by Rick Jones
After Mr. Spartan ended his BGAN connection with Mr. da Vinci and then leaving Kimball Hayden alone with his considerations, he entered a small bedroom with a single-sized bed with flanking nightstands and a small desk. After opening the closet door and spreading clothes on the hanging rod to opposite ends, he pressed a button which opened the closet’s rear wall panel. Once he stepped inside this hidden addition to the home a bank of fluorescent lights activated from motion sensors.
Behind glass panels and braced within racks were suppressed assault weapons alongside a display of ballistic vests and Kevlar helmets. The Consortium always made sure that a mobile unit was always well equipped.
Standing before the display with his hands in his pockets, Mr. Spartan appraised the rifles, all MP7s. Fine weapons, he thought; all light and powerful. Then his mind appeared to wander as images of his wife and child entered his mind’s eye, a memory that came popping up like an old super-8 film.
They were at a picnic whose lawns landlocked a small lake filled with carp, which his daughter loved to feed scraps of bread. The day was sunny with cloud patches providing intermittent shade, and a moment when his family was a focal point of his life outside of his work with the Consortium.
Then inside this weapons depository, Mr. Spartan closed his eyes and remembered everything.
Three years ago, his daughter Alison, age six with Shirley Temple curls and glowing cheeks, was standing along the edge of the water tossing small pieces of bread to the carp. His wife was sitting on a red-and-white checkerboard-patterned blanket with a basket by her side that was filled with fried chicken, cornbread, and potato salad, everything that made for a perfect family outing. Mr. Spartan, whose real name was Marty Southerland, stayed close to his daughter along the bank and smiled every time she cried out with glee, or whenever a carp surfaced to steal the floating piece of bread, before ducking beneath the surface. Whenever she laughed, Southerland swore that he had never heard anything so musical or magical in his entire life. Whether it was the lilt of her tone or her heightened squeal, there was nothing more pleasant to a parent’s ear.
Along the hillside crest that overlooked the lake, a sedan parked near the edge. Inside were two males, both well-dressed in dark suits, sunglasses, and fedoras. After a moment of observation, they exited the vehicle and began to saunter down the slope wearing gregarious smiles and sociable appearances. But when they reached the checkered-patterned blanket, one of the men pulled out a suppressed pistol and shot his wife with a shot to center mass and another to the head, which was the hallmark work of a trained assassin.
Everything seemed to move horrifically slow with the world beginning to tilt oddly upon its axis. The assassin’s voice sounded as if it was dragging like the slow play of a record on a turntable with every word impossibly drawn out, as he spoke to Southerland. “The location of your home base,” he said. “Tell me where it is.” Then the killer raised his weapon in Southerland’s direction. “The Consortium Stronghold . . . I won’t ask again.” Then he directed the point of his firearm at his daughter, who was screaming.
Southerland’s world was now chaotic and spinning, something of a bad acid trip as the assassin loomed tall before him like a colossus. Now with the point of his Glock looking like the mouth of a cannon, he kept it pointed at Southerland’s little girl. “Last chance. Where is the Stronghold?”
Southerland was locked within himself, his tongue a paralytic strip of muscle. When he was able to voice syllables, however, they came out as nonsensical, nothing but ridiculous sounds. It was all the meaning he could provide, however, given that his wife was laying on the ground with a peach-sized hole on one side of her face and a half-smile on the other.
“You have five seconds, Mr. Spartan, to tell me where I can find Mr. da Vinci . . . Four.”
Then standing between the assassin and his daughter, he recalled saying, “The Consortium Stronghold is not—”
“. . . Three . . .”
“—broadcast to field operatives like—”
“. . . Two . . .”
“—me.” Southerland regretted this lie the moment he said it, the response an automatic reaction to disavow everything.
“. . . One . . .”
“I can find out!”
“Wrong answer.”
