S8 Ep22: UK release of Moscow X with former CIA analyst David McCloskey

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[00:00:08] Lock your doors, close the blinds, change your passwords, this is Secrets and Spies.

[00:00:27] Secrets and Spies is a podcast that dives into the world of espionage, terrorism, geopolitics

[00:00:32] and intrigue.

[00:00:33] This episode is presented by Matt Fulton and produced by Chris Carr.

[00:00:39] Hello everyone and welcome back to Secrets and Spies!

[00:00:41] On today's episode we're reaching into the vault of the Not Too Far Back to bring you

[00:00:45] my interview from September with author and former CIA analyst David McCloskey about

[00:00:50] his new novel Moskout X.

[00:00:52] The received rave reviews here in the US was on several critics year end top 10 lists and

[00:00:57] will finally be released in the UK on January 18th, just a few days from now.

[00:01:02] So for all of you across the pond, a gentle reminder if you will, go out and grab Moskout

[00:01:07] X as soon as you can and dig in, you won't regret it.

[00:01:10] As always a couple house cleaning notes before we get started, a big thanks to all of our

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[00:01:50] David McCloskey, welcome back to Secrets and Spies.

[00:02:03] I'm so excited to have you here.

[00:02:05] Hey Matt, great to be with you.

[00:02:06] Thanks for having me back.

[00:02:07] Yeah.

[00:02:08] So you're here to talk about your new book Moskout X which is fantastic.

[00:02:14] Thank you.

[00:02:15] Thank you.

[00:02:16] Before we get into that, I wanted to turn the call back.

[00:02:20] I know you've gone into this in the past but for anyone listening who's unfamiliar, just

[00:02:26] wanted to go into your background a bit.

[00:02:29] How you came to Langley, what you did at CIA, that kind of stuff.

[00:02:34] Yeah, I know.

[00:02:35] Of course.

[00:02:36] So I got into the S.V.N.A.

[00:02:40] as a business I guess pretty young.

[00:02:42] I was actually 19 when I first took my first polygraph.

[00:02:48] I got recruited in a way that I'm sure would make a lot of my OSS 4 Bears role over in

[00:02:56] their coffins.

[00:02:57] But it was essentially a recruiter coming to campus to talk about CIA and I was a pretty

[00:03:06] young freshman at the time and thought it sounded like an amazing opportunity.

[00:03:14] Of course, also assumed that there was no chance that I would ever get in.

[00:03:18] So I applied and was thankfully selected.

[00:03:23] So I went through the whole polygraph full psych medical, all that kind of stuff as a 19

[00:03:29] to 20 year old and then joined as an undergrad intern where I worked on Syria for my first

[00:03:35] summer which was 2006 so we had the 34 day war between Israel and Hezbollah that summer

[00:03:41] and then the next summer was the run up to Al-Kabar and so I was just totally hooked.

[00:03:46] That joined full time after I graduated and pretty much worked on Syria as an analyst,

[00:03:53] the entire time that I was there.

[00:03:58] And it started as a relatively sleepy account working on Syria in like, oh, eight, oh,

[00:04:06] nine, you know, four, it got sexy.

[00:04:09] It wasn't the world.

[00:04:10] Yeah, well, sexy might not be the right word.

[00:04:12] But yes, you know what I mean.

[00:04:15] I know what you mean and that of course was there and had a front row seat when it tipped

[00:04:21] into, you know, an uprising and then eventually a civil war but I was an analyst the whole

[00:04:25] time and you know left about, oh man, almost nine years ago now, I've been out and have

[00:04:36] not been writing.

[00:04:37] So you were in Nisa before the reorganization.

[00:04:40] Yes, I was, I was in OG Nisa.

[00:04:43] I was in Nisa and then it became Mina and then it became, I think there was actually

[00:04:50] something else in there before the reorg and now of course it's the Near East Russian

[00:04:56] Center.

[00:04:57] I don't want to get too inside baseball for people but so Al-Kabar is the Syrian nuclear

[00:05:01] reactor that these Israelis bombed in, was that oh eight?

[00:05:05] They bombed it in oh seven.

[00:05:07] I believe it was September of oh seven because they, I remember, you know, they did it like

[00:05:12] the first or second week that I was back at school so I had left and then they did it.

[00:05:17] So you missed it.

[00:05:18] I missed it.

[00:05:19] I saw it in the New York Times.

[00:05:22] And Nisa is the office of Near East and South Asian analysis.

[00:05:25] Yes.

[00:05:26] There you go.

[00:05:27] Okay.

[00:05:28] You, you know, had this, had this career at CIA starting out very young.

[00:05:33] I mean they started like bought you out of the gate, you know?

[00:05:39] And then, you know, I know you went and did some consulting for a bit after, after,

[00:05:44] a, Langley.

[00:05:46] Tell us a bit about your, your, your, your spy novel is origin story.

[00:05:51] I mean was this, was working in the genre something you always wanted to do?

[00:05:55] No, it wasn't.

[00:05:56] I mean, it wasn't something that I had really considered at all.

[00:06:00] I, you know, I always loved reading and writing and I had read voraciously in the genre,

[00:06:10] you know, before I joined the CIA and actually didn't read silveraciously when I was at CIA

[00:06:16] I think somewhat common.

[00:06:18] You know, you have, you kind of see how it actually works and, you know, you read some of these

[00:06:23] novels and it, which I actually really love most of them like, you know, the kind of

[00:06:28] more shoot them up type stuff that's really fun and action packed.

[00:06:32] But you, you read that kind of stuff from your inside.

[00:06:34] You're like it's so different from what I'm doing that it can sometimes be, you know,

[00:06:39] it, it, it strains credibility too much.

[00:06:40] But so all that to say, I didn't read so much when I was on the inside.

[00:06:43] When I left, I, I was really, I think working through some stuff after having seen what

[00:06:52] was going on in Syria, you know, I'd spent, but basically worked my entire professional,

[00:06:57] you know, career up to that point on that country.

[00:06:59] I lived there.

[00:07:00] I had friends there and I found that writing was just kind of a way to process that.

[00:07:06] It was very cathartic.

[00:07:07] I was doing it without any real intent of publishing anything.

[00:07:12] It was just for me.

[00:07:14] But I came back to it.

[00:07:16] You know, I sort of, I realized how much I loved it and I realized that it sort of made

[00:07:25] me feel like me, you know, in a way.

[00:07:28] And so I had had this desire to get back to it, you know, somehow.

[00:07:34] So I, you know, I put that project aside bits and pieces of that thing that I was writing

[00:07:39] when I left became to ask a station eventually my first novel.

[00:07:44] But I had, you know, I was like, okay, this will just put it in and draw somewhere and

[00:07:48] might be able to come back to it later.

[00:07:50] And turned out five years later, I had an opportunity for a whole bunch of reasons to spend,

[00:07:55] you know, a real chunk of about six, seven months writing full time and came back to it

[00:08:02] and Damascus Station came out of that.

[00:08:05] But there was no thought what I was inside C.I.

[00:08:09] But I would really ever write spy fiction or, you know, become an novelist at all.

[00:08:14] What spy novels really interest you?

[00:08:16] Like what, which ones inspired you?

[00:08:18] So I really like spy fiction that deals authentically with character and that deals authentically

[00:08:29] as much as you can with factual agency.

[00:08:34] And also that, frankly, novels that I think deal really realistically with sort of setting.

[00:08:38] Right, that make you feel like you're there.

[00:08:41] And that could be blindly but it could also be Moscow or Bahrain or Berlin.

[00:08:49] So I'd say there's probably a long list of things that have, of spy fiction that's inspired

[00:08:56] me along the way.

[00:08:57] I think few that would bear that shouldn't be.

[00:09:01] I really love, I mean, I've read all of the look I can in obviously and really love

[00:09:08] it.

[00:09:09] But I would say a little drummer girl, it probably stands out to me as one that kind of shows

[00:09:15] the long arc of an operation and how much, you know, ineffictionalized way, of course,

[00:09:20] but how much planning goes into it in preparation and sort of the human element to, okay, what's

[00:09:27] the boundary between intimacy and manipulation?

[00:09:32] You know, as you're, as, you know, as Charlie's being recruited by Mossad.

[00:09:39] So I've really, that novel's treatment of that really inspired me across both Damascus

[00:09:45] Station and Moscow X.

