Declare

Declare (2001) is a supernatural spy novel by American author Tim Powers. The novel presents a secret history of the Cold War, and earned several major fantasy fiction awards.

The non-linear plot, shifting back and forth in time from the 1940s to 1960s, mainly concerns Andrew Hale, a scholar and occasional operative for a secret British spy organization. Early in World War II, Hale is recruited as part of Operation Declare, an investigation of the true nature of several mysterious beings living on Mount Ararat, and how the Soviet Union has attempted to harness their vast supernatural powers. In this effort he is opposed by real-life communist traitor Kim Philby, a supporting character in the novel, who did travel extensively in the region. The novel proposes that the Great Game, the prolonged strategic conflict between the British and Russian empires in the 19th century over domination of Central Asia, was actually part of Operation Declare. The Okhrana, or Tsarist secret police, are cast as the Russian counterpart to Operation Declare.

A sub-plot concerns Hale's on-off romance with Spaniard Elena Teresa Ceniza-Bendiga. A devoted Comintern agent and lapsed Catholic when she first meets Hale, Ceniza-Bendiga eventually rejects communism. While imprisoned in Moscow's notorious Lubyanka prison, she returns to her faith upon discovering the horrible motivation behind the deliberate mass starvation and violent political purges of Stalinist Russia: the placation of an entity called Zat al-Dawahi ("Mistress of Misfortunes") or Machikha Nash ("our stepmother"), a demonic being who demanded human sacrifice in exchange for protecting the nation from foreign invasion.