Episode 1: The Immortal Code - Part 1
Mackenzie Gray preferred the simpler pleasures. He liked the comfort of the familiar St. Louis skyline that greeted him each day. He liked the Arch, as boring as it was to look at, constantly looming above him. The Mississippi River flowed beyond his window offering barges and casino boats that floated near the banks of the Riverfront. The sites had become as common to him as the Glock he wore near his shoulder. Quickly he adjusted it and moved the sports coat into a more comfortable position.
He didn't know why he wore the gun, actually. It wasn't like he was on a mission. He was home, taking some much needed R&R.; Vacation. He liked the sound of that word. And on the first day of his vacation he was meeting fellow operatives for lunch at the infamous Blueberry Hill in U. City. The Loop, as they called the trendy part of U. City, was bustling with activity. Nearly all the parking on the street was taken as it always seemed to be at this time of day. So Mac, being the ever thinking man he was, swung into Fitz's parking lot hoping no one would notice he wasn't eating at that particular hamburger joint.
A quick jog across the street and down a block had him at his destination.
Blueberry Hill was dark. It was always dark. Sometimes it fit his mood but today it merely annoyed him. Maybe he would request a table near the window. Record jackets of all types lined the walls and memorabilia from the rock and roll era filled the many shelves all around the establishment. The rocking strains of Chuck Berry blasted out of the jukebox as Mac noticed a flyer on the opposite wall advertising Chuck's monthly performance.
His friends hadn't arrived yet so Mac had the waitress seat him as close to the window as possible. He found himself at one of the booths decorated with a game board under clear glass. His game of choice today was Parcheesi.
Theresa Shea appeared through the grand opening near the memorabilia cases like a dream. Long brown hair straight to her shoulders, black go-go boots and a sheath dress all in lavender clung to her too slim body. Mac motioned for her and she slid in the booth beside him.
"Where's Paul and Jack?" she asked searching the room for her employer and Mac's best friend.
"I'm sure they'll be here soon. Jack never misses a free meal."
"What's the special occasion?" she asked curiously.
"What? I need an occasion to treat my friends to lunch? I've been in Beijing for three weeks. I thought it might be time for some real food. They don't have Blueberry Hill hamburgers in Beijing. I know, I looked." Mac smiled his killer smile and glanced up as the waitress appeared at their table. He ordered a beer and a tea.
"I like this place, Mac. It's quaint." Theresa said it like it was a disease.
"Quaint? Ouch! Wound a guy why don't you. Never chastize a man's favorite eating establishment. I think that's in the Bible or something." Mac laughed then noticed both Paul Thomas and Jack Darcy materialize beside them.
"You know, Theresa, calling Mac's favorite hamburger stand quaint is like declaring war in Afghanistan. It's just something you don't do," said Paul with a tint of laughter in his voice.
Theresa smiled warmly, rubbed Paul's bald head and planted a red kiss there as a signature. He pulled a handkerchief out of his business suit's pocket and rubbed at the red stain.
"So, tell me Mac," Jack said, eyeing Theresa up and down. "Why is it you never introduced me to this luscious lady before?" Jack grabbed her hand and placed a simple kiss there. "Jack Darcy at your service." He twirled his long brown mustache and elaborately bowed.
"Oh, I don't know..." Mac said trailing off the words into silence as he noticed the look of concern in her eyes.
Theresa was facing the large plate glass window. Her eyes grew wider and she reached inside her dainty purse withdrawing a gun. Mac couldn't see what she did from his vantage point inside the booth, but he knew there was trouble brewing. Theresa was one of the Legacy's deep cover agents. She could spot trouble a mile away. Paul was across from him and also noticed Theresa's wide eyed stare.
"What's going on?" Paul asked trying to peer over the top of the high-backed booth.
"Get down!" Theresa screamed. She pushed Jack to the floor and started shooting. The plate glass window shattered scattering millions of tiny shards in all directions. The patrons nearest the explosion made like ants in a toppled ant colony and dispersed for cover near the back of the dining area.
Theresa aimed and got off two rounds before Mac could assist her. The light blue Cadillac parked in front of the window revealed no passengers only long guns. They protruded from the caddy's windows firing at will. Theresa was hit twice in the chest. Her petite body lurched and fell to the floor in slow motion. Mac could hear tires squealing as he tumbled out of the booth and down to the floor. He scooped her into his arms. She was dying. He knew it. He kissed her temple as the last breath exited her body.