The assassin pulled the trigger twice, two muted shots, with a bullet catching Southerland in each thigh, which sent him to the ground. Alison ran to her father and pulled him close after folding her arms around his neck.
“Tell me something, Mr. Spartan? Is what’s about to happen to you worth the cost of disavowing the whereabouts of the Consortium . . . or Mr. da Vinci?”
“Please.” Mr. Spartan recalled saying as though he were a man on his knees who begged to be spared, as he held his hands together in an attitude of prayer when in actuality, he was embracing his child. “She’s only six . . . Let her walk away and I’ll get you whatever information you need.”
“You expect me to stand here and believe that you don’t know the location of the Consortium or the whereabouts of Mr. da Vinci? It’s a noble quality to be loyal to the hand that feeds you, Mr. Spartan, but there are costs for such loyalties as well. So again . . . wrong answer.”
There was another sound, that of a loud spit. And then Mr. Spartan could feel his daughter’s arms falling away from him, the softness of her touch letting go forever as she fell backward into the water she loved so much when feeding the carp. Southerland reached out to his daughter and cried out her name, only to watch her drift lazily away from him along the surface of the pond. When she was beyond his grasp, and with little of her chiffon-green dress showing above the surface as she began her slow descent to the bottom, Southerland turned to the assassin and pinned him with a hard and vengeful stare. Behind the sunglasses and beneath the fedora, Southerland could see little of the man’s face except for his white goatee. “One day,” he told the assassin through clenched teeth, “I’ll find you and when I do . . . I’ll kill you.”
“Unlikely,” was all the assassin said as he pumped three more rounds into Southerland, believing him dead.
After watching the killers return to the vehicle along the hillside crest, Southerland was seeing the world through a haze of red gauze, then purple, and then black. When he came to three weeks later after emergency surgery, that’s when the realization that he was alive and alone struck his gut like a hammer blow, causing him to retch.
Mr. Spartan opened his eyes. I had lied to protect the Consortium at the cost of my family, he corroborated to himself. This man, this assassin, had known my weakness and used it against me. And then: May God forgive me for the choices I’ve made . . . Because I cannot.
Since that day, the moment of his family being murdered had been indelibly inked into his mind. They were images he would never forget as the need for retribution burned deep inside him. He never gave up on life or would allow himself to die, when others would have given in. He suffered through the pains and agony as his body healed, always fighting with an ember of anger fueling him. In time, as he found family within the Consortium, his drive to find those responsible never escaped him. Someday, he believed they would meet once again, only this time they would be at the end of his gun barrel.
The Consortium.
Those under his management were now his brothers, those who he had grown close to and watched over. Now as he looked at the number of weapons in their racks, he wondered how many of his brothers he would lose in the upcoming operation. Two? Three? More? Even the loss of one would be too much. The secret to moving on after such losses was to learn how to live with it, which he did after the deaths of his wife and daughter.
Find that spark of anger within yourself and allow it to burn . . . until it can burn no more.
Opening the glass panels, Mr. Spartan began to remove all the firepower and wares necessary to see the mission through.
* * *
The house’s central room was surrou
nded by twenty-foot walnut paneling, bookshelves that were lined with first editions dating back centuries, French-style furniture, and a floor-to-ceiling fireplace that was made from fieldstone. It was the only elegant room within the safehouse which served as a haven for Consortium members to congregate and hold conversations, as well as to drink expensive cognac from crystal glasses. When Hayden entered the room after his time with Mr. Spartan, the members were either reading or enjoying a cigar. Sitting at the bar and keeping his own company was Mr. Plato, who was enjoying a fine liqueur.
Hayden walked up to the bar and pointed to the vacant chair beside him. “May I?”
“Please do. If you want something to drink, however, you’ll have to pour it yourself. There’s no barkeep here like there would be at the lounge inside the Stronghold.”
“No. I’m good,” said Hayden, taking the seat.
“Something I can help you with?”
