Commitment - Predatory Ethics: Book II (12 page)

“An opportunity?” Quentin asked. “It is more of a sacrifice.” Now Quentin did what he never thought he would, he lied. “You are sacrificing yourself as our Lord did. As the last Grand Master de Molay did. You’re sacrificing yourself to the flames of damnation.” It was a subtle argument he hoped his Grand Master wouldn’t look past. Quentin still had the condemnation for Bernhardt in his heart, yet he preferred to refer to it as a sacrifice for the greater good. Bernhardt’s actions and going on to Supreme Tribunal still damned him, yet Quentin showed Bernhardt he looked at it as martyrdom for their plans. He hoped it would put his own refusal to compromise in a context where Bernhardt would accept it.

Bernhardt’s shoulders slumped with relief. He looked at Quentin with a gratitude that lit up his face. Tears streamed down his cheeks, and he went forward in a rush, squeezing the door’s bars between his fingers, turning his knuckles white.

“You cannot imagine how hard it has been for me, Tino. You cannot begin to understand.” His whole form shook with the release of emotion blocking even the sound of gunfire and screams of pain coming from the end of the long corridor. “I am so relieved you finally understand that everything I’ve done was for the Brotherhood.”

“Yes, I do. I’m sure there were many brothers who didn’t see de Molay’s sacrifice as such either.” Quentin saw greatly proportioned men dressed in dark grey fighting with black clad Templars and winning. Bernhardt saw none of it and for the first time in years Quentin thought he might see the sun again.

“The world will be ours again. We will no longer have to remain hidden from it. The Templars and Freemasons will be the rulers we’ve always been, but we will no longer have to hide. Soon the Architect’s Plan will become reality in stone, brick, and mortar none will be able to deny.”

His soliloquy was cut short by the click of a drawn hammer. It was full of finality, an unyielding metal contraction that caught both men’s full attention. Bernhardt’s gaze accused Quentin, but the replying stare answered the obvious how could he have done anything from where he was.

Quentin quickly dropped down beneath the heavy wooden door and drew the gun wielder’s attention to let Bernhardt quickly mutter, gesture his arms, and throw him away and up shattering his skull and neck against the stone ceiling.

“Bernhardt, get me out of here. We’re under attack and you’ll need everybody you have.” Quentin’s voice carried from behind the door, and was answered by the clatter of keys thrown through the bars and against his cell’s far wall. The Grand Master’s response was pragmatic. He didn’t have the luxury of time or attention to open the door for his former seneschal. He had his hands full with another two attackers.

The loud clatter of a Schmeisser machine gun reverberated against the walls and forced Bernhardt to the floor. A quick incantation sent the gun into the Grand Master’s hands who with a few quick bursts removed both his oncoming assailants. Yet as quickly as he got rid of them he found himself immobile, his arms rooted at his sides and his whole body lifted and floating inches off the floor.

“Herr Hapsburg.” The voice that shouted out from Riefenstahl’s
Triumph of the Will
, addressing thousands of Teutons who hung on every breath was heard and was unmistakable. “That will be quite enough, danke.” Bernhardt could do nothing but watch a duo of men in front of a phalanx of Aryan perfection striding ever closer to him. Inside the cell, Quentin was trying the second key of the six on the ring thrown earlier into his cell. He had to reach out and unlock the door from outside. It would not do to have the lock of a cell where the prisoner could reach it from the inside.

The two leading men walked with unquestioned authority. The taller of the two differing to the shorter even in his movements, letting him walk ahead a few steps. The taller was solidly built with the athletic shoulders and deep chest of a man who was at constant struggle and battle. They were too far away to see which had spoken.

“You have been quite a problem, Grand Master, Supreme Tribunal, and Premier Traitor to the Great Leviathan.” As they drew closer Bernhardt could not believe his eyes. He had doubted his hearing before but dismissed what he heard. Now his eyes reminded him of what he didn’t believe, and he still couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge who the man admonishing him in the most pleasant of tones was. “You will be remembered as our very own Judas, mein herr. Yes, I am certain you will go down in history as despised as he is by all in the Weakling’s Church.”

They stopped five feet from the immobile Grand Master. At that distance the shorter man was unmistakable. His likeness had been everywhere in 1940s Europe, at some places adored at others reviled. His Chaplin mustache was under the thin, cruel nose and twitched with self-congratulation.

