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Gaither Stewart

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Lily Pad Roll Paperback – August 27, 2012

by Gaither Stewart (Author)

5.0 6 ratings

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With his new 'spy novel', Lily Pad Roll-a sequel to The Trojan Spy-Gaither Stewart reinforces his claim to join the distinguished ranks of authors like Graham Greene and John le Carré who are not only great storytellers, but whose stories burn with a passion for truth and justice. The 'political' thriller plays an important role in today's world, filling a gap left by the near-total demise of investigative journalism. Stewart "tells it like it is"-and not yesterday's news, but the here and now: in this case, the surreptitious spread of Western neo-imperialism across the planet, and in particular its agenda of encirclement and attempted emasculation of the "old enemy", Russia.

Stewart marshals his sometimes unruly cast of engaging characters with consummate skill. In that manner, Lily Pad Roll offers a fresh perspective on world events, unraveling layer after layer the deceit concealed in the imposition of "democracy" on a recalcitrant world. Georgia, Syria, Serbia and Iran may not seem to have much in common, but all four are influenced by the same forces. When a young journalist travels through Eastern Europe to investigate America's new military presence among post-communist countries torn between fragile democracy and a shifting geopolitical situation, he himself falls into the murderous sights of US secret services. The author's deep understanding of the region enables him to present the story behind the story, from the perspective of local people, without ever losing sight of breaking events and the reality that the US continues its century-old containment of Russia by any means necessary, even at the risk of a true cataclysmic global war.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Lily Pad Roll is an atmospheric and disquisitive thriller that casts US military presence along Russia's Eastern European border in a light American readers may find shocking. --Mike Hopping
Journalist and novelist
Author of MacTiernan's Bottle

From the Author

People often ask me, "Why did you call this novel Lily Pad Roll?" The answer is simple and should be known by most Americans, but unfortunately isn't. This colossal and largely manufactured ignorance weighs heavily on the course of history today, and, in fact, endangers us all. For as the US seeks total strategic supremacy around the world, and its military deepens and broadens its hold upon scores of nations, especially as it maneuvers to contain Russia, the old foe (and China, too) the chances of a global, terminal conflagration increase exponentially. In this scheme lily pads play a nefarious role.

A lily pad is a floating leaf of the white water lily family. A bullfrog sits on a lily pad in a pond. The lily pad does not sink under its weight. The giant water lily, victoria amazonica, has the world's biggest lily pad, up to four feet, which can support the weight of several people at once. The lily pad is quiet. It lies tranquilly on the surface of the pond water, offering refuge and camouflage for the frog, protecting it from predators. The lily pad fits in with its natural surroundings, as does the frog.

Human beings are the only creatures which do not fit in with the rest of nature. Nature is simple. But mankind rejects simple living. The American military has adopted the lily pad concept. In military jargon, a lily pad means an outpost, an advance camp, a foreign base, or a staging area, only one in a series. It means a scaled down military facility with theoretically little permanent personnel, often used as a staging ground for Special Forces and Intelligence operations. Soldiers may then leapfrog from one lily pad to another. The outpost aspect of the military lily pads follows the model of the multiplying lily pads. Especially the giant water lily leaf. They not only multiply but also grow in size and in time tend to become permanent military bases now encircling the world. For example, Afghanistan is a gigantic lily pad; permanent, also a place to move out from, a place from which soldiers go out to 'conduct operations' against other people around that part of the world.

