The Trade

September 11, 2017
Journalist Van Dyk’s gripping follow-up to Captive—a memoir about his 2008 abduction in Afghanistan—probes the machinations of the criminals, terrorists, and governments behind his ordeal. The book’s tense, sinister first part covers his pre-kidnapping travels to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to interview Taliban figures and terrorists, a journey that required shadowy Afghan fixers to negotiate safe passage from tribal leaders and militants and ended in betrayal and his six-week captivity. Subsequent chapters follow his post-release struggle to learn who kidnapped him and why. It’s a hard slog to pry loose information, taking Van Dyk to the White House, the FBI, and the security consultants and Afghan power brokers who negotiated his release (some of whom may have orchestrated his kidnapping). The answers he gets are often enigmatic, but they paint a portrait of a burgeoning trade in hostages compounded from gangsterism, ideology, clan vendettas, and the subterfuges of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, which supports the Taliban while Washington pretends ignorance. Like a Le Carré novel, Van Dyk’s narrative conjures disorientation, danger, and paranoia as he ponders the hidden motives of the smiling, solicitous men he encounters, all the while conveying his deep-seated anguish.