Post Cold War Trilogy Background

By Chester Campbell

When I first wrote my post Cold War political thriller trilogy back in the early nineties, I had a character who, as a young man, had been led off course by a charismatic leader who then rejected him as a failure. I wanted to show how his courage and determination overcame the stigma of that experience and allowed him to regain his self-respect. It had to play out against the backdrop of tensions that remained in the aftermath of the Cold War.

For years I had devoured Cold War spy stories like a chocoholic with a plate of brownies. I supplemented my novel reading with a steady supply of books on the KGB, the CIA, and figures like the famous British-born Soviet spy, Kim Philby. By the time I took up novel writing, I was well-versed in the field of espionage. I also kept up with events in the Soviet Union and what occurred when it was dissolved and the Commonwealth of Independent States came into being.

The central character, Burke Hill, faces one crisis after another in Beware the Jabberwock, the first book in the trilogy. A former FBI agent, he has the moxie to tangle with rogue elements on both sides of the old Iron Curtain. Rather than have him battle the odds alone, however, I created a sharp, talented, independent young woman to share the journey, his old CIA pal's daughter, Lorelei Quinn. She provides additional incentive for Burke when the bad guys target her as a way of getting to him.

The second book, The Poksu Conspiracy, finds Burke working as director of clandestine activities for a PR firm that's a CIA spinoff. I continued to develop his character as a tough, uncompromising intelligence agent. Lori Quinn, now Mrs. Burke Hill, remains in the background, pregnant with twins. As with the first book, I spent almost as much effort creating the bad guys as I did the good ones. I gave them full backgrounds and valid reasons for acting as they did.

When it came to book three, Overture to Disaster, I had a different idea. Instead of starting the story with Burke Hill, I came up with two widely different characters on opposite sides of the world, both tormented by painful experiences from the past. I used my Air Force background and a lot of additional research to create Special Operations helicopter pilot Col. Roddy Rodman. His counterpart in the east was Chief Investigator Yuri Shumakov with the Minsk, Belarus city prosecutor.

Rodman was court-martialed for an error that resulted in his helicopter being shot down over Iran, with everyone aboard killed except the two pilots. While working to learn how his brother, a Soviet Army captain, was killed, Shumakov is falsely accused of murder. The two characters' paths cross in Mexico where they discover they're both looking for the same person. That's where Burke Hill comes into the picture as he joins forces with the other two men.

If you're a fan of conspiracy theories, you'll love Overture. Behind the plot is a shadowy group of international bankers and corporate socialists. It will be out as an ebook on Amazon in a couple of weeks.

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Reseaching Foreign Settings

By Chester Campbell

While I worked on revising the third book in my Post Cold War political thriller trilogy, I was reminded of the lengths to which I had gone in researching the locations where the story takes place. I originally wrote the book in 1992, so some of the settings were more fresh in my mind at the time. Two of the central characters in the book, Overture to Disaster, were a retired Air Force Special Operations helicopter pilot and a chief investigator for the Minsk, Belarus city prosecutor.

Col. Warren "Roddy" Rodman settled in the Guadalajara area of Mexico following his court martial for supposed negligence that resulted in the crash of his helicopter on a clandestine mission to Iran. The area around Lake Chapala, 40 kilometers south of Mexico's second largest city, was home to one of the world's largest colonies of expatriate Americans. Digging around on the Internet, I found the editor of a community newspaper that served the group and got lots of information on the area and its residents.

I used AAA maps, guidebooks, and similar sources to augment my knowledge of Guadalajara and its environs. I had attended a convention in Acapulco a few years earlier, taking a bus tour from Mexico City to the coastal resort. We stopped at towns along the way and en route saw many miles of typical rural countryside. In Mexico City I got a good taste of the metropolitan flavor.

