Harsher than Fiction
Hi! I hope you’re doing well. Something happened this week that I thought was worth talking about.
As someone who writes about espionage, I’m fascinated by the recent exchange of prisoners between Russia and the west. There’s the obvious surface details about the complex, multi-national negotiations necessary to make it all happen, the human interest stories of these people who find themselves pawns in an intricate game, and the tense cinematic image of all these parties coming together on an airport runway in Ankara to make the trade.
But there are also some things beneath the surface that give me pause. It reminds me that John Crane’s world is a spy fantasy. Real espionage is not much fun. It’s physically and morally brutal, often with horrifying impacts on innocent people caught up in its whirlwind. There are two details of this deal in particular that struck me.
One is the fate of Alexei Navalny, the charismatic anti-corruption crusader and political rival to Putin who died in a Russian prison in February. It’s been widely reported that this deal, which was in the works for quite a long time, was originally meant to include his release. I was listening to an interview yesterday with a journalist who’s been closely involved with Navalny’s people in Germany, and he said that, while western negotiators were talking with their Russian counterparts about including Navalny, Putin hadn’t signed off on it. In fact, they were afraid to even raise the idea of freeing Navalny with Putin.
At one point, someone finally broached the idea to Putin as a way to get the deal moving forward, and - again according to this journalist - the word came back that Putin was amenable. But the next day, Navalny died. That’s quite a coincidence. Obviously we’ll never know for sure, but it seems quite likely that Putin was never going to release Navalny, and that when he became integral to the deal, Putin had him killed to take him off the table.
It must be a horrifying thought for the people who worked so hard to rescue Navalny that it was their efforts to save him that led to his murder.
The other thing that stood out to me is the story of Anna and Artem Dultsev and their children. The Dultsevs were sleeper agents operating under deep cover in Slovenia, posing as Argentinians. They had two children, currently 8 and 11. They had been detained in Slovenia in 2022, and the children placed in foster care. As part of this swap, they pled guilty to espionage on Wednesday, were sentenced to time served, and were deported along with their children.
The thing that horrifies me about this is that the children knew nothing. As far as they knew, their parents were Argentinian, and so were they. It wasn’t until they were on the plane back to Moscow that they were told they’re actually Russian, and they’re going to have to live there now. They don’t even speak Russian. There’s video on Twitter of Putin greeting them in Spanish as they get off the plane.
It’s not the first time this has happened. Another pair of Russian deep cover spies, Andrey Bezrukov and Elena Vavilova, had two sons in Canada before moving to France, and then to the United States, where they were caught in 2010. (Their case was actually the inspiration for the series The Americans, with Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys as Russian spies living in the American suburbs.) Again, their sons were completely in the dark and had their lives upended, including being stripped of their Canadian citizenship. The younger son fought for years in the courts before ultimately regaining his citizenship.
For both sets of children (and who knows how many more are out there?), it’s hard to imagine anything more devastating. They’ve had literally everything in their world taken away, right down to their ability to trust and believe their parents. I cannot imagine what it would take to put your child in that situation.
But that’s real-world spying. You see why I like to stick with fantasy. In John Crane’s world, things aren’t always easy, and there isn’t always a perfect solution to any problem. But there is at least some kind of division between good and evil, and it’s possible through courage and perseverance to actually do good. As this week’s news taught me, I’ll take that over the real world.
til next time,
-- MP
Spy My Stuff
You can find me at MarkParragh.com and my books here at Amazon. The John Crane series is currently in Kindle Unlimited, and so exclusive to Amazon. Rumrunners can also be found at other fine ebook retailers.
Reading: With a Mind to Kill by Anthony Horowitz. New Bond novel! His Forever and a Day might be my favorite non-Fleming Bond of them all, so I’m excited about this.
Watching: Moon Dog, an adorable short about maybe not always going with your first instinct.
Listening To: Crystal. By 80s synth band New Order, believe it or not.