This Saturday, 10 June, at 12 noon, the diplomat and former director of the CNI will sign copies at the Madrid Book Fair

Jorge Dezcallar presents his new novel "Operation False Flag"

PHOTO/ATALAYAR/GUILLERMO LÓPEZ - Jorge Dezcallar
photo_camera PHOTO/ATALAYAR/GUILLERMO LÓPEZ - Jorge Dezcallar

The diplomat and ex-director of the CNI Jorge Dezcallar returns to the novel with ""Operation False Flag", a new adventure of Asís García Fernández, the "accidental spy" of his first foray into fiction, now on a mission of unequivocal topicality: from the Kremlin to Tindouf. The author of "Embracing the World. Geopolitics: where we are going" will visit the Madrid Book Fair 2023 and will dedicate copies of his works next Saturday, 10 June, from 12:00 to 14:00, at Lex Nova (stand 330).

Spanish intelligence services in Madrid have detected strange communications between a Russian citizen and a member of the Polisario Front. They soon realise that the Kremlin is seeking to create a new conflict between Morocco and Algeria to distract attention from the war in Ukraine. The CNI has to act quickly if it wants to avoid another international conflict, and the only way to do so without leaving any traces is to turn to Asis, who has started a new life with his wife in Mallorca. However, when you have been a spy, even by accident, your past always comes knocking at the door.

"This is a fictional story that uses a background as real as the war in Ukraine and the Maghreb struggle for hegemony between Morocco and Algeria," explains Dezcallar. His new spy novel, "Operation False Flag", owes its title to "that operation in which someone is incited to do something he is convinced is in his interest, when the one who is really interested is the one who pushes him. And all without leaving any traces". Because "in love and war, things are not always what they seem. And when spies are involved, they never are".

Operación Falsa Bandera
Operation False Flag

"From Sun Tzu, five hundred years before Christ, to Clausewitz, deceiving the enemy has been one of the keys to victories which, let us not forget, are better when they are not fought. False flag operations fall into this category of hiding reality behind a smokescreen to conceal the real instigators, and my novel is a very clear example of a military operation carried out by people who think they are doing it for their own benefit when in reality they are being manipulated without realising it by others who are the real beneficiaries of the operation," says the Spanish ambassador. 

Dezcallar ventures that the destruction of the Nordstream pipeline could be such an operation. Or "the recent destruction of the Kakhovka dam, near Kherson in Ukraine, at the beginning of the Ukrainian offensive to try to regain the ground lost to Russia. This has caused an environmental and humanitarian disaster. Who did it? Russia blames Ukraine, and Ukraine, NATO and the EU accuse Russia. It would be a perfect false flag operation if the Russians had convinced Ukrainian militiamen or resistance fighters to blow up the dam to encourage their army's offensive... when in fact it delays it because tanks cannot advance in flooded terrain. I don't know, but I leave it as a hypothesis".

"It is clear that my forty years of diplomatic life and the fact that I have directed the Spanish intelligence service, the CNI, somehow come to the fore when I write an espionage plot against a background of regional geopolitics," says the author of "Operation False Flag". "I suppose my experience makes the procedures I relate more plausible. And it has allowed me to get to know at close quarters a group of men and women with a high sense of state, true patriots dedicated body and soul to a very solitary job that benefits the defence and security of Spain and the Spanish people. The world of the intelligence services is a world of shadows and this means that the general public does not know what spies do. My novels try to fill this gap and discover their honour", says Dezcallar.

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