Yuri Shumakov, the chief investigator, moves about his hometown of Minsk, with junkets to Brest on the Polish border and Kiev, the capitol of neighboring Ukraine. This was the period just after the breakup of the Soviet Union and the beginning of the Commonwealth of Independent States, a loose confederation of the former Soviet states. Belarus was the old Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. To get information about the country, I corresponded with the American Embassy in Minsk. I went this route with two of these early manuscripts and found it quite helpful.

I sent a list of questions concerning particular points I needed to clarify. My Embassy contact provided details on such items as soccer teams, locations of government buildings, the status of the old KGB, all items I used in the book. I turned to guidebooks and other sources to get the flavor of Brest and Kiev.

The Special Operations helicopter mission to Iran provided an interesting bit of research. I had a book on Army Special Forces (in which my younger son had been an officer) that told about U.S. Green Berets helping victims of an earthquake in a mountainous area before the mullahs took over the country. I picked that area for my mission as the people would still be friendly to American troops. Since I had been an intelligence officer in the Air Force and Air National Guard, I felt I had a little entree to the active duty force. I read extensively about the MH-53J Pave Low III helicopter and talked to an operations officer at Hurlburt Field, Florida, home of USAF Special Operations Command. He read the section of the book detailing the clandestine flight and offered some suggestions.

I used outside reading to fashion my chapter that takes place in Zurich, but when revising the manuscript twenty years later, I called on my memory of visiting the city during a European trip in 2000. The descriptions still sounded good, though I added a couple of features gleaned from my personal experience.

Visiting foreign locales can certainly improve an author's views, but extensive research can achieve almost the same end. If you love research, as I do, either route can be exciting. And by the way, Overture to Disaster should be out in March.

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Taking on a Conspiracy Theory

By Chester Campbell

Back in the early nineties, I subscribed to a financial newsletter by Larry Abraham, who headed an international investment house based in Panama. One of his pet subjects was the Council on Foreign Relations and the Bilderberg Group. He and Gary Allen wrote a book in 1972 titled None Dare Cal it Conspiracy. It was revised in 1985 with the title Call It Conspiracy. The book detailed his studies of the CFR and his belief that its leadership, including heads of major corporations and financial institutions, used their influence to set the agenda for the government and the economy. The Bilderberg Group, including wealthy bankers and corporate leaders from around the world, acted in concert on an international scale.

When I tackled my third book in the Post Cold War political thriller series around 1993, I cloned Abraham's theories into organizations I called the Foreign Affairs Roundtable and the Council of Lyon. The Council was named for the city where it first met, as the Bilderberg Group took its name from the hotel where it met first in the Netherlands.

Abraham said the groups involved an aristocracy of the financial elite. He said the multinational bankers had supported Lenin's Bolshevik revolution and provided loans that funded building of the Soviet empire. I used this idea in the book.

After the demise of the Cold War, dissident factions in the old Soviet Union tried to re-assert their influence and regain the power they had lost. I built the plot of Overture to Disaster around such a group seeking to undermine the work of the new Commonwealth of Independent States, formed from the former Soviet republics.

The story follows parallel plot lines, one that begins in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, the other in Washington, DC where an operation is under way to remove a dissident from Iran using an Air Force special operations helicopter. The lines come together in Mexico when a Belarussian investigator meets the pilot of the doomed helicopter.

I hope to have the book available after the first of the year as an ebook for the Kindle. The conspiracy gets deadly before the end of the tale.

Chester Campbell

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Writing About Places We've Never Been

For most of my fiction writing career, I have stuck with the idea of only taking my characters to locations I have visited. Even that can be problematic if you aren't careful. When I wrote my first Post-Cold War thriller in 1990-91, I had visited Hong Kong. But when I revised Beware the Jabberwock for publication recently, I discovered I had used a hospital that was too far from where my character had an accident.

While revising the second book in the trilogy set just after the Cold War, The Poksu Conspiracy, due for publication soon, I realized I had broken the familiarization rule. I had a few scenes set in Berlin and Budapest. These are places I've never been. I depended on some maps of Berlin and online information for the German capital, but not much was required since it only involved a drive in from the airport to a downtown office.

