Karen Cleveland.
Vivian is standing in the doorway, watching her twins, when she hears Matt’s footsteps. She recognises the smell of his soap, it’s her husband. In the last two days, things have changed, and suddenly, Matt seems like a stranger to her. Just two days ago, at work as a CIA counter-intelligence analyst, she found Russian sleeper cells in the US. In the encrypted files of Yury, possibly a Russian handler, she sees a face she knows, with whom she lives and is raising four children — her husband Matt. This starts her search to uncover the truth, in Karen Cleveland’s debut novel Need To Know (Penguin Random House; Rs 599).
A former CIA analyst, Cleveland met her husband around the same time when she started working for the CIA. “It actually crossed my mind, very briefly, that he might not be who he said he was. Luckily I was wrong, but the idea for the book stuck,” she says, in an email interview from London, just before her book tour.
Wanting to give a glimpse into her life in the CIA, she created the character of Vivian. “Like me, she’s an ordinary person with a family she loves dearly. But she discovers a life-changing secret about her husband; luckily that’s not based on anything in my life,” she says, “I think I would have made some different decisions, but it’s hard to know exactly how you’d react in such terrible circumstances.”
Cleveland was on extended maternity leave for her second child when she began writing the book. “Since I was writing it at home with an infant and a three-year-old, it was really just about writing whenever I could — when my older son was at preschool and my younger son was napping, or after they’d both gone to bed at night, or on the weekends,” says the Virginia-based author.
She was a freshman in college when the 9/11 attack took place, and two years later she lost a friend in Iraq. These events led her to join the CIA. “I wanted a job where I could help make my country a safer place and I felt like that was a place where I could really have some impact,” she says. She worked there for eight years — focusing on Russia and counter-terrorism. She used to spend hours reading classified intelligence reports from a variety of sources. “Often that involved evaluating whether information was reliable or incorrect or intentionally deceptive. It was like putting together a giant puzzle, with only maybe half the pieces and no picture on the box,” she says. She studied International Peace Studies from Trinity College in Dublin and public policy at Harvard University.
Though stories of America versus Russia have always been popular in books and cinema, the recent US elections have changed the order of things in terms of the conflict. “The book isn’t based on a real-life case, but there have been fairly recent cases of Russian sleepers in the United States — 10 Russian agents were arrested in the US in 2010,” she says. A subtle theme of nationalism also runs in the story. With President Donald Trump at the helm, it has also made people contemplate on what the American identity really is. “We live in interesting times,” says Cleveland, “I never worked under the Trump administration, and so I’m not the best person to speak to the subject. But I do know that as a CIA analyst, my job was presenting the truth to policymakers and hoping they did the right thing with it. I feel confident that my former colleagues are continuing to do the same.”
The book will soon be adapted for the big screen by Universal Studios and the author can’t wait to see actor Charlize Theron essay the role of Vivian. Meanwhile, Cleveland is weaving another riveting story. “I’m working on another thriller set in Washington DC. It’s in the same vein as Need To Know and deals with the struggle between loyalty to country and loyalty to family, she says.
For all the latest Lifestyle News, download Indian Express App
Get assembly election result LIVE updates from each constituency in Tripura, Nagaland and Meghalaya
