The Milan Briefcase

Book excerpt: The Milan Briefcase unfolds against the backdrop of the continuing, all but forgotten war in eastern Ukraine and an ailing Russian economy whose helmsmen are losing the electorate’s faith in their competence. It is a tale of machinations within clandestine corridors of power, where manipulation of public opinion is just one of the ruses, together with systematic dumbing down, employed by Machiavellian puppet masters towards achieving unpalatable ends. When classified Secret Service documents left inadvertently in a London minicab fall into private hands and are whisked away to a quiet European principality, the fuse is lit to a chain of events setting British and American intelligence services on a collision course against six individuals unaware of the significance of what they have uncovered. After three of the protagonists collude in a major bank robbery, not one of the six escapes the line of fire, whether it be in the form of death lurking in Gaudí’s Sagrada Família, Hezbollah pitted against the Islamic State in Lebanon, indictment for conspiring with jihadists, a suicide bomber in Lagos, a disastrous military offensive in Afghanistan or pursuit beyond Tiananmen Square. But perhaps some are prepared to pay the price.