By Earl Merkel: A Writer's Homepage

An Interview With The Author of DIRTY FIRE

Interview Transcript
-----------------------------
Q: Our guest today is Earl Merkel, the best-selling author of FINAL EPIDEMIC whose new novel is entitled DIRTY FIRE. He has been kind enough to provide some of the chapters for me, and I have to say, I want to read the rest.

Earl, welcome to today's program. Without giving away the plot, summarize DIRTY FIRE for us.

A: The storyline involves a former police detective who was set up on a bribery charge and disgraced, largely as a ploy to discredit him as a witness in a police-corruption investigation. But as the story progresses, he finds himself part of something much larger, much more sinister.
The case against him is dismissed, in a way that makes it obvious the fix is in. Still, he is out of work and his life is on the skids. Then he receives a summons by a dying convict who tells him a story about an art heist that turned into an arson-murder. Even more tantalizing, there appears to be a potential cover-up of the real crime by his former police department.
Before he knows it, he and everybody connected with the case is hip-deep in arson and murder, stolen artwork that may or may not exist, too-smart FBI agents with hidden agendas, corrupt public officials and members of the Russian Mafiya.

Q: I know a writer gets this question all the time, but where did you get the idea for your book?

A: Basically, DIRTY FIRE was born early in 2001 when I read a newspaper story on how the Russians looted billions of dollars worth of art at the end of World War II. A half-century later, they still have most of it stored in secret depositories. Exactly what they have is largely unknown; until a couple of years ago, even the mere existence of this treasure was treated as a state secret.
I wondered what would happen if, in light of today's realities in the Russian Federation, somebody smuggled out a number of famous, lost paintings? What if this person brought them to the United States with the single intent of using them to reveal to the world the true extent of what the Russians still hide?
Most important, what would the Russians do to keep the secret?
But when I started writing, the characters started taking off on their own. The characters brought in the other things: the arson, insurance fraud, public corruption, international intrigue and domestic conspiracy. Then they forced me to write it.

Q: In 1995, didn't the Russians announced they were holding art treasures they had confiscated from the Nazis?

A: In 1995, they admitted they had 'some' artwork. But they have never admitted the full extent of their looting, or publicly catalogued what they currently hold. The fact is that there are world-famous works of art they have kept hidden, pieces that the world believes were destroyed in the war.
What little we do know has come out in tiny bits; for instance, until a short while ago, nobody knew for certain what had happened to the famous Trojan Gold excavated by Heinrich Schliemann in 1873. Or Raphael's Sistine Madonna.
Both, as it turned out, were being hidden away at a monastery about 50 miles outside Moscow. Not by coincidence, it is the same monastery I used in DIRTY FIRE. It remains the single largest repository of the artwork the Russians looted during what they called the Great Patriotic War, and what is still in there is maintained as a state secret.

Q: Why would additional disclosure be a problem today?

A: Certainly, full disclosure would be a public relations disaster for a nation that is trying to get loan guarantees, investment capital, international credibility. And the potential for lawsuits by the rightful owners is nightmarish. In many ways, the Russians know they have a tiger by the tail. They are afraid to let go.
Then too, the artwork has become a powerful political issue inside Russia. Internally, the so-called liberals --before he 'retired,' Yeltsin was a good example of a Russian 'liberal'-- want to return it, use it as a bargaining chip with countries like Germany and Austria. And in fact, they did return some art to the East German government over the years, when they saw some benefit in so doing. But Russian nationalistic elements see this artwork as virtually the only thing they got from World War II that they have not already lost.
The only thing the different sides seem to agree on is the need for discretion. In Russia, it is almost an article of faith that you are less likely to be shot if you keep your mouth firmly shut.
Late in 1998, I was in Washington during the conference hosted by the U.S. Department of State on the missing artwork issue. Forty-something countries attended, including Russia. There was a great deal of excitement when the Russian delegate pledged his country's commitment to returning the art they held that could be proved to have been looted from Holocaust victims. As one of my characters says in DIRTY FIRE, the key word is prove. The Russians say there is a lot of research required, and that could take years, even if it is a legitimate excuse.
Then there is the semantics involved. The Russians differentiate between so-called victim art and what they call trophy art. Generally, victim art was taken from individuals and trophy art from institutions. But not always, and a lot of my sources see that as a factor in any Russian compliance.
And finally, the Russian lower house, the Duma, passed a law a year or two ago that declared the trophy artworks they seized during World War II as national treasures, not subject to repatriation. All in all, this issue is very much in turmoil today, and will be for the foreseeable future.

