Tale of the Sica, Book #5
Action Adventure / Crime
Date Published: 04-11-2023
Great-uncle Leon, the most successful assassin in our family’s 2000-year-old history, is back.
It’s 1920, the Great War is over, and the death rattles of the White Russian armies echo across Europe and Asia as they crumble one by one before the advancing Bolsheviks. It seems that Leon’s days with the British Secret Service Bureau are over.
But when a battalion of British soldiers is shanghaied by a diabolical Baltic baron hellbent on conquering Mongolia and backed by an international organization of fascists, Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming, head of the SIS, sends his number-one assassin to take care of business.
From London and Paris to the Crimea, Georgia and war-ravaged China and Mongolia, Leon and his accomplice, the beautiful Countess Catherine von Merenberg, are plunged headfirst into a maelstrom of horror to rescue the British troops and stop the reign of the Bloody White Baron.
Excerpt
There was no question in Leon’s mind that Churchill was a snob with little time for anyone who didn’t match him in courage, wit, or wisdom. But Churchill had been made aware of Leon’s abilities by Smith-Cumming, and in Leon he recognized the traits he saw in himself. Not all of them, heaven forbid. No one could match the well-roundedness of the great Winston Churchill.
“When did you first realize that so many young men—underage boys, as Sir Mansfield put it—were missing?” Leon asked Churchill, who was still upset at walking into the dining room and seeing his cousin, Clare Sheridan, at the same table as the Russian Lev Kamenev. According to Churchill, Kamenev was supposedly in London for peace talks with the British government, but he suspected the Bolshevik was really trying to dig up dirt on Churchill by having an affair with Clare.
“You may recall,” said Churchill, glaring across the room at his cousin, who was doing her best to ignore him, “and then again you may not—I’ve no idea of your knowledge or interest in the machinations of government— that my first task as Secretary of State for War was the demobilization of our troops as they returned from Europe. That was a bloody mess, I'm ashamed to admit.”
“I'm sure you did your best, Winston” said Philip Sassoon, trying to placate his friend.
“I always do, Philip. But there are occasions when one’s best is simply not good enough. Not often in my case, but it does happen.”
About the Author
Jonathan Harries began his career as a trainee copywriter at Foote, Cone & Belding in South Africa and ended it as Chairman of FCB Worldwide with a few stops in between.
After winning his first Cannes Lion award, he was offered a job at Grey Advertising in South Africa, where he worked as a copywriter and ended up as CEO at age 29, just before emigrating to the US. Like most immigrants in those days, he started once again from scratch. After a five-year stint as Executive Creative Director of Hal Riney in Chicago, he was offered a senior position at FCB. Within ten years, he became the Global Chief Creative Officer and spent the next ten traveling to over 90 countries, racking up 8 million miles on American Airlines alone.
He began writing his first novel, Killing Harry Bones, in the last year of his career and transitioned into becoming a full-time author several years ago, just after retiring from FCB. He’s been writing ever since while doing occasional consulting work for old clients.
Jonathan has a great love of animals, and he and his wife try to go on safari every year. They’ve been lucky enough to visit game reserves in South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Tanzania, India, and Sri Lanka.
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