James Barrington email interview 2008 on Foxbat

It's a long time since I've read a good and absorbing espionage thriller but Foxbat certainly had me hooked. James has very kindly answered some email questions indepth for us.
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VW - As a military pilot why did you decide to write espionage thrillers?

JB - There is an old adage that a writer should always write about what he knows and, like all such adages, there is a good deal of truth in this. But what it does not mean is that an author should only write fictionalized accounts based on his personal experience, but rather that the author should use his experience to provide a realistic and convincing world in which entirely fictitious events can take place. My background was military, as you are aware, and it made obvious sense to me to set my stories against the backdrop of the world I had known and worked in for over 20 years, and which I think provides a sense of realism and authenticity which would be difficult for an author - no matter how talented but without any military experience - to capture with the same degree of fidelity. One of the reviewers of my second novel, Pandemic, remarked that my depiction of life on board the British aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious was 'documentary-accurate', a comment that particularly pleased me, as he was a front-line pilot on one of the squadrons embarked on the vessel. I think that if the reader can be persuaded to believe that the world you're describing in a novel is an accurate reflection of an environment in which he has an interest, then he is far more likely to accept the less believable parts of the story.

This is why I always take considerable trouble to ensure that any information I include about military hardware and equipment is accurate in all respects. It irritates me when I find other authors who either do not know how far wrong they are in what they're writing, or presumably simply don't care. I started one novel by an American author who described in graphic detail the downing of a Harrier over Iraq in one of the Gulf Wars and explained how the pilot had dragged the navigator from the wreckage and carried him halfway across the Middle East to safety, killing dozens of Iraqi soldiers on the way. If he'd taken 30 seconds to run a check on the internet, he would have discovered that the Harrier is, and always has been, a single-pilot aircraft. At that moment, the book and the author lost all credibility for me.

I suppose you could say that the answer I have given above is the good reason why I write the kind of books I do. But it is certainly true to say that these are also the kind of books I like to read and maybe that is the real reason.

VW - Have you always written stories or was it a case of try it and see what happens?

JB - I don't believe anyone ever wakes up one morning and thinks ‘I'll write a novel'. I suspect that every writer first serves a fairly long apprenticeship by writing articles and short stories for magazines and perhaps for specialist publications connected with his work before finally embarking on a full length novel. In my case, I earned my first income from writing at the tender age of 17 when I sent an angry and probably libellous letter to a motoring magazine complaining about one of their articles. I genuinely didn't expect to hear from the editor but after about a week I received a letter from him telling me that my contribution would be published in the next issue and that they would be paying me a fiver for it. That was effectively the start of my writing career because it showed me that I could generate a second income from the flourishing British magazine market. Over the next few years I wrote for a variety of specialist magazines including Custom Car, Superbike, and Target Gun. Most of these articles and stories were humorous and they all paid quite well.

When I finally left the Navy, I had time to concentrate on writing a full length work, which is a very different discipline. With short stories, the author must write to a deadline, possibly a very short deadline, conform to the magazine's style and content, and tell a story which contains the three classic elements - it must have a beginning, a middle, and an end - and which will entertain the readership. And in many ways writing short stories is actually more difficult than writing a novel because within these tighter confines the author has to make every word count. The wider expanses offered by the novel allow far more space for a writer to experiment and develop his story and characters in the way that he chooses. Having said that, the writer must still work within the confines of his genre, and produce a work that is not only readable but more importantly saleable. If an article in a magazine fails to impress the readers, it doesn't really matter because no doubt there will be other articles that they would enjoy, but when a publisher signs a contract for a book he knows that he is committing his company to a substantial outlay, and he must be certain that his investment will be recouped by subsequent sales.

VW - Foxbat is a psychological espionage thriller: was any of it based on personal experiences?

JB - No. This novel was to some extent suggested by certain classified reports and analyses I read whilst I was in the services, and by research that I did after I left. I have always been very careful to avoid including in my books anything of a classified nature, so everything that I refer to can be found in open sources. There are two obvious reasons for this. First, I've signed the Official Secrets Act, and if I did reveal anything classified that I learnt during my service I would be liable to prosecution. Second, if I had any doubts about a particular book I would have to submit it for MoD (Ministry of Defence) clearance before publication, and publishing timescales are tight enough without introducing this kind of protracted checking.

VW - Is Paul Richter loosely based on yourself?

JB - No. Paul Richter is an amalgam of several different people that I met and worked with in the services, but he's not primarily based on me or any one particular character.

VW - Why was the MiG-25 called 'Foxbat' by NATO?