"I love you, Mac," she whispered.
He had never had the chance to tell her why he wanted to meet her for lunch. He never had the chance to show her the house he'd bought. He'd never have the chance to call her Mrs. Mackenzie Gray.
He fingered the ring in his pocket. A ring that the woman he loved would never wear.
"In a little used room in the Old Post Office Downtown Mac met with Paul Thomas and a team of other agents. Among them was Nikki Carpenter, Harlem Lloyd and Ramsey Redcliffe. Mac didn't know why they were involving Ramsey, he was one of the Foundation's top hit men. They called him Death, for obvious reasons.
"We have a level eight breech." Paul said with more concern in his voice than Mac had ever witnessed. "Theresa's death was only one of many Foundation and Legacy agent's deaths world wide. All the agents who have been eliminated have only have one thing in common. Their names were in Immortal, our Foundation/Legacy computer database. This has the highest level of priority. Someone's broken the Immortal Code."
"You're kidding? I thought even the CIA's best cryptologists couldn't crack it." Harlem Lloyd brushed back his graying hair and sat down. This was too much for an old man to handle.
"That's exactly what we thought too," said Nikki Carpenter forcefully. She revealed a folder she'd been keeping under her arm. In it was a profile and a photograph. "His name is Angel. He's a genius. We don't know if that's his real name or a code name. All we know is that he's most likely the one who cracked it."
"Mac, you and Nikki are assigned to the case." For a second Paul wavered. He'd never personally given this high of a command before but today called for drastic action. "You're authorized to use extreme prejudice. Find Angel and take him out. Along with any other accomplices. No one who knows the code must live to tell the tale. All our lives depend on it."
"Where do we start?" Mac eyed the profile and fingered the picture of the younger looking man.
Paul handed Mac and Nikki an itinerary. He flipped through it and saw the name of an agent. A familiar name.
"What I'm handing you is the most obvious next target. He's down the list aways but taking into account how quickly they're disposing of our agents... Not to mention.... Mac, I thought that you might want to look into this one. I know you know the boy."
Mac glanced up from the itinerary. "You're kidding? HE'S an agent?"
"One of our best deep cover operatives. You're order stands. Take out Angel, any accomplices and keep this agent alive."
"While the others convened on the far side of the oblong room, Nikki Carpenter couldn't help but notice Mac's mood. Grim, determined, but not sad. No tears of mourning. He wasn't acting like a man who had only hours ago lost the woman he loved. And for Mac, no action, no feeling was not good. He relied on gut instinct to guide him in the field. And with gut instinct you actually needed to feel something in order for it to work. Basically, he was the classic sensitive, macho jerk who behind his back was called Saint Mac. He was big on church. He was Catholic. All Catholics were big on church, him especially. He grew up in one, literally. Sister Mary Rosa was like his second mom. He never really had a first.
Nikki wasn't usually the sensitive type. Hell, she fought with Mac more than she didn't. It was their warrior's dance. He yelled. She yelled and everyone went home happy. Today seemed to be the exception. His unfeeling attitude toward Theresa's death had her worried.
"It seemed like business as usual for you in there," Nikki said, leaning on the table that separated them.
"Yeah, why wouldn't it. It's a job. I'm doing it." The vein in Mac's jaw throbbed.
Nikki noticed the twitch, and released the breath she was holding. At least there was still a sliver of the Mackenzie Gray she knew still in him.
"Quite a cavalier attitude there, hot shot. You express more feeling for your damned Darwin Society... or is it the Sierra Club? I can never remember. You are such a softie when it comes to your causes."
"Did you want something?" Mac's teeth gritted together making an audible sound like fingernails on a chalk board.
"No, not really. It just seems to me that you're taking this awfully well... well, considering..." Nikki stood upright and moved a mass of black hair off her neck. It cascaded like a rain shower of ebony down her back. "You're taking this awfully well."
