The Paris Vendetta

If all my friends jumped off a bridge, I wouldn't jump with them. I'd be at the bottom, hoping to catch them.

It's the circumstances that create fear. How you respond is all you can control. Concentrate on that, and you'll always succeed.

Something about history stirred him. He liked following in its footsteps.

As with those of my previous seven novels, this plot involved concocting, combining, correcting, and condensing a number of seemingly unrelated elements. Now it’s time to draw the line between fact and fiction. General Napoleon Bonaparte did indeed conquer Egypt in 1799,

He needed to join the fray. Help her. Do something. But fear kept him frozen. He felt puny, peevish, cowardly. He was afraid. Then he straightened up from his conflicting thoughts and forced his legs to move. Lyon vaulted Meagan off

The building had first been constructed over the tomb of St. Denis, a local bishop martyred by the Romans in the 3rd century, and revered by Parisians. An exceptional building in both construction and design, regarded as one of the first examples of Gothic architecture on the planet. He remembered a French acquaintance once boasting that the world’s greatest assembly of royal funerary monuments lay there. Like he cared. But maybe he should. Especially about one particular royal tomb. “Nobody knows if Dagobert is actually buried there,” she made clear. “The building was first erected in the 5th century. Dagobert ruled in the mid–7th century. He donated so much wealth to the basilica’s enhancement that, by the 9th century, he was credited as its founder. In the 13th century, the monks there dedicated a funerary niche in his honor.” “Is Dagobert there or not?” She shrugged. “What does it matter? That niche is still regarded as the tomb of Dagobert. Where he is. Dead.” He caught the significance of what she was saying. “That’s what Napoleon would have believed?

There are other examples, though less compelling. Global warming, perceived food shortages, control of fresh water. In recent years these have been tried. But they have not, as yet, either risen in actuality or been perceived as a sufficient threat. “Massive programs that drastically expand health care, education, public housing, and transportation might work. But they would have to be all-encompassing, engrossing the entire population in their success, expending resources at obscene levels. It’s doubtful that this could occur. Even a small war expends massive amounts of resources. Military spending and preparedness is wasteful beyond measure, and no social-welfare program could ever compare, though the various national health care and social security programs around the world do waste money at extraordinary levels.

Early efforts in South America and Africa had generated unprecedented profits, and secured everyone’s continued allegiance, since nothing fortified a conspiracy better than success. Yet this Dane of immense wealth and influence, an outsider, seemed to know everything.

Finance would never have possessed the power to embarrass the government since, if that had been the case, the bankers and not the leaders of government would have controlled. The hand that gives is above the hand that takes. Money has no motherland. Financiers are without patriotism and without decency. Their sole object is gain.

She shrugged. “The world is a complicated place. Oil prices go up and down with no reason or predictability. Either inflation or recession runs rampant across the globe. Governments are helpless. They either print more money, which causes more inflation, or regulate the situation into another recession. Stability seems a thing of the past. I have a way to deal with all those problems.

the desire to exchange the narrowness of human mortality for the breadth of enlightenment. His scientists liked to postulate how this may be the most perfect building in the world, the original Noah’s Ark, maybe the origin of languages, alphabets,

The best way to gain listeners’ confidence is make them think you have trusted them with a secret.

...women provide the greatest of pleasures, the worst of problems.

I like what Flaubert once wrote. History is prophecy, looking backwards.