Bill Sloan, a former British Army intelligence officer and Shahid Al Sheehi, the son of a Pakistani British immigrant are caught up in a breathtakingly ambitious plan for a small Middle Eastern Emirate to seize regional power by acquiring WMD. The destinies of Sloan and Al Sheehi are irrevocably entwined. This novel draws the reader into a realm of political intrigue, characterised by thwarted terrorist plots, international duplicity, and a host of anxious preoccupations including the threat of WMDs. Incredibly timely, as these issues still continue to feature in contemporary headlines, this work acts to set our current perceptions of such issues is context. Well developed characters populate the pages, living very different lives but influenced by similar factors; their parallel agendas and overlapping imperatives are detailed with ease by a writer in command of his subject matter. Informed by personal experiences, this novel has a real feel of authenticity - an unrivalled insight into the Middle Eastern tensions which have simmered over the past thirty years. AUTHOR: Mike Sixsmith has enjoyed a varied career in counter-terrorism and intelligence in the Special Forces and the commercial world for over forty years. He worked closely with Government intelligence agencies throughout this time. Brought up in Northern Ireland, and becoming a British Army Special Forces officer, he spent much of the 1970's on active service in the Province in a variety of intelligence and security roles. For much of the 90's he focused on business intelligence in the Middle East region, conducting fraud enquiries and investigations into counterfeit trafficking, often involving prominent local figures. At the behest of a sheikh, he was arrested on a pretext by the secret police. After interrogation and solitary confinement, he was awaiting trial at the time of 9/11. His experiences here provide much of the background to this novel. He has been happily married for thirty six years and has three children. His experience has convinced him that the unintended consequences of American foreign policy, aided and abetted by Britain, have greatly outweighed any hoped for consequences. His writing explores the lives of the protagonists in these revolutionary conflicts, whose fate is largely determined by an accident of birth. A protestant child with a middle class background, forced by circumstances to live in a working class housing estate in North Belfast, he naturally joined the British Army. Had he lived on the Shankill Road, it would have been the UDA; or if the Falls Road the IRA. Had he lived like Shahid in the novel in an Asian ghetto in London he would likely have been a jihadist. His writing seeks to illuminate these paradoxes; the opposite but parallel lives of those ensnared in such a reality.
