He's an all-American boy.
Kurt Kurtovic is someone you might know — and ought to fear.
Kurt was a U.S. Army Ranger. Born and raised in Kansas, he was trained to kill for — what? Once he might have said "for God and country." Kurt searches in the former Yugoslavia, the land of his parents, for a place, for faith, for a cause. In the midst of the horrors in Bosnia, Kurt is recruited to fight by a holy warrior, a terrorist Iago, who plays on all of Kurt's doubts and fears: America is the evil behind the horror, but Kurt can change it. He can take the war home. He can penetrate to the heart of the U.S. elite. He can teach his country a lesson so horrible it will never forget.
In this riveting story of war, love, and deception, Christopher Dickey takes us to the white-hot core of the terrorist mind. Innocent Blood is as real as today's headlines — and tomorrow's.
He's an all-American boy.
Kurt Kurtovic is someone you might know — and ought to fear.
Kurt was a U.S. Army Ranger. Born and raised in Kansas, he was trained to kill for — what? Once he might have said "for God and country." Kurt searches in the former Yugoslavia, the land of his parents, for a place, for faith, for a cause. In the midst of the horrors in Bosnia, Kurt is recruited to fight by a holy warrior, a terrorist Iago, who plays on all of Kurt's doubts and fears: America is the evil behind the horror, but Kurt can change it. He can take the war home. He can penetrate to the heart of the U.S. elite. He can teach his country a lesson so horrible it will never forget.
In this riveting story of war, love, and deception, Christopher Dickey takes us to the white-hot core of the terrorist mind. Innocent Blood is as real as today's headlines — and tomorrow's.
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Overview
He's an all-American boy.
Kurt Kurtovic is someone you might know — and ought to fear.
Kurt was a U.S. Army Ranger. Born and raised in Kansas, he was trained to kill for — what? Once he might have said "for God and country." Kurt searches in the former Yugoslavia, the land of his parents, for a place, for faith, for a cause. In the midst of the horrors in Bosnia, Kurt is recruited to fight by a holy warrior, a terrorist Iago, who plays on all of Kurt's doubts and fears: America is the evil behind the horror, but Kurt can change it. He can take the war home. He can penetrate to the heart of the U.S. elite. He can teach his country a lesson so horrible it will never forget.
In this riveting story of war, love, and deception, Christopher Dickey takes us to the white-hot core of the terrorist mind. Innocent Blood is as real as today's headlines — and tomorrow's.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780684852614 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Simon & Schuster |
| Publication date: | 08/19/1998 |
| Pages: | 336 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.80(d) |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Christopher Dickey has been writing about terrorism around the world for years, but always this writing has appeared in the other side of the field: nonfiction. As chief of Newsweek's Paris bureau, former chief of the magazine's Cairo bureau, reporter for The Washington Post, and author of two previous nonfiction books, including WITH With The Contras: A Reporter In The Wilds Of Nicaragua, Dickey has repeatedly found himself trying to convey the thought processes of violent revolutionaries. Now, in Innocent Blood, his first novel, Dickey takes his readers wholly inside the mind of a terrorist in the making, in a gripping tale of anger, alienation, and the belief in redemption through blood.Kurt Kurtovic, the mind at the center of Innocent Blood, is the son of Yugoslavian immigrants, born and raised in the isolation of the Kansas prairie, and further isolated by the emotional distances between his family members. Kurt escapes Kansas -- and tries escaping his own pain -- by joining the Army fresh out of high school, becoming a Ranger. Kurt serves in the invasion of Panama and is on the frontmost of front lines during the Gulf War, but he begins to feel somehow apart from this life he has created for himself. When he recites the Ranger creed, he knows that he is fighting for God and country -- only he's no longer sure whose God or whose country.
Kurt visits his parents' native Bosnia, trying to search out his family's roots, looking for his own belonging. But as he arrives, in 1992, Yugoslavia dissolves into civil war, and Kurt is increasingly enraged by what he sees as the United States' apathy toward the suffering there. When he meets Rashid, a holy warrior in this bloody struggle, Kurt's alienation and bitterness make him an easy recruit -- and an ideal mujahideen, trained in destruction and all too ready to use his knowledge.
