The Seventh Fairway

Two retired gentlemen. One golf tournament. An enemy intelligence network that never stood a chance. Cedric Pritchard cannot abide waste. Lionel Welles cannot abide untidiness. Between them, armed with nothing more than strong opinions and a great deal of free time, they intend to spend a fortnight at the Interstellar Commonwealth Golf Championship doing what they do best: tidying up after other people's carelessness. Neither man has the faintest idea that the golf balls scattered across the Aldermoor rough are not, in fact, careless litter - they are the Aurigan Directorate's most elegant piece of tradecraft in a generation, a coded communications network passing sabotage orders, rendezvous points, and the identities of deep-cover agents beneath the noses of Commonwealth Intelligence. And neither man can walk past an abandoned golf ball without picking it up and replacing it with another from the nearest practice basket. As Captain Peter Ashcroft's team celebrates a cryptographic triumph they never actually achieved, and Director Halvorsen's network quietly disintegrates into chaos no one can explain, the truth turns out to be considerably stranger - and considerably funnier - than anyone in either intelligence service could have imagined. A Cold War espionage comedy in the tradition of classic British wartime capers, THE SEVENTH FAIRWAY asks the only question that really matters: what happens when the fate of an entire intelligence war comes down to two old men who simply can't stand to see good equipment go to waste?