The Keepers of the Persian Gate
Sydney Maurice
Copyright © 2015 Sydney Maurice
The right of Sydney Maurice to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. Published in the United Kingdom. No part of this book may be used or reproduced whether in print or digitally in any manner without the express written permission of the author.
Edited by Jennie Carlsten PHD
“Nothing happens by accident.
If it happens, you can bet it
was planned that way.”
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
32nd President of the United States of America
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1: Operation Frequent Flyer
Chapter 2: Isla Margarita
Chapter 3: Retreat
Chapter 4: Evacuation
Chapter 5: Doughty Street
Chapter 6: Settling In
Chapter 7: The Old Bank of England
Chapter 8: Mens Rea
Chapter 9: Actus Reus
Chapter 10: Operation Cromwell
Chapter 11: Lancelot
Chapter 12: Gigha
Chapter 13: The Acropolis
Chapter 14: The Netherlands
Chapter 15: Queen’s Counsel
Chapter 16: The Privy Court
Epilogue
Prologue
IN THE ACHAEMENID ERA (550-330 BC), 10,000 men guarded an infamous gate to the Persian Empire in what is now modern day Iran. Geographically, the Persian Gate lay in a dark pass that was immune to sunlight. Historically, the pass was impenetrable by horse or chariot, and any army moving through it would be forced to do so on foot. The old myth was that he who controlled the Gate controlled all of Persia. At the time, the Persian Empire encompassed the whole of the Middle East, stretching from the borders of contemporary Turkey through to the borders of India.
In the winter of 331 BC, Alexander the Great, on his great conquest to the East, realised its strategic importance and attacked the Gate. The attack culminated in the famous Battle of the Persian Gate. Many of the defenders of the Persian Gate were unarmed but bravely fought hand-to-hand with the trained army of Macedonia, dragging men to the ground and using implements such as rocks to attack the invading enemy.
Those men who fought bravely without weapons believed in peace and freedom above all things. After the battle, the few survivors formed a collective known as the Keepers of the Persian Gate. This collective went on to survive through the centuries and millennia to the modern day. However, as time went by the strategic relevance of the actual Gate itself lessened. The Keepers of the Persian Gate spread out across the region, embedding themselves in governments and armies across Persia. Still conscious of how Alexander had built an Acropolis close to the site of the Gate after the Battle, the Keepers were determined to ensure that no power from the West would ever again exert the same level of influence over Persia as Alexander did after 331 BC.
***
2000 hours, Thursday, 3rd March 2011
It was the seventh anniversary of the date on which Patrick ‘Paddy’ Trimble informed his parents that he intended to go to Sandhurst to train as an officer in the British Army. It was also Paddy’s twenty-eighth birthday, and for the third successive year he wasn’t able to get out for a drink to celebrate the occasion.
Instead, in a bizarre twist of fate he had just been deployed to an American aircraft carrier, namely, the USS Nimitz. Being the only Brit onboard on this particular occasion, he got a bit of gentle stick from the American crew upon his arrival. Thank God the stay would only be brief, he thought to himself. Paddy was British, but also Irish - if that makes sense. It often took a bit of explaining when he entered new environments. He was born and raised in Northern Ireland, part of the United Kingdom. His mother was a local human rights lawyer and his father was an American diplomat. Like his father, Paddy stood at six feet and two inches tall, and despite a predisposition for competing in ultra-marathons, he cut an imposing figure.
Paddy’s mission had taken him from New York that morning, specifically the headquarters of the United Nations, where he had taken part in a high level briefing to a hastily organised ad hoc sub-committee of the Security Council, the 1540 Committee. Due to the urgency of the situation, Paddy had not slept properly since he departed England on Tuesday night. It wasn’t long since Paddy had been dropped aboard the Nimitz by helicopter that he was shown to his temporary quarters.