In INNOCENT BLOOD, Dickey puts a frighteningly human face on the "true believer," forcing us to acknowledge the pervasive origins of the potential for terror. Dickey has said that he began writing INNOCENT BLOOD "as a way to understand the minds of the fanatics and terrorists I often write about as a Middle East correspondent. The results may be disturbing for the reader. But no more than they have been for me."
Interviews
On Friday, August 22nd, the barnesandnoble.com Live Events Auditorium hosted Christopher Dickey, Newsweek's Paris Bureau chief and the author of the chilling novel INNOCENT BLOOD.
Moderator: Welcome, Christopher Dickey! Thank you for taking the time to join us online this afternoon to discuss INNOCENT BLOOD.
Christopher Dickey: It's my pleasure to be here.
Parker from Tallahassee, FL: Was there a specific inspiration for the character of Kurt Kurtovic? Did you base him on someone?
Christopher Dickey: I'd like to say right off the bat that he is not based on Timothy McVeigh. I was interested in creating a character who would exemplify a certain kind of alienation in American society. A very dangerous kind. And I started work on the novel in early 1994. The character of Kurt was developed completely in the first few months of writing. It was just a frightening coincidence, if a predictable one, that a real terrorist act would be carried out by a man so much like the man I had in mind.
Katy from Philadelphia, PA: Now that you've written both fiction and nonfiction, which do you prefer? Will you go back to writing nonfiction at some point in the future?
Christopher Dickey: I write nonfiction every week in Newsweek magazine. But there is a lot of excitement -- intellectual excitement -- in writing fiction, because you can explore character in a way that is almost impossible to do when you are writing nonfiction.
ParNR from Warminster, PA: The jacket of INNOCENT BLOOD is quite striking. Did you have any input on its creation?
Christopher Dickey: Yes. The jacket design is close to the design that was first shown me by Simon & Schuster. But I insisted that the eye be as blue as possible. I did not want any confusion about the ethnic background of this terrorist. And I thought if the eye were anything less than icy blue, people would think the character was some kind of "foreigner." For better or worse, when you say all-American, people still think that means blond hair and blue eyes.
Amy G. from NYC: Do you agree that the American media focus too much on violence in their reporting? Did you glean any of your material for the book from your experience in the media?
Christopher Dickey: I think the American media concentrate far too much on violence as something that is purely sensational, or if you will, purely visual. Television loves violence, because it attracts your eye. What is lacking is any clear sense conveyed to the public of what is behind so much of the violence that we see. We tend to live in a world where all violence takes place on the screen as if it were completely isolated from other events and there were no relationship between cause and effect. Yes, as a journalist I often covered events that are similar to the ones in the book and went to the places where the action in the book takes place. But it was precisely this sense that there was a logic behind violence and that to stop the violence that logic needed to be understood, that drove me to start writing this novel in the first place.
Amy Unger from Providence, RI: Hello, Mr. Dickey! What news sources do you regularly read to get the best international news?
Christopher Dickey: Of course, I keep track of the wire services, CNN and the French equivalent of it, as a kind of constant background to what I am doing all day long. The best single bit of "background noise" for news is probably the BBC. For more in-depth reporting one of the most interesting sources is the Foreign Broadcast Information Service in the United States and BBC Monitoring in the UK. These give you original documents and news reports and speeches from all over the world, unfiltered.
Lora from Madison, WI: Your intimate portrayal of Kurt in INNOCENT BLOOD conveys a deep understanding of why terrorists become terrorists. Taking this one step further, would you say that you understand why or how someone like Timothy McVeigh could happen?
Christopher Dickey: I think so. First of all, I think McVeigh is less in the tradition of the kinds of terrorists we came to know on the international scene in the 1970s and '80s, and more in the very American tradition of the "angry loner." In a real sense McVeigh is the spiritual heir to Lee Harvey Oswald. He took a sense of personal alienation and failure and made the government accountable for it. In the 1960s such men focused their anger on individual politicians. Today they tend to focus that anger on the government as a whole. The other important fact about Timothy McVeigh is that he had been to war and had seen how many people could be killed in the name of a "good cause." Once he joined his personal anger to the idea, in his own mind, that he was waging a personal war for a good cause, then it is not hard to understand how in his own head he could rationalize what he did.
