The Hidden Society

by R. Chauncey

  Dodge turned back to his computer as he spoke. “Then we reduce the number of people. Most people working for hardware stores are short term employees. Retired people, high school and college kids, college graduates working temporarily until they find a job in their field of study, and then leave and start working in the areas they studied for in college.”

  “So you’re talking about managers, assistant managers, and buyers” Betty said.

  “Yes. Julian needed help in doing what he did, and I’m not talking about this person he gave the flash drive to,” Dodge said. “I’m talking about someone to help him carry out his eventual plan.”

  “Are you suggesting he began planning what he’d done years ago?” Willow asked him.

  “We’ve already agreed on that, Willow,” Karl told him.

  “Someone he knew he could trust,” Dodge said.

  “Okay,” Betty said.

  “Julian would have picked someone he had a long term relationship with,” Dodge said. “And I’m not talking sexual.”

  “And Julian wouldn’t have picked a stranger,” Karl said with an expression of deep thought on his face. “He would have picked someone among his managers he’d spent time watching and knew was reliable. Someone he knew wouldn’t fail him.”

  “There shouldn’t be that many of them,” Willow said. “Even for sixty-four hardware stores. Maybe a hundred or a hundred and fifty managers, assistant managers, and buyers.”

  “So what are we looking for?” Betty asked.

  “Anything that’s unusual,” Dodge said. “Anything that’s out of place and that can’t be verified. And someone who worked out of the headquarters store in Augusta, Maine.”

  “Okay,” Karl said. “Let’s get busy.”

  *

  An hour and twenty minutes later and due to the miracle of computers that can access information faster than humans from anywhere in the world, Betty said from the desk she was sitting at, “I think I’ve got something.”

  “What?” Karl asked, looking up at her.

  “It’s a newspaper story from a small town. Look,” she said, pressing three keys on her keyboard to put the same information on their computer monitors.

  “Beaver Bay Daily Reporter. Obituary. Marlene Done. General Manager for the Noreen Hardware Stores in Augusta, Maine, died in a drowning accident twenty years ago in July in Lake Superior while vacationing alone in Beaver Bay. Mourned by her employer Julian Franks’ owner of the Noreen Hardware Chain of Stores, and her parents, brother, and relatives of Augusta, Maine,” Karl read.

  “That means nothing,” Willow snapped.

  “Continue reading” Betty said.

  “Marlene Done’ body was never found after a week of dragging the area where she drowned,” Karl read. “Cause of death was related to drinking and walking on the beach at night alone. Numerous eyewitnesses reported seeing Ms. Done drinking alone at the Lake

  Superior Lodge‘s restaurant bar before she went for a walk along the beach. When she didn‘t show up the next day, and the maid reported to the manager her room hadn‘t been slept in, the Beaver Bay Police were notified and a search found her jacket on the beach. Ms. Done was vacationing alone.” Karl leaned back in his chair and looked at the last line in the obituary.

  “So what?” Willow said. “Lots of people drown swimming alone.”

  “Continue reading,” Betty replied.

  “The Beaver Bay Coast Patrol reported that it was unusual for the body of a drowning victim not to be found since the current in the area is southwesterly and the bodies of drowning victims usually wash up on the beach a week or so after drowning,” Karl read. “The only explanation the local Coast Guard station could give for the failure to find Ms. Done’ body was that an underwater rip tide may have carried her body far out into the lake where the chances of recovery were almost nil.”

  Silence fell upon them for a few seconds. Then the sound of Dodge typing on his keyboard broke the silence.

  “What did her family say?” Willow asked.

  “They were heartbroken,” Karl read. “Especially her boyfriend.”

  “Why wasn’t he with her?” Willow asked.

  “According to him they had been having difficulties,” Karl read.

  “What sort of difficulties?” Willow asked.

  “Doesn’t say,” Karl said. “She was mourned by her parents and a brother. She was thirty-seven.”

  “So she worked for Julian and drowned while vacationing alone,” Willow said. “That doesn’t give us any information to help lead us to who Julian gave a flash drive to.”

  Dodge was busy typing on his computer.

  “We need to take a look at someone else Julian may have had contact with,” Willow said.

  “We don’t know who Julian had contact with,” Betty told him. “The man didn’t even have a wife or family.”

  “That’s odd,” Dodge said, breaking his silence.

  “What’s odd?” Willow asked, looking over at him.

  “Transfer information to the other monitors,” Dodge told his computer.

  The computer immediately did as ordered.

  Willow read what was on his monitor. “We may have something here,” he said.

  “You’re right, Willow,” Karl said, reading the same information. “Underwater geological formations in the lake around Beaver Bay make rip tides almost impossible.”

  “The local cops probably listed Done’ death as an accident because they had no evidence of foul play,” Betty said.

  “Computer, access the records of the Beaver Bay Police Department for July12, 2056,” Karl said.

  “Why you want that?” Willow asked.

  “To get a better report on Marlene Done’ death than the one in the newspaper,” Karl explained.

