Fortune Favors

by Sean Ellis

  “They’re inside,” Higgins announced after a few seconds, lowering the gun. The Kimber Model 8400 Advanced Tactical rifle, equipped with a Trijicon AccuPoint 2.5-10X56 30 millimeter scope, was the former Gurkha’s favorite new toy.

  “Why don’t you go conduct a little recce?” Higgins answered at length. “See what our friends are up to. We can cover you from here.”

  “We?” Annie protested.

  Higgins patted the polymer stock of the rifle. “Wasn’t talking about you, Annie girl.”

  Kismet suppressed a laugh, but then addressed the young woman in a more serious tone. “Actually, I think I should go alone. Your father will watch my back, and you can watch his.”

  Annie frowned, but nodded, grasping the tactical rationale behind the decision.

  Kismet slid out of the Ford to retrieve his own combat gear—a MOLLE compatible shoulder holster rig which he’d adapted to hold his kukri sheath on the side opposite his Glock. He slipped the nylon web straps around his shoulders, checking one last time that everything was secure, and then covered it all up with a loose leather bomber jacket. He tossed a nod to the others, and then set off down the drive toward the house.

  He didn’t know what sort of resources Leeds had at his disposal, but judging by the reception committee the occult scholar had arranged in Central Park, he thought it best to stay below the radar. It seemed well within Leeds’ ability to monitor the airports, so instead of a ninety minute flight he opted for the twelve-odd hour long overland route.

  Despite the need for urgency, Kismet wasn’t going to let Leeds take him off guard again, so before leaving New York in the rented Ford, he had taken Higgins and Annie on a little shopping spree. He’d grimaced a little at the price tag of Higgins’ weapon of choice; even more costly had been the time spent finding a shooting range where the rifle could be properly zeroed.

  “You have to let me zero it,” Higgins had persisted. “Otherwise, what’s the point of buying it?”

  Kismet had wondered that very thing when the initial purchase was made, but he was pleased that Higgins seemed to finally be treating Leeds as a real threat. There had been more than a few times when he’d wondered where Higgins’ loyalties lay. He still didn’t know what to make of Higgins’ reaction to the statue of Prometheus at Rockefeller Plaza.

  In all the time since that fateful night in Iraq, the one thing Kismet never had cause to question, was the role of the soldiers who had accompanied him. He had always just assumed them to be unwitting pawns in someone else’s game, but Higgins’ reappearance, so close to a trove of priceless artifacts...so close to what might be a connection to the secret of immortality itself...made him question all his assumptions.

  His choice of Rockefeller Plaza as a rallying point had been deliberate.

  In the early days of his quest to unmask the Prometheus conspiracy, he had quite naturally wound up there, staring at Paul Manship’s gilded bronze statue of the mythic Titan delivering his gift of fire to mankind, wondering if this place...this confluence of corporate power, the home of not one, but several television networks and twenty-four hour news agencies...might not be some kind of beacon for his newfound foe. Perhaps even their headquarters.

  His investigations had yielded nothing, and not just at Rockefeller Center, but he had become quite familiar with the place, and had even started to think of the balcony over the ice rink as a sort of sanctuary.

  He hadn’t failed to notice Higgins staring at the statue of Prometheus, but the old soldier’s reaction had been impossible to gauge. There was a look of recognition to be sure, but no different than what could be seen in the goggle-eyed gaze of hundreds, perhaps thousands of first time visitors. Prometheus wasn’t exactly the Statue of Liberty, but it wasn’t unreasonable to think that Higgins might have heard about it. What he didn’t question was the look of delight in the soldier’s eyes when he’d picked up the Kimber rifle.

  Kismet reached the front porch of the house a few seconds later, but instead of climbing the steps, he crept around its perimeter to see if there was a back entrance that would permit him to go in unnoticed. As he ducked under the broad picture window at the front of the house, he could hear loud voices from within.

  “Liar!” raged the occultist. “Fontaneda told your father, and your father told you. I know he did. Now you tell me, or I will cut your heart out.”

