My father completed his two-year compulsory military service in the Intelligence Corps of the British Army in 1961.
In 1995 when he passed away, he confessed to me that he should have remained in the military. Unfortunately he could not undo the past.
At first, I was more than a little hurt by his proclamation. Had he continued in the service, my father would have missed out on meeting me, my brother and my sister, surely that would have been a greater regret? When I became a father, coincidentally in 1995, I realized that I was not my father. I saw the world differently. I was relieved.
As the years marched past and I pursued my own dreams, I began to feel a sense of regret for my father. Yet my regret has never turned to pity. There is simply no room in life for melancholy heartache. One's life is made of two components, choices and chance. The intersection of the two defines our destiny and history cannot be re-written.
Or can it?
One day I sat at my computer and decided to give my father an alternate ending. So I give you "Clandestine" the completely fictional account of a man who came to a similar fork in the road as my father but took another path. My story traces the life of Callum O'Donovan a career soldier who lives through the espionage of the Cold War. Callum traipses through time, sits in on actual events, meets real people and pontificates on the great conspiracies of his generation.
In the end it is a life filled with love, passion, betrayal, coincidence, sadness, adventure and loss.
Maybe it is the life that my father imagined and if so I am glad I decided to rewrite it for him.
For Harry