Kindle Edition Amazon Quentin Cope Create Space Quentin Cope Category:  Action/Thriller Publisher: Self Published ISBN-10:  1478136766 Type: Fiction Pages: 447 Copyright: July 1st 2012 ISBN-13: 9781478136767 It’s 1973. A disillusioned British agent is targeted by a conspiring, murderous and fanatical Unicorn secret membership to create a deadly high stakes game. In 1973, Maxwell Armstrong is following a trail of death and destruction across three continents, seemingly one step behind the ruthless and powerful members of a fanatical political secret society, the Unicorn. Desperately needing to extract himself from the clutches of the British SIS, Armstrong is determined to expose the Unicorn and pull back the two Cold War Superpowers from the brink of a possible Armageddon. Against a backdrop of International financial meltdown and functionless governments, will the exiled Imam, an Islamic religious leader with a mounting and fervent world following, carry out a threat intended to de-stabilize the world financial markets for decades to come? The stakes are high as the British agent calls upon primitive instincts to survive. Excerpt Chapter One January 6th 1973 – Poltava – Northern Ukraine - USSR It was an exceptionally cold winter in northern Ukraine. The early January air temperature was minus ten and the wind chill factor was driving it down even further on that bleak, seemingly lifeless Saturday night. Captain Maksym Borsuk checked his black faced, Poljot stainless steel military watch. It was twenty three hundred hours and four minutes. Any time now. The snow was still falling on the arrow straight road between Poltava and Stasi, as it had been for the past three days, narrowing the navigable width down to one single track with ice banks piled up to over a meter on either side. Captain Borsuk, with three of his troop, was manning a simple red and black striped, single pole timber barrier, placed across the road some four miles from the Soviet Military Air Base at Poltava. It was unusual for a Captain of the Spetsnaz GRU Tenth Separate Brigade to be manning barricades in the middle of the night. But this was an unusual situation. The barricade had been in place for only ten minutes. He and his troop of eight men were waiting for one particular vehicle to appear from the near white-out in front of him. It would be coming from the direction of Stasi. The barrier guards wore the uniforms of standard Russian Airborne Troops beneath dark grey greatcoats and heads covered ineffectively by light blue VDV berets. The four men at the barrier all carried powerful, heavy, rubberized, steel cased torches and AKMS automatic assault rifles. The remaining five members of the troop were hidden from view some meters north of the barrier, dug in behind the ice banks. Straining eyes picked up the glimmer of a headlight through the continuous snow flurries, then two, then three. The middle one would be a motorcycle escort and the other two would be the ten ton truck. There could be an escort of some kind behind the truck, Maksym mused, either a four wheel drive of some sort… or maybe another motorcycle. The Captain spoke into a hand held VHF radio. ‘This is the one!’ No reply was required. The noise of steel tire studs crunching into the compacted ice became louder and the stabs of light brighter as the small convoy approached. Whatever it consisted of, the plan hadn’t changed. It was a simple one, as all good plans were. Kill everyone and take the truck. The motorcycle crawled up to the barrier made visible by the beams of torches moving casually back and forth across the striped pole supported on two, rusting steel tripods. He stopped, as did the KAZ-717 semi trailer behind. The rider dismounted ready to approach the great-coated officer at the barrier, but as he did so, barely heard through the considerable wind noise, a shot was fired. He instinctively turned his head to look back past the truck where he thought the disturbing noise had come from. Straining eyes revealed the morphing shapes of two shadowy figures approaching either side of the truck from the rear. “What the hell was going on?” It was, in fact, a final thought as his head was pulled back sharply, twisted violently to the left and a stiletto shaft of case hardened, blue metal driven upward beneath his rib cage. With neck broken and heart ripped apart, the lifeless body of the motorcycle rider was allowed to fall to the icy roadway. At exactly the same moment, two nine millimeter bullets, efficiently delivered by military issue Makarov pistols ended the promising careers of Junior Sergeant Demichev and Private Ogienko, the bodies of which were roughly pulled out of the truck cab and dumped behind the steadily growing ice banks. The bodies of two motorcycle escorts and their warm mechanical mounts would follow suit as the Captain dropped the tailboard and jumped in to the canvas topped rear of the truck in order to examine its cargo. Four or five pairs of eager hands ripped the canvas cover back behind him. There were, as expected, two sturdy, well manufactured timber ply boxes on the flat bed of the truck. He released the dozen or so snap catches that secured the lid of one box to check its contents. Inside, held by tailored anti-vibration brackets and mounts was a black missile shaped object about three meters long and a meter in diameter. Captain Borsuk pulled his torch downward, to quickly read the light grey, Cyrillic scripted code, stenciled on the casing of the missile. He grunted in satisfaction. One of his men opened up the other box. The contents were the same. This, so far silent, group of highly trained, highly intelligent military specialists were now the proud owners of two Russian manufactured RDS-4, 30 Kiloton nuclear devices. The Captain spoke to the man nearest to him as he vaulted athletically from the back of the truck. ‘You…drive the truck. Tell the others to get in under the canvas cover at the back’ ‘OK Maksym’ the soldier replied. First names were always used in Borsuk’s unit, regardless of rank. ‘Help me with the barrier’ In the yellow glow of the truck’s poor quality headlights, the two men threw the pole and two tripods over the snow layered ice banks and with a quick look back to ensure all the men were aboard and out of sight beneath the stiffened, tailored canvas cover, they clambered in to the cab, pulling the ill fitting doors as tightly closed as possible. The Captain spoke again. ‘Right… you know where to go. First stop Kremenchuk’ The driver pulled up the heater lever to its highest level, coerced the stubborn floor mounted gear lever in to first, accompanied by some level of protest from the non-synchromesh gearbox and they were on their way. ****** The normal twenty minute drive to the large lock-up store in Kremenchuk took nearly an hour. They were now behind time. Using a loading ramp and A-frame chain hoist, the nine men transferred the two timber crates weighing around 4,000 Kilo’s each from the Kaz and in to two smaller Kolhida five ton panel trucks. Fully fuelled and eager to get away from the area as quickly as possible, the two trucks edged out of the lock-up into the murky night. The bad weather was a godsend. There would be no police out on a night like this and any military roadblocks between Kremenchuk and the coastal town of Berdyansk would be passed easily with one simple flash of a Spetsnaz GRU identity card. No one in the military, with even half a brain, would want to take them on. The team, tightly packed inside the two trucks with their sensitive cargo, would need to make up some time on the 330 Kilometer trip to Berdyansk, but Captain Borsuk was confident they would make it without blowing themselves and the southern half of the Ukraine to shit. ****** The deadline was midday on Sunday, January 7th. They made it to the outskirts of the town with half an hour to spare. Here, the two trucks parted company; one heading east to a lock-up store on Dyumyna Street and the other, containing Captain Borsuk, three men and one crate, toward Yuvleina Street and the gated entrance to the small commercial port. The dilapidated looking tramp steamer was waiting for them at the quayside. The Sea of Azov led into the Black Sea and on through to the Aegean. Borsuk did not know the final destination of the cargo that had so far cost four lives and didn’t need to. A forklift appeared from nowhere and headed straight for the drab grey vehicle parked on the quay side next to the rusting coastal vessel. Captain Borsuk walked purposely over to the port office and made a thirty second phone call. As he put the handset down, he was smiling. On the short walk back to the truck, he raised a hand to his expectant comrades. Within minutes, the timber crate was off and carefully ensconced in cargo hold number three. The boat was carrying nothing else commercially and was in ballast. As soon as the one box was loaded, she was to be away. With doors tightly shut and the three members of his team on board, Borsuk gave the word and the matt grey painted panel truck headed for the port gates without fuss. The whole operation had taken literally minutes with little or no attention being paid to the transfer of the 30 Kiloton nuclear bomb by passers-by and port staff. Now, a reward was due…two point seven million US Dollars in used notes. It was where it should be. Maksym had checked. That was why he was still smiling; one in the bag and one as a deadly insurance policy. This had been a good day’s work.

