Алистер Маклин - Circus

‘You destroyed them without looking at them.’ It was a statement not a question. His voice was very quiet. ‘Why?’

‘What did you want, sir? Another mutual balance of terror throughout the world?’

‘Why?’

‘I told you why. Remember? I hate war.’

For long moments the admiral looked at him without enthusiasm, then he slowly relaxed, leaned back and astonished them both by laughing.

‘I’ve a damned good mind to fire you.’ He sighed, still smiling. ‘But you’re probably right on the whole.’

Maria said blankly: ‘Fire him?’

‘Didn’t you know? Bruno has been one of my top, and certainly most trusted, agents for the past five years.’

Alistair MacLean, the son of a Scots minister, was born in 1922 and brought up in the Scottish Highlands. In 1941 at the age of eighteen he joined the Royal Navy; two-and-a-half years spent aboard a cruiser was later to give him the background for HMS Ulysses , his first novel, the remarkable documentary novel on the war at sea. After the war, he gained an English honours degree at Glasgow University, and became a schoolmaster. In 1983 he was awarded a D. Litt. from the same university.

By the early 1970s he was one of the top 10 bestselling authors in the world, and the biggest-selling Briton. He wrote twenty-nine worldwide bestsellers that have sold more than 30 million copies, and many of which have been filmed, including The Guns of Navarone, Where Eagles Dare, Fear is the Key and Ice Station Zebra . He is now recognized as one of the outstanding popular writers of the 20th century. Alistair MacLean died in 1987 at his home in Switzerland.