LEGACY Book 1: Forgotten Son Read online

  Manny lowered his head. Though he could not see the smug look of Helmut’s face, he could still feel the leash.

  “It will be done as you say,” Manny replied.

  “Good. I want to find out who sent them. After that, you can do whatever you want with them. It is imperative that the package be transported this week. Then you can retire, Manny, and live out the rest of your life just as you wish.”

  Manny did not hear the phone disconnect, but knew Helmut had hung up. He tossed the cell phone back in his pocket and returned to his office. Tomás was still at the computer, speaking commands into a microphone.

  “We have trouble,” Manny said.

  “Is it this email that keeps popping up?”

  “Click it,” Manny said. “These two have been sent to kill us.”

  Tomás clicked on the email and as he did, the screen flashed a couple of times before displaying the attached pictures. A voice began talking through the laptop speakers.

  “Hello, Tomás,” the voice of Helmut said through the computer.

  “Who is this?” Tomás asked, bewildered. “How are you talking to me? I have this thing firewalled and encrypted! I got this perra locked down like gravity!”

  “Two American agents will arrive at Mexico City tomorrow,” Helmut said. Manny and Tomás studied the image of a dark haired American in combat fatigues and a thin teenage girl with long blonde hair.

  “That girl is an agent?” Tomás asked. “She can’t be sixteen, man!”

  “These agents have been sent to kill both you and your uncle. Kill if you must but I would rather find out what they know first. Be careful. Your lives depend on this, gentlemen.”

  The screen returned to fighting. They saw a pair of ninjas crash through the front door of José’s drug cartel headquarters. One of the maids had obviously been forced to carry a gun and fight, but the woman dropped the rifle and screamed when she saw the masked men. They shot her and continued inside.

  “Who was that speaking?” Tomás asked his uncle.

  “The man who helped set up my empire,” Manny replied, deflated.

  “Your empire?” Tomás mocked. “The one you ‘built with your own hands’?”

  “Everyone has help, Tomás, even you.”

  “I don’t need your help, uncle. You gave me a situation and I handled it and now I find out that you aren’t even in charge?”

  “I run this cartel, Tomás, don’t fool yourself. Helmut merely assists from time to time.”

  “Europeans don’t assist, uncle. They take over your society and try to change it into theirs.”

  “We will do as he says,” Manny said, trying to regain the upper hand. “Or you will not see another sunrise.”

  A group of ninjas screaming took their attention back to the laptop. A large man in striped, bloody pajamas was dragged into the hallway. His face was lifted to the camera for identification.

  “Te odio,” Manny whispered.

  “Take him outside!” Tomás yelled.

  Manny wasn’t used to seeing someone sitting in his desk shouting out orders. Did he look this foolish when he barked commands?

  José was dragged to the yard and forced to his knees in front of his statue of the Virgin Mary.

  “Madre! Have mercy, Manuel!” José pleaded.

  “Can they hear me?” Manny asked. Tomás nodded. “Chinga tu madre y muerte, puto! Disparale!”

  The ninja holding a gun to José’s head just stood there.

  “I thought you said they could hear me?” Manny asked.

  Tomás whispered an order into his microphone and the ninja kicked José to the ground and emptied his AK-47 into the drug lord’s body.

  “Why didn’t he do what I said?” Manny asked.

  “This is my army now, uncle,” Tomás said.

  Manny felt a chill race down his spine. For the first time, he looked around and noticed that his office didn’t look as it used to. The painting of his childhood horse was no longer displayed over the carved stone fireplace. The small medallions that once proudly hung over the bar had been replaced with a gaudy picture of a cartoon figure with the words “All Your Base” at the bottom.

  Suddenly Manny felt another leash had just been slipped around his neck and the other end was tied to the pistol now brandished in his nephew’s hand.

  “You can leave,” Tomás said.

  Manny stormed down the stairs, but as he looked at the guards, he suddenly realized that he didn’t recognize any of their faces. As he reached the front door, he spotted his butler. A trusted member of his family for decades, Manny finally found someone he knew. Somebody who could help.

  He raced toward the butler, eyes frantic with questions, but the butler merely opened the door, glaring at him as he would a panhandler. Manny looked down in shame. As he walked by, the butler placed his finger against the back of Manny’s head like a gun.

  Manny froze in place.

  “Don’t come back,” the butler said and then motioned as if he had pulled the trigger.

  Manny ran to his car. Screw this. He was going to retire early.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Liz Worn cursed her Native American heritage.

  “This is horse crap!” she screamed. “If I had known I was gonna have to go through all this trouble, I would have claimed to be Asian. They talk funny, but at least they have air conditioning!”

  “Ms. Worn, all you have to do is complete the Sinanju rite of passage and you will never have to talk about this again,” Kylie said. “Just follow my lead. I’ve prepared a speech written phonetically in the native Sinanju tongue. It’s just a couple of lines, but you’ll need to memorize them.”

  Liz snatched the papers from Kylie, but began fanning herself with them instead.

  “I will do no such thing. I went to my prom in a helicopter. I’m a Harvard graduate. Heck, I dated a guy from Juilliard! I’m not spending one more brain cell on this than I have to for these goomy goomps.”

