Writing - Gestation of a thriller

Some writers believe that all those piles of writing ideas that had not been translated into either short stories or books should be ditched. There’s sense in that – tidying up, clearing the wheat from the chaff.

However, some ideas require time to gestate and may be worth holding onto - for years. I have several examples of retaining ideas that have ultimately paid dividends; here’s one.

When I was training in the RN in 1971, our group spent an evening round the mess table and set up a Ouija session, using a tumbler and placed in a circle pieces of paper with the alphabet and numbers on them. Needless to say, despite our best efforts, nothing intelligible resulted. Then I proposed that the gobbledegook was in code. And an idea formed. The message would be transmitted by a psychic spy, Tana Standish.

But, in the final analysis, it didn’t seem to be gibberish.

By the time Keith Tyson deciphered the first paragraph, he felt sick inside.

Unsmiling narrow mouth beneath a salt-and-pepper moustache, Jock stubbed out half-smoked cigarettes repeatedly. He was a bag of nerves since his last mission. It was plain on his face that he knew this astral message was very bad.

At last Tyson put down the pencil and raised his grey eyes. His expression was solemn. “It’s from Tana,” he said. “They’ve got her.”

Alan Swann’s face lost most of its colour as he leaned forward. He queried softly, “Where?”

“Czechoslovakia.” (p174)

That was the set-up. So I wrote a 2,000-word short story entitled ‘The Ouija Message’. Even though by then I’d sold a number of action-adventure stories, this one didn’t find a home. In retrospect, I realised that the story needed more space. I embarked on writing a book – same title – and it stretched to a modest 50,000 words.

At that time (1974) publishers were not averse to commenting on submissions. Robert Hale was not keen on the psychic elements but said ‘the work is up to publication standard and indeed better than many that are published’. So that was encouraging. Alas, a good number of rejections of Ouija followed and time passed and life-work tended to get in the way. I continued to have reasonable successes with short story and article sales, and wrote other books, thrillers and fantasy, but didn’t sell any of those novels either.

Time passed. As it does. Then, in 2007 I dug out a one-line idea – ‘He was dressed entirely in black. Black because he was in mourning. Mourning the men he had killed.’ I decided to write a western! That same year I sold the resultant book to Hale, and five more followed before they went out of business. At the same time, I had success with the Harry Bowling Prize, winning an award with the first chapters of a crime novel. While, sadly, I didn’t get agent representation, the success spurred me on to finish that crime book and it was accepted by a new publisher, Libros, under the title Pain Wears No Mask; (Libros went out of business but now the book is available as The Bread of Tears). On the back of these two successes, I revisited The Ouija Message and, thanks to all those years of writing experience, vastly improved the book to the extent that it ran to 80,000 words and it was accepted by Libros in 2008. That book spawned two more adventures and I’m busy writing the fourth in the Tana Standish psychic spy series. Since my breakthrough in 2007 I’ve had 37 books published.

The moral of all this? Never give up on your writing ideas. Believe in yourself. And if you keep writing, you keep improving.

 

Note: The Tana Standish books are: Mission: Prague (Czechoslovakia, 1975); Mission: Tehran (Iran, 1978); Mission: Khyber (Afghanistan, 1979); Mission: Falklands (Argentina, 1982) – work in progress.

Vengeance Papers Trail

Crooked Cat is offering three exciting e-books at bargain prices – 99p/$1.11[or thereabouts!] each – for the week starting from today, Friday 24 July.

The Carbon Trail by Catriona King

Espionage. Murder. Love.

Jeff Mitchell has a headache and he doesn't know why. But then, he doesn't know much about his life at all. Only one word means something: carbon. 100% of diamonds and 20% of the human body. What does it have to do with the agents tailing him in New York? Or the threats against his life?

Who is the exotic brunette who would kill to protect him? And the beautiful blonde in his bed?

The Carbon Trail - the mind has no limits.

Catriona King is also the author of the highly successful crime series featuring D.C.I. Marc Craig, beginning with #1: A Limited Justice and #9: The History Suite is the latest. (Though two more are imminent!)

Amazon UK here

 

Amazon COM here

 

The Prague Papers by Nik Morton

#1 in the Tana Standish psychic spy series.

Czechoslovakia, 1975.

Tana is a spy - and she’s psychic. Orphaned in the Warsaw ghetto during the Second World War, she was adopted by a naval officer and his wife. Now she works for the British Secret Intelligence Service. Czechoslovakia’s people are still kicking against the Soviet invasion. Tana is called in to restore morale and repair the underground network. But there’s a traitor at work.

