| Vendor | |
|---|---|
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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher |
| Original language | |
| English | |
| Categories | |
GULF OF SPIES
David Rose is writing another book in the vein of TAKING MORGAN called GULF OF SPIES.
In the confrontation between the West and radical Islam, Dubai is the frontline, the epicentre – a seething cauldron of intrigue, espionage and covert power-plays. Masked by a tawdry, glitzy surface of $10,000 a night prostitutes, wealthy tourists and booming high finance, Dubai plays a role analogous to the Vienna of 1949 depicted in Graham Greene's classic thriller The Third Man. Every spook agency and militant group is there in force, eavesdropping, intriguing, cultivating contacts: the CIA, MI6, the BND, the Taliban, Al Qaeda, the Iranians, the Pakistani ISI, even the Israelis. Most visitors to Dubai have no awareness of these seething undercurrents. But they are there.
This will be the setting for the book which David Rose is now writing. Provisionally entitled GULF OF SPIES, it will, like his previous work TAKING MORGAN, be both gripping and authentic, derived from the author's personal experience of the region and extensive on-the-ground research. Its story revolves around the CIA's awareness of a cataclysmic terrorist plot, and its attempt to thwart it. But it realises that in order to do so, it has to develop a source who has access to its central perpetrator – a billionaire local sheikh.
His plan is to recruit nine human suicide 'vectors' of disease. He has managed to obtain vials of smallpox virus from a former Soviet laboratory. The vectors will be infected with it, and at the moment when they are at their most contagious, before symptoms develop, they will board flights in Dubai to Paris, London, Rome, New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Berlin, Beijing and New Delhi – so triggering a smallpox pandemic.
The source the Agency needs turns out to be Michael Elliott, a very senior British investment banker who has recently relocated to Dubai as the local chief of Bank of America. The sheikh, who manages a fund worth $2 trillion, uses him as a key financial advisor. To recruit and run him, the Agency chooses Helen Ferguson, one of its top non-official cover operatives. Like TAKING MORGAN, this book will be told from two points of view: his and hers, and will focus as much on their flawed but fascinating personalities and their developing relationship as the menace they are trying to combat. Layers of deception will slowly unravel as the book builds to a shattering climax.
This will be the setting for the book which David Rose is now writing. Provisionally entitled GULF OF SPIES, it will, like his previous work TAKING MORGAN, be both gripping and authentic, derived from the author's personal experience of the region and extensive on-the-ground research. Its story revolves around the CIA's awareness of a cataclysmic terrorist plot, and its attempt to thwart it. But it realises that in order to do so, it has to develop a source who has access to its central perpetrator – a billionaire local sheikh.
His plan is to recruit nine human suicide 'vectors' of disease. He has managed to obtain vials of smallpox virus from a former Soviet laboratory. The vectors will be infected with it, and at the moment when they are at their most contagious, before symptoms develop, they will board flights in Dubai to Paris, London, Rome, New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Berlin, Beijing and New Delhi – so triggering a smallpox pandemic.
The source the Agency needs turns out to be Michael Elliott, a very senior British investment banker who has recently relocated to Dubai as the local chief of Bank of America. The sheikh, who manages a fund worth $2 trillion, uses him as a key financial advisor. To recruit and run him, the Agency chooses Helen Ferguson, one of its top non-official cover operatives. Like TAKING MORGAN, this book will be told from two points of view: his and hers, and will focus as much on their flawed but fascinating personalities and their developing relationship as the menace they are trying to combat. Layers of deception will slowly unravel as the book builds to a shattering climax.