In American military thinking, the huge city-like bases for 100,000 troops in Germany are no longer necessary. So America is "reconfiguring its footprint"--that is, reviewing its global deployment of troops in order to be able to apply military force anywhere rather than be tied to a small number of bases. That is the lily pad concept, the analogy of frogs hopping around a growing number of foreign bases. Frogs equal battle-ready troops. Saudi Arabian restrictions on the use of U.S. bases there resulted in the construction of the Qatar lily pad. The air war against Serbia and the theft of its historic territory of Kosovo made possible the creation of the giant lily pad-state in the Balkans. Lily pads now dot Bulgaria, Romania and the Czech Republic, northwards to the Baltic States, across the Black Sea to Georgia, another lily pad-state, to lily pad-state Iraq, and on to Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan and to Singapore. The only limit today is the surface of planet Earth, but the moon and Mars are not excluded from military "Strangelove" ambitions and dreams. At the last count--no one can be precise since the U.S. maintains secret bases and Intelligence installations all over the world--the United States of America had 737 bases and more than 600,000 soldiers manning garrisons or involved in countless operations in some 200 nations, spanning the globe from Europe to Iraq and Afghanistan, to the Far East, the Pacific, Africa and Latin America. To this figure one must add hundreds of thousands of "private contractors", aka mercenaries--their exact number is also secret--serving the interests of the global American empire. Like the lily pads. It is safe to assume that their number is growing.

From the Back Cover

Conspiracy is in the very air we breathe. It is in our veins. It's the human stain. Real life is not what the naïve believe it is. And conspiracy is ubiquitous. Things are made to appear so vacuous, so different that it is as if none of those terrible events that I know really occurred ever occurred at all. (Clifford Beecher, Jr. in Lily Pad Roll)
________________________
In the novel 1984, George Orwell projected the present to warn us about the future. In Lily Pad Roll, Gaither Stewart collapses the future to alert us about the present.
*
Injecting political and moral arguments into a novel is always risky business. Most writers can't negotiate the delicate mix between message and plot. With Lily Pad Roll, a novel that takes up where The Trojan Spy left off, Stewart faced that problem. He found the answer and this volume is as much a didactic document as a spellbinding narrative, as well as a timely meditation on war, a combination which puts this book in a special category. But what are these bizarre sounding "lily pads" that preoccupy the author? Stewart provides the answer in his prefatory words:
_______
"The American military has adopted the lily pad concept. In military jargon, a lily pad means an outpost, an advance camp, a foreign base, or a staging area, only one in a series. It means a scaled down military facility with theoretically little permanent personnel, often used as a staging ground for Special Forces and Intelligence operations. Soldiers may then leapfrog from one lily pad to another. The outpost aspect of the military lily pads follows the model of the multiplying lily pads. Especially the giant water lily leaf. They not only multiply but also grow in size and in time tend to become permanent military bases encircling the world. For example, Afghanistan is a gigantic lily pad; permanent, a place to move out from, a place from which soldiers go out to 'conduct operations' against other people around that part of the world..."
______________
In short, the perfect outposts for today's global empire. Quick-morphing bases to encircle and strangle any opponent.
*
With their lives intersecting with the lily pads, and moving across an exotic landscape that spans much of Europe, from Moscow to Munich, Istanbul, Belgrade and a little village in Croatia, Stewart's characters capture the reader's affections at once. These are not Hollywood superheroes but ordinary people caught in a web of intrigue whose sheer magnitude and audacity defies verisimilitude. There's Cliff, the ex-intelligence operative whose awakened conscience forces him to re-enter the field he abandoned years earlier, with tragic results. Ilya, the diminutive but principled Serbian who fights for human decency. Self-doubting Karl Heinz and Antonia, his new love, who once again makes his life worth living. And above all, the linchpin of the plot, Elmer Redway, the eccentric genius hacker who, though he precedes the real-life Bradley Manning of WikiLeaks fame (infamy to some, surely), chooses to reveal what the global military power of his country is up to. For all of them, honoring truth is the key to redemption. And we wish them well along the way. --Patrice Greanville, Editor in Chief, The Greanville Post.

