By Miriam Kramer
Beirut Station is my first Paul Vidich book, but it will not be my last. His latest espionage thriller stars a female CIA field officer operating in Beirut during the 2006 war between Lebanon and Israel. The half-Lebanese, half-American heroine, known by her pseudonym Analise Assad, works under non-official cover as a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) staffer in 2006 Beirut.
Analise has an assignment: to assassinate a Hezbollah leader. She serves on a joint CIA-Mossad team in planning this operation. While having a casual affair with an American war correspondent, she collaborates with a South African war correspondent whom she knows to be a Mossad agent. Her colleagues are not necessarily as they seem.
As Analise progresses in cultivating sources, she plots a car bomb assassination with the CIA station chief and their Mossad colleagues. She mistrusts most, as do those around her, with the reporters, terrorists, and local intellectuals showing the same skepticism and noses for information as intelligence officers. Those she knows are only versions of themselves, and as a person who lies for a living, she rarely trusts what she sees and hears. Vidich also portrays her as a woman half in and half out of the culture around her, fluent in Arabic with a Lebanese appearance and an American upbringing that fosters her sense of displacement.
Outwardly messy, Analise has an internal sense of organization and flashes of inspiration that enhance her skill at living her different, compartmentalized lives. Somehow Vidich manages to birth her as both a complex and anonymous character. We never learn her real name, and it does not matter.
Vidich colorfully depicts 2006 Beirut, which also helps one appreciate the novel. He does not paint atmosphere with the dark and lovely brushstrokes of Alan Furst, who has always struck me as a period espionage writer who relies heavily on ambience. Instead, his sense of mood evolves through stories told by Analise and other characters about the ethnic complexity of Lebanon and people pinned between cultures and identities.
When Analise realizes that she is caught in a trap, she finds a way to wiggle her way out and exact a price of her own for those who have put her there. She re-establishes her personal self, the one at least somewhat separate from her various covers—one that has been evolving under shadow. She comes to self-respect through thinking on her feet, being cautious, but actively taking any chances possible when luck turns her way.
It may be too reductive to say that I enjoyed Vidich’s portrayal of shady, war-torn Beirut. We are currently watching an Israel-Palestinian war that is also creating humanitarian disaster and elevated levels of instability in the Middle East. This situation was never far from my mind. I simply appreciated that there were no unadulterated heroes or heroines in his book; just a few characters whose motives and actions were clearer, less violent, or less treacherous. He simply serves up Annalise, along with American, Lebanese, Hezbollah, and Israeli characters, leaving you to judge them on your own terms. Vidich sees nuance and complexity in a similar way to John Le Carre.
If you are seeking out a Daniel Silva thriller, this is not it. Well-written and deliberate, Beirut Station will help you while away your winter with its intricate plot and characters. If you want a thoughtful novel that provides excitement and unanswered questions along with its resolution, Beirut Station will serve your needs.