  The threat was palpably real, even through the double-paned insulated window. It occurred to Kismet that, in all his encounters with Leeds, he had never witnessed the man losing his temper.

  “Please sir,” came the hoarse reply, barely audible. “He didn't tell us anything.”

  Kismet paused a beat. Had it been a woman’s voice? He started forward again, rounding the corner, and spied a back door to the house. He tried the knob; locked.

  With a dismayed frown, he stole back to the front of the house. As he ducked under the window, he heard Leeds threaten again. “Do you love your son? If you don't tell me about Fontaneda, I'll cut his throat.”

  “Please,” begged the weak voice. Leeds had used the word ‘father’...was this Joseph King’s daughter? “Please. I've told you what I know. There's nothing else.”

  Kismet could sense that something terrible was about to occur inside. He crept onto the porch and touched the knob, turning the handle slowly so as not to betray himself with the click of the latch mechanism. Pistol in hand, he pushed open the door.

  There was a short vestibule just beyond the door, and past that a right turn into the sitting room. Kismet could plainly see four figures. He immediately recognized Leeds and Elisabeth, even though their backs were turned. The blonde actress stood with a gun pressed against the temple of a young African American man, while the silver haired occult scholar menaced an older woman, presumably the young man’s mother...and evidently, Joseph King’s daughter. Something glinted in Leeds’ hand...a blade of some kind, a straight razor or a scalpel.

  With a disdainful grunt, Leeds thrust the old woman away and wheeled on Elisabeth’s hostage. The blade came up in a glittering arc and then held there, poised above the young man’s neck like the Sword of Damocles.

  Kismet threw caution to the wind and charged forward, brandishing his pistol. “Back off, Leeds!”

  Elisabeth gasped in surprise, but recovered with unexpected speed. She brought her own pistol around, aimed at Kismet’s chest, and in the same fluid motion, stepped between him and Dr. Leeds, placing herself directly in his sights, and at the same time, spoiling his shot at the occultist.

  Leeds seemed not to have notice the intrusion. There was a strange hunger in his eyes as he stared down at the captive, contemplating him like the victim in some bloody ritual sacrifice. In a rush of understanding, Kismet realized that was exactly what the young man was about to become. This wasn’t about torture or coercion any more.

  He tightened his finger on the trigger, felt it start to move. He could see the hesitation in Elisabeth’s eyes. She wasn’t going to shoot, not intentionally at least, but she wasn’t going to move either. “If you think I won’t shoot you—”

  Before he could finish the threat, Leeds’ blade hand began its final, horrible descent.

  * * *

  As soon as Kismet started down the drive, Annie and her father picked up and began moving as well. They didn’t approach the house; it was only about four hundred meters, and with Higgins’ scope and the pair of spotter’s binoculars Annie had grabbed from the back of the Ford, they didn’t need to be any closer to see what was going on. They just needed a better line of sight. They hiked across the road and out across the manicured cemetery lawn, careful not to trip on any of the low headstones—or step on any graves—and took a position facing the large front window of the house they’d seen Elisabeth Neuell enter.

  Annie did a quick three-hundred-sixty degree scan, to ensure that none of Leeds’ hirelings were creeping up behind them, then turned back to the house and peered through the binoculars. The window was partly obscured
by slat blinds, but when she moved her head sideways, ever so slightly, she found that she could see right through them.

  She easily picked out the familiar figure of Elisabeth Neuell. Annie’s breath caught in her throat as she realized that the actress was holding a gun to someone’s head. The rest of the tableau resolved quickly. Dr. Leeds, tall and silver-haired, was menacing another captive...an old woman.

  “Bollocks. Dad, they’re—”

  “I see it,” Higgins cut her off. His voice was taut, and in the silence that followed, she could hear his breathing, deep and steady, just the way he’d taught her. Take a breath, let it out, find your target, take a breath, let it out...

  She braced herself in anticipation of the shot, but it didn’t happen. Her father continued to breathe rhythmically, his right eye glued to the scope. In the interminable silence, Annie realized why he hadn’t yet pulled the trigger. He had been a soldier, a steely-eyed killer, but was he that person any more? Could he kill this way—not some enemy soldier on a foreign battlefield, but someone he knew?

