Chapter 5

At last, it was Thursday afternoon and time for me to protect Carlo Bellini while he delivered the final payment on his loan from the Knights Templar. Neither one of us wanted any trouble, so I walked right beside Bellini and carried my baton at the ready. We returned to his office and a very happy Carlo Bellini paid me my fee. That was fine, but if all of my jobs were that easy I would soon be bored right out of my skull!

I now had enough other jobs going on so that I was no longer looking for bodyguard jobs. I could get that type of exercise any time I wanted it just by walking the streets of Silano. I had made my pitch to Mentor about the way I wanted to operate my bank, and he had bought in.

Martino had agreed to be my contact man and I had given him the full story of how I happened to be in Silano. Of course, he was dubious at first, but I convinced him of the truth of my story by having Mentor deliver 100 pounds of gold bars and coins in front of Martino. That was stashed in Martino’s strong box until it became a nuisance. By this time, Martino was convinced that the gold was real, so I had Mentor transport it to a special cache that he had established in the future.

The bank worked by having Martino approving the loan and collecting the collateral. Mentor’s computer transported the gold to Martino and assigned a number to the loan. It picked up the collateral and kept it somewhere until the loan was paid off.

Martino also accepted deposits of gold, and these accounts were handled the same way as the loans. Martino named the bank “People’s Bank of Silano”. We were soon a very important financial institution because the bank paid interest on deposits and charged only 5% interest on loans instead of the 25% interest that the Knights Templar charged.

Of course, the Knights Templar noticed our bank very quickly after we began operating. It was not the deposits that they noted, but it was how their loan business dropped off rapidly. One case they noted was a man who had been a regular customer suddenly stop going to them. After a few weeks of no-shows, they sent an agent around to talk to him. He said that he had found a better interest rate and had switched. That was how they had found Martino. An agent visited Martino, but he would only talk in generalities, so they did not get much useful information. From what we were able to hear, the Knights Templar would be out of business inside Silano within a year.

Mentor was very happy at that news, and we noticed that the economy of Silano showed signs of picking up. Duke Marno, the nominal ruler of Silano also noticed us, but because his income was falling off. He usually collected a monthly bribe from the Knights Templar to leave them alone. This bribe was a percentage of their monthly intake, and Duke Marno started getting less money as our business picked up. Naturally, he reacted to that.

We had no interest in paying a bribe to anybody to let us stay in business, and we made that clear at the first visit from the duke’s agent. If it had been a tax that everybody paid, we would have gone along as proof that we were good citizens, but nobody had yet thought of collecting taxes as a universal thing—all government business was paid for as a result of bribes. One of Mentor’s objectives was to get rid of bribes, so we were not going to participate.

Martino received an order to show up for a meeting with one of the duke’s staff to explain this strange behavior. Well, since I was the cause of the problem, I went in Martino’s place to the “palace.” It did not take me long to become annoyed. For no reason that I could discover, I was kept waiting for over an hour, and that interfered with my lunch. The only explanation that I can think of is that it was part of a softening up process and was supposed to impress me with the importance of the person with whom I was scheduled to meet.

Of course, I had been searched for weapons before I was allowed to enter the palace. My baton was ignored as not being useful as a weapon. They took my knife, but left me my armor. Anyway, once I got in to see the duke’s staff member, the whole thing turned into a shouting match in which I refused to be intimidated into paying any bribes. Finally, when it became certain that I was not going to give in, the bastard I was talking to suddenly had me thrown into a cell in the dungeon.

I didn’t fight this indignity, but went along with it. Oh, there was no doubt that I could take out the two men who were taking me downstairs, but I wanted to see what would happen next. Besides, I was not ready to try to defeat the duke’s entire army of thugs.

They pushed me into an empty cell, slammed the door, and locked it. I shouted, “HEY, WAIT A MINUTE! I HAVE NOT HAD ANY LUNCH!”

One of the fools who had led me down to the cell said, “That’s too bad. If you are a nice boy, maybe you will get some supper.” He laughed at that as the two walked away from the door.

Well, I had no intention of going hungry if I could avoid it. For the first time, I called for help from Mentor. “You must know where I am. Can you transport some food to me so that I don’t go too far from a lost temper? Also, please ask Martino to pick up Mara from work tonight. Tell him what has happened and that I want him to relay the information to Mara. He should also tell Madam Orsa that I will not be there for the morning martial arts class. I’ll leave it up to her to figure out what to do about that.”

