It has been almost a quarter century since the fall of the Soviet Union, but the settings for classic espionage and suspense novels have been slow to take root in the obvious new center of intrigue: Beijing. Adam Brookes, formerly a longtime China correspondent for the BBC, changed all that this year with the publication of “Night Heron,” a page turner that takes the reader from China’s far west to the streets of the fascinating Chinese capital, pulsing with power and danger.The flawed hero, Philip Mangan, is, like Mr. Brookes, a British journalist. Mr. Mangan finds himself enmeshed in a spy ring when an escapee from a labor camp, a burly man known as Peanut, reactivates a decades-old espionage network he had set up with British intelligence. In an interview, Mr. Brookes discussed his novel, which is published by a division of the Hachette Book Group. Excerpts follow:
苏联解体已经过去将近四分之一个世纪，如今新的阴谋中心显然是北京，但是经典间谍悬疑小说在这里扎根的速度还很慢。曾长期担任BBC驻京记者的亚当·布鲁克斯(Adam Brookes)今年出版了《夜鹭》(Night Heron)，改变了这种情况。这本引人入胜的小说把读者从中国的西部边陲带到迷人首都的街头，这里涌动着权力和危险。书中性格上有缺陷的主人公菲利普·曼根(Philip Mangan)和布鲁克斯一样是英国记者。一个名为“花生”(Peanut)的壮实男人从劳改营中逃出来，重新激活几十年前他与英国情报机构建立的间谍网络，曼根发现自己陷入了该网络。在采访中，布鲁克斯谈论了自己的小说。该书由阿歇特出版集团(Hachette Book Group)的旗下出版社出版。以下是采访节选：

Q. What was the inspiration behind “Night Heron”? Is it something you always wanted to do?
问：《夜鹭》的灵感来源是什么？它是你一直想写的东西吗？
A. I didn’t harbor a deep ambition to be a fiction writer. I’d always thought of myself as a reporter. Fiction sort of crept up on me. I trace the start of the process back to an odd experience I had in Beijing when I was based there as a correspondent for the BBC.
答：我并没有特别想成为小说家。我一直认为自己是记者。写小说的想法是悄悄在我头脑中产生的。它起源于我在北京担任BBC驻外记者时的一次奇特经历。
An elderly Chinese man came to the bureau and tried to hand me classified documents. He strongly implied he wanted to pass secrets to the British government, and wanted me to help him do it. I’m pretty certain it was a provocation of some kind, someone dangling secrets at me to see what I’d do. I sent him packing. But in the months and years that followed, I kept thinking about him sitting there on the sofa, clutching his documents and spouting these ludicrously dangerous suggestions, and I found myself spinning a story around him. As the story took shape, the elderly man morphed into a rotund, sharp-eyed rogue named Peanut, and the story became “Night Heron.”
一个上了年纪的中国男人来到社里，想交给我一些机密文件。他强烈暗示我，他想向英国政府传送机密，想让我帮忙。我确信他是在挑拨，向我炫示机密，想看看我的反应。我把他打发走了。但是在之后的几个月甚至几年里，我不断想起他坐在沙发上，拿着文件，喋喋不休地说着荒唐、危险的建议，我围绕着他编了一个故事。这个故事成形后，那个上了年纪的男人变成了一个名叫“花生”的圆圆胖胖、目光敏锐的无赖，这个故事就是《夜鹭》。
Q. Were there any models that you used? Any famous espionage thrillers that you consulted? Robert Ludlum? John le Carré?
问：你参考了任何样本吗？有没有参阅什么著名的间谍惊悚小说？比如罗伯特·勒德拉姆(Robert Ludlum)或约翰·勒卡雷(John le Carré)的作品?
A. I’ve read every word of le Carré and marveled at how he puts the spy novel to serious purpose, how he combines suspense and superb character-driven writing. For atmosphere and economy, Alan Furst. For pace and plot, well, all the greats, Robert Ludlum, Len Deighton, Robert Littell. “Night Heron” is first and foremost a suspense novel, but when it aspires to be a little more, it looks up at le Carré for instruction.