The Hungarian part was a bit more complicated. I had Burke and Lori Hill spending several days there. Budapest was Lori's birthplace. Luckily, National Geographic Traveler ran a feature on the city around this time. It included great pictures of various sites and an article that provided lots of information. I also read a book by someone who had lived there several years that gave an inside look at the area.

Among the places described in the magazine was a restaurant that had been restored to its pre-Soviet satellite name, the Cafe New York. It occupied two levels of the old New York Insurance Company building, and the Communists had renamed it Cafe Hungaria. The lavishly decorated upper level was a balcony that looked down on the lower level called Melyviz, or Deep Water. In the old days, the affluent gathered on the upper level to peer down disdainfully on the writers and artists who subsisted on the cheaper fare of Deep Water. Burke and Lori made an important contact there.

My work was validated when I submitted those chapters to my writers group. Turns out one of my colleagues had lived in Budapest while her husband was there with the U.S. military. She said my descriptions were right on.

I haven't begun revising the third book, which was originally written around 1993. Titled Overture to Disaster, it is the longest of the three, currently clocking in at 165,000 words. And much of it is set in locations that I've never visited. I was well versed in the activities of the CIA and KGB back in those days, and I did a great deal of research on areas where the story is set. In the early part of the book, I have scenes in Minsk and Kiev, capitals of two of the new countries that were formerly Soviet republics.

It was only later in my fiction career that I decided to stick with locations I've visited. I'm pleased with what I did in these first three books. I'll be surprised if any of my readers takes me to task for the way I described these places nearly a quarter of a century ago.

My Take on Multiple POV

By Chester Campbell

My first published mystery series featured retired Air Force OSI Agent Greg McKenzie. I began writing Greg's story in first person from his point of view. I've stuck with that technique for five books now, and it seems to be working. Greg and his wife Jill are well loved by their fans. But when I decided to start a new series about another Nashville PI with a different sort of background, I chose to write in third person for a little variety.

Third person gives more freedom to explore the inner workings of characters other than the main protagonist. Actually, the first two McKenzie books had third person prologues, but those served to introduce the background for the plots. In the Sid Chance novels, a majority of the story is told from Sid's POV, but several chapters or parts of chapters come from the POV of Jaz LeMieux, his part-time associate, a wealthy ex-cop and successful businesswoman. There are also a few scenes from the viewpoint of the bad guys.

I've recently been working on revisions of the first three manuscripts I wrote back in the early nineties. They comprise a trilogy of post Cold War espionage tales. The main protagonist is Burke Hill, a disgraced former FBI agent who is summoned out of a monastic life as a nature photographer in the Great Smoky Mountains by a CIA agent friend from years before. At the time I was an avid Cold War spy story reader just winding up a career that involved non-fiction writing for newspapers, magazines, and other venues.

Those early books involved multiple points of view on a grand scale. I wasn't aware of any taboos regarding point of view, so I gave each character free reign to tell his part of the story. That's one of the primary changes I've encountered in revising the manuscripts. I try to stick to one POV per scene. On a few occasions I found it necessary to break a scene to allow a character her necessary moment in the sun.

Using multiple points of view gives a greater opportunity to mine tbe depths of character where many people are involved. In Beware the Jabberwock, the first book in the trilogy, a diverse group of characters is involved in carrying out a plot against a pair of world leaders. Looking at the situation from different viewpoints provides a greater understanding of the motivations involved. As long as it's clear whose head we are in, and the shifts aren't ping-pong style, I find it makes for a more interesting story.

On a few occasions, I find it helpful to cheat a bit. Such as a brief mention of something someone sees who isn't the POV character. If such things are done subtly, it won't be noticed and it can avoid the need for additional explanation. To me, rigid rules regarding point of view or any other facet of fiction writing are merely invitations to find ways of getting around them. A good story can be told with many different techniques. It's up to us to find the best way of doing it.

