Three Stooges Chase Terror
A Most Wanted Man, John Le Carre’, 2008
When it is learned that three 9/11 terrorists including leader Mohammad Atta, were based in Hamburg, that city became the European epicenter for the war on terror. Unfortunately German, British, and American anti terror intelligence resemble the three stooges far more than they resemble the cold war spies that preceded them. But what they lack in understanding they more than make up for in high tech video and audio spy tools.
Hamburg Hauptbahnhof 
A young man shows up in Hamburg railway station videos and is quickly identified as a most wanted terrorist who is escaped from prisons in Russia, Turkey, and Sweden. Who he is and what he has supposedly done by way of terror is totally unknown to the intelligence community. He claims to be a Chechen Muslim but speaks only a few words of Chechen, his primary language is Russian, and he knows almost nothing of the Islamic faith.
The young man is taken in by a young Turkish boxer and his mother and their house falls under incredible levels of bugging and surveillance. A young, blond, bicycle riding, genes wearing lawyer who carries her legal papers in a backpack soon shows up at the Turks house and is identified as the independent youngest daughter of a very powerful German family (politics and law) who works for a pro bono amnesty group and has been assigned the young man because she speaks fluent Russian having been raised as a diplomatic brat in Moscow. The young man and everyone who meets the bicycle riding lawyer falls in love with her. Next to show up at the Turks’ house is the Scottish propriety of a private bank operating exclusively in Hamburg. He immediately falls in love with the young lawyer.
Inconspicuous spy-mobile 
The spies are totally clueless but quickly and quietly converge on Hamburg in their private Helicopters out of Berlin. They insist on moving around Hamburg in inconspicuous convoys of black Mercedes. The Hamburg spy station kidnaps the young lawyer for interrogation and British intelligence pays a very threatening visit the the Scottish banker. Nothing subtle about these guys. The woman assigned to interrogate the lawyer falls in love with her.
They learn that the boy is the sole heir of a Russian military man who raped the boy’s mother who died shortly after giving birth. During the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian father has moved a small fortune to the Scottish private bank for laundering in special accounts overseen by the current banker’s father. The current banker wishes these Russian accounts code named Lipizzaner for the horse breeds ability to turn from black to white as they age would simply disappear. The Russian raised the boy and has now died.
Lipizzaner White Mare and Black Colt 
The Hamburg intelligence officer who uniquely speaks Russian and Arabic, has been closely watching an Islamic cleric and teacher who operates a vast charity network. He has concluded that the cleric’s charity is only 5% dirty, i.e. only 5% of the money finds its way into illegal and terror operations, which make the charity practically saintly. He comments that most multi-national corporations operate at about 50% legal.
A scheme is hatched by the three intelligence groups to convince the boy to give his inheritance that he considers dirty to the saintly cleric in return for a promise of German residence and an education. The cleric would be recruited by the Hamburg office to collaborate in return for the large donation which would allow intelligence to infiltrate Islamic terror networks around the world.
Unfortunately for the fate of this complicated scheme, we are dealing with the three stooges, one of which is under the control of W and Darth Vader. Entertaining, informative, and bleak.