How everything started
It started with a spontaneous phone call. On February 25, 2013. A phone call that set the stage for a completely new project. The subject of the call was one we knew well at Capscovil: electric cars. A few days earlier, we had heard of Louis Palmer WAVE Trophy and contacted him. He, too, was keen to do something together to increase visibility of clean mobility among the citizens.
It quickly became clear to us that the tool should be a novel about WAVE. We did not have in mind a thriller with physical violence but rather something more subtle. So, in April, we decided on a spy novel. Because what is more exciting than a conspiracy by ruthless spies of a secret economic power that could in fact be true?
The final decision was made on May 23 after the project was integrated in the annual plan and the authors had been chosen. This decision marked the corner stone for a new, a larger project; a completely different concept for a novel series, which also required new authors (we’ll come to them later).
And on June 9th, we learned of a remarkably young man who would make our work so much easier: Edward Snowden. Until May 2013, he had worked for American intelligence agency NSA on behalf of the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton. At the Kunia Regional SIGINT Operations Center he had access to top secret information and their revelations hit the news world like volcanic eruptions. The published details showed the extent of of internet and telephone communications surveillance carried out by NSA and British intelligence agency GCHQ. Two organizations that belong to a group dubbed Five Eyes, but more on that later.
It is Ed Snowden’s brave determination and disclosures that we owe the knowledge of insidiously designed eavesdropping operations to; a knowledge that enabled our authors to create tailor-made spies in Project Black Hungarian.
Thank you, Edward Snowden!
