Private Detective: BENNINGTON P.I.: A thrilling four-novel political murder mystery private detective series...

by D. W. Ulsterman

  “Of course I’m going to take a chance to talk to him! Are you nuts? Who wouldn’t?”

  Stasia held both her hands out in front of her.

  “Have at it, Frank – enjoy. I guess I just don’t see the big deal. In fact, I’m pretty sure you’re a far more impressive man than old Teague ever was.”

  Bennington stood up and pretended to tip an imaginary hat at Stasia.

  “While I do appreciate the intended compliment, I will respectfully call horse shit with the knowledge there’s likely a few thousand or so groupies out there who would say otherwise.”

  “Not that it matters, Frank, but I heard there were a few ladies around D.C. who would testify to your own penchant for chasing a skirt or two over the years.”

  Frank’s face broke into exaggerated offense.

  “I assure you, young lady it was far more than one or two! Now with that said, I’ll be on my way.”

  The private detective was halfway to the T3 pub’s exit when he stopped and turned around sheepishly, realizing he had no idea where he was going. Stasia remained in her chair with her hands folded in front of her, waiting for Bennington’s pride to diminish enough to allow him to ask for directions.

  Several seconds passed before Frank finally mumbled his defeat.

  “Where’s the library?”

  Stasia held a hand to her right ear, grinning at the opportunity to tease the older man.

  “I’m sorry, Frank, what was that?”

  Bennington scowled back at his T3 partner, knowing how much she was enjoying the moment.

  “Hey, Mr. Bennington, first right out the door, go about twenty feet, and then the first door on the left.”

  Frank turned toward the bartender, his tone expressing his gratitude.

  “Thank you, Hugh.”

  “Traitor!”

  Stasia pointed at Hugh Madsen and repeated the charge.

  “Traitor!”

  The bartender watched Frank leave the room and then shrugged back at his accuser.

  “We men have to stick together, Ms. Wellington. Otherwise, you’d make beggars of us all.”

  Stasia’s laughter was short-lived as her eyes gazed out over the darks stones of the Illuminati building. Though she knew it was impossible for anyone from the Illuminati to see her inside of the T3 clubhouse, she experienced an acute sense of being watched. Though she had not mentioned it to anyone, the former Vatican operative knew some kind of horrible change in the balance of things was now underway. Alexander David Meyer had known it too, and fled New York because of it. And now here she was, sitting across the street from their centuries-old enemy, wondering when that change would finally and fully reveal itself.

  We’re not ready.

  18.

  “There’s a bit of a mess to clean upstairs.”

  Jean-Paul noted the indifference in Malthus’s voice when referring to Walid’s still warm body that lay on the floor above them.

  The Pindar regarded Malthus with an equally indifferent stare.

  “So I heard. Staff are already taking care of it.”

  Jean-Paul made certain to say nothing, knowing his own place within the Illuminati might prove as precarious as Walid’s. Instead he stood motionless in the small, concrete reception room just outside the massive double doors that opened into the underground heart of the Illuminati’s New York location.

  Alvaro Zavala extended his right hand toward those doors while glancing back at Jean-Paul. The Pindar sensed the Illuminati operative’s uncertainty.

  “Shall we go inside?”

  Malthus nodded his head while still looking bored.

  Zavala quickly entered a code into a small key pad housed to the right of the doors and then stood back as those same doors slid open with a loud whoosh of air.

  Jean-Paul had never been inside the Illuminati’s New York operations center, and the sight left him stunned.

  Hundreds of men and women were seated in front of computer screens, scanning through thousands of images from surveillance cameras across the globe. Above their heads hung massive screens showing news footage from nearly every nation in the world. Rows upon rows of these screens were placed from one end of the four hundred foot long underground structure to the other.

  As the doors closed behind him, Jean-Paul noted how cold and dry the air inside the operations center was. The floors, walls, and ceilings were the same thick, dull grey concrete as the reception area outside. The hundreds of Illuminati operatives sat silently at their works spaces, their eyes scanning the images flashing in front of them.

  The New York Pindar inhaled deeply, his eyes glimmering with satisfaction at the work being done all around him.

  “Information is power, and it is here we are winning the war! I understand this is your first time here, Jean-Paul. What do you think?”

  The Rwandan continued to look around him, amazed at the amount of information being processed and stored, while also realizing the people seated in front of all those screens were something less than human. Their faces indicated no emotion, their eyes devoid of any feeling, instead merely shallow mirrors reflecting the ever changing images before them.

  “It is…impressive.”

  The Pindar laughed.

  “Indeed it is! I recall watching the towers falling in this very room not so long ago. What a glorious day that was! All that work, planning, and finally, perfect execution! We have been moving very quickly since that day. And soon, everything will be ours!”

