Over the last two decades Damien Lewis’s career as a freelance reporter and film-maker has taken him to a long list of the world’s most troubled places: from the Balkans to Iraq, Sudan to Burma. Lewis’s film ‘Death in the Air’ was praised at the 2000 Rory Peck Awards for its investigation into the use of chemical weapons in the conflict in Sudan. Lewis has written not only about war and conflict, but has also investigated the heroin trade, child trafficking and tiger poaching, among many other subjects.
His first book, Slave, cowritten with Mende Nazer, told the powerful and shocking true story of Nazer’s abduction as a child from her village in the Nuba mountains of Sudan and her life as a slave first in Khartoum and then later in London. An international bestseller, it won the Index on Censorship Book Award in 2004.
Lewis has written two other non-fiction books, both works of contemporary military history: Operation Certain Death and Bloody Heroes. His first work of fiction was 2006’s Desert Claw, a tale about the search for a stolen Van Gogh painting in post-Saddam Iraq. Lewis’s latest work, Cobra Gold, is also fictional - although as Lewis tells us, parts of the book are based on historical events. Set in the 1970s and the present day, Cobra Gold is a gripping novel that takes us from Beirut to East Africa and brings together the SAS, a daring bank robbery, the Lebanese civil war, the secret brotherhood of the Black Assassins, and an internationally-feared terrorist known as The Searcher.
I asked Damien Lewis to tell us more about the background to the novel, and about the relationship between his career as a reporter and his fiction:
Unlike your previous bestsellers, Operation Certain Death, Bloody Heroes and the extraordinarily powerful Slave, Cobra Gold is billed as fiction. However, the plot of the novel hinges on an actual event: the largest single bank robbery in history, which took place in Beirut in 1976. How did you first hear about the real-life robbery, and how close you think your fictional version of the story is to actual events?
DL: I first heard about the world's biggest ever bank robbery from a retired British soldier. In fact, when he asked me what I imagined to be the world's biggest ever bank robbery, I went for all the obvious ones - the Great Train Robbery, the Brinks Matt, the recent Securicor Depot robbery in the UK. It was none of these: it took place in 1976, in war-torn Beirut, the Lebanon - when a British bank was blown apart and robbed. What was and remains most mysterious about this robbery is that it is so little known about: to this day, none of the money has been retrieved, no one has ever been brought to justice and no one knows who carried out the raid.
Several theories exists of course, some a little far fetched (claims that the Italian mafia, the Russian Mafia, or even the IRA did it) - but few if any of these make sense in war torn Beirut, when a ferocious Muslim militia was fighting a battle-hardened Christian militia for control of the city. My military contact presented an alternative scenario - one in which a rogue group of British special forces soldiers was responsible for carrying out the bank raid. It was a compelling story, but like many of these covert operations the full truth is unlikely ever to be known.
Readers of your previous novel Desert Claw will already have met Mick Kilbride, who plays a key role in Cobra Gold. Could you tell us a little about Mick and his career? Why did you decide to bring him back in this book, and will there be more outings for him in the future?
DL: Mick is the son of the key protagonist in Cobra Gold, Luke Kilbride, the leader of the rogue unit that carry out the bank raid. Cobra Gold is a book in two parts: the first, the 1970s bank raid; the second, a mission to retrieve the hidden loot set in the present day. As Luke Kilbride and his team are in their late-fifties in the present day, they need some young blood to assist with the gold retrieval mission. This is where Mick Kilbride comes in. Mick has widespread experience in British special operations, and has also worked alongside US special forces – although by the time he’s recruited for the gold retrieval mission in Cobra Gold he’s left the military and is a freelance operator. In part, I brought him back into Cobra Gold because readers warmed to him so much in Desert Claw. And yes, my intention is to bring him into play in some of the plots I have in mind for the next novels.
Mick differs from his father in that he suffers from a tragic flaw – he’s a classic flawed hero figure. In a sense, his weakness is also his greatest strength, and it is that which makes him a human and accessible hero.
As well as the genuinely gripping plot, one of the great pleasures of Cobra Gold is its delight in technical detail. For example, we’re not just told that Kilbride’s dog Sally is highly trained, we find out that Sally has ‘been through the Defence Animal Training Centre in Leicestershire before spending the next four years on active duty with the SAS.’ What kind of research procedures went into the book, and how concerned are you with getting those kinds of details right?
