Book Review: The Helsinki Affair by Anna Pitoniak

Growing up, the last thing Amanda Cole thought she wanted to be was a spy. Her grandfather was in the CIA as was her father Charlie, and she’d seen firsthand the strain the job had put on her parents’ marriage. Now at the age of forty, she’s happily single and less contentedly second-in-command of the CIA’s Rome desk. Rome is nice, but savvy, talented Amanda wishes she could spend her days actually doing the job she’s trained for instead of whiling away her hours in comfort and abject boredom.

Even so, she’s experienced enough to have little time for an unlikely informant showing up at her station’s gates one day. When Russian bureaucrat Kostya Semonov claims that his information has to do with an impending assassination attempt on powerful American Senator Bob Vogel, however, Amanda takes the meeting. After listening to his story, she’s convinced that his intel is legit. Alas, her station chief doesn’t feel the same way.

When the worst happens and Amanda’s beliefs are vindicated, she’s given greater responsibilities, including supervision of Semonov before he’s sent back to Russia to gather more intel for her. But a secret file Vogel had been putting together makes its way to her father, who finds himself listed in it as a person of interest despite having worked solely for the CIA’s public relations wing for decades. Charlie Cole’s career in active espionage, if not his entire life, had taken a downward turn after his disastrous posting to Helsinki forty years ago. It’s not an era he wants to revisit, so he punts making a decision about the file to his daughter, handing it to her and asking her to keep his name as far away from the case as possible.

Amanda knows straight away that she has to bring the file to the attention of her superior. What she’s less sure about is mentioning her father in relation to it:

She had to come clean about Charlie’s strange request; had to tell the director that her father was clearly hiding something. It was now or never. Come on, she thought. Start talking. Right now. Right now! But there, in the thick silence, it suddenly occurred to her. The obvious outcome of telling [her boss was that the] conflict of interest was glaring. She, as [Charlie’s] daughter, would instantly lose the assignment.

 

But she badly wanted to see this through. The Russians assassinating an American politician was uncharted territory. Plus, Amanda was the person Semonov trusted. What if, by removing herself, she destroyed any chance at progress?

As Amanda delves further into the case, she begins to uncover the real reason the Russians wanted Vogel dead. With the help of CIA savant Kath Frost, she unravels a breath-taking global conspiracy to manipulate the world’s markets. But she also discovers details about the clandestine acts that led to her father’s career downfall, and that perhaps continue to keep him compromised. How will she reconcile her need for justice with her desire to protect her father from harm?

Amanda Cole is a fascinating character: smart, compassionate and sometimes completely oblivious to what a jerk she’s being. She feels like a fully realized person, and not just one of the cardboard caricatures that lead far too many cerebral spy novels. Kath, her greatest ally, is an absolute delight, as the two women bond over the misogyny they’ve faced in their careers from their own people. More importantly, Kath tempers Amanda’s more knee-jerk responses, in a partnership I’m eager to see much more of.

But the real star of The Helsinki Affair is Anna Pitoniak’s nuanced view of espionage and its history. As Abe Romanoff, the American ambassador to Russia, says to Amanda over breakfast one day:

“Do you know why the Cold War lasted as long as it did?”

 

“Because they wanted to kill us and we wanted to kill them.”

 

He smiled, bemused by her tone[.] “That was part of it, of course. But, also, it’s because certain people were enjoying themselves too much to stop. Not most people. Most people aren’t that cruel. But a few powerful people, on their side and on ours: They loved the game. They loved having an enemy, having a crusade. My God, you look back on those years and they seem almost baroque. Double agents. Triple agents. Mole hunts. Conspiracies inside conspiracies.”

Cruelty, Ms Pitoniak posits, may be more efficient in getting things done in the short-term. In the longer view, however, it only perpetuates unnecessary suffering, not just of the people involved, but of innocents caught in cruelty’s outward-moving ripple.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the loneliness that permeates the book’s final pages. Espionage, this book infers, is a field which reflects back onto its practitioners. Charity comes back to you, as does cowardice. The trick, as Amanda learns as the gripping narrative unfolds, is in navigating between the two and holding onto the values you know to be true and worthwhile, not just what’s easier to do or believe.