  She forced herself to do another quick sweep of their surroundings—still no sign of anyone else in the cemetery—then peered through the binoculars again.

  Something had changed.

  Elisabeth was now pointing her gun toward some unseen target...Kismet! And Dr. Leeds was now standing over her former hostage, his upraised hand gripping a blade.

  “My God! He's going to cut him, Dad!”

  The hand with the knife started to descend.

  Higgins let out a breath...

  And squeezed the trigger.

  TEN

  There was a loud crack as something punched through the window.

  Just over Elisabeth’s shoulder, Kismet saw Leeds’ hand explode in a spray of red flesh and broken steel. Bits of the blade flew across the room, embedding in the wall in the same instant that the sound of the shot buffeted the fractured window pane.

  Dr. Leeds stared down at the ravaged flesh where his right hand had been, a look of amazed detachment on his face. The bullet had blasted through the small bones of his hand, virtually severing the appendage through the middle of his palm. His fingers dangled uselessly from the bloody ribbons of flesh that had survived the trajectory of the thirty-caliber slug.

  Elisabeth held her stance, blocking Kismet’s way, but looked back at her associate in mute horror, unsure of what to do.

  Leeds just stood there for a moment, dumbfounded. Then, he began to laugh.

  Kismet bolted forward, ducking under Elisabeth’s gun barrel, and snared her wrist, twisting it until the pistol fell from her nerveless fingers. She gave a yelp, then wrenched free of his grip, fleeing to take refuge behind the wounded occultist. Leeds continued laughing, seemingly oblivious to the pain.

  Kismet advanced, holding the Glock trained on his adversary, but before he could close the distance, the occultist brought something from his pocket. Kismet pulled the trigger, but Leeds was already moving, and as the bullet flew harmlessly past his head, he hurled the object—a glass ampoule filled with some kind of gray powder—to the floor.

  Brilliant white fire exploded in the center of the room, blinding Kismet momentarily. He triggered the pistol again into the expanding miasma of black smoke, then checked his fire; there were at least two people in this house he didn’t want to kill, and blinded by the flash and smoke, there was no way to tell the difference.

  Holstering the pistol, he plunged forward to where he thought the young man was. His ears were ringing from the discharge of the pistol and the detonation of Leeds’ flash grenade, but he could hear shouting, the voice of the young man, calling out a name.

  “Candace!”

  “I’m here.”

  As the fumes cleared, he saw the two now-freed captives huddled in front of a sofa, but there was no sign of Elisabeth or Leeds, save for a trail of blood leading outside. He knelt in front of them, and for just an instant, flashed back to a night more than twenty years earlier, when he had attempted to offer comfort to victims of violence. This time at least, he’d been able to do more than just ease their passage.

  “It’s okay,” he said in his most soothing tone. “I’m here to help.”

  “What do you want?” demanded the young man, his eyes fixed on the Glock in its holster, visible beneath Kismet’s open jacket. He didn’t sound nearly as distraught as Kismet would have expected.

  “Well, I guess I want the same thing that other guy did,” he answered honestly, leaning back in an effort to hide the gun from view and look a little less intrusive. “But I’m not going to threaten you to get it.”

  “Figures,” was the disdainful reply.

  “Joe!” This sharp interjection came from the old woman. “You mind your manners, now. This man just came to our rescue. The least we can do is hear him out.”

  Joe didn’t seem terribly impressed with the old woman’s exhortations. “Don’t take that tone.” He seemed poised to continue in that vein, but a noise in the vestibule instantly silenced him.

  Kismet drew his pistol and spun on his heel, but before he could take aim, Higgins and Annie stepped into view. He eased the gun back into its sheath and glanced back at the householders. “It’s okay. They’re with me.”

  The young man—Joe—gave a snort.

  The old woman spoke again, with the same reproving tone. “Joe. These folks helped us.”

  Kismet turned to Higgins. “Leeds?”

  “Gone,” Annie announced with some satisfaction. “They made it to their car and took off out of here like they were on fire.”