  A few seconds later the computer put the information on the monitors of the four of them.

  ‘Beaver Bay Police Department records start at January 1, 2057.’

  Dodge turned around in his chair to face the others. “Julian would have made sure the Beaver Bay Police Department didn’t computerize their reports at the time of this woman’s death. It was and still is a small town with tourists coming only during the spring and summer. That way whatever we found out about her death wouldn’t be enough to give us a clear picture of her. What type of person she is, because he knew once he broke with the Society there would be a major search for him and anyone who may have helped him. So he chose someone who could disappear.”

  But why would he want to break with the Society flashed through all their minds, but not one was foolish enough to ask the question. The Society had a long and well established reputation for killing soldiers who asked questions not related to their specific jobs. They had each killed a soldier who asked too many questions about a job the soldiers had been given. Their ability to kill a fellow soldier was one the reasons Karl had selected them.

  “He planned carefully and well,” Karl said. “He probably told Marlene Done about the Society because he trusted her.” He felt silent for a few seconds as he thought then said, “He probably gave her information that would have convinced her that the Society existed. Then he gave her information to disappear with after her faked death, and gave her an identity hard to find.”

  “Plastic surgeons?” Willow asked.

  “No doubt she’s had face altering surgery,” Dodge said. “But nothing major. Out-patient surgery probably, and nearly twenty years ago after she had disappeared by an older surgeon. And by now that surgeon is either retired or dead. Even if we started a search of plastic surgeons we’d eventually hit a dead end.”

&
nbsp; “Let’s get a picture of what Marlene Done looked like,” Willow suggested.

  “Won’t do any good,” Karl said. “We’ve already agreed she may have had plastic surgery.”

  “We can check on Marlene’s family and friends,” Betty suggested.

  “No,” Dodge said. “When she drowned she died as far as they are concerned. Julian would never have chosen someone who’d be foolish enough to call a family member or friend years after she was supposed to have died in an accidental drowning.”

  “Yes,” Karl said thoughtfully. “Julian would have convinced her of the importance never to contact anyone from her old life.”

  They all knew the Society had ordered the murders of family and friends of people who threatened them or interfered with a Society operation.

  “Is there a picture of her from Beaver Bay?” Willow asked.

  “None,” Dodge answered, thinking about pictures of Marlene Done. “Any ID she had disappeared with her body.” He started typing on his computer again.

  “That’s why we should check with her family and friends,” Willow said. “One of them certainly has a picture of what Marlene Done looked like.”

  “That’ll take time,” Karl said. “We could go to her home town, find out where her family lived, break into their house, and find a picture of her.”

  “The picture would be twenty years old,” Betty said. Then she added, “If this Marlene Done person was chosen by Julian to help whoever he gave that drive to, doesn’t it make sense she would have destroyed all pictures of herself before she disappeared.”

  Dodge stopped typing and started laughing.

  “What’s funny, Dodge?” Karl demanded in an angry sounding voice.

  “Read,” Dodge said as he transferred the information from his computer to the other’s computers.

  “There was a fire in the Done family home in Augusta, Maine, six days before

  Marlene took her vacation to Beaver Bay,” Betty read from her computer monitor.

  “I’ll bet a week’s pay every picture of Marlene Done were destroyed in that fire,” Karl said, looking at his monitor.

  “You can also bet that the fire was started by Marlene Done, too,” Dodge said. “No, she would have been too clumsy to start a fire that looked like an accident. But Julian would have been smart enough to send a soldier to her home to start a fire that would convince the Augusta Fire Department it was accidental.” He stopped and thought for a while. “And when the soldier reported back to him, he would have killed him to make sure he wouldn’t talk.”

  “Yes, you’re right, Dodge,” Karl agreed with him. “Julian would have told her to destroy all pictures of herself, but not deliberately. An accidental fire would be a perfect way of destroying any pictures of her.”

  “And six days later before any new pictures of her could be taken she goes on vacation to Beaver Bay alone,” Betty said. “Where she drowned in an accident.”

  “Julian had years to plan his exposure of the Society,” Karl said. “Plenty of time to choose a person he knew was intelligent and would help him. I wonder what was there about this Done woman that attracted him to her.”

  “She was intelligent,” Betty said.

  “So where is she if she’s not dead, and what has she been doing all these years?” Willow asked.

  “Waiting for whomever Julian gave the drive to,” Karl said.

  “Waiting where?” Willow asked in an annoyed voice. “And why?”

  Dodge looked at him and said, “Exactly?”

  “What do you mean?” Karl asked him

  “Julian probably did tell her about the Society, and about any threat he imagined it posed for the future of the world,” Dodge said.

  “What the hell do you mean threat?” Willow, a loyal soldier, angrily snapped at him. For him the Society was the world to be protected by any means necessary.

  “Shut up, Willow!” Karl yelled at him. “Go on, Dodge.”

