Treachery on the Nile

Roger Croft

Description

Former newsman and occasional MI6 agent Michael Vaux has survived an assassination attempt and plans on a long period of rehabilitation.
But the spymasters at Vauxhall Cross, the London HQ of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, have learned of a military plot to overthrow the pro-West regime of Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
Intelligence sources have warned Britain that a small clique of rebel officers plan to finalize their plans for a coup d’état aboard a pleasure craft heading up the Nile to Aswan.
London and Washington have supported military strongman Field Marshal Abdel al-Sisi’s regime since he overthrew democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi in 2003. Britain decides to thwart the coup attempt by stealth rather than force and orders the SIS into action.
MI6’s Department B3 is ordered to do what it takes to sabotage the rebels’ aims. And the top brass decide that Michael Vaux, known for his long experience in the region, is the man for the job.
Vaux, who is still recovering from the attempt on his life, is told that he is being sent on a ‘recuperative’ Nile cruise to his favorite part of the world. They calculate that his renowned interest in the Mideast will be stirred by the presence of a military contingent among his fellow passengers on the pleasure cruise.
By social contact and shipboard friendships, his MI6 agent runners consider it inevitable that he will learn more about the timing and details of the planned putsch so that it can be aborted by any means necessary.
Vaux employs his social wiles to get to the bottom of the conspiracy but discovers that all is not what it seems abord the Levantine Goddess.

Sujets

• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Archway Publishing
• Date de parution: 14 mars 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781665739351
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Praise for Roger Croft
The Algerian Hoax
A taut, engrossing tale about spies and their dangerous webs of duplicity.
[Kirkus Reviews]
The plot is layered with spies, terrorists and not knowing whom to trust. Croft keeps the pace moving in this thriller despite the laid-back persona of the main character.
[Publishers Weekly]
First rate, a finely polished amalgam of conspiracies and intrigue.
[City Book Review]
Croft’s crisp, gripping prose, immaculate research and pitch-perfect pacing bring an immediacy not only to ‘Operation Mascara’ but also to the Syrian conflict…Croft excels in capturing the essence of various places, be it the glittering baroque Notre Dame basilica overlooking the yacht-crammed Old Port of Marseille, or London’s streets washed by a steady warm drizzle…a horde of non-stop surprises keep readers guessing.
[The Prairie Book Review]
Warehouse of Souls
…a solidly-constructed page-turner with an ending that will surprise readers…Croft’s characters are carefully crafted with flaws and redeeming features. Fans of the genre will love Michael Vaux.
[Kirkus Reviews].
A page-turner with an ending that comes as a complete surprise.
[Publishers Weekly].
The Maghreb Conspiracy
Croft’s interest in regional politics here plays second fiddle to the tangled web of communications between secret agents, some of whom are playing a double or even a triple game.
The book paints an unflattering picture of Morocco’s monarchy, the militant Islamists trying to overthrow it and the Americans supporting it…an easy and enjoyable read.
[India Straughton, Daily Star, Beirut]
Croft’s style of writing is perfectly matched to the rhythm of a good spy novel… he moves along at a good, solid pace.
[San Francisco Book Review]
TREACHERY ON THE NILE
 
 
 
A New Michael Vaux Novel
 
 
 
 
ROGER CROFT
 
 
 
 

 
Copyright © 2023 Roger Croft.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
 
 
 
Archway Publishing
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.archwaypublishing.com
844-669-3957
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
ISBN: 978-1-6657-3936-8 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-3937-5 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-3935-1 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023903305
 
 
 
Archway Publishing rev. date: 04/19/2023
Contents
Praise for Roger Croft
Other Books by Roger Croft
Author’s Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Notes
 
TO JOHN JOHNSON AND GEORDIE ROSE WHO HAVE HELPED FAR MORE THAN THEY KNOW
Other Books by Roger Croft
The Wayward Spy
Operation Sal adin
The Maghreb Conspi racy
Warehouse of S ouls
The Algerian Hoax
 
Bent Tria ngle
Nonfiction
Swi ndle!
Author’s Note
C onstruction of Egypt’s first nuclear power plant at El Dabaa on the Mediterranean coast, some 120 miles west of Alexandria, began in July, 2022.
 
Princes in this case
Do hate the traitor, though love the
treason.
 
