NOC – Non-Official Cover
MI6 drags an 'overcover' (retired) NOC back into post-Soviet Moscow, 'where a scientist's "miracle" biomedical program may be the future of mankind.'
Nicholas Anderson, a former MI6 non-official-cover operative living as an expatriate in California, is pulled back by Box 500 orders and Dr. Michal Molody’s personal summons. In Moscow and Vienna, old Cold War scars, IRA-linked arms networks, and Molody’s foetal tissue, stem cells, and electromagnetic medicine claims collide in a documentary-style spy thriller told with an insider’s wary voice.
Can Anderson work MI6 tradecraft again without being swallowed by “perception management” and the institution he no longer trusts? And when Molody’s research edges toward cloning and dramatic disease reversal, is it salvation, fraud, or a pipeline to biowarfare and mass-casualty terror?
A historically grounded political/espionage thriller that mixes moral injury with covert operations, where surviving the hunt matters less than whether dangerous knowledge gets contained—or unleashed through extremists, states, and compromised services.
Nicholas Anderson is a British former Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) officer whose four-decade, globe-spanning career informs his insider’s view of covert operations and international power dynamics. Writing as a self-described “professional foreigner” (gaijin), he frames his work as a “Documentary Thriller,” blending real experience with protective fictionalization to confront political and social taboos.
Buy NOC
NOC Twice
In the world of UK Secret Intelligence Service non-official cover, the first casualty isn’t truth—it’s memory.
Nicholas Anderson, a former Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm pilot turned SIS officer, recounts deniable Cold War operations across Southeast Asia, West Africa, Albania, France, the Soviet Caucasus, and Bulgaria. Written as a memoir-like spy thriller, it follows his tradecraft-heavy missions—surveillance, false-flag cover, assassination, exfiltration—while grief and disillusionment push him toward a break with the Service.
If secrecy is the job, how can any account of non-official cover, false-flag operations, and perception management be trusted—even by the man who lived it? As missions blur into propaganda and institutional cynicism, will conscience survive a system built to erase accountability and isolate the costs?
A politically charged espionage memoir-thriller where deniable operations collide with moral injury, and the price of obedience is paid in grief, doubt, and the fear that the past can be edited—or made to disappear.
Nicholas Anderson is the author of the NOC (Non-Official Cover: British Secret Operations) trilogy, writing first-person, fictionalised autobiographical “documentary thriller” narratives rooted in UK non-official cover operations. His work blends memoir-like immediacy with the tension and detail of espionage fiction, shaped by long-form reflection on the lasting personal costs of deep-cover experience.
Buy NOC
NOC Three Times
A stolen wire transfer in Belize drags a retired operative back into Iraq and Iran—where the most dangerous enemy may be the story he’s ordered to sell.
Living quietly in San Pedro, Belize, a former British intelligence officer investigates a vanished US$25,000 transfer and the “respectable” figure he believes is protected behind it. Forced back under the Official Secrets Act, he is redeployed to build a deniable team for Iraq—then pushed into an illegal sampling mission inside Iran that makes him question every handler and every motive.
Can a man trained in covert operations, hostage recovery, and Iraq War tradecraft stay loyal to a system he believes runs on secrecy and propaganda? When a mission’s evidence doesn’t match its justification, will he expose the manipulation or become part of it to survive?
A geopolitically charged hybrid of spy thriller, war narrative, and memoir-tinged polemic in which deniable missions, betrayals, and moral compromise can cost lives, freedom, and the last remaining trust in reality.
Nicholas Anderson is the author of The NOC Trilogy and writes as a former British intelligence officer who says he held the highest “UK Eyes Only” clearance level. Drawing on firsthand experience, he recounts leading an “uncammo” special forces unit from 2003–2007, spanning three tours connected to the Iraq War and deployments to Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen.
Buy NOC
NOC5: Life in ‘Overcover’ (Over and Out)*
The level of combined naivety, ignorance, hypocrisy and plain dumbness that is spoon-fed to the people of today needs deconstructing by an actual on-site insider. I will attempt to undertake this in my fifth and last book of The NOC Series. It will be published in 2027 warts and all.
My only agenda is to educate and fill in the gaps that the average person on the street with a half a brain must have figured out that the government in the country they reside in isn’t exactly informing us all in full. In bits ‘n’ pieces, occasionally yes, but never is the whole picture presented on quite a few subjects, especially those with more secretive content.
I should add that that I was again recalled to active duty because the British national defence mechanisms are so severely depleted that they are calling back experienced older intelligence officers way past their prime, like me, and I did so commit for two days a week between February 2022 to February 2025. In between those times I also undertook travel to Belgium and Germany (for untold NATO meetings), Poland (three times), Kaliningrad (twice), Ukraine (twice), Russia (twice), Estonia, Lithuania, Belarus, Latvia, Moldova and Serbia for two or three nights each and once up to 10 days away hectically taking in five countries. I donated my salary anonymously to local charities where I live to not screw up my pension but did claim expenses.
During this time, obviously I had a unique close-up to a lot of material for this upcoming much delayed (by me) book, which will feature chapters mostly about my life in ‘overcover’ (intel slang for retirement).
Most of the writing will variously present a different version of what the compliant international media where you live is copying verbatim from press releases and news feeds of a so-called ‘official narrative’ furnished by those in power from both the extreme left to the extreme right. In general, I am neither of those ends politically…I’m more what is known as realpolitik (I describe it as being practical for the current time of need).
I can assure you the long-ish wait for this overdue issue will not disappoint you. The title has been revised and the red book cover is still being designed (the copy seen here is a mock).
Thank you for your patience.- Nicholas Anderson
Author of NOC5: Life in ‘Overcover’ (Over and Out)*
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-7329661-8-5
eBook ISBN: 978-1-7329661-9-2
Published in 2027
Note: The UK Ministry of Defence has deemed the Secret Intelligence Service/MI6 P (for Production) intelligence officer who wrote the contents of this book cannot have his career file declassified for public consumption until February 2075. Therefore until then for legal reasons this book has been categorized fiction.
Buy NOC
NOC4: Addendum
He learned SIS tradecraft to serve the state—and discovered how easily secrecy turns into a machine for dirty money, disinformation, and broken lives.
After a career-ending injury as a Royal Navy helicopter pilot, Nicholas Anderson is recruited and trained into British intelligence (SIS), then thrown into covert political action and overseas fieldwork from Lisbon’s Carnation Revolution to Cold War Poland and Switzerland’s extremist-finance shadows. Leaving the service, he stumbles into business edges of organized crime and later becomes a kidnap-and-ransom negotiator in Latin America, where one case forces a final reckoning.
Can an intelligence officer keep his moral bearings while operating inside systems built on compartmentalization, propaganda, and plausible deniability? When tradecraft works but the outcomes still destroy the innocent, is loyalty anything more than complicity?
A historically grounded espionage memoir that moves from SIS operations to kidnap-and-ransom negotiation, where success means living with what was done in the dark and failure means carrying what can’t be undone.
Nicholas Anderson is the author of The NOC Trilogy and this fourth, quasi-memoir addendum, drawing on a career he describes as spanning UK SIS/MI6 service beginning in 1973 and extending through retirement in 2007 (with a further tasking in 2008). Credited in the text as “Cmdr., CMG; Royal Navy, SIS, NATO,” he frames the book as a release of previously omitted material—some once restricted, later becoming open-source—revisited with hindsight and newly available context.