As I was recently re-watching Jack Ryan on Amazon Prime, they referenced the CIA’s “Seventh Floor,” to which I could do nothing other than smirk. I was laughing at an internal joke with myself for how basic a fact it is that I had just learned.
For those who don’t know, let me take a moment to provide a bit of American spy education.
The CIA - America’s Central Intelligence Agency -- is based in Langley, Virginia, a short 17-minute drive along the Potomac River to the Pentagon. But another little fun fact: the location of CIA HQ, often just cited as residing in Langley, is actually an unincorporated community used just for the area housing the CIA.
Stumbling through a bookstore is a lot like spying: You have a mission to find your next great read but intelligence is sparse. You walk in and there are displays begging for your attention and dollars. There is a friendly pot of coffee itching for you to veer off and grab a fresh cup. And other shoppers are there to get in your way.
It’s all noise. You need to find your book.
That is how it was when I found The Seventh Floor by former CIA officer David McCloskey. The cover caught my attention (read: more noise) but the back cover is what pulled me in.
I love a good suspense book -- murder, crime, spy -- you name it and I will read it.
What McCloskey does is build a suspenseful spy novel around the inner-workings of the super-secretive and ultra-powerful Seventh Floor of the CIA. This is where you need the highest security clearance and where decisions like the 2003 Iraq War and going into Abbottabad to capture Osama bin Laden are made with soundproof walls protecting those who make it there.
Robert Mortan, a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) wrote on Medium, “It’s a fortress — a nerve center where a handful of the world’s most powerful and secretive people make decisions that can tip the scales between war and peace with a single signature or a murmured command.”
And that’s what The Seventh Floor creates. It’s meetings inside the building, it’s secret phone cables and parking garage meet ups to find a leak that is housed somewhere on that floor.
Artemis (the main character) has to fight her way through attempts on her life, questioning her friends, and maybe the best moment, projectile vomiting at her boss which sets her on her spiral of going against the CIA. I mean, haven’t we all almost projectile vomited at work at some point?
The Seventh Floor is a complex weave of long-time and unquestionable loyalty mixed with suspected betrayal, and the urge and need to have people you can trust even if those same people may be the ones who would kill you if they had the chance.
Welcome to The Seventh Floor.
Want to read it for yourself? Pick up your copy of The Seventh Floor by David McCloskey.
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