The Vault of Hercules

Chapter 23

Under a bright ceiling light in his apartment in Newington, the bald man from Nina's gym was packing his sports bag. This time, however, it was not filled with protein powder, towels, and fresh socks. Right at the bottom, under a folded golf shirt, an unlicensed firearm slumbered. Nina's nameless powerhouse walked over to his bookshelf lined with novels by Tom Clancy and John Grisham, biographies like that of Winston Churchill and Oliver Cromwell, the odd Sean Hudson horror, and a stack of Encyclopedia Britannica. Behind the larger books a thick metal box held up a statue of the god Atlas, bearing the world upon his shoulders.

An old cigar tin balanced on top of some smaller notebooks he had shoved in behind the large hardbacks. Inside the tin he kept the key to the metal box, which served as a low-key money box or makeshift safe. The sparsely furnished apartment was evident of the man's long incarceration up until a few months ago. In fact, apart from the obligatory trip to the grocery store and his personal time at the gym in Quartermile, he was a recluse. Nobody knew how he made a living since his release and nobody dared ask. He was the kind of man who did not have to do or say a single thing to attain an intimidating presence, even as skinny as he was.

Perhaps it was his black eyes full of wisdom and confidence that only came standard with hell and attitude. Even his car was an insignificant model, over twenty years old. Ex-SAS captain John Arthur Armstrong was by no means a flashy person and his business was his own. All he wanted was to be left alone. After the life he’d had, the biggest treasure in life was peace and solitude.

Unlike his perceived personality in public, Mr. Armstrong enjoyed talking as long as the audience was his own. Living alone before incarceration, being locked mostly in solitary confinement during his stretch at Wakefield, and preferring his own company in every aspect of his life had him talking to himself a lot.

From the metal box he took all his cash, a hefty sum that couldn’t possibly have been the remnants of responsible saving. Piles of bound notes occupied the metal box, but this was only his home stash. He had more and he would never tell where it was. There was only one thing he desired more than to be left alone, and that was to destroy the pigs who’d turned on him and left him behind for the cops after he’d done a job for them. Just before being released from the Supermax unit at the HM Prison at Wakefield, he’d obtained priceless information.

The same bastard who’d betrayed him was orchestrating the kidnapping of an MI6 agent's child, and it would occur in Quarter mile. Although the kidnapping at the gym had been foiled by the petite brunette he’d seen training there, it was meant to be the decoy while another abduction, the real target, was to be at Falkirk. Unfortunately, even John's sharp mind had been fooled. It was only after he’d heard about Sam Cleave's hunt for Valdi from Bad Norris that he picked up the trail that led him to Nina Gould. Initially he was unable to locate Sam, so with a bit of wording on the underground front he got her number and took a chance.

“It’s a small world, is it not, Dr. Gould?” he said as he packed the money in strategic places in his clothing and on his person. Surprised as he was about her response to his call, he could tell by her tone of voice that she was in trouble, desperate to drop bread crumbs to anyone with the wherewithal to catch on. He checked the location of Kalavryta on the map and proceeded to purchase his flight ticket to Greece.

John smiled as he reminisced about the phone call. “Still can’t fathom the coincidence you brought across my road, Dr. Gould. It’s done nothing short of invite me to the man I have vowed to kill.” He shook his head, “It's Kismet.”

He had met Valdi in prison a few years ago, just before the monster had been transferred to Broadmoor, a cage in London for criminally insane animals where he fit in perfectly. It was during this brief time that Valdi had told him about the international racketeer Igor Heller slicing a deal with Guido Bruno, acting head of the Cosa Nostra in Ireland. When Bad Norris leaked that Guido Bruno was responsible for Valdi's premature and illegal release from Broadmoor, John was infuriated for a plethora of reasons, most of which bore on the fact that Bruno had the audacity to sink even lower. Instead of keeping to gunrunning, drug smuggling, counterfeiting and arson, the Sicilian swine had now graduated to human trafficking — of children!

“I don't know what this MI6 agent did to fuck you over, sonny-Jim, but I’d be elated to assist in annihilating your cannibalistic ball-biter while I peel the goddamn skin off ya.” John grinned vindictively as he unpinned a newspaper article from his wall. It featured an article on Igor Heller's arrest in Romania a few years ago and mentioned his affiliation with a so-called Nazi myth and his ties to Bruno's previous cartel in Rome.

It was a fine testament to the evil that had occurred when Heller's Black Sun organization worked with Bruno's Sicilian Mafia, and he would be damned if Valdi or Bruno would get away with this heinousness. In his right fist the article crumpled under the strain of his rage as he imagined the paper being Bruno's scrotum.

John Arthur Armstrong had never claimed to be a saint. In fact, his stint in the SAS was initiated only to attain a higher level of training in the art of war. He’d always loved violence and never held any respect for authority, but he hoped that enlisting in military ranks would remedy his uncontrollable penchant for destruction. The SAS supplied him with all the necessary training in hand-to-hand combat and armament, as well as a wealth of opportunity to employ his knowledge.

All went smoothly until the day he’d maimed his commanding officer in what was still an unconfirmed directive for a midnight drill in the Lossie Forest. From that incident onward his criminal career had escalated rapidly. Due to the lack of conclusive evidence he was subsequently discharged, but it was too late. John Arthur Armstrong was already highly trained in military offensives for almost all terrains and had trained his body equally as intensively as his marksmanship.

Little as the young trainers and staff at Masteron's Gym & Fitness knew about him, they certainly had a good eye for a dangerous individual. They had no idea that the villainous character they conjured up for him just to keep their jobs interesting was actually spot-on. The bald man who could bench a Chieftain armored tank and had the glare of Satan, was indeed that strong and that mean. Much as he would have relished proving this to the puny boys at the fitness club, he prized his privacy much more. After all, his privacy would be pivotal to complete the murderous mission he had planned. For now, he had to keep to being a grumpy loner with a potent protein shake in his water bottle.