[00:09:47] And another one I would say is Jason Matthews, the late Jason Matthews, Red Sparrow Trilogy,

[00:09:52] which was one of the first spy novels I had read that showed, you know, I really appreciated

[00:09:59] a lot of the procedural aspects of those novels and obviously the trade craft.

[00:10:04] But I loved how many Easter eggs there were for insiders in those books at, at how he really

[00:10:12] went out of his way to show the pure, a critic nature of the agency in a lot of respects

[00:10:18] and to kind of bring a lot of those quirks and foibles onto the page.

[00:10:23] I thought it's sometimes very humorous ways.

[00:10:25] So that whole trilogy was a big inspiration to me.

[00:10:32] You know, in another novelist I would say that whose books have been, you know, on my

[00:10:38] bedside table when I've been writing has been Charles McCarrie's novels.

[00:10:44] You know, I find, again there, you know, he's a former agency guy.

[00:10:49] You wouldn't necessarily know it from the books because he doesn't really try to go in

[00:10:54] depth so much on a lot of the trade craft or, you know, the ins and outs of the bureaucracy.

[00:11:00] But he deals in really I think smart character driven spy fiction that kind of gives you

[00:11:08] the gamut of human experience and emotion at the same time in so much of his work.

[00:11:13] So those would be just a few.

[00:11:15] I'd mention as being inspirations to me along the way.

[00:11:18] So I guess hearing these inspirations, it sort of makes more sense now.

[00:11:24] But so one of the big positives about Damascus Station as people saw it and I think is certainly

[00:11:32] true with Moscow X now was the way in which you depict the intelligence world accurately.

[00:11:39] You know, you touch on stuff like CIA's administrative rules and regulations, you know,

[00:11:45] their kind of business travel guidelines, hall files, assessment cables, sending the balance

[00:11:52] of your, you know, salary back to the US Treasury stuff like that.

[00:11:59] Why do you think it's important to really focus on this kind of minutia rather than just

[00:12:06] you know, the gunplay and lobbying quippy insults at the bad guys?

[00:12:10] Well as much fun as those things are.

[00:12:13] I think for me, it comes out of the desire to draw the characters realistically and fully

[00:12:22] and when I'm dealing with characters that are CIA operations officers in Moscow X,

[00:12:31] they're docks or in the case of proctor running a fairly aggressive component of Russia

[00:12:39] House called Moscow X, you know, the reality of those jobs is that a lot of it, you know,

[00:12:45] you're sort of dealing with this bureaucracy.

[00:12:48] You're dealing with these regulations and procedures you're dealing with finance.

[00:12:53] You're dealing with legal, you know, these kind of things comprise a significant amount

[00:12:58] of your day and you spend a lot of calories thinking about them, worrying about them,

[00:13:03] dealing with them.

[00:13:04] And so it's felt to me like from a character standpoint, if I'm trying to draw real CIA officers

[00:13:09] who are embedded in this bureaucracy, you know, and there's a balance here right because

[00:13:15] if you really get into the minutia of it, it could be quite boring or the reader could feel

[00:13:18] like I'm sort of cramming, you know, some kind of bureaucratic education down their throat

[00:13:23] and they're just here for a good time.

[00:13:26] So I have to be careful but I think that in dollops and at the right point in a story,

[00:13:32] they bring the characters out, you know, I think and hope more authentically than if

[00:13:37] I just suppress that stuff or if I invented, you know, it certainly is a lot in novels

[00:13:44] that are fiction clearly but if I just invented crazy things that happened to them because

[00:13:49] they seemed like they'd be even more fun.

[00:13:50] I think the books would feel less like I'm dealing realistically with these people and

[00:13:56] with the real CIA that they work in.

[00:13:59] I mean, I sort of look at it this way and I've drawn dawn about this to people on the pod

[00:14:05] and off the pod but I'm really kind of big on the ethics of writing in the spy genre

[00:14:12] which is sort of to say that I think there's a degree of fantasy and escapism at the heart

[00:14:17] of what we do.

[00:14:18] I mean, people sit down and they read these books for fun but I think with this subject

[00:14:25] like most people who read these books, it's the biggest, most concentrated look at international

[00:14:32] relations, geopolitics, intelligence work, military affairs that most play people will

[00:14:39] ever get.

[00:14:41] And so I think authors in general but especially in this genre have a duty to tell the truth

[00:14:47] and try to portray the world as accurately as it really is.

[00:14:51] You know, I mean if you show it that like okay this really cool awesome guy with a

[00:14:59] glock and a semtex can go and solve this huge complex geopolitical issue with cultures

[00:15:06] stretching back thousands of years in 300 pages.

[00:15:09] I think after a while people didn't have a tendency to think that that's real and they

[00:15:14] wonder why it's not, why you can't so easily solve these issues in real life.

[00:15:20] I don't know if you have any thoughts on those lines.

[00:15:23] Yeah, I definitely agree with the diagnosis that there is cultural tendency or frankly

[00:15:34] just the poor whole to the world of the intelligence community and CIA is largely through Hollywood

[00:15:42] and through spy fiction.

[00:15:44] That is how most people consume it and so over time and in some there could be an expectation

[00:15:51] that well there really should be superhero spies and why don't we have those right because

[00:15:56] I've been reading about them and watching them on TV for two decades like they must, if

[00:16:01] they don't exist they should.

[00:16:02] And so if I'm seeing the intelligence agencies behave in ways that you know make them appear

[00:16:07] to not be superheroes or to be villains well then that's something wrong with them as

[00:16:11] opposed to the way the spy business actually works.

[00:16:15] Totally agree with that I think where I kind of, where I would come down on it though is

[00:16:21] when I think about the sort of discovery of a story and of character you know your there's

[00:16:30] a gray fuzzy line here of well what's authentic for that character you know what I mean like

[00:16:41] what is what part of the like archaeological side am I digging around into like bring

[00:16:47] this bring this person out and I think that you know I don't think there's anything wrong

[00:16:54] at all with having spy fiction it is much more you know it's fun it's glitz it's shoot them

[00:16:59] up it's not really connected to reality and I read those albums all the time because I

[00:17:03] think they're just like great fun but I think for me at least you know I kind of feel

[00:17:09] like I don't even know it's a duty but it's just more like the world of my books is dealing

[00:17:19] with something that I think is approximating a more realistic version of the actual CIA

[00:17:27] like that's where I've kind of chosen to dig around and where I like to tell my stories

[00:17:32] and so then as a result if I you know all the sudden have somebody in a you know Tuxedo off

[00:17:42] running around with a gun and shooting people and running ops inside the United States of America

[00:17:47] that's going to feel really inauthentic to the world of my books and I think readers would

[00:17:52] probably be like oh that's not you know I don't come to these books for that I mean they want

[00:17:57] the baseline is you got it book fails if you don't consume it right if you're not finishing

[00:18:03] the story because it's like oh there's so much to show our again or just nothing's happening and

[00:18:08] but you don't like the characters at all like the world you're gonna you know okay fine I haven't

[00:18:13] I've missed a mark there but you know I think the world of my novels is hopefully

[00:18:17] you know pressing a little bit closer to the bureaucracy and the ethos and the culture of the

[00:18:22] actual agency and so that's that's kind of where I've chosen to draw my line yeah so I mean this

[00:18:29] the realism you know led to really great reviews for Damascus station I mean some of the

[00:18:34] pullerbs you had were formidable I mean people like David Petrae is saying it was you know the best

[00:18:39] fine novel that he's ever read you know um people couldn't say enough good things about it I'm

[00:18:46] wondering if you know how that one that that reception to Damascus station how did it feel to be

[00:18:55] you know received so warmly with your with your debut novel like that well I mean obviously it

[00:19:01] mostly felt good you know because you're I think you're kind of at least may you know I'm sort of

[00:19:10] but I mean last time at the massacres station now in Moscow actually sort of bracing for the shoot a

[00:19:16] drop you know and for for I don't know if it's a it's a writer thing or if it's a me thing and I'm sort

[00:19:21] of a pessimist by nature so I'm kind of like all right I'm waiting for the avalanche of terrible

[00:19:27] reviews and you know people telling you to sort of pack it up and fight it other job so to to hear

[00:19:34] other things to hear positive words about the novel and to feel like it was generally well

[00:19:39] received this is a tremendous you know blessing and gift and and um one that I think again as a

[00:19:47] natural pessimist I'm sort of not preparing myself for this time sort of equally bracing for you

