‘All right,’ she said. ‘So we will have a drink. A whisky for me. A large one.’
He ordered the drinks and took them from the waiter at the door.
She sipped her whisky, grimaced and took a longer drink. ‘I have been thinking,’ she said.
Bartlett took a gulp of his drink to prepare himself for her thoughts. ‘Yes?’ he said.
‘Now that the Arabs have the map showing all the places where there isn’t any oil, it is the duty of us Israelis to find the places where there is oil.’
He nodded. ‘You’re already trying to do that.’
She ignored him. ‘And I think it would be very wonderful if you, with all your knowledge of the Sinai, helped them.’
He raised himself on one elbow and gazed at the stars shining down on Jerusalem. On the Dome of the Rock, on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, on the Western Wall. On Arab and Jew and Christian.
‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do,’ he said. ‘When I go back to London I’ll go straight to Somerset House.’
‘What is this Somerset House?’
‘It’s the place where you can trace your ancestors.’
‘What are you talking about? Surely you are not making fun of me?’
‘No, I’m not making fun of you. I just want to find out if I’ve got any Jewish blood in me.’
‘It would be wonderful if you did,’ she said. ‘And then I shall be able to help you in your work in the desert.’
‘Aren’t you rather presuming that I will find I’ve got some Jewish blood?’
She smiled, lips against his. ‘Everyone can find Jewish blood in them if they look hard enough.’
‘Just one other thing,’ he said.
‘And what is that?’ Her voice was a murmur.
‘How can an expert on water irrigation help a geologist looking for oil? I’ve always been told that oil and water don’t mix.’
She pulled him down and showed him.
A few seconds later the phone rang. They stopped and Raquel picked up the receiver.
‘Who is it?’ he said.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It’s a man. An American, I think.’
‘It’s probably the President of the United States,’ Bartlett said. ‘Hang up.’
The Chill Factor
Richard Falkirk
Iceland is erupting, and it isn’t merely the volcano, Hekla, spewing poisonous ash and lava into the air.
It is 1971, the height of the Cold War, and anti-American feeling among Icelanders is running high. When a teenager is found dead after a drunken night out, her clothes torn and face bruised, anger is directed towards the military personnel at the NATO air base at Keflavik who outnumber the local population.
British agent Bill Conran, invited by the Americans to uncover a Russian spy ring, comes to realise that this is no routine assignment. Unsure who can be trusted, and targeted by an unknown assassin, he discovers that Iceland, for all its cold beauty, has never been hotter.
‘Taut, cleanly written, building to a bang-up climax.’
NEW YORK TIMES
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Angels in the Snow
Derek Lambert
A diplomatic posting in Moscow offers excitement and intrigue, a chance to go behind the Iron Curtain. But the reality is a community of Western diplomats and cynical journalists cut off from ordinary Muscovites and under constant surveillance by the KGB. In this alien land an American working for the CIA and a young Englishman at the British Embassy are gradually cracking under the strain of life in the Soviet capital, their lives inextricably associated with the Twilight Brigade – the defectors who play cat-and-mouse with the secret police.
The landmark first novel by Derek Lambert exposes the reality of life in post-Stalin Moscow, in which the tensions and hostility of the 1960s’ Soviet Union sometimes prove intolerable.
‘A novel of terrific atmosphere.’
DAILY EXPRESS
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The Red House
Derek Lambert
The Red House follows a year in the life of Russian diplomat Vladimir Zhukov, the new Second Secretary at the Soviet Embassy in Washington – a ‘good Communist’ in 1960s America.
Seeing what life in the West is really like, he discovers there is more to America than what Soviet propaganda has taught him. Increasingly intrigued by the Washington circuit, from outspoken confrontation between diplomats to the uninhibited sexual alliances arranged by their wives with other diplomats, the capitalist ‘poison’ begins to work on him and his wife.
As he struggles to remain loyal to his country and begins to question who is the real enemy, he has to decide to whom is first loyalty due: country or lover, party or conscience.
‘A gripping and topical novel.’
Available to buy here
The Yermakov Transfer
Derek Lambert
The Trans-Siberian Express has left Moscow carrying the most powerful, closely guarded man in the Soviet Union. But not everyone on the train is who they claim to be, for an audacious plot has been hatched: to kidnap the President.
Tension aboard the train is at a maximum. The KGB has checked and double checked. But as Vasily Yermakov, the Soviet leader, tries to sleep on the first night in his cabin, he has an uneasy feeling that something is about to go wrong.
‘An exciting new development – not only of Derek Lambert’s skills, but of the thriller too!’
LEN DEIGHTON
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The Saint Peter’s Plot
Derek Lambert
As the Russians and the Western Allies race towards Berlin, the Nazi hierarchy plots to escape the inevitable retribution facing them at the end of World War II.
Kurt Wolff is a handsome SS Captain and a member of Hitler’s personal elitist bodyguard. Bestowed on him is the greatest honour of all. He has been chosen to implement Grey Fox – The Saint Peter’s Plot – the most daring secret mission of the war. Germany stands on the edge of an abyss, and the fate of this once great nation is in his hands.