Mr. Plato was a well-fit man with dark conservative hair, bottle-green eyes, angular features and somewhere in his early thirties. And he saw no ring, meaning that Mr. Plato was neither married nor had children to speak of. His absolute dedication was his allegiance to the Consortium. And the others inside the lounge—everyone from Galileo to Shakespeare to Archimedes, and not discounting Donatello or Michelangelo—appeared as facsimiles to one another with shared builds, hairstyles and, to a degree, a flat affect.
“You sure?” asked Mr. Plato, who held up his glass. “It’s best to relax before the storm.” Then he brought the glass to his lips and sipped from its edge.
“Mr. Spartan,” Hayden began, “appears somewhat . . . concerned.”
“He probably is. What we’re about to come up against is something not made for little boys to attend.”
Hayden wasn’t sure if that was a shot against him or not, so he dismissed it and said, “He seems—what, detached? I’m not sure if that’s a good thing right about now.”
Mr. Plato took another sip from the glass before setting it down. Then: “Believe me, there’s no one more focused than a man who has an ax to grind. What you see, Kimball, is a man who lost everything except the brotherhood of the Consortium. We’re all he has left. And he lives through us as a proxy for his family.”
“A proxy? Meaning?”
“Meaning, three years ago his wife and daughter were murdered, and Mr. Spartan was left for dead by an assassin who was trying to pinpoint the location of the Stronghold and its Grand Master, Mr. da Vinci. Mr. Spartan, however, decided to remain true to his allegiance to the Consortium, rather than sparing the lives of his family. A decision I believe he deeply regrets. Since then he hasn’t been the same—at least not here.” He pointed to his chest to indicate the heart. “Mr. Spartan does remain focused if that’s your worry. But if there was any man I would follow into battle—ever—it would be him.”
“And the assassin who killed his family?”
Mr. Plato shrugged. “Disappeared. He discovered Mr. Spartan’s weakness and used it against him, even though Mr. Spartan remained true to his code to keep the Stronghold safe. But the cost was too great.” That was when Mr. Plato raised his hand to show Kimball his ringless finger. “I noticed that you were looking at this before,” he said, wiggling the ring finger. “Just before you sat down. But the reason why I don’t wear a ring is simple enough,” he told him. “I’m not married or have any close ties. You want to know why?”
“I can probably make a good guess.”
“Yeah. And you’d probably be right, too.” Then Mr. Plato leaned in Hayden’s direction to the point where Hayden could smell the man’s alcohol-accented breath. “The thing not to do, Kimball, with all respect to Mr. Spartan, is to never allow your enemy the advantage of finding your Achille’s heel. We all have one. Mr. Spartan’s happened to be in plain sight, which made him an easy target. Family always are, which is the reason for this.” He wiggled his empty ring finger again. “What the weaknesses were for Mr. Spartan and Mr. Copernicus will never be mine.” He eased away and went back to drinking his liqueur. Then: “I understand you have a girlfriend. Shari Cohen.”
Hayden seemed genuinely surprised by this. “Does everybody in the Consortium know about my personal life?”
“Everybody in this room.” He turned to face Hayden so that their eyes locked. “Look, Kimball, life in the Consortium can be both a blessing and a curse. It has its rewards and its tragedies. The only way to tilt the scales in your favor for the incentives provided by the organization is to take precautions. Your girlfriend—don’t allow her to become your weak spot.”
“I was told that the members of the Consortium were generational, meaning that you come from a long line of members. But if you’re not married to continue the line . . .” Hayden let his words hang.
“What’s the purpose of continuing the line,” Mr. Plato said to make his point, “only for them to be cut down in the process? And yes. You’re right about that, Kimball. No doubt. But we live in a different age when assassins will do whatever they can to produce accomplishments. Unfortunately for Misters Spartan and Copernicus, though family is the only way to keep the organization going, family members also become targeted killings that can weaken the resolve of the company. I choose to sit back while others regenerate the firm with descendants. I will not put a bullseye on the life of someone I care for. Ever. You might want to consider the same since you’re a Vatican Knight.”