“It is good to be back on this plane. I am grateful to my loyal lieutenants and am proud of the work they are doing for our cause.” He glanced approvingly at his behemoth second. “I am fortunate to have better men under me than you, Bernhardt.”

“This isn’t possible,” Bernhardt gasped.

“Come now, you doubt your fine predator senses, herr Hapsburg?” He addressed Bernhardt’s disbelief. “I am he. Do not doubt that.”

“This is a trick. You’re a pretender.” Bernhardt saw the Fuhrer five feet from him. It was uncanny to be seeing a man who until now only still existed in newsreels and photos of WWII. Adolf Hitler was still despised throughout the world, decades after his suicide in a bunker, hundreds of feet below decimated Berlin.

“Your belief is no matter,” he dismissed. “I am come to put our master’s house in order. Templars, Luciferians, and Freemasons have hijacked Lucifer’s plans for too long. It is no wonder our Redeemer has turned his back on us. He is repulsed by what he has been given to lead, and I don’t blame him.” He shook his head in utter disgust and disdain.

“Teutons working for the Devil?” Bernhardt asked.

“Yes, and he has rewarded our loyalty by allowing us vengeance on our despised fellow knights, the Templars.” The Fuhrer replied.

“What do you want?”

“What do I want?” Hysterical laughter peeled across the stone corridor from his thin lips. He was joined by his Reichsfuhrer but only puzzled looks were returned by the rest of their group. “You plotted and showed your thoughts before Lucifer, in Hell, did you think He would let such insolence lie?” he answered rhetorically. “You will answer for it by being returned to it.”

“I’ll take it up with Him then. I’m through talking to his lackeys,” Bernhardt said with contempt. “He sends a freshly spawned fiend to take in a predator borne?”

“You have verve, insolence.” The Reichsfuhrer answered, speaking for the first time, and drew his sidearm from a finely tooled and lacquered leather holster. He pulled back the Walther PPK’s slide group and pointed the barrel at the middle of Bernhardt’s forehead. All the while his Fuhrer watched with disdain and added as three shots went into Bernhardt’s head, one in the pineal gland and one in each eye. “You can tell him yourself.”

As the echo of the shots stopped bouncing off the stone corridor Herr Hitler surveyed the corpse littered floor. “Very good. Our work here is done. Reichsfuhrer, have this place cleaned up. It is unseemly to keep it in this state. This is not a charnel house.” He turned and walked briskly past the rest of his party, followed quickly by Rolf Hess. After a few hisses and snaps of fingers three of their party went to the other end of the corridor at a run, yelling orders in German and screaming an enormous amount of schnells.

Hours later one of the cleaning crew joined the rank of bodies burned in the facility’s incinerator. Tino Quentin then walked out to a new life. He was a new man able to do whatever he wished because he had been removed from any public record. Now his old Templars were gone.

Time: March 7
^th
, 1975, Restaurant, Les Amures, Geneva, Switzerland

Simon was surprised at how nervous he felt. He had been sitting at a discreet table, out of the path of the restaurant’s traffic. He checked his watch and looked at another table, unoccupied save for a gilded “Reservée” sign in its centerpiece. Only two chairs were faced eachother, pushed before an intricate center table arrangement of red, pink and green roses, multicolored lilies, and angel’s breath fronds that spilled around the fine china place settings.

He found it utterly ironic that he was trying this century’s social custom of dating with one of the most traditional women he had ever met. She was also a stunningly beautiful creature with a mind and strength of character Simon was completely awed by. Simon was happy to go wherever she would choose to meet. He was also relieved to think of something other than his obsession with the past. It had taken over his thoughts and emotions and he could concentrate on little else.

In truth he was on his third Michael Collins and enjoyed the warmth it was giving his frontal lobe. He came half an hour early for the 7:00 PM rendezvous and now checked his watch’s pronouncement of 7:10. He nodded and realized she would probably be doing just what he was. He got up, out of the shadows and made his way to their allotted table, detouring through the bar. Once seated, he ordered another Michael Collins and informed the staff he had arrived.

