Tiny sensors located behind the subject’s eyes probed his retinas and matched the findings with data in a computer database. Hidden scanners in the panels compared his hand-and fingerprints to those in a database. There was a soft click and a section of the wall opened to reveal a stairway.

He descended the stairs to a steel door that opened with a pushbutton combination. Behind the door was a room lined with glass-enclosed cabinets. The airtight cabinets were controlled for temperature and humidity to protect hundreds of thick volumes arranged by date.

The books contained the history of the Baltazar family going back more than two thousand years. The chronicles told of the family’s origin in Palestine, its move to the island of Cyprus, where they flourished as shipbuilders. The family provided ships for the Fourth Crusade. They were involved in the bloody looting of Constantinople, where they stole as much gold as they could carry in their vessels.

After the Crusade, the family threw its lot in with the Crusaders. They moved to western Europe and joined a cartel that used the stolen gold as the basis for a mineral empire. Since then, every birth, death, and marriage, going back to Cyprus, had been recorded. Business dealings. Feuds. Diaries. Each detail, no matter how sordid, embarrassing, or criminally liable, was enclosed between the covers of the gold-embossed volumes.

Baltazar had read every word in every volume, and it was his Crusader past that had stoked his interest in jousting and other trappings of chivalry. A touch screen computer built into the wall was used to make entries and serve as a reference guide.

A stone idol sat on a platform in the center of the room. It was the figure of a man, with his palms up, arms angled slightly downward, as if he were waiting to be handed something. He had a round, bearded face, and his lips were spread wide in a smile that was just short of a leer. Twin horns protruded from the sides of his head. The god Ba’al was given a special place because he was the namesake of the Baltazar family, which had courted his favor and asked it to guard its fortunes since its very beginning.

The idol had been used in unspeakable rites of human sacrifice. It had originally been set up on the edge of a fiery pit. The stone feet were still blackened by smoke and heat. In hard times, priests of Ba’al would sacrifice infants, placing them on the sloping arms, where they rolled into the flames. Instead of a blazing fire, the space in front of the idol was occupied by an altar. Sitting on the altar was a chest made of dark wood and decorated with dozens of precious stones.