A Nastia Game

‘What do you want me to do?’ ‘Kill ex-President Bakr,’ he said. Saddam’s eyes were powerful, hypnotic, evil, and dark. His words deliberate, cold, metallic. She stood frozen; looking into the eyes of the male Medusa. Kate found herself calm; even relaxed. Someone inside her was telling her, It will be an honour to serve our State. She heard herself say, ‘He will die of old age within a week’.

What links the Royal Air Force, the Iraq-Iran War, the game of chess, and the invasion of Iraq in 2003? The answer is A Nastia Game, a computer war game devised by the RAF as a staff training exercise in the 1970s, and sold to Iraq shortly before the Iran-Iraq war.

Squadron Leader James Douglas is the software specialist developing the game, and his interest is heightened when he meets the female Iraqi officer assigned to the project – the stunning Kathab al Jised, known as Kate. James’s life with his wife and family in England is put on hold when he travels to Baghdad to train Iraqi officers in the war game. When an attempt is made to breach the game’s unique security system – designed by James and based on a secret chess code – everyone connected to it is immediately plunged into danger. With MI6 and the Iraqi secret service playing a high-stakes game of bluff and double-bluff, James and Kate must decide where their loyalties lie...

A Nastia Game is the first in a trilogy. It was based on the author’s personal experiences, when he was posted to the RAF Staff College in 1974 to be the college’s first computer systems analyst. There, he and a colleague designed a war game to be used to train the students attending the colleague. The software was subsequently sold on to the Iraqi Air Force by the Ministry of Defence. The simulations in the game were modified and enhanced by ICL so that the game could be used to test plans for the invasion of Iraq, rather than train officers.