Here is part of the opening chapter of Daniel Silva’s new novel The Secret Servant:
Professor Solomon Rosner, a Dutch Jew and author of a study on “the Islamic conquest of the West,” is making his way down the Staalstraat in Amsterdam, dawdling in the window of his favourite pastry shop, when he feels a tug at his sleeve:
“He saw the gun only in the abstract. In the narrow street the shots reverberated like cannon fire. He collapsed onto the cobblestones and watched helplessly as his killer drew a long knife from the inside of his coveralls. The slaughter was ritual, just as the imams had decreed it should be. No one intervened — hardly surprising, thought Rosner, for intervention would have been intolerant — and no one thought to comfort him as he lay dying. Only the bells spoke to him.”
They ring from the tower of the Zuiderkirk church, long since converted into a government housing office:
“A church without faithful,” they seemed to be saying, “in a city without god.”
Limewoody
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