Mission: Falklands - Just Published!

Mission: Falklands is the fourth in the Tana Standish psychic spy thriller series. 

The Tana Standish missions are a mixture of fact and fiction but with ‘a nifty twist’, as one reviewer put it. The ‘smart, sexy female protagonist isn’t just a rare child survivor from Warsaw’s WWII ghetto. Nor is she merely a highly skilled covert operative, brought up by the British to be extremely effective against the KGB. Tana Standish has one more thing going for her: psychic talents. There’s nothing outlandish in the psi-spy’s capabilities – they’re neatly underplayed, a talent which isn’t understood or entirely controllable but which frequently tips the odds in her favour.’

Mission: Prague (Czechoslovakia, 1975).

Mission: Tehran (Iran, 1978).

Mission: Khyber (Afghanistan, 1979-1980).

Mission: Falklands (Argentina, the Falkland Islands, and South Georgia, 1982).

[All of the above are available on Amazon in paperback and e-book format]

It took thirty-four years for my original Tana Standish psychic spy novel The Ouija Message to grow and improve and eventually transmogrify into Mission: Prague. One of my first versions was rejected by Robert Hale with the comment that it was better than many books that were published but they ‘didn’t do fantasy’. (They accepted my first book sale in 2007, a western!). It came close a few times to being accepted but in retrospect I’m glad it didn’t get published earlier. The characters and the story required more depth, more time to evolve. Naturally, there has to be a willingness to suspend disbelief regarding psychic abilities! Then again, most fiction is fantasy anyway.

Prague garnered good reviews, such as ‘Interestingly, Morton sells it as a true story passed to him by an agent and published as fiction, a literary ploy often used by master thriller writer Jack Higgins. Let’s just say that it works better than Higgins.’ – Danny Collins, author of The Bloodiest Battles.

Each book begins with my first person narration. I receive a manuscript from a secret agent which recounts one of Tana’s missions. Here’s an excerpt of the Prologue from Mission: Falklands:

Beyond the headland the North Sea was grey and turbulent, white horses racing towards the shore. Leaden clouds swirled, harbingers of rain, threatening another bleak December day. I managed to find a parking space for my Dacia Sandero on the road opposite the Octagon Tower, built in 1720, in the Northumberland town of Seaton Sluice – known colloquially as ‘the Sluice’ – half-way between Whitley Bay and Blyth.

I walked the short distance past a dry-stone wall towards the King’s Arms, a large three-storey whitewashed sandstone pub. Almost everywhere you went in the north-east was steeped in history and this Grade II listed public house was no exception, built around 1764. Overlooking the small harbour and Seaton Burn with its smattering of small boats beached on mud, it had started out as an overseer’s house, and then became the King’s Arms Hotel and coach house. In the nineteenth century the coach house was used by HM Coastguard on the lookout for contraband smugglers.

On the left was a short bridge which crossed a manmade channel blasted out in the 1760s by Sir John Delaval and named ‘the cut’; the bridge linked the newly formed ‘Rocky Island’ to the mainland and is now adorned with love-padlocks.

Despite the slight chill in the air and the threat of rain, a handful of male and female regulars in shorts and T-shirts sat drinking at wooden tables outside in an area roped-off with beer-barrels: the usual tough north-easterners.

Keith Tyson, retired spy, stood waiting for me at the entrance porch, as punctual as ever. I was pleased to see under his arm he carried a familiar leather valise though it was now a little careworn – a bit like him.

The stories about her missions are told in multiple third person narrative, merging fact and fiction. Part of the inspiration for the series stems from my interest in history.

Wherever possible I have tried to write about places I’ve seen or visited, such as Gosport’s Fort Monkton, the Khyber Pass, Belize, Bahrein, the United States, the Falklands and South Georgia. Other places have required considerable research. In Mission: Tehran at a critical point there is an earthquake in Yazd; that actually happened on the date shown in the book. An episode in Mission: Falklands that involved two Soviets in Altun Ha is derived from my trek there. Another sequence describes a meal in the Pink House in Savannah, Georgia, which I’ve frequented. My memories of two days on South Georgia informed a section of the story too. And so on...

