Tales of Mi7 Series

Jamaica, 1980. A general election is in the offing. The left-of-centre People's National Party stands a chance of winning a third term of radical social reform. Ties with Russia and Cuba will likely be strengthened. The IMF will be shown the door. The powers that be in London or Washington are not prepared to countenance any of that. Not at all. Unfortunately, the only person available to address the situation is someone the Brits would rather not acknowledge. At just 25, Ruby Parker and MI6 have a fractious shared history.

What if, to save thousands of lives, you had to trigger the destruction of the only person you’d ever loved? In Afghanistan, British secret servicewoman Marcie Brown, posing as the third wife of one of ISAF’s most trusted operatives, is killed in a drone strike. Or at least, that’s what the official report states. Deep inside enemy territory, what remains of her body is deemed irrecoverable. Seven thousand miles away, her grieving husband, MI7 officer Nicholas Fleming, joins a police investigation which stumbles onto an Islamist plot to bomb central London - and he uncovers evidence that one of the bombers is his wife.

By universal consensus, there’s only one exhibition worth seeing at this year’s Venice Biennale. Giuditta Cancellieri’s Il Timore di Dio, six paintings of something as yet undisclosed. Don’t bother buying tickets, though. A court order means no one’s getting in, not even the artist’s closest associates. The city’s been filling with felons. Most observers don’t think that’s an accident. At least one rumor suggests the paintings depict Italy’s most powerful gangsters, or its politicians, in compromising positions.

John Mordred doesn’t want to leave MI7’s Red Department, but then life has a way of twisting his arm. When his youngest sister gets kidnapped in one of the world’s worst war-zones, everyone agrees he’s the ideal person to mount a rescue...only protocol forbids it. Yet while resigning might be easy, getting out of the UK isn’t. Not when the police and the intelligence services have been warned to stop him by every means at their disposal. Even assuming he can overcome that, getting into Libya is going to be even more of a challenge.

After an acrimonious US election whose outcome Moscow may or may not have influenced, can it really be that a few maverick intelligence agents from Russia and the United States are fighting a discreet battle to the death on some of London’s back streets? And that the corpses are piling up, out of sight of the British police? And even that the whole thing could spiral at any moment into God knows what version of a third world war?

After a chance skirmish with an armed killer in central London, agent John Mordred ends up in hospital in a critical condition. Six weeks and a full recovery later, he’s persuaded it’s purely a police matter, so one he should forget about. But nothing in MI7 is ever that simple. There’s more to this particular incident than meets the eye, and unnamed people in high places want it investigated. They believe Mordred’s the man for the job.

A 51-year-old pub landlord from Hammersmith, a DJ from Lambeth, a prize-winning novelist influenced by Charles Dickens, and Iain Sinclair, a young British intelligence officer: just four of the 10 contenders in 2018’s truly fabulous Ultimate Londoner competition.

When John Mordred leaves MI7, marries the woman he loves, and settles down to a relatively humdrum lifestyle, it ought to be a brave new start. But he and his wife have formerly been top-level spies, and they find the readjustment harder than they anticipated. When - courtesy of a friend, and apparently out of the blue - they’re offered an all-expenses-paid holiday in Malta, it seems the answer to both their prayers. Sunshine, relaxation, and romance. Just what the doctor ordered.

2019. Russia's Web Brigades have created a divided West, but both the European and the American intelligence services are getting wise to their tactics. When Stanislav Kuznetsov, the FSB’s Director of Overseas Strategic Affairs, entrusts a group of young idealists with the task of devising the next phase in the disruption of Russia’s enemies, little does he suspect that six weeks later, they’ll come up with a plan to suborn the British Broadcasting Corporation. His first reaction is mingled incredulity and exasperation. Have they taken leave of their senses?

When Ruby Parker, head of MI7’s Red Department, is hospitalized by a burglar, all is not as it seems. Her removal coincides with a series of catastrophes for British spies in hostile territories abroad, and some very shifty behavior by the new acting head of Red Department, Patrick Atherton. Atherton dislikes Red’s established hierarchy, which includes all its officers without exception, and possibly John Mordred in particular. The idea that there’s something fishy going on, and that all this is linked, seems intuitively obvious, and probably worth investigating.

MI7 is expecting an eccentric new recruit in the person of Chasha Jones, self-described (only partly tongue-in-cheek) as "the most intelligent woman in London". She's hard-working, insightful, and fun to work alongside. But the day she's due to begin, there's no sign of her. It turns out she's joined forces with an eccentric Brit called Hector Raynebow. Raynebow used to be an environmentalist, but he's rejected all that on the grounds that humanity, in its present form, is incapable of saving the world. He has the perfect solution: Humankind 2.0.

Ruby’s Parker’s retirement hangs like a dark cloud over MI7. She herself has only a vague idea what the future might hold - both personally, and in terms of national security. But for many on her team, she’s irreplaceable. To cap it all, there’s a massive organizational overhaul on the cards at Thames House. Everyone’s nervous, and with good reason. In the middle of all this uncertainty, there’s an assassin at large.