It is July 2002 -

America and Britain are preparing to invade Iraq, world oil prices are soaring, and Middle East tensions are running at an all-time high.

• But what is so strange about the dead body of a single Muslim boy killed in Palestine that the SIS knows it could lead to nuclear conflict?

• And when they send scientist Dr Nicholas Langley to investigate why does this lead to the violent kidnap of his children?

• And can the security forces avert a genocidal war?

In a convincing story, neatly consistent with recent history, David Caldo explores the nature of terrorism and takes us on a terrifying ride into a secret battleground of greed, fanaticism and fear.

- Read Sample

This is my second novel. It was written in June 2002, during the build up to the invasion of Iraq. I wrote it as a thriller, but also to express my frustration at the blindness of an American military process that must only make the situation in the Middle East worse, alienate the Muslim world, and ignore the underlying problems of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

Unfortunately many of the predictions that I made then have now become a depressing reality.

As a novel, my Agent advised me that the book was 'not publishable'. No American publisher would touch it, being concerned that the American public would perceive it as anti-American and anti-Israeli (though it isn't either). Without the lucrative American market it would be unlikely to find a European publisher. That was the nature of those times.

But this is still an exciting story. Enjoy it. Remember that, even though it's bedded in fact and many of the incidents in it really happened, it is still only fiction.