“I wish I were James Bond, but I’m just a messenger,” says Sean Cross, the hero of “Vale of Tears,” Representative Peter T. King’s barely veiled 2004 thriller about a congressman who must thwart a planned “dirty bomb” attack by Qaeda operatives working in Brooklyn and on Long Island.
Even before the plot of the novel unfolds, it is a tense time for Congressman Cross, Mr. King’s alter ego. He has been assigned a police escort “ever since he had begun receiving vague phone and mail threats from self-proclaimed Islamic terrorists.” Then a series of explosions rock Long Island and Brooklyn, and Congressman Cross is forced to help “connect the dots” to prevent an even bigger attack.
As Mr. King takes the spotlight this week with his hearings on the radicalization of American Muslims, “Vale of Tears” shows he has long been considering the dangers posed by radical Muslims, as well as what role a mere congressman can play in protecting his country.
Congressman Cross (might rejected names have included Congressman Shepherd, Congressman Fisher or Congressman King O’Kings?) doesn’t get a chance to do much cloak-and-dagger work — rather, he persuades reluctant witnesses to spill the beans. He chastises Dr. Abdul Ahmed, head of a Long Island Muslim group, for failing to fully identify with America’s interests: “As I said, you can talk about the Middle East some other time. Today your brothers and sisters are the innocent Americans who were killed and injured …”
Dr. Ahmed responds: “With all respect, Congressman, I distinctly recall all the speeches you gave about the way the British were persecuting the Irish in Northern Ireland.”
Retorts the congressman: “With all respect to you, Doctor, if the I.R.A. had ever attacked Americans, I would have disowned them in a second — and I would have waited a long time before I started talking about what was going on in Northern Ireland.”
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