by R. Chauncey
Arden existed. If the company existed also, then there was a small measure of truth to Franks’ story. Whether Duffy existed, or did not exist. If the company existed then the measure of truth to Franks’ story grew wider. And if Paul Duffy existed also then the measure of truth to Franks’ story grew wider still. He turned right to his computer on the desk extension and started to go to the information section but stopped.
No, too dangerous if Franks is right, he thought. The best way to check on Paul
Duffy would be to go to Arden and find someone in the town’s hall of records who can find a record that Paul Duffy lived or is living in the town. He thought a few seconds more then decided, No, going to Arden might not be the wisest thing to do if Franks is right because this Hidden Society knows about it.
He turned to the laptop on his desk and decided to read the second flash drive. He removed the first flash drive from the USB port placed it on the desk and stuck the second one in its place, and began reading.
If you don’t know something evil exists how do you fight it?
“That’s simply,” Larson said. “You expose it.”
He continued reading.
Invisibility is the Hidden Society’s greatest strength, and weapon. Expose it, and it becomes helpless and worthless. All of its wealth and knowledge and soldiers will not avail it in the least bit. Because once the democracies of the world find out it exists, learn its history and what it has done and the power it possess in the modern world, they will descend upon it, and destroy it.
The Society’s members and soldiers know this and will defend to the death its secrecy and knowledge. Do not expect help from anyone within the Society. All of its members and soldiers know what will happen to them if they turn against the Society. But the Hidden Society, like all secret society’s past and present, has weaknesses. As one of the former leaders of the Hidden Society, I know its weakness as well as its strength.
And knowledge is both its weakness and its strength.
All the Society’s knowledge and secret codes are stored in three places about the world.
The first place is in the abandoned remains of Fort Zinder, an old French Foreign Legion Fortress two hundred miles south of the city of Algiers in Algeria. It is five miles west off the main highway going south. Go south for exactly two hundred miles till you reach the remains of a dirt road. Then turn right. And keep heading west until you see the remains of the fort. Inside the enlisted men’s quarters in the center of the floor is a trap door that leads to an underground chamber. Inside that chamber is the computer that possesses all there is to know about the Society. Fort Zinder appears only on French history maps printed before 1900. If the Algerian Government knows about it, and they probably do, it amounts to no more than the remains of a part of its history.
The second one is in the Great Sand Hills of Saskatchewan, Canada. Buried in a man-made cave and carefully concealed.
The third place is in the State of Nevada in Eureka County. It is located in an underground chamber in the Simpson Park Mountains. And it is the most important of the three places because it is the only one that is checked upon once a week by a very loyal soldier. From it the other two places can be accessed. All three places are guarded by mobile robots who also clean and maintain the equipment. Anyone attempting to enter any of these places without authorization will be instantly killed by laser beams, and their body disposed of by the robots.
All three of these places were established by the Hidden Society in 1993 without any of the governments of the three countries knowing about them. The ones in Algeria and Canada are checked on once every five years when the equipment in them is updated.
Information comes to these three places from hundreds of satellites that revolve around the Earth. The Society doesn’t own or control any of these satellites they just use them. Because the leaders of the Society and the Council of Twenty can access those satellites any time they wish. The nations that own these satellites have no knowledge the Society uses them, because the Society has secret codes in each one that allows it to use them.
If you are an American and you are reading this information, the third place is the best of the three places to locate and easily entered. There is a stone door in the flat side of the mountain the information center is in. First it is easier to reach and second it controls all information going to the other two places. Get into the information center in Nevada and download the information there on the World Internet and you will automatically download information from the other two centers. But be aware, though the three places appear as a natural part of the terrain, all three are monitored and will go into a defensive mode and will shut down if any unauthorized persons attempts to enter making entry impossible, and the leaders will be notified immediately. And they can, within a matter of an hour dispatched soldiers to track down and kill whoever attempted to enter either place.
To reach any of the three places, remove this flash drive from the laptop, open it, and remove the chip in the center of the drive. Place it in your computer-cell phone, com-cell, next to the operation chip. It will fit and immediately adjust itself with your com-cell’s operation chip, and lead you directly to the places. The chip is a computer processing unit with software information programed into it. This program will assist you in locating and getting into the information centers.
Your com-cell will begin to vibrate and/or hum when you are within five hundred yards of either place. Open your com-cell and type ‘map’ on the keyboard. A map will appear and direct you to the entrance of the places. Then type ‘open’ and the door to whichever place you are at will automatically open. Once inside your com-cell will automatically display another map with information showing you exactly where you must go and what you must do to download the information stored within the center to expose the Hidden Society.
The chip will also shut down all the defensive systems. You don’t have to do anything except get into the information center alive.
Do not worry about the Society’s control of satellites to track your com-cell the chip is undetectable.
