A weapon that was never declared
In 1989, South Africa secretly built seven nuclear warheads. Six were dismantled under international observation. The seventh was never declared.
Thirty years later, in London, retired cybersecurity expert David Hartley is content with green tea, Sunday lunch with his daughter, and a quiet retirement — until Emma, a Guardian journalist, hands him an encrypted file from his old life in Cape Town. The password is one only David could know. Inside is proof that the seventh warhead still exists. And someone wants the world to know.
A colleague is murdered on a London street. Emma's flat is ransacked. Within forty-eight hours, David and Emma are travelling on forged passports to the country David swore he had left behind. Hunted by an MI6 fixer with everything to lose and a former Armscor officer with everything to sell, they have less than a week to find the bomb before it disappears into the hands of buyers who will not hesitate to use it.
"Six warheads were declared. The seventh was hidden. Now it's loose."
From the wine farms of Franschhoek to a hangar at OR Tambo, The Last Warhead is a propulsive South African espionage thriller about the secrets governments bury — and the price of digging them up.