[00:19:53] know uh the roast but you know I like to think about pretty much every day as a writer and that could

[00:19:59] that could deal with publicity or it could be you know actually just staring at a blank page right any

[00:20:05] kind of part of it it's sort of like a three-legged stool of you know fear joy and self-loathing

[00:20:11] and it's just a matter of what proportion of those things you're gonna have in any given day so

[00:20:17] you know there's days where you know you're sort of high on some great reviews and then the next

[00:20:22] day you know you're sort of staring at a blank page and you're thinking I'm gonna be able to do it

[00:20:25] again um so it's it's kind of all of those things at once and definitely not an equal measure you

[00:20:32] know it sort of goes up and down and the proportion changes depending on what's going on but you know

[00:20:37] it was um it was a tremendous you know full stop it was a tremendous gift and blessing to sort of

[00:20:44] feel like okay there are people I like the mask station you know and I wrote it in large part

[00:20:50] it's a say with Moscow acts with like my own sensibility in mind about what I want on my night

[00:20:55] stand and so there's something there about like you know feeling like that that that voice that

[00:21:01] story whatever it might be you know is resonating with people that's just that's wonderful

[00:21:07] so with that with that reception in mind was it I guess intimidating sitting down figuring out

[00:21:12] how are you gonna follow up the mask station with the next one yes yeah that was a terrible

[00:21:19] terrible thing uh and you know it's I would be lying if I said it doesn't continue to some degree

[00:21:26] because you know the mask station came out of there are guts of that novel that go back to the writing

[00:21:35] that I did right after I left the agency and so there's something that's deep there and emotive

[00:21:43] and real and um you know I've been working on the novel I guess you could say for you know I've

[00:21:49] been working on that book for seven years it's you know before it got published not consistently but

[00:21:57] you know it had been brewing for a while and then with the second book you know not only am I

[00:22:02] not really dealing with the same cast of characters nor returning to the same setting you know in Syria

[00:22:08] I've got you know less time new characters to discover and more pressure uh you know and I've

[00:22:17] got to do a whole bunch of research on on Russia um which I didn't cover with the agency and kind

[00:22:22] of get under this you know the hood of that so it felt um very daunting and uh you know you kind

[00:22:30] of I think I'm as operating for a long time and I think frankly still I'm wondering you know

[00:22:37] can I still bottle the same magic that Damascus station seemed to have like is that

[00:22:42] is it a one-off or can I can I do this more consistently and that you know that's a that's a

[00:22:48] that's a real feeling yeah so let's let's dig a little deeper into Moscow X uh what's the book about

[00:22:55] tells about it you know the book basically started as they answered the question what might it look

[00:23:03] if the agency got really aggressive um it really took the gloves off when it came to dealing from

[00:23:09] a covert action standpoint with Vladimir Putin and so the title of the book Moscow X is the name

[00:23:16] of a fictional component of the CIA's Russia House in the novel um that is charged with taking

[00:23:22] this very outside the box aggressive uh approach to deal with Putin and um the the the wonderful or

[00:23:32] one of the wonderful protagonists of the novel in a case officer named Artemis Brokter the chief

[00:23:37] of Moscow X um taps two CIA officers who are under non-official cover knocks we call them uh to

[00:23:48] to basically go and get close to and recruit Putin's money man one of Putin's money man with the idea

[00:23:54] that the agency will make Putin believe that a coup is underway when one is in fact not to kind

[00:24:01] destabilize his perception of his hold on power in doing that they get close to the money man the

[00:24:07] money man's wife Anna is a Russian banker um who is not at all what she seems she's actually at

[00:24:14] Russian intelligence officer she's the uh foreign intelligence service the SVR's version of a knock

[00:24:20] and she is playing a game all her own uh you know so it's obviously a book about modern day

[00:24:28] espionage but you know i also like to think that it's a book about vengeance and loyalty and truth kind

[00:24:34] of in the umbrella amid this world of really covert war between uh Washington and Moscow so that's

[00:24:43] a bit of what the novel is about so as you said there's sort of there's only a couple characters

[00:24:48] returning from Damascus station in in this one was very happy to see Artemis Brokter as one of them um

[00:24:56] i was sort of curious i mean while you know sam joseph ended the last book with some professional

[00:25:02] issues on that on the horizon presumably um i think maybe a lot of authors would have just sort of

[00:25:08] written him out of that situation and you know kept him around for you know familiarity safety that kind

[00:25:15] of thing but you didn't do that i mean you you have new protagonist here there's you know proctor

[00:25:22] three other principal characters seeya and uh max that you talked about seeya and anna have this kind of

[00:25:29] as you've hinted at this weird kind of back and forth play between each other trying to co-opt the other

[00:25:35] for a bit um i was it was it was it a challenge finding these new protagonists to to to lead the book

[00:25:42] was that a challenge you sort of actively wanted to tackle it was the so i i did i did want a challenge

[00:25:49] it in the book and that was part the creation of or the discovery of new characters and then i think part

[00:25:55] also setting a lot of it in russia and kind of purposely not going back to the middle east or to

[00:26:00] syria so those were those were definitely on my mind when i started writing the book um you know i

[00:26:08] i felt like uh i i also felt that i and i honestly cannot really explain why i didn't want to do a series

[00:26:20] where it's like say i'm joseph book one two like i i didn't want to do that you know um

[00:26:28] and i read tons of those you know i read all the bright thorebooks or read the jack car books i read

[00:26:32] the daniel so i looked like i like there's something really fun and satisfying about that progression

[00:26:40] but as as i was doing it i just didn't want to do that with with sam now i might do it with

[00:26:48] proctor to a degree but i think my books are always gonna end up being a little bit more um

[00:26:54] polyphonic then right you know those that just kind of follow follow the main protagonist throughout

[00:27:01] so that was also in the back of my mind and um you know even though i did sort of write sam

[00:27:07] at the end of maska station into some trouble you know i think it's nothing that i couldn't get him

[00:27:12] out of eventually in the world of of the novels um and in fact he may he may return

[00:27:19] in the third book uh for a bit but those that was kind of i think all of that was going through my head

[00:27:25] when i started writing proctor was even going to be in the book but as i was writing it

[00:27:31] i felt like she was missing is all i could say and then i just started to plug her in and you know

[00:27:36] she took off her own deranged ways as she does yeah so one of your i guess strengths i guess as a

[00:27:46] writer as was you know as a lot of people said after damaska station is the way you write female

[00:27:52] characters i mean so there's proctor proctor is kind of her own kind of thing i guess but

[00:28:00] wouldn't really it's hard it's hard to put her in a bite yeah yeah yeah she defies she devised

[00:28:06] easy categorization yeah she is all things at all times kind of um but so you had mariam hadad and

[00:28:14] her cousin in damaska station in this one you have kind of another two-hander with sia and with um

[00:28:23] and with anna i mean and none of them are none of your female characters are just sort of

[00:28:29] accessories and air or window dressing you they're not selling victims to kind of borrow

[00:28:36] your words there their arcs are kind of broadly empowering and i mean it's kind of rare in this

[00:28:42] genre um as one as you could talk a bit about how you do that with your approaches to that i certainly

[00:28:48] i didn't start either book with any kind of intense that the protect like that that you know

[00:28:56] and i would say look like there are many different types of characters in these novels but i think

[00:29:03] damaska station sort of starts as sam's novel and i think by the end it's marians

[00:29:08] and i think you could make a similar case here that by the end of of wasko x you know we sort of

[00:29:15] this is anna's book um and that process was very organic and unexpected you know i

[00:29:29] generally have adopted approach when i'm writing of

[00:29:34] going toward where there's energy and feeling like and and trying to to you know sort of let go

[00:29:44] of my own ego or any sense i have of structure outline and let the story drive things once i feel like

[00:29:50] i kind of got down to a point where i i've hit the river that's running it i can just kind of go

[00:29:55] with it you know um and i think in both novels it felt like okay once i hit something in damaska

[00:30:05] station it's like okay mariam i would write i write a lot of stuff that doesn't make it into the books

[00:30:12] in an effort to discover the characters to figure out what they talk like what they wear

[00:30:18] what they think with you know what what they're afraid of um and as i just discovered them i

[00:30:25] think in those cases i just felt like oh there's so much energy here i'm just gonna kind of let it

[00:30:30] i'm gonna let it go you know i just follow that and that's that's it and so you know i kind of

[00:30:37] um i don't have a i don't have a sexy answer on why i chose them because i don't really think i

