Chapter One—The Manuscript #4
“N…No, sir. It’s just…”
Adam Baylor raised his eyebrows. “Just what?”
“Just…just that you’ve never given me more than that to spend and…and you weren’t there in the back of the room when I turned around,” he finished in a rush.
“I ask again. What were my orders?”
The young man looked at the floor. “To buy the manuscript, sir.”
Baylor sighed and then sounded almost concerned. “And I gave you a second chance. When you called that you had failed, I initiated Plan B. You failed at that as well. You weren’t able to snatch the portfolio from that American bitch.”
“No, sir,” he said in a voice that was barely audible.
“You have disappointed me.” Baylor kept his voice soft, almost sympathetic. The stooge in front of him paled. He lengthened the silence for effect until even his bodyguard shuffled a foot and then snapped back to attention. “You do know what happens when someone disappoints me?”
A moan slipped out of Toby, but was quickly stifled. “Yes, sir.”
The small group of his other go-fers that Baylor had wanted to witness what he did with failures, looked away.
Baylor nodded at the bodyguard, who went to the closet and retrieved a medieval cat-o-nine-tails. He turned to Toby. “You know what comes next.”
Shaking, Toby removed his shoes and socks and then stood to disrobe. In his boxer shorts he walked over to the patch of marble tile in front of the fireplace and knelt.
Baylor smiled satisfactorily at the first hard crack of the whip on bare flesh.
****
After his goons had carried the unconscious man away, Baylor frowned at a small spot of blood that had dripped onto the carpet.
He thought he had made a suitable impression on his small audience.
It should be a long time before any of them thought not to follow his orders to the letter.
He almost laughed to himself at how quickly the others had asked to be excused to see to his other requests.
But the floor was a careless mistake. The blood cleaned up from the marble easily—it was why he had it there—but the carpet would have a brown spot.
He’d have to check and see if the cleaning lady was married or had kids.
Perhaps he would arrange for a small accident.
Nothing major. Just enough to let her know that in the future she should be more circumspect with his Persian carpets.
She wouldn’t dare to tell him the spot hadn’t been there earlier.
He poured himself a cognac, settled in an ultra-soft leather chair, lit a Cuban cigar and pondered the outcome of today’s work.
He was not pleased that he had lost the manuscript, but the girl could be traced.
And the bitch would pay when he caught up to her.
He would think of a special torture to compensate himself for this extra waste of his time.
But what annoyed him more—he wouldn’t use the word “worry”—was the purchase of the Templar Shield.
It held its own subtle magic, vested by that meddlesome Merlin long ago.
Baylor had recognized it immediately. De Molay had been carrying it when King Philippe sent his men in to arrest him.
He smiled, remembering how easy it had been to instill insatiable greed into the French king and the weak pope…
well, Clement hadn’t even given a Christian protest. Not when the Templar treasure might be his.
Not that Baylor had any intention of letting the pope keep the relics.
He frowned. That was one mistake he hated owning up to.
The Templar treasure had been whisked away before the arrests were made, which meant someone within his ranks had turned traitor.
He’d spent most of the first half of the fourteenth century trying to find him and he never did.
And Baylor hated losing. So the Templars and their treasure had become a personal vendetta for him.
And that’s why the manuscript was so important.
His informants had been quite serious that it was a map to the location of the Holy Grail.
He smiled again. The Grail lore was nonsense, of course, but if this were the Chalice—one of the four ancient Hallows—then the other three would reveal themselves as well.
The squared power of four—the Spear, the Sword, the Dish and the Grail—well, together they would give him the power to be a god again. And he would return to the Isle and do the final battle with that bitch granddaughter Goddess, Brighid. He would rule the world. Literally.
And then he frowned again, remembering the man who had appeared in time to save the American broad. It was the Templar who had killed two of his best men the night de Molay had burned. The Immortal who probably still wore the cross that protected him.
Baylor’s eyes hardened. So the war wasn’t quite over.
Ah, but he already had some players in place. Terrorists were like children, easily led and gullible. How easy it was to make people intolerant and living only to hate. And those jihad fanatics thought they were killing for their GOD.
He tittered. If only they knew.