As I was organizing my fiction in recent weeks I came across this novel by Frederick Forsyth; I've owned it for ages but never got around to reading it. Back in the 80s and 90s I was an avid reader of spy fiction including Forsyth, Ludlum, and Le Carr
é. Forsyth books that I read back then were
The day of the jackal,
The fourth protocol, and
The Odessa file. Unbeknownst to me, this novel, which was published in 1979 and set in 1982, is about Ukrainian nationalists who want to start an uprising against the Soviet Union by assassinating the head of the KBG. They succeed in their attempt, but their getaway goes wrong and they're arrested and jailed in West Berlin. Their fellow nationalists attempt to free them by hi-jacking an oil carrier and threatening to release a million tons of crude oil into the ocean. Told from many viewpoints, including the terrorists, diplomats, the ship's captain, the story is slow to build but around the halfway point becomes irresistible. It was ironic to be reading a book with this theme during the Russian war against Ukraine, and at the same time, watching
Jack Ryan season 3, which also had a Russian theme.
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