The Phantom Group
Caldwell

 

Hampton hadn't slept well in over twenty-five years there were good nights when he gathered a few hours of rest. But more often than not he drifted in and out of sleep like a hobo from town to town. It had its affects on him, headaches and lost of appetite along with weight lost and dried eye sockets. His sleeping disorder became a part of his life just as all of the other disorders life created in him. Helsinki was a beautiful city especially at night and because of his sleep disorder Hampton saw most of every city he visited at night. He made it every year since Joyce's death to honor her. Helsinki was the city she loved even thought he was only a week and few days from surgery. His doctor warned him about his drinking. Hampton promised he would drink in moderation but he knew his motivation for drinking was no longer cognitive. It was an addiction and addiction went controlled they controlled. So he walked the lit streets near the south harbor in Market Square carrying a bottle of some Helsinki liquor. His belly felt as if it was pulling apart and the painkillers did very little to relieve him of the pain. The liquor on the other hand worked just fine. Market Square was filled with historical buildings of the time when Helsinki was the port of the world. The cobblestone street and closed shops where during the day is alive with commerce and people. The architecture was middle eighteen century mainly light yellow and the roofs mostly gray. It was much quieter at night but there was still a lot of activity on the port.
Hampton cursed at his presbyopia as he tried focusing on a sign in front of him. The words blurred as the mind struggled to accommodation what its eyes were telling it. Growing old was the cruelest of all malicious events. He eventually read the blurred letters Teiteiden Talo or workshops and tutorials. The elegant building stood right in front of him and he realized he had walked quite a ways from his hotel. It was closed for the night. A few people congregated in front of it bathed by the lights of the street and the building. A couple beautiful blonde prostitutes worked the corner of the street just outside of the luminance. Hampton smirked at the irony, he was in too much pain to have sex but the desire still lingered. Another sick joke in the comedy of life he thought letting his left hand rub the area of his stomach where the incision was made. One of the young women glad him a smile out of pity and he realized have pathetic he must appeared. He sipped from the bottle in his hand to help him to ignore her stare.
"You're one walking fool," a man said standing in the shadows. Hampton held the bottle like a club. "You move slow but steady."
"Who the hell are you?" Hampton figured either Patterson or one of his goons. He was surprise they would follow him to Helsinki.
Cantrell stepped from the shadows and glanced over at the two women. "Are they a little young? Hell, you don't look as if you could survive a round with one of them anything." Cantrell's bald head held the light of the street and he appeared large in the long black coat he wore. Hampton wondered if the tie bothered such a thick neck.
"I ask you a question, son, and it's not polite not to answer it," Hampton said.
"Cantrell is my name but that won't mean anything to you, Judge Hampton."
"You must work for that delightful gentleman Mister Patterson the President's National Security Advisor. I told him and I'll tell you that I don't have Winton's Journal." Cantrell's face darkened and he slowly scanned their surroundings.
"Someone else approached you concerning the journal?" Cantrell asked.
"What do you mean someone else, son. Your boss I would assume. He came to my home in Maryland. I don't have the damn journal. I was sure you people would come to that conclusion by now after you tore up my little home looking for it."
"Patterson the President's National Security Advisor?" Hampton knew the large black man in front of him had no connection to Patterson the judge could read it in his face and actions. "Perhaps I should take you to dinner, Judge? How about the Kanavaranta I hear it's a wonderful place to eat."
Hampton glanced once at the two prostitutes and shied. "There was a time I would have said no to such an invite considering the alternatives but now with this wore out body, dinner over sex is palliative."
 The restaurant was a portion of the Uspenski Catherdral, a beautiful reddish brink 18th century structure beside the Katajanokka Canal. Both men sat outside in the comfortably cool night beneath an awning. Cantrell's back towards the canal and a small walkway that spanned the canal. There were a few flowers of an assortment of color in a bed not far from Hampton. A small motorized boat passed just below on the water of the canal. It's pinging engine slightly disturbing the calmness of the evening. Overhead the nation's flag fluttered. Between salad and soup Hampton asked Cantrell how he knew of the journal if not from Patterson. Cantrell explained his knowledge of the journal extended only to hearing of it. He was hired by a Helen Hendricks to recover the journal from him.
"I assure you, your honor, I don't have the slightest clue what is even inside the journal," Cantrell said as he finished his soup.
Hampton popped a painkiller in his mouth and down half a glass of water. "I just had surgery and still have a little pain."
"Here in Helsinki?"
"It was in Maryland but I always come to Helsinki." Hampton let his eyes survey the congenial evening for a few moments. "I hate to tell you, Mister Cantrell, but I don't have the journal never did have it. I saw it once, even was offered it but that's all. I only got involved in any of it because of a client I had but that was a long time ago."
"You told me that already, the fact you didn't have the journal. What my problem is there are individuals that believe for whatever reason you have this journal or know where it is. That brings me to believe you are probably being tailed." A young attractive blonde waitress arrived with their main courses. She gave Cantrell a wink before scurrying back inside. "You may be in danger."
 "What can be inside that journal that would have so many people trying to find it? I wish I had taken it when Winston's sister offered it to me back in 1975."
"How old is this journal?"