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Spies Come in from the Cold

By Chester Campbell

Today's U.S./Russia spy swap took me back to the good old Cold War days. I say "good old" in the context of a spy thriller reader and writer. I was an avid reader of the genre from early Helen Macinnes novels, through John le Carre, Graham Greene, Len Deighton, Robert Ludlum, Jack Higgins, and Nelson DeMille. One I thought did some great writing but haven't heard much of is Campbell Armstrong. His Mazurka had some really vivid descriptions.

News stories about the present spy swap call up memories of years ago when the exchanges took place at the border between East Germany and West Berlin marked on the cold steel of the Glienicke Bridge. Some of the spy novelists used that scene dramatically in their books.

Stories about the present-day Russians living normal lives in U.S. suburbia evoke thoughts of DeMille's 1988 thriller The Charm School. In it, the Soviets are revealed to have built a prototype of an American town where intelligence agents are trained to talk and act like typical Americans. According to one former U.S. official on a radio talk show, nothing was ever unearthed like The Charm School, though less elaborate training was carried out in Moscow suburbs.

I read numerous books on the KGB and espionage in general while researching a novel I wrote back in the 1960s. It involved a professor who had defected from Communist Romania and was teaching at Vanderbilt under an assumed name. He had knowledge of a Soviet device designed to block American radar. When the scopes suddenly went awry at a U.S. radar installation in the Zagros Moutains of Iran that kept tabs on the firing of intercontinental missiles, American agents came looking for the professor, as did the KGB.

The manuscript spent about six months with an editor at Avon in New York before he returned it sadly with word he hadn't been able to sell his colleagues on buying it. That ended my novel writing until I retired in 1989, when I picked up the spy thread post Cold War.

I never got into prisoner swapping. In my spy books, it was mostly take no prisoners. My knowledge of current tradecraft and operations is rather limited, but I enjoyed writing about them back in the nineties. I still have intentions of digging out some of the old stories and juicing them up for another try. The subject still fascinates me.

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Sarin Gas Attack Stirs Memories

By Chester Campbell

In Dr. Doug Lyle's The Writers Forensics Blog last Saturday, he wrote about the terrorist attack in a Tokyo subway on that date (March 20) in 1995 using sarin gas. It was headline news fifteen years ago as the first case of a CBW (chemical and biological warfare) agent being used in a major city.

The blog brought back memories for me of what might have been. I started writing end-of-Cold-War spy thrillers when I retired. I finished the first one in 1990, the second in 1991, and the third in 1992. Book three brought me a contract with a well-known New York agency. It was the last of a trilogy featuring Burke Hill, a former FBI agent who runs an international PR agency that's a CIA front.

In this book, which has the working title Overture to Disaster, Burke doesn't appear until midway through the plot. It starts out in the Ukraine just before the demise of the Soviet Union. A group of KGB officers steal several mortar shells filled with nerve gas from an army unit, killing a young army captain from Minsk.

At about the same time, a USAF special operations mission to extract a defector from Iran goes bad and the helicopter pilot is falsely accused of responsibility. He is court-martialed and discharged.

The story picks up a couple of years later with the murdered captain's brother, a chief investigator with the police in Minsk, the Belarus capital. He uncovers a plot by the ousted KGB officers to organize dissidents in the new Commonwealth of Independent States, a move designed to usher in a new Soviet-type state. Knowing the U.S. is committed to supporting the independence of the former Soviet republics, the plotters plan a diversion to keep the Americans occupied at home.

A team of Shining Path guerillas is trained in Mexico, where the former Air Force helicopter pilot now lives. This is where Burke Hill joins the story. It all winds up on the Fourth of July in Washington, D.C., where the nerve-gas shells make their appearance.

The agency let the manuscript gather dust on the shelf for a couple of years. When it finally went out, a Tor-Forge editor liked the story but said it was dated. What makes it so sad is that if they had found a publisher early on, the book would have come out about the time of the Tokyo subway incident Dr. Lyle wrote about. With that hook, the book could have really taken off.