Tana has a few contacts in Argentina and several friends who suffer at the hands of the military regime. Tana is determined to help them. And of course betrayal lurks in the shadows... When she embarks on her rescue crusade she learns a devastating fact that changes everything and thrusts her towards the Falkland Islands and inhospitable South Georgia at the outset of the historic conflict...

Inevitably Argentina’s ‘disappeared’ and ‘death flights’ are relevant. As with all the books in the series, I’ve strived to inject realism even with the fantasy concept of psychics. As one reviewer has stated, ‘Such is the level of detail and ambition that Morton soon sweeps up the reader in the narrative and creates so convincing a canvas that we can easily accept the central conceit. Bouncing between different times and locations, he has created a book which feels big in scope, an adventure story with a supernaturally gifted protagonist that still feels absolutely real.’

QUILLER BALALAIKA - Book review

Sadly, Balalaika is the last Quiller novel (published 1996). Adam Hall (Elleston Trevor) died the day after he finished it, in July 1995.

It’s contemporary: following the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian mafiya is poised to take over the new Russia by destroying the country’s economy. The man responsible and capable of achieving this is a British Moscow-based national, a defector from the Foreign Office, who escaped the country and was given the rank of Colonel in the KGB. ‘His name is Basil Secker, and he uses the Russian alias of Vasyl Sakkas’ (p11). Sakkas is elusive and powerful. Quiller’s mission – Balalaika – is to infiltrate the mafiya and then find and neutralise Sakkas in some manner.

Briefed by Chief of Signals Croder, Quiller is made aware that this is a dangerous ask, with poor chance of success. Quiller requires Ferris as his director in the field; this is so important, that Ferris will be pulled off the Rickshaw mission in China.

As before, Quiller shuns the use of any gun. He is adept at unarmed combat, delivering death when his life is threatened or the mission is at risk of collapsing.

All the style of the previous novels is here displayed at the hands of a 75-year-old thriller writer at the top of his game: the usual spare prose, the stream-of-consciousness writing, the extensive scene of hand-to-hand combat (subsequently employed by Lee Child, among others), and his continual argument with his pain-averse conscience, often referring to himself as ‘the little ferret’.

‘It was eight days since Ferris had been ordered out of the field and by now the lights would be switched off over the board, either that or a new mission would already be set up there with data coming in from the director in Algeria or Baghdad or Beijing, while Mr Croder shut himself up in his tempered-steel shell to consider whether or not to resign, how much guilt to feel for the little ferret he’d left running in circles through the snow, or whether he could hold out a spider’s-thread hope for an eleventh-hour last-ditch breakthrough for the mission, knowing as he did the blind tenacity of said ferret when the jaws of adversity gaped from the shadows of the labyrinth’ (p232).

The breathless climax in wintry Moscow is fitting, another Hall-mark fast-paced ending.

‘That’s it.’ So the author finished his last book. There’s a poignant four-page Afterword contribution by Jean-Pierre Trevor, his son.

Editorial notes:

Combat

In two places Hall mentions hitting the nose with force, driving the bone into the brain and causing instant death. However, when researching my recent  Leon Cazador novel No Prisoners, I learned that this is probably not so: ‘Next instant, Leon deployed the ninja Fudo-ken, the clenched fist slamming full into the man’s nose, shattering the bone structure. While the bone and cartilage probably wouldn’t penetrate his perverted brain, the blow would undoubtedly cause subdural hematoma which was bound to deny the brain adequate blood flow. As a result, a biochemical cascade was in all likelihood happening right now as Leon dispassionately watched. Brain cell death was imminent. No great loss to humanity.’

Chapter titles

The single-word chapter headings were not always evident. In The Quiller Memorandum of the 23 chapters only 12 are single words; interestingly Ch3 is ‘Snow’ and in Balalaika Ch1 is ‘Snow’.

His fourth Quiller (The Warsaw Document) is the first with the consistent use of single-word chapter headings. There is only one other exception, in Quiller’s Run, with 11 of 32 being two-word titles, one of them being ‘Pink Panties’!

Certainly, inevitably, as mentioned already, some chapter headings will be repeated, not least ‘Midnight’.