[00:30:45] fit that way you know i think i sort of found that story and that voice in a way that felt like it

[00:30:52] worked and had energy to me and so i just sort of captured it on paper you know um that's the best

[00:31:00] way i can describe it i mean you know i i think that my first attempts at writing a lot of these

[00:31:06] characters voices are always very um like they don't they don't work ultimately or they wouldn't

[00:31:11] work in a book because i'm just getting to know them or just sort of starting to see a little

[00:31:15] glimmer of them but you know as i write as i write it you know you start to realize who they are

[00:31:21] and hear them more effectively and then you kind of like all right i'm rolling with that and i'm

[00:31:24] just gonna i'm just gonna let it take me take me on a ride um so i wish i had i wish i had a better

[00:31:29] answer but it's just this very organic thing that kind of comes out of the writing process i think

[00:31:35] that's how i find my characters so this book um does a lot of work with

[00:31:42] interesting non-traditional forms of covers for its officers i mean there's one with

[00:31:48] as an fn o that i was new to me i don't think i've ever seen that before depicted um just

[00:31:56] wondering if you could talk us through you know yeah these different types of covers that uh

[00:32:01] the you know three kind of principal officers in this story have and the benefits i guess that

[00:32:07] that gives for operating in a denied territory like modern russia there's three three characters

[00:32:13] in the novel that are operating under forms of non-official cover one of them cia who is a

[00:32:19] London based lawyer all right so she's she's actually a lawyer but she's also a cia officer

[00:32:26] we have max who is maybe has the most interesting form of uh of cover in that he is

[00:32:34] in the world of the book a foreign national officer i had to mess around with the actual title here

[00:32:39] thanks to our friends at the cia's publication review board um that's interesting but he's basically a

[00:32:48] you could think about his role as being he he's a mexican national right so he's not an american citizen

[00:32:57] and he is but he's a cia officer he's not an asset his his grandfather in the novel had been

[00:33:04] an asset but the family business which is this thoroughbred kind of breeding and and and delay

[00:33:11] operation in northern mexico is essentially a cia fronter it's kind of the way it's depicted

[00:33:19] in the novel it's like a a j v with the cia between langly and between the kestio family um and so

[00:33:27] so he has this sort of even more interesting form of cover which is like he's actually he's actually

[00:33:33] an officer but he's kind of not you know and he doesn't have to he doesn't have to do a lot of

[00:33:40] the bureaucratic stuff that like cia would as a doc and then ona is um a member of the russian foreign

[00:33:48] intelligence service and the russians are more creative and flexible with a lot of this stuff

[00:33:54] than we are yeah um but she is what the svr would call a member of their um and i'd butcher the

[00:34:00] russian if i said it but a member of their apparatus of attached employees which means that she

[00:34:04] is an svr officer um but she is under commercial cover working at a russian bank uh which enables you

[00:34:12] know and then to you know the other point of your question is all these but so it's a setting for

[00:34:16] these characters and you think about well why is that useful yes intelligence agencies and

[00:34:21] really here you know you think about a world of ubiquitous technical surveillance you think

[00:34:26] about sensors everywhere you think about the the you know just incredible amount of of data the

[00:34:33] ease of analyzing it it's very hard um for let's take the world of Damascus station where you have

[00:34:40] case officers who are operating at an embassy they're under diplomatic cover but they're you know

[00:34:45] there are employees of the united states government right how hard is it in the context of modern russia

[00:34:52] for uh even if you put the sea ice stuff aside for someone from the state department to go and meet

[00:34:58] with the russian that that shouldn't be meeting with americans you know that's hard um the russians

[00:35:04] could figure that out they could ask questions this person could you know be disappeared um when you're

[00:35:09] dealing with you know a london based lawyer who's got kind of this you know shady law firm or

[00:35:16] you're dealing with a mexican national who's you know selling race horses those kind of interactions

[00:35:24] are much easier to orchestrate um and so so there's you know there's an indirect nature

[00:35:32] uh to the to the trade craft here that is that is really increasingly necessary uh in

[00:35:38] in the world that we're living it so i did choose well and then i would say from a storytelling

[00:35:44] standpoint um you can give these people you know the the the thoroughbred you know operation is

[00:35:52] a great example of well i can just create a really sexy bit of cover for somebody yeah that

[00:35:59] can dial up the story um more so than if you just have a you know second secretary uh working out

[00:36:06] of you know the embassy in mosque out all the sudden i can deal with the you know

[00:36:12] multi-billion dollar horse racing operation right and bring that into the story and think about how

[00:36:17] that could be used to drive plot points or character points so all that kind of stuff came together

[00:36:22] and i thought that it it would work to to you know step out of the world of embassy operations

[00:36:27] and to deal with the world of really commercial operations at this point so with Damascus station

[00:36:33] you had the benefit of your kind of whole professional experience at Langley you know being devoted

[00:36:38] to Syria the civil war the Assad regime um and this one you really kind of shift gears a bit

[00:36:47] i mean masco axis set broadly across russia-mexico various parts of of western europe um was it how

[00:36:54] was it kind of yeah shifting gears into these new kind of settings and cultures and different kind

[00:36:59] of political systems uh what what resources helped you kind of research this book yeah i did have to

[00:37:05] do a lot of a lot of research uh which maybe was a mistake um because it just took a lot of time so

[00:37:14] you know with some places i had you know the mental travelogue right like um spent a lot of time

[00:37:21] a lot bit like you know that's like a lot a lot a lot of the book is set there you know i sort of

[00:37:26] i have the memory to deal with i can uh that was a little bit easier you know um russia was harder uh

[00:37:34] and the process there was reading pretty much everything i could get my hands on not just about

[00:37:41] the high politics but like yeah you know books about st. Petersburg that deal with okay what's the

[00:37:46] traffic like and what's the cuisine like at all you know what do people wear how do you like

[00:37:51] what do people look like when they're walking how do people walk you know i mean you just all

[00:37:56] all these kinds of things that you're trying to absorb to create the um you know

[00:38:01] the quote-unquote fictional world of of the novel but that these are the kind of facts that

[00:38:07] as a novelist you don't want to get raw right and and and if you put them in in the right quantity

[00:38:13] they make the book feel really it makes you feel like you're actually in the city you know

[00:38:19] yeah there's plenty plenty of books that if you don't do that

[00:38:23] you don't feel like you're there you're told you're there but you're not actually you know as a reader

[00:38:27] but you don't feel it and and i'm you know hopeful that with the masqueras station and then now

[00:38:34] with masqueras that like the setting becomes a character in that way so it's a lot of reading

[00:38:39] it's a lot of reading of stuff that you know you might not normally think of if you're trying to

[00:38:42] get up to speed on russia um and then it's a lot of conversations with people who who have

[00:38:48] have lived there and spent tons of time there um because you know if i'm trying to figure out okay

[00:38:54] what's it it's november and you're walking around St. Petersburg like what does that smell like

[00:39:03] you just talked to some people from st. Petersburg that'll kind of talk you know about different

[00:39:09] spells that come in on the marine wind and like what it's like to be there and you know all that

[00:39:13] kind of stuff is just invaluable so it's a lot of that too um and even with places that i've been

[00:39:19] you know i find it doing that is helpful because sometimes when you're there you're kind of like

[00:39:24] get out focused on that you're not absorbing all these things but then you talk to someone who's

[00:39:28] you know who grew up and has spent their entire life in in london and even though i

[00:39:32] know the place generally you're kind of like okay yeah that you're you're bringing new new light

[00:39:36] on the setting to me that i can work in through a character's perspective so it's all those things but

[00:39:42] yeah man it was it was a lot of work i would not recommend if you're trying to get a book done quickly

[00:39:48] put it that way so what was the was it was it i think i kind of know the answer this was it

[00:39:53] difficult finding your way through this through this book yes yeah it nearly killed me uh-huh

[00:39:59] that like literally but it was very hard it was very hard right you know i mean i'm

[00:40:04] um i'm sort of i think maybe come into the realization that it's just hard to write novels go figure

[00:40:11] uh so it's just gonna be hard i think i started with some kind of delusion

[00:40:17] that because i had done it once the second time would be easier and i found that that was

[00:40:24] absolutely not the case i mean for a lot of stuff we talked about it was it was more research

[00:40:30] um i think there was a i started digging around for the wrong story or a story that did work to start