‘A fine thriller … very hard to put down.’
IRISH PRESS
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I, Said the Spy
Derek Lambert
Each year a nucleus of the wealthiest and most influential members of the Western world meet to discuss the future of the world’s superpowers at a secret conference called Bilderberg.
A glamorous millionaire just sighting loneliness from the foothills of middle age; a French industrialist whose wealth matches his masochism and meanness; a whizz-kid of the seventies conducting a life-long affair with diamonds: these are just three of the Bilderbergers who have grown to confuse position with invulnerability. It is a mistake that could prove lethal when there is a crazed assassin on the loose …
‘Could put ideas into the head of many a spy.’
SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
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The Red Dove
Derek Lambert
As the Soviet space-shuttle Dove orbits 150 miles above the earth on its maiden flight, Warsaw Pact troops crash into Poland.
The seventy-two-year-old President of America wants to be re-elected. For that he needs to win the first stage of the war in space – and decides to capture the Soviet space shuttle. But as the President plans his coup, a nuclear-armed shuttle speeds towards target America – and only defection in space can stop it.
‘Writing as crisp as the Moscow winter … the Soviet setting is magically evocative.’
NEW YORK TIMES
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The Judas Code
Derek Lambert
Convinced that Hitler and Stalin are intent on overpowering each other, British Intelligence concoct a ruthless double-cross to lure Russia and Germany into a hellish war of attrition on the Eastern Front. It will divert Hitler’s wrathful Blitz and buy Britain the most precious of all commodities: time
.
The plot hinges on one man, Josef Hoffman, a humble Red Cross worker in neutral Lisbon. Hoffman must go to Russia to meet Stalin and send covert communications back to the Allies using a new cipher, the Judas Code. But who is Hoffman? And where do his loyalties really lie?
‘Skilfully mixes fact and fiction from World War II. It’s bloody good.’
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
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The Man Who Was Saturday
Derek Lambert
Moscow treats defectors from the West with kid-gloves. That is, until they outlive their usefulness. But the American Robert Calder is different. He defected to Russia with information so explosive that even the iron-clad regime of the Kremlin shook with fear. It has kept him alive. Until now.
With Calder desperate to return to the West, the ruthless and scheming Spandarian is placed on his trail, a KGB chief with a mind as sharp as the cold steel of an ice pick. And as a back-up they unleash Tokarev, a professional assassin who kills for pleasure …
‘A white-knuckle number … straight-ahead, foot-to-the-floor excitement.’
NEW YORK TIMES
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Vendetta
Derek Lambert
For the beleaguered German and Russian armies, the terrible winter at their heels, there is no war beyond the carnage in Stalingrad’s grim skeleton. In desperation, orders come from the very top: victory is to be determined by a duel between champion snipers Antonov the Russian and Meister the German. A duel to the death.
For the two marksmen there is now no war but the race to pin the other in their sights. Who will be the dead hero and who the living legend? Only time will tell …
‘The book is perfect. The horror of war is captured by the spare prose; the tension mounts, and the inevitable confrontation is uplifting in its outcome.’
DAILY TELEGRAPH
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About the Author
Richard Falkirk was a pseudonym of Derek Lambert, who was born in 1929. He served in the RAF for two and a half years and then worked as a journalist for local newspapers, becoming a foreign correspondent on the Daily Mirror and then the Daily Express, travelling the world to dangerous locations that later inspired his books. His first novel, Angels in the Snow (1969), was based on first-hand knowledge from a year’s assignment to Moscow and entailed him smuggling the manuscript out of the country in a wheelchair. From journeying up the Himalayas in a jeep to being shot at in Israel, his experiences informed his authentic tales of espionage and adventure that helped turn him into a bestselling author of more than 30 thrillers. Derek’s last book, Spanish Lessons, is an affectionate and often hilarious account of giving up life as a globe-trotting journalist to settle down to life in rural Spain with his wife Diane, where he died in 2001 at the age of 71.
By the same author
Angels in the Snow
The Kites of War
For Infamous Conduct
Grand Slam
The Chill Factor
The Twisted Wire
The Red House
The Yermakov Transfer
Touch the Lion’s Paw
The Great Land
The Saint Peter’s Plot
The Memory Man
I, Said the Spy
Trance
The Red Dove
The Judas Code
The Lottery
The Golden Express
The Man Who Was Saturday
Vendetta
Chase
Triad
The Night and the City
The Gate of the Sun
The Banya
Horrorscope
Diamond Express
The Killing House
Historical Fiction
Blackstone
Blackstone’s Fancy
Beau Blackstone
Blackstone and the Scourge of Europe
Blackstone Underground
Blackstone on Broadway
Autobiography
The Sheltered Days
Don’t Quote Me … But
And I Quote
Unquote
Just Like the Blitz
Spanish Lessons
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