答：我读了勒卡雷的所有作品，为他把间谍小说用于严肃目的，把悬疑和极佳的角色导向写作融为一体而惊叹。我向艾伦·弗斯特(Alan Furst)学习气氛的营造和行文简洁；向所有伟大的作家学习节奏的把握和情节的设计，比如罗伯特·勒德拉姆、伦恩·戴顿(Len Deighton)和罗伯特·里特尔(Robert Littell)。《夜鹭》首先是一部悬疑小说，但它想不至于此时，就向勒卡雷学习。
Q. Were any of the characters drawn from your own experiences? And you? How much is Philip Mangan like Adam Brookes, BBC Beijing correspondent?
问：有没有哪个人物是根据你的亲身经历创作的？菲利普·曼根与你有多少相似之处？
A. Plenty of “Night Heron” ‘s characters draw on encounters that I’ve had over my years as a correspondent: the officious policeman; the quiet, dangerous security type; the smooth and conniving diplomat; Chinese men and women bewildered by change. Philip Mangan, who is my journalist character, shares both my love of reporting and my frustrations with it. But the big difference between him and me is that I told the man who came to my bureau to take his secrets and leave. Philip Mangan didn’t, and through his own vanity, restlessness and misplaced curiosity, was drawn into espionage.
答：《夜鹭》中的很多人物源于我当记者这么多年遇到的各种人：指手画脚的警察；沉默危险的国安人员；搞密谋的圆滑外交官；面对变化不知所措的中国男人和女人。我笔下的记者菲利普·曼根跟我一样，热爱记者工作，也为它感到沮丧。但我跟他最大的区别是我让那个来社里找我的男人带着他的机密离开；菲利普·曼根则不然，由于虚荣、不安分以及不合时宜的好奇心，他被卷入了间谍网络。
Q. There haven’t been too many spy thrillers set in China. Why do you think that is and is it changing?
问：以中国为背景的间谍惊悚故事不多。你觉得原因是什么？你觉得情况在变化吗？
A. I think many readers find China quite forbidding territory. The history can seem bleak and alien, the terrain hard to visualize and navigate. Names are a big problem. The Romanization of Chinese words in the pinyin system makes them very hard to recognize unless you’ve learned the rules of pinyin while studying Chinese. What on earth is a non-Chinese speaker to make of words like xue, or qiu or zhi?
答：我觉得很多读者认为中国是一片禁土，认为那里的历史阴暗、陌生，那里的地貌难以想像和驾驭。名字是个大问题。除非你在学中文时学过拼音规则，否则很难辨识汉字的拼音系统。一个不懂中文的人怎么可能会念xue、qiu和zhi这样的拼音呢？
I’ve tried in “Night Heron” to keep the reader who is new to China oriented, and to make sure that I chose names and locations that people can pronounce and keep straight. I’ve tried to show something of China in all its variousness, in its humor, the scope of its culture. In the novel, you’ll come across a little Chinese poetry, some history as experienced and felt by the characters. People have said they like the description of food in the novel because that’s something that everyone can relate to.
为了让不太熟悉中国的读者不至于一头雾水，我在《夜鹭》中选用的人名和地名都是容易念、不会混淆的。我尽量展示中国的多样性、精神气质和文化广度。在小说中，你会读到一点中国诗歌以及书中人物经历过或感受到的历史。有读者说他们喜欢小说中的食物描述，因为它跟每个人都有关系。
I think there is lots of room for spy fiction that takes China seriously as a subject. We know that China spies energetically on Western countries, and there’s a growing body of evidence that we spy vigorously on China, the opaque and complex emerging power. As someone said to me at the beginning of the process of getting “Night Heron” published, Beijing is the new Berlin. The West’s future with a strong and unpredictable China is undefined. The stakes are there. The stories should be there, too.
我觉得以中国为严肃主题的间谍小说还有很大写作空间。我们知道，中国针对西方国家的间谍活动十分活跃，有越来越多的证据表明，我们也在中国积极进行间谍活动，因为中国是个不透明的、复杂的新兴大国。在《夜鹭》的出版过程之初，有人对我说，北京是新的柏林。由于中国的强大和不可预测，西方国家的未来也变得难以预料。那里利害攸关。故事也应该发生在那里。
Q. The novel’s pace is really fast. How hard was it to craft the plot in a way that kept things moving so fast?
问：这本小说的节奏非常快。设计如此快速推进的情节有多难？
A. Hard. The editing process was everything, and I had some very serious help. Professional editors know how to do this stuff, and I listened and learned. I think coming from a background in broadcast journalism might have helped a little with the pacing. Writing for broadcast makes you write tight, and gives you a feel for the rhythms of speech.