JB - There's a system operated by NATO and used by almost all Western nations when discussing the military assets of the former Soviet Union. This is known as NATO Reporting Names and is a simple code-word system that allows for quick, easy and unambiguous identification of those assets. As far as aircraft are concerned, there are four principal classes - fighters, bombers, transport or commercial, and helicopters - and NATO, to keep it simple, allocated the letters F B C and H respectively to those four classes. So all Russian fighters are reported using names beginning with F, bombers with names beginning with B and so on. This means that any Western military personnel who are discussing Russian aircraft will immediate know the type of aircraft, even if they are not familiar with the model. Typical names of bombers include Bison, Bear and Blackjack; transport aircraft Coaler and Condor; helicopters Hind and Hormone, while fighters include Flogger, Fulcrum, Fishbed and, of course, Foxbat. The names are allocated more or less at random, though where there is known to be a relationship between two aircraft, the names will often be related. The best example of this involves the MiG-25. This aircraft is known by NATO Reporting Name Foxbat, and its direct successor, the MiG-31, is known as the Foxhound.

VW - Is any part of your story based on current truth i.e. the North Koreans stealing MiG-25s?

JB - As far as I know, there have been no reported cases of North Korean agents stealing Foxbats, but with that regime nothing much would surprise me. The reality, as I mentioned in the book, is that most of North Korea's arms and armaments are supplied by China and have been for some years. It's also a fact that the Foxbat is now very old technology and if the North Koreans were going to try stealing aircraft they would probably be more likely to choose something more modern. Stealing Foxbats only makes sense in the context of the novel I've written. What the North Koreans do seem to be good at is taking an existing design of weapon and modifying it for their own purposes. The example I mentioned in this book was the Seersucker missile, also known as the Silkworm, which the regime is known to have worked on extensively and which is now capable of a far greater range than its original design specified. And they have also produced tanks optimized take advantage of the terrain of North Korea.

VW - Why did EMP not affect the valve technology of the MiG-25 and is this based on any truth?

JB - EMP will only affect solid-state circuitry. Old-style valve technology is largely unaffected by this phenomenon and, as I said in the book, that is now believed to be the principal reason why the Russians chose it to include in this aircraft. At the time when the Foxbat was built, the Russians had already developed, or perhaps more accurately stolen, solid-state circuits for avionics systems and these could easily have been incorporated into the aircraft if they wished. The fact that they didn't use solid-state circuitry means they never intended to and that implies that the Foxbat was indeed intend to be a post nuclear exchange survivor.

VW - What is EMP and can the effects of it be overcome in today's solid state technology?

JB - EMP stands for electromagnetic pulse. This is a phenomenon that occurs when a nuclear device is detonated. The pulse sends a huge surge of power through all unshielded electronic devices within range of the weapon and effectively burns them out. The optimum scenario for an attack on the United States for example would require a weapon detonation over the centre of the continent at an altitude of about 300 miles. With a weapon of sufficient power, and we are talking multi megatons here, that would burn out every non-shielded electronic device in America. Of course a lot of doomsday scenarios have been predicated on the basis that a madman or a rogue state could use such a weapon to cripple the United States in the early stages of war. Most information about America's command and control structure is highly classified, but I'm reasonably certain that for the last 10 years at least America's important telephone lines, data links and computer systems had been properly shielded. Even so the detonation of such a weapon would certainly cause a major problems and enormous inconvenience because of the disruption of less important and unshielded systems.

VW - As a civilian would a person such as Paul Richter be allowed to fly a Sea Harrier today to resolve the situation?

JB - The logical answer to this question is no. Flying an aircraft is not like driving a car. It requires an infinitely higher skill level and constant practice, practice which is then assessed on a regular basis by examiners. If Paul Richter had not been an experienced Harrier pilot, there would have been no possibility of him doing what he did in this book. Even so I doubt that, unless the circumstances were extreme, a ship's captain would permit him to get into the cockpit. But this is a novel, and in a novel both the author and his readers are allowed to suspend their disbelief and then watch as events unfold that we all hope we'll never live to see in reality.

VW - One thing we as the general public don't think of unless it effects us personally, is the amount of countries involved to resolve a given political situation and the tremendous psychology that goes with the posturing and minds games each country plays? How much of this were you aware of as a military pilot and how much did you have to research? (I think this is a two part Q)

JB - When you join the military you're aware that you become one part of a very large organisation, and that that organization itself is just a part of a greater whole. As a pilot, you are part of a squadron, and that squadron will be one of two that make up the Air Group on board an aircraft carrier, and the carrier is part of a flotilla which is part of a fleet, and so on. What I'm trying to say is that we are all component parts of a very large machine, and it is comparatively rare for those component parts to have a full understanding of what the machine itself is doing. Information within the military is very tightly controlled. We apply the need-to-know principle throughout the services and just because we happen to be involved in, say, the Gulf War, that doesn't mean we have any better idea of the way the conflict is progressing than people sitting at home in England and watching it on Sky News. Obviously, the pilot of a helicopter who has just carried out a mission to Baghdad will be perfectly aware of whether he succeeded or failed in that specific task, but neither he nor anyone else on board will know exactly how the overall battle is being won or lost. Having said that, military personnel are obviously far better qualified to interpret what information they have than members of the general public. In short, most combatants in a war zone will know quite a lot about their own small part of it, but not a great deal about the overall picture.

From the point of view of this book, I tried to create as realistic an environment as possible in America where much of the decision-making about the response to the North Korean threat would be made, and I tried to guess the kind of actions that the American government would initiate with the forces that I know it has at its disposal. This did entail quite a lot of research, and a lot of interpretation of that research.

