Good evening I’m thrilled to finally be able to share my extract from The Dark Web as part of the Urbane Books Christmas Extravaganza! Apologies to all for late post my little girl is now ill too so this fantastic are quite hectic as I’m sure you can imagine.
The Dark Web is available now in ebook and paperback, the ebook is currently only 99 p but you can purchase a copy of both here
Before I share my extract with you here is a little bit about the book.
Book Synopsis:
The latest thrilling instalment in the gripping African Diamonds trilogy!
The tentacles of the Dark Web are tightening their grip around the world. From Moscow to Shanghai, Washington, UK, the Middle East and Europe, nowhere is beyond their reach.
When a computer scientist dies mysteriously in Dubai, Jenny Bishop’s nephew, Leo Stewart, is hired to replace him. Leo’s life is soon in danger, but he is the only person who can find the key to prevent an impending global cyber-attack. With the help of Jenny and old and new friends, he must neutralise the threat before the world’s vital services are brought to a halt in a flagrant attempt to once again redraw the borders of Europe and Asia. Can the deadly conspiracy be exposed before the world is thrust into a new Cold War?
Christopher Lowery delivers a gripping final chapter in the bestselling African Diamonds trilogy, with a thriller that is powerfully resonant of today’s global dangers, hidden behind the ever-changing technological landscape.
The perfect read for fans of Gerald Seymour, Wilbur Smith and Frederick Forsyth.
Extract: Prologue
Shanghai, People’s Republic of China
Monday, 9 July 2012
‘That man from the syndicate called again, that’s the fifth time since we turned them away.’ Madame Xiu Lee-Win poured a glass of green tea for her husband.
‘What did you say?’
‘The same as every time they came and every time they’ve called, “The company is not for sale, please stop pestering us”.’
‘I don’t understand their obsession with our business,’ Chongkun Lee-Win sipped his tea. ‘There’s dozens of microprocessor companies around just as good as ours. If they’ve got the kind of money they say, they can take their pick. Just keep refusing, dearest,
and they’ll finally realise we won’t change our minds.’
‘I suppose so, but I’m tired of answering the phone and hearing that man’s voice. And he said a peculiar thing before he rang off this time.’
‘And that was?’
‘He said, “I think it’s time to convince you to sell”.’
‘I don’t know how they’d do that. They’ve already offered a fair price. Don’t worry about it, just ignore them and they’ll go away.’
‘You’re right, I’ll stop answering the phone. I’ll get the Filipino girl to answer in Spanish, that’ll put them off. Anyway, how was your day?’
‘Excellent. We just got the second quarter results and they’re very good, we’re ten per cent ahead of revenue forecasts with two per cent gross margin improvement. We can afford to continue to invest in our development programmes without worrying about
cash flow.’
‘You’re talking about the ACRE project, aren’t you? How’s it coming along?’
‘We’re making good progress; Han and I were reviewing the latest test results this afternoon. I think we’re still a year or two from perfecting it, but you know how long it takes to transform a concept into a working solution.’
She wagged a finger fondly at him. ‘You’d better deliver it soon or you’ll be embarrassed in front of the world. Remember? I told you not to authorise those press releases last year. “Announcing ACRE, The Ultimate Level of Encrypted Transmission from Lee-
Win Micro-Technology”. You could be prosecuted under the Trade Descriptions Act.’
Her husband laughed and kissed her cheek. ‘Nonsense. It was a smart move, it brought us lots of publicity and new customers. They’re all waiting for ACRE and we’ll get there in the end. It’s just a
matter of time and money and the breakthrough will come, you’ll see.’
‘Yes, it certainly is. According to the cost summary I saw on your desk, we’ve invested over $40 million since you came up with the concept two years ago. And you were sixty years old last month, are you going to follow that dream into retirement?’
‘It’s not just a dream, Xiu. ACRE is much more than that. Do you remember how we pioneered the change in the concept of CPUs and microprocessors back in the eighties? Now we’re going to do the same thing for encrypted transmission. I forecast that five years from now, Automatic Constant Recurring Encryption will be the de facto system of protecting and transmitting data all over the world.’