About the Author

Gaither Stewart, author of the historical thrillers THE TROJAN SPY and LILY PAD ROLL, first and second parts of his Europe Trilogy, is originally from Asheville, NC. After studies at the UC at Berkeley, other American universities and Munich University, he has lived his adult life abroad, first in Germany, then in Italy, alternated with residences in The Netherlands, France, Mexico, Argentina and Russia. After a career in journalism as a correspondent for the Rotterdam daily newspaper, Algemeen Dagblad, and contributor to the press, radio and TV in various European countries, he today writes fiction and journalism. He is a senior editor and European correspondent for the major American online publication, The Greanville Post. His works are published in venues throughout the world. His collections of short stories, Icy Current Compulsive Course, To Be A Stranger and Once In Berlin are published by Wind River Press (windriverpress.com). His novel, Asheville, is published by Wastelandrunes.com. He is currently at work finishing part three of the trilogy, TIME OF EXILE, scheduled for publication in the Spring of 2013. Stewart lives with his wife, Milena, in Rome, Italy.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Trepper & Katz Impact Books (August 27, 2012)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 344 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0984026320
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0984026326
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.2 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.72 x 8.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #10,487,012 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #196,159 in Military History (Books)

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Sweet Pea #2
A classic analysis of the cost of the covert, global, military design
Reviewed in the United States on October 12, 2012
Verified Purchase
Gaither Stewart's book is a wake up call to our nation. Just as "Dr. Strange Love" depicted the military mindset
run a muck during the cold war; Lily Pad lifts the curtain on the global machinations of the USA military designs
on our world today. This masterful depiction of the tentacles that encompass the globe, with rationales
never shared with the citizenry, threatens our our economy, and increases the animus nations feel towards our
hubris that we not only know how the world's nations should function, but fosters the audacity to feel justified in placing military lily pads (the military term for such bases...) with impunity in countless countries. Never contemplating how we would react to another nation's audacity, should they decide to return the favor! The paranoid reasoning is that Russia is still the arch villain, our supreme enemy, justifying this invasion in seven hundred countries to encircle the Russian bear, with more pads each year! Eisenhower's prescient warning about the dangers to democracy of the military/industrial/(and congressional) complex is being realized by these bases, and kindled by our super nationalism and sense of exceptional ism! Aiding the execution of this covert plan is the dereliction of our our subservient fourth estate who have been feeding on the huge, payroll of the US defense department's propaganda budget for America; billions of tax payers dollars buy their silence. We will all pay for the toll it will ultimately cost us in blood and treasure. This paranoid mirage, obviously illogical and bogus, yet Romney and his fellow neo cons demand adherence to their fear inspiring villains. Prattling
and bomb rattling towards Iran, Syria, and doubtless other "bad guys" yet to be uncovered (or made), intimidating
any who would dare expose the grand lily pad plan, or the economy busting billions to feed this paranoia is truly
paying for our own downfall.
The intricate story that reveals these facts is the epitome of a spy thriller, all the more profound because it is not a fantasy, but a revelatory tome on what lies at the base of our countries misconceptions that have
lead to Viet Nam, Iraq and would have us ever increase these fiascoes in Iran, Syria and other nations on the hit list described in the "Plans for a New American Century" the grand plan that the neo con, tea party, Radical right have decided we all must submit to.
Gaither's book is an education to what causes this mindset that has and will continue to produce such death and carnage. Didn't we learn the lesson of allowing presidents to lie,first under Johnson's attitude that lying to the public is deemed acceptable. Obviously and sadly not as Bush blatantly lied about the justifications for invading Iraq. Tragically neither president was held to account for deceiving the public. Anyone wishing to know what the reason behind the simplistic excuses for such devious actions will find the answers in this, the second of Gaither's European trilogy. He truly has done a service to our nation if we will only desist from being willing sheep and devote our patriotism to what our Founders set forth and save our freedoms that are being sacrificed at the altar of "security."

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G. R. Markowski
Excellent for many reasons
Reviewed in the United States on February 17, 2013
Verified Purchase
1) Excellent real intelligence on the reason for hundreds of US bases in the Middle East and worldwide
2) The plot line is more captivating and more realistically handled than most military thriller stories, such as Hunt for Red October
3) The underlying power plays and their effect on Eastern Europe seems accurate to me, and commonsensical given the usual and historical goals of Western "Civilization", power, conquest, economic imperialism
4) The author invented a Bradley Manning before the real Bradley Manning
5) The male characters are compelling and well developed.
6) The covert actors also appear largely real, at least in my experience, except female spys and operatives are used as much as males. (e.g., Broadwell and Tripp.)

