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

by D. W. Ulsterman

  “I was visiting family and got the call. When I heard you were involved, I said no problem, and here I am.”

  Frank experienced the same formidable power in Alberto’s handshake as he had earlier when they first met during the FDA assignment in Washington D.C. He recalled the speed at which the former Army Ranger was capable of both in and out of his wheelchair. The massive corded muscles of his arms could propel him forward faster than many legged men could run. Not quite yet forty, the still boyish looking Alberto Diaz had already proven himself to Frank Bennington to be a highly capable T3 operative.

  “Was it Dorman who contacted you as well?”

  Alberto shook his head.

  “No, it was the congresswoman. She was the one contacted by Dorman.”

  Bennington realized Teague was standing silently near the front door.

  “Oh, Alberto, this is Teague. Teague, this is Alberto Diaz. We did a recent assignment together in D.C. working under the direction of Congresswoman Mears.”

  Teague stepped forward to shake Alberto’s hand and then winced.

  “Bloody hell that’s a grip you have there!”

  Alberto’s eyes narrowed as he looked up at the older man.

  “You look familiar. Do I know you?”

  Teague shrugged as he stepped back, his face breaking into the infamous devilish grin that had been his calling card during decades of fame, fortune, and debauchery.

  “Ah, I get that a lot.”

  Alberto remained looking at Teague for a moment and then shrugged as well, turning his attention back to Frank, the T3 operative’s demeanor instantly turning to the task at hand.

  “Any idea what kind of security we might be facing from our friends across the street?”

  Frank shook his head.

  “No. We’ve seen a few of them outside. They’re likely well armed, but how well, or how many, we don’t know for sure.”

  Alberto nodded.

  “Ok, for the sake of preparation, let’s assume the tougher scenario. Maybe up to a dozen armed operatives over there. I snuck a peak at their entrance. It’s heavy steel, not something we can just kick down. Fortunately, I’ve brought my own reinforcements.”

  Both Teague and Bennington watched as Alberto reached behind his wheelchair and withdrew a large duffel bag.

  “That’s one of the few good things about not having any legs below the knees – nobody bothers to ask what’s in the bag. I rolled by two NYC patrol cars on my way here with this stuff hanging on the back of my chair and they didn’t give me a second look.”

  Alberto unzipped the duffel bag and removed a dull black, Remington 700 Light Tactical Rifle, a weapon common to many large city SWAT teams. This was followed by two M84 stun grenades, and lastly what appeared to be an extra large pen.

  “You planning to write them a nice letter with that?”

  Diaz smiled at Teague’s attempt at humor while carefully holding up the pen.

  “Sure, why not? How do I get to the roof?”

  Bennington pointed toward the stairs.

  “All the way up and then there’s a door at the end of the hall that takes you out to the roof.”

  Alberto placed the items back into the duffel bag and then pushed himself out of his chair and onto the floor where he balanced himself on the pads of his hands, using them like feet.

  “Great, grab the duffel bag and any other weapons you have and then meet me on the roof. Let’s go, gentlemen, I want this operation concluded before morning.”

  Teague’s mouth fell open as he watched the legless Alberto Diaz move quickly across the floor and then begin propelling his body up the stairs with only the power of his hands and arms. Within seconds, he was already nearly to the second floor.

  The musician’s eyes lit up with stunned respect at what he had just witnessed. Teague then turned his head to glance at Frank, his deeply lined features once again accompanied by a grin.

  “I like your friends, Bennington! I like them a lot!”

  Teague grabbed Alberto’s duffel bag in his right hand and began his own ascent up the stairs, leaving Frank to carry the rifle they had taken from Hugh Madsen, as well as the handgun Stasia had given him earlier.

  By the time he reached the third floor, Frank was struggling to breath, and though sweating profusely, he found himself suddenly feeling uncomfortably cold.

  What the hell is this? I can’t be getting sick. Not now…

  Teague’s sandpaper growl called back down to him.

  “Bennington, where you at mate?”

  The private detective’s mouth opened and closed several times as he attempted to force more air into his lungs. He tried to make his reply sound as normal as possible.

  “Almost there, don’t wait up!”

  Finally the cold sweats subsided almost as quickly as they had arrived and his breathing normalized, though Frank’s legs felt barely capable of allowing him to stand, let alone moving him up another flight of stairs.

  One step at a time, Stasia needs me…

  Frank Bennington began to climb.

  30.

  Stasia Wellington sat cross-legged on the floor of the Illuminati cell looking back at Gabriel who stood leaning in the corner where the steel-barred cell door connected to the stone walls surrounding them. She was unsure of how far down the cell structure was, but guessed it to be at least two floors beneath the street surface above.

