\u201cIf there\u2019s one thing I have no business doing,\u201d I told them, \u201cit\u2019s writing a spy story.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was\u00a0a sharp winter\u2019s day, and around our pub table the critique group nodded readily. A little too readily. Crimped in my hands was a draft of the spy story I had been attempting to introduce.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s for Mystery Writers of America,\u201d I explained. \u201cEvery year heavy hitters\u00a0put together an awesome\u00a0anthology. This time it\u2019s the Cold War, with Jeffery Deaver and Raymond Benson, the only two American authors ever to pen an authorized James Bond novel.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, it is a fact that inserting James Bond into any conversation kick-starts it big time, no matter how it was humming along pre-Bond. Try it. You\u2019ll see what I mean. On that particular\u00a0cold Saturday, the group\u2019s nods turned knowing, if at whatever action-packed Bond scene ran through their heads. Echoing through pub you could almost hear the surf guitar opening to Dr. No<\/i>.<\/p>\nNOVEMBER 2012, THE 12:15 TGV OUT OF PARIS<\/b><\/h5>\n
\u201cDamned British,\u201d I said, scribbling liked mad.<\/p>\n
I meant the various grand schemes and counter-strategies John Lewis Gaddis had outlined in his The Cold War<\/i><\/a>, open on my seat-back table. Out our train window morning glimmered over\u00a0France.\u00a0Beside me, my wife pretended not to wake up.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s for the MWA anthology,\u201d I wanted to remind her. But I didn\u2019t. I\u2019ve gotten good at staying married.<\/p>\n The train barreled south, into Provence. I\u00a0read on, well-fueled by inspiration and Coca-Cola Lite. Weeks into research, no writer fed me Cold War perspective like Gaddis or its zeitgeist like John le Carr\u00e9. Gaddis framed the stakes; le Carr\u00e9 made it human. Both got inside the grand monoliths of East vs. West and showed its reality: fragments and fissures.<\/p>\n I was honing in on the story gold buried in those fractures. The British, a fading power, forever had to calibrate their interests, balancing instinct with how far they dared stray from America. If the British on their isle walked a tightrope, imagine the front lines where East and West truly met. Imagine where the Cold War wasn\u2019t the least bit cold.<\/p>\n Where there was blood in the streets.<\/p>\n \u201cHungary!\u201d I said. All these months later I like to think I declared the Hungary idea. It was worth declaring.<\/p>\n A damning piece of evidence that I only thought it: no librarian asked me to leave.\u00a0Surely any Eureka!<\/i>-grade exclamation would have brought at least a curt rebuke.<\/p>\n Already I had dismissed Czechoslovakia. Russian tanks crushing their 1968 rebellion was an iconic if grim image of the times, but the math was all wrong. A lead character had long since begun to form: young woman, no spy training, a gaping wound in her soul where a daddy\u2019s girl used to be.\u00a0A Czech recruited for a revenge mission set a Prague version in the mid-80s, already the Glasnost era. Not enough boil to the pot.<\/p>\n But the 1956 Hungarian Revolution<\/a>?<\/p>\n Cue Budapest, 1973. And cue the Bond riff, if that’s your thing.<\/p>\n \u201cRevenge,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n The gray cat in my lap blinked her wet eyes. Either she wasn\u2019t impressed or she preferred her revenge served colder still.<\/p>\n I kept typing–there is no point elaborating to a cat. What I\u2019d meant was, with all that Cold War gamesmanship, a Shakespearian turn of a game upon its players. A pox on both the East and West\u2019s houses. The idea sounds tidy a year later. At the time it was anything but fast or easy, a prying loose of story,\u00a0of craft vs. impulse. But I\u2019d begun to write, kindled by grainy Polaroids of \u201873 Budapest and launched by a narrator I can\u2019t explain. Helena appeared to lead me before I had its end, before she had the name. But\u00a0her first\u00a0words\u00a0she had a tone.<\/p>\n So did her Budapest. Hungary\u2019s Western connection and tradition of self-determination survived under the Russian thumb. By 1973 socialist ideology had calcified, and Hungary wrangled a degree of political and economic freedom: Goulash communism<\/a>. \u201cThe happiest barracks,\u201d it was said of Hungary, though I read it as a nexus of decay. Corrupt, lip service paid to Communism, ever more overt luxury, but still smuggled goods, still a crumbling one-party state, still a formidable secret police, still\u00a0a Russian crackdown\u00a0should Hungary stray too far.<\/p>\n Still more than a few war criminals from \u201956 lining their pockets.<\/p>\n Like I said, revenge.<\/p>\n Great story<\/i>, Gloria said in her e-mail. But it\u2019s disjointed. And the ending doesn\u2019t work.<\/i><\/p>\n The silence that followed was broken only by the Pomeranian snoring at my feet.<\/p>\n I re-read her critique<\/a>, re-read my story, re-re-read her critique. The truth hit me like where Bond snaps off that hipshot on the poor bastard tracking him in the sniper scope.<\/p>\n Salty words flew.<\/p>\n It took more than one long walk until I got back hammering out a better story. All but the ending. Helena hid it from me until the last minute. Out of love, I\u2019ve wondered. Or fear. The big finish as submitted–no spoilers–was its truest and most painful. And sealing it up for New York, the pages smelled of fresh laser toner. In the end, after all the research and creative agonies, nothing inspires like a ticking clock. Say like all those bombs that Bond defused with the timer stopped at 007.<\/p>\n \u201cRemember a few months back,\u201d I said, \u201cwhen I brought in that spy story?\u201d<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n I tried hard to get\u00a01973 Hungary\u00a0as right as possible. To the extent I got it wrong, I apologize. To the extent I took a liberty here and there, well, that\u2019s storytelling. Know \u201cSparks\u201d\u00a0was born\u00a0from good intentions: honoring the Hungarian cause and its very human place in the Cold War.<\/p>\n The Hungarian proverb goes: \u201cNe igy\u00e1l el\u0151re a medve b\u0151r\u00e9re.<\/i>\u201d Translation: Don’t drink ahead to the bear’s hide (Wikipedia), or\u00a0idiomatically, \u201cdon\u2019t count your chickens.\u201d I\u00a0latched onto the double-meaning made of \u201cbear,\u201d the sense of fate balancing out,\u00a0the Hungarian connection. Sparks, a central image of the story, flung at a bear\u2019s hide would live fierce but overmatched lives, a scorch mark at worst.<\/p>\n \u201cSparks\u201d is about the scorch marks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DECEMBER 2012, THE STACKS, WILLIAMSON CO. PUBLIC LIBRARY<\/b><\/h5>\n
DECEMBER 2012, THE SANCTUM SANCTORUM (aka\u00a0my office), FRANKLIN<\/b><\/h5>\n
JANUARY 27 (4 days to Deadline), THE SANCTUM SANCTORUM<\/b><\/h5>\n
OCTOBER 2013, CRITIQUE GROUP, NASHVILLE<\/b><\/h5>\n
The Thank Yous<\/b><\/h6>\n
\n
The Research<\/b><\/b><\/h6>\n
The Title<\/b><\/h6>\n