Hidden agendas

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The Last Supper

A Novel

Charles McCarry

Overlook Press: 390 pp., 24.95

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The Faithful Spy

A Novel

Alex Berenson

Random House: 352 pp., $24.95

IF you were to read Charles McCarry's "The Last Supper" and then follow it immediately with Alex Berenson's "The Faithful Spy," you would, in a matter of a week or two, find yourself in possession of a short, entertaining, albeit highly fictionalized, history of the CIA from its OSS beginnings in World War II through the Cold War and Vietnam to its struggles with Al Qaeda today. You would also find yourself contemplating two very different approaches to the art -- if that's the word one wants -- of the spy novel.

McCarry is one of the highly appreciated veterans of the genre, a writer of thoughtful, well-constructed prose whose works have frequently been compared to those of Graham Greene and John le Carre, which is a burden he didn't ask for and doesn't necessarily deserve. "The Last Supper" is nothing less than a full-scale biography of Paul Christopher, lead spook of McCarry's previous novels, from his birth in Weimar Germany to a peaceful retirement as the Cold War draws to an end. Or perhaps one should make that "leading victim," since Paul loses his parents and the woman he loves to the mega-historical ordeals of the 20th century and spends an arduous, annealing decade in a Chinese prison for no justifiable reason. Since Paul is one of a band of subterranean brothers, relationships with other familiar characters from McCarry's espionage epic are deepened, shadowy dots are connected and an utterly unexpected betrayal, requiring several decades to work out, is revealed.

Nothing so complicated is attempted by Berenson. He's a young New York Times reporter making his debut with a good, ripped-from-the headlines gimmick -- an American spy named John Wells penetrates Al Qaeda's inner circle, is disowned by the CIA but nevertheless must single-handedly try to prevent a dirty-bomb attack on the United States. Berenson is pretty much an action specialist whose prose is headlong and whose little gestures toward psychological nuance never delay the narrative rush of his storytelling. Essentially, he's a no-frills, plenty-of-thrills kind of guy.