SACRED WINDS
Story and Screenplay © By David Collins and Roger Cottrell
Graphic Novel © By Roger Cottrell, David Collins and Abhartach Comics
LOGLINE
Political conspiracy thriller set in Iran against the background of covert arms procurement, the war on terror and Iran’s internal political crisis. A thinking person’s James Bond meets Road to Guantanamo.
SYNOPSIS
Michael Eskandarie is a young man with an identity crisis. A British citizen of part Iranian and part English background he was once a foreign affairs analyst based at a prestigious British University, with links to the Foreign Office and Blue Chip Foreign Policy think tanks. But his research is axed when he starts to draw conclusions on Iran’s role in Middle Eastern geo-strategy that the Foreign Office, but more especially a pro-Washington government, doesn’t want to hear. His Dubai born wife hates England and the run down area where they live, relentlessly reminding Michael - who considers himself British - that her rich father could get him a consultancy job in the Arab Gulf. This is amplified when the abduction of British Marines by Iranian Revolutionary Guards in the Shatt-al-Arab fuels anti-Iranian sentiment in the British tabloid press and public, and when their home is attacked.
Financial pressure on the out of work academic forces him to take a job as a rep for what appears to be an engineering company, providing precision engineered components to the Iranian oil industry. Michael has a background in sales and speaks Farsi and is quickly taken on board as the man for the job. No sooner has he arrived in Iran however, that he discovers how things are not what they seem. His debauched host, Anoush arranges for him to visit the Persepolis facility on the Caspian Sea Coast, where a Russian scientist heads up research but a sinister Mullah and SAVAMA thugs appear to be in charge. Whatever they are doing has precious little to do with the oil industry.
Michael’s marriage is in crisis and quickly disintegrates as the story progresses. This leads to Michael’s emotional involvement with the daughter of the Russian scientist and a run in with the secret police. Clearly, he has gotten himself involved in some kind of international conspiracy but his new lover is effectively a prisoner at the Persepolis facility.
When Michael returns to England things just get worse. He confides in his former PhD supervisor only to find himself blackmailed into working for MI6. When he arrives back in Iran a rival intelligence faction, close to the British and American governments informed by doctored intelligence reports, has already sent a ruthless band of mercenaries from Basra to take out the facility by force. The privatized military units are already central to an ill thought out exit strategy in Iraq and thus to the Anglo-American covert strategy for the region and their atrocities in Southern Iraq have been revealed throughout the narrative. The leader of the mercenaries calls himself Callan, after the psychotic mercenary leader in Angola in the 70s and quickly decides that Michael is his nemesis.
Things take a turn for the worse when Michael’s MI6 handler is murdered by Callan and Michael is framed as a British Muslim turned terrorist in the UK. The company executives for whom he works in Britain have also been arrested for trafficking in weapons of mass destruction, and talk of war with Iran is being wracked up. Michael abducts Anoush, his debauched host in Tehran and forces him to help Michael rescue his Russian lover from the Persepolis facility. As he does so, Callan’s mercenaries stage a military attack. Incredibly, Michael and his lover escape and hi-jack a vehicle to the Turkish border with Callan on his tail. But the British military and MI6 are waiting for him at the border and with Michael branded a terrorist in the British press, what kind of reception awaits him when he arrives?