Why mention this? For my Tana Standish psychic spy novels I adopted Adam Hall’s penchant for single-word chapter titles (Mission: Prague, Mission: Tehran, and Mission: Khyber). In contrast, my Leon Cazador novels have two-word chapter headings (Rogue Prey, No Prisoners, and Organ Symphony).

See also: WRITEALOT: Book review - Quiller: A profile and Bury Him Among Kings (nik-writealot.blogspot.com)

JET STREAM

I was drawn to the book Jet by Russell Blake because the cover shares the same model as my book Mission: Prague (see the two covers to compare below).

  

The similarities don’t end there, either. Maya, codename Jet is a twenty-eight-year-old Mossad assassin. The heroine in Mission: Prague is psychic spy Tana, a survivor of the Warsaw ghetto; she was thirty-eight at the time of her Prague mission.

Jet’s adventures are set in the present, while Tana’s are in the past (Czechoslovakia, 1975; Iran, 1978; Afghanistan, 1979).

Tana’s Prague novel first came out in 2008 as The Prague Manuscript. Jet was published in 2012, though the ‘shared’ model did not appear on the new Prague cover until 2017.

Both books are fast-paced.

Jet – the first book in the series

Maya thought she’d left behind her life of violence and had retired to Trinidad. Unfortunately, somebody from her past had talked and sent an assassination squad to eliminate her. From the explosive beginning to the traumatising end, it’s action all the way. I certainly want to read more in the series!

Russell Blake has produced a page-turning thrill-ride that has built up an enviable fan base. And to his fans’ delight he’s prolific. He’s just produced his SEVENTEENTH Jet novel (including two prequels) plus a host of other series; in all, in seven years he’s written about 60 books (and co-authored two with Clive Cussler).

If you like your adventures fast and furious, try the Jet series.  

***

Secret file – 00/13/417 – Tana Standish, psychic spy

Mission: Prague was released by a MOD accredited publisher, Manatee Books. It is based on a manuscript that came into the possession of the author Nik Morton (believed to be a pseudonym). Investigations are in hand to ascertain the source. It is believed that the work is a collaborative effort by a select group of agents, all intent on telling the story of Tana Standish, psychic spy.

Standish was recruited into International Enterprises (Interprises) in 1965 and her career continued until 1988.

Her story is ostensibly being told as fiction. Mission: Prague involves Standish in a mission in Czechoslovakia in 1975.

Other earlier Standish missions have still to be declassified. They take place in the following theatres: Singapore (1965), Naples (1966), Izmir (1967), Odessa (1968), Pilsen (1968), Karachi (1970), Elba (1971), Gibraltar (1972), Mombasa (1973), and Hong Kong (1974).

Standish – brief biography

Tana was born on May 12, 1937 in Warsaw. At the time of the uprising of the ghetto in 1942, she was five years old. She had two brothers, Mordechai and Ishmael, both now deceased. She was adopted by a British couple in 1942, but her adoptive father Lieutenant Hugh Standish was killed ironically in a car crash two years later. Her mother Vera never remarried.

Tana joined Edinburgh University in 1955 and read Psychology, gaining a BA (Hons) in 1958. Thereafter, she worked for the Parapsychological Research Unit, Northamptonshire – 1958 to early 1965; during this time, she travelled to the US and the USSR, among other countries, to give talks on memory, for, besides possessing psychic abilities, she has a photographic memory.

Two of her later missions have been documented in Mission: Tehran (1978) and Mission: Khyber (1979)

Book review - The Fox

Frederick Forsyth’s return after a fiction hiatus of five years sees his thriller The Fox published before it’s really ready. It seems rushed, for reasons I’ll go into soon, and is sadly unsatisfactory, and I believe the blame can be shared equally between Mr Forsyth and the publisher.

The publisher should do better. The list of books by Forsyth is impressive, with The Outsider following on from The Kill List, below which are two Non-fiction books listed, The Biafra Story and Emeka. Don’t Bantam Press know that The Outsider is non-fiction, being his autobiography?

