A Collision of Evil

 

Dr. John J. Le Beau was a clandestine operations officer in the Central Intelligence Agency for over twenty-five years before he retired from the agency in 2005. Most of his intelligence operations career was spent on assignment outside of the United States, including in locations experiencing active terrorism. His intelligence duties included assignments as chief of an operational facility in Europe engaged in counter-terrorist and counter-proliferation operations and intelligence collection; Program Manager of a human and technical collection program involving the Middle East; Operational Chief for an intelligence collection program directed at transnational issues; and a counter-insurgency officer in an active conflict area. Since January 2006, Dr. Le Beau has served as a Professor of National Security Studies in the College of International Security Studies at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Garmisch, Germany.

The thriller Collision of Evil is Le Beau's first novel and begins with the savage murder of an American tourist, Charles Hirter, in the Bavarian Alps. The victim's brother, Robert, a CIA operative, joins forces with German police detective Kommissar Franz Waldbaer and learns that a Nazi secret which had been hidden in a cave near where Charles' battered corpse was found may have been a weapon of mass destruction. The evils of World War II threaten to merge with modern-day terrorism if Islamist terrorists are able to use the weapon before Robert and Kommissar Waldbaer can prevent a tragedy of epic proportions.

Le Beau is on a blog tour this week and agreed to a little Q&A for In Reference to Murder.

IRTM:  Obviously, your CIA background came into play when writing Collision of Evil. How much of the plot and details arose out of experience and how much is fictionalized?

JJLB:  The specific terrorist conspiracy detailed in the novel is purely fictitious, as is the selection of a target for attack.  That noted, in my own experience as a former intelligence officer and current terrorism specialist, the plot is entirely realistic in terms of how jihadist terrorists think and the type of targets that interest them.  As I tried to suggest in Collision of Evil, the point of terrorism is not just to stack up some bodies but to spread a sense of dread and fear as broadly as possible. Even failed attacks can have this effect – witness the level of publicity and reaction that has been recently created by the failed attempt to blow up an airliner over Detroit.  In describing the terrorist characters in the novel, I tried as best as I could to realistically capture the way that these people tick, how they bond as a group driven by a common motivational force, and the way they look at the world.

IRTM:  Since your doctoral dissertation was about World War II and Germany, you already had quite a bit of background to assist with the historical aspects of your book. What other research did you conduct in writing the novel, and were there any surprises left for you to discover through your research?

JJLB:  I guess that the most important research for the book, in a sense, was conducted by living for a long time in the environment where much of the narrative takes place – Germany and Austria.  Whether correctly or not, I do feel that I understand fairly well how things operate in these countries and the various cultural and historical factors that make Central Europeans a bit different from Americans in some ways.  I have on numerous occasions spoken with people here in Bavaria who lived through the Second World War, either as combatants or civilians.  I tried to incorporate that ‘everyday life’ fabric into the texture of the story.  As for research per se, in my view it is always a source of delight and unexpected revelations.

IRTM:  What is your actual process for character development? As someone with your actual CIA experience, what makes a character "real" to you?

JJLB:  In a sense, character development is perhaps a bit like painting a human likeness on canvas.  You start with a basic outline of a character and then refine the sketch into something more substantial, more lifelike.  For Collision, at any rate, I first had a sense of the plot and that the plot required a protagonist who is a German law enforcement official and another protagonist who is a CIA Clandestine Service case officer.  I tried to live in their respective skins and imagine their different outlooks as I developed the characters.  I hope to add some depth to the characterizations of Hirter and Waldbaer in future writing endeavors.  As for my CIA experience, I think that played a vastly important role in trying to portray how intelligence and espionage and analysis works, with all its blemishes – and how very different it is from a fictive world where flawless technological innovations solve all problems.    

IRTM:  Terrorism, specifically terrorism involving radical Muslims, is very much on the minds of most Americans these days. Although most fears revolve around plane-related attacks, the threat of terrorists getting their hands on weapons of mass destruction is far more worrying, especially in light of such new stories as lax oversight of Russian nuclear stores left over from the Cold War and instability in a country like Pakistan which has nuclear weapons. How realistic is a plot like the one in Collision of Evil which deals with a similar scenario?

JJLB:  I fear that the notion of zealous terrorists employing chemical, biological or even a crude nuclear device is a possibility that we need to be concerned about, and that, indeed, many authorities are concerned about.  What is utterly beyond debate is this: Al Qaeda and like-minded organizations have no moral qualms about employing mass casualty weapons against people they regard as infidels, none at all.  Documentary evidence make clear that Al Qaeda operatives and leadership elements are in favor of harnessing whatever weapons would permit them to strike us in a spectacular way.  To date, most of their success has been due to conventional explosives of one type or another (such as PETN), and there has been an increase in the size of explosive charges employed.  But this surely does not mean that terrorists are not interested in more innovative forms of mass murder.  As for oversight of nuclear stores, this too is a real concern, as is proliferation of knowledge regarding weapons of mass destruction.  Note for example that the infamous AQ Khan of Pakistan is the man who gave that country its nuclear weapon and who also harbors Islamist sympathies.  This is arguably not a good combination, and we need to be concerned about it. I recall that the former DCI, George Tenet, said it was the possibility of terrorism tied to WMD that kept him awake at night.  This is certainly a sentiment that I share.

