Gary Born is a renowned international lawyer and author. He has represented countries and businesses in nearly 1,000 international disputes around the world, including cases involving Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Yemen. Mr. Born has also published widely on international law, including the leading commentaries on international arbitration and litigation. He has taught at universities in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa, including Harvard Law School, National University of Singapore, and St. Gallen University. He lives in London, with two Maine Coons, and travels widely. The File is his first novel
The File follows Sara West, a tenacious botany graduate student on a scientific expedition in the heart of the African jungle. During her research, she stumbles upon a cache of WWII Nazi files in the wreck of a German bomber hidden deep within the jungle. Those hidden files reveal the location of a multibillion-dollar war chest, secretly deposited by the Nazis in numbered Swiss bank accounts at the end of WWII. But Sara isn’t the only one interested in the war chest. Former KGB agent Ivan Petronov and Franklin Kerrington III, deputy director of the CIA, both have deeply personal reasons for acquiring the files Sara has found. With two dangerous men — and their teams of hit men — on her trail, will Sara be able to escape the jungle alive?
Born stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about writing and researching the book:
Author’s guest articles are sometimes about the author, so I’ll say a few things about me, and the book I wrote — but I want to start with someone else.
The File is about a young woman, Sara West. She doesn’t seem so different at first glance, and she certainly doesn’t think she’s different from most other people. But she is.
Working with her father and friends on a research expedition in Uganda, Sara discovers the wreckage of a Nazi bomber from World War II. In the wreck, which has been hidden for 70 years, Sara finds a file of documents, which contain information on secret Nazi accounts in Swiss private banks, holding billions of dollars. They also have the names of the Nazis most important foreign spies, including in the United States.
Two incredibly different, but equally evil, men almost immediately learn of Sara’s discovery: Ivan Petronov, a former KGB agent who has been hunting for the Nazi bank deposits for decades, and Franklin Kerrington III, the CIA’s deputy director, whose patrician family’s secret support for the Nazis would be revealed by the file. Petronov and Kerrington dispatch rival teams of mercenaries to Africa to retrieve the file — Petronov for the Nazi money and Kerrington to hide his family’s traitorous past.
Petronov and his lover (a beautiful former Chinese spy) lead a Russian special forces team to Africa and slaughter Sara’s colleagues and father. Sara flees, with the Nazi file in her backpack, and Petronov’s team hunts her through the jungle. And it’s then the reader realizes why she’s so different.
Using wilderness skills she learned on earlier research expeditions with her father, Sara escapes the Russians, eventually turning the tables and vanquishing many of her pursuers. The Russians nonetheless corner her in a remote African town but then are themselves attacked by Kerrington’s men. Jeb Fisher, a young, ex-CIA operative, is sent to kill Sara, but instead he both discovers Kerrington’s evil secrets and falls in love with Sara.
Sara and Fisher hijack a plane from a nearby U.N. airbase and fly north, before running out of fuel and parachuting into the Libyan desert. After nearly dying of thirst, Fisher commandeers a Libyan militia Jeep, and they make their way to the Mediterranean and board a ship smuggling refugees into Europe. Once in Italy, the two head north, with Sara determined to uncover the secrets of the Nazi file and avenge the killings of her father and friends. Still tracked by Kerrington and a new team of Petronov’s Russian mercenaries, Sara and Fisher make their way to Zurich, where they confront a corrupt Swiss bank director with the files detailing the Nazi bank accounts. Sara plans a bloody showdown on the premises of the Swiss bank and, well, you’ll have to read the book to find what happens — but it’s not necessarily what you would think. Because, well, Sara is different.
I wrote the book about Sara. She inspired me, like she inspired Jeb Fisher, and took me along with her. I think you will like her, too.
I also think that you will like the stories of Sara and Jeb, who start out not trusting each other and then take things from there. It helps — or maybe not — that they are thrown together in the world’s most exciting places: the Rwenzori Mountains (the so-called Mountains of the Moon), where the plants look like the Pandora universe in Avatar, only better; the Sahara Desert, which almost gets the better of Jeb; Italy, which is impossible not to love, especially Rome and Lucca; and finally, Switzerland, which needs no explanation.
This is a story about Sara. Who turns out to be very different. But it’s also about all of us, and the many different pieces that make us whole.
There’s a lot about Sara in The File. But it has pieces of me as well, mostly the places, but some of the people.
The jungle scenes, when Sara finds the wrecked Nazi bomber and then runs from the Russians who are hunting her, were inspired by the couple months that I spent in the jungles of Congo and Uganda some years ago. Hiking along jungle trails that nobody but hunters used, with local guides who never seemed to get lost, provided the raw material for many of the early chapters of the book. I tried to make those scenes, with the forbidden beauty of the jungle, as realistic as I could.
The U.N. airbase came from Somalia, at the UN peacekeepers’ base outside Mogadishu – where the planes have to bank sharply in from the ocean to avoid missiles and small arms fire from the ground. I visited there for work a few years ago, and the airfield’s barbed-wire fences and security gates were the inspiration for the base where Jeb and Sara hijacked their plane back to Europe.
The scenes in the Libyan desert and along the coastline were drawn from the hitchhiking I did across the Sahara and the Sinai a few years ago. The emptiness of the desert, and the brutal heat of the day, came from the surroundings of Tamanraset and El Golea. The scenes of Jeb and Sara waiting alongside an empty desert road for most of a night and day were borrowed from those same destinations.
And the scenes in Italy, from Calabria to Rome to Lucca, come from a dozen trips to one of the world’s most beautiful countries. Sara’s trip with Jeb up the Italian boot retraces trips I have done along the exact same roads.
As for the people, Kerrington and Petronov come, unsurprisingly, from Washington and Moscow, respectively. No single person combined all of the traits, evil and otherwise, of either man. But many in both places contributed to both Kerrington and Petronov.
Most important, though, is Sara. She too contains pieces from people I have met. But more than any other character, she is herself and unique — making her own choices, different from what I had started out intending or what others might have chosen. In those chapters, I was really just along for the ride.
You can learn more about Gary Born and his books via his Amazon profile and follow him on Goodreads. The File is available via Histria Books and all major bookstores.