  Dodge continued. “He would have told her to find someplace to hide, and not tell him. And make no attempt to contact him.” Dodge stopped and looked at them without seeing them. His mind was awash with thoughts. He started talking again. “He would have told her to wait until someone he trusted contacted her by some code word no one in the Society would recognize, or even use.”

  “But if he told her to hide somewhere he didn’t know, how in hell would this person he gave the drive to contact her?” Betty asked.

  “Because he knew whoever he gave the drive to would check out the information on the drive and in doing so make contact with Done,” Dodge said.

  “Yes,” Karl said. “All that makes sense, Dodge, but it don’t tell us who this person is or where this woman Marlene Done is or what name she’s hiding under.”

  “We need a lead,” Betty said. “And all we’ve got is dead ends. Marlene Done might as well be the ghost of Christmas past.”

  “We’ve got to think about this in a logical manner,” Willow announced.

  “Well, what the fuck do you think we’ve been doing?” Betty growled at him, shaking her head in frustration at his limited thinking.

  “Even a man as smart as Julian would leave a trail,” Dodge mumbled more to himself than to the others. He stood up and started toward the door.

  “Where the hell are you going?” Willow asked him.

  “To the bathroom. I’ve been drinking a lot of coffee.” He stopped at the door and turned to Karl. “Get us some water in here, Karl. Before we all start pissing coffee.”

  Karl nodded and reached for the phone on his desk.

  “With all our high tech computer equipment we should be able to pick up a trail that will lead us to this mysterious person,” Willow said as Dodge left the room.

  High tech flashed through Dodge’s mind as he walked toward the bathroom down the hall.

  Ten minutes later he returned.

  “All we have to do is put the correct word or question to our computers and the high tech we’ve got will give us a lead,” Willow said.

  “High tech ain’t worth a shit, Willow, if we don’t know what word or question to put into the computer,” Betty tried explaining to Willow. “Marlene Done may be alive somewhere under an assumed name and a well-established identity we don’t know about because we don’t have any questions or words that will lead us to her. And a lot of good high tech does us.”

  “We gotta do something,” Willow said in a voice with just a touch of worry in it. “You know what happens if we fail.” He looked at Karl.

  “We die,” Karl said in a relaxed voice. He didn’t bother mentioning it wouldn’t be a pleasant death. What would have been the purpose?

  Dodge returned to his desk and sat down. He turned to face the computer while the others continued to argue about what to do, and hinted at how they would die if they failed.

  There were times when Dodge regretted becoming a soldier in the Hidden Society. The thought of belonging to a powerful organization with unlimited power and wealth had appealed to him twenty-four years ago when he was young, adventurous, and bold. But now he was forty-seven with a wife he dearly loved and two children he’d gladly die to protect. But his death wouldn’t protect them. He had learned over the years that his fat salary and successful investments had a price he hadn’t thought of when he happily followed in the footsteps the male members of his family had walked in for over three hundred years and became a Society soldier. He had to live with the unlimited ruthlessness of the Hidden Society, and its obsession to remain invisible, wealthy, and powerful. The Hidden Society was a monster. And he was a part of it. And he secretly hated it.

 
In the last ten years Dodge had learned secrets about the Society that made him fear for the life of his family and his own. But there was little he could do about it now. Maybe the future held a way out of the Society for him, and the salvation of his family. It was a foolish hope, and he knew it. Many a time he’d told himself accept the life you’ve got and prepare one of your children to follow in your foot steps as you have followed in the footsteps of the men of your family.

  “Got any ideas, Dodge?” Betty asked, looking at him with an expression of admiration.

  “That flash drive Julian gave this person would have contained the history of the Society. Wouldn’t it?” he asked without turning to look at them.

  “Is that going to help us find this person who has it?” Willow asked.

  “Maybe,” Dodge replied.

  “How?” Karl asked him.

  He turned to face them. “What would that flash drive have contained?”

  “A complete history of the Hidden Society from 1049 till now, but not a very thorough one. Not enough space on the drive. But a general history that would have convinced anyone who read it there was a Hidden Society,” Karl answered.

  “Okay,” Willow said.

  “Are you suggesting Julian may have given the drive to someone who’s a historian?” Betty asked.

  “No,” Dodge answered. “One doesn’t have to have a degree to be a historian anyway.”

  “So what are you suggesting?” Karl asked. A bit annoyed at Dodge.

  Dodge looked up at the wall behind Betty and stared at it while his brain sorted out his thoughts.

  Betty, Karl, and Willow looked at each other and shrugged. All of them were completely lost on Dodge’s train of thought.

  A minute passed before Dodge lowered his eyes to Betty and asked, “What’s the most important thing the Society has acquired in the last one hundred years?”

  “Who the hell knows that?” Willow snapped at him.

  “The all-purpose chip invented by Paul Duffy sometime in the early part of this century,” Dodge said. “The Society acquired it in 2034. Making it possible for us to go anywhere,” he raised his arms and pointed at each computer. “In the computer world, and every member and soldier knows that.”