“Very well, Doug. Do you expect to need anything else from me in the near future?”

“Yeah, now that you mention it. If I have to spend the night in this God-forsaken cell, I would appreciate a decent mattress, food, and clean water. I suspect that I am being shown what could happen to me if I don’t cooperate with an adequate bribe.”

“Okay, you can depend on me for that. Do you want to break out of the dungeon if they do not release you soon?”

“Absolutely! I don’t want to stay here any longer than necessary. On the other hand, I don’t want to give away the fact that I have access to ‘supernatural’ powers if I can avoid it. I’ll keep you posted on that.”

Mentor laughed at that, but he did agree with me. We talked about a few other things before he had to leave because we were using a lot of power that might be needed later on.

I only had to wait a few minutes before some food and a good quality mattress showed up. I ate an excellent lunch and sent the dishes and scraps back uptime.

The new mattress had been deposited on the bed so all I had to do to enjoy it was to lie down. I decided to nap for now and possibly make some general plans for what to do if I were not released soon.

About 6:00 PM the turnkey delivered a bowl of miserable looking gruel and a cup of foul smelling water. He had to wake me when he came in, and one of the first things he said was, “Where did that fine mattress come from?”

My answer was semi-truthful. “I don’t know. It was here when I needed it, and I don’t know where it came from.” The turnkey went out mumbling to himself. I don’t know if he reported the mattress to anybody—probably not. I’ll bet he planned to steal it for himself as soon as I departed the cell. Fat chance of that!

I pitched out the gruel and the water and asked my friends from the future for a supper. I ate an excellent meal with a fine wine to go with it. Uh-oh, I had better get busy with some exercise, or I was going to get fat if I had to stay here much longer. There were some bars along the ceiling and one wall that I could use in getting some exercise. I have no idea what the bars were intended for unless they were there to make some forms of torture more convenient. I was left to myself after the turnkey picked up the bowl and cup. By the way, there was no spoon.

I managed to get a decent sleep that night, I was not even bothered by rats. Was that some of Mentor’s doing? I’ll have to ask him and thank him if it was. The next morning was the beginning of a different story. About mid-morning I had a visit from the man who had ordered me tossed into this cell.

He was pretty sarcastic when he started talking, but I managed to keep a very neutral tone to my voice. I had eaten an excellent breakfast which consisted mainly of a Western Omelet and a cup of very good coffee. My attitude seemed to irritate him more and more the longer our conversation lasted. By the time he stalked away, it was all I could do to keep from laughing at him. As he departed, he said, “I think what you need is a visit to our expert on pain.” That had to be a reference to the torture expert. Uh-oh, the situation seemed to be getting serious.

Okay, I had several more requests from my friends uptime. I asked for several items, specifically four cherry-bomb firecrackers and four of the equivalent items loaded with thermite. They were also able to supply me with a tiny grinder that was battery powered and could cut through the toughest steel. I wanted that in case I had to escape from chains.

Just after noon, two thugs came in to escort me to the torture chamber. To my surprise, they did not try to strip me first. I was curious because I had never seen a real torture chamber, and I went along quietly with them. Each man grabbed me by my upper arm and almost carried me to the designated chamber. It was damned hot in there, almost like a sauna. This was the result of several fires or banks of glowing coals, surely used to heat iron tools to a proper torture temperature.

I was chained by my wrists to a post in an otherwise clear space in the room. Apparently, the head torturer was something of an expert on the psychology of torture. I was chained in a place where I could see every thing the man was doing to prepare to work on me. The two men who had delivered me to him had left as soon as they had finished chaining me to the post. The torturer and I were the only people left in the room.

He was concentrating on what he was doing so I had plenty of opportunity to use the small grinder to cut almost all of the way through a couple of chain links so that I could break loose from the post whenever I chose to do so. I had been forced to leave my baton behind in the cell, so I needed a weapon that I knew how to use effectively. In this case, that was the two feet or so of chain between my wrists and the post.

That little grinder was very effective against the steel from which the chain was made. I had finished making my cuts long before the torturer was ready to begin work on me. I dropped the grinder back into my pocket and waited patiently for the torturer to get back to me.