  There were no windows, no other cells, just a narrow stone covered hallway some forty feet to the right of the cell where a single, dim bulb hung limply from the ceiling. Most disconcerting was how quiet it was. Even a low whisper managed to echo off the walls of the underground prison the T3 operative found herself in.

  For now, Stasia knew there was no escape, and she didn’t intend to waste precious energy attempting to do so. Her strength needed to be saved up for the fight she knew was to come later.

  That left her time to focus on Gabriel.

  “Were you really born in France?”

  Gabriel’s eyes momentarily widened, startled by the sound of Stasia’s voice.

  “I believe so, yes.”

  Stasia crossed her arms across her chest and looked the tall, thin, black clad form of Gabriel up and down before allowing her eyes to once again settle on his face.

  “You’re not sure where you were born?”

  Gabriel lowered his body until his backside rested against the back of his legs, perched just above the ground in a posture that made him appear more than a little bird-like.

  “I know France to be the place I grew up and spent my youth. None of us are truly certain of where we were actually born though, are we? That requires us to trust in the version we are later told by those there when it happened.”

  Stasia ran a hand threw her hair and then shook her head.

  “I notice how you manage to make answering even the most basic question something that comes out a lot more complicated and convoluted than it should – like where you were born.”

  Gabriel’s mouth slipped downward slightly, threatening a frown.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t intend to confuse. It’s just…my way.”

  Despite the mystery of his answers, Stasia noted there was a melodic quality to Gabriel’s voice reminding her of how she felt as a girl standing under one of the wind chimes that were hung above the porch by a mother she could barely remember. Stasia had always felt those chimes hinted at something ominous approaching, a well intentioned metallic tinkling of wind-born warning.

  She had that same feeling while speaking with Gabriel.

  “How old are you, Gabriel?”

  Gabriel stretched his long arms out to his sides like thin, featherless wings. His hands then moved to his face where he gently rubbed his eyes. When those hands dropped back down, they revealed a face grinning with the realization of the trap Stasia had attempted to set for him.

  “I don’t know, but perhaps what you really mean to ask me is if I’m insane. That was the subject that came
up often between myself and your former mentor, Father Barnes. So often he would roar to me my mental deficiencies, anger born more from his own spiritual fears and insecurities than my admittedly unique attributes. He was both priest and man of science, and so represented that same conflict humankind has grappled with since evolving into self-awareness. The uncertainty of the soul as it struggles to exist in seemingly perpetual discord within the constructed realities of the mind.”

  Stasia recognized the attempted deflection, just as Gabriel knew the death of Father Victor Barnes remained something that pained her. The priest was one of the few men who showed her kindness and respect, and believed in her potential to bring good to a world he considered to have gone all too dark. But her relationship with Father Barnes was not something of pressing importance while she found herself imprisoned underneath the New York Illuminati complex. What Stasia needed to know was more about the man she found herself sharing a cell with.

  “Are you older than Alexander David Meyer?”

  Gabriel’s hands folded under his chin, supported by elbows that rested atop jagged knees. His dark eyes looked up toward the ceiling, though Stasia sensed he was somehow seeing far beyond the stones that hung over them.

  “Yes, this form is older than Alexander David Meyer.”

  This form?

  “What do you mean by this form, Gabriel?”

  Gabriel shrugged as he pointed to himself.

  “I mean what I said – this form, this version of me. I was born into it, and have resided within it for some time, just as you have lived in the form as you were, and are now.”

  Stasia was quickly beginning to understand why being around Gabriel so often sent Father Barnes into a rage. The man appeared incapable of sharing a simple, coherent thought.

  “Ok, just to be clear, leaving out the talk of this form or that form, the man I’m talking to right now in this cell, the man I know as Gabriel, is in fact older than Alexander David Meyer. Is that correct?”

  Gabriel looked as if he was confused to hear Stasia repeating the same question.

  “Yes, that is what I said. I am older than Alexander David Meyer, quite a bit older in fact.”

  Stasia, sensing she had finally broken through Gabriel’s indirect way of talking, seized upon the opening.

  “How is that possible? You don’t appear to be much older than me. Mr. Meyer is a man in his seventies.”

  “In human terms it would seem impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

  The Catholic educated Stasia was familiar with Biblical verse, as well as the Archangel Gabriel’s place within that tome’s text.

  “Mathew 19:26, that’s your way of explaining the impossibility of somehow being older than an old man?”

  “God does not require explanation, Stasia. God simply requires faith.”

  “You think my own faith in God requires me to also follow your version of faith, and how old you claim to be?”

  Gabriel chuckled, his hands still folded under his chin.

  “I do believe you missed your true calling, Stasia Wellington. Your skills and enthusiasm for cross examination would make you a formidable attorney.”