答：挺难的。编辑过程是关键，我得到了一些非常重要的帮助。专业编辑知道如何做这件事，我倾听他们的意见，向他们学习。我觉得我的广播新闻背景可能对把握节奏也有所帮助。为广播撰稿会让你行文紧凑，注意话语韵律。
Q. How much research did you do for the novel in China? Did you go out to Qinghai Province, for example, for the labor camp breakout scene? And how much time did you spend in Beijing? How did you learn about the details of the government agencies in both the Chinese and British governments?
问：你为这部以中国为背景的小说做了多少研究？比如说，你是否曾为劳改营越狱的场景而远赴青海？你在北京待了多长时间？你是怎么知道中国和英国的政府机构的细节的？
A. I’ve traveled a lot in China over the years, beginning back in the 1980s when I was a student in Beijing. Seven years as a reporter there gave me a sort of reservoir of scenes and atmospheres to draw on. As for the elements of the novel related to the intelligence agencies — Chinese, British and American — I assembled what I could about how these agencies work and I imagined outwards from there. I had some help from people who know the intelligence trade, and there’s more than you might imagine in the public domain these days — in academia, court records and such like. Living in Washington helps. This city is full of intelligence types, and you can listen to the way they speak. It’s always going to be hard for an outsider to portray the spy world with verisimilitude, but some of the plot threads in “Night Heron” mirror real-life cases. I’ll leave you to figure out which ones.
答：这么多年我去过中国的很多地方，最早是在20世纪80年代，当时我在北京读书。我在北京做了七年记者，积蓄了很多可以借用的场景和氛围。至于小说中与情报机构有关的元素——中国的、英国和美国的——我尽我所能搜集关于这些机构运行情况的资料，然后展开想像。我从了解情报行业的人那里得到了一些帮助，如今你能在公共领域得到的信息超乎你的想像，比如学界和法庭笔录等。住在华盛顿也有所帮助。这座城市充满了各种情报机构，你可以倾听他们讲话的方式。让一个外行人逼真地描绘间谍世界总会比较难，不过《夜鹭》中的某些情节线索反映的是真实情况。具体是哪些我还是留给你来猜测吧。
Q. That big corporation, Shady Creek, is ominous. Anything analogous in real life? How did the idea of having it as an alternate power come about?
问：那个庞大的公司——暗溪(Shady Creek)——非常凶险。现实生活中有没有类似的机构？让它作为替代势力的想法是怎么产生的？
A. I put a quotation at the start of the novel which refers to the growth of an “espionage-industrial complex.” It’s clear that the private sector now plays a significant role in the intelligence activities of the U.S. and U.K. Private corporations supply equipment, manpower, analytic expertise and computing and communications capacity to the intelligence agencies, and on occasion they appear to supply people to carry out operations. With Shady Creek, I’ve tried to imagine how private equity might view opportunities in this growing world of intelligence contracting. Espionage may have been one of the last activities to be conducted solely by the state. Not anymore.
答：我在小说开头有一段引语，说的是“间谍工业联合企业”的增长。如今私营公司在美国和英国的情报活动中显然扮演着重要角色。私营公司为情报机构提供设备、人力、专业分析意见以及计算机和通讯能力，它们似乎偶尔也提供从事间谍活动的人员。我想通过暗溪公司来想像私营企业如何看待不断膨胀的情报外包业的机会。间谍活动可能是最后几项单独由国家从事的活动之一。不再会有了。
Q. When will the next book be out? And with Hollywood so entranced with the Chinese movie market, is there a chance of this becoming a movie? Or is the small screen more realistic?
问：下一本书何时出版？现在好莱坞对中国电影市场非常着迷，这本小说是否有可能拍成电影？还是更有可能拍成电视剧？
A. The manuscript of “Night Heron” ‘s sequel has just gone to the editors at Little, Brown and is due out in the first half of next year. “Night Heron” has been optioned for the small screen, which I think would suit it well. We wait to see how that develops!
答：《夜鹭》续集的草稿已经交给利特尔&布朗出版社(Little, Brown)的编辑们，计划明年上半年出版。《夜鹭》的电视剧改编权已经卖出，我觉得它非常适合拍成电视剧。结果如何，让我们拭目以待！