  Zavala stared into Malthus’s eyes for a brief moment, his tone hinting mocking contempt.

  “Even heaven and hell will be Illuminati, isn’t that right, Malthus?”

  Malthus shrugged, an empty grin affixed to his face while still appearing bored with everything around him, including Zavala.

  “Whatever you wish, oh mighty Pindar.”

  The Pindar appeared ready to give a response, but then turned around and began walking toward the center of the room where a raised platform had been built atop which sat what Jean-Paul recognized as a large, intricately carved throne made of wood and stone. He had heard rumors the Pindars had long sat upon such thrones, and now those rumors were being proven true.

  Zavala bounded up the six steps and then sat down in his throne, his newly acquired vantage point allowing him to literally look down upon those he deemed his lessers.

  “So, with Walid’s unfortunate demise, you are in need of another partner are you not, Jean-Paul?”

  Jean-Paul glanced at the still grinning Malthus before addressing the Illuminati Pindar.

  “Yes, it would seem I am, if that pleases you.”

  Zavala leaned forward on his throne while slowly nodding once.

  “It does.”

  The Pindar looked upward, speaking into an unseen communication device Jean-Paul assumed was hidden somewhere above the throne.

  “Bring me Hess!”

  Even Malthus appeared interested in who was making his way toward them from a door that opened from across the room. The man was just over six feet tall, with long arms and legs and a cleanly shaved scalp. He wore a custom made military styled blue uniform and heavy, dark leathered military boots. As he came closer, Jean-Paul could see the man was in his 30’s, his abnormally long face unlined, a wide mouth slashing across the space below a pair of prominent, bony cheeks. He moved with the confident gait of a well trained and capable soldier.

  Jean-Paul’s eyes narrowed slightly as he tried to read the small white badge sewn into the left shoulder of the man’s blue uniform.

  New United Nations

  “Gentlemen, allow me to introduce to you, August Hess.”

  Hess clasped his hands behind his back with his feet spread shoulder width apart while his eyes stared straight ahead. Jean-Paul sensed the man’s dangerous energy crackling just under the surface of the blue New United Nations uniform, wanting to break free, and do what he was trained to do – kill.

  “Mr. Hess, this is Jean-Paul Bikindi. He will be your
partner on any upcoming Illuminati-related assignments.”

  Hess turned his head slightly as his eyes slowly came to focus on Jean-Paul, who in turn nodded silently back at the newly arrived Illuminati operative.

  “What do you think, Malthus? Does Mr. Hess appear capable enough to you?”

  Malthus’s head tilted upward and his nostrils flared open, as if he was attempting to smell the essence of August Hess.

  “I’ve heard of Mr. Hess, but the uniform he wears, what is this New United Nations?”

  Zavala waved the question away with his right hand.

  “Nothing of importance right now, though someday, perhaps. Tell me, Jean-Paul, are you familiar with the phrase, highlight reel?”

  Jean-Paul nodded.

  “Yes, of course.”

  The Pindar clapped his hands together, the sound echoing in the large concrete tomb that was the Illuminati’s New York operations center.

  “Good! Then look there and see your new partner in action!”

  Jean-Paul stared upward at the large screen Zavala pointed to. He instantly recognized the village depicted in the footage. It was his former home in Rwanda, a day’s walk from the shores of Lake Kivu.

  People were being rounded up at gunpoint, young and old, women and children. The quality of the video indicated it had been taped recently.

  “Isn’t this near the place of your birth, Jean-Paul?”

  Jean Paul nodded to the Pindar, though his eyes remained fixed upon the large screen that loomed above their heads.

  “Do you think it’s possible you had family still living there within the last few weeks?”

  The Rwandan looked over at Zavala and nodded again, his voice a hoarse whisper between clenched teeth.

  “Yes.”

  Jean-Paul saw August Hess reveal the hint of a smirk as all four men followed the images.

  “What you’re seeing here is, officially speaking, a quarantine. The Ebola crisis we helped manufacture allowed a great deal of population testing to be performed. Once that testing was completed though, it also required the subjects to be terminated. Mr. Hess here oversaw that requirement, and might I add, did so with extreme efficiency.”

  A row of men and women were forced to stand directly behind, or in front of, one another. An elderly man with a badly bent back was the first in line. Jean-Paul watched as August Hess held up a military rifle to the man’s forehead. The sounds of weeping could be heard in the background.

  “What was the rifle you were using, Mr. Hess?”

  August Hess’s eyes reflected his own excitement over watching himself carry out his work.

  “That’s a modified M82 .50 caliber sniper rifle. A bit heavy to be carrying around, but it proved more than adequate for this application.”

