The Faithful Spy by Alex Berenson (Random House)

Alex Berenson was a reporter for New York Times and has extensively covered the occupation of Iraq. He uses his experience and has created a story for post-911 America. The Faithful Spy is his book and it has won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel. 

It is about an undercover CIA agent named John Wells, who has successfully infiltrated Al Qaeda before the events of 9-11. “After years of fighting jihad in Afghanistan and Chechniya, he spoke perfect Arabic and Pashtun, his beard was long, his hands calloused”.  He rode horses as well as any native Afghan, enjoyed the sport buzkashi, an Afghan version of polo but instead of using a ball, the objective of the game is to place a dead calf or goat in a goal. He played as hard as any Afghan.  “He prayed with them. He had proven that he belonged here, with these men”. He had also become a Muslim. The Taliban and Al Qaeda members call him Jalal.

The story begins a few months after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11, 2001. The story opens with Wells and a few of his jihadist friends being in the middle of a battle in Afghanistan. Their small group is planning on attacking Marines who are stationed nearby. Wells plans to take out his comrades and to try to get a message to his CIA handler.  

Around the same time that Wells was doing battle, Jennifer Exley, She was asked by her superiors to go to the U.S.S. Starker, which was sitting out in the Atlantic Ocean in international waters, “so its precious cargo would remain outside the jurisdiction of American courts”. 

Onboard the naval ship is just one prisoner. A young man named Tim Kiefer who went by the name of Mohammad Faisal. He was a twenty-two year old American who was fighting for the Taliban “against the United States”. The American public was aware of the capture of John Walker Lindh, which the media dubbed the American Taliban. Keifer’s capture was kept quiet and President Bush had signed an order declaring Kiefer an “enemy combatant”. Exley was here to question him about one other American - John Wells who has been incommunicado for the last two years.

The story progresses at a fast pace. Wells does manage to take out the terrorists who were his buddies and was taken in by the U.S. military where he gave them as much information as he could about what he had learned. He also writes a note and asks Major Holmes to make sure Jennifer Exley at the CIA gets his handwritten message. “Will pursue UBL. No prior knowledge of 9/11. Still friendly, John ”. 

John Wells is caught between two worlds. It is similar to the real-life situation of Agent Storm : My Life in Al Qaeda (reviewed in Asia by the Book, April 7, 2023). Unlike Mortem Storm in the real story, Wells goes back to the terrorist fold because he knows that the upper leaders are planning on something bigger than 9-11. He is determined to find out what and when will it happen. But little does he know, he is part of the plan as well… ~Ernie Hoyt