Recently, Paddy had been promoted to the rank of acting Captain and had been on attachment to the British Army Legal Services (ALS). However, his background was in the Parachute Regiment and he knew a thing or two about jumping out of an aircraft. Given the nature of the operation upon which he was about to embark, Paddy was quite conscious of the fact that there would be a strong possibility he may be required to do a jump. As far back as 2005, he had experience in American C-17s on joint missions alongside the US 173rd Airborne Brigade in Northern Iraq.
Paddy had been on a trial attachment with ALS since June 2010. In August 2010, it was recommended that Paddy become part of a support attaché to the Special Prosecutor’s Office (SPO) in the International Criminal Court (ICC). Initially, Paddy was given a relatively mundane administrative role during his first few weeks in the Hague. However, in early September 2010, things got more interesting when a certain Jean-Pierre Mutumbo was arrested near Brussels.
Mutumbo was a senior figure in the Central African Republic (CAR) during the Bush War which started in 2003. At the time of his arrest, it was widely believed that Mutumbo had been given the job of plotting revenge attacks against the People’s Army for the Restoration of Democracy, with whom CAR had been at war. Mutumbo was charged by the SPO of the ICC with committing war crimes by instructing forces under his command to commit widespread pillaging, torture and unlawful murder, as well as the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people.
Shortly after his arrest, Mutumbo was surrendered by Belgian police to the ICC. The ICC had twelve detention cells in a Dutch prison in Scheveningen, near the Hague. Not long after Mutumbo’s arrival at the ICC detention centre, he requested that someone from the SPO attend him at his cell, claiming that he had information for them.
When the SPO met with Mutumbo, he claimed to know the whereabouts of a Dr. Ludwig Von Gunten, or ‘the Mechanic’ as he came to be known amongst his customers. The Mechanic was a former nuclear scientist that was wanted for questioning. A British Army unit claimed to have shot the Mechanic in 2007 whilst searching for the remnants of Al Qaeda insurgencies in the mountains of Northern Afghanistan. However, no corpse was ever recovered. The army unit, widely believed to include members of the Special Air Service (SAS), had supposedly uncovered evidence suggesting that the Mechanic had been meeting with Al Qaeda as late as 2007.
At the time of the meeting with Mutumbo, the Chief Prosecutor in the SPO was a former French barrister by the name of Francois Pires. He was excited by the information regarding the Mechanic and he knew how important his capture would be. On this basis, Pires made an offer to Mutumbo without authority to do so. He even forged signed documents from the President of the ICC assuring Mutumbo that no trial would ever go ahead. It cost him his job as Chief Prosecutor. However, the risk seemed to pay off, and Mutumbo provided a detailed account. At the time Paddy went on attachment to t
he ICC, the SPO had files open on the Mechanic for numerous offences contrary to the Geneva Conventions of 1949.
Following the removal of Pires, a small SPO team was established to investigate the whereabouts of the Mechanic. Paddy was selected as an ideal candidate to head up the investigation: he had the perfect combination of combat experience and intelligence. Moreover, he would gain invaluable experience in international law as he aimed to pursue a career with the ALS on a more permanent basis. Based on the information received from Mutumbo, the SPO had gone about plotting a timeline of the Mechanic’s possible movements.
Chapter 1
Operation Frequent Flyer
PADDY QUICKLY THREW ON HIS UNIFORM, and then proceeded to make his way to the briefing room on the Nimitz. As he stepped into the room, he was greeted by a Navy SEAL.
“Good evening, sir. Allow me to introduce myself. I am the Officer in Charge, Lieutenant Graham. My team is at your service, sir,” said Lieutenant Graham.
“Thank you, Lieutenant. I understand you’ve been briefed on the situation and that your team are aware this is a joint multi-national operation,” said Paddy. A French representative from INTERPOL would be landing on the carrier shortly, as would members of the Chinese and Russian security forces.
“Yes sir, I understand the full complement of the UN Security Council is represented?” asked Lieutenant Graham.
“That’s correct, Lieutenant,” said Paddy.
