A week before the Auckland Writers Festival, I watched an old Ridley Scott thriller, Body of Lies, in which British actor Mark Strong does a star turn as the head of Jordanian intelligence. Set in the Middle East, the movie involves high drama, terrorists and guns.
At one of the festival’s packed-out sessions, journalist Finlay Macdonald interviewed writer Ben Macintyre about his latest book The Siege, a riveting story involving high drama, terrorists and guns.
Under the bright lights, Macdonald, as smooth and opaque as the head of Jordanian intelligence, interrogated jolly, rumpled citizen Macintyre. The British author of wildly entertaining non-fiction gave away little about himself and everything about his subjects, whose stories he tells with remarkable skill and style. He is a perfect interviewee, at ease and fluent, with a very British eye for funny jokes and ironic details.
Charming Macintyre allowed suave Macdonald to extract a single confession: “I was once recruited by MI6. But I was hopeless! See, I just give secrets away!” He added archly, “That could be a double bluff, of course.” Of course it could. We will never know, but remain grateful, as readers, that he was allowed (presumably by the security services) to interview one of the world’s most famous double agents, Oleg Gordievsky, for his riveting book The Spy and The Traitor.
The author spent 100 hours questioning Gordievsky, who was one of the Russian defectors most in line for a cup of polonium or a dose of Novichok. When contradicted, Gordievsky would subject him to “a Soviet stare”, Macintyre reported.
The dynamic during the festival session was as interesting as the subjects discussed. Under Macdonald’s level stare (Soviet, Jordanian) Macintyre produced an effortless string of anecdotes and particulars from The Siege. His true account of a hostage-taking in London poses an interesting question. How would each of us behave if subjected to extreme, unexpected terror? Would we show courage, or collapse? Everyone reacts to stressors in different ways. The book describes ordinary people under excruciating pressure – their heroism and their failures.
Once, while flying from Oslo to Reykjavik, I got through a terrifying bout of turbulence by reading Macintyre’s A Spy Among Friends. His account of double agent Kim Philby steadied me as we lurched and yawed. The pilot made cryptic remarks over the intercom (was he in tears?) as a woman next to me threw up. Nearly in hysterics myself, I clung to Macintyre’s deadpan Philby.
The spy’s friends could never forgive his betrayal nor understand his fanaticism, but no one could deny his outrageous nerve. If Gordievsky’s stare was Soviet, Philby’s was quintessentially British: posh, opaque, unreadable. Macintyre gives us the pictures: Gordievsky’s wintry scowl, Philby’s charming smile.
On terra firma outside Reykjavik, I clutched my copy of Macintyre’s book, now designated lucky. I was standing at the edge of an extraordinary sight. The Eurasian and North American tectonic plates have been moving apart at 2cm a year, and in Iceland’s Thingvellir National Park you can walk to the Silfra fissure. A space has opened in the surface of the world, and I was looking into the rift.
At the writers festival I recalled this moment: clutching the talismanic Philby book while looking at a great crack in the world. It was one of those moments when you comprehend you’re standing on a planet. How insignificant are our divisions and ideologies when you consider the annihilating sweep of geological time. But we need and value the human details. We’re united by the kind of stories Macintyre tells. They steady us, anchor us on the side of humanity, help us to contemplate ourselves.