If you are as intelligent as I think you are, you will carefully check out the information from flash drive one. When you do, you will meet a person. Use the phrase Cherry Wood. If this person is still alive, you will find a very powerful ally.
Remember Paul Duffy.
If you think all that you have read is a fairytale, then the Society will one day make its presence known to the world. On that day, the world and every person and thing in it will belong to the Hidden Society. And freedom on this world will be dead, and a dark age of tyranny shall envelope the world. And only God will know how long it will reign.
Larson reached for his coffee and finished it in one long drink. He placed his mug on the desk next to the laptop and wondered why me? I’m just a former high school history teacher who writes fiction. Why did Julian Franks choose me? How did he know about me? He didn’t have answers to his questions. But Larson decided it wouldn’t hurt to check out some of the information on the first flash drive.
He looked at the clock on his desk. It was 5:20. And he was tired. Long distance driving in winter or anytime of the year was not something he enjoyed doing. Because it tired him out.
Larson started to turn off the laptop and go to bed, but stopped and thought,
It wouldn’t hurt to put that chip in my com-cell just in case Julian Franks isn’t some lunatic. And if it fits like he said it would -?
He removed his com-cell from the brown leather com-cell holder on the left side of his belt, placed it on his desk, and slid open the back revealing the battery inside. He removed the battery and saw a blank metallic plate with the ID and serial numbers of the phone. He was reluctant to remove it since his knowledge of com-cells was
like his knowledge of computers. He knew how to use them only.
I come this far, he thought and opened the center drawer of the desk and took out a letter opener and used it to pry up the metallic plate. He spotted the processing chip in the center of the com-cell.
Then he looked at the information on the laptop, memorized the information, removed the chip from the drive port, and using the letter opener pried it open. He looked back at the information that was still in the laptop’s ram drive and on the screen then looked back at the open drive. The chip was exactly where the information said it was.
He carefully removed it with his fingers and placed it next to the processing chip in his com-cell like Franks had written, and it fit, then reattached the metallic plate, the battery, and the cover on the com-cell.
“My God,” he whispered as if he was afraid of being overheard. “The damn thing fits.”
Larson turned his com-cell on.
The words Hidden Society immediately appeared on the small screen.
He pushed the display button and everything that was on the chip appeared on the screen. That disturbed him. So far Franks had been correct about Arden, its distance from Las Vegas, and the chip from the flash drive fitting into his com-cell.
Madness, raced through his mind as he turned off his com-cell and returned it to the holder on his belt. Then he reassembled the flash drive and turned off the laptop, closed it, and slipped it into the bottom left hand drawer of his desk. He put the second drive and the first drive in his left hand pants pocket, turned off the light on his desk and walked out of the study. He went to the basement and into a storage room filled with a lot of old stuff he didn’t want to throw away where he opened a trunk he hadn’t opened in years and placed both flash drives after wrapping an old, but clean, white face clothe around them in the bottom right hand corner of the trunk. Then he closed the trunk and thought of locking it but couldn’t because he didn’t know if the lock still worked. And if it did, he didn’t know if he had a key to it.
Fifteen minutes later he had brushed his teeth, stripped down to his shorts, and gotten into bed.
Just before he drifted off into a deep and welcomed sleep, he thought, I’ll go to the library tomorrow and check out the information on the first flash drive. That means looking for this Paul Duffy guy. He lives in Arden, Nevada. Remember Paul Duffy. What did that mean? He yawned and went to sleep.
***
Chapter 5
January 4, 1:10 p.m.
Everything about Karl Winters said he was an average guy. And nothing he did could change his average guy appearance, because he didn’t want to change his average guy appearance. Because it gave people a false view of what type of person he really was, and that gave him an edge on everyone who encountered him.
He was of average height, weight, with black hair that was receding, that went with his average colored white skin and his average looking face. But he did wear expensive underwear, socks, suits, shirts, and shoes that looked average on him, and drove a gray three year old Ford.
Karl Winters was a well trained and experienced killer who enjoyed killing living things. He had no interest in women, men, drink, or drugs. Food and drink, always water, sometimes coffee or tea – never any alcoholic drinks , served only to keep him alive and healthy to kill living things. Art, science, entertainment, sports, history were all meaningless to him. Killing was his thing. And he was intelligent which made him, because of his love of killing extremely dangerous, but only when he was on an assignment. And he preferred to operate alone so his average appearance helped him blend into the city where he was sent to kill someone. And Karl didn’t care who his targets were, men, women, or children. Killing was killing as far as Karl was concerned.
His intelligence along with his average appearance gave him an extra edge when he was on an assignment to kill someone, because he never acted rashly. He always carefully identified his targets - never had he killed the wrong person or failed to kill his target, learned their habits, and killed them in a quiet manner that didn’t disturb anyone else or endanger the lives of other people.