[00:40:40] and i got pretty far down the path like i probably i probably rode almost a hundred pages on a plot

[00:40:47] line that just fizzled and and died and i knew that it i think i knew after 30 or 40 pages it wasn't

[00:40:55] working but i kind of kept banging away at it to see it already work and i eventually just had to

[00:40:58] throw it away so there were there are months of that and then it was just like okay to move that

[00:41:04] aside start over from a clean slate so that was mixed into um and then you know i obviously didn't

[00:41:11] help uh you know from a from a story standpoint and the creation or sort of the rendering of

[00:41:20] the setting the invasion or the more you know sort of full-throated version of the invasion that

[00:41:27] happened in in February of 22 like it just recast i couldn't write the book and not

[00:41:34] have that be part of it in some way and so the setting of okay well what does what is it like now

[00:41:41] in Moscow and St. Petersburg now that we're in much more of a fortress russia situation than we were

[00:41:46] two years ago that has changed you know daily life there it feels different like i i i i felt like

[00:41:53] i had to capture that and that that i had to do another kind of phase of of research um to get my you

[00:42:01] know to get under the hood there so all those things just made it very challenging to write i'm

[00:42:07] very happy with how it's turned out but it was uh it sort of fought its own creation every step

[00:42:12] of the way so this sort of leads kind of directly into my next question so you were on this podcast

[00:42:18] with Chris in January of 2022 talking about Damascus station and then a couple weeks later

[00:42:25] Putin fully invades Ukraine and since then you know there's been these uh string of mysterious

[00:42:31] explosions and fires across russia and you know i don't know how that happens kids don't don't play

[00:42:36] with matches um so that wind up for and i'm sure there's various overlapping saps and there's

[00:42:44] allied services and i'm sure there's a jsoc task force involved in all of that not just focus too

[00:42:50] much on attribution i know better than to ask you about that but all that lined up to so what was your

[00:42:59] what was your reaction to the invasion when it happened and what did you what's more kind of

[00:43:06] specifically i guess if you can say what did you have the change about the book after it happened

[00:43:11] like how much rewriting was involved if any really i don't know yeah so i had to rework a lot of the

[00:43:20] way i framed the setting so in in the chapters where you're starting you know where you're

[00:43:26] in and this was this was thought this was the kind of mad thing part because

[00:43:33] there were things i had to rewrite because they weren't true anymore but those were not those

[00:43:37] were sort of few and far in between i felt like the plot could still work largely it was more that

[00:43:44] throughout the novel there would be missed opportunities if i didn't go in and add things

[00:43:51] to really make you as the reader feel like you're you're under the hood yeah yeah you

[00:43:59] feel what it's like to be in peter's burger mascar right now or you feel what it what it's like to

[00:44:06] kind of go in to russia as a knock i mean that would always have been a terrifying prospect but even

[00:44:12] potentially more so now and so it felt like throughout the book i had to figure out

[00:44:20] how i brought that to life in almost each and every scene and and what i've when i'm

[00:44:27] teaming up what a place looks like or when i'm in dialogue with characters you know when they're in

[00:44:32] russia like how is this stuff coming up you know is this a natural point in conversation where

[00:44:38] someone might mention something about the war or something related to it or you know there's a scene

[00:44:44] in the in the novel where Anna is walking around a neighborhood of waskow and you know she comes

[00:44:51] upon a a big mural of Putin you know that is fictionalized but felt like yeah not so hard to imagine

[00:45:03] in the kind of increasingly sort of neo-stalinist setup that he's got going for him and so things

[00:45:09] like that felt like they had to be had to be worked in i will say now i said how much had to

[00:45:15] change the plot side of things that entirely true because i had a kind of build up of several

[00:45:21] provocations and older versions of the novel that led the CIA to get to this point where they

[00:45:28] said okay we're gonna take the gloves off and in the context of the war in Ukraine it actually felt

[00:45:34] like all those things are like they've already happened or they just sort of felt increasingly

[00:45:37] small beings and so i just kind of had to work that stuff out of the story and almost just start from

[00:45:43] a much more personal affront to proctor which takes place in the first couple chapters of the novel

[00:45:51] that gives us a window into how the Russians operate and then creates a kind of character driven

[00:45:56] reason um for wasko ex-undertaped this very you know sort of daring and unconventional operations

[00:46:04] so all that kind of stuff happened a little bit later in the book and i felt like with the war

[00:46:07] it's like i got to figure out a way to pull this forward because your average person who's coming

[00:46:11] to this book is gonna say okay well the Russians weren't done all this stuff like how was this

[00:46:16] news to the character so all that had to be worked out right um proctor has this monologue pretty

[00:46:23] early on in the book where she says you know the Russians have been repeatedly poking us again and

[00:46:28] again for years constantly pushing the envelope through things like uh election meddling or

[00:46:35] directed energy weapons like the hivanna syndrome um uh equipping the Taliban with ied's to attack

[00:46:42] our troops in Afghanistan do you see the outbreak of this war in real life is sort of like

[00:46:49] the next logical step in that in that and climbing that escalation ladder you know if there was an

[00:46:55] Artemis proctor leading Moscow ex a couple years ago do you think what we see now when Ukraine could

[00:46:59] have been prevented i think that that counterfactual would definitely be above my pay grade but i do

[00:47:06] think that you can draw line you know across i mean going back probably further than this but you

[00:47:16] don't think about okay the war in Georgia you think about uh Syria you think about you know

[00:47:22] there's a run of them you mentioned a lot of them but a run of assassinations uh of you know

[00:47:29] oppositionists defectors um overseas do you think about uh and at home you think about um directed

[00:47:37] energy what you know attacks against our our intelligence officers you think about you know

[00:47:42] nudilink around it are in our grid in our infrastructure rants somewhere attacks like you

[00:47:48] you just sort of have this you know fairly uninterrupted uh string of

[00:47:55] Russian provocation and sort of poking around to figure out that all they said make

[00:48:02] you know create problems for us but to figure out what the response is going to be and i do think

[00:48:09] that uh oh you're cranking you know 2014 right i mean and and the sort of you know

[00:48:16] sort of hybrid war that ensued afterward so you take all that stuff and i think it's pretty easy

[00:48:22] to pay the picture of a a Putin and the men around him in the run up to this war uh saying look

[00:48:32] you know not only is this going to be done relatively quickly right but this is going to be like

[00:48:40] the other ones and the Americans will talk big game and you know probably do some things to support

[00:48:47] the Ukrainian you know the rump Ukrainian regime or whatever's left that that um that will bother us

[00:48:54] but they're not really going to do anything and i think um you know they've obviously probably

[00:49:00] events somewhat surprised by how uh you know there's a lot to talk about with respect to the way

[00:49:08] that we've supported the Ukrainian government but i think with the largely effective response

[00:49:13] that we've had to the invasion so far um that you know probably was was unexpected on the part of

[00:49:21] of Vladimir Putin and the met around him so i do think that string that proctor talks about is

[00:49:26] you know you can draw those kind of connections but would he if we had taken a fuller

[00:49:32] and a more direct kind of approached any of those would they have stopped i mean i think

[00:49:37] if we had done if we had you know i don't get this way above my paper aid but i think i don't think

[00:49:43] that if we had done anything with respect to the assassinations or a serial whatever i don't think

[00:49:47] that would have necessarily changed the calculation in Ukraine but it's possible that if we had um

[00:49:52] approached Ukraine differently over the past eight or nine years that maybe the Russians would not

[00:49:58] have decided to invade it this way but again i just speculating there yeah i've got to ask your take

[00:50:04] on uh you have gany pregozen and the vognor group um boy i i mean you know i was watching those events

[00:50:14] June and yeah it's part of his thinking like because i've got you know the this sort of fake who

[00:50:21] in the novel you know and then all the sudden progution is out there you know potentially trying to

[00:50:27] pull off the real thing and uh i i mean i have to admit my first thoughts were well how am i gonna have

[00:50:34] what will i do to the novel if they pull this off you know and if putin is is ousted i didn't have any

[00:50:41] good ideas um you already had galley's out too i think i think i i think i had a galley at that

[00:50:47] galley's 100 100 percent like it was it was at the point where it's like i can't i can't change

[00:50:54] anything really i mean i could have maybe changed the sentence or two here and there but i think

[00:50:58] what i where i landed was if putin had gone i would have i probably would have done a little bit of

[00:51:06] what i did in the maska station and the whole book would have been framed as some kind of almost