  Kismet shook his head ruefully as he turned again to the pair—mother and son, if he’d overheard correctly. “He’ll be back.”

  Joe stood, raising the woman to her feet, and then sagged onto the sofa. “All right. Just who in the hell are you, anyway?”

  Kismet paused a beat. Given the violence that had just occurred, the man’s distrust was warranted, and unless he did something to change the mood, it was unlikely that he’d get any kind of meaningful cooperation. Start at the beginning, he thought.

  He looked intently at each of them in turn. “Joe, right? And Candace? I’m Nick Kismet. I work for a United Nations cultural agency. Several years ago, a man named Henry Fortune contacted my agency about...an unusual discovery.” He thought he detected just a hint of a reaction, but whether it was to the mention of Fortune’s name or the ‘discovery,’ he couldn’t say.

  “When we attempted to follow up on it, we got another letter from a Joseph King.” He gestured toward Candace. “That would be your father?”

  She nodded slowly.

  “Mr. King indicated that Fortune had died, and that seemed to be the end of it.”

  “Henry Fortune died in the 1960’s,” the woman said. “You’re chasing after something that happened fifty years ago?”

  “Some new information has come up.” Kismet scrutinized the woman’s face. “Did you know him?”

  “I remember Henry,” she said, her tone not quite wistful. She exchanged a knowing look with the young man, almost as if asking permission to elaborate.

  Kismet thought he was gaining a measure of trust, and decided to give them a moment. He turned to Higgins. “Al, why don’t you try to establish some kind of secure perimeter?”

  The former Gurkha seemed to understand what Kismet was really asking, and beckoned his daughter to follow him back outside. “Come on, Annie girl. Let’s go keep an eye out for unwanted visitors.”

  When they had left, Kismet eased into an adjacent chair and turned to the old woman. “The man that assaulted you wants Fortune’s discovery. You’ve already seen what he’s willing to do to find it. Whether or not you actually know anything doesn’t matter to him right now; you’re in danger. You need to leave here. At the very least, you should call the police.”

  Calling the police ought to have been their first reaction as soon as they had ascertained that the danger was past, and yet strangely, the pair hadn’t shown the slightest
inclination to do that.

  Joe glanced at the wall. The spatter of blood and metal fragments was the only real evidence that the whole thing hadn’t been just a bad dream. “Ain’t callin’ the police,” he said quietly after a moment. “Call them, an’ then we’d have to answer questions that I ain’t inclined to answer.”

  He turned back to Kismet. “You saved us. I suppose that counts for something. So let’s just cut to the chase. We know what you’re lookin’ for.”

  Candace gasped apprehensively. “Joe, you sure about this?”

  The young man nodded. “It’s been a secret too long. Is it Henry Fortune you’re looking for? Or the Fountain of Youth?”

  * * *

  Elisabeth sucked greedily at the cigarette, holding the nicotine-laced smoke in her lungs for several seconds before exhaling out the open car window. The breeze of their passage down the Savannah Highway snatched the fumes away, but a lingering trace of the odor permeated the car. During their time together, Leeds had forbade her from smoking in his presence, but right now she didn’t give a damn what he thought, and besides, he seemed to have other things on his mind.

  She’d only gotten a brief glimpse of the wound in the moments following their escape from the cemetery. Leeds had quickly wrapped his injured hand in a now thoroughly blood-soaked cloth, but she’d seen enough to know that the pain must have been debilitating. The unseen sniper’s bullet had torn off half his hand. Nevertheless, Leeds had calmly led her from the smoke filled house and back to their rented sedan where he’d gotten in the passenger’s side and instructed her to drive, supplying her with a destination as soon as they were outside the cemetery gates.. Except for the telltale beads of perspiration on his brow, Leeds seemed completely indifferent to the experience.

  Maybe not completely indifferent, she thought. He’s not bitching about me smoking.

  She tossed the cigarette butt out the window and took the exit Leeds had earlier indicated. As she negotiated the main streets, he spoke again, guiding her through turns and into a residential neighborhood like some kind of living GPS device.