Templar 09 - Secret of the Templars by Paul Christopher Page A

was really nothing more than a card player dealing from the bottom of the deck.
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    The planning committee of Operation Leonardo met at Bolton House, which they rented fromthe National Trust. Bolton House was a beautiful and majestic country estate built of stone—the epitome of English country living. It was located in Lincolnshire and the house itself was surrounded by a thousand acres with three or four wooded areas plus its own lake. It was about as private as you could get.
    The individual members of Leonardo and their personal security teams began trickling in early in the day. By evening the members, dressed for dinner, met in the dining room with its magnificent table capable of seating eighteen. The meeting began with a sumptuous catered dinner that included oysters with champagne vinegar mignonette, celery soup, fig and Stilton salad with port wine dressing, venison tenderloin with Madeira wine peppercorn sauce, Yorkshire pudding, shepherd’s pie, floating islands with lemon custard sauce and raspberries, and English Eccles cake.
    It was almost nine o’clock before the remains of the meal were removed and the men around the table were comfortably smoking cigars and drinking brandy. Finally Sir Henry Maxim, director of operations for MI6, tapped a spoon against his brandy snifter and called the meeting to order.
    â€œAlthough most of us already know each other well, for the sake of our new guests I thoughtproper introductions should be made. On my left, representing the CIA, is Russell J. Smart. Beside him is His Eminence Cardinal Secretary of State of the Vatican Arturo Ruffino, followed by Pytor Novestev, our Russian friend from the FSB; beside him, Dieter Rhine of the BND; and, last but not least, Thierry Grenier of France’s DGSE.
    â€œTogether on my right are the new members of our organization. Representing India, Kota Raman of the well-known Raman family, Abraham Ivankov from Russian organized crime, from the Unione Corse Dominique Venturi. And from Japan, Katsu Giri, head of the Yamaguchi-gumi yakuza group. Thank you all for being here. I’ll now turn the meeting over to Russell Smart from the CIA.”
    â€œMy friends,” Smart began, “over the past few years we have all come to the same conclusion. The entire world is rapidly approaching what the astronomers refer to as a singularity. In astronomical terms, a star becomes so heavy it falls in on itself, thus creating a black hole. In our own singularity, the entire world has come to the point where money has no true reality. Banks create invisible and meaningless things to sell to each other; entire countries are imploding. China has now become the inevitable snake eating its owntail. It has almost inflated itself out of business by lending more money to the markets than they can possibly repay, thus losing those markets to sell to. India is on a bold upward curve based on low labor costs and virtually no environmental controls, and their government is totally corruptible and the perfect nesting site for capitalists from the West. At the same time India is literally killing itself as its freshwater supply dries up due to bad hygiene, creating pockets of plague that will eventually cover the entire country.
    â€œIn my own country, bailing out companies that can no longer survive has become a farce, yet the United States still believes itself to be the world’s greatest country. Our biggest industries revolve around the military, but at the same time we start wars that we cannot hope to win. The whole world has gone crazy. The only way for us to succeed as a group is to develop our own economy. One of the ways we intend to do that is with Operation Leonardo. Our new member from Japan, Mr. Katsu Giri, has expressed an interest in our new ‘criminally’ oriented members. I’ll let him speak for himself and those other new members of Leonardo.”
    Giri, a short, slim man with iron