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Sylvia Dellinger
Lucky to have found "Lily Pad Roll"
Reviewed in the United States on October 29, 2012
Verified Purchase
Lily Pad Roll
Although THE LILY PAD ROLL is frightening, it is refreshing to find an author who tells the truth as he sees it. The first book of the trilogy gave me great hope that at last I've found an author who writes very interesting but also knowledge of his experience.
Please hurry with the third book!

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William T. Hathaway
Shattering Myths Can Be Dangerous
Reviewed in the United States on December 19, 2012
Gaither Stewart is a shatterer of myths. In The Trojan Spy, volume one of the Europe Trilogy, he shattered the myth that the USA is fighting terrorism and showed instead how our government works in a symbiotic relationship with the so-called terrorists. Now in Lily Pad Roll, volume two of the trilogy, he shatters the myth that America is invading countries and building foreign bases in order to defend the homeland and secure oil supplies. He shows instead that the deeper motive for this slaughter of hundreds of thousands of our fellow human beings and the resulting near-bankruptcy of our country is brutal geopolitics: the desire of our ruling elite to weaken their chief rivals, Russia and China, and to prepare for war with Iran. Stewart's artistic skills make this case more convincingly than a dozen academic analyses could.

The lily pads of the title are the new US bases now proliferating on the borders of Russia and extending towards China, allowing troops to hop quickly from one to the other in strategies of domination on the Eurasian chessboard.

Some of Stewart's characters are seeking to expose and stop this aggression, some are determined to extend it by any means necessary, and others are trying just to stay alive in the crossfire. Most of them are deracinated internationals adrift in the New World Order but alienated from it: Cliff, ex-CIA operative who quit because he couldn't stand the ruthless killing. Haunted by his past, tormented by guilt, he seeks solace with Elizaveta, the painter who can see into others and capture them on canvas but who refuses to reveal herself. Masha, her mother, fragile and vulnerable after decades of trauma. Karl Heinz, who uses his cover as journalist to ferret out and expose military secrets but whose commitment to truth is also a way of escaping his self image as a rich dilettante. Katharina, needy of love but unable to give it. The erotically lush Antonia of the German body and Slavic soul. Günther, the well-connected German businessman who can arrange entry into the secret bases ... but at what cost? Ilya, survivor of the NATO terror bombing of Serbia, witness to his country's dismemberment, whose sense of justice has been tempered into a sword by these geopolitical atrocities. Elmer, MIT dropout turned military electronics specialist whose conscience overcomes his cynicism and turns him into a dangerous whistleblower who must be eliminated. Raymond, agent entrepreneur, freelance spy, driven to take revenge on others for his personal misery. Their lives cross and interweave into a fabric of suspense that is ripped asunder at the end, leaving two of them dead and the world much changed.

The story unfolds primarily in the Balkans, that crossroads of history, and Stewart renders the settings masterfully: Sophia and Belgrade, grand old cities now enduring the crass glitz of the new capitalism that has been hastily thrown over their hewn-stone mansions and communist-concrete highrises, filled with recently impoverished people disoriented from the lost security of socialism, trying to survive imperialist machinations from afar. The plot also takes us to Munich and Berlin, sleek citadels of empire; Moscow, capital of confusion; and Istanbul, the eternal.

If all that wasn't enough, Sarah Edgar's cover for the novel is also superb: In a play on Foucault's panopticon, an all-seeing eye stares out at us from the center of the Pentagon. The image implies there's no place to hide from the empire. Stewart's story convinces us, however, that although shattering the empire's myths can be dangerous, it's morally necessary and can be achieved through courageous resistance. Lily Pad Roll is a book of hope.

Shattering myths has also been dangerous for Gaither Stewart's career. The Europe Trilogy was shunned by mainstream publishers and review media because they are propagating the myths Stewart is shattering. The books are published by Punto Press, an independent house specializing in the literature of resistance.

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Lily Pad Roll Paperback – August 27, 2012