Damascus Station

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I had one final question for McCloskey. During his time covering Syria, did his views about the country and the global response to the war change in any way? Q: Sam has an assigned “funnyname,” Burt O. Goldjagger, an absurd-sounding alias to use in written cable traffic. Real CIA aliases are just as absurd.

Q: Live bomb tests have been used on cadavers wheeled out on Rollerblades and suspended on IV poles.

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Mr. McCloskey, who grew up in Minnesota and studied international relations, worked as a political analyst in CIA headquarters and from field stations in the Middle East. In Syria, a CIA officer has disappeared, and presumed killed. Sam Joseph is a CIA case officer in Paris and is tasked with recruiting Mariam Haddad, a Syrian national who works in the Syrian palace. The plan is for them to work together to identify the man responsible for the missing spy. However, Miriam is a beautiful woman and during the course of the recruitment, they fall for each other. Sam knows this is forbidden by the CIA; a case officer should never enter into a relationship with an agent. He struggles to hold his distance and assumes that once in Damascus, they will see each other only as the mission requires. David McCloskey is a former CIA analyst … the book is energised by his own experience’– The Times Best Books of 2023 So Far Ultimately, I was interested in telling an authentic story: one that described the actual CIA, its tradecraft and operations and the real Syrian war. The story came to life as I wrote. Over time — and this was not obvious at the beginning, by the way — it became clear that the relationship between Sam and Mariam was this story’s emotional core. Their relationship provided a lens for the operations, the intrigue and the civil war. The novel became their story. McCloskey’s next book is another spy novel, centered on the next stage of the U.S.-Russia spy war: “It’s not a sequel to Damascus Station , but it’s in the same universe, so some characters will reappear.”

Damascus Station is simply marvellous storytelling...a stand-out thriller and essential reading for fans of the genre' - Financial Times For an authentic representation of what it's like to work in intelligence, look no further than Damascus Station. McCloskey has captured it all: the breathtaking close calls, the hand in glove of tech and ops, the heartbreaking disappointments, the thrill of a hard-won victory' - Alma Katsu, author of Red Widow and former CIA and NSA analystDamascus Station is an extremely effective modern espionage novel, filled with action and incident but also a profound knowledge of the people and factions of Syria, the complex maneuvers of spycraft, the gray areas, competing egos and overlapping priorities that make every day a journey through the minefield. DAZZLING DEBUT STEMS FROM DISTINCT EXPERIENCES It’s almost a cliché that Joseph and Haddad break one of the iron rules of espionage and fall in love. Of course, this makes it even more dangerous for her if she is compromised and greatly raises the stakes for keeping her safe. Joseph is at greater risk too. The Agency would clamp down hard on him if it learned of the affair. It could even be career-ending. Yet, McCloskey manages to keep their relationship real. The tension keeps building as Haddad’s assignments become more dangerous and complex, and as evidence accumulates about an unthinkably deadly plot. You get a break when the action occasionally moves from Damascus to lovingly described France… Author David McCloskey was a Syria specialist for the CIA for six years. He knows whereof he writes in this novel about espionage in Syria. Damascus Station is filled with the acronyms and jargon that officers of the agency, like employees throughout the government, throw around so casually. Employees of the Agency are officers, never “agents.” Spies recruited within Syria are “assets,” or, rarely, agents. He describes in detail the techniques Sam uses in his two tours in Syria to avoid detection. And he introduces us to gadgets developed by the CIA’s Technical Services Division that would make James Bond’s Q salivate with envy. The book comes across as a primer on tradecraft.