And she learns about a secret Soviet complex in the Sumava Mountains. Unknown to her there’s a top secret establishment in Kazakhstan, where Yakunin, one of their gifted psychics, has detected her presence in Czechoslovakia.

When Tana infiltrates the Sumava complex, she’s captured! A desperate mission is mounted to either get her out or to silence her - before she breaks under interrogation.

#2 in the series is The Tehran Text, also available.

 
Amazon UK here

 

Amazon COM here

 

Vengeance Wears Black by Seumas Gallacher

#2 in the Jack Calder series.

Jack Calder and his former SAS colleagues at ISP, a specialist security firm, are saved from certain death when an ex-Gurkha is killed smothering a deadly grenade thrown into a lunchtime Chinese restaurant in the West End of London. They learn that murderous turf wars are raging between Asian Triads and Eastern European mobsters vying for control of international fiefdoms of drug smuggling, people trafficking, prostitution and money laundering.

An unexpected visit from the highest levels of international law enforcement offers Jack and the ISP team a means to use their black operations skills to wreak a ruthless retaliation against the drug lords.

Unlikely partners emerge in their onslaught against the gangs as the warring criminal factions threaten an unholy alliance to repel them. The pursuit spins across Europe, Turkey and North Africa before a final reckoning.

The first Jack Calder book is The Violin Man’s Legacy and #3 is Savage Payback.

 
Amazon UK here

 

Amazon COM here

 

 

 

 

 

Books, more books

Crooked Cat Publishing has just accepted my latest book. Which will be released in April 2015.

And they're publishing THE TEHRAN TEXT, the sequel to THE PRAGUE PAPERS on 17 February!

A bottle of cava has been opened...

Secret file – 01 – Tana Standish, psychic spy

On November 26, The Prague Papers are released. This book is published by Crooked Cat. It is based on a manuscript handed to me by an MI6 agent, Alan Swann. It needed some knocking into shape, as it had been a collaborative effort by a select group of agents, all intent on telling the story of Tana Standish, psychic spy, whose career spanned 1965 to 1988. They asked that her story be told as fiction.

As a result, the forthcoming novel The Prague Papers is the first adventure to feature Tana Standish and is mainly set in Czechoslovakia in 1975.

 

 

Certain information was divulged in order for me to write the book; yet some has been concealed to date. Certainly, her past and attributes are dealt with in more depth in the book. Here is a brief outline of information that I have gleaned so far.

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 was killed ironically in a car crash two years later. Her mother Vera never remarried.

At the time of this novel, she is thirty-eight.

She 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.

Besides possessing psychic abilities, she has a photographic memory.

Her hair is auburn, sometimes black and sometimes brunette. She has intelligent wide eyes with faint lines at the corners.  Eye-colour varies with the light – sometimes topaz, sometimes green or grey. Her nose is aquiline, her forehead high with two pronounced lines when concentrating. She has known grief but can still laugh, her mouth being sensuous; her chin is round and firm, perhaps ‘determined’, and she has high cheekbones.  Her voice is resonant or sensuous, dependent on the situation. She has kept herself fit and possesses strong muscular shoulders and arms and is generally well-toned.

 

 

The episode in Czechoslovakia is her eleventh mission since joining a special adjunct of MI6. I don’t know why this particular mission manuscript was the first to be chosen for me work on. I can only hope that details of her earlier missions will be conveyed to me at some future date.

The Singapore Signal – 1965

The Naples Note- 1966

The Izmir Intelligence - 1967

The Odessa Objective – 1968

The Pilsen Portfolio– 1968

The Karachi Code - 1970

The Elba Errand – 1971

The Gibraltar Gathering - 1972

The Mombassa Message - 1973

The Hong Kong Cover – 1974

The Prague Papers – 1975

Since my first meeting with Mr Swann, I have been entrusted with a further three manuscripts, pertaining to Iran, Afghanistan, and Argentina. The Tehran Text will be released in 17 February by Crooked Cat.

 

 

November release - The Prague Papers

Due out in November from Crooked Cat Publishing, the first psychic spy Tana Standish thriller, set in the Cold War, which Mr Putin seems intend on bringing back...

Czechoslovakia, 1975. Tana is a spy - and she’s psychic. Orphaned in the Warsaw ghetto during the Second World War, she was adopted by a British naval officer and his wife. Now she works for the British Secret Intelligence Service. Czechoslovakia’s people are still kicking against the Soviet invasion. Tana was called in to restore morale and repair the underground network. But there’s a traitor at work.

