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With her spy novel, insider Loraine Sievers gives exciting insights into what’s going on at the UN headquarters in New York.
Late in the evening, a car speeds up First Avenue in Manhattan at excessive speed. The driver deliberately swerves to the right and knocks down a young woman in front of the staff entrance at the UN headquarters. She is taken to the hospital with serious head wounds and internal injuries.
Loraine Sievers’ espionage thriller entitled «An UNwilling Spy» begins so dramatically. She worked for the UN for decades and wrote an extremely competent standard work on the Security Council, which was several hundred pages long and was still easy to read.
novel rather than autobiography
Even today, she is invited as an expert to the most powerful UN body. She recently lamented the growing tensions that were hampering the Council’s work. Today they are similar in size to the times when her novel is set: 1974, in the middle of the Cold War. The UN headquarters was a stronghold of international espionage. distrust reigned. The atmosphere was charged.
Legend: The United Nations headquarters on 1st Avenue in New York is the main setting of Loraine Sievers’ spy novel. Keystone/Alessandro della Valle
Sievers was actually planning an autobiography, but in order not to damage the reputation of the UN, she chose the form of a novel: The headquarters make a grandiose stage set – with its pompous halls, endless corridors and winding paths, from the gloomy cellars and underground garages to the roof at the top of the Secretariat building.
Anne Thomas – the curious heroine
The 24-year-old American Anne Thomas is drawn into the maelstrom of political and criminal machinations. Reluctantly, but also a bit of her own fault, because she is curious and allows herself to be drawn in. A friendly-looking but ultimately dangerous New York police officer makes an appearance, as does a fatherly FBI agent, and the UN’s rich art collection also plays an important role
It is shadowed, cobbled together, threatened and murdered. The thriller is also interesting because it shows how difficult it was for the USA when they realized that the UN seat not only brought them prestige but also hundreds of spies from the Soviet-controlled Eastern bloc.
The USA feared that gullible Americans like the fictional Anne Thomas would be recruited as agents. The surveillance of the UN staff was intense, often quite clumsy and correspondingly annoying.
The position of women
The insights into the day-to-day workings of the UN, into the extremely hierarchical structures at the time and the blatant discrimination of women in the civil service, are also illuminating.
The men were the bosses. Often pompous, sometimes incompetent, as many owed their posts to country quotas rather than qualifications. The women were secretaries and assistants, had to look neat, wear deux-pièce and high-heeled shoes. Hardly anyone made it to an executive chair.
The slouch hats stayed
At least that has changed. But the political quarrels are back. Sievers emphasizes that the problems cannot be compared directly with those of the Cold War. Because technical progress has fundamentally changed the secret service trade.
Sievers therefore in no way denies that many things are still hidden today, that the multi-ethnic organization UNO is naturally a playground for slouches. It’s actually amazing that the first UN spy novel is only appearing now, almost 80 years after the founding of the world organization.
2023-07-29 12:34:00
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