By Miriam R. Kramer

With the upcoming unpredictable presidential election, the DC beehive will hum more than usual even in August, so make a space to get away from American politics and ensconce yourself in an intricate debut novel and espionage thriller, A Spy Alone, by Charles Beaumont.

Having studied Russia over an extended period, I am always looking for good fiction about it. Charles Beaumont’s work interested me in particular because he operated undercover for the United Kingdom’s MI6, crisscrossing the globe through diplomatic missions, visits to war zones, and international business ventures. His fiction takes place during Russia’s war upon Ukraine, with his protagonist, Simon Sharman, a jaded former spy making sense of the United Kingdom and what it stands for today.

The excitement builds from the first page as Simon, a former MI6 operative, identifies surveillance around him as he makes his way to his intended destination in Oxford twenty years after attending the school.  In the early 1990s he had studied in this breeding ground for UK leaders, when Russia was the Wild East after the fall of communism. As a student, his tutor is Peter Mackenzie, a brilliant, alcoholic professor with strong Tory ties including Margaret Thatcher, and a bone-deep knowledge of European history.

Mackenzie’s circle includes the luminaries and aristocrats who inevitably end up at one of the most prestigious universities in the world. On the outside, Simon is a middle class student trying to find his place in the complicated social hierarchy there. He gravitates to the beautiful Sarah du Cane, the brilliant daughter of a diplomat and famous negotiator who studies Slavonic languages and eventually becomes a professor living in Christ Church College, and an undercover intelligence analyst.

The novel flashes forward twenty years to Simon after he has retired from the Pole, a part of MI6, and turned to private intelligence work. A Russian oligarch has asked to donate money to an Oxford college. He is requested by an advisory firm, cynically known to former spies as an oligarch concierge service, to find out more so the university can gracefully back away in the context of the war in Ukraine if the funds are dirty.

While doing so, Simon and his assistant, Evie, already know that the oligarch in question, Georgy Sidorov, had cover at the Russian embassy as an SVR operative after the fall of the Soviet Union. They find out through digging with informal networks that include hackers and independent researchers that Sidorov once funded a small, inactive NGO called the International Transparency Committee connected to Simon’s professor, Peter Mackenzie. The money came from an offshore shell company. As a young man Sidorov he had visited Oxford to take part in an academic diplomatic meeting regularly, but had made no personal contacts and interacted with no one.

As Simon and Evie continue their hunt for answers, they walk a maze of shell companies and other funding apparatuses, networking with formal and informal sources to begin to unravel select global Russian money and energy networks. They see these entities’ effect on the British government and economy as Great Britain must find a way to punish the very organizations that have infiltrated the country and seek to create loopholes in any war-related sanctions.

When Simon and Evie’s research causes a stir in Moscow Center, Simon gains information from a Russian spy he had turned years prior. He looks to see if Professor Mackenzie was more than he had appeared in gathering a network of acolytes who went on to run hedge funds, advise the prime minister, encourage Brexit, and change the shape of the state and its international relations. If there was a Cambridge Five with members of the upper class who betrayed their country for communist ideals, what might have happened at Oxford as Russia changed shape and infiltrated the United Kingdom in a quite different context? If so, was it done by Russian security in the form of the SVR, GRU, or a previously unidentified entity?

While Beaumont’s novel keeps excitement brewing, it is also a damning indictment of the ways in which London and in particular its business district, the City, have become a center for laundering dirty Russian coin. From Simon Sharman’s viewpoint, the UK shows only superficial support for Ukraine as twenty-first century uberwealthy Russians have bought up pricey London real estate, sent their children to expensive schools, hired advisory firms to make shady deals, and influenced the appointments and elections of the most important governmental leaders, including those in charge of national security.

He sees that some British leaders who studied at Oxford have supported Brexit, encouraged a leaner security network, and worked to weaken NATO ties. He wants to fight for the country he believes in, the one he grew up in, by chasing down this shadowy network that he believes is weakening the very identity of the nation. There is a nobility to what he does, this tired and retired spy with a low-level private practice who becomes involved again in matters of the highest importance.

In some ways Beaumont as a writer brings to mind John le Carré, but he is slightly less philosophical. His cynicism is similar, and his character development is not as pronounced as his scathing, complicated indictment of corrupt Brits and Russians with no ideologies except domination of the financial and governmental networks they wish to control. The question also is “Who controls whom?” Do the corrupt Brits rule the Russians or vice versa? Can this sticky, extensive web even be understood?

A Spy Alone is worth reading not just for the tradecraft, although Beaumont writes it well and speeds his plot along with interesting twists. You can take it on this level and enjoy the novel. I was mostly interested, though, to hear Beaumont’s ripped-from-the-headlines view of Britain’s place in the world vis-à-vis Russian influence as the war in Ukraine continues. I was also fascinated to read it in light of Russia’s attempted influence on US elections and American implementation of sanctions after the Russians attacked Ukraine.

If you read this column regularly, you know that I have thoroughly recommended Don Winslow’s fascinating Border Trilogy fiction to gain knowledge of the complicated links between the Mexican drug trade and the US economy. This novel falls into a similar category. It can be a beach book that teaches you about international relations, an espionage thriller that will make you think.