THE REPUBLIC OF NIGHT

Further adventures of Pascual Rose, the cowardly counterterrorist (self-avowed) who’s still trying to come in from the cold.

Geopolitical chess, played by super-spies and begun last year in Lying Crying Dying—to which this is the sequel—revs up again, the moves sneakier and of darker intent. Probably the middle game’s been reached, but that’s hard to know for sure; hard for poor, embattled Pascual even to know precisely who his opposition is, though whoever it is, harm is assuredly the object. There he was, beached in Barcelona, broke but safe (he foolishly believed), having dodged a multiplicity of inimical forces: drinking too much, whoring more than he really wanted to, doing the odd translating gig in one or another of his six languages, keeping his head down. And then suddenly, looming large in Pascual’s out-of-the-way path, came the enigmatic Frenchman Morrell, packing one of those gut-wrenching can’t-refuse offers. A hundred thousand US dollars, says he, in exchange for a quick betrayal, an act not unfamiliar to a counterterrorist famously. . . er. . . pragmatic. French intelligence is interested in a former colleague of Pascual’s, an operator who’s changed sides as often as Pascual has himself. The havoc wrought by Daoud Najjar is well known. What he looks like, however, is a mystery to virtually all except Pascual. Come to Paris, plant “the Judas kiss,” then fade into the night, pockets filled. Refuse, and bulletins will be sent to an array of those who’d kill—le mot juste—to learn Pascual’s hidey-hole. Bereft of choices, he wends his way to Paris, tracks his quarry (while his quarry tracks him), falls in love, gets caught up in multinational swindles, Algerian politics, Swiss chicanery, and Russian hooliganism, but manages nevertheless to elude all pursuers and, quintessential survivor that he is, position himself for the end game.

Endlessly convoluted, but if you’ve got a soft spot for the Byronic antihero, Pascual’s your man.