David Ignatius is the author of the new novel Phantom Orbit. His other novels include The Paladin. A columnist for The Washington Post, he lives in Washington, D.C.
Q: What inspired you to write Phantom Orbit, and how did you create your character Ivan Volkov?
A: Phantom Orbit began with two ideas: I wanted to write about space weapons—which I think are the fascinating, super-scary “high frontier” of military and intelligence activities—and I wanted to have a Russian hero who embodied the qualities of Russians whose lives and families were destroyed after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The two came together in this novel.
I had an unusual research problem: My character Ivan was born in Magnitogorsk, the Pittsburgh of Russia, deep in the Urals, a city that was devastated in the post-Soviet era. I was planning to travel to Magnitogorsk to do research and had obtained a Russian visa.
But then Russia invaded Ukraine, and for some strange reason Russia put me on its sanctions list, banning me from travel there. So, I had to invent Ivan and his world using the internet and my imagination.
Part of Ivan’s story takes place in the tragic world that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. I’ve seen that conflict close up in four trips to Ukraine since the war began—some of them focused on reporting about the use of high-tech space weapons in the war.
Q: As a novelist and columnist, how do the two coexist for you?
A: I thought when I published my first novel Agents of Innocence in 1987 that I would have to choose between the two vocations. But I couldn’t decide which fork in the road to take, and I’m glad I didn’t—because as it worked out, my journalism and fiction support and reinforce each other.
Reporting my columns, I am constantly travelling the terrain of the spy novel—journeying abroad to Ukraine, the Middle East, Europe and Asia. I write columns about those places for The Washington Post, twice a week. But on any subject that really engages me. I have more to say than you can fit into the standard 800-word package of a newspaper column.
Writing fiction lets me unpack these stories and people—and paint on a much broader canvas where I can let the story be as complicated and ambiguous as most things are in real life.
I think being a reporter/columnist makes me a better novelist, more grounded in fact. And the imaginative stretch of writing fiction makes me a better journalist who can use language more creatively to tell stories.
The biggest reason, to be honest, is that I love both pursuits and couldn’t bear to give either one up.
Q: Can you say more about how you researched the novel, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?
A: I described my research in Russia—and the bizarre fact that I got put on the “banned” list—I’ll bet I’m the only novelist who can say that!
In addition, I tried to immerse myself in the world space operations. I met with two heads of the newly-created U.S. Space Force, and some of their strategists. I visited the National Reconnaissance Office, the agency the spy-satellite agency whose very existence was once secret. I visited the amazing government-backed think tank for space operations, called the Aerospace Corp., in Los Angeles.
What surprised me in my space research was the astonishing creativity of new startups in space—the best example is Elon Musk’s “Starlink.” I talked to his company and a dozen other space entrepreneurs to understand the technologies I was writing about in my book.
And as always in researching my fiction, I talked to many intelligence officers to get a feel for details—including the topic of sexual harassment in the CIA, which is a subplot in the book.
Q: The Publishers Weekly review of the novel called it “contemporary cloak-and-dagger intrigue at its finest.” What do you think of that description?
A: I was very pleased and flattered. You work hard on a book, and it’s immensely gratifying when readers—especially reviewers—understand what you’re trying to say.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m working on a novel about the intelligence battles between the United States and China, called The Tao of Deception, that will expand a short 25,000-word version that was serialized in four parts last summer in The Washington Post.
And I’m writing another short novel for serialization this summer about some deadly Russian intelligence operations in the United States, tentatively titled Little Moscow. I plan to expand it, as well, to book length in rich detail. I don’t think this one will get me off the “banned” list.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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