Tragedy of Cleop atra
Samuel Daniel 1562-1619
Chapter 1
SHRODELLS HOSPITAL
HERTFORDSHIRE
ENGLAND
EARLY 2016
‘I t’s a miracle,’ he insisted.
Dr. Douglas Malley shrugged and smiled widely. ‘Not really. You were lucky, yes. Your lungs were punctured but not fatally. When we got you into the emergency ward your heart was still beating and that was key. We knew then that you had a 95 per cent chance of surviving.’
Michael Vaux, former journalist and one-time secret agent, sipped on his iced-water, then raised the glass to offer a chaste toast. ‘Here’s to you, doctor. I owe you my life.’
‘The emergency team were the heroes, not me. By share luck the bullets missed your aorta—otherwise you’d have been dead as a duck. Also, your assailant—if she had been a foot or so closer, that would have been it . As it was, two bullets were embedded in the chest wall and another struck a rib.’
Dr. Malley, in his forties, overweight, with thick black hair and a shaggy moustache, had been sitting on the side of the hospital bed as he took Vaux’s pulse, monitoring it against his gold wrist watch. He got up with a slight sigh, stuffed the stethoscope in the side pocket of his white coat and thrust his arm out to shake Vaux’s proffered hand.
‘So when do I get out of here, doctor?’
‘This coming weekend, I think. Get your beautiful lady friend to pick you up and treat you gently for a month or two. You’ll need a lot of pampering and tender loving care for a few weeks yet.’
What Vaux called his idyllic reunion with Anne came just a few weeks after Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service [SIS] finally exonerated him from charges of treachery and spying for an ‘unfriendly power’.
A sub rosa court of inquiry had come to the shattering conclusion that MI6’s usually canny and cautious team of spy catchers had been misled and misinformed by a group of in-house incompetents who had been inspired and encouraged by persistent pressure from Mossad and other external sources whose motives were well-intentioned but rooted in prejudice and professional jealousies.
Within a few days of his retirement, Anne had been given permission to return to the U.K. from her arranged assignment in Berlin [to keep her out of the loop while the plan to entrap Vaux got underway] and Vaux, who had suspected she had found a younger lover, was walking on air at the prospect of their reunion.
But the long-awaited, romantic tryst came to a shattering, violent end when Alena Hussein, Vaux’s former lover and exposed triple agent, shot him at point-blank range on the porch of his rambling bungalow in Watford Heath.
Anne, in the kitchen stirring scrambled eggs for breakfast while Vaux went to open the front door, had heard a female voice and a short conversation; then an ominous thud as Vaux collapsed on the tiled floor. She rushed to the hallway, saw blood pouring from Vaux’s chest and in her shock and denial never heard the roar of the engine as Hussein’s rented Ford Fiesta sped away, headed for London Heathrow airport.
Vaux is now comfortably installed in a newly-built glass conservatory which in his enforced absence has replaced the open flagstone terrace on which he had spent so many sunset evenings, his sole companion a glass of tawny Cutty Sark scotch on the marble-topped bistro table, accompanied perhaps by a paperback novel, background music supplied by Stan Getz and Charlie Parker.
‘I rather liked it the way it was,’ said Vaux.
‘But darling, you are convalescing—and come the autumn, you’ll appreciate the warmth of the place,’ said Anne in defense of her decision to plow ahead with several domestic innovations while Vaux was safely confined to the hospital’s recovery room.
Vaux grunted a reluctant capitulation.
* * *
At about the same time as Vaux munched on a cucumber sandwich, trying to decide whether he liked the closed-in terrace that had replaced the familiar patio, Sir Gerald Formby, the newly installed head of Department B3, a sub-section of MI6’s Mideast and North Africa desk, contemplated whether to call Vaux with his latest proposition.
He sought the advice of his new deputy, the young Patrick Thursfield, a former medieval history scholar who by some odd accident of fate had landed up in the higher echelons of the U.K.’s Secret Intelligence Service.
‘So, what do you think?’ asked Sir Gerald, as he noted Thursfield’s inappropriate brown tweed suit.
Thursfield removed his newly-acquired horn-rimmed glasses and decided to clean them with the end of his university tie. ‘About what exactly, sir?’
‘Good God, man, my idea! —to get Vaux on a convalescent trip down the Nile—coincidentally on the same boat on which, according to our sources, the conspirators are to meet and plan their bloody coup d’ etat.’
When Thursfield read the first draft of Formby’s memorandum he had put it in the pending tray. It was too early to pass judgment and he would wait to see whether any of his colleagues thought the plan sensible or feasible. He would go with the flow. If his two years assigned to Department B3 had taught him anything, it was not to commit himself to any strategy or maneuver too early in the game.
In short, it was essential, if his career was to flourish, to see which way the wind was blowing. His recent regrettable ex