The story is about a young British man, Luke Jennings, with Asperger’s Syndrome who has hacked into the US security system. Together with his family (mother, father, brother) he is arrested and they're sequestered in a safe place in England. Rather than prosecute him, both the Americans and the British decide to make use of his considerable gifts to tilt the balance of power – to interfere with Russian, North Korean and Chinese computer-linked weapons systems.

Forsyth’s page-turning ability is apparent as he peppers the story with facts and details about the clandestine and political world, even including most recent events, such as the Skripal poisonings in Salisbury and the summit meetings with North Korea. As usual, Forsyth employs his omniscient third person narrative, creating that immediacy of a reporter viewing events unfolding. Unfortunately, that technique here leaves little room for emotion. In truth, I felt that the book reads more like a film treatment than a novel; it was all tell, tell, tell and not much show.

It’s a quirk of mine, but I find it annoying when a character is referred to in two different ways. The putative hero is Sir Adrian Weston. Most of the time, we get Adrian or Sir Adrian. But then he drops in Weston. Bond was always Bond; end of.

The utilisation of Luke is serious wishful thinking, breaking down foreign firewalls virtually at the drop of a hat. Luke’s technical shepherd who directs the lad’s hacking activities is Jeremy Hendricks, who (to tick a box) ‘was gay but made no mention of it, choosing a quiet life of celibacy’ (p13).

Hendricks is an example of poor characterisation. We don’t really get to know Sue Jennings, Luke’s mother, or even Luke, ‘The Fox’ for that matter. We learn a little about Sir Adrian, even delving beneath his skin. But that’s all. The majority of characters – and there are over 30 listed (with organizations too) beginning on p303 – are ciphers. There is no emotional content, so as a reader I didn’t experience any tension when threats were described to silence Luke. Really, Luke is the main character, the reason for the story, Hitchcock’s McGuffin, yet he does not come alive, so then the threat of his death falls flat: it should create concern at least.

Since reading the book, I’ve looked at the reviews. They fall into two categories: excellent thriller, couldn’t put it down and the obverse, highly disappointing with a cop-out ending. I regret to concur with the naysayers.

An aside

I was fascinated to read about a sleeper agent: ‘The agent … masqueraded as a shopkeeper in the West End of London whose British name was Burke. His real name was Dmitri Volkov.’ (p73)

In my Tana Standish psychic spy novel Mission: Tehran (originally published 2009, re-published 2017) states:

Yuri – cover-name Neil Tomlinson – had hired the light cargo aircraft for the day and filed all the flight-plan papers at the nearby airport. He landed in a field a couple of miles away from Fenner House and picked up ‘agent Burke’.

Lieutenant Aksakov had already concealed the Escort behind a hedge and a cluster of trees and thrown the blonde wig and business clothes into the boot.

She was wearing the more familiar hard-wearing green cotton tunic and trousers. For this mission she’d left behind in the car’s boot her water flask, the folding stock version of the Kalashnikov automatic AKM, three hundred 7.62mm rounds and the P351-M radio set with scrambling and high-speed transmission apparatus. The vehicle was detonated to explode should she be unable to retrieve it. Instead, she carried her spring-loaded knife, spare blades, a Makarov pistol and thirty-two rounds. Six grenades and plastic explosive completed her weapons load. (p184)

Glossary: Burke - Code-name chosen because Aksakov specialised in throttling people without leaving a trace and this transitive verb stems from a nineteenth century murderer’s name. (p275)

Coincidence, then…

Editor comment:

There are a few instances where an editor should have intervened; here are just two of them.

1) ‘Though he was more than ten years older than the man at Yasenevo, he had noted the rising star of the SVR when he had been deputy chief of MI6.’ (p90) Of course the rising star of the SVR wasn’t in MI6, though that is the implication here. It should have read ‘Though he was more than ten years older than the man at Yasenevo, when he had been deputy chief of MI6 he had noted the rising star of the SVR.’

2) ‘Under the Shah, Israel had little to fear from Iran…’ (p170) Of course the Shah was never the head of state of Israel. Perhaps it should have read: ‘Under the Shah, Iran posed little threat to Israel…’

An interview

Here's an interview which has just been posted online:

http://mxpublishing.tumblr.com/post/178408884643/the-mx-book-of-new-sherlock-holmes-stories

Best wishes

Nik

'... feels absolutely real.'

