Truthseekers (23 page)

A front kick springing off the wall for extra momentum brought in a spiral, the secret of Phillip’s impact, creating concentric circular motions and therefore embracing a 3.14 ratio to his force. The kick hit John firmly in the ribcage, even as a seasoned fighter himself he had almost avoided it, and sent him flying backward landing hard on the ground, partially winded, and stunned. Phillip’s landing position meant he was on his feet and coming again at John. Gasping for air John had overcome the noise in his head telling him to pass out and reached again for his gun, pulling it free of his pants, a move he must have rehearsed hundreds of times.

Phillip on seeing the gun coming dropped hard on John’s chest again taking his air, and in a move spun his hand and fingers of John’s weapon hand right back at him. The pain in his little and third finger were immense and as best as he tried to resist, the lack of air and the pain were too much. Two clear snaps were heard and John screamed in anguish dropping the weapon. It was then that Phillip rolled him over still holding his wrist in a lock that naturally flipped the desperately struggling John. Phillip wrapped his muscular thighs around John’s neck and in just a couple of seconds John’s lights went out. The fight was over.

Phillip jumped to his feet and kicked the gun away. He then dragged John’s body behind a column and searched his pocket for keys, which he found. He searched John for anything else of interest and seeing nothing except the comms, which were strangely silent, he tidied himself, brushing back the hair that had fallen in front of his face. He smiled thinking to himself how he may put that scene in a movie one day and leapt up and ran down the corridor. He opened the first door; it was not locked and then he saw the far door at the end of the corridor. Trotting now he arrived at the door and tried it. Locked. He went through the keys and tried a couple. The second one fitted and he heard a click. He was still on full alert, as he knew there might be other adversaries inside.
There weren’t.

On a chair with her head on a desk, rags stuffed in her mouth, was Stacey. Phillip closed the door behind him and stepped over to Stacey cradling her head in his arms. He noticed how good she smelt and his instinct was to kiss her, like he had read in a fairy tale. Instead he splashed water from a bottle on the desk on her face, removed the rags from her mouth and shook her awake.

Stacey looked up through her misty eyes. At first she saw two hairy people staring back and as she came to focus a small smile came on her lips and she said: “Can I have your autograph?” Phillip did better than that. He kissed her firmly on the lips and she melted into awareness.

29

Rocko Rizotto had lost quite a bit of blood, but it seemed to have stopped for now. He literally had to stuff part of a dirty old rag into the wound, which to him was like stuffing a steak with garlic cloves. In the coming days the museum would start a full-scale investigation on the missing vest of Chief Sitting Bull. They would never find it.

Rocko had staggered back to the ground floor. He knew he needed attention, but he couldn’t abandon Stacey. “Leon must have finished his speech,” thought Rocko. He could hear talking, music and party sounds but nothing more than that. Knowing he would easily stand out, a staggering man soaked in blood, he could not be seen, but how to find Stacey… and where was that actor?

He snuck behind the various columns of the museum, hoping not to see any other black-suited killers as he knew he was unlikely to win another battle. Luckily lights were out most everywhere else. He then saw a light coming from a round hole in a door, he heard a lot of clanking behind the door; the kitchen. He had no interest in food with his predicament, but beside the door was a trolley stocked with alcohol for the event. The waiter was absent. Rocko felt he should immediately clean the wound. This thing he had stuffed it with was disgusting.

He snuck past, staggering quite a bit from the trauma and sharp pain in his side and took a bottle of vodka, a good Russian brand called Stolov. He staggered off behind another pillar. He also had taken some linen serviettes. The bottle was only a third full. He went to pour some on the linen and apply it, yet instead he lifted the bottle to his mouth and took three huge swigs, allowing the burn in his throat and stomach to awaken him. He then splashed some on a serviette and upon taking the rag out, cleaned the wound. Whilst it still bled a lot, he saw the wound itself was small and in fact not too bad. Not only had it missed anything major inside him, it would possibly require only a few stitches. He poured some more vodka on a new piece of linen and then with some tape he had found wrapped the whole of his body under his shirt to secure a makeshift bandage. The vodka stung immensely and in a challenge not to pass out from the sharp pain he downed the rest of the bottle. He then took the empty bottle, the used linen, tape and vest of Sitting Bull and threw them in a trashcan.

