The Good Friday Agreement which heralded a new dawn for the people of Ulster is, for all practical purposes, functioning more or less as intended. Republicans and Loyalists are sitting side by side at Stormont and, apart from the odd family tiff, things are slowly changing for the better.
In London, although it had taken a massive load of the shoulders of the security services, many bulwarks of the establishment were less than happy with the numerous, apparently, random acts of appeasement performed by the Government: none less enamoured than the head of Britain’s Secret Services, Sir Rodney Parr. His distaste becomes more acute when he is summoned to a meeting with the Cabinet Secretary, who has orders directly from the Prime Minister.
The Prime Minister, by fair means or foul, has found out that operations are been carried out by the intelligence services to infiltrate a terrorist cell they are convinced posses a serious threat to the nation’s security, which may have an Irish connection, possibly dissidents. The message was to get it sorted, quickly and discreetly with no egg on government faces. As far as the PM was concerned, “it shouldn’t take much sorting out; it’s just a few geriatrics trying to make a nuisance or themselves.” Not quiet how SIS would have described it.
Frank Plaskitt is middle aged, a West London Private Detective: bored, depressed and longing to get out of the business and the city: tired of chasing errant spouse’s, benefit fraudster’s and petty felons. The visit to his office one January morning by the furtive Mr. Brown, a representative of a specialist government department, ensured that whatever happened to him over the next couple of months, Frank certainly would not be bored.
Once again accepting The Queens Shilling sends Frank on a journey through his past. It leads him from the grey streets of winter time London to the warm shores of Southern Europe, and back again to a cold and foggy North Sea dockside. So Frank, after all those years of regret, had one last chance to play the game. What he didn’t know, what no one could possibly have guessed, was he would unearth a well advanced Al Qaeda plan designed to cripple Britain’s energy reserves.
It was a heady mix, old Republican terrorists, Al Qaeda, a middle aged private detective and a hotchpotch of regulars of the Dog and Partridge pub. If you turned on your cooker this morning, and it lit okay, you’ll know who won the battle. The devil is in the detail………