And she learns about a secret Soviet complex, concealed in a colliery in the Sumava Mountains. Unknown to her there’s a top secret psychic establishment in Kazakhstan, where Yakunin, one of their gifted psychics, has detected her presence in Czechoslovakia. As he gets to know her, his loyalties are strained.

With her old flame Laco, Tana infiltrates the Sumava complex. When she’s captured, a desperate mission is mounted to either get her out or to silence her - before she breaks under interrogation.

 

 

Writing - The Prague Papers - Foreword

Prague - Wikipedia commons

THE PRAGUE PAPERS

 

(Tana Standish, psychic spy, in Czechoslovakia – 1975)

The first in a series

 

Nik Morton

 

To be published by Crooked Cat – currently in the publisher’s edit phase,
so it will be subject to change

  

FOREWORD: Manuscript

 

Portsmouth, Hampshire, UK

The agent who called himself Mr. Swann entered the Queen’s Hotel bar at 2PM, just as he had promised. In my business, I’d met a few spies and all of them were nondescript. After all, to be a good agent, you need to blend in, be unmemorable. Swann just didn’t fit that category, so I wondered if I was wasting my time on this mysterious appointment.

            He was tall, dark and sanguine. In his early fifties, maybe a little older. His black hair sported a white streak on the left; a livid jagged thin scar continued from there at the hairline all the way down that side of his face to his chin. The bottle-green worsted suit was bespoke, the shoes patent leather. He wore gloves and carried a large brown leather briefcase. Removing a dark gray trilby, he nodded at me. Spots of summer rain had peppered dark blobs on his shoulders and hat.

As I stood to greet him, he gestured for me to remain seated and strode over. He limped ever so slightly, as if one leg was shorter than the other; I’m only a reporter, not a detective, and I certainly wasn’t going to measure his inside leg.

            He’d implied he was still in the field but I was beginning to suspect that he’d been put out to grass. A bit harsh, I thought. Because of his physical appearance maybe nowadays he was a desk man at ‘Legoland’, the agents’ popular name for the headquarters building at Vauxhall Cross on the Thames.

Let’s be honest, he wasn’t going to melt into any background. Besides, these days he was the wrong ethnic type for infiltration. The Twin Towers atrocity changed several priorities and a few careers come to that. Why do we in the media insist on the shorthand ‘9/11’? Sounds more like a deodorant brand to me. What’s wrong with giving that terrible act of violence against the victims of over thirty different nations its proper name? Anyway, the world was not the same since then and now the clandestine services were mainly gunning for fanatical terrorists, not greedy traitors or misguided ideologists, though those sort probably still existed in the woodwork, waiting their chance to emerge.

            Sitting opposite me, Swann smiled as the middle-aged blonde barmaid placed a whisky and dry ginger in front of him. Clearly, he was known in this place. Not promising, I thought, though obviously being prominent could also imply that you couldn’t possibly be a spy because spies are shadow creatures. Double blind, or whatever they call it.

Maybe that’s how the character James Bond got away with it for so many years, traipsing round the world using his own name more than the odd pseudonym. Now Quiller, he was much more realistic. Never did get to know his real name. And of course Quiller’s author, Adam Hall, was a cover-name for the late lamented Elleston Trevor. Still, those spies were fiction; Mr Swann was fact and studying me.

            Swann’s eyes were a cold blue; one of them, I suddenly realised, was glass. You’d have to be quick to detect the movement but, in an instant, his single orb seemed to scan the entire room and its occupants. As it happened, I’d chosen a booth where we couldn’t be overheard.

Despite the very visible scar, it was obvious that he had undergone some plastic surgery: the aging skin round eyes and cheek contrasted starkly with the pristine sheen of his square jaw.

            He lifted the briefcase onto his lap and clicked open the metal clasp. He fished out a bundle of paper. ‘Perhaps this manuscript would prove of interest, Mr. Morton?’

            I liked the man at once. No skirting around the reason for our meeting, no small talk about the lousy British weather. Straight to the point.

            He handed over about a ream of Courier font typewritten paper, secured by a thick elastic band. The corners were turned and the sheets had lost their whiteness. A bit like me, I suppose. It also reminded me of my rejected manuscripts – except there were no coffee-mug stains.

            ‘Have you heard of the Dobranice Incident?’

            ‘No,’ I said.

            ‘It was a while ago, I must admit.’ He’d never make a politician, I thought; they never admitted anything.

            ‘So when was this incident?’

            ‘1975.’