DL: Well, authenticity is everything in a good book. Much of the international thriller material I read today is flawed in that scenes and procedures could just never happen in the real world. In fact, I’m appalled at some of the rubbish that gets published, as if readers are supposed to believe it could have happened for real. One thing I’ve learnt is that an author should NEVER underestimate his reader. In fact I’ve never been emailed by a reader (and I get many emails every week via my website, damienlewis.com) saying that a plot or the detail of a book is too complicated.
Having said that, technical details for its own sake is to be avoided at all costs: where included it has to be so to lend texture and weight to the driving thrust of the plot and the narrative. I see so many books where a less than talented or perhaps bored author packs out the pages with reams of techno-detail. I picked up one book recently and got a third of the way through and then gave up, as I was drowning in obtuse technical detail and there was no plot or characters so to speak of.
My own research comes about via my own experience as a war reporter, or via a network of military and espionage / intelligence contacts that I have. Where necessary, I travel to the sites and places I write about – so for example in Cobra Gold I spent three months in Tanzania, East Africa, visiting the locations I write about in the book. With the attack dog scenes in Cobra Gold, I actually worked with a breeder and trainer of such dogs to get the feel and detail just right. It seems to have worked – many of the reader’s emails I’ve had mention the dog scenes as being so memorable.
Your storytelling technique is highly cinematic. Are there plans to film Cobra Gold? Do you have anyone in mind to play Mick Kilbride and his deeply sinister nemesis, the terrorist known as The Searcher? Who would you most like to hear uttering the immortal line: ‘Meet Sally, mate, and piss yourself with fear’?
DL: That’s a comment a lot of readers and reviewers echo – if feels like a movie, it has cinematographic style. I take it as the ultimate complement. If readers say it feels like a movie because they can visualise the scenes and characters and action and drama that powerfully, then I’m very happy as the author to hear it. There is a deal being negotiated as we speak with a top movie company to option the rights in Cobra Gold – with a view to making a film of the book. Various actors have been mentioned to play hero Kilbride – although no one has come forwards to take the role of The Searcher! On that note, The Searcher is a character based upon a real life figure, so whilst he may appear to be extreme, his actions are not at all unrealistic. Finding someone to play such an evil role may be a bit of challenge however!
Your own career as a filmmaker and reporter has taken you to an astonishing list of the world’s trouble spots, and your film ‘Death in the Air’ about the use of chemical weapons during the war in Sudan was praised at the 2000 Rory Peck Awards. In what ways has your career documenting conflict and injustice around the world informed or influenced your fiction?
DL: Good question. Funnily enough, I’ve met a couple of ex-military men recently in the course of work, and we’ve sat down and compared various nasty parts of the world we’ve ended up in – and both of them concluded that the job of a war reporter often involves getting into more insane action and scrapes than that of a special forces soldier. Certainly, you’re far more on your own out there – there’s no massive machine of the military to back you up, and often you’re alone, or there’s just one fellow reporter-cameraman with you. It’s the nature of the job also that it takes you into so many different areas of an increasingly insecure and conflict torn world: war, espionage, terrorism, people trafficking, slavery, corporate greed, warlord-ism, freedom fighters.
A reviewer recently said of Cobra Gold: ‘having reported on war, terror and espionage, Damien Lewis is now writing about it in his gripping new thriller Cobra Gold.’ I guess that’s a pretty good summation of how it is for me – as much as possible I write from what I know and about what I’ve seen or experienced. And the protagonists, whilst ambivalent and troubled characters, generally come down on the side of right when called upon to make a stand. There are a lot of authors out there right now just stringing together various set action pieces – with no real plot, characters or message. That’s not for me. My books have to say something more, to challenge the reader, to take them to new places – I think Cobra Gold does this. Expect the unexpected is a big part of the equation, I guess.
Can you tell us about the project or projects you’re currently working on?
DL: I’m presently writing a non-fiction book about the war in Darfur, Sudan – where I was recently. It’s a particular take on that story, and there’s been huge interest in it from publishers worldwide. It’s a heavy, tough story to do – a rollercoaster ride into a real life hell heart of darkness. But it needs to be told. Then I’ll be working on the first in a series of international action thrillers, each of which shares the same central characters – and each of which develops a plot that is both shocking and revelatory, kind of at the cusp of where the world seems to be heading. At the same time, I’ll be developing other non-fictions books, as I like to keep my hand in at both. And then there are a couple of film projects too – plus I’m scheduled to be back in an African war zone in January. It’s maybe enough to be going on with ….
It sounds like it! The best of luck with those projects, and I wish you every success with Cobra Gold. Many thanks for talking to us. Cobra Gold by Damien Lewis is published by Century and is available now.