Q: There are some startling scenes of violence in DIRTY FIRE.

A: Thank you. (laughs) I think.

Well, in the course of the book, I only kill off... oh, seven or eight people or so. I think that is the correct number. That is a pretty low bodycount, considering the genre. And after all, in FINAL EPIDEMIC my body count was what-- a couple of hundred thousand people?

Q: Speaking of genre, what category does your book fit into? There is a lot of very fast-paced action, so is it a suspense-thriller?

A: When I was writing DIRTY FIRE, I had the opportunity to meet John Camp, who writes the Prey series under the pen name of John Sandford. He is one of my favorite authors, by the way. Anyway, he said a suspense-thriller has to keep the pedal to the metal from start to finish, but that a mystery can take a little time to develop the occasional subplot or offbeat character. It's definitely paced differently than a pure thriller would be.
So, to answer your question, I guess I have written a suspense-mystery. At times in the book, I do let the reader go down a side road or two. DIRTY FIRE is a book that is aimed at readers who want to exercise their minds with a rich cast of characters who are, as happens in real life, often unaware of how they are entangled in the larger action.

Q: Give us an example.

A: For instance, a strong subplot in my book deals with the nature of celebrity in the modern world-- with some humor, I hope.
For me, part of the fun was to develop different characters and subplots, and then bring it right back into the middle of the main action.

Q: Russia and the Russian Mafiya are both important plot devices throughout DIRTY FIRE. For instance, you paint a pretty bleak picture of the situation in Russia. You have one character call it --what-- the first modern instance of a major nation that has become completely criminalized. Did you overstate that for literary license?

A: No. Actually, I even had to tone it down a bit, just for believability.
I think it is difficult for Americans to accept the notion of gangsters running a country. But I have friends in Russia who are journalists, and they deal with it as a fact of their daily life, as well as their culture and history.
The Russians have a criminal underworld that predates the establishment of the Soviet Union by several hundred years. It is called the Thieves Society -- vorovskoi mir, in Russian-- and it had rituals and strict codes of secrecy that allowed it to survive and flourish under Czar and Commissar alike. The early Bolsheviks worked closely with them, and learned how to finance a revolution through armed robberies and other crimes. Stalin even robbed a bank with these people, in his salad days as a revolutionary.
The fact is that the vorovskoi mir was a sort of invisible partner throughout most of Russian history. Under the Communists, it served as a sort of social safety valve-- for instance, by being the force behind the black market in the Soviet Union. The vorovskoi mir more or less ensured that products and commodities were available--or a price, of course-- and shared the profits with the members of the Soviet ruling class-- the nomenklatura. Organized crime-- which came to be known as the Mafiya -- was incorporated into, even ingrained with, the Communist Party and the Soviet government.
Of course, that association made it much easier for organized crime to achieve a powerful --some call it a preeminent-- position in Russia today. A few years ago, there was a poll in Russia about the future. The respondents said they believed the odds their children would grow up to be criminals was four in ten. Forty percent is a pretty high level of probability, even for a pessimistic country like Russia.

Q: Is the Russian Mafiya active in the United States?

A: The FBI certainly thinks so. Early on in my research for DIRTY FIRE, I received a transcript of then-FBI Director Louis Freeh testifying before Congress that the fight against Russian organized crime here officially had been declared a priority. He said it was of equal importance to the fight against the so-called Italian Mafia and the Asian gangs in the U.S. And as I mention in DIRTY FIRE, the organized crime units of various police departments have noted the growth of the Russian crime organization here.
They start out by preying on their own people. As a result, there is a growing Russian Mafiya presence where ever you find a large population center that came from Russia. Then they expand their operations.
And they are truly internationally powerful. In Israel, for instance, where there is a large number of Jewish-Russian emigres, they have already had scandals about Russian mob influence in the Israeli government.

Q: And they are as vicious as you portray them in your novel?

A: The Russian Mafiya has earned its own reputation among American criminals. During my research, I saw a story in the New York Times Magazine that quoted one of John Gotti's people as warning a suspected snitch: "We Italians will kill you, but the Russians are crazy-- they will kill your whole family."

Q: Some of the details you have included in DIRTY FIRE are very interesting-- and I imagine, controversial. For instance, one of the characters states in passing that the Federal Reserve once melted down Nazi gold bars so a bank --which is identified as Citibank-- could have an acceptable security for a loan to Spain. Did that really occur?

