Review - The Assassination Bureau, Ltd

Assassination these days is such an impersonal affair.  Typically, some bloke living in a dusty climate, usually sporting the sort of beard normally associated with the wilder sort of prophet or cider-guzzling tramp, turns to his mate and just has time to say ‘Do you hear somethi…’ before his world gets, briefly, loud and bright.  A few hours later green and grainy footage is released, shot from the nosecone-cam of something travelling very vertically very quickly towards what looks like an ariel view of two blokes, with beards, in a dusty climate.  It’s green and grainy for the few seconds before everything goes, briefly, white.  Cut to a newscaster who, depending on the broadcaster, will either gravely announce the spectacular televised passing of some boogyman who bothered democracy and goats in equal measure, or will be shouting ‘USA, USA’ and doing fist-pumps.  About three minutes after that, the footage will be on YouhooTube, edited into a montage with a dozen other clips just like it and accompanied by a booming rock soundtrack, probably ‘We will rock you’ by Queen.

That’s twenty first century assassination, impersonal and remote, courtesy of a drone built by a corporation somewhere in a state with more wheat than culture and flown by a bloke in an anonymous looking building in a retail park in Newport Pagnell.

Jack London’s portrayal of assassination is a stylish affair.  Set in early twentieth century America it has it all; a trans-continental chase featuring steam trains and ocean liners, fine dining, gentlemen, a lady, quite a lot of violence both implied and explicit, and a profound sense that the author thinks that it probably would be a good idea if an organisation such as the Assassination Bureau actually existed.

For The Assassination Bureau Ltd., assassination is an art.  More than that, assassination, if practiced perfectly, can be a social service.  The assassins of the Assassination Bureau Ltd. have practiced their craft and are perfectionists.  If a client comes to them and wants a target assassinated, then the Bureau will conduct its own discreet enquiries and only if convinced that the assassination is socially and morally justified will it act.

This purpose is set out in the first few pages of the book.  If you have the money, you can approach the Bureau to have somebody killed.

So it is that rather unpleasant types are done away with (apparently in a variety of styles, business clients prefer to have their enemies disposed of in a discreet fashion, whilst anarchist groups prefer something a little more ‘red’), as those too frightened to bloody their own hands hand over a sizeable wad of cash.  The services of the Bureau do not come cheap.  The Assassination Bureau, it is clear, is very much a luxury service.

Ivan Dragamiloff, Chief of the Bureau, is convinced of its moral rightness, as are those assassins, skilled craftsmen all, who deliver the service.  Indeed, a sizeable chunk of the novel is given over to the debate about the rightness, or otherwise, of a select, secretive and unaccountable body of men engineering social change, to the benefit of their bank balance, by bullet and bomb.

The opening pages are fascinating enough, a secret society of assassins, moral ambiguity and a Chief of an organisation who has the decency to run the Bureau from a book lined study with a deaf-mute servant.  Things step up a gear though when the fabulously named Winter Hill discovers the existence of the Bureau, meets with the Chief and, after successfully convincing the Chief of the moral wrongness of the organisation, pays for the Chief himself to be assassinated, by his own organisation.

Bound by the strict moral code that allows the assassins to do their work with an easy conscience, the Bureau set about trying to assassinate the Chief, himself a master assassin.

The pace is relentless, letting up only for occasional truces that usually involve a spot of fine dining followed by mayhem.  The narrative stays with Hill and the chase is played out in a series of telegrams he receives as the members of the Bureau try, and fail, to assassinate their own Chief.  As a narrative device, it’s a compelling, interesting way of building suspense.  Then, as the chase moves into high gear and the protagonists come together for a series of confrontations building towards the climax, the narrative becomes more conventional, even if the subject matter does not.

Moral certainties are examined in some detail in the book.  Of course there is the whole ‘is it right to kill a bad person’ question which kickstarts the plot with the same instant results as slippering a fox, but other questions arise too, such as just who is in a position to judge who is bad?  The victims of the Bureau include thugs and bent policemen and corrupt politicians, but also respected businessmen, beloved family men, who happen to, at some point in their past, have had a ruinous effect on the lives of others.  One can reform oneself, but one cannot escape the past.

An outstanding read and a romantic vision of a bygone age when value really was put on personal service, even if it was of a type you would rather have avoided.