‘If you say so, darling. You can keep up the project, just don’t
stress about it constantly, or it will be the death of you.’
Thursday, 26 July 2012
It was six-thirty on a dark, rainy morning when Chongkun climbed
into his white 2009 Volkswagen Golf. Although he had a chauffeur and several other cars, including a 1999 Rolls Royce Silver Spirit Mark IV, he preferred to weave through the traffic in the little saloon and drop it in the employees’ parking lot behind the Lee-
Win building in Pudong, leaving the luxury travel for his wife. The sky was black with heavy rainclouds, and he strained to see through the windscreen wipers as he drove slowly along the street lit up by the headlights of the passing cars. Their colonial-style town house in the Jing’an area was about fifteen kilometres from the office, on
the other side of the Huangpu River. Chongkun would meet their two sons, Junjie and Jiang, for a coffee before work and chat over the day’s programme. Both were married and worked with him in the microprocessor business, as heads of finance and marketing respectively. Although the family owned several other companies
involved in manufacturing and commerce, he loved the challenge
of the continual innovations in the world of the Internet, often led by Lee-Win under his stewardship.
Chongkun always took the same route to work. Experience had taught him it involved the fewest hold-ups, and the trip took less than thirty minutes at that time in the morning. He made his way to the Fuxing East Road to cross the river by the tunnel and then come
down Century Avenue to the business park. At the roundabout near the Xiao Taoyuan Qingzhensi Mosque, the cars were bunched up, nervous drivers waiting for a gap to enter the traffic. As Chongkun inched his car forward, a massive black Hummer pulled alongside him on the right and a green Ford saloon came up on his left side,
moving to the inside lane of the roundabout. The Hummer also moved ahead and he drove slowly out with it, protected by the saloon on his left. Suddenly he felt a soft impact from behind and the Golf was pushed several metres forward, onto the roundabout.
He jammed his foot on the brake and looked in the rear-view mirror. An old red Land Rover had run into the back of his car. The Ford on his left had stopped, and he looked past it to see a Tsingtao Beer truck bearing directly down on him. The Hummer had also stopped on his right, and he pushed the throttle flat to the floor to try to get past it and over the roundabout.
The fully loaded lorry smashed into the Golf, pushing it into the Hummer. The little car was crushed to half its size, with Chongkun inside. It took the firemen three hours to extricate his
dead body from the wreckage. The Land Rover had disappeared from the scene. In the dark, pouring rain no one was sure what had happened and why he had driven into the path of the truck.
The verdict of the inquest was accidental death, but his heartbroken widow didn’t believe it. In October, she sold Lee-Win Micro-Technology to the syndicate for twenty per cent less
than their original offer, and the Lee-Win family left Shanghai and settled in Macau.
Xiu Lee-Win’s prophesy had proved to be accurate, but not for the
reasons she supposed.
About The Author:
Christopher Lowery is a ‘Geordie’, born in the northeast of England, who graduated in finance and economics after reluctantly giving up career choices in professional golf and rock & roll. Chris left the UK for Switzerland in 1966 and has lived and worked in six different countries over the last 50 years. He was a real estate developer and Telecoms/Internet entrepreneur and inventor and has created several successful companies around the world, notably Interoute Communications, now Europe’s largest cloud services platform provider and Wyless Group, now part of Kore Telematics, one of the world’s largest Internet of Things providers.
In 2014, Chris started writing historically/factually based thrillers and the first two volumes of his African Diamonds Trilogy – The Angolan Clan & The Rwandan Hostage, were published by Urbane Publications, a UK publisher. These books are based upon his family’s experiences during the Portuguese Revolution of the Carnations of 1974 and his daughter’s work as a delegate with the ICRC in Rwanda in 1996. The third volume, The Dark Web, was published in April 2018, and draws on his experience as one of the creators of The Internet of Things, between 2002 and 2016. His fourth book, The Mosul Legacy, an unrelated story, will be published in September 2018. His illustrated All About Jack stories for children are written in humorous verse, and were published privately.
Over The Rainbow Blog 