Character List

Carson Pryce, about 40 years old, was born in Ottawa and joined the Service straight from university as an intelligence analyst. He is a brilliant but reclusive worker, well-regarded by the Americans for the big picture geopolitical analyses he does for them. For this reason he has a special place in the intelligence-sharing relationship with them. He has a strong obsession for Rachel Dunn.

Rachel Dunn is a few years younger than Carson. She comes from Oak Lake, Manitoba and joined the Service to do international humanitarian work, mostly within the context of the UN. She has successful postings in Vienna and Geneva and eventually at a fairly early stage becomes ambassador in Romania. She manages a busy life outside the office, for example, sitting on the board of a philanthropic Foundation which funds projects to help children in poor countries.

Irving Heywood comes from New Brunswick. After a lengthy career he has risen and acquired the responsibility for all of the Service’s ‘operations’, which includes the communication network. When it crashes, he is held responsible and thus vows to find the ‘perpetrators’. He has a complex psyche and quick but extreme emotions which can flip-flop in minutes. He develops a close professional relationship with Jaime.

Jaime is a mystery. No one knows where she is from, only that she’s from somewhere up-north. She is a brilliant cyberspace operator, charged by Irving Heywood to find out who was responsible for the computer virus which wiped out his system. In this way she gets to know how Carson Pryce does his work and how he operates in cyberspace. But who does Jaime really work for?

Nikko Krause is a banker from Berlin who meets Rachel at an international negotiation. Together with Morsi Abou-Ghazi, his international business partner, he runs a philanthropic Foundation.

Morsi Abou-Ghazi is an Egyptian who has made his billions in the container shipping trade. He spends time in a villa complex in Kenya and on his yacht cruising the Mediterranean. But are his emotions and activities as altruistic as they seem?

Diego is a charming taxi-driver in Costa Rica.

Excerpts	The Author