            ‘Good God, the Dark Ages!’ If my shaky memory was to be believed, I was an idealistic nineteen-year-old, reporting the Melody Maker pop-scene at the time. I shook my head. ‘I wasn’t into world events then.’ I’m fifty-eight now and world-weary. Early retirement would be nice, but it wasn’t going to happen since the politicians had wrecked my personal pension. At least I genuinely liked writing – and getting paid for it. Though, on reflection, no matter how much I wrote, it didn’t get any easier.

            ‘The incident was trivialised,’ Swann said. ‘Made barely page three in the broadsheets at the time. A postscript, really.’

            ‘And this postscript – these papers concern that ‘incident’?’

            ‘Dobranice. Yes.’ He handed over a single sheet, a typed list.

            I glanced at it. Some place-names I recognized as trouble spots from recent history, others I hadn’t heard of and the rest might well be places from a Pirates and Travellers game:

Dobranice

Tehran

Kabul

Caldera

Izmir

Hong Kong

Elba

Naples

Peking

Bulawayo

Mogadishu

Cairo.

       ‘When you said agent, you didn’t mean travel agent, by any chance?’ I asked.

His mouth made a grimace but his good eye shone, betraying amusement. ‘Keith warned me about your – for want of a better description – sense of humour. No, that’s a list of places – where certain assignments were carried out.’

‘So this manuscript is about Dobranice, the top of the list?’

‘Yes. Top place on the list. Top story.’ He grinned lopsidedly. ‘Top secret.’

I took a good gulp of my cool San Miguel, just to remind me of sunnier climes. This hotel was one of the few places to stock imported Spanish beer. Most of the stuff was bottled in Britain and didn’t taste the same. I glanced at a window. Needless to say, it was raining again. A sultry summer, so the weathermen promised. Weathermen and politicians – don’t believe a word they say.

I nodded at the bundle of typescript, itching to get my hands on it, but I held back. ‘Why give this to me?’

            ‘Times have changed.’ He sipped his whisky. ‘The Old Order has gone now. Even if the thirty-year-rule allows them to release anything about the incident, I doubt if you’d ever see the full story.’

            ‘Well, thirty years have gone, haven’t they? I don’t recall anything being released about this Dobranice place, though.’

            ‘And I doubt if you will, ever. Anyway, whether it’s Prague, Dobranice or other assignments in Iran, Afghanistan, Argentina… Not everything is covered by the thirty year rule; some take longer to be released. The point is that they’re all about Tana. And we feel her story should be told now.’ The look in his eye seemed wistful, as if there was a history between him and this Tana person.

            ‘Tana?’

            ‘Tana Standish.’ He nodded at the pile of paper. ‘Read the manuscript – she’s in there.’ He looked sad, almost bereaved, the way he spoke about the mysterious Tana.

            Blood throbbed in my temple. Every instinct I’d developed in the news-hunting game told me this might be worth a look. ‘You said "we". Who wrote this?’

            ‘Me. And a few others. Keith and Mike. Others. A group effort. Let’s just say that we downed a few drinks and got together a number of times after the Berlin Wall came crumbling down. I know, that’s a long time ago as well.’ His mouth curved. ‘Anyway, it made a pleasant change from dry assignment reports.’

            ‘But –?’ I offered. There always has to be a but.

            He smiled again, thinly. ‘Well, it might be best to rewrite it as fiction, Mr. Morton. Just to avoid the stupidity of another Spycatcher circus.’

            ‘Or Stella Rimington’s Open Secret?’

            ‘Not so open, was it? In fact, not much action in her prose, I’m afraid. Now, Dobranice – it has more than enough action.’ His features turned rueful. ‘More than enough.’

            ‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘those books were about the Security Service, MI5. This isn’t, is it?’

            ‘Indeed, you’re quite right. It’s a rather secret part of the Firm, actually.’

            ‘I’m not going to put any agents at risk by writing about this, am I?’

            ‘No, these adventures won’t figure in the revelations of Wikileaks, Assange or Snowden.”

            ‘I’m pleased to hear it.’

            ‘It might have fresh relevance, now that Mr Putin is keen to start a fresh Cold War.’

            ‘True. What do you want in return?’

            He studied the remains of his drink and because I wasn’t psychic I couldn’t fathom what he was thinking, but it was more than his words: ‘Just the story. The story is the thing.’

            Another question had been nagging throughout our clandestine meeting. ‘Why bring this to me? As much as I try spreading the word on Twitter and Facebook, I’m not exactly well-known, you know.’

            ‘Jack Higgins turned us down.’

            I glared and he grinned. ‘Just joking,’ he said. ‘You’ve been around the block, if you like, you’ve lived through these times, even if you didn’t know what was going on in secret circles. Not many do, if we’re honest. We’ve still got one of the most secret societies on earth, right here in good old Britain. Whatever happened to ‘Great’?’