Rocko staggered off. He would need to get up the stairs. This was a feat that would require some stamina and grit. Rocko viewed it as the last quarter of a hockey game, the time when your body was exhausted but you had to push through the physical pain and in fact hit the opposition even harder then before. That’s always how he played. He gritted his teeth, stepped out from the column into view and turned away from the crowd, which was now behind him in the room of the event. He took the first step holding the banister firmly and wincing at the pain of climbing steps. It was then he looked up, confused at first. Above him just a few
steps was the actor Phillip Glenville, with Stacey tucked under his left hand side. Phillip smiled and said:

“Hello, my brother. Maybe you could give me a hand. It seems our friend Stacey here enjoyed the festivities a little too much and we need to get her home.”

Stacey looked drugged and was struggling on her feet, as if she was almost sleepwalking. Phillip was half dragging her, one step at a time. Rocko summoned all his will and might and put Stacey on his other side, away from his wound, and together they strode half walking half dragging Stacey through the party. They needn’t have worried. People at these events were so self-obsessed that no one noticed some drunks scuttling off. Once on the street they waited for a taxi. No one had said a word to another.

William Chant III had had enough of the museum dedication. He hated these events, although it was important that the bank was seen to be promoting ancient civilizations. Mr Black had decided to put one of his signature pieces in full view of the public. “Let the symbologists try and work it out,” he had said, certain no one would make any associations. For hundreds of years the families had hidden their most guarded secrets in full view of the public: the Luxor Obelisk in Paris, and the Statue of Liberty, homage to Lucifer himself, being two of their most secret icons, as well as being some of the most photographed tourist attractions in the world.

Chant stepped outside and called his car. He did not want to be in the building when John took out the two he had been ordered to. It was best he was seen leaving so for once he had said goodbye to several dignitaries including the mayor and he left. As he got to the bottom he noticed three drunken individuals, two men, one a bull elephant of a man with dark brown eyes, stocky with a full brow. The other a pretty boy, Hollywood type with a muscular frame and white teeth. How he hated those types. The woman, however, he despised the most, She was drunk, head low, blonde hair all over the place. She looked dishevelled in a cocktail dress and Chant guessed she was probably married to the
big one. With a grey fleck in her hair he guessed her to be about forty. He could not hold onto his disgust. A taxi had pulled in and the woman was being put in the car by the Hollywood type. Chant’s own car was just beaten into the curb by the taxi and was now double-parked being honked by the traffic passing by.

“Get out of the way you disgusting people. Go back to the gutter that bore you.”

Chant was amazed how the words came out of his mouth. He was normally able to turn a blind eye to the average of society.

Rocko who was now somewhere between searing pain and excessive blood loss had been gripping his side. The last thing he wanted to hear was some aristocrat’s judgment of him. He had enough of that as a child, and it was one of the reasons he’d left New York in the first place. He pulled himself up to his full height and width and turned to Chant, placing his hand on his chest and looking him squarely in the eye.

“Go home, before your wife has her third boy for the night, Mr Cockhead.”

Then Rocko smiled and winked at Chant, got in the cab and drove away.

Chant was seething, yet inside he knew something was wrong. He looked down at his shirt and clearly on the front of his pristine white tuxedo shirt was a bloodied handprint. Rocko’s face was firmly in his mind and then he clicked: “It was them… No!”

Chant thumped the roof of his car hard and got in.

Upstairs in the museum John was coming to. Again he had failed. His sternum hurt like he’d been hit by a bus and two of his fingers were broken, but he didn’t care about that. He had lost Stacey, his team was in tatters and now he had to report to Chant. He picked himself up with a resolve he had not felt in his whole life. He would kill all of them now. There was no other way. Just do it.

