BLACK WATER

Fiction

Dark deeds, neighbors naming neighbors

BLACK WATER

By Louise Doughty
352 pp. Sarah Crichton Books

Reviewed by Sarah Morgan

Graham Greene said, “There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets in the future.” It’s almost as though Louise Doughty studied this quote or perhaps all of Greene’s works. She certainly pays homage to the man in her extraordinary psychological spy novel, Black Water. 

The lead, John Harper (his current alias), had a tough life before joining what he refers to as “the firm,” a Dutch security company that gathers information and carries out covert ops for multinationals doing business in hotspots around the globe.

Harper is a solitary man with no binding ties, a “shadow man.” A spook. Everyone close to him has either died or abandoned him. There is a failed marriage and a child who died just days after birth. His mother was an alcoholic, his only close relative, a black civil rights attorney—his step-grandfather—must release him when the mother reappears. He often refers to himself as “a citizen of nowhere” and notes that while he was an outcast in America for the color of his skin, the further east he flies, the whiter his skin appears. 

The story begins in 1998 with Harper lying on a cot in a small Indonesian cottage where the firm has suggested he take a break, “gardening leave,” to use the spook vernacular. It’s unclear in the beginning just why his bosses are unhappy with his work, but the reader is instantly aware of Harper’s paranoia as he listens to the rain on the roof. Doughty is a skilled writer and instills fear in us as Harper imagines assassins coming for him. Yes, this is how they would come, during the rain when sounds are muted by the pit-pit of rain on the roof. At first, we are not aware of who “they” are, which only heightens the sensation of Harper’s unsound mental state. 

Rain and water become major characters in this tropical tale of fear and deception. While the title of the book refers to waters in the canals and rice paddies of Indonesia, readers are quick to see a connection with the infamous security company, Blackwater, during the Iraq war under G.W. Bush.

Doughty deftly flips back and forth between Harper’s current situation in 1998 and 1965, a Jakarta in political turmoil. It’s clear that he has bad memories of dark deeds during a massive uprising against President Suharto and the subsequent purge of his enemies, both real and imagined. What would we do to save our skins when the mere mention of your name or a family member could bring about the deaths of everyone? Neighbors naming neighbors. Nowhere is safe. Thousands upon thousands died. 

  

It’s a good idea to read a bit of history before reading this book. Even a brief glance at Indonesia’s Wikipedia page will make it clear that Doughty did her homework with historical events. It also made me wonder if she didn’t use the Harper character as a kind of analogy for Indonesia itself. John Harper, like President Suharto, was born into poverty and came from a family of mixed race. Both spent time in foster care and frequently moved; Harper’s vagabond mother dragged him from the Netherlands to America and back again. And John Harper, like Indonesia, seems to have an uncertain future. 

During Harper’s gardening leave, between bouts of paranoia, he meets by chance a remarkable woman. Rita is an NGO volunteer on the island, slightly younger that Harper, independent, she works teaching children. Harper stumbles upon her in a small bar one afternoon while lost or taking a shortcut. At first, he thinks she is a plant, but then reviews how he came upon her, and realizes no one could have known he would go there that day. They begin a relationship. Greene also once said, “In human relationships, kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.” Doughty uses the relationship with Rita to tease out of Harper what he’s been hiding all these years and what he does for a living, something he has told no one his entire life. The threat of that truth is palpable. 

The book is not a typical spy page-turner, but a slow unraveling of a secret, a betrayal, and a man who became a spook. Anyone who loves Graham Greene’s books, and especially The Quiet American or Christopher Koch’s 1978 The Year of Living Dangerously should enjoy this book.