Fuelled by outrage at his arrest in December 1997 by MoD police, Milos Stankovic, a major in the Parachute Regiment of the British Army and the son of a Royalist Serb, decided to write his extraordinary story: a dramatic tale of life on the edge in war-ravaged Bosnia. Because of his fluency in Serbo-Croat, Stankovic (known as "Mike Stanley" in the Army) acted as the high-powered go-between for General Mike Rose (commander of Britain's UN force) and the Bosnian Serb leaders Mladic and Karadzic (who hated each other). Shuttling between the two camps, he played a crucial part in securing the release of UN hostages and in establishing ceasefire accords. His life was constantly at risk; nevertheless, with Rose's full support, he ran a 'Schindler's List' operation, smuggling families (Serb, Croat or Muslim) out of besieged Sarajevo. His arrest came as a thunderbolt. What lay behind it will be revealed in the book and will ignite an international controversy.

* Milos Stankovic was born in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia in 1962 -- a British citizen with Scottish and Royalist Yugoslav parents, themselves refugees from Yugoslavia. Educated in England, he enlisted in the Parachute Regiment in 1981; the Army sent him to university where he studied Russian at Manchester and in Minsk in the Soviet Union. He has served with the British Army in Belize, Northern Ireland and Africa, and with the UN in post-war Kuwait and Iraq, and two long tours in Bosnia between December 1992 and April 1995. * Prior to his arrest at Staff College in October 1997, Major Stankovic served as a company commander with the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment.