The Inconstant Gardener

By TOBIN HARSHAW

THE NETWORK

By Jason Elliot

337 pp. Bloomsbury. $24

Jason Elliot’s first novel may be the ideal thriller for the age of “C.S.I.” Forget Bondian femmes fatales and Bournian superassassins, and prepare to learn a great deal about steganographic code-making, the differences in the safety catches of various Soviet-era firearms and which side of a car to fling yourself out of should you come under roadside attack. It’s safe to say that “The Network” is the first spy thriller in which the climactic action scene is decided in large part on the basis of whose vehicle has superior gear differentials. And yet, it’s a lot of fun, this mix of spy chic and übergeek.

An unlikely candidate for the espionage genre, Elliot is known primarily for “An Unexpected Light,” a much-praised narrative of his travels in Afghanistan published a decade ago. And here he takes us back to that place and time — the innocent days when the words “Al Qaeda” and “Osama bin Laden” would have drawn blank stares at the water cooler. Elliot’s protagonist is Anthony Taverner, a former British Army officer whose intelligence career foundered when his personal life sent him “spinning in a different direction.” Now a divorced father and struggling landscaper, Anthony is brought back into the world of black ops through his connection to the titular Network, a loose coalition of figures in the British diplomatic, military and espionage services who are convinced that “the Western powers will no longer fight conventional wars because the enemy of the future will be more diffuse” and “grow out of the disaffected peoples of the Islamic world.”

Anthony’s entry into this elect stems from his youth. Back in the 1980s, when the Soviet military was getting its nose bloodied by the Afghan mujahedeen, he and another restless British college student spent a few months in the country living the lives of AK-47-toting jihadists — certainly a more edifying spring break than Daytona Beach, if not necessarily more dangerous. Soon after, they were recruited to the Network by an old family friend of Anthony’s, referred to only as the Baroness. With her affection for mnemonics and habit of dropping vaguely portentous pearls of wisdom, she’s Kipling’s Colonel Creighton by way of Yoda.

Fast forward to 2000 or so, when Anthony is brought back into the great game for two parallel tasks: to destroy a cache of Stinger missiles hidden in a crumbling Afghan fortress and to find his college mate, who after a decade as a mole in a Qaeda terrorist outfit finally needs to come in from the cold. This means that Anthony must regain his fighting trim, so he reports to a kindly former commando (simply called H), who puts him through a series of physical, technological and mental tests that will disabuse any reader of the illusion that there’s a Jason Bourne hidden inside us all. It’s swell reading, but I wouldn’t want to try it at home.

Elliot is so good at describing the preparations that go into modern spycraft that when the real action begins — with Anthony heading off on short-term missions to Washington and Khartoum — you may be somewhat disappointed by the conventionality of the plotting and the cardboard nature of the new characters, particularly a C.I.A. cowgirl and a Sudanese beauty who seem to have been planted in this novel only as positioning for its sequel. But the balance is regained when Anthony finally stands in the shadows of the Hindu Kush amid the bombed-out desolation of Kabul.

“The Network” won’t give you any fantastic insights into Afghanistan’s dissolution or Al Qaeda’s broader goals, but it’s a smart thriller for our time. And, as a bonus, I’ll be fully prepared the next time I run into a Taliban checkpoint on the Long Island Expressway.