The Double Eagle
James Bond meets The Thomas Crown Affair in a spellbinding tale of international intrigue and suspense. Now available in e-book format for the first time.James Twining’s first Tom Kirk adventure - available in e-book format for the first time.Tom Kirk. The world's greatest art thief.Jennifer Browne. An FBI agent desperate for a second chance.Cassius. The criminal mastermind controlling the art underworld.In Paris a priest is murdered, the killers dumping his mutilated body into the Seine. Only he has taken a secret with him to his death. A secret that reveals itself during his autopsy and reawakens memories of Depression–era politics and a seventy–year–old heist.Jennifer Browne, a young and ambitious FBI agent is assigned to the case.This is her last chance to kick start a career that has stalled after one fatal error of judgement three years before.Her investigation uncovers a daring robbery from Fort Knox and Tom Kirk, the world's greatest art thief is the prime suspect.Tom, caught between his desire to finally get out of the game and his partner's insistence that he complete one last job for the criminal mastermind Cassius, faces a thrilling race against time to clear his name. A race that takes him from London to Paris, Amsterdam to Istanbul in a search for the real thieves and the legendary Double Eagle.
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The Double Eagle
JAMES TWINING
To Victoria, always
Là, tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté,Luxe, calme et volupté
Charles Baudelaire, L’Invitation au Voyage
Executive Order No. 6102
By virtue of the authority vested in me by Section 5(b) of the Act of October 6, 1917, as amended by Section 2 of the Act of March 9, 1933, entitled ‘An Act to provide relief in the existing national emergency in banking, and for other purposes,’ in which amendatory Act Congress declared that a serious emergency exists,
I, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, do declare that said national emergency still continues to exist and pursuant to said section do hereby prohibit the hoarding of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates within the continental United States by individuals, partnerships, associations and corporations and hereby prescribe the following regulations for carrying out the purposes of this order.
All persons are hereby required to deliver on or before May 1, 1933, to a Federal Reserve bank or a branch or agency thereof or to any member bank of the Federal Reserve System all gold coin, gold bullion and gold certificates now owned by them or coming into their ownership on or before April 28, 1933.
Upon receipt of gold coin, gold bullion or gold certificates delivered to it, the Federal Reserve Bank or member bank will pay thereof an equivalent amount of any other form of coin or currency coined or issued under the laws of the United States.
Whoever wilfully violates any provision of this Executive Order or of these regulations or of any rule, regulation or license issued thereunder may be fined not more than $10,000, or, if a natural person, may be imprisoned for not more than ten years, or both; and any officer, director, or agent of any corporation who knowingly participates in any such violation may be punished by a like fine, imprisonment, or both.
This order and these regulations may be modified or revoked at any time.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
President of the United States of America
April 5, 1933
Contents
What do you not drive human hearts into, cursed Craving for gold!
Virgil – The Aeneid (iii.56)
Pont de Grenelle, 16th Arrondissement, Paris 16th July – 9:05pm
They were late.
They’d said quarter to and it was already five past. It made him uneasy to be standing out in the open for this long. If they weren’t there in the next five minutes he was leaving, a million dollars or not.
He patted his pocket nervously. It was still there; he could feel it through the black woollen material, its warm weight pressing against his thigh. It was still safe.
A teenage couple, arms interlinked, strolled towards him, snatching kisses every few steps in the dying light. Mid-embrace, the girl caught sight of him and broke away with an embarrassed shrug. Her fingers flew unconsciously to the small silver crucifix that hung around her neck.
‘Bonsoir, mon père.’
‘Bonsoir, mon enfant.’
He smiled and nodded at them both as they walked past him to the other side of the Pont de Grenelle, noting that it was only then they allowed their guilty laughter to echo up through the fading heat. Against a crimson sky, the lights on the Eiffel Tower sparkled as if it was on fire.
He rested his arms on the parapet and looked out at the Statue of Liberty. Identical to her much larger sister across the Atlantic, she dominated the Allée des Cygnes, the narrow island in the middle of the River Seine upon which she had been erected in 1889, according to the inscription on her base. She had her back to him, smooth bronze muscles of crumpled fabric and taut skin, eternally youthful despite the green patina of old age.
As a child, his grandmother had once told him that many members of their family had made the long and difficult journey from Naples to America in the 1920s. When he looked at the statue, he felt somehow connected to those faceless relatives, understood something of their sense of wonder at their first sight of the New World, their unshakeable faith in a new beginning. So he always chose this place. It felt familiar. Safe. Protected.