VW - As a military pilot involved in espionage at what point would Paul Richter trust the Russians, to fly him from A to B, especially as one lot of investigators plane had been sabotaged?

JB - Paul Richter first met Viktor Bykov in the first book in the series, and in one way it could be argued that Richter saved Bykov's life. Bykov trusts Richter about as much as he trusts any Westerner and that feeling is reciprocated. I don't believe Richter would have found any difficult in climbing into an aircraft with Bykov.

VW - Would Paul Richter in today's climate be able to persuade the captain of the ship to back him up on the kind of mission he was asked to do by Simpson?

JB - Royal Navy captains are a special breed of men and I think it's quite likely that in circumstances I described the captain would react in very much the manner I've suggested. There's an old expression that says orders are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men, and the Royal Navy never puts fools on the bridges of its warships.

VW - It is always shocking to read how a country treats its people, Camp 22 is horrific, did you include it in your story to alert your readers that Korea's human rights issue is dreadful?

JB - Not directly. I always try to make my books as realistic as possible, and the reality in North Korea is that concentration camps like Camp 22 exist and are very frequently used by the government to dispose of people who have offended it or who are seen as dangerous. The vengeance exacted by the government on the people who were perceived to have failed it is exactly the kind of punishment I expect them to have suffered in real life. I would hope that most people would already be aware of the kind of things that go on in the so called Hermit Kingdom, but if they weren't, then perhaps I've done them a service in opening their eyes.

VW - Would North Korea in today's reality really try to detonate a nuclear bomb on Tokyo? That was quite a thought and a very good red herring!

JB - I think this is a real possibility. You have to appreciate that North Korea is totally isolated. Its old enemy occupies the southern section of the promontory. Japan, effectively an American client state, lies to the south and east, and north is the vast inscrutable lump that is China. North Korea has been preparing for a second Korean War ever since the first one ground to an unsatisfactory halt, and it genuinely expects to not only take on the military might of the United States but to win. If there ever was another military action in Korea, and if the North Korean government realised they were losing, they might well decide to lash out with whatever they had left, much as Saddam Hussein did in Iraq when he began firing off his Scud missiles. In this scenario, Japan would be a very likely target.

VW - Was basing half the action on HMS Illustrious your way of showing what our Navy can do?

JB - To some extent this is true. From the point of view of the plot, I needed Richter to be in the vicinity of the buffer zone between the two Koreas as the action in the latter part of the book unfolded, and having him stationed on board a ship I knew well seemed an ideal solution. Plus, as you point out, it is also a useful way of reminding people that our Navy has got teeth.

VW - At the end of the book Paul Richter has received more orders from Simpson, but where will you take him for his next adventure?

JB - The fourth Paul Richter book is entitled Timebomb and will be released this summer. This story is set in western Europe, and in southern England. I won't tell you any more as that might give away too much of the plot, but it will be the usual guns and bombs and stuff. I'm about to sign a new contract with Macmillan two more books, to be released in 2009 and 2010.

VW - Why is it that so many people who have come out of the forces are writing very successful thrillers? Is it also a way of expunging what they have been through or a way of keeping the adrenalin of live action going?

JB - Very few of the people who have left the forces have actually written very successful thrillers. In most cases, a ghost writer has done all the work and the former servicemen's contribution to the effort appears to have been limited to perhaps coming up with the idea for the book and sticking his name on the front cover. There are exceptions, of course, and recently a number of books have been published that have indeed been written by former servicemen. But what their motives were for writing these books I have no idea.

VW - Who and what have been your writing influences, and how do you set about writing a novell?

JB - Like every writer, I've certainly been influenced by the authors I enjoy reading. These include writers like Tom Clancy, Stephen Leather, Frederick Forsyth and Lee Child, but I tend to read any thrillers I can get my hands on, because one thing I've certainly learned since getting published is that writing is a business like any other, and you have to know what other people in your genre are doing. I know a lot of authors claim that they've been influenced by the authors of the classics - Dickens and the like - or literary authors, but I freely admit that I haven't. I don't read them because the world they're describing is wholly irrelevant to the world I'm writing about, and I frankly don't have the time to get side-tracked. My writing commitments are now so intense that I would need to have a pretty good reason to pick up any book to read that lies outside my genre.

All my novels start with a single idea, often a question. For Foxbat, this was something like ‘What was the real reason the Russians built the Foxbat, as opposed to the good reason?' That idea forms the core of the book. I work out who the bad guys are and what they're going to be doing, in general terms, then sort out a prologue that will hopefully intrigue the reader enough to make him or her want to read on. It's said there are ‘tree' and ‘wood' writers. A ‘tree' writer starts at the base of the trunk and just climbs up the tree to the very top, which is where the book will end, and is able to clearly see where he's going at all times. ‘Wood' writers walk into a wood knowing only that at some point they'll walk out of the other end, but have no idea where their path will take them in the meantime. I'm definitely a ‘wood' writer. I start the book knowing more or less how it's going to finish, and just see where the characters take me.