By Fred J. Eckert
October 17, 2018
THE FOX
By Frederick Forsyth
G.P. Putnam’s Sons, $28, 304 pages
A momentous deadly war is underway against the West — intense, constant, ever-escalating, a war that makes our rapidly-changing era perhaps the most dangerous ever.
This is the warning that leaps out from the pages of Frederick Forsyth’s brilliant new thriller novel “The Fox.”
Mr. Forsyth’s latest tale, which he says will be his last, rivals his iconic first novel, “The Day of the Jackal,” that classic of the political and espionage thriller genre that 47 years ago first brought him world-wide acclaim and began his string of 17 novels that include some of the best thrillers of our time.
“The Fox” is a gripping yarn about a “war without shells, without bombs, but most of all without declaration”: cyberwar.
With every country’s security now dependent upon computers, computer systems and their archives known as databases, the great warriors in this new kind of war are ultra-skilled hackers. The lethal weapon they deploy is injecting sabotage-inflicting malicious software called malware or “Trojan Horses.” Such cyberspace sabotage could be as deadly as a nuclear strike.
Without perfect security against cyberattacks, a country might find its power grids, communications systems and everything else essential to supporting daily living suddenly disabled, triggering widespread panic.
On guard shielding potential cyberattack targets are firewalls. Standing between hackers and the most crucially important targets are firewalls so highly sophisticated and complex they are considered impenetrable.
Mr. Forsyth’s riveting tale tracks responses to the shocking discovery that all three centers most critical to U.S. national security — the Pentagon, the NSA and the CIA — have been hacked.
Whoever cracked the best-in-the-world firewalls safeguarding the most secret databases in the world must be the greatest hacker the world has ever seen — or, more aptly put, didn’t see, since no one noticed he had been there until well after he had moved on.
Oddly, although he could have done earth-shattering damage, he did none. Nor does he later when he hacks into a major financial institution from which he easily could have transferred to accounts of his own hundreds of millions of dollars.
To pinpoint the location from which he is operating, it takes some of the world’s best technological minds three months — more than enough time for such a super-genius perpetrator to wreak unimaginable havoc upon all countries and institutions he might wish to target.
To the great embarrassment of the British government which has teamed up with the United States in a top-secret search to find him, the culprit is operating from an ordinary suburban home in a town 32 miles outside London, where a team of British and American special forces captures him in a middle-of-the-night raid.
They are stunned — utterly amazed — by what they discover. What follows is a terrific narrative that reinforces Frederick Forsyth’s reputation as a master storyteller few can rival in delivering spellbinding suspense.
The United States wants the dangerous perpetrator — nicknamed “The Fox” because of his cleverness — extradited to face interrogation and imprisonment. But in an Oval Office meeting with the president and his national security team, an adviser the British Prime Minister secretly relies upon proposes an alternative.
Why not take this blisteringly brilliant hacker who has done no harm to the West and weaponize him for us to use against our enemies?
The president agrees — and it’s a sheer delight for any patriotic American or Brit to read as “The Fox” helps the West inflict humiliating nightmares against Russia, Iran and North Korea.
The West must safeguard this invaluable asset. Its enemies must exterminate him. Mr. Forsyth depicts virtuoso performances by both sides. Through his characters Mr. Forsyth provides edifying discourses on such matters as how the computer has so dramatically changed espionage and war and why old ways of espionage, especially deliberate disinformation and sleeper agents but also the brush-pass and dead-letter box of yesteryear, remain essential.
Equally edifying are his discourses on the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath; the brotherhood of three power bases that now has a stranglehold on Russia under its Vladimir Putin dictatorship; and the radical Islamic dictatorship in Iran and how they learned from the mistakes of other seekers of nuclear weapons and played the previous administration for suckers with a deal making it easy for them to keep right on lying and cheating.
So is his discourse on the Kim dictatorship dynasty in North Korea which long pursued having a nuclear arsenal and is currently engaging in a scam to buy enough time to perfect a more portable thermonuclear warhead size and greater missile payload.
This timely, well-written thriller has it all. Great plot with surprising twists and turns. Intriguing characters. Spellbinding suspense. A fast, tremendously entertaining read. Since “The Day of the Jackal,” Frederick Forsyth has been considered a giant of the political and espionage thriller genre. This giant just became even more towering.
• Fred J. Eckert, President Ronald Reagan’s U.S. Ambassador to Fiji and to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture, is a former Republican congressman from New York.
No comments:
Post a Comment