Embassy Siege. Shaun Clarke

      

      Embassy Siege

      SHAUN CLARKE

      Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain by 22 Books/Bloomsbury Publishing plc 1994

      Copyright © Bloomsbury Publishing plc 1994

      Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015

      Cover photographs © Oleg Zabielin/Alamy (soldier); Shutterstock.com (textures)

      Shaun Clarke asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

      A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Source ISBN: 9780008155124

      Ebook Edition © December 2015 ISBN: 9780008155131

      Version: 2015-11-02

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

       Copyright

       Prelude

       Chapter 1

       Chapter 2

       Chapter 3

       Chapter 4

       Chapter 5

       Chapter 6

       Chapter 7

      

       Chapter 8

      

       Chapter 9

      

       Chapter 10

      

       Chapter 11

      

       Chapter 12

      

       Chapter 13

      

       Chapter 14

      

       Chapter 15

      

       Chapter 16

      

       Chapter 17

      

       OTHER TITLES IN THE SAS OPERATION SERIES

      

       About the Publisher

       Prelude

      Number 16 Princes Gate formed part of a mid-Victorian terrace overlooking Hyde Park and had been used as the Iranian Embassy in London for more than a decade. Until 1979, it had represented the Iran ruled by Shah Reza Pahlavi and his wife, the Empress Fara Diba.

      Noted for its Italianate stucco façade and prominent frieze, it was a very large building spread over three main floors and an attic. The ground floor comprised an imposing entrance hall, a large, beautifully furnished reception room, toilets, an administration office, and an expansive library overlooking the rear terrace. The main stairs led up to the first floor and the rather grand ambassador’s office, the more modest office of the chargé d’affaires, two administration offices and a storage room. The second floor contained two more administration offices, Rooms 9, 9A and 10, another toilet and a telex room. The third floor was the busiest, containing the press counsellor’s office, the press room, the commercial office, the xerox room, the switchboard, Room 19, the kitchen, a toilet, and two more administration rooms, one of which was empty. A well skylight with a glass roof, located between Room 19, the switchboard, the xerox room and the outer wall, overlooked the main stairs connecting the three floors. As the lift terminated on the second floor, the third floor could only be reached by the stairs.

      When run by the Shah’s young and eligible Ambassador, Parvis Radji, the Embassy had been noted for its lavish dinner parties and largesse when it came to supplying excellent caviar, French wines, cars, free hotels and first-class travel to British diplomats, journalists and other visitors whose goodwill and assistance were vital to Iran. However, while ostentatiously maintaining this front of gracious, civilized living, the Embassy had also been used as a base for SAVAK, the Shah’s dreaded secret police, whose function was to spy on and intimidate London-based Iranians, mostly students. Many of these secret police were uneducated, unsophisticated and addicted to the Western ‘decadence’ they were supposed to despise: nightclubs, alcohol and bought women.

      Such activities had, however, ended with the downfall of the Shah in January 1979. Six months after the revolution, the Ayatollahs replaced Parvis Radji with a new chargé d’affaires, Dr Ali Afrouz, a twenty-nine-year-old graduate in psychology and education. Once installed in the Embassy at Princes Gate, Ali weeded out the corrupt members of SAVAK, banned all alcohol from the premises,