The Lieutenant then showed Paddy to a small desk at the front of the briefing room. On the desk was a bulky briefing report stamped ‘classified’. Paddy gently opened it to review its contents. He spent the next twenty minutes getting to grips with the papers, while the room gradually filled with all the relevant personnel.
“Bonjour, Monsieur Trimble, I am agent Marco Montpellier from INTERPOL. It is good to finally meet you,” said Marco.
***
“Hello, agent Montpellier. Thank you for your briefing over the video link at the UN. Without INTERPOL’s evidence, I doubt we would be sitting here,” said Paddy. Agent Montpellier had been part of the team at INTERPOL which had located the target. INTERPOL had a special flight passenger mapping system (SFPMS). This system was used to identify passengers travelling through various locations to a single ultimate destination over periods of up to forty-eight hours.
In the previous week, SFPMS had picked up the same credit card being used in three destinations: Malta International Airport; Amsterdam Airport, Schiphol; and Mexico City International Airport, before traveling on to Del Caribe “Santiago Mariño” International Airport. The common attractor was that the passenger’s departure point appeared to suggest Libya. INTERPOL had liaised with several national police forces and airport security to obtain as much CCTV footage as possible and had gotten facial identification in Mexico City.
“Captain on deck!” shouted Lieutenant Graham. Everyone drew silent and stood to attention. The Commanding Officer of the Nimitz walked into the briefing. Paddy was never a naval officer, and his identification of ranks in the Navy, particularly those in the US Navy, regularly got him into trouble. However, he recalled the anchor symbol was a clear indication of an Admiral.
The Admiral approached a lectern at the front of the briefing room. “Good evening all, I am Rear Admiral Humphrey, and for those of you new to this vessel, welcome aboard the USS Nimitz. I trust you have been well looked after so far.” Admiral Humphrey told the room that Nimitz had been selected as base of operations for this mission. He also explained that the mission was codenamed Operation Frequent Flyer.
“There are a lot of new faces participating in this mission who will not have met each other before. I have received briefings this evening from Erin Rhodes of CIA on each and every member of the international team,” said Admiral Humphrey. He commenced with the SEAL team, and explained to the rest what the acronym SEAL stood for: SEA, AIR and LAND.
“They operate in every terrain, so don’t let the tag Navy fool any of you. For those of you familiar with our set-up, you will notice that we have a few more than the usual sixteen SEALs with us today. In fact we have twenty-two members, six joining from other SEAL teams. The vast majority of the team are coming from Seal Team 7, which has joined us from Coronado, California. The remainder of the US SEALs have joined us from the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, origins of which I am not at liberty to disclose,” said Admiral Humphrey.
Paddy leaned in to Marco and whispered. “Navy Special Warfare Development Group? Is that SEAL Team 6?”
“Yeah, I thought those guys only worked alone?” replied Marco.
Admiral Humphrey gave a look in their direction, clearly not welcoming the whispers in the audience, and continued. “Commanding this operation will be Lieutenant Graham who some of you will have already met.”
The Lieutenant stood and saluted. Admiral Humphrey lowered his glasses down his nose and continued, as he flicked through his dossier. “In addition to the SEAL team we have five international specialists involved in this operation. I’m going to go through the list of members of the team and - as if it was your first day in high school - I’d like you to stand up and say a little bit about yourself, your background, and in particular why you are here.
“Okay… First, we have Mr. Deng Junmin who is the People’s Republic of China’s representative in this operation.”
Deng stood to his feet. He wasn’t very tall. But that didn’t matter. He had a lethal look about him. “Hello, ni hao, I am Deng Junmin, and I hail from the Chinese Central Security Bureau. I have spent the last several months guarding our members at the United Nations. I was a member of the Macau Quick Reaction Platoon. If you have heard of it, you probably know it as the five minute response team.”