[00:51:11] alternative history of the last days of putin and i would have you know yeah would have framed

[00:51:16] the novel is happening in like the very recent past like in the last couple years um because i

[00:51:22] couldn't as like i just couldn't write him out i couldn't write in all of that stuff at that time

[00:51:28] so that was you know selfishly my my first thought i mean you know i i kind of see

[00:51:36] some real patterns with progojan and like russian elite politics going back hundreds of years where

[00:51:44] you know you have this sort of spurned uh courtier who has been elevated by putin and who you know

[00:51:52] on his own did not have you know really for a long time didn't have his own power base outside of

[00:51:59] putin i mean he was elevated by putin as the sort of outsider brought into the system to do

[00:52:06] nasty and somewhat deniable things you know for the czar um and then you know he kind of

[00:52:14] reacted as a spurned courtier might and went and tried to rectify his own you know

[00:52:23] and there's a lot of different speculation on this but it kind of seems like at least one

[00:52:26] read is this guy thought he was gonna be on the outs and wanted to make sure that he you know

[00:52:33] wasn't going to be and i don't know what was communicated to him to make him call off the march

[00:52:41] but it kind of seemed like i was surprised and i maybe i shouldn't have meant to see that

[00:52:46] it didn't seem like whatever support progojan thought he was going to get inside the military and

[00:52:52] security services didn't really manifest and neither did anyone really stick their neck out for

[00:53:00] putin so you kind of had just this fence sitting freeze yeah it was just everyone's kind of sitting

[00:53:05] around looking to see what happens um and progojan you know blinked in a lot of ways um

[00:53:13] and maybe never would have been able to take the final you know the final below

[00:53:21] because it's possible that he thought he had some support from somewhere inside

[00:53:25] you know the military or the fspe or the roscoward that he ended up not having and he just backed

[00:53:32] was even more fascinating to me is why he thought he could continue to you know go in and out of

[00:53:38] russia as that happened to live you know because you just don't get to do that when you when you

[00:53:45] oppose yeah the czar in the system you die um and i think you know putin probably

[00:53:53] killed him a couple months later and in russia to demonstrate like i didn't need to kill him

[00:54:00] because i'm so powerful but i did uh and and he obviously did it i think in russia as a sign

[00:54:06] that you know you're just i can i can do this whatever i want it and whatever a man or i want

[00:54:12] i'm in charge yeah uh i mean i i struggled to call the coup because i don't think he actually

[00:54:20] intended to to overthrow the regime i think he just wanted to throw fit and i question if he

[00:54:26] backed down because he saw that if he kept driving to mascar there's a chance that the regime could

[00:54:31] have actually had fallen and he didn't like if you break it you buy it and i don't think he wanted

[00:54:36] to buy yeah no i i think i've um that interested to see that the very in ways that different like

[00:54:43] news outlets and podcasts have referred to it it's like is it an abortive coup is it a like what

[00:54:50] is it um but i i could totally uh i could totally see that but he was perhaps

[00:54:57] rock and it is that what happened and how far he may have gotten and he maybe emerged from his

[00:55:04] rage blackout to your point unsure of what he might do if you know if they actually got there

[00:55:11] and they were able to physically physically take the prebloet you know if everyone just sort of

[00:55:16] continued to stay back i i seriously questioned if he could have i i think he could have done it maybe

[00:55:22] yeah i mean you know that's that's the crazy thing about these kind of elite maneuverings is that

[00:55:29] you know until you get there yeah i mean who you know who knows are are are what elements of

[00:55:37] the you know the presidential kind of administration or or what elements of the military

[00:55:42] you're actually going to stand up versus who might just say that they're on vacation and and

[00:55:46] sit it out you know you kind of you don't know until you until you get there and it's it's very

[00:55:51] possible that dear point people would have just said okay let's let's sit it out and the end

[00:55:56] of augur guys could have could have had their run of the place you know i'm sure it would have been

[00:56:00] bloody if they'd gotten into the crevallant or anything like that there would have been bloodshed

[00:56:04] and and there already was from what they did um but you know yeah it's very possible you know you

[00:56:10] talk about that that that fence sitting in sort of the rest of the Russian elite kind of sitting

[00:56:14] on the sidelines and and waiting to see what what happened i it's also sort of struck me the

[00:56:20] reaction of ordinary Russians I mean Russian popular opinion is almost impossible for us anyway

[00:56:27] to gauge at this point um but it was interesting to me the degree to nihilism isn't quite the right word

[00:56:37] but the fatalism that they sort of reacted to it as like i that they basically were like I don't

[00:56:43] really care who's in charge as long as i'm able to feed my family and whoever is in charge

[00:56:50] isn't actively beating up on me at the moment yeah that's that's right i am i think that one of

[00:56:57] the things that was most interesting to me and discovering um in particular the honor character

[00:57:04] in the novel was you know i was trying to figure out the sense of what does it look like

[00:57:10] if you're if you're a Russian and she's not an ordinary Russian right she's a member of the elite

[00:57:14] but but there was something very deep here in the Russian relationship with power or with the state

[00:57:24] and it kind of at least my read is that for a lot of people it didn't really it doesn't really

[00:57:31] matter if you're a member of the elite or if you're not many of them have a very um it's this weird

[00:57:42] paradox of like the state is fundamentally unjust and yet it's worthy so there's this sort of weird

[00:57:49] kind of almost spiritual aspect i might say to the state and its power and the fact that like

[00:57:55] it just sort of it just sort of is right turn up always talks about like the kind of connection

[00:58:01] between the Russian states as an arm of god almost which was interesting to me and he's he

[00:58:06] got his own sort of like crazy third-rome neo fascist like you know he's deeply fucked up

[00:58:13] yeah yeah he's a very at hand he's not at normal uh he doesn't kind of what i would he doesn't have

[00:58:19] what i would describe as like the kind of normal Russian like wily man approach to the state because

[00:58:26] I think I think a lot of Russians and actually this Russian sociologist you know going back into

[00:58:32] the Soviet era I've kind of studied this phenomenon there's a really interesting um really interesting

[00:58:38] stuff written about kind of with the Soviet man you know and how it's there's been more continuity

[00:58:46] in that profile um even up to the present than then sort of discontinuity and and it was striking

[00:58:52] to me that like you know we think about this from from an American or western standpoint and you're

[00:58:56] like okay I have a view of my own rights I have a very expansive view of my own freedom and agency

[00:59:05] and uh the state uh in some respects sort of exists to kind of facilitate that and to create

[00:59:14] the conditions under which I can sort of thrive and flourish and in in the Soviet sort of

[00:59:23] sort of soci uh you know as Russian sociology like there's there's actually a view of like okay it's

[00:59:28] more patience than it is protest right so you think like why aren't people out on the streets

[00:59:34] protesting the war and you create why i you know like well there's just sort of this view of like

[00:59:38] you don't just go out and protest against you sort of just grit through them right yeah um there's

[00:59:43] this view of like you can take the sort of active displeasure and almost mockery of the Russian state

[00:59:49] the system even Putin but that doesn't mean that you demand full rights and freedom from it right um

[00:59:58] so there's this there's almost like this perspective that i'm going to i'm gonna seek out small

[01:00:05] victories where i can to take to to give myself some sense of dignity but i'm not out there

[01:00:15] calling for you know a Jeffersonian democracy and there's a much more limited view I think

[01:00:22] of what's possible because the state has seen this sort of predatory and eternal thing but that

[01:00:28] it's also sort of fundamentally on some kind of mission and somewhat worthy and good

[01:00:34] also and all those things are kind of bottled up together so i i was really struck by that um when

[01:00:41] i was doing my research and felt like you know it was important that like Anna the novel you know she's

[01:00:47] she is doing things that to us you know on the very risky but she's not doing them to like change

[01:00:57] Russia she's not doing them to even like fully change her own position she's almost doing them

[01:01:01] there's a line that i think is that i think captures her position well which is she has a line in

[01:01:06] the novel like i get a steal from a thief and i'm gonna get away with it like that is ultimately what

[01:01:12] she is after and it's it's far less than any of us with our perspective on our rights would be

[01:01:19] after but for her that's victory and that's what she wants this is a good place to bring in a quick

[01:01:23] passage from the book if you don't mind me read it get real cool yeah please so this is early on

[01:01:27] this is early on in the book it's uh Anna reflecting on St. Petersburg okay so it says her

