Teresa Drake, a 22-year-old British secretary, disappeared on 11 August 1979 after boarding a private plane from Athens to Jeddah alongside her millionaire boss and rumoured lover, oil trader Aladin Hassan Bahri, and three others. The aircraft vanished without a distress call or any immediate trace, triggering global headlines and decades of unresolved speculation set against the backdrop of the Cold War and the Iranian Revolution. Her family have never received a definitive answer, and now, 47 years on, her sister has spoken publicly about the case for the first time, raising the possibility that Teresa was secretly working for MI6.

Elizabeth Hammond, Teresa's sister, told the Daily Mail the family were fed conflicting accounts over the years, including claims Teresa was dead, that she was alive and held hostage in the desert, and an alleged ransom note demanding £6million. The plane's wreckage was eventually found in the Egyptian desert eight years after the disappearance, but this failed to resolve the mystery. Elizabeth recalls her sister hinting at secret work before leaving for Athens and a final, frightened phone call to their grandmother, and says the family faced threats, mysterious messages and a government D-notice that halted British press coverage, describing the saga as "a James Bond novel on speed".