“You look a little blurry eyed, Frank.”
“Hey, you’re the one that has me doing all this running around. I’m too old for that kind of nonsense!”
Bennington noticed Stasia had changed her clothes. She now wore a pair of faded, form fitting jeans and black t-shirt along with a pair of well used grey running shoes.
“This some kind of casual Friday thing you didn’t tell me about?”
“No Frank, it’s just that in my line of work, when I get some time to relax, I do it. Besides, it’s not even Friday.”
Frank rubbed his eyes and cleared his throat as he shuffled across the room, hoping the aching in his legs and lower back would diminish soon.
“So this is my room? Like, anytime I want a place to crash, I just come on in?”
Stasia paused under the door frame and nodded.
“Yeah, pretty much. This being the New York clubhouse, we get members from all over the world stopping in and sometimes it’s just to have a place to get away from the world for a while. There’s no media in here, no law enforcement, no obligations beyond whatever you might need. That also means we don’t bother each other in here. You can talk to the other members, but don’t stare, don’t ask for autographs, a picture, definitely no pictures allowed inside the building.”
“That’s the second time you’ve told me to respect the other member’s space. What kind of members we talking about here?”
Stasia looked out into the hallway and then back at Frank.
“Most are like you and me, individuals with certain skills and insights, but there are some who have those things but also happen to be very well known, high profile public figures.”
Bennington was intrigued.
“Like political figures, celebrities, that kind of thing?”
The Vatican-trained operative nodded.
“Exactly. Tell you what, Frank, you hungry?”
Frank’s stomach had been demanding attention for the last hour.
“Actually I am, starving in fact.”
“Follow me upstairs to the third floor then. We can grab breakfast and I’ll do my best to answer your questions.”
Bennington closed his bedroom door behind him and followed Stasia to the end of the hall and then up another narrow staircase which opened into a large, low ceilinged room with several sets of oak tables and chairs arranged haphazardly throughout the space. A long bar ran nearly the entire length of the left side of the room, while a row of windows overlooking the surrounding neighborhood, including the Illuminati building across the street, dominated the room’s right side. The space reminded Frank of an authentic English pub from the Old World.
A tall, broad shouldered man stood behind the bar cleaning a row of drinking glasses. His brown hair was cut short and speckled with gray at the sides, and his clean shaven face hinted at the soon to be deeper lines of a man recently past forty. Having often been around various agencies of law enforcement while working in Washington D.C., Bennington recognized a man with security training.
Stasia glanced back at Frank.
“C’mon, I’ll introduce you.”
The bartender’s name was Hugh Madsen and he was, as Bennington suspected, a man with law enforcement experience, having spent a decade working within the D.E.A. It was during an assignment gone bad in Miami seven years ago and a subsequent forced resignation that led to the former D.E.A. agent’s invitation from Alexander David Meyer to provide security for the T3 Group in New York.
“Hugh Madsen, this is Frank Bennington. He’s come to us by way of Washington D.C.”
Hugh extended his right hand and firmly shook Frank’s.
“It’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Bennington. I heard something of your work with the recent FDA assignment.”
Bennington shrugged off the compliment.
“I had a lot of help.”
For a brief moment, Madsen’s blue eyes locked onto Frank’s with an uncommon intensity.
“Never knew a successful assignment that didn’t have help, Mr. Bennington. Welcome to the New York clubhouse. Ms. Wellington, can I order up something from the kitchen for you two?”
Stasia smiled while nodding.
“That would be great, Hugh, thank you. I’ll have a slice of that lightly buttered dark rye toast I normally get, some fruit – whatever is available, and a cup of coffee with two sugars.”
Hugh Madsen waited patiently with his well muscled arms crossed over his chest for Frank to let him know what he wanted for breakfast.
“Uh, is there a menu I order off of, or what?”
Hugh shook his head.
“No sir, Mr. Bennington, you just tell me what you want, and I make it happen for you. If we don’t have it at the moment, we bust our ass to get it.”
“Ok…just a couple eggs, scrambled, uh, some wheat toast, and a glass of orange juice. Oh, and I’ll take a cup of coffee too, with some cream.”
Hugh gave Frank a quick nod.
“Very good, sir, I’ll have both those orders to you shortly. If you need anything else, just let me know.”
Bennington watched Madsen disappear behind a single door to the right of the bar. Before the door closed, the private detective heard the sounds of dishes being cleaned.
“There’s a kitchen back there?”
Stasia was already moving to one of the tables near a window on the opposite side of the room, her footsteps thumping softly upon the well polished wood floor.
