Book Review: The Trap by Ava Glass

Monday, 7 October: Emma Makepeace, a British spy whose reputation precedes her, is faced with her greatest challenge yet. She has one week to prevent the Russians from assassinating one of the leaders of the Group of Seven, who are about to meet in Edinburgh. A refresher; the G7 is “an informal grouping of Western democratic nations. Its members are the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan.” For an organization with “no leader, and no legal standing,” it’s “incredibly powerful.”

A successful meeting is the goal of the British PM but in a troubling development, the security boffins have learned that an assassination attempt is being planned. Chaos in Edinburgh because of changed traffic patterns is one thing but violence at the G7? Unthinkable.

Emma is to meet her boss, Charles Ripley, at the Vernon Institute, which is a façade for an off-the-books agency. Its mission is to hunt Russian spies. Ripley meets her outside his office: “Change of plans.”

“There’s a meeting. Secure location, high level. I want you there.”

 

“About Balakin?” Emma asked.

 

“Yes.” Ripley pulled a black cigarette case from his pocket. “It’s the timing, you see. It’s worrying people. It’s worrying me.” He lit a Dunhill with a worn gold lighter and took a long drag. “And then there was that knife attack last week.”

 

Emma’s eyebrows rose. The day before, a lone man with a knife had attacked a group of tourists in front of Westminster Abbey. One person had died and three had been hospitalized.

Vladimir Balakin is an extremely high-ranking FSB official (FSB = Federal Security Service of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs) who has arrived in London to meet with the Russian ambassador. There can be no good reason for that. “You don’t think there’s a connection, do you?” Emma asks. Ripley doesn’t answer straightforwardly: “It was random, as far as MI5 can tell.” He continued, “But the killer was Russian, you see. As were the victims.” It makes sense to Emma now, because in her rarified life, there are no coincidences: “If something looked like a plot, it was a plot.”

Emma’s meeting is James Bond level. Ripley introduces her to “C” aka Giles Templeton-Ward, the head of MI6.

C glanced at Emma with inquiry, and Ripley said, “This is Emma Makepeace. The one I told you about.”

 

“Ah, of course.” In C’s cold gaze Emma saw that he already knew everything about her. He knew about her Russian parents, the languages she spoke, her time in the army, and everything she’d done right and wrong in her three years at the Agency. He would have a list of all her weaknesses.

 

“Good to have you.”

So, a tad dismissive but C and the prime minister’s team are under enormous pressure from “The Cousins,” (intelligence code for the Americans) to prevent a G7 attack. They suspect Balakin is in the UK “with instructions for how to carry out that attack.” Their notion of what the attack will be is vague, but Ripley knows Balakin’s MO: “he’ll be looking for the personal touch. A targeted assassination. That’s his style.”

Ripley’s team goes to Edinburgh where Emma watches Balakin: “There’d been something in his confident swagger as he left the plane that bothered her.” Did he want to be seen—were the Russians that “cocky?” Emma tracks Balakin and his henchman to a house in an Edinburgh suburb that belongs to Nick Orlov, a Russian ex-pat, now an oil executive (and British citizen). It’s vital Emma gets inside the house. Since Emma is completely reliant on her GPS for getting around an increasingly shut-down Edinburgh, Ripley teams Emma up with a copper who knows the city inside out. Kate Mackenzie aka Mack is the perfect choice, intelligent, honest, and maybe a little disgruntled with Edinburgh’s police bureaucracy.

The fastest way to get into Orlov’s house is for Emma to play the honeytrap card. This definition is spot-on: “Honey trapping is an investigative practice involving the use of romantic or sexual relationships for interpersonal, political, or monetary purposes.” The good guys have less than a week to prevent disaster. What else could break open the Russian plot and prevent an assassination? Ripley’s instructions are crystal clear. Nick is having dinner at the Balmoral Hotel—Emma’s told to “Get close to him. Find out all you can.” And by close Ripley means as close as she can. Emma lays the trap at the Balmoral after Martha, MI5’s best disguise specialist, tricks her and Mackenzie out. Lights. Camera. Action. Hit the bar.

Both Emma and Mackenzie looked as if they belonged here.

 

Emma wore an effortlessly chic form-fitting dress of caramel silk which contrasted perfectly with Mackenzie’s dark blazer. To anyone passing they would have looked like a pair of well-heeled friends on a night out. Or perhaps sisters; Martha had made Mackenzie’s hair the same shade as Emma’s.

Emma cleverly ambushes Nick outside the bathroom—she drops her phone, they clang heads. When he stiffly hands her back her phone, she stops. Looks. “Wait. Aren’t you Nick Orlov.” They talk and exchange numbers, and Nick tells her he’d like to see her again. Game on.

Nick invites her to dinner. Before she goes in, Emma and Mackenzie talk over what the evening might entail—Emma points out what she’s already done to investigate Orlov: she knows his house, checked out his girlfriend, and read his speeches. She tells Mackenzie, “There are some wives who don’t know their husbands as well as I know Nick Orlov.” Mackenzie isn’t convinced.

“I couldn’t do it,” she said, after a while. “It’s too much to ask. It would make me feel like a prostitute. Turn right. I’m on the next intersection.”

 

Emma flinched. She’d never been part of a honeytrap before and the idea of doing it made her feel a little queasy. But there was a lot at stake and she’d seen his interest kindle in that brief encounter at the Balmoral. It would be malpractice not to exploit his weakness to find out what the Russians were planning.

While there, she inserts cutting-edge spy cameras and recording devices. Orlov asks her on a second date and tells her to bring her passport. Arrivederci Roma! Fasten your seatbelt because it’s breakneck action all the way. Ava Glass rachets up the tension like nobody’s business: it all started with her debut thriller, Alias Emma. Brava!

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