The Cover Wife by Dan Fesperman

 

So this is a novel about at least one of the possible and plausible ways the intelligence agencies of the Western Allies (in this case, Germany and the US) could have dropped the ball in 1999 such that the attacks of September 11, 2001, happened. It's a pretty grim novel, for a lot of reasons--not mainly because of what happened after 1999, more because so many of the characters in the novel have as their primary interests something other than the jobs they're supposed to be doing. Long-standing bureaucracy and all-a-that, I guess; everyone playing the angles for their own personal betterment no matter the price of an operative, or some innocents, or thousands of civilians, or whatever. Not just grim, cynical: probably not entirely without justification. Competent and readable enough, a decent novel.