DECOY

Decoy

Simon Mockler

German rights: Goldmann Verlag

Currently on UK submission

All other rights available

Manuscript available now

Centurion, a billion dollar American security firm based in LA, has developed a Pulsed Electronic Projectile weapon under contract to the US Government. Its manufacture requires massive amounts of coltan, the rare metal found only in large quantities in eastern DR Congo, an unstable region under the control of brutal Ugandan and Congolese warlords. To secure a steady supply, they must take over General Nbotou’s territory. Centurion recruit the unscrupulous senior MI6 Officer Sir Clive Mortimer as a secret board member and charge him with planning and organising the attack. Sir Clive is head of Cyber Crime at MI6 but his background is running ‘grey ops’ for the SAS in Africa, so he seems to be perfectly suited to the task.

Sir Clive’s strategy involves an elaborate bluff, leaking information about a supposedly new weapon being developed by MI6, a nuclear bomb for the internet grown from micro-circuitry and organic matter implanted into ten medical trial volunteers in a lab outside Cambridge. As part of the plan, Centurion approach a French-Chinese arms dealer, Monsieur Blanc, and pay him to steal the devices and pitch them to General Nbotou. Monsieur Blanc agrees, suspicious of their motives but happy to use his contact in exchange for their cash. Once Nbotou buys the devices, Sir Clive will have the excuse he needs to send in a covert force. Cambridge Computer Science student Jack Hartman unwittingly takes part in the medical trial to make back money lost in a poker game. However, he throws a spanner in the works by managing to escapes moments before Monsieur Blanc’s men arrive. MI6 and Monsieur Blanc give chase: the ten devices are supposed to work in sequence, so all of them must be delivered to Nbotou. Sir Clive catches Jack first. He tells him the devices are a bluff, and he needs Jack to let the final device be extracted so MI6 can find out who the key players might be in a future cyber war.  Jack believes him and agrees to help, not realising that Sir Clive is working for his own ends, but Monsieur Blanc’s attempt to extract the device goes wrong. He kidnaps Jack and takes him to General Nbotou’s camp in the Congo. Sir Clive advises the British government that the General now represents a serious threat to UK security and sends a small group of soldiers to take him out.

Alongside the action, we learn about Jack, the son of a former SAS officer once known as the Grim Reaper, and a very untypical Cambridge undergraduate. Jack has issues of his own which have formed his character and shaped his relationship with his father, and these are resolved alongside the main plot action, with the father revisiting his SAS skills. Simon Mockler's characters are exceptionally well developed, with sympathetic elements to many of the so called baddies (Monsieur Blanc in particular is a fascinating character), and it is the combination of this ability with highly sophisticated plotting which really sets him apart as a distinctive new voice.

Simon Mockler studied Fine Art at Camberwell Art College then read Modern Languages at Cambridge University. He has worked as an artist, musician, teacher and civil servant and now investigates complaints about misleading ads for the Advertising Standards Authority. He is in his early thirties and lives in Brixton, south London, with his wife and son.