With warm thanks to the following for their help with the writing of the book: for anecdotes, editing, expert knowledge, practical support and mysterious info re micro subaquatic GP locators: Gillon Aitken, Luis Anton, Craig Brown, Tim Burton, Andreas Carlton-Smith, Fiona Carpenter, Gil Cates, the CIA’s Office of Public Affairs, Richard Coles, Marie Colvin, Nick Crean, Ursula Doyle, Harry Enfield, the Fielding family, Carrie Fisher, Piers Fletcher, Linda Gase, John Gerloff, Sara Jones, Jules’ Undersea Lodge, Key Largo, Andrew Kidd, Paula Levy, Hugh Miles, John Miller, Michael Monteroso, Detective Joe Pau of the LAPD bomb squad, Maria Rejt, Mia Richkind, Sausage, Lesley Shaw, the Sunset Marquis Hotel, Beth Swofford, Russ Warner and those who are too secret to be mentioned even with an X.
I’m particularly grateful to J. C. for his time, sharing of specialized knowledge and for showing me how to fire a gun using a biro.
And thanks above all to Kevin Curran for his enormous contribution in terms of plotting, characters, jokes, ideas, multiple reads and edits, spelling and punctuation, and most of all for advising me that the way to write a thriller was not to put the whole plot down in the first chapter as soon as you thought of it.