Monroe from Cleveland, OH: What is your opinion of the isolationists who are bearing arms and fortifying themselves out in the middle of nowhere here in America? Are they a serious problem or threat to the United States?
Christopher Dickey: I think they are a threat when they are forced to interact with the American government, and ultimately they always are. They deny the responsibility or the authority of the government to effect their lives in any way, because they say it is a government that does not obey its own laws -- as they interpret them. The dangerous thing is that they hold their personal interpretation to be above all others, and this is a key element of fanaticism. Whether it is nationalist fanaticism, libertarian fanaticism, of religious fanaticism, the conviction that you have the right to kill because you are in direct touch with the Truth is extremely dangerous for your neighbors and the society in which you live.
Jeffrey from Syracuse, NY: I haven't read INNOCENT BLOOD yet, but I plan to order it. For Kurt's transformation from an American fighting for his country to a terrorist plotting to destroy the United States, was there one breaking point, one moment, or is it a slow process? Thank you for taking my question.
Christopher Dickey: There is a breaking point. But he arrives at it through a slow process. Kurt is searching for his identity. He is looking for a way to put value on his life and into his life. In a sense, this is the same spiritual search many Americans now find themselves pursuing. But in Kurt's case, each time he believes that he has found a place to be and a person to become -- in the army, with his fiancée, in the homeland of his parents -- that is taken away from him. That's why eventually, at his weakest moment, he is such a perfect tool for someone who understands his need and preaches the notion that violence can answer it.
Haggs from Westchester, NY: Mr. Dickey: Israel. Thursday's internationally distributed photograph of Arafat embracing one of the leaders of Hamas. Is the Middle East in more trouble now than ever? Are we going to see an all-out war? Or the continuation and escalation of the terrorist activities?
Christopher Dickey: The Middle East is in very grave difficulties right now and on the verge of violence such as we have not seen since the beginning of this decade. What was a peace process based on cooperation and a positive vision for the future has been turned by the acts of a few fanatics -- Yigal Amir, Rabin's assassin, being one of them -- into a process of confrontation, humiliation, and anger. I do not see any way out of the spiral toward greater violence unless the Israeli government changes its views about the nature of peace and Arafat changes his view that all power must be held in his own hands. We were supposed to be building trust in the Middle East these last five years. Now all we are building on both sides is hatred. Sorry I can't be more optimistic than that.
Lars from Washington, DC: Why do you think the terrorist Rashid has such an effect on Kurt? He certainly didn't seem as charismatic as these "cult leaders" usually are, just really pushy.
Christopher Dickey: Rashid is not a cult leader. He is more like an intelligence operative gone freelance, a case officer, if you will. I don't think he could affect large numbers of people, but he doesn't have to. He only needs to effect Kurt and two or three others to get the job done. The obvious parallel would be with Ramzi Yousef, who was able to pull together the completely incompetent conspirators planning to blow up the World Trade Center and actually carry out the plot.
Kevin from Boston, MA: What's the significance of the Advent calendar in INNOCENT BLOOD? It seemed to have a certain resonance with Kurt.
Christopher Dickey: It is a symbol of his childhood and his desire for discovery. Specifically, his search for faith and meaning in his life. But also, I personally have always loved Advent calendars, and it was one of those elements that seemed to introduce itself into the narrative without my planning or expecting that it would be there.
Brian Elliott from Portland, OR: Good morning -- or should I say, good evening to you Mr.Dickey -- Of all the terrorist attacks you've investigated, would you say these terrorists share similar traits? If so, what would these traits be?
Christopher Dickey: The trend, as is very well documented by Bruce Hoffman at the Center for the Study of Terrorism at St. Andrews University, Scotland, is toward an ever-greater religious component in terrorist activities. The point I was making earlier about fanaticism and the sense of being in touch with a personal Truth is a key element that members of the Aum cult in Japan, or McVeigh in Oklahoma, or Yousef in New York have in common. That's different from the secular political motivations and widespread organizations with government links that characterized terrorist groups in the 1970s and '80s.
Rich from Sayre, PA: What drew you to study and report on revolutions and revolutionaries?