            ‘Sold for a peerage, perhaps?’

            He shook his head and smiled. ‘I don’t do politics. Not a good idea in our profession. But as I was saying, actually, Keith liked your articles for the Portsmouth and District Post.’

            I didn’t for a minute believe a word of it. And yet... I fingered the manuscript in anticipation. It seemed too good to be true. I was being handed all this secret stuff on a plate.

‘All right, then,’ I said, ‘I’ll give it a go.’

‘Just do her justice,’ he said.

* * * *

Later, how I wished I’d met Tana Standish. People like me – and those accursed politicians – sit cozily at home with our petty complaints while men and women like her fight the good fight against evil. The Cold War may have gone away for a while, but we still need people like Tana Standish, Alan Swann and Keith Tyson. And they get no thanks. Mainly, their stories go unheard and unread. At the most, their achievements probably get a footnote in a newspaper.

            After several months shut away from the world of today I have finished this book, which I have called The Prague Papers – the first chronicle of Tana Standish’s missions which presages several calamitous adventures with significant revelations from recent history. It is dedicated to all the secret agents who fight behind the scenes and behind the news.

 

***

 

Note: This is just a teaser. All of the Tana Standish books begin in a similar manner, with the secret documents being handed over... The novel is in the third person, however.

 

 

Tana Standish, psychic spy - 01

I’m pleased to announce that Crooked Cat Publishing have accepted my first two Tana Standish chronicles.

 

Tana Standish, a child-survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, was adopted by a British naval Lieutenant and eventually joined the British Secret Intelligence Service. She is a psychic with a photographic memory. Each adventure begins with the passing of a collection of papers and manuscripts to the author (Nik Morton) by one of her secret service associates. He then writes down her experiences. The first is The Prague Papers (Czechoslovakia, 1975), followed by The Tehran Text (Iran, 1978), both of which have been previously published (2008 & 2009 respectively), though the latter received minimal exposure as the collapse of the publisher occurred almost at the same time as its release. The next two adventures are planned; these are: The Khyber Chronicle – (Afghanistan, 1979/80), half-completed, and The Caldera Cryptogram (Argentina, Falklands, 1982).

 

The timeline for Tana’s secret service career is shown below:

The Singapore Signal – 1965 – (Tana’s first mission)

The Naples Note - 1966

The Izmir Intelligence - 1967

The Odessa Objective – 1968

The Pilsen Portfolio– 1968

The Karachi Code - 1970

The Elba Errand – 1971

The Gibraltar Gathering - 1972

The Mombasa Message - 1973

The Hong Kong Cover – 1974

The Prague Papers – 1975

The Peking Profile – 1976

The Bulawayo Bulletin – Jan 1977

The Mogadishu Memorandum – Jul 1977

The Cairo Codicil – Dec 1977

The Tehran Text - 1978

The Khyber Chronicle – 1979-1980

The Caldera Cryptogram – 1980-1982

The Savannah Statement - 1983

The Dingli Disclosure – 1984 (Malta)

The Malaga Missive – 1985

The Oslo Observation - 1985

 

More disclosures from the secret annals soon!

Recurrent images: beginnings and echoes

Using a leitmotif in your fiction can provide an added dimension. This is a recurrent idea or image. Indeed, there may be several different leitmotifs in the novel.

In my series of novels about Tana Standish, psychic spy of the Cold War, I begin each book with similar imagery. This serves a number of purposes – it thrusts the reader directly into the action and it reveals something about the characters involved, for example.

The first two books are out of print and seeking a new publisher; the third is a work in progress, with more to follow in time.

The Prague Papers - ONE: Prelude

Czechoslovakia, August, 1968

Six Soviet officers stood on the balcony overlooking St. Wenceslas Square and the definition through the sniper-scope was so good that Tana Standish could detect the black-heads round their noses and the blood-shot eyes that testified to late-night celebrating with alcohol. She had ten 7.5mm rounds, more than enough to kill all of them. 

            Tana had a steady grip but there was no risk of weapon-shake anyway as the new Giat F1 rifle rested on its bipod on the window-sill. She had also made sure that, as this weapon was fresh from the French production-line, it could not be traced back to England.            

            Dressed in his brown-grey greatcoat with bright red lapel flashes, General of the Army Ivan Pavlovsky cocked his head to the left while he listened attentively to his commanders. He was thick-set, with small dark eyes and a pug nose whose nostrils bristled with hair.