Maybe (probably) I'm dreaming, but it just goes to show how the luck of timing enters into this peculiar business. I pulled up the the manuscript today (I still have all my old unpublished stories in the computer) and I still think it's a great story. I think I'll do a little revising and try it again.

Maybe my luck will change this time around. And the title? It refers to the 1812 Overture played by the National Symphony on The Mall behind the Capitol at the climax of the Fourth of July celebration. Makes for a rousing finish.

Chester Campbell's Website

The Simpler Life

By Mark W. Danielson

The best thing about my flying job is being able to drop in on distant friends. I was recently able to visit my best buddy during a short LA layover. Dan and I grew up together, have known each other for fifty-four years, and every visit feels like old times. We did everything imaginable growing up, riding our bikes up and down the East SF Bay hills delivering The Richmond Independent, and when we finished, would race through Wildcat Canyon on what we called the “Inter-Canyon 500” to Tilden Park and other regional parks. My paper route had a particularly steep hill near its end that frequently had a radar cop parked near the bottom. My goal was to get stopped for speeding, but in spite of my many efforts at exceeding forty miles per hour in a twenty-five zone, it never happened.

In our early teens, Dan and I were either kayaking, sailing, or piloting sailplanes or airplanes. Steve Canyon was our hero, and Twelve O’Clock High was our favorite TV show. Dan soloed a glider at age 14, and we both soloed airplanes on our sixteenth birthdays. Dan’s dad was my flight instructor, doctor, and mentor. He bought a J-3 Cub so that Dan could build flying time, and I was fortunate to be included in that, too. Being two years older than Dan, I earned my license first, and the two of us flew a plane around Northern California, sleeping under the wing. Neither of us took anything for granted, and we worked hard for what we achieved. Although Dan had hoped to be a test pilot, his vision declined during college. Instead, he has had a remarkable thirty-three year career with Northrop Aviation, has designed nine civilian aerobatic airplanes as a side-line, was an aerobatic champion, and is a third degree black belt. I’ve had an equally successful thirty-nine year piloting career with the Air Force, Navy, and numerous civilian aviation positions. We are who we are because we had supportive parents and a thirst to achieve our dreams.

(Dan and his J-3 Cub. Me and our under-wing tent.)

A lot has changed since we were kids, though. Cell phones and personal computers keep inescapable pressure on kids and under-develop their minds. Instead of jumping off a fence with a pretend parachute, or building models as we did, they play video games, or chat electronically, all the while gaining weight from their lack of exercise. The President’s Physical Fitness program faded along with daily gym class. Kidnappings and random shootings have become far too common. One day, meaningful conversation between two people may even become extinct. But while today’s kids may not have the same opportunities as Dan and I, nothing says they can’t have dreams and work to achieve them.

Our Schwinn bikes riding gave Dan and I our independence. Not only did they get us around, they also taught us coordination, energy management, and geometry. To me, there is nothing better than seeing young kids riding bicycles. Two boys in my neighborhood are just like Dan and me, but they are the exception. It’s easy for me to make a value judgment, but instead, I’ll chock this up as the new reality.

Looking back, life was simpler when Dan and I were growing up. All we had to worry about was the Cold War, and remember to “duck and cover” when out teachers told us to. Perhaps because most moms stayed at home to raise their kids, we respected adults, and identified them as “Mr.” and Mrs.” Another difference is we were happy living with one TV, one phone, one family car, and ate meals at home.

Children today face many more challenges, and the pressure to be perfect is outlandish. The media portrays unrealistic lifestyles, and kids are bombarded with technological interference. While I view these changes wishing their lives could be simpler, I must realize that they aren’t complaining because their perspective is different from mine. In that regard, I suspect they will one day look back, and like me, wouldn’t change a thing about how they grew up.