  Stasia offered a faint smile as her mind move quickly to the next question.

  “And the angel answering said unto him, I am Gabriel that stand in the presence of God; and am sent to speak to you, and to show you these glad tidings.”

  Gabriel stood up and then remained very still as he looked down upon the still seated Stasia. The wind chime nature of his voice suddenly turned deeper, like the sullen, lonely sound of a faraway horn blowing into the abyss.

  “Mathew 19:26. A reasonably close approximation of what was said. I had forgotten but now…I remember.”

  Stasia’s voice rose, carrying down the hallway and reverberating against the cold rocks surrounding them.

  “Do you think you’re the same Gabriel? That I am somehow sitting here now speaking to God’s messenger?”

  Gabriel momentarily closed his eyes and inhaled and exhaled deeply, the sound of his breathing nearly as loud as Stasia’s voice. When his eyes re-opened, he finally gave a succinct response.

  “Yes.”

  Stasia was surprised by the sudden arrival of impending tears forming at the corners of her eyes.

  I want so badly to believe. If only it were that easy…

  “Gabriel, why not break through those bars? Hell, why not tear down this entire disgusting church while you’re at it? Isn’t that within the power of an angel?”

  “If only it were that easy.”

  Stasia flinched at the remark, wondering if Gabriel somehow heard the very same words spoken inside of her own head.

  “Why isn’t it? Why can’t you just destroy this place and everyone in it?”

  Gabriel eased himself back into his earlier crouching position, the bottom half of his black trench coat spreading out behind him like a vulture’s tail.

  “I suppose I could, but that would require a terrible sacrifice on my part. It would mean the end of what you see before you now, for this flesh cannot withstand my true form. No longer could I taste and feel as you do. I would be required to return to a place that no longer wants me, an existence without all of the wonderful mess that is the human experience. I’ve become rather attached to this life, Stasia and it is my hope to hold on to it for just a little longer. Timing, as they say, is everything.”

  Stasia quickly wiped away the tears from her eyes, realizing then Gabriel was most likely as Father Barnes had believed him to be – a disturbed man detached from reality whose promise of protecting her from further harm was little more than a well intended boast.

  “You don’t believe me, do you? I am told to answer questions for which you then refuse the answers! The human penchant for disbelief is something I will never fully understand.”

  Stasia ignored Gabriel’s disappointment in her disbelief, instead wanting to keep the questions moving and not allow Gabriel the opportunity to go silent. He may have been a troubled man, but Stasia also sensed he might have answers to things she wanted to know.

  “You said the dead Illuminati operative over there, the one who tried to save us, that he changed your mind about protecting me. How did he change your mind? Was it the shock of seeing him killed in front of you?”

  Gabriel glanced behind him toward the body of the dead black man that lay upon the hallway floor outside the cell.

  “His name was Jean-Paul Bikindi. He killed many-many people. There was such pain in him, such terrible regret. At the moment of his death was when I felt the release of his essence, a time of selfless sacrifice. There was purpose in it, purity, hope, an accounting of his responsibility for the life he had chosen. Though at that life’s end, he chose not for himself, but for you, Stasia Wellington. Jean-Paul chose to try and save you. All these years I have relished in the many sins of humankind in all its gloriously varied debaucheries, but in doing so, I had forgoten what brought me here in the first place.”

  Though remaining doubtful of Gabriel being anything beyond a very confused human being, she couldn’t help but be fascinated by the spiritual story he was telling.

  “And what’s that, Gabriel? What brought you here in the first place?”

  “Holy Grace - the grace of humankind, how every life is born in such violence, the child torn from the protective womb of its mother, and yet, there remains the potential for love, and compassion, and how those lives might then evolve into something more, something…better. My existence does not offer such things, Stasia so I had myself born into human form so that I may witness and experience these things without the ethereal obstruction that exists between your world and mine.”

  Stasia’s face betrayed her annoyance over words she felt danced too closely with New-Age nonsense.

  “Gabriel, I do believe you believe what you’re saying, but I’m sorry, I don’t share your views on grace, or humankind’s potential for love and compassion. The world has turned to shit, and
I’ll be the first to admit it’s our fault. Before long there will be some men coming down that hallway behind you, and it won’t be a friendly visit. This entire place represents an organization that has worked to enslave societies around the world for centuries. The Illuminati control information, and most people have given up questioning the facts that are being spoon fed to them 24/7 in this digital age that never sleeps. The T3 Group has tried to slow that process down by disseminating real truth when and where we can, but clearly we are overmatched in this fight. The Illuminati now realize that, and are openly moving to eliminate us. That’s what this all comes down too really, a street fight both literally and figuratively, and I’m now pretty certain I’m on the losing side. The only question left at this point is how many of them do I get to take with me.”