            Try as she might, she could not detect any thoughts from the officers. But she was able to lip-read. They were in a self-congratulatory mood, since the invasion had gone well, with only a few Czech and Slovak deaths. Vodka had indeed flowed last night.

            As one of the main architects of the offensive, Pavlovsky would have the honour to die first. She levelled the cross-hairs on the general’s forehead, just between the close-set eyes.

            For God’s sake, don’t! Along with the words that she snatched from Laco’s tumbling thoughts came a familiar dull ache at the back of her neck. Her mouth went very dry. Tana lifted her finger away from the trigger and felt cold sweat start its trail down the side of her brow.

            She turned her head as, seconds later, Laco unlocked the apartment door and rushed inside, slamming the door behind him.

            ‘Thank God I caught you in time!’ he gasped, eyes staring at the rifle on its stand.

            ‘We agreed,’ Tana said evenly, ‘if we got the opportunity, it was too good to pass up.’ Out of the corner of her eye she watched the Soviet officers. They weren’t going anywhere. Two of them were pointing down into the street, where a car was on fire.          

            Laco heaved a sigh of resignation. ‘We intercepted a radio message.’ He rested his back against the wall by the door and slowly sank down on his haunches, head in his hands. ‘They said there will be reprisals if we kill any of their officers.’

            ‘If I was one of the other ranks,’ she said, ‘I’d be a bit upset about that.’ But it wasn’t a joking matter. Reprisal was not a nice word in Czechoslovakia.

            She drew the lace curtain across the window, concealing the weapon.

            Kneeling beside Laco, Tana gently took his hands in hers. She understood. He was only nineteen and he didn’t want another Lidice on his conscience. ‘One day, we’ll beat them,’ she said, ‘I promise.’

FR1 rifle - Wikipedia commons

 

The Tehran Transcript – ONE: HEART

Friday, September 8, 1978

Iran
Dressed in his sinister black SAVAK uniform, Captain Hassan Mokhtarian looked every inch the evil man he was. A man who deserved to die.

            Tana Standish could see him quite clearly through the telescopic sight, even making allowances for the poor light as dusk descended over Tehran and the city’s surrounding mountains, turning the overshadowing snow-capped cone of Mount Damavand a delicate shade of mauve. At least today the city smog didn’t obscure the peak of the volcano which still belched out sulphurous fumes from time to time and killed the odd stray sheep.

            Hassan exuded an air of danger with his pitted complexion and deep-set ebony eyes under a prominent forehead ridge. While SAVAK was a civilian organisation, many of its officers were military men and they relished wearing a uniform which instilled fear in the population.

            Standing in the open doorway of his villa, he exhaled smoke through his nostrils and dropped the Marlboro cigarette to the lightly coloured marble-tiled step, grinding it under the toe of his boot. His eyes glinted, as if he took pleasure in the destruction of even small things.

Hassan smiled as he closed the door behind him and stepped down to the waiting limousine with its bullet-proof smoked-glass windows. The government driver opened the door.

            Going to fat, his black silk shirt taut against his stomach, Hassan paused, one shining boot in the vehicle, and glanced back at the window to the right of the entrance. His wife Rosa waved.

            He had excelled himself with the Koofteh Berenji. The balls of meat had been filled with barberries, walnuts and fried onions. They were delicious. Normally, Rosa arranged for the chief maid to buy their meat for the chef, but on this occasion he’d insisted they take from the freezer the most recent gift from headquarters.

            Rosa allowed his odd whim – it was about once a month, he supposed, that he dictated what they ate and actually cooked it himself. It just depended on the quality of the source. He joked that it made him stronger, more capable of doing the Shah’s work, and of course the chef got a day off into the bargain.

            Now he grinned broadly at the memory and he experienced a thrilling shiver down his spine. Hassan wondered what Rosa would say if she realised the ground meat they’d eaten was the heart of Savak Hoveyda, a particularly recalcitrant activist for “people’s rights”.

            He used his big nicotine-stained fingers to brush back the oiled hair from his forehead, gave Rosa a cursory wave and, abruptly, his heart lurched and his normally emotionless features contorted in distress, deep furrows appearing in his prominent forehead, and his eyes screwed tight as sudden intense pain assailed his hands. It was as if his fingernails were being pulled out by the same pincers his men had used on Hoveyda, the same he had planned to use tonight on the anonymous Mojahedin woman.

            Shaking violently, Hassan staggered back and fortunately his driver caught him before he could fall on the hard marble steps.

 

Tears streamed down Tana’s face and dampened the black cotton material of her chador as she watched Hassan Mokhtarian stumble backwards into his driver’s arms. The optical telescopic sight – the Mauser SP66 had no obscuring iron sights - provided her with a very detailed picture of her target’s sudden facial transformation.

