Personally, since I was blinded in one eye, I have become a better striker. Especially with the épée, seeing doesn’t help much. The target is there. You need to feel the blade as if it were an extension of your arm. You don’t need eyes to move your wrist. The French call it le sentiment du fer, a feel for the iron.

The Negroni went down easily, momentarily chasing away the heat of summer. There was nothing like it in Czechoslovakia. Presumably, not even in Russia. Over there, you drank strong, tasteless stuff. You drank to dull the senses, to forget, to punish yourself. It was solitary drinking, even when in company. In Italy, on the other hand, you drank to

In retrospect, however, Dobbs was glad he had attended King James College in Inverness. It had been a ruthless but valuable initiation. Having survived the experience, nothing struck fear into his heart, not even war. That was what these schools were for. To prepare members of the British ruling class to forge their character and prepare them for

He had been a theater critic for a prestigious newspaper, a respected man with friends, a beautiful home, an elegant wife, and several mistresses. He had lived in a world full of beauty which had suddenly dissolved, like a dream that vanishes upon waking. With great determination, the man had forced that dream out of his mind.

Not far from the pit, two prisoners were digging a smaller hole. When they had finished, a third prisoner arrived with a wheelbarrow full of papers. Identity papers. Letters. Postcards. Drawings. Childish doodles. Diaries. Notebooks. School books. Wedding announcements. The prisoner tipped everything into the hole. One of them emptied a canister of

His tone was not aggressive. He said the word with the chilling calm of someone used to issuing orders.

The Nazis talked about “militant science.” It was not science. It was a parody of science. Just as National Socialism was a parody of politics.

The foul smell was still in his nostrils. The stench of death stuck with him. In the other war, as the bodies of friend and foe alike rotted in no man’s land, he had breathed it in for months. Sometimes, the corpses ended up becoming part of the trenches. But what the baron had seen in the woods was different. It was not war. It was something

A new nation required new words.