Don Smith’s Secret Mission: Tibet

Secret Mission: Tibet is a fairly early (1971) entry in Don Smith’s Secret Mission spy novel series. At that time there was a huge market for action-oriented spy thrillers. If you were at least a halfway competent writer and could turn out such books fairly quickly they might not make you rich but you’d certainly be able to pay the rent.

The hero of this novel is Phil Sherman (I believe he also features in some or all of the other books in this series). He’s not a professional secret agent. He’s an international businessman although not an overly successful one. He is persuaded to take on an espionage mission, not for the CIA or any of the usual suspects but for NASA. They’ve lost a couple of satellites. What worries them is that they’ve been talking to the Soviets and the Soviets have lost some satellites as well. All these satellites suddenly stopped transmitting while passing over a certain point in central Asia. It looks like foul play was involved.

A top NASA space scientist named Newton wants to find out what happened to those satellites but he wants the investigation to be secret. He’s afraid that if word gets out the US Government will get nervous and suspend the space program. He can’t ask the CIA for help - he certainly doesn’t trust those guys to carry out a discreet secret investigation. So he persuades his old pal Phil Sherman to help. Phil is sceptical but he is assured that all he has to do is get air-dropped into Tibet, place two radio direction finders, and then get air-lifted out. There’s no risk at all.

Phil Sherman has cause to regret his naïvete when he ends up imprisoned by the communist Chinese in an ancient Tibetan monastery. That’s what happens when you offer to help out an old buddy.

This novel was written at the height of hysteria over Red China. The Chinese Communists had taken over from the Russians as the chief villains in spy novels, TV series and movies. In this case the Chinese have a super-laser.

Phil isn’t the only prisoner in the monastery. There’s another American, Bill Rogers, who built that super-laser. There’s a middle-aged German, von Kruger. And there’s von Kruger’s beautiful half-Chinese daughter Suwary. The prisoners are not tightly guarded, the assumption being that the surrounding countryside is totally impassable so only a lunatic would try to escape. But Phil knows something that makes escape essential.

He was hoping to take just Rogers and the girl with him. Rogers because he is the key to the secret of the super-laser, Suwary because Phil has already discovered that she makes an enthusiastic and skilful bed-partner. He eventually finds he has to take von Kruger as well.

Most of the novel is an epic chase through hostile terrain with the Chinese snapping at the heels of the fugitives. There’s plenty of action and excitement.

However most of the interest is provided by the webs of deceit and betrayal in which the four main characters are enmeshed. Phil Sherman cannot trust a single one of them. They cannot trust each other. Phil is pretty certain that all have lied about their backgrounds and motivations. Any one of them might at any moment betray one of the others. The author handles this aspect rather well. He builds up a nice atmosphere of paranoia.

There’s also a great deal of sexual tension. Phil doesn’t know if Suwary has slept with Rogers or not, but she might have. He doesn’t like that idea. Rogers is pretty sure Suwary has slept with Phil and he really isn’t happy about it. And Suwary may have slept with some of their captors.

This is a very solid novel of its type with suspense, well-handled action sequences and huge dollops of paranoia. I liked it enough to persuade me to look for further books in the series. Highly recommended.

Note: The cover features a girl in a skimpy fur costume wielding a very large sword. Tragically this cover illustration has zero connection with anything in the book. But hey, chicks with swords do help to sell books.