When Sir James and his Knights Temporary unleash deadly nanobots to reclaim former British colonies throughout Africa, Jamaica, and now New Jersey, Remo, who is outraged that his home state is being invaded, joins in the fray to stop the madness and make history.Breathlessly action-packed and boasting a winning combination of thrills, humour and mysticism, the Destroyer is one of the bestselling series of all time.
For the Glorious House of Sinanju
With special thanks and acknowledgement to Tim Somheil for his contribution to this work.
Copyright
First published in the United States in 2005 by Worldwide
First published in Great Britain in ebook by Sphere in 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7515-6089-3
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2005 Warren Murphy
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
Sphere
Little, Brown Book Group
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London, EC4Y 0DZ
Dedication
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Epilogue
About the Authors
The castle was burned to the ground.
Funny thing about that. Stone castles aren’t supposed to burn to the ground, but there was no denying that Loch Tweed Castle was reduced to ashes. The local gossip placed the blame on the late Mrs. Tweed-Smythe, who had taken to collecting newspaper clippings during the Second World War. What started as a hobby, the locals claimed, became an obsession. Mrs. Tweed-Smythe tried to keep it secret that she was filing away a copy of the newspaper, each and every day, year after year.
The locals who were employed by the late Mr. and Mrs. Tweed-Smythe reported on the unusual volume of newspapers received by the old couple. The London
There had to have been twenty or thirty thousand daily newspapers stored in the old cellars of the castle. With that much fuel, the fire would burn on and on, until even the stone walls crumbled. It was the only reasonable explanation for the extent of the castle’s obliteration.
“So there’s no chance of finding any bones,” the locals decided as they discussed the matter endlessly. “There’s nothing left but dust.”
This made the tragedy even harder on the good people of the little Scottish village. Many of their sons and husbands and fathers—and a few wives—were driven mad during the recent troubles. They had stormed the castle, for reasons that were too foolish to believe and best left unsaid. They killed the poor old Tweed-Smythe and his helpless, daft wife, then burned the castle down around them. Nobody understood why it had happened. All they knew was that their loved ones were dead and gone, without even bones to bury.
The simple, mourning villagers were wrong. Old Mrs. Tweed-Smythe was as crazy as they came, but she didn’t hoard newspapers, and it wasn’t a stash of six decades of the
The villages were also wrong about there being no bodies.
“Fuh! Christ!” The English gentleman got a face full of putrid air when he wrenched open the trapdoor. Something inside was decomposing.
The Englishman staggered away and vomited into the ashes, then rested with his hands on his knees.
This was awful. He shouldn’t have to do this kind of thing. There should be people to do it for him. All his life there were people to do it for him, whatever it was.
But he couldn’t trust anyone else, friends, family or coconspirators.
But did he have what it took? Of course he did! He was an Englishman—a true, old-fashioned, unflappable Brit.
But could he
Well, certainly. He had faced unpleasantness before and come through with flying colors. There had been the bit of murder down in Africa a few years back, and then the other bit of murder, also, coincidentally, in Africa, also a few years back. His constitution had been fully tested and hardened. Or so he had thought, until he had breathed in the fumes of the rotting corpses down there.