  Kylie had no idea what a ‘goomy goomp’ was, but she hid a smile. She had known in advance that Liz Worn wouldn’t memorize anything.

  The small motorcade drove into the main road of the Sinanju reservation and pulled up to the building marked ‘City Hall.’ Liz remained in the car, placing her lips on the air conditioning vents to suck the cold air out of them while Kylie went inside.

  “Uh, hello?” Kylie asked the empty room.

  She tapped the bell on the counter, but before her hand could return to her side, a man appeared next to her. He had not been standing there a second earlier. Startled, she jumped back.

  “Whoa! Where did you come from? We’re here to see Sunny Joe Roam.”

  “That’s me. You from the papers?”

  The man was tall, thin and old, but there was something hard about his face. As she looked closer, Kylie recognized his eyes and smiled.

  “Hi, I’m Kylie Holcomb from Senator Worn’s campaign,” she said extending her hand. Sunny Joe shook her hand and returned to his statue-like stance. “Uh, we called you a few days ago about the future Senator completing a rite of passage?”

  “I’ve already told your people no. She has no ancestors here and I’m not gonna let her turn our tribe into a political punch line.”

  The door slammed open and Liz Worn, fully decked out in a wool version of a 1950’s television Indian costume spilled into the room. Sunny Joe looked at her like she was diseased.

  “What are you supposed to be?” he asked.

  “Shut up!” Liz barked. “Someone tell me where the goddam air conditioning is in this place!”

  Kylie winced, but motioned her forward.

  “This is Sunny Joe Roam,” Kylie said formally. “He is the leader of the Sinanju tribe.”

  Liz panicked.

  Not knowing what to say, she pulled out the script Kylie had prepared for her and started reading.

  “Oh, great chief of the Sun…Sinjana…onjono, ah, whatever. We have traveled many moon for rite of passage. Make a
sweeping arm movement,” Liz said.

  Then she realized that she wasn’t supposed to read the last part and made a sweeping arm movement. “We give much moolah to make great wigwam for chief.”

  “Your press lady already came here and checked on this a few months ago,” Sunny Joe said, annoyed. “You don’t have any ancestors here.”

  “You speak English?” Liz asked, passing a look to Kylie. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

  Liz tossed the papers to the floor. “Look, Tonto, before the cameras get here, let me make this worth your while. Do you know you guys don’t even own a casino? I thought all Indians had casinos! After I get into the Senate, my number one priority will be to get you the casino you deserve. The white man has held you captive long enough!”

  “We can have a casino anytime we want, lady. We choose not to.”

  “What kind of Indians don’t have a casino?”

  “Sinanju,” Sunny Joe said defiantly.

  He had almost had enough of this idiot when the television camera crew came in the door. Liz fell to her knees in desperation. It would only be a moment before they started rolling.

  “Please, I only need to be given a Suntajano name,” she pleaded. “Just give me your blessing!”

  Sunny Joe looked down at the Senatorial candidate. Her faux Indian makeup was already streaking down her flushed red face. Sunny Joe kept his anger inside. Everything about this woman offended him, but if she wanted a show, Sunny Joe would give her a show.

  He waited until the cameras blinked on and then raised his hands over her head.

  “You, who are not of my tribe, light of skin and small of brain — if you can but pass the Sinanju rites of passage, you shall receive a tribal name.”

  Liz looked back at the cameras and smiled, giving them a thumbs-up. Her Indian makeup dripped over her cheeks as she smiled.

  Sunny Joe looked outside the building and then reached behind the counter to grab an old broom.

  “Wow,” she asked as Sunny Joe handed her the broom, looking at it as if it were an heirloom. “Is this a magic broom?”

  “It is the first task in the Sinanju rite of passage. It is said that only a Sinanju warrior can sweep the street clean,” Sunny Joe said, pointing out the window.

  “But…that’s a dirt road,” Liz protested.

  Sunny Joe continued pointing outside, unmoving as a statue.

  The cameras focused on Liz as she looked out the door for a moment of protest and then, magic broom in hand, went outside and started sweeping the dirt street.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Helmut Belasis leaned back in his chair, breaking the seal from his box of Gurkha Black Dragons. Though he had long ago accepted such benefits as a normal part of his life, he was still able to enjoy them. He clipped the end from one of the cigars and lit it, officially beginning his daily ritual. The smoke lingered just long enough in the air to take a second hit from his mouth.

  Helmut, like the director before him, had been genetically selected to lead VIGIL. Occasionally, others were allowed to join the organization to bring in new wealth and energy, but the real power remained tied to the same bloodline.

  Purple eyes.

  It indicated the key gene that identified a member of the distinct VIGIL bloodline. Most people would never have known the eye color existed, except for one VIGIL board member’s daughter who insisted on becoming an actress.