            It wasn’t enough, though. It never would be, she thought, the familiar taste of iron in her dry mouth.

            Thought-transference was something quite alien to the self-satisfied torturer of the Shah’s Security and Intelligence Service, SAVAK. It pained her as much this time as it had when she’d received the psychic echoes from her friend Savak Hoveyda – so ironically did they give their security and intelligence service the acronym which was a common Persian name!

Mauser SP66 rifle - Wikipedia commons

The Khyber Code – ONE: HERAT

Wednesday, February 14, 1979
Afghanistan
Cross-hairs of the telescopic sight centred on the man’s creased forehead, just below his brown and grey woollen hat. Steadying the weapon, Clayton tried calming the anger and disgust that threshed in his body. He needed a quick, clean shot. Stop breathing, squeeze the trigger. Now!

            The stock of the Mannlicher-Carcano carbine thudded into his shoulder as the gun’s report bounced off the hills. The 6.5mm calibre bullet made a bloody mess of the man’s head, splattering blood over his long-sleeved astrakhan coat. A lifeless hand dropped the curved knife.

            As the echo of his shot died, Clayton levered the bolt, feeding another cartridge into the breech, and fired again.

 

Not too many minutes earlier, Clayton had been on foot, gingerly leading his horse down the rocky scree slope towards the village. Although it was cold, he wore tough hide sandals, as did all tribesmen in the mountains. His disguise required it, since he was liable to pray five times a day and that meant preceding his devotions with ablutions of cold water on the back of the neck and feet. Few devout Afghans could be bothered with lace-up boots, they took too long to remove. He wore chalwar kameez, a wool hat and a black leather patch over his left eye. His pattu was slung over his back.

            He was about an hour early to pick up young Sher, his helper and guide, who reckoned that he’d found a buried ancient minaret just two days’ ride away.

            He stopped, noticing a gathering of men and a young woman outside an adobe house on the edge of the village. Two horses were standing idle by a hitching rail. Further down the village street, people watched furtively from windows and doorways, heads hooded, only their eyes visible.

            Clayton lifted the false eye-patch to get a better view of the group. Their body language indicated that something was amiss.

            Old instinct kicked in. Withdrawing the rifle from its leather boot under his woollen saddle-cloth, he sat back on the slope and rested his elbow on his knee and studied the group through the telescopic sight.

            Sher was being restrained by two stocky villagers with bushy black beards. A young woman was being held by two more men. Her shawl had been pulled away and her big brown eyes stared fearfully at the tall bearded man in the astrakhan coat. Clayton recognised him – he was Sher’s father, Asad Sattar.

            Clayton was too far away to hear what was being said, but he could read Asad’s lips, translating from the tribe’s Pashtu language: ‘You bring shame to my house, Nura!’

            ‘No, father, it is not like that!’

            ‘I have been informed that you dare to gaze with lust on an unworthy man!’

            ‘No, it is Ramin, he is jealous, he wants me but I don’t want him!’

            ‘What you want is of no consequence! You dishonour me and all your family!’

            ‘No, father,’ Sher objected, ‘that is not true!’

            Asad cuffed his son with the back of his big hand. ‘Silence, boy, or I shall cut out your tongue!’ Asad turned back to his daughter. ‘For your transgression, I shall pluck your eyes out and cast you into the wilderness!’

            Asad moved shockingly fast, pulling his curved knife from its belt sheath and flicking its point at Nura’s left eye.

            Clayton’s stomach lurched as the girl screamed. Sher’s eyes brimmed with tears but he didn’t cry out; like all young Afghan men, he was stoic in adversity for he had learned not to cry even if seriously hurt. Clayton steadied his arm and hands, aimed and shot Asad in the head. It was bad enough that anyone would do that to another human being, but for a father to be so brutal beggared belief. He knew all about the medieval practice of Islamic honour killings, but he’d never witnessed any; usually, they occurred behind closed doors. Girls as young as nine were sold or wed to old men and death while giving birth was commonplace.

            Trembling with after-shock, Clayton fired again. This second shot pierced the shoulder of the man on Nura’s left. His third shattered the kneecap of one of the men restraining Sher. Only seconds had elapsed and in that time the remaining men let go of the two youngsters and, helping their wounded comrades, turned and hurried towards the house. For an archaeologist, Clayton thought, he was a pretty good shot. The quality of the rifle helped, he supposed; nothing to brag about, the same type was used in the assassination of President Kennedy.

