The Templar's Code

CHAPTER 85

Caedmon examined the windowless room.

The décor consisted of two wooden chairs, one of which he was seated in, a metal desk, a heavy steel door, and a bare lightbulb in a ceiling socket. The sturdy concrete walls were painted an uninspiring shade of dun, the concrete floor a dark green, the paint peeling from both surfaces in ragged strips. Overhead, an exposed pipe dripped rusty water in a continuous and annoying plonk-plonk.

There was one other pipe in the room — a solid metal pipe securely attached to the concrete wall with heavy-duty straps. He knew it was securely attached because he was handcuffed to the blasted thing and had had no luck yanking it free from the wall.

I don’t see any electrodes, Caedmon thought with a measure of relief, so how bad can it get?

Earlier, gun barrel pressed to the back of his head, he’d been “ushered” into the basement of a nineteenth-century bank building currently undergoing renovation. Scaffolding, sawhorses, and plastic sheeting were strewn about the gutted upstairs interior. A negligent workman had been kind enough to leave a string of electric lights turned on. So they wouldn’t break their bloody necks as they trespassed. Since he’d been forced to drive the Audi, Caedmon knew the bank was located in the vicinity of Catholic University. The bastard probably reconnoitered the site earlier in the evening en route to his murderous rendezvous with the unfortunate Professor Lyon.

Thank God the bastard has taken me hostage instead of Edie.

Even in her distraught state, Edie had to know that if she handed over the Emerald Tablet to their nemesis, she would be rewarded with a bullet to the brain. Caedmon prayed that her sense of survival was strong. That she used the cell phone to call a taxi. And that she took the taxi directly to BWI airport. He didn’t care which plane she boarded so long as she left the D.C. area.

On the other side of the room, the steel door suddenly swung open with a jarring reverberation. A jaunty hitch in his step, the once handsome man strolled through the metal door frame, the bare bulb casting an unflattering light on his hideously swollen jaw.

He calmly placed a hammer with curved claw and a pair of slip joint pliers on top of the metal table. “The upstairs is being completely refurbished to make way for a discotheque. I’m not entirely certain, but I believe it will be called La Banque.”

“How unoriginal,” Caedmon muttered, taking silent note of the hardware. It ominously implied that he would be “put to the question.” The quaint medieval euphemism for torture.

As though he were a mind reader, his captor forcefully shoved the metal table in his direction, butting the short end against his waist. Caedmon grunted, the wind knocked out of him.

“How careless. My apologies.” Placing a hand over his heart, the bastard insincerely smiled. A grotesque parody given his battered left side. “I have yet to introduce myself. I am Saviour Panos.”

Saviour. Caedmon caustically snorted. The bastard’s mother certainly played a cruel joke on the world the day she bestowed that name upon her son.

Panos seated himself kitty-corner, presenting Caedmon with a view of his still-beautiful right side. “Did you know that you have me to thank for the successful retrieval of the Emerald Tablet?”

“Indeed?”

“There was a police officer in Meridian Hill Park. Probably still is.” Panos punctuated the addendum with another insincere smile. “Unless someone has found him.” Reaching behind him, he removed a heavy revolver from his waistband and set it next to the hammer and pliers.

Belatedly realizing that the weapon Panos had been brandishing was the dead policeman’s service revolver, his belly painfully tightened.

“Good God.”

“That depends on which god one prays to — the god of Light or the god of Darkness.”

Caedmon wondered if his captor obliquely referred to the octogram star, which comprised two perfect squares. Light and Darkness. The union of opposites.

“I take it that you are an occultist.”

Raising his hand, Panos lightly caressed Caedmon’s cheek. “Can you take it? Do you want to take it?”

Caedmon instantly recoiled, banging his head on the concrete wall behind him. The conversation had suddenly veered in an unexpected direction.

“I’m curious about your woman… Does she give you pleasure?” The picture of nonchalance, Panos draped his upper arm over the back of the chair.

Caedmon refused to answer.

“I will take your silence as a yes. She’s very beautiful. Usually women don’t arouse me, but if I had the right woman—”

“Don’t even think about it, you bastard!” Caedmon exclaimed, the other man’s verbal blade cutting deep.

“You are in no position to stop me. From doing anything.”

To prove the point, Panos rammed his elbow into Caedmon’s chin, slamming the left side of his face into the metal pipe attached to the wall.

Jaw clenched, he swallowed a deep-throated bellow as a burst of excruciating pain instantly radiated across his cheekbone. Like a bear caught in a trap, he futilely pulled against the handcuff that restrained his right wrist. When that got him nowhere, he went for his captor’s throat with his uncuffed left hand.

The other man chuckled, six inches out of reach. “Just desserts, my English friend.”

Also chuckling, Caedmon spat out a mouthful of blood and spittle. His aim true, the disgusting gob hit Panos directly in the face.

The smirk instantly vanished. “For your sake, I hope the curly-haired bitch loves you. If not…” He let the threat dangle.

I loved the fact that you were a brainiac. An iconoclast. A Renaissance man. Prior to the brake failure, Edie had used the word love in the past tense. Not exactly the sentiments of an enamored woman.

Despite the throbbing pain, he summoned a cocky grin. “She’s mad about me.”

Snarling, his face twisted with rage, Panos grabbed the hammer.

Caedmon braced himself.

Bring on the lions.