"When I picked up this novel about psychic British spy, Tana Standish, and her adventures in 1970s Czechoslovakia, the spy template I thought it would adhere to is the James Bond one. After all, that is already an outsized world and surely a beautiful spy with precognitive abilities could be dropped in fairly seamlessly.

But Nik Morton actually foxed me, by instead opting for the John Le Carré model. This is a gritty and realistic feeling world, with dirt under its fingernails. And it’s beautifully realised. You can almost smell the Turkish coffee and cheap cigarettes in the cafes... But is there any way to make a psychic spy fit seamlessly into this world?

You have your doubts, don’t you?

And yet Morton manages it.

Such is the level of detail and ambition, that Morton soon sweeps the reader up in the narrative and creates such a convincing canvas that we can easily accept the central conceit. Bouncing between different times and locations, he has created a book which feels big in scope, an adventure story with a supernaturally gifted protagonist that still feels absolutely real.

I was expecting a light throwaway read with Mission: Prague, but was glad I got something far more ambitious."

Thank you, F.R. Jameson for commenting on Goodreads.

The full review can be read there. 

Mission: Prague

Available on Amazon as a paperback and an e-book here

Pulp Den Awards

Publisher, author and avid reader Tom Johnson issues a variety of awards at the end of each year, and these are for stand-alone science fiction novel, best new pulp novel, best SF/horror novel, best mystery/thriller, best fantasy novel that he has read in 2017. See here

"The 2017 PULP DEN AWARD for the best Spy series I read in 2017 is the Tana Standish female psychic spy from Britain. There is good action in this well written series, and the stories flow smoothly. This is a great new series for spy fiction fans."

Thank you, sir!

 

A great new action heroine to be watched

A new 5-star review for the first documented  mission of Tana Standish, psychic spy. 

"Tana Standish, now 38, was an orphan Jewish girl trying to escape Warsaw by sneaking on a ship with her brother. Her brother is killed trying to find food on the ship. She was also caught later but before she is killed a British submarine torpedoes the ship. The survivors included the young girl. MI6 learns that she has psychic abilities, and when she grows up they train her as an espionage agent. She doesn’t really read minds, but receives impressions, and can detect danger, hostile and friendly elements, as well as pick up hidden names. She is also studying remote viewing in connection to her abilities.

"Mission Prague is not her first assignment, but it is the first published tale about this psychic spy...
 
"This is a brand new British espionage thriller set in the Cold War, and Tana Standish is a great new action heroine to be watched. 

"The novel is topnotch, though the author goes off on tangents a bit too much in order to tie the story and real people into real events. Still, if you are looking for a great new series, try this author out. 

"You’ll like Tana Standish, the psychic spy. Highly recommended."

Thank you, Virginia E. Johnson! 

Mission: Prague
Available from Amazon as a paperback and e-book here

 

'... felt I'd actually been there.'

Amazon 5-star review for Mission: Khyber
 
'First, the detailed descriptions of Afghanistan; I felt as if I’d actually been there. Also, the fascinating history of the area I found illuminating. I liked the way the author further developed his character, psychic spy Tana Standish. In the first two novels she seemed almost invincible. Here, she is more vulnerable, and therefore more rounded. The one negative aspect for me was that I found the descriptions of the weaponry a bit challenging to follow, having never picked up a gun in my life, and some of the military manoeuvres left me a bit bewildered. But that was part of the book’s authenticity: the attention to precision was admirable, and the general atmosphere reminded me of John le Carré’s work. I highly recommend it: clearly the work of an experienced writer.'

Thank you, Maureen Elizabeth Moss 

Available from Amazon as a paperback or e-book here

Head of British Secret Intelligence Service

Recently, there has been some controversy regarding a suggestion for a blue plaque for Admiral Sir Hugh Francis Paget Sinclair (1873-1939). However, English Heritage apparently ruled that he was not ‘historically significant’ enough to be recognised with a blue plaque at his official London residence in Queen Anne’s Gate, which was linked by a secret tunnel to MI6 HQ.  If you’ve been reading the news over the last few months, you’ll be aware that certain individuals in English Heritage have lost the plot, and this could be construed as another example of their arrant political correctness.