“Yeah, it can serve a whole lot more than just the two of us. Some days this room is pretty busy when more members are stopping in, other days like today, it’s just you and me.”
Stasia sat across from Frank, each of them able to look out the window at the Illuminati church building on the other side of the street.
“Go ahead Frank, ask your questions. I know you must have a lot of them.”
Bennington cleared his throat,
“So what’s Nagato’s story? He has to use sign language?”
“Yes, he lost the ability to speak several years ago. He had been held captive for years by a madman, forced to kill or be killed, and in the process was also repeatedly tortured. On one occasion, boiling water was poured down his throat, destroying his vocal chords.”
Frank was stunned, both by the story, and how matter-of-factly Stasia told it to him.
“How did he escape?”
Stasia’s faint smile came from somewhere far removed from the third floor of the T3 Group clubhouse. It was a memory of something, or someone, significant to her.
“A soldier for hire, a man named Mac Walker got him out. When Nagato was freed, he ended up here as Mr. Meyer’s guest, and eventually, was appointed the New York clubhouse guardian.”
Bennington was having a difficult time placing the older Japanese man who had greeted them earlier as being capable of surviving years of brutal torture. He also couldn’t understand how such a man was put in charge of the T3 clubhouse.
“All due respect to Mr. Nagato, and while I appreciate his ability to make my back feel better, he doesn’t seem like T3 Group material. He’s even older than I am, and can’t weigh more than a buck thirty.”
Stasia turned away from the window to look at Frank, her eyes indicating mild disappointment in his words.
“You know, I’ve had plenty of people think and say much the same kind of things about me simply because I’m a woman. Guardian Nagato is much more than just some older Japanese man. He is also rumored to have been a real life Ninja.”
Frank knew Stasia had to be putting him on, and he didn’t intend to fall for it.
“Well of course he was. And before that, he was known as Bruce Lee too, right?”
Both Frank and Stasia looked up as Hugh Madsen arrived at the table with their breakfast.
“Hugh, Mr. Bennington here is having a hard time believing Ninjas are real.”
Madsen finished placing the food and drinks on the table and then stood up with his hands clasped loosely behind his back as he r
egarded Frank.
“Well, Mr. Bennington, I’ll put it this way. There are two people in the clubhouse I wouldn’t want to tangle with. The first is Ms. Wellington here, and the second is Guardian Nagato. I don’t personally know if everything I’ve heard about him is true, but I have trained with him in the gym downstairs, and the guy can’t be beat one on one. So could he have been some Ninja assassin forty years ago? Sure, maybe. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my time here, is not to question the possibility of the impossible.”
Frank kept staring back up at Hugh Madsen, waiting for the bartender to crack a smile and give up the joke. Madsen didn’t smile though, but instead simply walked back to the bar area.
“And you know what, Frank, that isn’t even the most interesting thing about Guardian Nagato.”
Bennington jabbed a fork into his fluffy, perfectly cooked, scrambled eggs.
“Ok, go ahead and tell me.”
There was no humor to be found within Stasia’s eyes, and her voice lowered slightly as she made certain no-one was close enough to hear her. Though the guardian’s condition was already well known by most T3 members, she felt somewhat ashamed to be talking about it out loud.
“Since arriving here, he’s never left this building. Not once has he been outside. After he was rescued from his imprisonment he had to be sedated at the hospital where he recovered. He had become so accustomed to his prison, the world outside no longer existed for him. It was too big, too unknown. He had to be sedated again when he was brought from the hospital to here. I was told he spent weeks in his room refusing to come out, and then it took months longer for him to be able to venture beyond the hallway outside that room. Now he’s able to go throughout the building of course, but even looking out a window too long makes him visibly tremble. At his age, it’s likely he’ll never leave this place.”
Frank’s coffee cup halted its journey to his mouth. He knew then Stasia was sharing what she genuinely believed to be the truth about Nagato.
“He suffers from agoraphobia? That certainly adds another layer of interesting to this experience.”
Stasia nibbled from a piece of freshly sliced apple.
“Yes, I believe that’s the medical term for what he has.”
Bennington grunted softly at the contradiction of the quietly confident, gentle and smiling Nagato greeting them at the clubhouse entrance also being a person crippled by an inability to venture outside.
As fascinatingly bizarre as that contradiction was to the private detective, it became secondary to the surreal arrival of another man into the room.
Frank didn’t notice him at first, his appetite focusing his attention more fully on the food directly in front of him. The voice was unmistakable though, and when Bennington turned to locate its source, so too was the figure that voice belonged to.
Stasia’s right hand reached across the table to tap Bennington’s left wrist.
“Frank, remember what I told you – no gawking.”