Sitting at the table, he smelled the freshly poured hops and nectar and swirled its contents to release more of the aroma. The scent was heady and prepared his taste for the more intimate coming drink. This seduction was cut short by his date’s finely timed entrance. Simon didn’t so much see or hear her, but felt her presence. It was a wave of electricity around the room; her mere presence demanded attention. It wasn’t sex appeal, though she exuded plenty of that, it was raw charisma. She smiled at the managers and nodded to every security man there. The powerful men of the restaurant, patrons who commanded multinational companies and some armies deferred to her. As she passed a handful of tables, men bent their heads in appreciation and acknowledgement.

Simon was out of his own seat and pulled out the chair for her to sit. She smiled a toothsome grin that was at once breathtaking and terrifying. She was a lioness, unabashed in her power and grace, not caring who it frightened. “Such chivalry, Mr. Magus. I thought it died with the court of Aquitaine.”

“It did madam, but I’m the only one who still practices it,” he happily responded. Now, how many women of any age could reference the 12
^th
century Anglo-French court? Simon was newly star-struck with Melusine Rothschild again. “Do you cause such a fuss wherever you go?” Simon knew the answer from the knowing smile of her eyes telling him she didn’t pay too much attention to what lesser folk did.

“You intrigue me, Mr. Simon Magus,” she said flirtatiously. “I’ve never spent so much time with anybody for centu…years. Let alone a vampire.”

Simon did his best to hide the shock of her outing him but saw she had impishly registered the discomfort. “I’m impressed, Mrs. Ms. Rothschild. What shall I call you Mrs. or Ms.?” He asked trying to steer the conversation back to more mundane fare.

“Melusine would do fine if I can call you Simon.”

“Please do.”

“You are quite an old one, the oldest I’ve ever seen.” He laughed pulling out a quizzical look from her, but she waited, with an amused smile, for an explanation.

“To most people the subject of their age is a delicate subject, yet you’re going for a compliment aren’t you?”

“Yes, of course. I’m impressed by your longevity.”

“I’ve been around for some time.” He looked up quickly. “Are you going to be crass enough to ask how long?” It was his turn to be impish.

“Crass?” She laughed a throaty growl that spoke of languid evenings and luxuriant bed play. “Consider me crass then.” His age hung there and Simon decided to tell her.

He lifted his drink and saluted Melusine with it. “To crassness then, my response is subtlety. So I’ll answer you thus. When I was barely shaving and standing among the full beards I heard of a teacher and prophet who drew crowds in Galilee. I took what I heard of his lessons and oration, added parlor tricks and basic spirit manipulation and gathered a following rivaling His. This teacher was a leader from the fanatical Qumranians, Nasoreans who lived in the desert and bathed constantly. At that time bathing was considered disgusting.

“Upon finding Him I saw a large crowd listening attentively to His words. I did not see the fair-haired, straight nosed, jawed man depicted in so many icons but a stooped and hump backed little ‘Apiru I saw all around us. Despite the original competition with the Nazarene, I soon forgot the rivalry and wanted to learn at the Master’s feet. Alas, however earnest I was, His puffed-up first disciple Peter rebuked me and said there was no more place for disciples. I was crushed but was allowed to stay when the Teacher’s beloved Mary Magdalene said I was welcome anyway.”

Melusine said nothing, her silence respectful, and her eyes demanding more, while Simon happily obliged. “The twelve disciples did not recognize or understand all of the Teacher’s friends or His lessons. Peter thereafter looked and spoke to Mary with contempt and disdain but never in front of Jesus. The posturing fisherman thought the Son of God did not see his deceit. I didn’t care because I was embraced by those closest to Him, His mother and beloved, the two Maries as they were called.

“After the Messiah’s much publicized execution, and resurrection early Christianity barely survived. The remaining, fragile Church of Jerusalem still preached the true words of Jesus while the Gnosis, the true words of God, nearly died. The Sang Real, the Holy Grail was brought to safety and hidden away. The work of the twelve apostles brought the worship away from those who killed Him and taught it to the gentiles.

“My Gnostic Simonian churches soon preached His words from Caeseria to Antioch in Syria, Phrygia, Egypt and Rome.”

“And you were there?” was her only question. “Your proximity to those influential people and times. To see how these abstract concepts took hold of hearts and imagination and became reality.” It was Melusine’s turn to salute with her glass. Simon graciously accepted and continued.