The Unicorn Conspiracy
To experience excitement in the world we live in must be an utopian dream. Wonderful. To understand and experience evil, danger and to be terrorised through political supremacy and religious fanaticism leading to total annihilation of human life is not only a violation of human rights it reeks of insanity. Terror. Sheer terror.
Cope sums it up in his intense depiction of Middle East politics and religion in the 70s and how it affected the major powers in the world. In layman's language it is simply "dog eat dog" but with the sophisticated weaponry such as weapons of mass destruction coupled with human knowledge and expertise then it is murder en masse and you'll find plenty of that to engage your interest with espionage, terrorism and an abduction seasoned with touches of romance and sex. Calling it a political minefield is an understatement.
When the stakes are high in this cold war, governments and secret services around the world would justify murder. The means justifies the end. Ordinary people are pawns and victims. Safer reading about it than experiencing it for real don't you think?
The novel initially focuses on 1959 in Oman where Armstrong, the protagonist, an under-cover agent develops a friendship with the Imam of Awabi, a religious figurehead ousted from his role as a political and religious leader of the Oman Interior with a strong following but considered dangerous and wanted alive or dead. The Sultan of Oman wants him captured and the British SAS support him. The Imam's brother Tammam bin Abdulla is less scrupulous about his religion and principles than the Imam and an extremely dangerous man. At this point Cope tells us that it is a "bubbling pot of religious fervour mixed with economic desperation and political polarization………..about to boil over." Well it certainly boils over. If you like living on the knife edge then this book is for you.
The story then concentrates on the pivotal year of 1973 which sees Armstrong discovering the existence of the Unicorn and his dangerous journey from the Middle East to Africa.
One of the climaxes I enjoyed was the explosion in Dubai. Predictably, innocent bystanders are the victims of an act of terrorism:
" Then the screaming started; a sickening, pungent smell of burning flesh filled the lounge as Maxwell retched and retched until he thought he would choke to death on his own stomach fluid."
One of the many things I enjoyed about this book was the realism created and the shocking legacy of how volatile the world was and still is. The author describes his book as a work of fiction built around real events which lead to a genuine fear of the outbreak of W.W.3.Thankfully it didn't happen and he is here to tell the tale!

