Free The Nostradamus Prophecies by Mario Reading

refused to keep pace with the rest of the twenty-first century. Watching the absurd behaviour of these ant-like creatures as they argued, cheated, fondled, shouted, swindled and duped each other in a failed attempt to make up for the dud hand that society had dealt them.
    What did the fools expect, when the Catholic Church still blamed them for forging the nails which pierced Jesus’ hands and feet? According to Bale’s reading of the story, two blacksmiths, pre-Crucifixion, had refused to do the Romans’ dirty work for them and had been killed for their trouble. The third smith the Romans approached had been a gypsy. This gypsy had just finished forging three large nails. ‘Here’s twenty denarii,’ the drunken legionnaires had told him. ‘Five each for the first three and five more for the fourth that you will make for us while we wait.’
    The gypsy agreed to complete the work while the legionnaires enjoyed a few more tumblers of wine. But the moment he started forging the fourth nail, the ghosts of the two murdered smiths appeared in the clearing and warned him not, under any circumstances, to work for the Romans, as they were intending to crucify a just man. The soldiers, terrified by the apparition, bolted, without waiting for their fourth nail.
    But the story didn’t end there. For this gypsy was a sedulous man and figuring that he had already been well paid for his work, he set to once more, ignoring the warnings of the two dead smiths. When he eventually completed the fourth nail and while it was still red hot, he plunged it into a bath of cooling water – but no matter how many times he did this, or from what depth he drew the water, the nail still remained close to molten. Appalled by the implications of what he had done, the gypsy gathered up his belongings and made off.
    For three days and three nights he ran, until he arrived in a whited city where nobody knew him. Here he set to work for a rich man. But the first time he laid hammer to iron, a terrible cry escaped from his lips. For there, on the anvil, lay the red-hot nail – the missing fourth nail of Christ’s Crucifixion. And each time he set to work – either in a different manner or in a different place – the same thing happened, until nowhere in the world was safe from the accusing vision of the red-hot nail.
    And that, at least according to Romany lore, explains why gypsies are doomed to wander the earth forever, searching for a safe place in which to set-up their forges.
    ‘Idiots,’ said Bale, under his breath. ‘They should have killed the Romans and blamed it on the families of the dead smiths.’
    He had already identified the two men guarding the camp. One of them was slumped under a tree, smoking and the other was asleep. What were these people thinking of? He would have to chivvy them up. Once Sabir and the girl were forced out on to the road, they would be that much easier to pick off.
    Smiling to himself, Bale unzipped the fl at leather case he had been carrying in the poacher’s pocket of his waxed Barbour coat and eased out the Ruger Redhawk. The double-action revolver was made from satinised stainless steel, with a rosewood grip. It sported a seven-and-a half-inch barrel, a six-round, Magnum-filled magazine and telescopic sights, zeroed-in for eighty feet. Thirteen inches in length, it was Bale’s favourite hunting gun, with enough power to stop an elk. Recently, at the firing range in Paris, he had achieved a consistent series of three-inch groupings at ninety-six feet. Now that he had live bait to fire at, he wondered if it were possible to remain quite so accurate?
    His first slug hit two inches below the heel of the sleeping gypsy. The man jerked awake, his body inadvertently taking the form of a set square. Bale aimed his second slug at the exact place the man’s head had been resting two seconds before.
    Then he turned his attention to the second gypsy. His first slug took out the man’s cigarette tin and the