30

Phillip took the team to his sister’s house. He had it while in New York; she travelled often and was rarely home. Stacey was coming along well and simply held onto Phillip with her arms around his neck. Phillip was smiling. Rocko rolled his eyes and looked out the window. “What’s with this guy?” he thought. “I get fricken’ stabbed and she’s all goo goo for him. I can’t even complain because he’s got a friend who will patch me up and has promised a full bar at the house.” Rocko decided it was best simply not to look at Phillip.

Phillip had indeed, on realising Rocko’s predicament, organised a buddy who was a doctor to visit the house so Rocko could avoid hospital and any questions from the law. Phillip used to cage fight illegally when young and made quite a few doctor friends all over the country.

The house was in fact on Park Avenue and it did have a stocked bar. The doctor arrived not long after they did. Stacey was checked out while Rocko opened a bottle of scotch. She was pronounced fine once she’d have a good night’s sleep. Rocko had nine stitches for his troubles and was bandaged and left watching the sports channel.

David and Abbey arrived a couple of hours later, after receiving a text from Rocko and coming direct to the house where they met Phillip. David thanked him fondly and promised he would do what he could to assist his career or make up for the problems they’d caused. Abbey watched Rocko feigning vomiting behind them. Stacey was in bed. She swore she would never wash her clothes again after Phillip had touched her.

The next morning in his office in New York City, Chant was pacing the floor. He was furious about the incident at the museum the previous night. What had been planned to be a routine capture, gain information from and dispose of event, ended in abject failure. Chant felt all of his seventy-odd years this day. He had stared his foe in the eye and he had been chided and bloodied. In all his years of power nothing like this had ever occurred before.

“Yet again you have failed me, John. I’m just glad Black will not find out about this. It could have been a total disaster.” Chant opened one eye and squinted at his battle-scarred commander.

John looked immaculate in a grey suit, pristine shirt and jet black tie. His sternum hurt like hell from where Phillip had kicked him and two fingers on his right hand were tightly bandaged. A dull throb emitted from both of them.

John simply nodded and hung his head.

A beep on Chant’s phone broke the mode and his secretary piped through.

“Mr Gills to see you as asked, Mr Chant.”

“Fine… send him in and then take my dry cleaning to the man,” Chant abruptly replied.

She showed Gills into the office and then scurried off. This scene had played out too many times before for her and she sensed this was not a congratulatory meet up. She never liked John anyway. She knew he was bad
to the core, yet as part of the families she had a secure position and excellent remuneration of in excess of $1 million a year, making her probably the best-paid secretary on Earth, and most surely the most discreet.

Leon Gills looked extremely nervous to John when he saw that he was in Chant’s office as well. Although Gills had never met the man personally, he had always thought of him as Chant’s personal bodyguard. There was a darkness around him Gills did not like.

“I … I feel last night went well, Mr Chant,” Gills spoke with a stutter. Chant said nothing.

“Mr Chant did not summon you here to talk about trivia. How does that actor know Rizotto?” John stared straight into Leon’s soul as he spoke. The look froze Leon like a deer in headlights.

“I’m sorry, what actor?” Leon replied.

He didn’t get a second chance. John backhanded him straight across his face knocking him clean off his feet and into a wall where he slid unceremoniously to the floor.

Chant’s lip curled up in a half smile.

“I’ll ask you again. How does Phillip Glenville know your friend Rocko Rizotto?” John’s intent was like that of a front-line soldier.

“I… I really don’t know… please don’t hit me… They must have met last night. Rocko has a way of meeting the people at the top of things.”

John pulled his hand back for another swipe. Leon bunched in and tried to cover himself, yet it was Chant who stepped in.

“Enough, John.” He waved his arm calming John’s tirade. “Leon you called Rizotto a few days ago and warned him. That sort of conduct must never happen again. You work for us. We made you what you are. We invested twenty years in you. You think you earned this or any job in the bank. You didn’t. You are stupid and incompetent, that’s why you were easy to groom. Yet I won’t have you putting everything we have at risk to these fools. Do you understand?”

Chant’s tone was as cold as a gravedigger’s, his ashen skin curling and rolling as he spoke. It seemed almost unreal to Leon Gills, who still hovered on the floor.