Carol Naylor.
Book Reviewer - Sol Times
www.carolnaylor.blogspot.com

The Unicorn Conspiracy
For his new thriller, Quentin Cope has chosen to look back at arguably the most dangerous period in modern history: the events leading up to the invasion of Israel—a nuclear-armed state—at dawn on Saturday October 6th 1973, Yom Kippur the holiest day of Judaism, by a coalition of Arab States led by Syria and Egypt with Soviet Union backing.

Whether the plot is purely his writer’s imagination or based on dark facts he may have uncovered, the real frightener is that the conspiracy he has set out so convincingly in his sinister thriller—and what a thriller this is—could so easily be behind the current real-life turmoil in the Middle East where the rise of Islamic Fundamentalism throughout the region under a charismatic leader is Western governments and their hard-pressed Intelligence services greatest fear. Add to this a devious conspiracy to destroy the West through its financial system (and without giving too much away, here lies the hard-beating heart of author Cope’s excellent novel) his readers are guaranteed to be watching current events very closely indeed!

Cope’s strength is his grasp of the facts within his fiction. He understands and crucially makes the reader understand the complex inner workings of the world of Western high finance with its immense strength to influence world events—but also its fragility under attack. Clearly he knows his chosen locations across the three continents in his novel at first hand, and his handling of his powerful characters shows a deft touch that can only come from actually knowing people at a very high level indeed. His hero, Maxwell Armstrong, a hard, dangerous, though reluctant secret agent, is convincing throughout and I suspect —allowing for the book’s cliffhanger dénouement—he will be found in Quentin Cope’s next novel which inevitably must be the follow-up to his fast-paced and intelligent Unicorn Conspiracy. A thoroughly good and thought-provoking read!

Glover Wright
© Jersey 2012
www.gloverwright.com


The Unicorn Conspiracy
I picked up this book at a recent book signing in Spain. Although adventure fiction is not really my cup of tea, I was drawn in to the book by the quite long introduction to the main story. I simply wanted to know what was going to happen next and how all the threads manufactured in the first couple of chapters were going to weave together. I then came across the beautiful Helga and was hooked. I finished it in three sittings and simply liked the way the author had linked and interwoven real historical events to the story. The introduction to the main action starts in the Oman and then moves on to Ukraine, which I found a little confusing at first, but then, a few chapters on, all is made clear and I really couldn’t put it down. The author has obviously travelled extensively in these areas as he describes them with authority. The writing was good as far as I was concerned and it turned out to be a very entertaining holiday read. The men in my life are reading it now and we are all looking for Cope’s next one.

JN