The first book in the Black Cobra Quartet series, 2009

India, 1822

March 24, 1822

East India Company Headquarters, Calcutta, India

I can’t stress how important it is that we behead this fiend.” Francis Rawdon-Hastings, Marquess of Hastings and Governor-General of India for the last nine years, stumped back and forth behind his desk.

The five officers at ease in the elegant rattan armchairs arranged before the massive mahogany expanse in the Governor-General’s study sat silent and still; Hastings’s passage was the only movement stirring the heavy, humid air.

The old man’s color was high, his fists clenched, the muscles in his shoulders and arms taut. Colonel Derek Delborough, Del to all who knew him, seated at one end of the row of chairs, eyed the signs of his commander-in-chief’s agitation with cynical detachment. It had taken Hastings long enough to summon him and his men, Hastings’s personally appointed special officers.

Behind Hastings, the white plaster wall was broken by two teak-framed windows shaded by the wide balcony beyond yet already shuttered against the burgeoning heat. Hanging between, a portrait of the king, painted when he’d still been Prince Florizel and the darling of Europe, stared out over this outpost of English wealth and influence. The room was amply endowed with rosewood tables and teak cabinets, many intricately carved and inlaid, glowing in the light that seeped through the shutters to glint off myriad ornate brass fittings.

Airy, spotlessly clean, richly and exotically appointed, the room possessed a timeless serenity underlying its utilitarian function, much like the subcontinent itself, a large portion over which Hastings now ruled.