At the age of thirty-two, in November 1988, I was living in the same small English town I’d resided in my entire life. I considered myself to be a reasonably ordinary guy, going about a reasonably ordinary life.

I had met my friend Hugh Simmonds as we fenced with each other on the local political scene in our mutual hometown of Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire. We became close friends, and set about our rise through the ranks of the British Conservative Party, then led by the redoubtable Margaret Thatcher.

We shared an ambition to become Members of Parliament, mine being a step or two behind Hugh’s because of our nine-year age difference. Hugh then managed to screw up a couple of opportunities in safe Conservative Parliamentary seats. So, while waiting for his third chance, he set up his own law practice in Beaconsfield, and I became his senior employee. Like I said, an ordinary guy, leading an ordinary life.

Then one fateful November morning, I found myself staring down at Hugh’s dead body, in the clearing of some local woods, and I couldn’t for the life of me work out why he might have committed suicide. The weirdness, however, had only just begun. Back at the law office, I discovered that some £5 million ($7.5 million) was missing from the firm’s Clients’ Account.

I was devastated by Hugh’s death, confused by the apparent theft, and concerned for his children, who were left with no suicide note. Any of these would have been enough reason to hunt for the truth behind Hugh’s death. But the primary reason I started poking around was much more prosaic – I needed to clear my own name.

Society needed a scapegoat – who was alive. I fit the bill. My response was to ask questions. And that’s when I was launched onto my rollercoaster adventure of international mystery and intrigue, an odyssey which continues even now. As innocuous as I thought my questions to be, they provoked a powerful response in very high places – all around the globe.

I was shot at, chased through the streets, warned off by the CIA, and threatened by Israeli and British intelligence officers. Even the FBI lied to me. Blatantly. But not before I discovered that Hugh was a senior officer in and a contract assassin for MI6 (Britain’s equivalent of the CIA), and that he was part of a small specially selected team close to Margaret Thatcher, seemingly tasked with arranging arms deals in support of covert foreign policy and funneling illicit arms’ commissions back to her and other senior figures within the British Conservative Party.

On further investigation, it became clear that, whatever the private and personal ambitions of the British Prime Minister, there was wider purpose for the team. Namely, and with the open support of the British Government, to smooth the path for Britain’s military and intelligence services and its defense industry, as they surreptitiously engaged in their clandestine role as hired gun for the US government, waging unconventional warfare around the globe in aggressive pursuit of covert US foreign policy.