Near Dark (Scot Harvath #20) - Brad Thor Page 0,31

from Portadown, they made this last leg of their journey in silence.

When they rolled to a stop several blocks from his home, his handler gave him a final talking-to. It went without saying that he shouldn’t tell anyone what had happened—not his mother, not his uncle, not his priest—no one. Not even his mates. If he did, there’d be hell to pay and his handler made it quite clear that he’d be the one delivering the bill.

After giving him an alibi and explaining what he should say and do in the unlikely event the police came around asking questions, he handed him an envelope.

“What’s this?” the boy asked.

“Open it.”

He did. Inside was several hundred pounds sterling.

“You’re one of us now,” his handler said. “We take care of our own. You’ve earned that.”

It was his first, rudimentary taste of the dark arts. Like losing one’s virginity, it had been quick, anxiety-inducing, and somewhat clumsy. But it had been successful. He had gotten the job done—which was all that mattered.

The boy didn’t know it at that moment, but he had just been introduced to a profession he would show an incredible aptitude for and grow quite comfortable in.

His handler had run the best assassins the IRA had ever fielded. The boy, in time, would surpass them all.

The British would both hunt and fear him. They would publicly declare him a savage, but privately marvel at his abilities. His kills would be the subject of lengthy newspaper and magazine articles. Then, one day, he would simply vanish.

It was Christmas 1999. The Good Friday Agreement had been signed, voted on by the citizens, and put into effect. The Troubles, for the most part, were finished. The demand, locally, for men of his vocation had practically collapsed overnight.

There was also a rumor that he remained at the top of a very secret “most wanted” list. With the ground shifting under Northern Ireland, new political parties and new allegiances were being forged. There was a dirty, ignoble scramble for power that would have made the ancient Romans blush. The knives were out. It was only a matter of time before someone turned on him.

With his mother already two years in the grave from a heart attack and his siblings old enough to take care of themselves, there was no reason for him to remain. He could go wherever he wanted. And where he wanted to go, was France.

Through an IRA contact in Dublin, he was able to change his identity and get a Republic of Ireland passport. Michael McElhone became Paul Aubertin and he never looked back.

After traveling through France, seeing all the sights he had always dreamed of, he applied to join and was accepted into the French Foreign Legion.

His plan was to serve for three years and then take advantage of the opportunity to apply for French citizenship. Two years in, on a mission in Kosovo, he was wounded and rotated back to France for a series of lengthy surgeries.

Per a provision in French law, any soldier of the Foreign Legion who gets injured in battle can immediately apply to become Français par le sang versé—“French by spilled blood.” A social worker helped him fill out the application from his hospital bed.

By the time his physical therapy was complete, his application had been approved.

After his naturalization ceremony in Paris, he decided to stay for a while. He took extension classes at the Sorbonne, immersed himself in the city’s museums, and devoured every history book he could find from the stalls along the Seine near Notre-Dame, as well as the Abbey and Shakespeare and Company bookstores of the Latin Quarter.

The more he read, the more he fell in love with the Normandy region to the north. That was where his truest passion lay—Deauville, Rouen, the beaches of D-Day, and the most mesmerizing abbey he had ever seen, Mont-Saint-Michel.

The dramatic medieval monastery and fairy-tale village sat on a fortified island in the middle of a tidal basin at the coast—abutted by the mouth of the Couesnon River.

It was a UNESCO World Heritage Site that looked like it had been torn out of a Harry Potter movie. Attracting over three million people a year, it was considered one of the most awe-inspiring attractions in all of Europe. With all the books he had read about it and all the pictures he had seen over the years, nothing compared to viewing it in person.

According to legend, the original site had been founded by an Irish hermit. Then, in