Gulls us with intelligence
Francis King
HEART'S JOURNEY IN WINTER by James Buchan Harvill, £14.99, pp. 201 The protagonist and narrator of this thriller, Richard Fischer, describes himself as 'a part-time British spy of doubtful allegiances'. Another character describes him as 'an Englishman professionally and emotionally on the make'. Since Fischer is youthful, unreliable and does not enjoy diplomatic immunity, it is one of the many oddities of this novel that in the Bonn of 1983 he should enjoy such easy access not merely to the SIS head of station but to the British ambassador himself.
To summarise the adventures which befall Fischer after his first encounter with Polina Merz, an American spy of Polish origins, is virtually impossible. Spiders dosed with hallucigens weave webs, not of the usual symmetrical pattern, but of a chaotic elaboration which baffles the eye. In the same way, the chaotic elaboration of Buchan's plot baffles the mind. At the centre of it is a controversial proposal, code-named Golden Plough, to regulate nuclear weapons in the European theatre. Polina is in favour of this proposal, as is her elderly American boss, a man who appears to have more than a little in com- mon with Averell Harriman. But the State Department, the Foreign Office and the Quai D'Orsay prefers the Zero Option. For having conspired to achieve Golden Plough, Polina and Richard end up being brutally interrogated as possible Soviet agents.
There can be no doubt that Buchan, who served for ten years as a foreign correspon- dent of the Financial Times, is extraordi- narily knowledgeable about all the tense, infinitely protracted negotiations which filled the last chapter of the Cold War. His novel contains brilliant sketches of such German politicians as Brandt, Schmidt, Strauss, Genscher and Kohl, and of Mrs Thatcher appearing 'in a long dress of vio- let chiffon and pierrot-lunaire make-up' at a British embassy reception. Pages three to seven consist of a masterly summary of the political situation in a divided Germany in the Eighties; and there is real knowledge and not merely imagination in the descrip- tion of the intelligence community. But it is precisely because Buchan is so well- informed that his book, bristling with tiny specifics, is so often difficult to read. When Graham Greene wrote of this or that foreign country, he was astute enough to reduce a highly complex political situation to a map composed of a few simple contours, which any ordinary reader could follow. Such an ordinary reader will soon become punch-drunk under Buchan's bombardment of references to the Social Democratic Party, the Christian Democrats, the Greens, the Red Army Faction and so on.
What also makes for bewilderment is Buchan's tricksy juggling with his time- scheme, so that the narrative constantly loops back on itself to get entangled in its own coils. The style can be equally tricksy. On the first page one reads, in what might be a parody of Graham Greene, of `Jugendstil streets that ran away like bad children' — a simile which, if one thinks about it, obfuscates instead of illuminating. Elsewhere, no less absurdly, Polina is described as 'scattering tears like a dog on a beach' and as resembling a set of Russian dolls.
Yet for much of the time Buchan writes with magical exactitude — evoking now a walk through the provincial orderliness of Bonn, 'little city of driving instructors, simultaneous translators, secretaries, Nazis, spies', now a trout-fishing expedition in the country, and now a night of desperate love- making.
Such is the hardness of definition with which Buchan presents his real people that it is surprising and disappointing that his imagined people should for the most part be so vague. Polina, so important to Richard as both his nemesis and salvation, and to the narrative as its chief driving force, is never much more than a catalogue of physical attributes — strikingly narrow waist, 'straight, white, American teeth', hair parted low — and the clothes in which they come packaged. Even Richard himself remains a wraith, despite all the biographi- cal details which he provides about himself.
Buchan had a well-deserved success with his first novel, A Parish of Rich Women. The comparative failure of this one must, I am sure, be ascribed to his miscalculation of where his natural talent lies. What all first-rate writers of thrillers have in com- mon is a powerful narrative gift. They may not write as well as Buchan and they may not possess his formidable knowledge and intelligence; but their books grip the read- er. Sadly, this political thriller, despite all the abundant talents which it displays, has about as much grip as the claw of a dead lobster on a fishmonger's slab.
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