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.’

TARGET ANTARCTICA - Book review

Hammond Innes followed up his novel Isvik (1991) with this sequel, Target Antarctica, in 1993.

As usual, it’s a first person narrative, by Falklands War hero Ed Cruse, having just ignominiously left the RAF. After some shilly-shallying he’s given a job to fly a stranded C-130 Hercules aircraft off an Antarctic iceberg. The reasons are not made clear until near the end of the book. There is a subplot involving one of the interested parties, the tragic if exotic La Belle, which provides a depth of character lacking in a number of the others. Indeed, it is her past that provides the only real fraught conflict.

Ed Cruse is likeable – as are all his first-person protagonists; though I suspect he could be a danger on the roads: he drinks and drives! He had two Bloody Marys and then had a coffee and a couple of large brandies and drove through London in his Jag... (pp138-139)!

I’ve read and enjoyed several books by Innes and found this showed his strengths in putting the reader in the story with believable descriptions. Yet, sadly, it lacked something and I felt the ending was rushed.

If this is your first introduction to Innes and you found it unsatisfactory, do try some of his earlier novels before forsaking his work; you will be rewarded.

THE ARGENTINE FIGHT FOR THE FALKLANDS - Book review

Martin Middlebrook (2003, revised from the 1988 edition). The author was generously given time and interviews by many Argentine combatants, but received no help from their air force. He relied heavily on Falklands – The Air War, a comprehensive book concerning all aircraft in the conflict.

It is enlightening to read about the conflict (April-June 1982) from the Argentine perspective.

In mid-January 1982 a Working Party met at Army HQ in the Liberatador Building, Buenos Aires.Members were Vice-Admiral Lombardo, General Osvaldo Garcia of the Army and Brigadier-General Siegfriedo Plessl of the Air Force. They expected planning to be complete by 15 September: by then HMS Endurance would be withdrawn, the training of conscripts would be well advanced and the re-equipment of the Naval Air Arm with Super Étendard aircraft and weapons would be completed.

However, events dictated otherwise. Scrap metal merchants landed on South Georgia (a Dependency of the Falkland Islands) without obtaining permission which created an international incident. As the talks between Argentina and Great Britain concerning the Falklands were not going anywhere, the Argentine junta decided to bring forward their ‘repossession’ plans to force the British Government’s hand...

Ships started loading at 8am on 28 March at Puerto Belgrano...

Troops were warned that there was to be no excesses against the enemy troops, women or private property when they ‘took back’ the islands. It was considered as a semi-religious crusade – even renaming the Operation Blue after the Virgin Mary’s robe.

Many soldiers experienced ‘an excess of joy’ to be involved – (p65).

However, a senior Argentine army officer considered the enterprise ‘a crazy expedition by demented people. It was stupid to offend a big country like Britain...’ (p17).

So, on 2 April the seaborne Argentine attack resulted in the taking of the Falkland Islands with very little loss of life.

On 3 April, a platoon of the First Marine Infantry Battalion on the frigate Guerrico set out to Grytviken (South Georgia) which was manned by about 22 Royal Marines. The marines put up a fight, but inevitably outgunned with superior numbers had to surrender.

In remarkably quick time, the British Task Force sailed, a response the Argentines had not expected. A British Exclusion Zone was set up...

On 12 April, the EEC embargo on trade and help came into effect: French technicians linked to the Super Étendards were due but were cancelled. The Argentines had only five aircraft and five Exocet aircraft-missiles.

Of the criticism of the sinking of the Belgrano on 2 May, Middlebrook considers it ‘humbug’ – and Captain Bonzo of that ill-fated ship agrees: ‘By no means do I have any feelings of anger’ (p116). In effect, once Argentine aircraft attacked RN ships on 1 May, war had begun and the 200-mile exclusion zone no longer applied, and the Belgrano was carrying 400 troops (a quarter died).

After the sinking, the Argentine fleet stayed off Argentina’s shore and did not engage the British.

The Argentine aircraft were up against the phenomenal Harriers as well as ship-born missiles and guns. ‘The whole world would come to admire the gallantry shown by the Argentine pilots’ (p150).

Damage to the RN ships would have been greater save that many bombs that hit the vessels did not explode. The Argentine Skyhawks and Daggers released their bombs when flying too low, not giving the bomb fuses time to arm themselves (p154).

Towards the end, as the Harriers gained air-superiority, the Argentine soldiers on the Falklands felt abandoned: the air force and the navy stood by on the mainland and did little for them, save brave bold re-supply flights into Stanley.

The end was inevitable, perhaps, but many of the Argentine soldiers put up a good fight, even though by then they were mostly demoralised.