  VIGIL had been formed in the first millennium A.D. by an Iberian monk who had looked to the skies, not for God, but for knowledge. This unnamed man was well-read in history and seeing all the war and disease that man had survived, knew that it would only be a matter of time before man became as extinct as the unicorn. He began networking with political and religious figures to form a community to ensure mankind’s survival for the next thousand years. VIGIL began gathering wealth and power at the turn of the first millennium, hiding behind such public organizations as the Knights Templar and Freemasons in the Middle Ages. Its membership fostered thinkers like Botticelli, Raphael, Vasari, and Salieri, and with their increase in knowledge, VIGIL’s mission was extended to ensure mankind’s survival for the next million years.

  It all boiled down to population control. The greater the population, the larger number would survive a cataclysm.

  So VIGIL’s mission until the mid-twentieth century was twofold: increase the population and keep them occupied by entertainment or by supplying artificial enemies through racial or class warfare. Prevent all wars that could wipe out civilization.

  Then the day they had feared arrived on July 16, 1945. The day mankind proved that it could destroy itself when the power of the atom was unleashed in a remote corner of New Mexico. Lars Papadakis, director of VIGIL at the time, was said to have locked himself into his office upon hearing the news. When he called an emergency meeting of the VIGIL board two days later, Lars provided new and more powerful directives. He said that mankind didn’t have a million years.

  It might not even have a million minutes.

  The full resources of VIGIL were allocated to bringing World War II to a close and then, for the first time, VIGIL began actively manipulating world governments. Their advocates infiltrated the governments of every major nation on Earth. But as they had done with all of their operations, they needed a boogieman to distract the people from what was really happening. Taking advantage of cultural biases, VIGIL allocated money and power to fringe groups all over the globe. From organizations dedicated to protecting wildlife and animals to abstract groups protesting humanity itself, VIGIL kept attention away from their manipulation of the political systems of nations all across the globe.

  Lars realized that even silly arguments had to be addressed once they had been placed on the table of serious political debate. It would take time and money to defeat such arguments and VIGIL had an abundance of both.

  International organizations, setup for contingencies such as this, were flooded with money. Ambassadors were replaced with VIGIL-friendly operatives. Radical organizations and religions were given serious precedence over well-established ones. For the first time in history, VIGIL played one of its four doomsday cards.

  It was time to occupy mankind.

  Once the international community was firmly established as a serious political organization, it became easier to target and eliminate nationalistic goals that ran counter to VIGIL’s worldwide mandate.

  And Lars’ plan worked.

  Within a decade of World War II, nation after nation had fallen under VIGIL’s financial onslaught and political machinery. Lars saw the ultimate dream of VIGIL at his grasp: a world government with VIGIL behind the curtain, controlling the world’s leaders.

  But one nation stubbornly defied him: The United States of America.

  Despite being flooded with campaign donations, favorable media coverage and outright bribery, the people of America refused to believe the stories they were being fed. They clung to their guns and their religion, ignoring the loud voices trying to overwhelm them. They elected an actor who had his own ideas. And then they elected somebody who acted like a cowboy and he knew where he was going, too.

  The foundation of America was built on the belief that every man had an opportunity to improve his lot in life.

  This foundation was taught to every child, in every school and in every church. They were boldly featured in movies and literature.

  Lars had to think.

  Lars realized that he had been looking at a twenty-year plan and, for most of the world, that was long enough for the plan to take root. He had to look for longer-term solutions and plan into the next century. He had already begun grooming Helmut Belasis as his replacement. Helmut would see the fruit of his labor long after Lars’ body was placed at rest in the Tomb of the Keepers.

  Lars began to turn over day-to-day operations to Helmut while Lars turned his full attention to America. Through court appointees made in the forties and fifties, he struck the foundational structures of American schools and
churches so hard that it would take decades to repair. He simultaneously followed with attacks on the core unit of American society: the family. It started out small as comedy bits questioning the structure of the family and then sparked into documentaries that highlighted perceived injustices in the family structure and enflamed as scientific study, quickly entrenching itself as a part of American cultural history.

  VIGIL worked its way through the American government over the next three decades, attempting to choke out the spark that made it unique. But each time they ran into interference from a small organization that they would later identify as CURE.

  Lars would die only days before a man who had never served in the military took the oath of office. Helmut’s first act as director of VIGIL was to meet with the new president in a room supposedly reserved for the First Family. The meeting lasted fifteen minutes, only long enough for Helmut to spell out his expectations.

  Helmut met with each succeeding President in the same room, immediately after their inauguration. Some meetings were successful, like his most recent visit, some less successful, like his stubborn predecessor. But Helmut Belasis had learned Lars’ lesson and thought in terms of centuries and millennia, not decades.

  Any setbacks by one small president could be easily overcome with the next.

  Helmut leaned forward and picked up his FORtab. Even with the most advanced technology known to man, he was still somehow unable to access the computers of this organization called CURE which had foiled their plans for almost a half-century now. Helmut didn’t like things that he couldn’t access. Without access, there was no control. But that would all change soon, he thought.

  Very soon.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Two men carried Liz back into the air-conditioned room on a stretcher. The cameras followed her in and Kylie allowed them to video tape her snoring. Kylie was surprised that Liz had actually been able to sweep for two whole minutes before collapsing. The small pile of dirt she had swept up had already blown back onto the road.