Cover Story

A former Moscow bureau chief for "Newsweek," Cullen offers a bleak picture of the new Russia in this 1994 novel of international intrigue. While reporting on stalled Arab-Israeli peace talks in Moscow, Colin Burke, savvy correspondent for an American weekly newsmagazine, is sent on the trail of a story broken by CNN - the Syrians are recruiting nuclear scientists from Russia. At the same time his editor wants a feature on the Moscow Jewish community. The latter assignment leads to a beautiful Israeli woman Burke immediately suspects is an Israeli agent. But Burke suspects everyone - overfriendly Russian journalists, his sources, his neighbors. The former assignment leads to a shadowy Arab, a massage and sex club and one of Russia's "secret" industrial cities, where he browbeats a Russian scientist into admitting he's sold out to Syria. But when Burke goes back for photos, the scientist has disappeared and a source is murdered. There's plenty of drab Moscow color and gritty hardship amid the swirling puzzle of truths, deceptions and cynicism. Burke is sharp and the occasional hole in the plot appears with the reader's unwillingness to believe this veteran could be so easily led. But Cullen puts his feel for Moscow and the workaday news biz together with a jaded but conscientious journalist to produce a well-written and absorbing novel of suspense.

Robert Cullen's previous book The Killer Department was a terrific true examination of the difficulty of tracking down a serial killer in a Soviet Union which denied the possibility that Communist Society could produce such a being. His novel Cover Story is several years old and appears to be out of print, which is a shame because it couldn't be any more topical. A veteran magazine journalist is covering a Middle East Peace mediation in Moscow that is being hosted by Gorbachev and Jimmy Carter. He begins investigating the rumor that Syria has obtained nuclear weapons and soon stumbles into an attempt to use Arab fronts to hire Russian nuclear physicists for Haffez Assad's bomb program. All the while his efforts are shadowed by an Israeli teacher who seems to be working for the Mossad and a neophyte Russian journalist who seems to be working for Russian intelligence. With the vivid depiction of a crumbling Russia, Middle East peace talks and renegade nuclear programs, the plot could be taken from today's headlines. Cullen drops in a couple twists & hastens the action along to a satisfying conclusion GRADE: B+