IRTM:  You've indicated in the past that uncovering terrorist plots are harder than people generally think. In light of efforts like the Patriot Act, is it still hard to "connect the dots?"

JJLB:  It might sound like special pleading for my former profession, but I would argue passionately that collecting, filtering and analyzing intelligence is a severely daunting task.  I’ve said before to students at the George C. Marshall Center that pulling intelligence together is much like assembling a puzzle. The problem is, that the intelligence people are not presented with all of the pieces of the puzzle, only some. And they do not have a picture of what the puzzle is supposed to illustrate once assembled.  This is hard, by any measure, and the stakes are high; lives can depend on putting the pieces together properly. To refer again to the recent airliner incident, the allegation is that the intelligence community (not just the CIA) had individual pieces in hand, pieces of evidence, but, it seems, were unable to assemble these disparate spots of information to see that Al Qaeda was plotting to take down an airliner with explosives smuggled onboard. The bar for actionable intelligence is a high one, and rightly so. But trying to uncover the machinations of a covert, fanatic and murderous group of jihadists is not child’s play.

IRTM:  During your career, you had to assess various threats including organized terrorism on a broader scale, and in your novel, Kommissar Waldbaer and Robert Hirter are tasked with a similar quest, on a more localized scale. In both cases, there is a need to try and understand the individuals involved in these movements in order to prevent death and disaster. You said in one interview that terrorists would suffocate without violence. Are efforts to change these individuals (like Saudi "rehabilitation") just political theater?

JJLB:  I think that trying rehabilitation efforts is worth the candle.  Not only Saudi Arabia, but Morocco and Yemen and likely some other countries are trying to ‘deprogram’ violent jihadists. The court is out on how successful this effort has been to date, but, in my view, it makes sense to try to thin terrorist ranks through a rigorous program of persuasion.  My suspicion is that rehab programs might work against some terrorist personality types but not against others. We have certainly seen failed attempts at persuasion and instances when a jihadist has feigned the adoption of a more moderate stance only as a device to gain freedom to rejoin his violent co-conspirators.  There are no magic bullets in fighting 21st century terrorism and it is sensible to try a broad array of techniques and analyze them to determine what works and what does not.  In some instances – for example with the type of terrorist characters who occupy Collision of Evil – the only solution is to kill them.

IRTM:  There have been a few incidents, particularly in Europe, I think, of an Islamic backlash against authors and artists who have portrayed Muslims in what they consider a blasphemous manner. Did you ever have any worries your book might cause that type of reaction?

JJLB:  You are right that Europe has seen some incidents of this sort – including a quite recent failed attempt against a cartoonist in Denmark.  Still and all, I expect that the bad guys have a very long list of targets and people they don’t like, so that puts things in more perspective. Of course, it's still good to watch your back.

IRTM:  Do you ever worry about novelists giving terrorists ideas?

JJLB:  That is actually something I thought about while writing Collision of Evil. I concluded, however, that terrorists have a track record of creativity and don’t need to rely on authors to provide them with new, malign ideas; they have plenty of their own, unfortunately.  There is a universe of so-called ‘soft targets’ at their disposal and the algebra of past terrorism makes it a mathematical certainty that some of these will be hit in the future.  This is a long term struggle that we are facing and we need to be sufficiently resolute to prevail.

IRTM:  I understand you are working on two Waldbaer sequels. What's next for the Kommissar?

JJLB:  You are right.  I am currently enjoying revisiting the Kommissar and some other characters in another international thriller that deals with a real world issue rather different from terrorism. Yes, I am being coy.  But I think it will make solid entertainment while also touching on topics of contemporary concern, or topics that we ought to be concerned about. The manuscript is about half finished and I hope to have it in reasonably finished shape in the next couple of months to submit to the publisher.  I also have separately scribed about 14,000 words of a third novel involving Waldbaer in a story that reaches back several centuries into the Germanic past. A good portion of the plot of this one transpires in a venerable Bavarian castle, a setting I have always found engaging since I was a kid – even before I ever visited a real castle. I am having considerable fun with both plots.

IRTM:  As you are something of a lay expert on beer — who would win a shoot-out between Becks, Samuel Adams and Guinness?

JJLB:  Good question. The brands you mention represent three rather different styles of beer. Becks is a respectable example of a North German pilsner, with a disciplined taste and appropriately bitter finish, if not quite in the league of Jever pilsner. Sam Adams is a brewery that an American can point to with considerable pride to reject the uninformed assertions that the U.S. doesn't have quality beer.  The Sam Adams brewery presents a considerable array of beer types, to be sure, but the Boston Lager is very fine indeed, and full-bodied without being unduly filling. Guinness, on the other hand, has an assertive taste and is a great pub beer, taken from the tap.  In a shoot-out, I expect I would draw the Sam Adams, but would also be glad to fill my hands with the other two brews mentioned. Thank you for the interview.         

John J. Le Beau is giving away a signed copy of his book, Collision of Evil, to one lucky tour visitor. Go to the book tour page, enter your name, e-mail address, and this PIN, 8889, for your chance to win. Entries from In Reference to Murder will be accepted until 12:00 Noon (PT) tomorrow. No purchase is required to enter or to win. The winner (first name only) will be announced on the book tour page next week.