MAN PICKS FLOWER
"He was already dressed, the too-sleek suit back on, last night’s tie folded into a side pocket, his late brother’s soft black moccasins suspended from the finger tips of his left hand. Deva was splayed asleep, sheets tangled between her legs, her face illuminated by the street lights of Bloomsbury, the King’s Cross end. He regarded her and started to find words for her beauty, then stopped himself. The night had been elating and sickening, comfort found where he had imagined harm. He thought, ‘We hail from opposing poles of modesty, Brazil and Pakistan. Londoners. He would sort it out later.’”
In Brazil, in 1982, John, a young American intelligence officer on his first mission, offers protection to a girl whose father had been killed by a militia sponsored by his country. In parting gratitude, she offers herself to him, and he accepts. But in the complexity of the moment, she accuses him of raping her, an accusation she never repeats, but which will always haunt him.
Deva, the daughter resulting from this union, never knows her American father. But after abuse and the early death of her mother, she flees to America, where she fails to find a father, but does find that she is a brilliant student, a talented singer, and that heroin cures pain. That addiction is overcome after her partner dies from an overdose and she finds herself pregnant with her own daughter, Nadia. They make a new start in London.
After Brazil, John’s work takes him to Pakistan. At first, he is idealistically concerned with an earthquake disaster on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, but this leads him to become a key figure in American support for the Mujahedin fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. In particular, he became the close friend of a local leader with homes on both sides of the border. The family is encouraged by America to take part in the heroin trade to finance the Mujahedin, and so becomes very rich.
By 2015 the three sons of that family had gone different ways. One stayed devout, and is now a leader of the Mujahedin’s successors, the Taliban, and so is America’s enemy; one runs the family’s now legitimate business empire from a London penthouse; the youngest, Harry, following an English education, lives his own life as a Londoner, with a small reputation at a poet.
John, now bitterly retired to New Hampshire, goes to Pakistan one last time in 2015 to visit his old friend, but his visit facilitates an American drone strike to kill the Taliban son. The rest of the family, except for Harry, is collateral damage. Pakistani intelligence takes advantage of Harry’s traumatic loss to radicalize him and encourage him take revenge. This includes killing John, who is believed to have guided the drone strike under the cover of friendship. Pakistan intelligence, like American intelligence, knows John has a daughter, Deva, but he does not know himself.
REVIEWS
“Man Picks Flower is instantly compelling; I read it in two days. A fusion of international intrigue and familial longing, Roger King’s beguiling new novel is something rare: a spy thriller with a loudly beating heart.”