Sunday, July 11, 2010

As It Stands: Channeling Ian Fleming: Spy story perfect stuff for a thriller

Dave Stancliff/For the Times-Standard

Posted: 07/11/2010 01:30:21 AM PDT

Holy red scare in suburbia, Batman!

A network of Russian spies in America!

Tabloid editors are ecstatically churning out fascinating details, such as the photogenic quality of one of the spies, Anna Chapman. Newspapers across the country breathlessly follow the stunning story of the spies among us.

Eleven people, 10 in the U.S. and one last seen in Cyprus, have been charged with being unregistered foreign agents. The cops are still looking for the one who was arrested in Cyprus but disappeared after a Cypriot judge freed him on $32,500 bail and embarrassed the Cyprus government in the process. The man went by the name Christopher Metsos and allegedly supplied money to the spy ring in America.

Ian Fleming, British author and journalist best remembered for his character James Bond in 12 novels and nine short stories, would really have a jolly go with this story.

The setting:

Richard and Cynthia Murphy, with their two children, live on a quiet street in suburban New Jersey in a beautifully maintained colonial house with maroon shutters. Cynthia is vice president of a financial service firm and loves to tend the hydrangeas in the front of the house.

The children, Katie, 11, and Lisa, 7, can safely ride their bikes in the nearby cul-de-sac in this serene upper-middle-class neighborhood. But like any good spy novel, this family isn't what it appears to be.

Their home, on Marquette Road, is owned by the “Moscow Center,” an intelligence arm of the Russian government. These seemingly ordinary Americans are actually Russians reporting to their handlers in Moscow. Go here to read the rest.

RELATED POSTS:

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UPDATE:

A web site called News and More in Just In Cyprus picked up today’s column on spies.

And on Twitter Spy Guy is tweeting this column

1 comment:

Jendocino said...

This is the strangest story. Did you know that some of these spies are begging the US for amnesty now? They're citing the damage it will cause their children to relocate back to Russia. You know, the completely Americanized children they gave birth to while living here as spies? Crazy, crazy stuff!

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