Cover image of "The Seventh Floor," a novel about a search for a mole in the CIA

Offices on the building’s seventh floor feature plush carpets, wood paneling, and other signs of their elite occupants. Because the best appointed of these offices accommodate Finn Gosford, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Deborah Sweet, known as Debs, the agency’s Deputy Director for Operations (DDO), chief of the clandestine service. And both are new to their jobs, having vaulted into the leadership over far more competent officers. Or that, at least, is the firm opinion of Artemis Aphrodite Procter, who had antagonized them both since they’d served together in Afghanistan. Because Artemis, like most of her colleagues, is a prankster. And when one of her pranks sent Debs off the deep end, their distaste for each other hardened into loathing. Which sets the tone for much of what follows, including an intrusive search for a mole within the senior ranks of the CIA.

Searching for a mole against the Director’s orders

But the event that pulls the trigger on that mole hunt takes place not in Langley but in Singapore. One of Artemis’s field officers, Sam Joseph, meets his most highly placed agent there at the high-stakes baccarat table in a casino. Following which thugs employed by the SVR kidnap Sam when he returns to his hotel room. And he then disappears into the maw of a secret SVR prison somewhere in Russia. The event sets alarm bells ringing for Petra Devine, the agency’s head of Counterintelligence and thus its chief molehunter. Earlier leadership at the CIA might have reluctantly allowed the search to proceed, despite the disruption it would entail. But that isn’t the case now. As McCloskey observes, “Gosford and Debs were politicians and Procter was a politician’s nightmare: a competent extremist, inoculated against bullshit, unwilling to kowtow, even when it made damn good sense.” The upshot: no mole hunt.

The Seventh Floor (Artemis Aphrodite Procter #3) by David McCloskey (2024) 393 pages ★★★★☆

Photo of a prisoner under guard in a high-security Russian prison, a scene like those in this novel about a search for a mole

A prisoner under duress at a high-security prison in Russia. The photo makes clear that these top-secret facilities are exceedingly unpleasant. And in this novel Sam Joseph spends days in one. Image: BBC

Undertaking a mole hunt from outside the agency

But Artemis isn’t willing to take this lying down. And when she loudly, and profanely, protests to Gosford’s face, she finds herself rudely forced out of the agency. It’s not long before Petra is out in the cold as well. The Seventh Floor is nothing if not efficient. Now Artemis is on her own. And somehow she must find a way to determine which of her longtime friends is a traitor.

Together, the closest of them are “Bratva: their foursome’s collective moniker inside CIA. The Russia House Mafia. Mac Mason, Chief of Operations; Theo Monk, Counterintelligence; Gus Raptis, now shuttered in a Langley holding position but until recently running the fieldwork in Moscow. And finally Procter, in Moscow X—overlord of the dirty, glorious covert action programs targeting Putin and his cronies.” The list of suspects now narrows to four: Mac, Theo, Gus, and—because she’s the likeliest suspect of them all—Debs as well. But Artemis can gain access to the files within the agency only when Sam Joseph, fresh from torture at the hands of the SVR, returns home more or less whole after Mac engineers a trade. And after overcoming the challenge of convincing Sam to help, Artemis devotes every ounce of her considerable skill and inexhaustible energy to pursuing the hunt to its shocking, and deeply disturbing end.

About the author

Photo of David McCloskey, author of this novel about a search for a mole
David McCloskey. Image: Ben Torres – Dallas Morning News

The Seventh Floor is the third of the spy novels David McCloskey has written. According to his author website, which I feel the need to quote in full, “He is a former CIA analyst and former consultant at McKinsey & Company.

“While at the CIA, he wrote regularly for the President’s Daily Brief, delivered classified testimony to Congressional oversight committees, and briefed senior White House officials, Ambassadors, military officials, and Arab royalty.

“He worked in CIA field stations across the Middle East throughout the Arab Spring and conducted a rotation in the Counterterrorism Center focused on the jihad in Syria and Iraq. During his time at McKinsey, David advised national security, aerospace, and transportation clients on a range of strategic and operational issues.

“David holds an M.A. from the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies, where he specialized in energy policy and the Middle East.

“He lives in Texas with his wife and three children.”

I’ve reviewed the author’s first two spy thrillers:

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