196 AMERICAN SPY
partner in evil, Bosnian Serb politician and psychiatrist Radovan Karadžić.
Much of the rest of the prospective novel was purely fictional, since I had
never been directly involved in the hunt for war criminals. Moreover, my
real-life Sarajevo adventure did not actually involve a secret lover/agent
(and if it had, I would not admit it here, because it was a clear violation of
CIA rules to fall in love with one’s agent).
My novel-writing effort got off to a solid start. By August 2001 I had
completed the synopsis and the first nine chapters. I brought copies to the
Maui Writer’s Conference, where I pitched the novel and learned more
about the (unclassified) writing business. I also shared the synopsis with
several people in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles.
Then 9/11 happened. I immediately stopped work on the novel. I
could not dwell on the past, no matter how compelling, when each of us
needed to deal with our new reality. I also assumed there would be little
public interest in the hunt for Bosnian War criminals now that we were
dealing with the likes of bin Laden. Plus, writing novels wasn’t going to pay
the bills, at least not anytime soon.
Two years later, like most people in my profession, my mind and much of
my work was preoccupied with America’s almost obsessive “war on terror.”
I initially explored kicking off a project in Afghanistan but instead decided
to gamble on a start-up in Iraq, since it was becoming increasingly clear
the Bush administration was hell-bent on overthrowing Saddam. Despite my
almost single-minded post-9/11 focus on the Middle East, I would never get
the Balkans completely out of my system (and that remains true to this day).
Although there were advantages to running my own business, one
downside compared to my CIA career was I could not count on a regular
salary. You eat what you kill when you operate solo. Steady income became
a real concern with my one-person firm; there were limits to how many
cases I could handle at one time.
Then one day it dawned on me. Instead of writing about the hunt for Bosnian
War criminals, why not do exactly what the protagonist of my novel was doing? To
collect the reward money, I would have to provide intelligence that led to
the capture of either Mladić or Karadžić. How hard could it be?