"Agents are dying. I'm going in to plug the leak. It's that simple." He glanced over at Paul Thomas and Ramsey Redcliffe thinking how opposite the two were. A saint and a devil working together. He shook his attention off them and refocused on Nikki. "Well color me confused. Do my ears deceive me or did Ms. Nikki Carpenter just express concern for my emotional well being? There's a first. I might have to write this down in my journal as a red letter day. The day Nikki Carpenter cared."
She flashed him a wan smile.
"It's just professional courtesy, Gray. We're working together and I want you to have a level head."
Nikki turned briefly as Paul and Ramsey's voices raised a notch. While she was distracted, Mac took his opportunity. His grandpa had always told him to grasp an opportunity when it came a knocking. With the swiftness of a Cobra, Mac grabbed Nikki around the throat and pinpointed three pressure points near her neck. When he pressed them together, Nikki's body slumped in his arms. It was a trick he'd learned in the jungles of Africa from a missionary. It came in handy at times.
Paul, Ramsey and Harlem hadn't noticed the slight struggle Nikki offered before she passed out. Mac scooped her up and carried her to a door near the old post office mail shoot. It was an old fashioned door with an old fashioned lock. He deposited her body inside the small room and locked the door.
"Another woman I care about isn't going to die on my watch."
Mac pulled the papers from his back pocket. The papers revealed agents names who had been eliminated in the last few hours or were soon to be taken out. One was familiar for personal reasons and one was familiar for professional reasons. Nikki Carpenter was on the list. And he wasn't going to let her die too.
"Sorry about this Nick," he lightly pounded on the door as if giving his notion a second thought. Then he grabbed his pack, the profiles and new weapons and walked out the door into the streets of Downtown St. Louis.
"Hey there Bud," Harry Gray said to Mackenzie as he entered their newly refurbished home. "What are you doing back already? She didn't say no, did she?"
"No, grandpa, she didn't say no. But she didn't say yes either." Mac opened his gun closet and withdrew a few choice weapons.
Harry didn't think it odd that Mac was packing a suitcase full of guns. He was use to it.
"Maybe. Did she say maybe? A maybe is always a good sign because it's usually followed by a yes." Harry ruffled his gray hair and sat down in his recliner.
"She didn't say anything grandpa. They never gave her a chance." Mac checked his Glock and cocked the gun forcing a bullet into the chamber.
"They?" Harry was confused. Who were they, and what did they have to do with anything?
"The men who killed her."
Harry didn't know how to respond to Mac's sudden pronouncement. Then, as if having nothing else to say he opted for the obvious.
"I'm sorry, Bud. Real sorry."
"I know. Me too."
"Nigel Bennett glanced from one intricately carved door to another. Due to he swift movement of his head, Nigel's hair fell into his eyes. A brown mass hung straight to his nose obscuring his view of the doorway. Quickly, he flipped the annoyance from his sight. Someday he'd have time for a decent haircut. Not today. Today was his first meeting with a relocated witness. The witness was late, not surprising considering who the man was, but Nigel felt a rumbling of anger in his stomach. Nigel was a stickler for being on time. It was his pet peeve, actually.
Again he carefully scanned the doorways hoping that the witness hadn't forgotten the important first encounter.
Sitting in a remote but busy cafe in Athens, Greece, Nigel Bennett fidgeted in the very uncomfortable chair he was sitting in. The cobblestones under his chair was doing nothing but making his squirming worse. He had slipped away from work at the American Embassy in order to meet the current important witness the Foundation was placing in his area. He hoped his employer, the Embassy one, not the Foundation one, hadn't noticed his absence. Nigel flinched as someone skirted past. On reflex he moved the uneven chair up a notch and found himself tumbling out onto the ground. Within seconds he was lying flat on the hard brick surface he had once been sitting upon.
"Blast!" Nigel's conservative appearance was now rumpled and dirty. Not a way to meet an important client for a first chat.
A cab swiftly squealing past blew his horn and Nigel jumped. No wonder he was a good agent, he thought to himself, even *he* didn't believe he truly was one. In fact, he felt more like Jerry Lewis than James Bond.
"Just call me Bond, Jerry Bond, the bumbling secret agent," he muttered under his breath.