  On the video, Hess had the taller people bend down to ensure each of their heads were approximately the same height. Once he confirmed that had been done, he fired the first round into the head of the hunchback at the front of the line.

  The heads of two men and two women blew apart instantly. The fifth person in line suffered a large gouge across the top of their head, while the man behind her cried out as the bullet lodged itself deep in his left shoulder.

  Hess was screaming for everyone to get back in line, threatening that their children would not be spared if they didn’t follow his orders.

  Soon another line formed. The woman with the wound spilling blood from the top of her head was now the first in line. Her young children sat wailing on the ground no more than a few paces from her.

  The M82 fired again.

  The entire upper half of the woman’s skull was obliterated. Five others behind her fell as well. The sixth in line, a grandmother to nine village children, made no sound as the bullet imbedded deeply into her upper left forearm.

  August Hess motioned for her to come forward and yet more villagers to join the line. Again he threatened to kill their children if they refused to do so. This method of obtaining compliance impressed Zavala.

  “See how easily he gets them to cooperate with their own death? It is that kind of managerial skills the Illuminati truly appreciates!”

  The village grandmother watched as Hess pushed the tip of his rifle against her head and then proceeded to spit into his face, her eyes glowering defiance. She knew her life was over, but she refused to give Hess the satisfaction of her fear.

  Another round was fired, killing four more villagers and wounding two others. This process was repeated until every adult in the village lay dead.

  That left the children.

  Hess ordered those who remained alive to stand as close together as possible as two of his men ran a rope around them several times, cinching them together tightly to hold the mass of brothers, sisters, and friends in place. Many of the older children held crying infants in their arms, all of their eyes wide with fear, but also a glimmer of hope that August Hess would not break the promise he had made to their murdered mothers and fathers, and allow them to live.

  Hess had no intention of such a silly gesture though. His job was beautifully simple - to kill.

  Jean-Paul felt a part of him screaming from inside to look away. It was a remnant of the Rwandan child he too had once been, a child who remembered the horrors and atrocities of chaotic destruction. The Illuminati operative pushed away that whisper of his past though, and continued watching the footage.

  August Hess was calling out for something to be brought to him. Jean-Paul recognized it instantly – a yellow-orange block of military grade Semtex with a transmitted detonation device already attached. Semtex had long been a favorite among various suicide bombers.

  As Hess approached the tied up mass of children, he held a finger to his lips, asking that they be quiet so they could listen carefully to his instructions.

  “I need you to pass this to the person in the very middle of your group. If you drop it, you all die, understand? That’s it, pass it along until it’s being held by someone in the middle of all of you.”

  Hess waited until one of the older children, a girl of ten, yelled out that she was holding the package.

  “Very good everyone, excellent work all of you. You really are a wonderful group of boys and girls.”

  Whoever was holding the camera moved back from the children, as did Hess and his men. The camera then zoomed to the group, the sound of crying infants barely heard over the sound of wind. The video focused up close on several faces. A boy of three stood looking all around him with a pair of abnormally large brown eyes. A small girl of five, wearing a pink bow in her hair, was trying her best not to cry because the older brother who stood next to her, told her the white man would hurt them if she did. The last face seen alive was a boy of twelve. He stared back in the direction of where Hess and the other men stood, his eyes communicating his own sudden realization of what was to happen.

  The explosion was considerable.

  A bright flash was followed by a dull thud, like an especially heavy car door being closed, and then the space where the children were made to stand, was devoid of life. All that remained were mere remnants: an arm, part of a leg, fingers, and shreds of clothing.

  None survived.

  As the screen went black, Malthus began to clap softly, his face indicating he was genuinely impressed by August Hess’s particular sense of work ethic.

  “Well done, Mr. Hess, well done.”

  Jean-Paul didn’t hear the compliment given to his new Illuminati partner. The only sound in his mind was that of the explosion, the only image the gruesome space where children once stood in the middle of a Rwandan village so much like his own.

  He knew then that if there was but one thing left for him to do in this life, it was to kill August Hess.

  19.

  Teague sat in a chair near the massive stone fireplace across from the entrance into the large T3 Group’s private library. Unlike the lower floor which had a subtle Asian theme to its décor, the clubhouse’s library room, much like the pub, was
decidedly Northern European, and would have been right at home if located in England, Scotland, or Ireland. The floor, walls, and ceiling were of the same dark aged wood, with two massive iron framed chandeliers hanging from the twelve foot ceilings above. Nearly every inch of the walls were shelves filled with book after book organized by subject and title. Each corner of the room had a computer station, the only hint of modern technology to be found in the space.

  Teague looked up as Bennington closed the heavy wood framed door behind him.

  “There you are, Mr. Bennington of the D.C. swamp! Have a seat in front of the fire! At my age, I’m always running from the cold you know!”