Sinclair certainly achieved a lot. He joined the Royal Navy aged 13 and entered the Naval Intelligence Division at the outset of the First World War. By 1919 he had become the Director of Naval Intelligence. In 1923, he took over from Sir Mansfield Cumming as the director of the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, aka MI6).

As early as 1919 he was concerned about the influence of Bolshevism, but in the main his concerns were ignored. By 1936 he discovered that the Gestapo had infiltrated several SIS stations; at about this time Lieutenant Colonel Sir Claude Edward Marjoribanks Dansey set up Z Organisation, intent on working independently from the compromised SIS.

Sinclair was asked in December 1938 to prepare a dossier on Adolf Hitler, for the attention of the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister. The dossier received short shrift as it was believed that it did not gel with Britain's policy of appeasement. Sinclair had described Hitler as possessing the characteristics of ‘fanaticism, mysticism, ruthlessness, cunning, vanity, moods of exaltation and depression, fits of bitter and self-righteous resentment; and what can only be termed a streak of madness; but with it all there is a great tenacity of purpose, which has often been combined with extraordinary clarity of vision’ (Foreign Office files)

In 1938, with war looming, Sinclair set up Section D, dedicated to sabotage and in the spring of 1938, using £6,000 of his own money, he bought Bletchley Park to be a wartime intelligence station. He died of cancer in 1939 so did not see the fruits of the code-breaking group at Bletchley that shortened the war.

When writing my first Tana Standish novel, Mission: Prague, one of my characters, the head of International Enterprises (‘Interprises’), an adjunct of SIS, was loosely based on both Sinclair and Dansey: Sir Gerald Hazzard, born 1909. His entry in Who’s who reads: Winchester and Magdalen College, Oxford; Recreations, yacht-racing, crosswords and chess; ‘attached to Foreign Office, 1939-present’ which is polite British jargon for working in the SIS [the ‘present’ was 1975-1978]. However, his physical stature was based on my first civilian boss after leaving school…

Hazzard’s recruitment of psychic Tana Standish is related in Mission: Prague:

England, 1965

“Tread carefully,” was Sir Gerald’s high-pitched warning to her as she boarded the train at Waterloo ten years ago, destined for the Fort, one of MI6’s training establishments, an old Napoleonic stone-walled edifice on the Gosport peninsula on the south coast of Hampshire.

Standing beside the middle-aged yet cadaverous man had been her grey-haired mother, bravely trying to fight back tears.

“Mum, I’m a big girl now, you know?” Tana said.

“Twenty-eight last May, dear, I know.” Her mother smiled back. “But I’m worried about what Gerald’s letting you get into. It’s dangerous.”

“She’ll be all right, Vera, my dear,” Sir Gerald piped. “In fact, I actually pity the instructors!”

The totally inappropriate falsetto voice of Sir Gerald had taken some getting used to, as had his emaciated appearance. There seemed to be little flesh on his face. Tana had seen survivors from the concentration camps and the facial features of the majority had been drawn, almost corpse-like, the skull’s bone structure clearly visible. She knew for a fact that Sir Gerald dined well and often, yet his head and, judging by how his clothes hung on his gaunt frame, his body too closely resembled some unfortunate who had endured a Nazi death-camp.

Sir Gerald had been like an uncle to her since Hugh Standish died in her childhood yet, officially, he only came into her life when she was twenty-eight, ostensibly to recruit her into his fledgling organisation, ‘Interprises’.

Ten years ago. When she’d qualified for the Intelligence Officers’ New Entry Course.

The day had been bleak and wind-swept as she hurried from the draughty Portsmouth Harbour railway station to the pontoon where she caught the little steam craft Ferry Prince, which seemed to be overloaded with commuters, among them Royal Navy sailors in square rig hanging onto their white hats. Halfway across the harbour, she saw one sailor lose his hat overboard and the young man swore, no doubt fearing that he’d be on a charge when he turned up at his submarine base, HMS Dolphin. Away on their left, she noticed the distinctive ten-storey tall tower, rumoured to have been built by German prisoners-of-war. Below it were the motley brick buildings of Fort Blockhouse, the submarine base, with two menacing black boats moored alongside.

