Rupert Wise

According to an account by a former pupil at Marlborough:

Rupert Wise was at Marlborough College from 1970-75 (B3 house) and, in his final year, was the senior prefect, i.e. head boy. I was there between ’73 and '78 (Preshute); and Frank from ’74-79 (Littlefield). Whilst I’ve repressed all memories of Frank, I vaguely recall Rupert as a somewhat glamorous figure with military interests. It’s unlikely that Frank and Rupert met each other at Marlborough but it's possible. A few years ago Rupert got into a bit of a dramatic scrape. This Telegraph report is worth quoting at length.

'The banker with a CV out of a spy novel' (By Ben Fenton 12/11/2005)

Rupert Wise, the British businessman detained with his wife, Linda, for 13 days by the Iranian authorities for trespassing on a secret island, must be glad today that his captors had not read his CV. Because on the face of it, it looks like the biography of a British intelligence agent from the realms of popular fiction.

Mr Wise, 48, was head boy at Marlborough College, one of Britain's leading public schools, and a leader of its Combined Cadet Force. He read classical Arabic at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and, according to a friend, went through the university on an Army-assisted scheme. Having studied martial arts at school, he won a Blue for boxing at university.

Mr Wise served in the Army for six years after leaving Cambridge, although none of the former schoolfriends contacted yesterday knew which regiment he belonged to. A rumour that he had been an officer in the SAS was discounted by sources with knowledge of the regiment's recent history.

Around 1984, he joined the investment bank Robert Fleming. Mr Wise became managing director of its Middle East division. In 1995, Mr Wise met and married Linda Davies, an Oxford graduate who had given up her own investment banking career to write thrillers. The couple went to Peru, where Mr Wise was to lead Robert Fleming's efforts to establish a new arm. Mrs Wise, 42, has written of an incident in Lima when gunmen started a firefight around their high-security compound. In her description, she said that Mr Wise, on hearing the gunfire, "grabbed a pistol and ventured outside" with the couple's bodyguard.

Mrs Wise later wrote a novel about Peru in which Helen Jenks, a banker, becomes involved in a high-level conspiracy and falls in love with Evan Connor, "apparently a tour guide but in reality a former SAS soldier working for British intelligence".(…) It was the Wises' passion for sailing that got them into trouble. On Oct. 28, they set off from Dubai in their new £300,000 catamaran Sinbad for the island of Abu Musa, 60 miles north of the coast of the United Arab Emirates. It was an odd choice for a maiden voyage because the island has been the subject of dispute between the UAE and Iran.

Apart from asking local experts, the Wises, accompanied by Paul Scholten, the Australian yacht broker who had sold them the boat, had also looked at up-to-date Admiralty charts and checked information on the GPS navigation system to assure themselves that they would be safe to visit Abu Musa, and apparently they were unprepared for the hostility of their reception. No public statement about the detention of the Wises and Mr Scholten was made in Britain or the UAE while the British embassy in Teheran successfully negotiated their release.

The embassy had negotiated a release last Monday, but the three were re-arrested at the airport by Iranian justice department officials and taken to Teheran. Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, said yesterday: "I am very glad that they have been released safely and without any charge. It took a good deal of work behind the scenes."

Connections

• Frank Gardner