Black shoes with small but classy tassels appeared near his right hand. Nigel rubbed the scuff marks that ran along his palms. Bangs had once again fallen into Nigel's eyes obscuring his vision. He was on his hands and knees attempting to get up from his slap-stick fall. Self-consciously, Nigel brushed his hair out of the way. Nodding to the patrons around him who were gawking, he slowly turned and gulped. He'd have to make eye contact sooner or later, later being his first choice. He hoped to God the man standing before him wasn't someone he knew. When Nigel finally stared the man straight in the face, he found himself gazing into the eyes of none other than John Hastings-Sinclair.
Bloody, perfect timing. Nigel winced. Why was it he always ended up looking like a complete idiot when meeting new clients? He figured by now the odds would have evened out and let him look good for a change. The fates weren't with him today.
John Hastings-Sinclair -- even the name sounded prudish, but John was anything but a reserved man. He embodied all the aspects of every influential entrepreneur Nigel knew. John's blond curly hair was perfectly instyle for the trendy times, his clothes, although business attire, screamed designer label, and the woman on his arm was every bit the beautiful model. But Nigel knew she wasn't a model. She was John's wife Angela. Her short dark hair was cut in a trendy pixie style that brought out her prominent cheekbones and her eyes were wide due to the lack of fat on her slim body. Their onyx depths peered at him.
"Are you all right?" the woman asked with genuine concern.
"Perfectly fine. Just a little tumble. Happens all the time around here. Cobblestones, you know. It's very hard to keep your chair under you." Nigel flashed them a wan smile and wiped at the lingering dust on his trousers. "Would you prefer to dine outside or inside?"
"Outside is fine," John Hastings-Sinclair said with a practiced authority. "Why don't we snag that table under the tree. We should have more privacy there."
"Right. Fine." Nigel guided them to the new table which luckily was on a more even surface. No more prat falls for him today, he hoped.
When they finally came to be seated, Nigel pulled out his palm pilot and entered his code into the mini computer. The small screen flashed with a combined Knights Foundation/Legacy logo then revealed to him the witnesses current profiles.
"You've both been living under your current alias' for quite some time now. The profile doesn't say exactly why you need the Foundation's help." Nigel looked up to John and moved his gaze to Angela. "Is something wrong?"
"No. Well, yes. Well, I'm not sure..." Angela started.
"What my wife is trying to tell you is that we saw someone from our past the other day. Someone who has ties to an important organization that I think you're familiar with... The Black Council."
John placed his arm around Angela's shoulders which had begun to shake noticeably.
"The Bl... Black Council?" Nigel's tongue tripped over the words. They weren't a club he wanted to be having a tiff with. "How are you both tied to them? The profile I have doesn't relate your previous identities."
"That was part of the deal. No one can know who we use to be. Us telling you will severely put our safety in jopardy. But we have to trust someone. Philip Lancaster tells us you're the most trusted agent they have. Not even your closest friends know what you really do." John started to hand Nigel an envelope. "Here's the agreed upon amount. Help us deal with our problem."
"What did Philip tell you? What do you expect me to do?" Nigel asked wondering what Philip had gotten him into this time.
"Kill Tasha Black and Cameron Cash."
Nigel spilled the coffee the waiter had only recently delivered. It dribbled onto the cobblestones disappearing into the spaces in between.
"Are you out of your bloody mind? Do you know who Tasha Black is related to? Julian Black. Black. As in Black Council." Nigel wiped hurriedly at the spill with four napkins and threw them into a bin opposite their table. "I may be an agent but I'm not one of *those* type of agents. I don't kill people. I'm a hands off kind of person. Mostly research and dealing with glitches. I can't believe that Philip would..."
John interrupted Nigel's tirade.
"I know exactly who Julian Black is. And he knows who I am. If he knew Angela and I were alive, well, let's just say we wouldn't be seeing another day."
"Might this be the time to tell me who the hell you really are?"
"My real name is Alexander Kassoff."
Nigel could tell that Angela was out of her mind with terror. Her eyes were round saucers.
"Oh, John, I don't know. Should I tell him? They would kill him too if he knew I was alive," Angela fumbled in her purse for a tissue and blotted at the tears rushing down her cheeks.
"Yes, my love, you must tell him," John said. His strength gave her renewed energy.
"My real name is Jannette." Angela threw John a worried glance then refocused on Nigel. "Jannette Black. Julian Black is ... was my husband."
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