Captive trio's truth about their Iran drama is stranger than wife's fiction

A SCOTS-born thriller writer and her investment banker husband triggered an international incident when their yacht was seized by the Iranian navy and they were held captive for 13 days.

Linda Davies, her husband Rupert Wise and Australian yachtsman Paul Shulton were snatched by Iranian forces as they approached the disputed island of Abu Musa in the Persian gulf.

British diplomats spent 13 days in tortuous behind-the-scenes negotiations to secure their release.

The British couple and their Australian friend were seized on 28 October when two Iranian gunboats slammed into the side of their yacht as they headed for the island, a territory being claimed by both Iran and the United Arab Emirates.

It was the beginning of an ordeal during which British diplomats secured their release only to see them re-arrested on the orders of the Iranian judiciary and taken to Tehran, where they were kept in custody in a five-star hotel.

Yesterday they were back in Dubai, where they now live with their children. Mr Wise said: "We had about ten armed men on the boat, shouting at us and informing us that we had done some sort of crime. We were apprehended and tied to the quay and put under guard."

He said that they were taken to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas for questioning by five or six interrogation teams, but were not informed about the reason for their arrest.

He said at first the Iranians might have thought they were spies and investigating the ownership of the island. They were never charged.

Mr Wise said they were allowed to contact their children at home in Dubai but were repeatedly denied access to the Foreign Office, and they were not allowed to say where they were.

"We were kept under lock and key, not allowed out, with armed guards outside and guards inside, for the full period of our detention. We were hostages."

The British embassy in Tehran successfully negotiated their release and agreed for the trio to be flown home on Monday.

But they were rearrested at the airport by Iranian officials and taken to a secret location in Tehran.

Mr Wise said: "I think the worst moment was when the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said we could go last Monday. We had the ticket, we were at the airport, we were in the charge of the British embassy.

"And then the judiciary from Tehran intervened, took us off the British embassy, overruled the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and put us on a flight to Tehran.

"We landed in Tehran and were carted straight into a minivan with curtains round the windows.

"About four minutes out, we screamed to a halt and changed vehicles, presumably to throw off the British ambassador and team who were in the airport building waiting for us."

It was a story that would not have been out of place in one of Ms Davies' novels. Born in Newton Mearns, she became a writer after carving out a career as an investment banker. She married Rupert Wise in London in 1995, a year after the publication of her first novel, Nest of Vipers. Shortly after, he was posted to Peru, where the couple survived another dramatic incident when a gun battle broke out around their house.

Her novels, based on the world of international finance and espionage, have won favourable reviews, but the plots struggle to match her real-life adventures.

Nest of Vipers features a "brilliant and beautiful foreign exchange dealer" who "becomes an undercover agent to investigate an apparently straightforward case of insider trading and gets caught up in a much wider international financial conspiracy".

Into the Fire involves a "young derivatives trader suspected of fraud" who "flees to Peru only to find herself facing much greater unknown and unexpected perils".

Her latest book, Final Settlement, features a New England heiress "whose life revolves around art and sailing" who starts to do up a ruined Scottish castle "but, after a near-fatal car accident ... loses her memory".

Yesterday the Foreign Office said British embassy staff had worked tirelessly to secure the couple's release once they learned of their detention at the beginning of the month.

A spokesman said: "We spoke in strong terms to the authorities in Tehran and demanded their immediate release."

Meanwhile, Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, reiterated - in relation to the wider row over Iran's nuclear aspirations - that military action against Tehran was "inconceivable" but conceded that there had been a clear deterioration in diplomatic relations.

Iran has hit back by accusing Britain of involvement in recent bombings in the south of the country.