On the Gosport side she’d been met by a Ministry of Defence driver in dark serge who had commented disparagingly on the weather then bundled her suitcase into the back of the highly-polished Rover.

The journey seemed circuitous – the driver explained that there was a crossing called Pneumonia Bridge over the creek but it was only capable of taking pedestrians and cyclists, not cars. “One day they might get round to building a proper road, I suppose,” he moaned, “but it’ll be after I’m drawing my pension, I shouldn’t wonder!”

Eventually, they turned onto Anglesey Road, part of the district of Alverstoke where many retired admirals were supposed to live, and this led down to the coast road and Stokes Bay, which offered a sweeping panoramic view of the Solent and the Isle of Wight.

Turning left, they passed several fenced-off military establishments.

Further along still, beyond the narrow hedge-bordered coast road, she knew, were the high brick walls of the submarine base and the Royal Navy’s Hospital Haslar. However, after a short drive they turned off to the right onto what appeared to be an unadopted road with a sign on their left indicating,

GOVERNMENT PROPERTY.

FORT MONCKTON ONLY.

NO UNAUTHORISED VEHICLES

BEYOND THIS   POINT.

They passed this and the 15 mph sign and headed towards an unprepossessing collection of brick buildings partially concealed by an overgrowth of brambles and weeds, all behind barbed wire.

Their car crossed over a drawbridge and it seemed they were expected as Fort Monckton’s ponderous studded steel doors swung wide on well-oiled rails and hinges.

***

I lived in Alverstoke for many years and often passed the secret Fort Monckton...

Then, in the sequel, Mission: Tehran, we learn more about Hazzard’s acquisition of the British SIS psychic HQ, Fenner House, motivated in part by the logic of Dansey:

The Georgian mansion was built in 1810 and had a chequered existence before being bought by Sir Gerald Hazzard in 1958 to establish the Psychic Institute. As a top intelligence officer in the MI6 hierarchy, he was following in the footsteps of two chiefs of the secret service – Mansfield Cumming, who often supplemented the fledgling secret service from his own pocket, and Admiral Sinclair, who bought Bletchley Park himself because he couldn’t get any funding.

Unofficially Sir Gerald had been interested in psychic research since encountering Tana as a child. However, abiding by Vera Standish’s wishes, he didn’t officially announce his friendship and interest until 1965.

Two years earlier ‘C’ had been Dick White and with his connivance, Sir Gerald had created his own particular offshoot of MI6, International Enterprises, in February, shortly after Philby flew out of Beirut for exile in Moscow. In July 1963 Sir Gerald actually set Fenner House aside for the sole use of Interprises, retaining the Psychic Institute as a convenient cover. His brief was to recruit agents who didn’t belong to any ‘old school’ – and he scoured the armed forces to that end. Inevitably, there were exceptions and he head-hunted Tana in 1965.

Changes to the interior structure of Fenner House were kept secret: the large bedroom at the west rear end was converted into a conference room and encased in a Faraday cage to prevent electronic eavesdropping. The upstairs closets and changing rooms on the north side had been converted into two separate rooms – the psychic training laboratory and the Communications Centre and a door from the latter opened into Sir Gerald’s bed-sitting room at the northeast corner which he occupied whenever he was visiting.

The servants’ quarters on the ground floor at the north side were knocked into two rooms – becoming the Gym – with its first-aid annex – and the Armoury.

***

Sitting cross-legged in the centre of the Gymnasium’s dojo, Tana maintained the yogic Sukhasana position, her arms limp and the backs of her hands resting on her bare feet. She wore a black leotard and her hair swept back in a tight bun.

This easy pose for meditation was suitable for her purposes. (Mission: Tehran, pp 178-179)

***

Mission: Prague

Available on Amazon as a paperback and e-book here

Mission: Tehran

Available on Amazon as a paperback and e-book here

Mission: Khyber

Available on Amazon as a paperback and e-book here