David Golemon - Legacy

“How are you today-” Rawlins asked, as he bent at the waist to get a better look at the man’s name tag-“Officer Wright?”

“Uh, just fine, sir, how are-”

“I saw you looking at my daughter a moment ago.”

“Uh, yes sir, she is very-”

Rawlins’s large hands shot through the air so fast that the guard never knew what was happening. One minute he was standing there facing the Reverend and the next minute his neck was being twisted brutally to the left. Before he even realized his words had been cut off, he heard his own neck snap in two. Rawlins grimaced and let the large man slide through his hands to collapse onto the concrete walkway.

“You were about to give an answer that would have gotten you in trouble, young man.” Rawlins stepped out onto the walkway and looked around. Then he removed the object he had retrieved from his desk. It was a small digital camera. He adjusted the automatic focus, zooming into the shocked and now strangled security guard. He snapped a picture and then looked down at one of the hundred security men he had on staff. “Your services will no longer be needed at my home.”

Rawlins turned and stepped inside the French doors and closed them behind him. His anger was totally vented and the relief he felt was just this side of ecstasy. He turned the small digital camera over and looked at the picture he had just taken on the small LED screen. He smiled and half nodded his head. “Not bad.”

He picked up the phone as he placed the camera on the desktop. He punched in a number and waited.

“Security. Anderson speaking,” the voice said as Rawlins picked up the camera once more and studied the picture.

“Ah, Mr. Anderson, one of your men seems to have had an accident right outside my study on the west side of the house. I think you better call for an ambulance-very quietly of course, I think he tripped and fell. Very good, no, please don’t disturb me. I have quite a bit of work to catch up on.”

Rawlins set the phone down and smiled at the small picture of the dead security guard. He finally opened the drawer and shut off the camera as he placed it inside. As he did he saw the small framed photograph he had placed inside a few months earlier, meaning to get the frame changed. He had forgotten about it. He picked it up once more as he had a million times in his life and looked at himself forty-five years earlier. He was standing next to his father in the black-and-white photo. He himself was as unsmiling as the man standing next to him. The dark-haired man wore the uniform of an Army lieutenant colonel. The uniform was spit-polished and fit as snugly as a tailor could make it. They stood in front of an old castlelike structure that looked as if it had seen better days.

“Nineteen sixty-five,” he mumbled.

As he lay the picture back inside the drawer, he knew the old castlelike building was no castle at all. Nowhere close, in fact. It was a stone monstrosity made to keep men imprisoned and his father had been the gatekeeper of that fairy-tale place-the man with the key in a rotating nation-by-nation watchman’s role.

He closed the drawer, shutting out the stern image of his father. Yes, his own flesh and blood had been the gatekeeper back in 1965, and that was how the events of today were related to Reverend Rawlins.

The keys of the gatekeeper opened and closed the dungeonlike cells of Germany’s Spandau Prison.

Jack Collins and Sarah McIntire stood on the large front porch of one of the more modest houses high in the hills just off Flamingo Boulevard in Las Vegas. Collins was a former black operations guru and a man with countless incursions behind enemy lines, and that was why Sarah McIntire could not figure out exactly why Jack was nervous about seeing his old boss, Senator Garrison Lee. Jack knew he was never one for watching people he loved and admired slip away. Sarah, her stature exactly one foot four inches shorter than the colonel’s, placed her hand through Jack’s arm as they waited for the door to be answered. They both wore civilian attire; the colonel in a button-down blue shirt and Sarah in a green skirt and white blouse. They both felt odd and out of place without the blue jumpsuit of the Event Group uniform, or at the very least their desert BDUs.

Jack and Sarah were both officially on detached service to Department 5656. Collins was head of the large security force at the complex that provided security for all archaeological digs and the safeguarding of its valuable finds and equally valuable complex, while Sarah, an Army lieutenant, was head geologist assigned to the Earth Sciences Department. It had been the senator who recruited them both and all three, along with Alice Hamilton, had grown close over the years. They were both worried as much about Alice as they were about the senator.

The left side of the double doors opened and Alice stood inside the threshold smiling. Sarah stepped in first and hugged the older woman while Jack looked around, uncomfortable at the very least. Finally, without a word spoken between Alice and Sarah, they parted and then Jack tried to smile as Alice hugged him. The embrace seemed to go on forever, and instead of making Collins feel uncomfortable, he relaxed. He patted her back and then stepped back and looked down at the smaller woman.

“How are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m tolerable, Jack, come on in out of the heat,” she said, stepping to the side to allow them access to the large but modest house.

Jack had been here on several occasions for dinner, just to talk with Lee about everything under the sun. He and Niles Compton went out of their way to update the senator from time to time on the current status of things at the Event Group complex. The former senator and OSS general seemed to appreciate the visits far more than he let on to Alice.

“Sarah, why don’t you help me in the kitchen and let Jack and that old grizzly catch up with one another?”

Sarah smiled and looked at Collins. Then she followed Alice down the long entranceway.

“Go ahead, Jack. He’s awake and in pretty good spirits-this being one of his good days. Oh, by the way, he insisted I ask Niles over for lunch also. He said he had something to discuss with all of you.”

Jack watched as Sarah and Alice disappeared, then he grimaced as he turned and walked down the long hallway of the one-story house. As he moved, Collins saw not one bit of memorabilia on the walls. There were no personal pictures, nor was there anything to indicate that the senator or Alice ever had a personal life, much less a life spent together. There were beautiful prints of desert sunsets on the walls, and that was when Jack realized it was like walking through one of those model homes that set fake fruit on the dining room table and dishes inside cabinets. As he approached the senator’s bedroom he also thought the reason the house was like a model was because the senator and Alice would never consider this their home, not after spending almost every day since 1946 underground at the Event Group complex. Yes, he thought, the complex under the sands of Nellis was their home, not this pile of wood and stucco. He stopped at the senator’s door, took a deep breath, and knocked.

“Well, don’t leave me in suspense. Open the damn door,” sounded the gruff command from inside.

Jack turned the knob and looked in, feeling as if he was a young boy and was intruding on his father. He saw the senator standing at the sliding glass window watching the desert behind the house. He finally turned and took in Collins, and then he smiled. Jack nodded silently back. In all of his visits he still wasn’t used to seeing the large senator in a pair of pajamas and a robe.

“Don’t laugh, Colonel. The Queen of Mean went and hid my clothes on me. She says I don’t need the aggravation of dressing.”