“I’ve heard about you guys, you’re a bad ass crew aren’t you?” said a rugged looking SEAL with a deep Southern accent. He looked like the Platoon Chief, that being the highest ranking enlisted man in the team.
Deng Junmin continued. “I was guarding the Chinese representative at the UN Security meeting last night and the Minister saw fit that I was to be the person to represent the Chinese Government in this mission. Please, feel free to call me by the same name all my friends call me, which is Elvis.”
“Why Elvis?” asked Admiral Humphrey.
“Because I have hair like the King!” said Deng. Laughter erupted in the briefing room. However, it was true, Deng Junmin did have hair like Elvis.
“Next we have Senior Sergeant Alexander Puzanov?” said the Admiral
“Yes sir, that’s me,” Alexander said as he put his hand up in the front row. “Please call me Alex. I am Russian Federal Security or FSB. I come from the Russian Embassy in Washington. I am also here on short notice.”
There was a bit of a silence.
“And…who sent you Sergeant?” prompted Admiral Humphrey.
“My Commander… that should be sufficient. I have clearances.”
Admiral Humphrey glanced over to Lieutenant Graham with a concerned look on his face and turned back to Alex with a look as though he wasn’t very impressed. “Mr. Puzanov. I am informed by Agent Rhodes that you were less than cooperative during your security vetting interview this evening. So please indulge us a bit further,” said Lieutenant Graham.
“Forgive me. I’m not one for small talk, but Russia is not happy that this man made his name and fortune selling Russian state technology around the world to our enemies and the enemies of our allies. Russia very much objects to the fact that this type of behaviour can be traced back to us. We wish to put a stop to it. That is why I am here,” said Alex.
More composed, Admiral Humphrey nodded and smiled. “Thank you, Sergeant. Thirdly, we have Marco Montpellier, an agent from INTERPOL.”
Marco stood up from his seat. “Bonjour, hello. I am agent Marco Montpellier and I am here firstly as a representative of INTERPOL and also as a representative of the French Government. When we capture the target, it will be my job to place him under arrest on behalf of
the signatories of the International Criminal Court. In order for the target to be extraditable, the extradition must take place from a signatory state. Being the closest member of the Security Council to the Hague, and a signatory state to the ICC, France is the perfect choice.” INTERPOL was given authority by the ICC, via the UN Security Council, to carry out the arrest of the target. Marco’s presence killed two birds with one stone.
“By way of a background, before joining INTERPOL, I previously served for ten years in the Groupes d’Intervention de la Police Nationale in Paris, which is the French National Police Force’s SWAT team,” said Marco.
The Admiral continued with the list. “We also have a Colonel Nasser Murat from the Qatari Special Forces. I will allow Lieutenant Graham to introduce you in a few moments, Colonel, as your role is particularly important in this operation,” said the Admiral.
Colonel Nasser nodded to the Admiral. He was the only member of the task force who seemed to be slightly out of place. Much older than any other member of the team, his hair was fully grey.
“Last but not least, we have Captain Patrick Trimble from the British Army. Patrick is perhaps the most important member of the team in that he is the only individual to positively ID the target in person in recent years.”
Paddy stood up. “Thank you, sir. My na…” Paddy was cut off.
“Captain Trimble, if you don’t mind, I understand you are giving a presentation, so it may be appropriate for you to introduce yourself at that stage of the briefing,” interrupted Admiral Humphrey.
“Oh, yes, of course, sir,” said Paddy.
The Admiral returned to his briefing. “Moving to the operation itself, Lieutenant Graham will command Frequent Flyer from a tactical, logistical and combat point of view. I realise that there may be members of this task force that outrank Lieutenant Graham in the NATO ranking system.
“Take it from me, as a Rear Admiral in the US Navy, that the buck stops with the Lieutenant during this mission and I want that clearly understood. There are members of this team that will each bring something to this operation which will assist the Lieutenant in his decision making process. However, where final calls are required to be made, which no doubt they will be, the Lieutenant has final say.
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