Christopher Dickey: Initially it was the drama. The first revolutions I covered were in Central America, and I suppose I was infected to some extent with the left-wing romanticism common to a lot of people who graduated from college in the early 1970s. But that didn't last long. What came to fascinate me was precisely the causes and effects of the violence, and I actually thought that if I could reveal those causes and effects in all their details on both sides of the conflict without taking any ideological stand, then I would be helping somehow to reduce the violence that I saw in front of me every day. I can't say that I was successful. But that is still what I am trying to do.
Allen Faust from Charlottesville, VA: When questioned about the Japanese cult Aum, I remember that U.S. government officials explained that they weren't aware of Aum's plan for world domination because they were "under our radar." That scares me. How many terrorist groups are "under our radar"? How do they have access to all of this high-tech biochemical terrorist equipment? Thanks for taking my question, Mr. Dickey. I look forward to reading INNOCENT BLOOD.
Christopher Dickey: Until recently I would say almost all of them were "under our radar." Just as armies tend to fight the last war, intelligence services and the police tended to use models of terrorist activities without much relevance to the current battlefield. The most frightening thing about this is that the technology for murdering not only hundreds of people but thousands or hundreds of thousands is readily at hand in the form of homemade or inadequately protected biological and chemical agents. One reason the public and the police tend to miss so many dangers is that they tend to ignore terrorist plots that fail. But in the United States alone in 1995, three separate white supremacist organizations were discovered to be stockpiling ricing toxins capable of killing hundreds of people in very minute doses. One was even successful in ordering samples of bubonic plague. As luck would have it, all these plots were stopped, but we should not confuse good luck with good security.
Wendy from Michigan: Hello, Mr. Dickey. Will INNOCENT BLOOD be made into a movie? Thank you for taking my question.
Christopher Dickey: I don't know. Many people think it appropriate material for one. But the alchemy that Hollywood uses to concoct its formulas for moviemaking these days is utterly unpredictable. We'll see which of the pending offers comes through, and then we'll have to wait and see if it ever makes it to the screen.
Mark from New York City: I read this morning about the Pope's tour through Paris yesterday, and the mixed but generally positive reception he garnered from the young audience, assembled for World Youth Day (I believe). How much weight or reverence do you feel young people give to the Pope's message of diligence and deemphasis on material needs?
Christopher Dickey: Frankly, not a lot. I think that in the euphoria of the moment, many of the young people here would make pious and idealistic statements, but I do not expect that the lives of many of them will be transformed by their experiences in Paris this week. That said, people do want hope, and they do want direction, and young people today, particularly those in the West and in America who feel no great sense of threat from any outside source, no external factor to direct their lives and give them purpose, will search where they can for meaning. Those who find that meaning in mainstream religion are the lucky ones and help to build society. Those who find it in fanaticism are the ones who help to tear it apart.
Daniel from Springfield, VA: What's next for Christopher Dickey?
Christopher Dickey: I'm working on a memoir, which should be out late next spring, called THE SUMMER OF DELIVERANCE. It's basically about my father, the poet and novelist James Dickey, and our often painful relationship.
Joan from Amityville, NY: Bonjour, Christopher. Whom do you like to read? Do you have any literary role models?
Christopher Dickey: Yes. I guess at this point in one's career, the question is not whom you read, but whom you reread. And I tend to reread stylists whose essays are often as good as their fiction, and in some cases better. I love Graham Greene, at least up until the last decade of his career. He was writing about the kinds of places and the kinds of people that I know, in ways that taught me things I would never otherwise have suspected or expressed. Joan Didion is someone I idolize as a writer, and I've been lucky to be her friend as well. George Orwell, especially his four volumes of collected essays, is indispensible. I don't like Gore Vidal's novels, but I love his articles and essays. I guess I'd have to say that my father's work influenced me as well, but less through choice than through osmosis. There are also a few scenes in INNOCENT BLOOD, you might note, that are pretty obvious homages to his work.
Moderator: Thank you very much for joining us this afternoon, Mr. Dickey! Very interesting stuff! Any closing comments?
Christopher Dickey: Not really. I think the questions gave me a great opportunity to talk about the issues that were most important to me in this novel. But I'd also like to thank you, Elke, online for your patience and skill typing my responses. And barnesandnoble.com, of course, for giving me this opportunity to meet with so many people in so many places.