Condor

By James Grady

Decades after his adventure in the classic Six Days of the Condor, the eponymous spy reflects on his life while awaiting his next target in this tense novella.

Ronald Malcolm, codename Condor, is still in the spy game. He may be older now, but in a world where hardly anybody sees anybody, nobody sees old. He’s the perfect choice to sit in New York City’s Penn Station and wait for what he calls “the killing train.” And while he waits for someone to take a life, he reflects on his own life. He wonders what has brought him to this moment. He looks back over memories of his childhood, his recruitment to the CIA, and that bloody day at the American Literary Historical Society that changed everything for him. But he must be careful not to get too lost on memory lane. The clock is ticking, and targets are on the move. He can’t afford to get caught with his head in the clouds . . .

Praise for James Grady

“A chilling novel of top security gone berserk . . . Breakneck . . . Not a slow minute.” —Library Journal on Six Days of the Condor

“Grady’s writing has changed dramatically over the years, evolving into a literary, impressionistic style . . . [It] is a perfect fit for the aging, unhinged, yet still-lethal Condor. This is an author writing at the top of his, or anyone else’s, game.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) on Condor: The Short Takes

• Language: English
• Publisher: MysteriousPress.com Open Road
• Release date: May 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9781504084659

James Grady

James Grady is the award-winning author of more than a dozen novels and three times as many short stories. His first novel, Six Days of the Condor, became the classic Robert Redford movie Three Days of the Condor and the current Max Irons TV series Condor. A Mystery Writers of America Edgar finalist, he has received Italy’s Raymond Chandler Medal, France’s Grand Prix Du Roman Noir, Japan’s Baka-Misu literature award, and two Regardie's magazine short-story awards.

Book preview

Condor

A Mysterious Profile

James Grady

Condor

The old man sitting in New York’s Penn Station passengers’ waiting area remembered the station’s escalator that once between killings carried him down from the street to find his redheaded lover waiting for him with a crimson rose in her hand and a slow smile of Gotchya! curling her ruby lips.

Who gets killed today? thought the old man.

That tick-tock of 2022 depended on him.

But he couldn’t help flashing on the memory of Brandi surprising him at the bottom of that escalator. Standing there as grooved steel stairs carried liar-him down, down, ever closer, her red lips smiling certainty as the rose she held clung to its petals.

He shook his head that autumn Tuesday afternoon.

Of course my mind is going to wander! I’m an old man!

Silver hair thinning and cut short for convenience or combat.

Scruffy black leather jacket unzipped for easy reach-in.

Frayed shirt a softer blue than his steel sky eyes.

‘Relaxed fit’ black jeans and scruffy black sneaker-like shoes.

Slumped in a yellow plastic chair.

In a world where hardly anyone sees anybody, nobody sees the old.

Old man. Old woman. Doesn’t matter to striding-past Brave New Worlders, their eyes locked on horizon-blocking cellphone screens crucifying their hands.

Perfect cover for a spy.

Me, the draftee who way back when someone he then called the old man pushed around bloody Cold War chess squares as The Unexpected Pawn.

Now I’m ‘the’ old man.

Sitting in a New York train station amidst ghosts.

Hearing their whispers calling me Condor.

He scanned the basketball court-sized passengers’ waiting area where hundreds of other haunted human beings hustled their tos & fros.

Two blue-uniformed police officers arrived to post on the edge of the crowd hustling over the station’s underground floor. Cop caps from Elvis Presley’s era. Body armor from 9/11. Holstered yellow Tasers. Handcuffs. Radios with earpieces. Black 9 mic-mic automatics with full stack magazines.

The White cop chewed gum.

The Black cop let the scene fill his eyes.

So far, so good, thought Condor.

Like all of us do, he flashed on: ‘How the hell did I get here?’

But nah.

Forget how.

Go for why.

Nowhere, U.S.A, a small Oh So White picket fence town back when Republican President Eisenhower insisted on educating every American kid as much as possible so we could beat Russia. The movie theater had a name. You shopped at local stores. Church bells on Sundays. Neon signs in bar windows. The pro-woman ex-mayor M.D. sold illegal abortions and everybody knew as his biz rolled gas, cafe and motel nickels & dimes from desperate outlaws into the town’s bank, just like badges and county health officials protocolled the ca-ching! illegal red stucco whorehouse with its lost eyes workers trapped behind closed curtains.

Now wind blew dust against his hometown’s whitewashed windows as Condor sat in New York’s Penn Station waiting for the killing train.

He grew up in a white house with a blue shingles roof. The only child of Spanish Flu/Depression/Dust Bowl/World War II/Hiroshima/Korean War/Berlin Wall survivors. Mom hid in the house: Bad times were outside just waiting to happen again. Dad went to work in a sports jacket like a businessman should in a world where what could be better than to be a businessman.

I was their son, thought the old man.

They loved me. Never got me.

I was a dreamer lost in stories.

I was Ronald Malcolm.

Un-coolest name anybody could think of.

A geek with thick glasses.

The total opposite of Bond, James Bond.

Who beat the bad guys. Saved the world. Swooned dream women.

Old man Condor who’d been born Ronald Malcom scanned the train station.

The cops.

The passing crowd of witnesses with cellphones that could film & post.

An Owl working her Charlie Sugar (counter-surveillance).

I can see clearly now, he thought as that reggae song echoed in his soul. Laser surgery. Contact lenses were my worst liability in my early missions.

If I’d had see-clearly-surgery when I was younger, riding escalators down—

—even made me a good shot, blinked Condor as he sat in the train station’s plastic yellow chair that would be hard to creaky old man launch from if.

And getting to that plastic yellow chair….

Surviving high school while being educated by the county library’s mystery books section. By the white screen of the movie theater back in the days when TVs

Reviews for Condor

[ladyoflorien_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

There are six novellas/short stories in the collection. Like most collections, I really enjoyed some of the stories and others not so much. The best part of the book was reading about an old spy, someone not in their prime.

[mmtz_82 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I received "Condor: The Short Takes" for free from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. Before diving into this collection of short stories and novellas, I read "Six Days of the Condor", Mr. Grady's debut novel, and the basis for the classic film "Three Days of the Condor" starring Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway. For a long time, I only knew Condor from the film, but Condor from the books is less assured and more ruthless. It's easy to see the cinematic appeal of the original tale. The stories in this collection are different, more intimate, and less straightforward. "Condor.net" is a reimagining of the original with the next generation of CIA spies and 21st century threats. I found it less interesting than the other tales in the collection which feature an older Condor, let out of the Company psychiatric asylum, taking on threats in the V (virtual world) and closer to home. Old man Condor lives life on the edge. But is he wrong about where this world is headed? I'm not sure.

[delta61 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Received this as a free book. The first story "Condor.net" is a remake of the famous "6 Days of the Condor". Waste of time. Remakes should only be limited to movies. Had previously read "Condor In the Stacks". Gave it a two out of five, only because I read it. Confusing mess of words. Won't be reading any other stories in this book, nor any other book by this author.