Perchance to Die (Paperback)

The narrator wakes up in a hospital. Someone has tried to murder him, and he wonders who and for what reason. As he searches his mind, his thoughts are interspersed with hallucinations and imagined discussions with the ghosts of Frans Masereel, Rembrandt van Rijn and Edvard Munch. Gradually the narrator realises how little he really knows about his friends. At one stage he suspects that his friendship with a Swiss aviation-electronics expert may have led Arabs to believe that he has contacts with the Israeli secret services. Later he suspects a ZA1/4rich banker who may believe that he knew things he wanted to keep secret. After this he suspects that a third friend, with contacts in the Arab Emirates and Malaysia, has brought the wrath of the Al-Qaeda network upon him. After a second attempt on his life in the hospital, he begins to suspect that a trip with his friend to the firm in Almelo, where Abdul Qadeer Khan started his career of providing Pakistan, Lybia, Iran and North Korea with nuclear know-how and technology, may have been the likely cause of his predicament.