[01:01:34] Peter was the second city of the new risky mere a Russian world batten down against the hostile and

[01:01:39] degenerate west but the trenches the bloodletting the air raid sirens well to Anna that night

[01:01:45] they were faint thunder clouds on a faraway horizon the special military operation in Ukraine

[01:01:50] the war had twisted deep into the Russian soul but it had been slower to disfigure the body

[01:01:56] apple and Nike stores were gone McDonald's has been renamed tasty and that's it parts for western

[01:02:01] made cars now had to be purchased through online dealers there were occasional and limited shortages

[01:02:06] at the grocery and department stores but as Anna had heard whispers of the Soviet days

[01:02:12] and experienced herself as a young girl in the dead empire of the wild 90s the Russian capacity

[01:02:18] for suffering was limitless unfathomable and the present was nothing a light graze on a body

[01:02:24] furrowed by deep scars tonight they would eat well and expensively they would just keep on going

[01:02:31] and I wrote in the margins here next to it I wrote an entire country with battered women syndrome

[01:02:37] and I didn't quite realize not to say too much I didn't quite realize the connection I was making

[01:02:42] at the time but your take on that modern Russia as a country with battered women syndrome and

[01:02:48] that's them just sort of just taking it one step at a time trying to survive yeah I um I think that

[01:02:59] we truly don't understand how deeply ingrained kind of in the in the psyche and the sort of

[01:03:10] spiritual mindset of many Russians like this idea that

[01:03:15] we can just grit through it and suffer our way to the other side you know it's not fundamentally

[01:03:27] an American strong suit I would say um but I think so many Russians would have memories of

[01:03:36] the Soviet collapse and would have memories of of what it was like in the 90s and

[01:03:42] we'll just kind of feel like you know um we can we can get through it and and frankly it's

[01:03:50] bent worse than this and it'll probably be worse in the future but this isn't really that bad

[01:03:57] you know and and I think it fundamentally does come back to this view on a state whereas you

[01:04:04] know I think we would have a perspective here that in America or across most of western Europe that

[01:04:12] this kind of condition domestically where you know there are increasing privations a lot of inflation

[01:04:23] people being you know young men being conscripted to serve in in a war that very unclearly and

[01:04:32] indirectly benefits you know ordinary Russians if not quite the opposite um though we would have

[01:04:38] a view that the state that's doing that the political party that's doing that like is like should be

[01:04:45] ousted you know it should be voted out to be forced out right and um you know if you don't think

[01:04:56] that that's possible and by the way also if you think that these kind of transitions

[01:05:02] typically are accompanied by even worse instability violence chaos you know a lesson you can take

[01:05:10] from the 90s is actually the the lawlessness um that that was right was not the result of some sort

[01:05:21] of like creative process of getting to a better democratic future but was actually the result

[01:05:27] of the collapse of a system right so like you know that period of time is the result of pushing the

[01:05:36] state too far or the state sort of wobbling and then collapse it um you know if if a lesson of

[01:05:44] political transitions is that they're worse than just living under the boot of the state

[01:05:49] and kind of taking what you can well I mean all of a sudden you're to a point where

[01:05:54] bad a room and syndrome whatever you want to use you know you don't you don't get the divorce

[01:05:58] you don't move out because it's going to be even worse um so I think that you know again these are

[01:06:04] these are generalizations and you could find many many Russians who would probably have a much more

[01:06:10] inspiring take on the future of their of their country and would would be demanding profound change

[01:06:16] but um you know I think it's relatively clear from the albeit uh you know sort of

[01:06:23] hitterness polling and just the lack of popular response to the war that you're seeing uh you know

[01:06:32] a country that's just saying look we're gonna we're gonna grit through this to the other side

[01:06:36] the Russian way of war has been to kill everything that moves until there's no one left to oppose

[01:06:43] you I think Putin learned this really in Chechnya a Shah al-Assad well he learned it from his father

[01:06:49] but I think Putin certainly reminded him of reminded him of this in Syria is there a way to prevent

[01:06:56] this kind of same outcome in Ukraine that years of bloodshedting that just leaves waste to an entire

[01:07:02] country that we saw in Syria like do you think Putin can can still shoot his way out of this problem

[01:07:07] well I think I think a lot of that depends on the um you know the level and the duration of the

[01:07:14] support that we in our largely European partners provide you know I think that uh the the Russian

[01:07:20] way of doing things is I mean frankly the way of a lot of warfare and human history which is

[01:07:27] you know we are just going to this isn't this isn't American counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan

[01:07:32] we're trying to win over local populations this is just we're going to if there's resistance we're

[01:07:38] going to destroy everything and we're going to kill all your people and we're going to deport a lot

[01:07:42] of them and um you know we're going to consume the territory that way you know and well obviously I

[01:07:50] think there's been a tendency to either view the Russian military as like a midget or 12-feet

[01:07:57] tall with not a lot of room in between and so you know before the war it's like well it's going

[01:08:02] to you know the rush has probably went in three days it's this you know extremely advanced

[01:08:06] in a military well in fact what we've seen over the past couple years has been that the military

[01:08:11] probably reflects a lot of the problems in the society right and yeah and the government

[01:08:15] and and it's not as effective as you know many Western analysts thought it would be

[01:08:20] but it's also not three-feet tall you know so and Ukraine is very important to Putin and the people

[01:08:28] around him and increasingly to the society um and I think we're seeing a situation where ordinary

[01:08:36] Russians are now sort of batting down the hatches to be engaged in this war for the long term it

[01:08:42] looks like it's going to be a long and bloody slog in any case um but whether or not Putin is able

[01:08:51] to eventually you know take more territory or maybe even further down the line get to his original

[01:08:58] strategic goal of you know installing a client state um you know in Ukraine I think a lot of that

[01:09:05] will depend a lot it'll probably take years and a lot of it will depend on whether we keep uh or

[01:09:10] whether we have this sort of you know political well in the resources to keep our eye on the ball

[01:09:14] and to resist that from happening I think the surest way to prevent Putin from doing what he's

[01:09:19] done in all these other places um and in in the parts of Ukraine that they've fought in and

[01:09:23] controlled is to you know give the Ukrainians what they need to win you know one of the things that

[01:09:29] keeps me up at night apart from like with this as far as this war goes apart from like our own

[01:09:34] issues that could potentially really change the game in Putin's favor is the deportations of

[01:09:39] Ukrainians to the far east I think there's some really dark stuff going on right now that we

[01:09:44] barely know about yeah that's I think that's right it we've um it's very easy I think to lose

[01:09:51] the thread on the war and and on Russian objectives because you can kind of just okay well you know

[01:09:58] you can push a lot of it out of out of side out of mind and um you can get hooked on narratives

[01:10:04] on the far left and frankly the far right of our spectrum that it doesn't really matter to us and

[01:10:09] we should we should just you know sort of let them figure it out um you know I mean well I think

[01:10:15] it's clear that a de-objective as defined you know as as Putin has said and written

[01:10:26] and as the Russian military is behaving is that Ukraine actually doesn't exist as a nation it's

[01:10:33] part of a the people who live there should not have their own cultural expression their own freedom

[01:10:40] their own government disconnected from the power vertical in Moscow and frankly do you you can

[01:10:50] even go a step further and say that the deportations um all the way up to the letter that sort of

[01:10:56] infamous letter that Putin wrote about you know going back into history and sort of reframing

[01:11:02] Ukraine is being nothing but a Russian facile state at best like all of that is just you know

[01:11:08] essentially a declaration that we're going to if we win if Moscow wins you do not get to

[01:11:16] exist you know I think that is a big part of the objective here uh and one that you know if you

[01:11:23] walk that high level policy on down you get to deportations you get to taking kids you get to just

[01:11:31] you know the the destruction or the the the looting of cultural artifacts

[01:11:36] destroying infrastructure you know destroying anything of cultural significance um because it doesn't

[01:11:41] you know it's not valid it's not it they don't they should not and don't exist as people

[01:11:46] couple quick questions for rewraps i know you got to go soon what's your what's your writing

[01:11:51] routine like uh any quirks or rituals uh lots of rituals i probably lots of quirks do i uh

[01:12:00] i try to write pretty much every day um i typically will go and i said it a coffee shop

[01:12:11] i find that i've got three kids under eight and most days at the house then you know you're sort of

[01:12:16] it's hard to get that that kind of focus with writing which is very different from