A: In November 1997, The New York Times reported that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York melted down $23 million worth of Nazi gold bars in the 1950s to replace the swastika with the words, "United States Assay Office." The Times said that the Fed melted down the bars after the National City Bank (now known as Citibank) urged that they be reissued and used as collateral to help Spain purchase a new phone system from ITT.
The Times picked up the story from Federal Reserve memos that had just been released, and which indicated that the U.S. Treasury knew that the Nazis had looted the bars from Belgium and the Netherlands. The gold had been sold on the world markets by the Swiss National Bank during World War II.
To be fair, the documents did not indicate whether the Treasury or the Federal Reserve knew or suspected that the gold had come from Holocaust victims. But a federal report issued in 1997 determined that jewelry and gold fillings taken from concentration camp victims were melted together with gold the Nazis took from the central banks of Europe, so you have to draw your own conclusions.
Citicorp defended its actions by in a statement that said, in part,"this all happened in an era when there was not as much introspection about this kind of transaction."
That's true, though it's hard to see how anyone, at any period, wouldn't see at least some ethical problem in such actions. Just recently, a book was published that charges IBM knowingly provided punchcard-computing equipment that helped Hitler more efficiently murder Gypsies, Jews and other social "undesirables." Such ethically challenged decision-making wasn't unique, it seems.

Q: DIRTY FIRE is set in Chicago?

A: It is set in Lake Tower, a fictional town north of Chicago.

Q: A suburb? Why not just set it entirely in the Big City?

A: My characters do go into the city fairly often, because Chicago is just too tempting a canvas for any writer. You cannot beat the excitement, the urban textures and complexities of the city. So a lot of the action takes place there, or in other locales away from Lake Tower.
At the same time, I needed a flexible setting-- one where I was not limited by the realities that everybody knows about Chicago. I needed a place where police corruption by the Chief of Police --I don't think I am giving away anything important by saying that-- would be a hands-on/hands-dirty sort of thing for him. All of that added up to inventing a town-- a small city, really-- not far from Chicago.
Plus, I live in the suburbs: that is part of what makes any visit to the city exciting for me. I wanted to communicate that excitement to my readers.

Q: Throughout the book, I was fascinated by all the details you provided. I found myself learning things all the time. For instance, was the Great Chicago Fire in 1871 actually caused by a meteor?

A: That is one theory. It would explain why the largest forest fire ever recorded -- the one at Pestigo, Wisconsin, which almost nobody has ever heard about-- occurred on the same day that Chicago burned down.
But it is only one of the many theories. The fact is, the city was build of dry lumber and pitch; it was a tinder box to begin with. So whether the cause was a cow kicking over a lantern -- though hardly anybody believes that anymore-- or a drunk with a match and a grudge, or even a white-hot chunk of rock from outer space... well, you can almost take your pick. There is evidence for any of them.
Me, I liked the imagery of the Water Tower pointing to the sky in a half-remembered warning. So I went with the meteor.

Q: We are almost out of time for today, but I have to know. What is next for you now?

A: Well, I am at work at another novel now; two of them, actually. My publisher, PenguinPutnam/NAL, has just released my novel FINAL EPIDEMIC, a thriller involving biological terrorism. I tend to work on two books simultaneously, and invariably one of them catches fire and takes me on a wild ride. That happened with FINAL EPIDEMIC, and the other one --PARTS UNKNOWN-- had to take a back seat for a while. I'm at it again, along with another one with the working title of DARK WATERS, OVERFLOWING.
Without going into too much detail, the main storyline OF PARTS UNKNOWN deals with theft of identity in the context of a disappearance fifteen years previously. He was the college-aged son of a prominent family, and presumably took off for parts unknown. The case has been dormant for years, but then body parts -- severed arm, a torso, that sort of thing-- begin showing up around the city. So the investigation into these unknown parts begins, and of course there is a connection.
But, as in DIRTY FIRE, that is only the kickoff to a much more devious sequence of events.
As for DARK WATERS, OVERFLOWING-- well, I've just delivered that to my agent (Kimberley Cameron, Reece Halsey North Agency). We're pretty excited about it, but I don't want to jinx things.

Q: You have a devious sort of smile on your face right now. You really enjoy your work, don't you?

A: I have a stock answer for that: It sure beats working for a living.

Q: That is as good a place as any to wrap up.
Our guest today was Earl Merkel, who has just published DIRTY FIRE, a novel set in the Chicago area. Earl, thanks for visiting on the program today.

(* NOTE: FINAL EPIDEMIC, Mr. Merkel's debut suspense-thriller, reached national bestseller status in its second week of publication. Please see link below.)

--

By Earl Merkel: A Writer's Homepage

Earl Merkel

An Interview With The Author of DIRTY FIRE

Other Merkel Books & Favorite Links