Stasia couldn’t help but smile watching Bennington turn slowly back toward her, his eyes as wide with wonder as an anxious boy on Christmas morning.
“But…do you know who that is?”
Stasia rolled her eyes and then pointed to Frank with a look that warned him to behave himself.
“Of course I do, now eat your breakfast.”
17.
“Stasia! Stasia! Stasia!”
Frank’s shoulders tensed as he realized the voice he had so easily recognized walking into the T3 Group’s pub room moments earlier was directly behind him.
Stasia put down her fork and smiled broadly, while also managing to give Bennington yet another behave yourself stare.
“Teague, I thought that was you who walked in.”
Bennington scowled at Stasia, knowing she had just called the man by the wrong name. Frank watched in stunned silence as the man grinned while leaning over and gently taking Stasia’s hands into his own incredibly gnarled digits and then kissing her lightly on the forehead.
“As dangerously beautiful as ever, young lady.”
Teague’s English-accented voice growled low and seductive, though with a hint of playfulness to it as well, indicating the man didn’t take himself or his surroundings too seriously. He had a dark scarf draped over his left shoulder, a black t-shirt and jeans, and an assortment of rings and bracelets adorning his hands and wrists. The wispy, unruly hair was completely grey, jutting out from above his head over a pair of almost comically large ears. The famously aggressive dark brown eyes resided underneath a heavy brow above which was a prominent and deeply lined forehead. The man’s face indicated every sinful deed of his seventy years, though the lean and sinewy body somehow represented the form of someone decades younger.
“And who is this gentleman seated with you?”
Frank froze as his eyes looked up at the man Stasia had for some unknown reason, incorrectly addressed as Captain Teague.
“This would be Frank Bennington, from D.C., and our newest member.”
The man’s eyes flew open as he clapped his hands together with a dramatic flourish.
“But of course! Of course! You did the FDA assignment for the congresswoman! Good bit of work there, mate. Gold rings!”
Bennington was struck dumb. He found his mouth suddenly dry, unable to form the words to respond.
Teague glanced at Stasia and then wagged a particularly misshapen finger in front of Frank’s face.
“There’ll be none of that nonsense here, Frank. Inside this building, there are no fans, just fellow members, understand? I’m no better than you, so keep your shit together. And don’t ever call me anything but Teague in here, yeah?”
Frank managed a half smile while nodding as he wiped the moisture from his palms onto the legs of his pants.
Teague’s right hand seemed to move in slow motion toward Bennington. The private detective was all too aware of how many iconic guitar chords that hand had played over the years from songs that had formed much of the background music to Frank’s own life. And now, in this increasingly bizarre and improbable world of the T3 Group, that same hand now reached out to shake his own.
The skin was parchment dry, though the grip firm and strong. The strong pungent smell of tobacco intermingled with another scent reminiscent of cinnamon and leather.
“Tell you what, mate. I’ll be in the library for a bit looking over some files. Feel free to stop in for a chat. Consider this…a personal invitation if you like.”
Teague then turned back to Stasia and offered her an abbreviated bow before turning around and striding confidently from the room, his voice calling out to Hugh Madsen before exiting.
“Take my tea in the library, Hugh.”
Frank followed Teague’s departure with a mouth hanging open like a wretched shock treatment victim, causing Stasia to snap her fingers in front of his face several times.
“Geez, Frank, I didn’t figure you for someone so easily star-struck.”
Bennington shook his head, incredulous that Stasia could be so dismissive of the man’s iconic celebrity status.
“You sure you really know who that guy is?”
It was Stasia’s turn to shake her head.
“Yeah, but in here, like he said, he’s just another T3 Group member. He’s just our littleTeague. Besides, he’s like a thousand years old, right?”
Frank’s eyes narrowed as he attempted to scold Stasia for her insolence.
“He’s older than me, but not by much.”
Stasia’s lower lip protruded outward like an unhappy infant.
“I wasn’t calling you old, Frank. Besides, your face can still pass for remotely human. Teague’s on the other hand, his is a face that belongs in the Smithsonian in the ancient artifacts section.”
Bennington’s eyes shut tight while wincing.
“Remind me never to grow older around you! You’re brutal!”
Stasia chuckled and then finished the last of her coffee.
“You g
onna accept Teague’s offer to have a sit down with him in the library? He’s more than a little eccentric, but he also has been coming into and out of this clubhouse a lot longer than I have, so I’d consider him a good source for information.”
Frank stared back at Stasia as if she had just grown a second head.
Private Detective: BENNINGTON P.I.: A thrilling four-novel political murder mystery private detective series... Page 63