Acknowledgements
Thanks are due first
to my agent, Georgina Capel, who showed great faith in this book
from the start, and also to Jane Wood, my editor, who tirelessly
made suggestions and gave me encouragement during its writing. She
was helped by Sophie Hutton-Squire. It would be difficult to
overestimate their contribution, or that of Puffer Merritt, who
read and corrected the first draft with her usual enthusiasm and
generosity.
The idea for
Empire State came to me on a fishing
trip organised by Mark Clarfelt in June 2002. So I thank him for
the happy accident that set off a train of thought, and also
Stephen Lewis, Matthew Fort, Tom Fort, Jeremy Paxman and Padraic
Fallon who unwittingly nurtured the plot during the course of a
very idle afternoon by the river. My friend David Rose introduced
me to Hadith literature, Roger Alton made many clever suggestions,
Lucy Nichols helped with occasional research and Aimee Bell gave me
the 1949 first edition of E.B. White’s hymn to New York,
Here is New York, which contains some
inspirational thoughts used here.
During the research
of a book of this nature there are many who help but cannot be
thanked by name. I was particularly grateful to a man who, at some
risk to himself, arranged a tour of the Egyptian prison system, and
then found the island where part of this book is set. My contact in
Albania was also invaluable. He shed light on his mysterious
homeland and gave me insights into the history and workings of the
intelligence service.
Empire State is a work of fiction - no secrets are
betrayed here - but there is some authentic detail which has been
gathered from numerous sources. Without them I would flounder. In
parts of the book I drew from actual incidents. There was an al-Qaeda cell in Albania. Five suspects were
arrested in a CIA-backed operation and flown to Egypt where they
were tortured before being tried. Two were subsequently executed. I
have also used part of a story of a group of migrant workers who
were gunned down by the Macedonian security forces on March 2,
2002. At the time, it was alleged they were terrorists, planning an
attack on the US and UK embassies in the Macedonian capital,
Skopje, a claim which the United States government was unusually
forthright in rejecting.
Finally, I would like
to thank my wife, Liz Elliot. Throughout the writing of this book,
as with the others, she has been the source of much support and
good judgement.