The Spectral Island

The mountains and waters of Ivund, in the Indian Ocean, contain something of immense value. To gain control of the Island, a shadowy Middle East group uses the cover of a madrassas-building project to arrange what at first sight is a local extremist takeover. The UK/US, with the help of local sources, and a retired academic and a professional intelligence officer who discover the truth use their Special Forces, re-gain control of the Island. This is a story of deception. Power deceives as it manipulates reality. Those who wield it the diplomats and politicians can only behave as their experience and allegiances allow them to, and the Island looks certain to be dragged from its idyllic existence, where time is of little essence, into a hectic Nauruesque future. Some of those who live on the Island will see only clouds, others, silver linings. They include: Rosalie, a smart, if unsophisticated semi-local, and her US cowboy husband; free-thinkers, Valli and Meera, who, with their daughters, dispense wisdom and Darjeeling from their Emporium in the town; and Madame Lemesurier, owner of the Mirabile, who seeks guidance from her husband, at rest under a marble slab below a baobab in the Hotel gardens. At the centre of the conspiracy, and under the control of the shadowy Middle East group, is a Chinese scientist. From enforced exile in North Korea, he has been lent to the group and compelled to carry out disturbing research from his prison on a madrassa site. The wild landscape of the Island, its madrassas construction sites and its hotel, the run-down Mirabil, provide much of the setting for the story, though the exercise of deception also pushes the action from place-to-place: a faceless office in London, GCHQ, the military bases of Djibouti and Diego Garcia, and the Presidential Palace in the mainland capital.