            Quick-wittedly, Sher spotted Clayton, waved briefly then ran over to his wailing sister who was crouched on the ground, hands covering her face. He grabbed her arm and tugged; reluctantly, she stood, covering one eye with a hand. They ran to the horses and Sher swung into the saddle and hauled his sister up behind him. In seconds, the pair was racing in Clayton’s direction, abandoning their home and village and family forever.

            Sher drew the horse beside Clayton; his sister hugged him tight, burying her face against Sher’s jacket.

            Clayton sheathed the rifle and swung into the saddle. ‘We must lose the pursuit, my friends,’ he shouted, pointing towards the village.

            Sher glanced over his shoulder, past the bowed head of his sobbing sister. Already, four horsemen were riding out of the village, furs flying out behind them, each brandishing long-barrelled jezails; sun glinted on the muskets’ elaborate lattices of mother-of-pearl.

            ‘Let’s go!’ Clayton said, urging his horse up the scree. An experienced young horseman, Sher followed, his sister clinging to him as if for dear life. Seven days from now, I had promised to be in Herat, Clayton fumed. Now, I may spend all that time eluding those damnable tribesmen!

            About an hour later, they entered a narrow defile and he halted his mount. ‘Sher, find me a place where I can transmit a message to Herat.’ His radio was concealed in several hollow sections of his saddle.

            The youngster nodded, his tone serious: ‘Yes, Greystock,’ using one of Clayton’s aliases. He signed for Clayton to follow him as he led his horse to the east.

Me at the gate (baab) to the Khyber Pass (1969)

***

Until I find a publisher for the series, I probably won’t finish Khyber (it’s one-third written already, however, and fully plotted).

 

'Local author Nik psychs his way to a gripping thriller'

‘Nik Morton has been a writer virtually all his working life. Even having now ‘retired’ to the Costa Blanca he still contributes to periodicals in both England and Spain… when I received a reviewing copy of his book The Prague Manuscript, I had no idea what to expect. I was in for something of a surprise.

‘After what I felt was a raher bland introduction I found myself in a world of double-dealing and intrigue at a level which made James Bond and Modesty Blaise look like rank amateurs; I’m sure that John Le Carré enthusiasts would agree with me. Nik’s Cold War espionage tale was fast moving and had more than one sting in it. Action turns me on, I am addicted to this kind of thriller so when I discovered that a local author could get me on the edge of my seat and still add a few exotic touches to the spymaster genre I reckon I’d landed a unique bonus.

‘I’ve been weaned on highly trained agents with all kinds of fancy offensive gear at their fingertips; masters of such disciplines as kung fu and jiu-jitsu, constantly hpped in and out of bed. Nik goes one better with his mind-blowing characters. Through the medium of his super spy, Tana Standish – an Amazon of Polish/English extraction – he adds more than a touch of paprika to the machinations of the cloak and dagger world and weaves a really cleverly contrived plot – explosive from start to finish. Get this – Tana is not just a superwoman but a psychic too. Yet confusing the issue, the opposition are also training psychic agents, one of whom is able to influence Tana’s movements yet appeas to be sympatico… (plot revelations omitted)

‘This tale is a lively, well written espionage adventure with plenty of twists. And it seems there is to be a sequel – or do I mean sequels?’
– The New Coastal Press, March 2009 – reviewer unknown, but it wasn't me!

That was a nice surprise and totally unexpected. The introduction may appear ‘bland’ to an action addict, but its purpose was to set the scene for the series, whereby I, the author, come into possession of highly classified manuscripts about Tana Standish and her fellow agents; this pseudo-factual conceit is maintained for the sequels too. And reviewer Danny Collins thought that it was even more effective than the similar ploys of Jack Higgins, praise indeed.
Nik

Reading Group

I was invited to visit the La Marina Reading Group this afternoon. They discussed The Other Queen by Philippa Gregory; some liked it, others didn’t. Dislike mainly centred on the fact the story was told from more than one perspective. Most thought it was enlightening and the readers came away with new facts and information about the period. I talked briefly about my two books, Pain Wears No Mask and The Prague Manuscript and widened the discussion to query if anyone had read a western or science fiction. Happily, one lady had just finished St Agnes’s Stand by Thomas Eidson – a marvellous book – and admitted that she had been pleasantly surprised to find she enjoyed a western. Many raved over The Time Traveler’s Wife and they preferred the classic SF of Wyndham and Wells. My message was, please don’t pigeonhole genres – try something new and you might be surprised. An interesting couple of hours. They took me up on my recommendation for their reading list - Poisoned Petals by Andy Crabb - 44 short stories set in Spain.
Nik