"At least forty years old. Winston was murdered in 1960." Hampton winced his medication was wearing off so he popped another painkiller. "It's a sorted preposterous tale, young man, one I'm sure you wouldn't be interested in."
"Try me, Judge. I don't exactly have to be going anywhere soon." The judge's shoulders sagged from the preponderancy of the tale. He hesitated at the effort it would take to tell it but decided the night was right for such a story. He allowed a smile to enter his face as he began the story with what he called a fear of miscegenation held by the ignorance white folks in Alabama. Cantrell was pulled into the story told by Hampton with a unique compassion. Hampton spoke of his intelligent client Willie Jackson, a pawn used by Winston's wife and a strange that had blown into town. The case wasn't about the truth it was about racism and the unspoken order of things. Hampton said it was more about enculturation than justice. There was very little evidence and the evidence that was collected with staged. Any half thinking individual could see that Willie Jackson had been set up. It didn't matter because it meant a black man had consensual sex with a white woman. It had to have been rape no white woman in her right mind would do such an unnatural thing! So Willie Jackson was convicted for the good of the white race and sentenced to hang. He told Cantrell of how he saw Nelson again in Vietnam but when he pressed the issue he was transferred to JAG.
"I didn't think anything else about it until 1975 when I received a letter from a CIA operative I knew while in the Nam. He told me stuff concerning this Nelson who was going under another name I think it was Jacobs. This led me to back to Greensboro because I thought the key to all of it rested with Winston. I took with me Joyce a friend of mine. To make a longer story short I saw the journal but didn't take it."
"Who has it then Winston's sister?" Cantrell asked.
Hampton leered at him but didn't answer. "I think it's getting pretty late and I need my sleep." Hampton slowly stood having to balance himself with the chair.
"Fair enough, your honor. Like I said I was asked to retrieve the journal I have no personal interests in it at all." Cantrell surveyed the area again. "I'll walk with you back to your hotel it's on my way."
The typical shadowing technique taught to CIA personnel involved a network of agents all in constant contact with each other. The sophisticated transmission devices used produced no static and took very little audible to use. If they were being shadowed Cantrell would know about it. The general feeling he had was that they were being shadowed. He hadn't see anything to confirm it but if Hampton was approached by the National Security Advisor concerning the journal there was a better chance than even that the NSA or CIA dogged the Judge. Cantrell didn't have to see them to know they were out there. He figured their conversation at dinner was recorded but the information Hampton told would have already been considered by whatever agency was assigned. The agency would have checked out Winston's mansion in Greensboro and any of his relatives. If so and they still were being shadowed it meant that Greensboro was a dead end. Cantrell had to admit whoever shadowed them they were very good.
Both men walked in an area groped by trees and lined on each side of the walkway by lights. A few black iron benches sat empty on the sides and telephone lines linked overhead. In the center of the walkway stood the green statute of Johan Ludwig Runeberg the writer of the Finnish National Hymn. A figure stood at the end of the walkway adorned in a long coat its hands to its sides appeared as if out of thin air. Cantrell moved his head to the right to see that another figure had appeared dressed similar to the figure at the end of the walkway. Without having to look Cantrell knew one was to his left and probable another behind. Hampton noticed the figures too but said nothing.
"Usually warm for a Finnish night don't you think, Mister Cantrell?"
Cantrell didn't have a gun and he was growing apprehensive. "I'm surprise by it to be sure." Neither figure moved from their spots it was more to show than to do. If these were the guys that watched them when they were at the restaurant they weren't as good as Cantrell thought. The figure at the end of the walkway started towards them and Cantrell was sure he held a weapon in one of his hands at his sides. Stopping only gave the figure the advantage so Cantrell moved on with Hampton a few feet behind him. The figure raised one of his hands about waist height and the barrel of a gun glistened off the light from a lamp post. Suddenly the man crumbled to the walkway. He had been shot but Cantrell didn't hear the bullet. Someone hit him using a silencer. That turned Cantrell around and he saw two of the other figures crumble.
"Run, Judge," Cantrell shouted. Hampton was in no shape to run and he stared back at Cantrell slowly shaking his head. Cantrell turned to the only figure standing in time to see where two silent rounds struck it in the neck and tempo. The blood sprays indicating the impacts. Cantrell pulled Hampton down to the walkway and then rolled towards the figure that just went down. Hampton would have laughed at the sight of Cantrell rolling like a bed roll if he wasn't so scared. Cantrell reached the figure discovering it as a white male in his mid thirties and very much dead. Cantrell checked the usual places for a weapon finding a Berretta in a shoulder holster. He pulled the weapon free and shoved down into the pit of his belly the feeling of vulnerability. Whoever dropped the four figures so professionally could very easily drop Cantrell. A few heavy moments labored on before Cantrell was up and running towards Hampton. He reached and judge and helped him to stand. If whoever did the shooting wanted them dead they would be dead by now.
"What in the name of everything that is holy is going on?" Hampton asked Cantrell.
"Your guess is as good as mine, sir. It smells like black Opts crap!" Cantrell had thought he would never be involved again in that sort of dealings. He was wrong and he knew it. "Let's get out of here before the police arrive." Cantrell stuffed the Berretta into the pocket of his long coat and aided Hampton out of the part to his hotel. It was in the distance just passed the assortment of boutique shops.

 

 

Copyright © 2003 Caldwell
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