Kimball Hayden leaned back in his seat. Shari was his life, his future. By accepting the invitation of the Consortium, did it also place her life in jeopardy? Did he unknowingly put her within the crosshairs?
Apparently, Mr. Plato saw the warring of emotions on Kimball’s face. “She’ll be fine,” he told him. “For now.” Then the Consortium league member noticed the clerical band in Kimball’s shirt collar and pointed to the strip. “Let me ask you this: can priests get married when you’re a member of the Vatican Knights?”
“I’m not a priest.”
“Then celibacy is not a problem then. Just don’t forget what I said about your weak spot. You’ll be fine.”
Kimball, however, wasn’t sure if Mr. Plato was trying to appease his sense of worry in regard to Shari. If this was the case, then Mr. Plato had failed miserably.
Then Mr. Plato added, “All I’m saying, Kimball, is do your job well and everything else will fall into place.”
“Which is?”
“To pave the way for you to acquire the relics.”
“And if you fail?”
“We won’t.”
“But if you do?”
Mr. Plato gave off a half-grin as he got his feet with the glass half full, gave Hayden a couple of light pats on the back, and made his way to an empty lounge chair close to the fireplace.
Hayden, who continued to sit at the empty bar, was left to wonder.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Lucerne, Switzerland
Two Hours Later
Three men were sitting at an outdoor café with a scenic view of the valley gorge, enjoying hot beverages. On the webbing of their hands between the thumb and forefingers were tattoos of grinning skulls that had both eye sockets covered over with eyepatches.
They had been part of the assault unit that raided the Croatian site to appropriate the staff that had belonged to Aaron and wielded by Moses, the scepter having been one of divine power. Today, they were discussing the Eye of Moses and its implications of becoming a weapon so great that nations, including superpowers, would have to get on a bended knee in reverence to its power. In time—whether it be months, years, or decades—the vision of Elias Caspari would eventually come to its finishing point. Totalitarianism would be the ruling and governing fist, and a power by one. This they were sure of since each member within the Klan believed in Caspari’s ideology as the only true means to saving man, especially since the writing was scribed all over the proverbial wall as wars and terrorism ceaselessly waged. Eventually, this cauldron of contention would
boil over if not handled accordingly.
As they spoke about ideology and global fixes, and of the potential power behind the Eye of Moses, the men were also being captured by the Consortium’s facial-recognition software through CCTV cameras. From 220 miles away, dots and lines from computer programming were marking certain landmarks on their faces to confirm identities. All had MATCH ratings of 99.9%.
From the Consortium Stronghold’s Computer Center, a signal was sent to Mr. Spartan in Lucerne.
It was time for Mr. Spartan to mobilize his unit.
* * *
Mr. Spartan was sitting alone on the patio that overlooked the apartments, the day beginning to bring a chill to the air. As he sat with his thoughts lingering, his wristwatch chimed. On the watch’s face was a message from the Consortium. Incoming: BGAN.
Mr. Spartan bolted from the chair and went to the BGAN computer system, booted it up, then hit the hi-lighted incoming message.
The monitor came up in grid-pattern with four panels to the screen. At the top-right portion were the three men in question, all confirmed hits from the Shadow Klan’s raiding unit from a few nights before. On the bottom of the screen were the coordinates to their location given in minutes and degrees. After Mr. Spartan typed in a few commands, the coordinates turned into a viable address, which was a small café six kilometers west of the safehouse’s location.
Without hesitation, Mr. Spartan called his team together in council.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Schwanen Cafe de Ville
Lucerne, Switzerland
Hans Gruber was one of the three men sitting at the café when they had been spotted by the CCTV cameras. The other two, Max Ueli and Alix Kristoffel, who were the size of rugby players, opted to end out of the conversation and got to their feet. After they fist-bumped Gruber, who decided to stay, Ueli and Kristoffel left the café.
