Cold War Spy Story Grapples With Loyalties Personal and Patriotic

It’s Forgive-and-Forget Week in America. Last week, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voted unanimously to give an honorary Oscar to Elia Kazan, who, nearly 50 years ago, in a single appearance before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, destroyed the careers of several fellow artists, including actor Morris Carnovsky and playwright Clifford Odets.

While Hollywood might want to stuff the evil genies of the Cold War and Sen. Joseph McCarthy back in the can, Joseph Kanon does not. His second novel, “The Prodigal Spy,” restores the old negatives in a way that not only reminds us of domestic horrors not long past but also calls on us to examine our deepest loyalties in a tale of a boy with two fathers.

Nick Kotlar is 10 years old in 1950 when his father, Victor, a high-level State Department official, is pulled before the committee by Iowa congressman Kenneth Welles. Although Victor’s sole accuser is a salesgirl at a department store, it is clear that his days at the State Department are numbered, despite the efforts of his best friend and lawyer, Larry Warren.

Nevertheless, all of Washington is shocked when Victor disappears, only to turn up in Moscow--not merely a fellow traveler but a spy who got away. Larry quickly helps Nick and his mother forget, becoming both husband and dad.

Cut to 1969. Nixon is president, and students in London, accompanied by Vanessa Redgrave, are protesting at the American Embassy. Meanwhile, Nick, 29, is having dinner with the U.S. ambassador and 20 of his closest friends. Back from a tour in Vietnam that scrambled all the perceived meanings of patriotism, Nick is in London working as a research student at the London School of Economics. Larry’s political savvy has brought him through several Washington administrations to the post of chief negotiator at the Paris peace talks and guest of honor at the ambassador’s residence.

Also at the dinner table is a young American journalist, Molly Chisholm, whose legs are only a secondary attraction to Nick. She has just returned from Czechoslovakia, she tells him. She has seen Nick’s father, his real father. He is ill and wants to see Nick.

So begins a journey that takes Nick and Molly not only to Prague but also back to a piece of Nick’s personal history that he had frozen into convenient myth. The journey becomes a test of love and loyalty, as rigorous as any devised by the House committee. The pair begin in a Prague frozen by the Russian invasion that followed the brief Prague Spring.

But they end in a Washington equally as cold, “bland and faceless, a discount Bauhaus, like a rebuilt city in Germany,” where Nick is forced to pass judgment not only on history but also on his two fathers.

Kanon blows heat into a Cold War whose end, many thought, spelled the death of the spy thriller. And despite the occasional invocation of the CIA and FBI, “The Prodigal Spy” is more parable than potboiler, more about exorcising ghosts than uncovering spooks. Its message is delicate and designed to bring solace and justice: There may be some wisdom in forgiving while remembering, as we trudge next to Kazan, east of Eden.