Now that I am retired and not so driven to find warmer places, I have more time to read and ponder things in the colder areas of the country. I do enjoy history, but I also love the mysteries of some of the fictional writers.
When I went to England for my Junior year abroad, I moved into a dorm (called a castle locally) and immediately met several young British students. This was a long time ago, and we did not know very much about each other or our countries. Now remember, this was the fall of 1962. Communication was almost nil as compared to today’s computers and cell phones.
One of the very first questions they asked me was if the Americans loved James Bond and Ian Fleming as they did. I had a complete blank face. Who was this author and character? They went to their rooms. Within a couple of minutes, they were back with seven or eight Fleming books about this incredible British spy. I was told that I should read all and catch up with the local environment.
I read Casino Royale first. Wow. Within a week I had read most of the ones that they had loaned me, and was totally into this cool spy. Later the next year, America found Mr. Bond in the movie Dr No. I have since become a reader of series where one character remains through future books by that author. Think of Jack Reacher, the Lincoln Lawyer, Bosch, or Mitch Rapp. These writers and their character made you come back for more with their character.
Great Britain has led the field of the intrigue for decades with the likes of Ian Fleming. Another international favorite is Brit Frederick Forsyth. He brought spy writing to the front with novels like The Day of the Jackal in 1971. I would keep an eye out for his books and recently found one simply called The Fox.
The gist of this thriller involves the hacking of computers. We have all become aware of the susceptibility of someone’s on line computer and try to save our personal information from intrusion. But think of the computers of the world that contain critical governmental information.
Thus, brings us to Forsyth’s latest. I will not spoil the story, but some of the early content got me thinking more about the real world than just the theme of the novel.
The book starts with the realization that the U.S.’s most secret and protected computer programs have been hacked. But even more surprising is that there was no corruption or interference, just browsing and then the hacker was gone.
With some serious research into the incident, it is determined that the hacker was somewhere in England. What followed was further narrowing of the search and cooperation with the British Secret Service. Quite soon the location of the hacker was determined to be a particular house in a small English town, A raid was planned by the British taskforce with two American Seals accompanying.
The raid went off without incident as there were only four people in the house. A father, mother, and two boys, 18 and 13. There was a single computer found in the dark and crowded attic. And that was it. No foreign spies, just two young boys, the elder being described as mentally fragile. Despite his inability with communication, he loved his computer and his quiet attic.
The British decide that this young man, Luke, is quite a find if they could keep him secure and comfortable. The family is relocated and the young man with hesitation of unfamiliar settings later agrees to hack for his country. One of the first finds is a Russian ship that is about to be launched and is the largest military ship now in existence, called a Battlecruiser, and is fully nuclear. The ship is named the Admiral Nakhimov. This ship was to be launched and would travel alongside of the British seaside in a show of force on its way to the Atlantic Ocean. With the help of the Fox, the steering of this giant ship is taken over and driven onto a sandy beach on the east side of England. No injuries but a total embarrassment to the Russians. And there the story takes off.
My further study found that the Admiral Nakhimov is truly a Russian nuclear battleship. But the story of the ship is a bit different. Launched in 1988, it did become a part of the Russian Northern Fleet. A few years later, it was drydocked for no announced reason. Work went on for years with proposed relaunching delayed until 2024. With the return to service, it became the last nuclear-powered surface combatant in service anywhere in the world. (We had retired our last nuclear-powered cruisers in the 1990s, primarily on financial grounds.)
The Russians announced that both nuclear reactors were online with some sort of trials to commence this summer. Certainly, the delay and frustrations with this huge war machine probably caused some real embarrassment to the Russians just like they fictionally suffered in Forsyth’s book. I would assume he had more data on the giant ship while writing his book, but my search made me wonder why a ship of this size and capability was relaunched by the Russians when we were abandoning a similar model? Books, even fictional ones, can raise real questions.
· Dennis Marek can be contacted at llamalaw23@gmail.com.