The Persian by David McCloskey — a vivid tale of spies, lies and the Iran-Israel shadow war
A masterful new thriller from the former CIA analyst is informed by a profound understanding of the Middle East and the forces that seek to reshape it
In The Thousand and One Nights, the dazzling collection of ancient fables, the narrator Scheherazade must tell her husband a new tale each night to stay alive. Her spouse, King Shahryar, was enraged by his former bride’s infidelity. He takes revenge by marrying a new virgin each night, then has her executed in the morning. Until he weds Scheherazade, who entrances him with her vivid storytelling and so escapes being put to death.
Like Scheherazade, Kamran Esfahani, the hero of David McCloskey’s outstanding new thriller, is also telling stories to stay alive — to an equally dangerous audience. Esfahani, a Persian Jewish dentist living in Stockholm, was recruited by Mossad officer Arik Glitzman to Caesarea, an elite unit operating in Tehran, killing high-value Iranian targets. But the mission goes wrong and Esfahani is now incarcerated in a Tehran prison, a captive of Iran’s brutal intelligence service.
Held for three years, he has been savagely tortured. Esfahani had dreamt of relocating to California — and fighting in Israel’s covert war seemed to offer a path to beaches and sunshine. Instead, his new life has brought him to a grim cell and a life of terror as he writes out, again and again, his account of the Mossad operation for his captor, the sinister General.
With his fourth book, McCloskey, a former CIA analyst who worked across the Middle East, once again deploys his insider knowledge with skill and verve. The framing of the narrative, told through Esfahani’s recollections, is an audacious approach but the story never flags. McCloskey brings every location alive, from Esfahani’s cell to Tehran’s pollution-racked suburbs and the villas of Tel Aviv. The terror of life under the ayatollahs runs through the book like silken threads in a fine carpet. But there is warmth and affection for Persian culture, from its literature to its subtle cuisine.
The notable strength of this book, like the rest of McCloskey’s oeuvre, is the depth and complexity of his characters, especially its female cast. Roya, a vulnerable Iranian widow who is Esfahani’s unwitting asset, moves between fear and hope, fury and desperation as she is drawn deeper into the operation. All the while she remains ferociously protective of her young daughter Alya, a child so vividly drawn she jumps off the pages.
McCloskey is sharp on the moral compromises and powers of deceit needed to make an effective intelligence agent. When Esfahani rescues Roya from an apparent kidnap attempt, where much fake blood is spent, she thanks him, sobbing on his shoulder as their fingers entwine, to his surprise and pleasure. In response he sees Glitzman in “some gloomy recess” of his brain, “stand, smile, and begin, very slowly, to clap”. The Iranians of course hit back against Caesarea. Their drone strikes inside Israel, using local agents, have deadly results. The traitors’ motives and backstories are briefly outlined but this plotline could have been developed in more depth. A fatal Iranian drone in Tel Aviv would cause a political earthquake, one that would immediately reverberate through the intelligence establishment.
In real life, the stories now coming out of Iran are a tableau not of fantasy but horror: thousands of protesters mown down by the regime. The savage rule of the ayatollahs may fall apart at any moment or endure. Eventually, it will surely collapse. When it does, Mossad’s shadow war will have played a key role. Read The Persian to understand more. The ending will bring a smile to your face. This is a masterful work of fiction — one deeply informed by a profound understanding of the Middle East and the forces that seek to reshape it, both light and dark.
The Persian by David McCloskey Swift Press £20/WW Norton $29.99, 400 pages