Faceless: Death has no face

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Faceless: Death has no face (original title: I Am Pilgrim ), published in German in 2014, is the debut novel by former journalist and screenwriter Terry Hayes . It was released in the UK on July 18, 2013 . On July 17, 2014, MGM bought the film rights.

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An American orphan boy grows up with very wealthy foster parents and successfully completes a medical degree at Harvard . He is sensitive and has learned to pretend, which makes him ideal for the secret service. After graduating, a US intelligence agency recruits him. After murdering a leading agent who betrayed secrets to the Russians in Moscow, he pursues a career in this organization and receives the prestigious leadership position of Riders of the Blue . After the collective failure of the US intelligence services that lead to the terrorist attacks of September 11th, his organization is disbanded. Peter Campbell, his code name, retires and writes a book on forensic pathology . This is of course published under a false name and he lives unrecognized in Paris. An ambitious New York police officer, Ben Bradley, determines Campbell's true identity and tries to persuade him to use his knowledge in the fight against terrorism. Campbell is initially horrified that he has been exposed, but then goes back to New York and tries to help Bradley in a particularly mysterious murder case: A woman who used September 11 to go into hiding murdered another woman and gained her knowledge from Campbell's book applied precisely.

At the same time, the novel describes the life story of Saudis Zakaria al-Nassouri. At the age of 14, this pious boy had to watch his father being sentenced to death for expressing criticism of the Saudi ruling family and publicly beheaded in Jeddah . The outlawed al-Nassouri family had to leave the country humiliated and impoverished and lived on in Bahrain . Zakaria secretly joined the Muslim Brotherhood, left his mother and two sisters, and went to Afghanistan at the age of 16 to fight the Soviet occupiers as a mujahideen . His extraordinary bravery in the face of the enemy secured him the friendship and respect of a warlord who became a powerful man after defeating the Soviets. Zakaria al-Nassouri obtained false papers, went to Beirut, studied medicine and married a Palestinian woman. While he was doing humanitarian work in Gaza, his wife was killed by an Israeli missile . From the Israeli point of view, it was merely collateral damage as the attack was aimed at other people. He promised his dying wife that he would look after their child, who suffered from Down syndrome . Zakaria al-Nassouri decided to destroy the United States. He stole smallpox viruses from a Syrian laboratory and modified them to carry out a biological attack on the United States. He went to Afghanistan to test the effectiveness of the virus on three Western hostages. Here his old war comrade, the warlord, helped him. He locked the hostages in a dungeon in an Afghan ghost village and successfully tested his lethal biological weapon on them. He tried to remove the bodies and was surprised by an Australian military unit. He narrowly escaped. The Australians were able to recover the bodies and turned them over to the United States, which discovered the modified smallpox virus.

Campbell is reactivated and meets the US President . The only lead he has is an encrypted phone call made from Afghanistan to a woman in Bodrum . Campbell, code-named Pilgrim , travels to Bodrum with a cover story: He is an FBI agent and is investigating the murder in New York . His contact person is the dismissive Turkish Commissioner Leyla Cumali. On the side, Pilgrim solves the murder case and finds out that Leyla Cumali was the woman on the phone. He concludes that the smallpox virus killer he only calls the Saracen must be Cumalis' brother. He determined Cumali's birth name: al-Nassouri. After a trip to Saudi Arabia, he and his colleagues from the Saudi secret service Mabahith determined his life story, but did not get any further because he was missing a name and al-Nassouri's trail was lost after the war in Afghanistan.

The Saracen has meanwhile traveled to Germany and started to work in production for a US pharmaceutical company near Karlsruhe . There he puts the viruses in vaccination vials. In this way, he can send his deadly cargo to the United States, where the doctors themselves inject it into the victims. Pilgrim, who is now at a loss, knows no way out. He thinks that the sister could be taken to a secret CIA torture prison. However, he believes that she could warn her brother over the phone and that the torture would not be of any use. When thinking about hunting strategies from the animal kingdom, he thinks of the crocodile , which, unlike the hunters, lurks for its victim. Pilgrim discovers that Cumalis 'son is really Zakarias' son. Cumali took him in after his mother's death. Pilgrim sets a trap for Zakaria, exploiting his only weakness, his love for his son. A dramatic showdown takes place in the amphitheater in Bodrum, with Leyla and her brother still resorting to the help of Albanian and Greek gangsters. Ben Bradley, who threatens the murder of Zakarias' son, succeeds in getting Zakaria to divulge full information about his plan to destroy him.

The gangsters are killed, Zakaria judges himself and only Leyla and Pilgrim survive. Pilgrim informs the President that he can just stop the threat in the USA. Pilgrim lets Leyla walk so her son doesn't have to grow up an orphan. Pilgrim recovers from his injuries and withdraws entirely.

At the end of the novel he realizes that it is his destiny to work in the police / secret service and plans to resume the work of the agent.

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An excerpt from Rudyard Kipling's poem The Young British Soldier plays an important role in the novel :

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
And go to your God like a soldier.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Maslin, Janet : A Superspy Races to Halt Armaggedon, 'I Am Pilgrim,' by Terry Hayes . In: The New York Times . June 16, 2014.
  2. ↑ [1]
  3. Jump up ↑ Tatiana Siegal: Matthew Vaughn to Direct 'I Am Pilgram' for MGM (Exclusive) . The Hollywood Reporter. 29th September 2015.
  4. ↑ Alison Flood: David Nicholls and David Walliams win top prizes at National Book Awards . In: The Guardian . November 27, 2014. Accessed March 14, 2015.

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