A Tale of Two Cities

By Mark W. Danielson

Few places I travel to have greater contrasts than Shanghai and Almaty, Kazakhstan. Almaty rates high in natural resources, and yet looks much the same as it did when it was part of the Soviet empire, whereas Shanghai has reinvented itself to become one of the world’s premier cities in the last two decades. The contrast between the two cities is as steep as the mountains that rise above Almaty. So, why are they so different?

I believe the answer lies within the people as much as the infrastructure. China welcomes foreigners, and is eager to show off its cities. The people of Shanghai smile and take photos of each other. They wear colorful clothing, fuss over their children, pack shopping malls, and publicly display their affection. Their hotels are world class, and their employees seem genuinely enthusiastic to serve. The city is a plethora of brilliant colors; on buildings, signs, parks, and temples. There is clean public transportation, fine restaurants, and neatly trimmed parks. Music plays from street speakers. Flowers are common. It’s always a pleasure taking walks here. I can go anywhere in Shanghai, day or night, and not feel threatened. Oddly, in spite of Almaty’s mixed Anglo/Mongol population, I can blend easier in Shanghai.

With few exceptions, everyone in China has a job, and doing it well seems important to them. Sentries on airport ramps stand at attention, laborers hand-wash sidewalks and hang decorations; still others deliver goods on bicycles. And while there is diversity in Shanghai’s wealth, it is evident that poverty is limited, and that working brings a purpose to their lives. There is pride is everything they do. The Beijing Olympics is a grand example of this.

By comparison, Almaty appears to operate as if the Cold War never ended. The run-down buildings I saw six years ago are even worse now. While there is some new construction here, it is minimal by comparison. There is a cold feel to this place, and it’s echoed throughout its people. With the exception of those working within the service industries, most carry dour expressions. When I walk the streets, my smiles aren’t returned. Shopping malls are few; their customers scarce. There is constant noise from blaring horns, squealing brakes, and grinding engines. A thunderstorm cleansed the air so I saw Almaty’s mountains for the first time. Only five miles from my hotel, these majestic peaks rise over sixteen thousand feet. I enjoyed this view for over an hour until darkness swallowed them. Sadly, the smog returned a day later and they were no longer visible.

In spite of its external appearances, there is plenty of money in Almaty. Their amazing night clubs, stretch limos, beautiful women dressed in fur coats, and Mercedes dealerships, all vouch for that. On the way to my hotel, my van passed a convoy of white Mercedes that were following a stretched Hummer limousine. All of these vehicles were dolled up for a wedding that few can afford. The night clubs, which are reserved for the beautiful people, are protected by the mafia.

The faces of the people on city busses tell a different story from those driving cars. It isn’t desperation that I see, though. It’s more like apathy. Stone faces press against the windows while others stand in packed buses. But this isn’t to imply their lives are forsaken. These people are the laborers; the lower class, as in any city. As with Shanghai, I have never witnessed any poverty here, and everyone I see is well dressed. They’re just not colorful as in Shanghai.

Our security briefings highly discourage us from walking alone here, and when we do go out, we must supplement our passports with a “Get out of Jail Free” paper, which is written in Russian. Numerous airline crews have been shaken down by the local police who force them to pay fines for made-up violations. We are easy targets here, with little recourse. It’s easier to pay the fine than risk an international incident. Even so, I doubt this money is accounted for at the end of the day.

Like Shanghai, Almaty has some beautiful sights, but most require a cab ride to get there. Cabs are plentiful, but their prices vary significantly. Curiously, any civilian car can pick up passengers up for a fair. It’s risky, but plenty of people do it. It’s helpful if you speak Russian because not many people speak English.

The world is shrinking, yet Almaty still feels desolate. I spent more time writing there than in any other location. On this trip, I wrote over 170 pages in the 76 hours I was here, and I’m grateful I had that opportunity. Seeing Almaty’s beautiful mountains was the highlight of my most recent trip. Walking its streets with three other pilots was uneventful. Flying into Communist countries always provides interesting insights, and I am privileged to have a job where I can share this part of the world.