Middlebrook obtained many pertinent quotations; here is a sample:

The Argentine padre told the men ‘God would forgive us. We must kill as many British as possible... By then I knew we were being told lies...’ (p274).

‘The junta and people at other levels all lied to the country’ (p290).

‘I have always admired the British, and it made me very sad that the only war I ever fought in was against the British’ (p290)

Many soldiers came to resent their officers more than the British (p275).

A worthy addition to any Falklands War book collection.

Editorial comments:

The author may have miscounted the aircraft-mounted Exocets: ‘No further opportunity occurred for the Argentines to use the remaining three Exocets’ (p247).

And yet: Two Exocets fired (p124) – one hit the Sheffield, which sunk; the second missed. Three left. Two Super Étendards fired Exocets and one hit the Atlantic Conveyor (p174). One left. On p202 it is admitted there is only one Exocet left.

‘The deer had been originally introduced to the island for sport-shooting purposes (p11). However, when I went to South Georgia (in 1985) I was told that the deer were introduced to vary the whalers’ diet. Culling was necessary from time to time to keep the numbers down and in 2013 teams of Norwegian government shooters and reindeer herders culled all 3,500 reindeer on the island.

 

EXOCET - Book review

 

Jack Higgins’s 1983 thriller Exocet was fresh off the press roughly a year after the Falklands War and presciently deals with Argentina’s search for additional Exocet missiles, as at the outset of hostilities Argentina only possessed very few.

Brigadier Charles Ferguson is head of an adjunct to the British Secret Intelligence Service, Group Four, directly responsible to the PM. Ferguson’s top man is Major Tony Villiers in the Grenadier Guards, attached to the SAS.

Villiers is divorced; his wife was Gabrielle Legrand. They used to work together undercover. She is tasked by Ferguson with getting to know Colonel Raul Carlos Montera, Special Air Attaché at the Argentinian Embassy in London. She must find out what the Argentine intentions were regarding the Falkland Islands.

Galtieri and Dozo figure in the story, as you’d expect.

Businessman Felix Donner is successful – and an illegal arms dealer. He has links with Russia. And he is hired by the Argentinians to obtain a ship-load of Exocets, weapons that could win the war. As the weapons are manufactured in France, that seems a likely place to make a deal...

Villiers is pulled out of the Falklands – he’s part of a four-man reconnaissance team and sent to France to thwart Donner.

The story is non-stop, switching scenes and countries at a fair lick, and never lets up, in the usual Higgins manner. The relationship between the pilot Raul and Gabrielle is handled well and creates tension. Of course history tells us that the additional Exocets were never obtained.

The manipulative General Ferguson appears in other books by Higgins. Interestingly, in Port Stanley, FI, there’s a Villiers Street. Having recently read The Falklands War by the Sunday Times Insight Team (1982), it is quite evident that Higgins read this account for background verisimilitude, and uses the facts convincingly.

Editorial note:

Higgins mentions a Smith and Wesson Magnum revolver with a Carswell silencer (p3). I could be wrong, but I thought it was very rare for a revolver to have a silencer fitted. A Magnum pistol, fine.

His character Dillon’s favourite handgun is a Walther PPK with Carswell silencer...

THE FALKLANDS WAR - THE FULL STORY

The Sunday Times Insight Team produced this paperback in 1982, not long after the end of the war, which was quite an achievement. The writing team consisted of Paul Eddy, Magnus Linklater and Peter Gillman, though they were assisted several reporters and researchers; participants from both sides of the conflict were interviewed.

The book contains black-and-white photographs, diagrams and maps.

On the night of April 1, 1982 the first Argentine troops landed – variously called the Amphibious Commando Company or the Buzo Tactico - two distinct military groups; depends on whose report is true. According to this book the Argentines attacked Moody Brook barracks with indiscriminate bursts of automatic fire, using phosphorus grenades and riddling each room with bullets. Fortunately, the barracks had already been abandoned by the Royal Marines. ‘The Argentine government made much of the claim that its troops had gone to great lengths to ensure that the invasion was bloodless. That was largely the result but what happened at Moody Brook suggests it was not the intention’ (p15).

According to an Argentine officer, they only used tear gas and intended to take prisoners, and only fired their weapons to alert other troops converging on Government House. (The Argentine Fight for the Falklands by Martin Middlebrook (1989)).

Mid-morning on April 2 the Union flag was lowered, to be replaced by the blue and white flag of Argentina.

Chapter 2 covers some of the diplomatic events taking place at the UN building in February. Talks had been going on for about five years or more, with no headway being made. Talk was that if negotiations got nowhere there would be an invasion in July. Also ongoing was a dispute between Argentina and Chile regarding the Beagle Channel.

