Book Excerpt
Back in New York, again. She was hot,
late, and not in the mood for the confrontation that would surely ensue once
she was before the Consistory. She had prepared meticulously for this meeting
and was not about to let her father down at this critical stage. Would any of
them understand the magnitude of her discovery or see that there could only be
one way to achieve their goal? She knew
she had found the truth; was this the real beginning?
“Look, Tom, you get caught, you die. It’s as simple as
that. Only a handful of people have ever survived the Nutting Squad. It’s a
one-way ticket to a roadside in South Armagh, wearing a black bin bag and a
nine mill round in the back of your head. You go in this time, and Devlin will
send you for your tea for sure.”
“I only have this one chance to get confirmation.”
“You’re too close for my liking.” Miller often
betrayed his roots when he was annoyed; it was one of the things that made him
more human. Intelligence was such a sterile profession for the most part. For
Tom Hampton, it was a release, a passage of discovery.
Prior Esquin
de Floyran of Beziers was to be described years later as a villain who sought
to save himself from imprisonment and an imminent death sentence by raising malevolent
allegations against the Knights Templar. This was in the autumn of 1307. The
former prior was ruthless and ambitious and was to be, in the years that
followed, one of the official torturers of his former fellow Templars in Paris.
Unbeknownst to the men who had sought shelter and respite at Micy, the
accusations he had made a month or so earlier were of great value to the
corrupt King. The allegations he had vindictively levelled resulted in spies
being sent to infiltrate the Order throughout France. Anywhere en route to the
Citadel and port at La Rochelle was very near the top of their target list.
On 7th June
1917 at 03:10hrs exactly, right across the Messines Ridge, the earth shattered
as millions of tons of earth were disgorged hundreds of feet into the air on
the tips of enormous tongues of flame. Clods of earth the size of cars flew
into the now orange and blue sky, spiralling upward in lazy parabolas, then
falling into the maelstrom below.
Plumer’s plan had worked, and thousands of troops moved off, their ears
ringing, their dry mouths full of soil, and their nostrils stinging with
ammonium nitrate into battle. Sapper Thomas Lloyd was to comment later that the
strangest sight he had ever seen as daylight flooded into the grim battlefield,
as the Infantry pushed on, Lloyd and the rest of his Engineer section came
across a sight which astounded them all. Deep within the crater, exposed upon a
ledge, sat four German officers at a table; one stood against the wall, still
smiling. The concussion from the blast had killed them all.