Karl was known among the Society’s members to be a very reliable killer, with a mind of his own when it came to the Society and a mouth to back it up. He always got the most dangerous assignments.
He lived in a small suburb far to the northeast of Los Angeles in a five bedroom home hidden behind tall leafy trees and a seven foot, two foot thick green hedge. He didn’t like the world invading his privacy. His five bedroom home, he never invited anyone to visit him, had double insolated brick walls and sat on a three feet high stone foundation with a double reinforced slate roof. The windows were bullet proof, and the electrical security system could detect anyone walking pass his property. People seldom did that since it was set back three hundred feet off the main road that had no sidewalks for people to walk on. Not that he would have objected if someone had stopped by. While he didn’t like people that much, he could be friendly if he felt like being friendly to the odd stranger that wandered onto his property. The steeply slanted road leading pass his property discouraged all but the most courageous walker or jogger from coming to his door and thank God there were few of them. If someone did knock on his door, his cold, gray eyes and expressionless face depressed them and they would leave immediately. Not even courageous girl scouts living in the community attempted to sell him girl-scout cookies.
His home was unique compared to that of the other houses four acres away from his. He owned the four acres on both sides and behind his house. A ten foot fence with a mild electric current running through it helped convince the few animals that attempted to go over it to just go away.
The people who owned the houses around his were always having trouble with pests of some sort or wild animals from the nearby forest. Not Karl. It had taken him the first three years of the twenty he’d lived there to convince those animals of the wild not to intrude on his property if they decided to dig under the fence. Buried ground sensors always revealed their presence night or day. And he kept one of his three high powered 30 caliber rifles with silencers and telescopic scopes handy in the living room, kitchen, and his bedroom to kill those animals foolish enough to dig under the fence. He always disposed of the bodies in the woods behind his house.
He had bought the telescopic scopes and rifles through the Society’s special purchasing department. He had made the silencers in his basement workshop. He didn’t believe in disturbing his neighbors with the sound of gun fire. The damn fools would call the police.
Poison took care of the insect pests. But those pests kept coming back. The damn creatures just didn’t know when to avoid his property. But he didn’t complain. Killing insects required him to learn their habits, and that kept his mind sharp and focused in case he was given an assignment to kill a human.
There was only one thing odd about Karl. He didn’t look or act like a man who enjoyed killing living things. And while he enjoyed killing humans he took no pleasure in it. He just killed them when he was assigned one to kill. It meant no more to him than taking a walk around his property. He looked and acted average giving the few people he encountered the impression he was just another average guy who wasn’t friendly. And that along with his intelligence is what made him such a valuable soldier to the Society. His family’s loyalty to the Society was old. The men and even women, since 1600, of his family had been soldiers in the Society for the last four hundred and seventy years, and they had always completed the jobs assigned to them by the Society’s leaders or Council of Twenty. Karl Winters was the type of man Derrick needed.
*
Karl sat in the spacious living room of Derrick Franks’ Big Sur home looking out at the Pacific Ocean wondering why Derrick had demanded this meeting. He knew it had to be important because D
errick wasn’t the sort of leader who invited soldiers to his home. On the table in front of him sitting on a silver tray was a glass and silver decanter of wine and two crystal glasses. Karl had no doubt the wine was expensive. He knew Derrick liked only the best of everything. He’d killed sixteen people on Derrick’s orders over the last twelve years.
“I’ve heard from one of the members that you don’t drink wine, Karl,” Derrick said as he entered the living room through two sliding doors that automatically closed behind him. He walked over to Karl. “You have no idea what you’re missing. There’s nothing like a glass of excellent wine.”
Karl didn’t turn around. He had heard Derrick walking down the carpeted hall to the lounge. Karl had excellent hearing. “Why am I here?” he asked.
“Because we have a problem,” Derrick said, taking the chair to the right of the table. He was dressed in expensive sports pants and matching shirt and shoes. He leaned forward and reached for the wine decanter and one of the glasses. He poured himself a glass of wine.
Karl didn’t turn his head. He watched Derrick out of the corner of his right eye. “We?” he asked.
“Yes,” Derrick said before he took a sip of wine.
“I’m a soldier. I don’t have a problem. You are one of the leaders of the Society. You have a problem.”
“My brother developed a conscious during his last years as a leader, and downloaded some vital information about the Society onto a flash drive.” He placed his glass on the table and stood up and walked to a table near the far wall. He opened a drawer in the table and took out a flash drive and walked back to Karl. He stopped next to him and held the flash drive out to him.
Karl turned his head to the right and looked at the flash drive then looked up at Derrick.
“This contains all the information on Julian’s death.”
Karl took the flash drive and put it in his left pants pocket. “You people should really get back to putting things on paper. The world has become a computer dominated world of unthinking assholes. Many people don’t even read books or newspapers anymore. They get everything off their fucking com-cells, laptops, or electric tablets.”