Chapter 3 relates the history of the Falkland Islands and the assorted occupiers, going back to the 1500s. In 1690 English Captain Strong stepped ashore and named the islands after Lord Falkland, the commissioner of the admiralty. Frenchmen came in his wake... The poet Byron’s grandfather  sailed into a bay off West Falkland in 1765 and established Port Egmont. As it happened the French had set up a settlement on East Falkland in 1764, Port Louis. In 1767 the French sold Port Louis to Spain for £250,000. ‘Spain formally restored Port Egmont to the British – on September 16, 1771’ (p38).

In 1816 the United Provinces of the River Plate split from Spain and Argentina was born. In 1820 an Argentinian frigate took formal possession of the islands. Some argy-bargy ensued over the years, including the razing of Port Louis by the American corvette Lexington, and the establishment of a penal colony whose prisoners promptly murdered the colony’s new governor. At that point the British sloop Clio hove into sight and was mostly welcomed by the Port Louis settlers. The British raised their flag on January 2, 1833 and stayed. Argentina protested for almost 150 years thereafter, ultimately appealing to the UN whose resolution 1514 of 1960 ‘pledged to bring an end everywhere colonialism in all its forms’ (p41). The UN’s 1965 resolution pressed Britain and Argentina ‘to find a quick and peaceful solution to the problem, bearing in mind the UN charter and the interests of the population of the said islands’ (p41).

In January 1982 scrap merchant Constantino Sergio Davidoff visited the British embassy in Buenos Aires to report his intentions: the scrap metal merchant had a contract to dismantle South Georgia’s four old whaling stations (which were closed in the early 1960s); they belonged to the Christian Salvesen shipping firm in Edinburgh. The Argentinians saw an opportunity to bring forward their intended invasion, using the scrap metal issue as both an excuse and a cover.

On March 19 four British Antarctic Survey scientists were on a field trip to Leith from their base in Grytviken (comprising about 30 BAS people).  They spotted the Argentinian naval fleet auxiliary Bahia Buen Suceso anchored in the harbour. Onboard were a contingent of marines, arms, ammunition, radio equipment, field surgical kit and food supplies. The troops were led by a slim, boyish-looking man whose shock of fair hair earned him the nickname ‘el Rubio’: Captain Alfredo Astiz. (p68). Astiz was a particularly nasty character, responsible for torture and death. He landed about 50 men, some in paramilitary uniform, and raised the Argentinian flag. The BAS scientists reported this to the governor at Stanley.

On March 20 HMS Endurance, with a contingent of Royal Marines was directed from Stanley to South Georgia and authorised to use force if necessary. Three days later Endurance was redirected to Grytviken; however, two marines were landed surreptitiously to an observation post on a bluff overlooking Leith harbour and, on March 25, they noted the Bahia Paraiso arrive and disembark many troops and their equipment. They reported by radio to London via a satellite link; but it was kept a closely guarded secret – why?

MI6 had a base in Buenos Aires. ‘Every Wednesday a meeting is held after lunch time, attended by, among others, the naval and military attachés at the British embassy’ (p78). On March 24 their assessment was that something was up – naval exercises with the Uruguayan navy were not plausible, judging by first-hand intelligence from the naval bases. Their opposite numbers in the American embassy concluded that an invasion was due on April 1.

The machinations in the UN make for interesting reading as certain countries take sides. ‘Guyana, worried about the claims on her territory made by neighbouring Venezuela, was on the British side’ (p114). [And this situation is still contentious today!] Interestingly, the Russians abstained – the issue did not affect their interests. America sat on the fence initially, for Argentina supported the fight against Communism that was spreading in Latin America: ‘We’re friends on both sides,’ Reagan announced. (p115). Ultimately, the British ambassador Sir Nicholas Henderson, with the help of General Haig, brought the Americans on-side. ‘On April 30... America would be allying herself publicly with the UK. “Armed aggression of that kind must not be allowed to succeed” said the president’ (p137).

Chapter 12 – ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ – relates the travails and recovery of South Georgia and the surrender of the Argentinians based there.

The recapture of Port Stanley signalled the end of the conflict with the surrender of the Argentine forces on June 14.

There are chapters and sections on the air-battles and aircraft, the terrible loss of life, the sinkings, and the bravery on both sides. As a piece of ‘instant reportage’ it is an impressive book. Granted, after all this time, as many more facts (and books) have surfaced some of this account will have been expanded upon and even corrected. Still, it’s a worthwhile read for an overview of the conflict.

It concludes: ‘At least the war has guaranteed one thing for the Falklanders on their remote rocks in the South Atlantic. No one will ever again underestimate the dangers they face’ (p265). [Famous last words?]