To Kingdom Come Read Online Free PDF

Family shall fall. You have been warned.’”
    “Thirty days,” my employer rumbled.
    “Do you withdraw your offer, Mr. Barker?” Sir Watkin asked. “Thirty days does not give you much time to become an Irishman, join a faction, and convince them to trust you.”
    Barker sat and pondered a moment, absently rubbing his finger under his chin. He did not seem to mind letting two of the most important men in England wait upon his reply. Finally, he let his hand drop to the table.
    “My offer still stands, if you’ll accept it. I believe I can deliver whoever set those bombs and sent this note to you. I shall require Scotland Yard to take them into custody at the proper time. During the month, I would like both Llewelyn and me to be working for the standard fee you pay Le Caron, contingent upon whether we succeed.”
    “Upon my soul, I wish we were as confident as you seem to be, Mr. Barker,” Anderson continued. “How do you propose to convince the faction cell to trust you?”
    “By offering them someone they very much need: Johannes van Rhyn, the reclusive inventor of infernal devices. I understand they have attempted to recruit his aid for some time, but he will not see them. I intend to impersonate him.”
    “Van Rhyn has turned down all requests to help the Home Office. We’ve sequestered him at the military base in Aldershot. How will you …” Anderson asked. “Do not tell me. You are acquainted with the German, as well as Le Caron?”
    My employer said nothing but gave the spymaster a thin smile.
    “You have interesting friends, Mr. Barker,” Anderson continued. “We were not aware of that. One final thing. Her Majesty’s government does not bargain with terrorists. If the two of you are captured, we will be unable to step in and come to your rescue.”
    “Understood,” Barker said. “I would not wish to endanger your other agents.”
    “What think you, Anderson?” Sir Watkin asked. “Shall we trust Mr. Barker and his mad scheme to hoodwink the Irish?”
    “It is a slender thread, I’ll admit,” Anderson said. “But I believe the peril we are in warrants a secondary plan. Very well, gentlemen. I shall take your proposal to the Prime Minister. I cannot speak for him, but for now, it would be to your advantage to set your pawns in play.”
    “What about you, young fellow? Are you up for all this?” Sir Watkin asked, as he shook my hand before we left.
    “I trust my employer implicitly, sir,” I stated, but to tell the truth, just then I was wondering the same thing myself.

4

    AFTER WE STEPPED OUTSIDE INTO KING CHARLES Street, Barker stuffed a finger and thumb under his mustache and emitted a shrill whistle, loud enough to make an old pensioner on the pavement flinch in astonishment and mutter about the Empire going to ruin. A cab drew up to the curb, and we clambered aboard.
    “Claridge’s,” Barker called over my head, and we bowled off.
    “Why Claridge’s?” I asked. What business did we have in one of London’s most prestigious hotels?
    “It is the hotel of kings, and Parnell is the uncrowned king of Ireland. I must speak to him.”
    Perhaps there was some savage living in the Sudan who had never heard of Charles Parnell, but the rest of the world most certainly had. He was the closest the Irish had to a real leader since St. Patrick. A Protestant, he had courted the Vatican in the hope of gaining support for Irish Home Rule. A onetime Land League radical who had spent time in Kilmainham Gaol, he was now creating a union that included everyone from the most pacifist groups to the most militant in Ireland. Though there were stillmany in Parliament who saw him as no better than an anarchist, he was the darling of many a soirée in London, and it was rumored that Prime Minister Gladstone himself had offered him a sympathetic ear on more than one occasion. I had heard that his framed image hung on the wall of thousands of homes across the Irish Sea.
    “I understand why the bombers