Judas 62 is largely set in 1993 and the present day so it might be pushing it to describe the book as historical fiction. However the roots of the book are in Russia’s biological warfare programme and its development since the end of the Second World War. Therefore I would suggest that if there was ever a book that is an example of Aspects of History’s tag, ‘the past isn’t dead, it isn’t even past,’ it is Judas 62.
Judas 62 is the second in Cumming’s Box 88 series, featuring Lachlan Kite the London head of BOX 88. A clandestine Anglo-American spy agency that developed from the CIA and MI5/MI6.
Judas 62 picks up the two main threads of Box 88, the first book in the series. Namely, Kite’s recruitment into Box 88 and Kite in the present day, with all the chaos his covert life causes in his personal life.
When Evgeny Palatnik, a Soviet defector to the West is murdered in America with Novichok, Kite sets out to avenge him. He is informed by Mocking Bird, a high level informant in Moscow, that Palatnik had been on the JUDAS list; a list of Russian scientists and intelligence officers who were living in the West and who had been singled out for assassination by Moscow. The former Russian FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko who was poisoned with polonium-210 in London had been listed as JUDAS 47. Sergei Skripal, the former GRU officer poisoned with Novichok in Salisbury, was designated JUDAS 54.
More disturbingly still for Kite is that a former alias of his, Peter Galvin, has also been placed is on the list as JUDAS 62. The novel flashes back 1993 when Kite used the Peter Galvin identity in an operation in Russia, to bring out Yuri Aranov a leading biological warfare scientist.
Kite manages to pull off an extraction in a daring escape from Russia. However his success comes at a great personal cost, not least making an enemy of Mikhail Gromik a Russian intelligence officer.
Kite believes that his being placed on the Judas list is connected with Gromik and the Aranov defection. Nearly thirty years later Gromik has risen to the top of his profession, having taken advantage of the opportunities that post-soviet Russia had to offer and is enjoying the high life in Dubai. To protect himself, Kite launches a sting operation to end all sting operations in Dubai, to bring down Gromik, using Aranov as bait.
This is a fascinating and compulsive read. Cumming gives a tantalising insight into the world of intelligence and the growing diplomatic and intelligence dispute with Russia – in a world where the gloves have come off. I haven’t read all of Cumming’s novels, I enjoyed his Thomas Kell Spy Thriller series, particularly A Colder War and his take on the Cambridge spy-ring in The Trinity Six, as well as Box 88, but I think Judas 62 is the best I’ve read so far.
Alan Bardos is the author of The Assassins.