[01:12:22] consulting or a lot of other jobs like you really need blocks you know you absolutely need longer

[01:12:27] blocks of time to really work like doing it in 30-minute increments 45-minute you can do some stuff

[01:12:32] there but you need longer stretches so i go i sit at a coffee shop i have a cup of coffee in the

[01:12:37] morning i try to do a session from like eight 15-8 30 if i can up until lunch um yeah at lunch time

[01:12:44] i'll typically like do other things maybe check some email like do a phone call actually have a

[01:12:51] lunch with somebody sometimes you need to talk to another human because you've been so immersed

[01:12:55] in the story that you need to pull yourself out and actually realize that there's a world of

[01:12:59] you know that that exists outside of your your story um and then i'll you you know if if i

[01:13:03] if i'm able from a scheduled standpoint i will go back in and i'll do another another run

[01:13:09] in the afternoon um for me the victory is not on it on an uneven day is not uh how do i feel about

[01:13:18] the writing or anything like that it's just word count i'm trying to get to somewhere between two

[01:13:23] and three thousand words a day um and i kind of know that i won't know it's all the processes

[01:13:34] tell i'm much further down the line if those words are going to work and in what context and

[01:13:38] you know if it's gonna be discovery work to get two characters setting another piece of the story

[01:13:44] or if it's something that's really gonna go in the final version so i just kind of i view it as like

[01:13:48] i've just got to show up every day i take a very almost a clock punching mentality to it of like

[01:13:53] this is it you know this is like eight thirty to five p.m kind of job i'd punch in i punch out um

[01:14:01] doesn't matter if i feel inspired that day it doesn't matter uh how much sleep i've gotten or how

[01:14:08] i feel about my life i'm just gonna sit down and do it um as if there were some external you know

[01:14:14] force or boss pushing me to go and get the words down on paper because i'll tell you other days

[01:14:19] where i sit down and i'm well rested i'm happy i'm a piece with the world and uh you know i feel

[01:14:26] actually not productive writing days you know like what if for whatever reason it didn't come and

[01:14:30] then other days are you sit down and you're like well i had three whiskeys last night and i'm really mad

[01:14:35] and yeah it's not a great start today and you know the kids were yelling and everyone was late this

[01:14:39] morning and you sit down and like by you know eleven a.m you're like rolling on something that just

[01:14:46] sort of appeared and then you go my overall approach is one where i say look um

[01:14:55] like if you're putting an album together you know maybe there's thirteen fourteen tracks but you

[01:14:59] probably wrote you know forty and then before you worked it down to the to the number that you've

[01:15:04] got on the album like i write you know that the books are somewhere between a hundred and

[01:15:10] fifteen and a hundred and thirty thousand words and i probably write about four to five hundred

[01:15:14] thousand words per novel uh so i because i can't find the right i have to dig around and

[01:15:23] figure out what's really gonna work and what's a distraction and you know what darlings need to be

[01:15:29] killed and all that kind of stuff before it before it really take shape so and then i probably go

[01:15:35] through uh i have a first i will typically sprint to get a first draft done i won't go back and edit

[01:15:43] really i just go so for the first i would say in you know the first three to six months of a book

[01:15:52] are just getting that first draft done and then i'll go back to you know try to put it away

[01:15:58] for a little bit i'll go back to it and then i'll start just you know cutting things making big notes

[01:16:03] and then from there it's just sort of every i'll usually take a pause and do another round of

[01:16:07] research as well somewhere between the second and the fourth draft of like there might be ten books

[01:16:13] that i've realized i need to read or i need to go back to this other and i i try to refrain from

[01:16:18] doing that too much in the early stage was i'm really trying to prioritize just getting the the

[01:16:24] initial ingredients for the story sort of on the table and then i go back to the research

[01:16:30] I figured out where that could get dollop dinner where it should shouldn't um and i'll just start

[01:16:36] all refinal refinal refined um and i probably do i made in total it kind of depends on how you keep

[01:16:42] track but and i probably do somewhere around ten drafts uh ten editing passes through and then

[01:16:49] it's toward the end it becomes this sort of maniacal thing where like the guts of the story are there

[01:16:54] but you i'm sweating every single word i read the books out loud myself to figure out how they sort of

[01:17:00] sound um and it becomes much more detailed and and maddening toward the end in that respect but um

[01:17:06] um it's a it's it's it's a little bit of chaos i could say throughout the whole thing and i

[01:17:13] don't outline um i don't find that to be helpful i don't find that to be helpful i know a lot of

[01:17:18] people that do but i i find that one's that's they i think they sort of for me they'd deaden the story

[01:17:24] and the voice and they make it seem more sort of predictable and so i just i don't do any of that

[01:17:28] yeah what's up with book three what can you tell us about it anything so it's done uh i'm i'm

[01:17:34] congrats what look thank you uh i'm putting the final touches on it um it is it is a mole hunt

[01:17:43] so it is very much a kind of modern homage to tinker taylor uh proctor returns uh in the in the

[01:17:51] George smiley role and basic premises um there's there is a very well placed russian mole operating

[01:17:59] inside langley who is it um and proctor is brought in to help you know solve that question solve

[01:18:08] that riddle so it was uh also hard to write i thought it would be easy again i'm discovering that

[01:18:14] there's a pattern here where i think the books will get easier and they actually don't uh this one is

[01:18:19] it has you know it it does bounce around between mascao and and and langley in a few other places

[01:18:27] but it's much more of a uh look into the c i itself and uh kind of a mystery around who this

[01:18:37] who this bowl is among our sort of casks suspect so it was fun to write in that sense because i

[01:18:42] the other two books are not really mysteries you know uh and so this one has that mysterious kind

[01:18:48] of question up front is like who is this of the cask characters we've met you seem interested in

[01:18:54] flawed characters working at the heart of repressive regimes yeah trying to hold onto their

[01:19:00] humanity while everyone around them loses theirs but we start to see that same dynamic with proctor

[01:19:07] in langley um i like that that's a good i might steal that actually when i framed the book i hadn't

[01:19:12] thought about it that way i look i i think um i think there's elements of that for sure in the third book

[01:19:21] the way that i have thought about this one is it's it's a lot of people a lot of the characters

[01:19:26] in the novel are dealing with the twilight of their careers yeah and so they're really wrestling

[01:19:36] with like what does it mean to be loyal to a place that doesn't really love me back you know um

[01:19:45] what was it all for and is it worth making sacrifices for the agency and what do those look

[01:19:57] like and what do they mean and what does friendship look like over you know decades in this business

[01:20:07] and so proctor is really wrestling with all of that and i do think uh that there are as

[01:20:14] you wisely note i think some threads connecting her to marium and to Anna dealing with like

[01:20:22] what does it what does it mean from me to be me or to get what i want in a system or in a construct we're like

[01:20:32] you know that's hard and there's there's plenty of people pushing back against me and i think

[01:20:38] you know obviously the CIA is a little bit you know it's not it's probably what many might think

[01:20:44] it's not a repressive autocratic regime but um you know it's it's it's the kind of place that uh

[01:20:52] it's it is a big bureaucracy at the end of the day that's not your family you know what is

[01:20:58] what is what does it mean to what does it mean to get what you need from it but also to be loyal to

[01:21:04] it at the same time and how do you balance those things that those are all all big themes in the novel

[01:21:09] before we wrap up where can listeners find more about you and your work so you can find me on

[01:21:14] david macloskeybooks.com uh you can buy the books pretty much anywhere you get your books uh

[01:21:22] local indie go to indie bound you know sort you toward a local uh independent bookstore near you

[01:21:29] uh you get it on to noble you get it at amazon you get it at apple books

[01:21:33] the audio book is now up for um the books are up for pre-order but and the book comes out on

[01:21:39] october third the audio book will trail that a little bit and we'll be out about a month later but

[01:21:45] you can pre-order the audio book now if you're more of a list reader so the book is masco x it is

[01:21:51] available october third where all books are sold is at the uk in australia too no the uk masco x comes

[01:21:57] out in the uk on i think january 24 so it's a little bit of a staggered release yeah okay so about

[01:22:04] half of you listening have got to wait a little bit we'll have pre-order links to all that stuff

[01:22:08] in the uh show notes american listeners please don't give spoilers go get it guys

[01:22:14] david thank you so much for joining us this was fun hey thanks for having me this was tons of fun

[01:22:38] thanks for listening this is secrets and spies

[01:23:08] so