“A gripping read that will appeal to all adventure lovers” - Booklist Starred Review Introducing professional watcher and deep cover specialist Marc Portman in the first of this stunning new series He's a professional shadow. A watcher who provides protection in potentially hostile situations. He works in the background, stays off the record. Often the people he's guarding have no idea he's there. Some people know him as Portman. When two British intelligence agents are despatched to negotiate the release of a group of western hostages in Somalia, veteran MI6 operator Tom Vane realizes that something about this operation doesn't stack up. Unwilling to see two promising officers sacrificed in what he believes to be a suicide mission, he covertly hires deep cover specialist Marc Portman to protect them. Heading for the wild and lawless land on the Kenyan/Somali border, Portman soon realizes that the British Intelligence Services have been double-crossed. Can he survive long enough to keep his charges alive and prevent a catastrophe? " Distant, magnetic, determined and deadly - words to describe Adrian Magson's new lead Marc Portman. Insanely atmospheric... the kind of book you can't put down. I can't wait for his next adventure. Bravo!" Miloramblesdotcom reviews " Give this man a Bond film script to play with! Contains some of the most explosive opening chapters I've read in a long time. ...a nail-biting story... Magson knows how to play with his readers' emotions." Crime Fiction Loverdotcom "The action starts on page one and never lets up. Marc Portman is a sort of 21st century self-employed James Bond. Highly recommended." David Bremner - Chairman - BMAA Adrian Magson was shortlisted for the Crime Writers' Association's Debut Dagger Award in 2001. As well as the new Harry Tate and Lucas Rocco series, he has had five novels published in the Riley Gavin/Frank Palmer series, and has written a writers' help book based on his 'Beginners' column in Writing Magazine. He lives in Oxfordshire. The Watchman A Marc Portman Thriller By Adrian Magson Severn House Publishers Ltd. Copyright © 2014 Adrian Magson All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-7278-8370-4 CHAPTER 1 Bogotá, Colombia I know the sound of a semi-automatic weapon being cocked. Some might mistake it for a briefcase lock mechanism or a workman slapping a power unit into a high-speed drill. It's similar but not the same. And I'd just heard it in the corridor outside my hotel room. I stepped over to the door and listened, heard the brush of footsteps on the carpet, a hushed cough and heavy, nasal breathing. The movement stopped outside the next door along and I was guessing it wasn't the room maid. Wary of getting my eyeball blown out, I took a quick look through the peephole. Three guys, heads in close like they were having a team talk. Their features were blown out of shape by the fish-eye lens, but I made out dark, unshaven faces and the standard Colombian attire of crumpled jackets and pants. And guns. Two of the men were holding semi-automatics with big macho can suppressors, while the third, who was gesturing a lot and therefore the leader, was holding a machine pistol. It looked like a Steyr TMP, a nasty weapon capable of spitting out 900 rounds a minute. Lucky you can't get a magazine that big. The men looked jumpy, turning to watch both ends of the corridor, like they had no business being there. Definitely not cops. FARC, at a guess. That's Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – the national guerrilla group with a brutal reputation for high-profile kidnappings and killings. If not them, it would be one of the drugs cartels in town looking for an easy ransom. Whoever they were, I was thinking the man next door had been selected as their next source of income. It was none of my business. I'd heard my neighbour in the bar the previous evening. He was an American mining engineer, middle-aged and well dressed, head of a minerals company. He'd been friendly and chatty and everyone within earshot knew he was in the country talking business with the government. Careless of him. What the two guys he'd hired as security clearly hadn't told him was that here in Colombia, you don't go round pushing that kind of detail about yourself. It's asking for trouble. Worse, he'd dismissed his two minders saying he'd got some shopping to do before heading home and could handle that all by himself. I watched the man with the Steyr lean across and knock on the door. He called out in accented English, 'Sir? Room service.' Like I say, it was none of my business. I could wait right here and let it blow on by; let it be somebody else's bad-hair day. No point inviting trouble. I picked up my overnight bag, opened the door and stepped out into the corridor. For a second nobody moved. The nearest gunman, short, heavy in the gut and sporting a large moustache, rolled his eyes at me in surprise. The other two were busy waiting for my neighbou