by R. Chauncey
“It just dawned upon me, Leader,” Karl began in a calm voice though he was mad. “Julian wouldn’t have been able to put enough on that flash drive he gave this mysterious person to ruin the Society, because the drive wouldn’t have contained that much space.”
“Just do like I’ve ordered you!” Derrick screamed at him.
Karl ignored his screaming and calmly said, “The drive would have to contain information on how to access all the Society’s computer records in order to expose us.” Derrick’s anger faded away in a second. Karl was right. To destroy the Society all the Society’s records would have to be downloaded on the World Internet. The history of the Society alone would be dismissed as no more than some fool’s imagination running wild. No intelligent person would believe such a thing especially the major political and business leaders of the world. But if all the Society’s records were downloaded on the Internet with all their access codes to every business and political organization on the planet along with how it was acquired, then everyone that read the records would believe them. And those with political power would move to destroy the Society as soon as they read what was downloaded on the Internet. There would be no place he or any of the members or soldiers could run and hide.
“So what are you suggesting?” Derrick asked in a normal voice.
“We could search for this mysterious person for months, and by the time we found them it could be too late,” Karl said. “What I’m suggesting is rather than identify this person we must wait for him or her to come to us. That means I must know where the Society keeps its most valuable records.”
Derrick didn’t say anything. All the members and soldiers knew the Society had detailed records of everything it had ever done going back to its beginning, especially the Society’s computer and software experts who had put the Society’s history in its computers. But only the Council of Twenty and the leaders knew where this information was kept, and now that they were dead only he knew where the information was and how to get into the hiding place, and what codes were needed to access the information. He’d intended changing the codes once the person Julian had given the hard drive to was caught and killed, and he had announced he was the sole leader of the Society. Once that was achieved he was going to contact those who watched the place where the information was kept and give them new orders. Every member of the Society would immediately know they couldn’t oppose him even if he had killed the Council of Twenty and the other two leaders because he could destroy them all buy using his com-cell to reveal what they’d done over the years.
“Leader, did you hear me?” Karl asked, knowing he had upset Derrick.
“Yes.”
“I need to know where to lay a trap for this person,” Karl told him.
“What are you suggesting, Karl?” Derrick asked him.
“I need to know where this person would go in order to download information that could destroy the Society,” Karl told him.
“You consider that important?” Derrick asked him.
“Julian would never have given anything to this person without stressing upon them the need to expose the Society as soon as possible, Leader. Julian would have known that would be impossible unless the person could get to where the information was kept, and release it to the world. We don’t have the time to waste looking for this person.”
“Let me think a few moments, Karl,” he said.
Asshole! Karl thought.
A minute passed before Derrick spoke again.
“Go back to your computer, and type, don’t speak, HD Code Apple. No one but you must have this information,” Derrick said.
“Yes, Leader,” Karl said, knowing such knowledge was a death sentence for him.
“You’ll know where to set your trap. Is there anything else?”
“No, Leader,” he said, and turned off his com-cell. So my life has a time limit, he thought as he put his com-cell back into his pants pocket and walked back to the work room. Thinking, but before that occurs we’ve got to find out who we’re looking for. Setting a trap for someone doesn’t mean a damn thing unless you know exactly what the person you’re hunting looks like.
*
Dorothy added HD Code Apple to her com-cell’s memory. She wasn’t worried about anyone discovering it. Her com-cell was safer than Derrick’s, because he didn’t know she had a second com-cell the Society hadn’t given to her. It was a cheap store bought com-cell that was good only for basic computing and making calls which she had recently bought, but it was an easily programmable com-cell whose memory was easily erased if a person pushed the wrong buttons. But she knew he knew she was monitoring every call on Karl’s com-cell. In coming or out going. And she now knew she had no choice but to make sure the plan worked perfectly. Any mistakes on her or her accomplice’s part, and they were both dead. But she and her accomplice now had two advantages, but only she knew about the two advantages and there was no way for her to let her accomplice know about them, at least, not at the moment. Because she didn’t know who her accomplice was or where he or she was.
The most important thing was Derrick didn’t know about them, and now that Karl had suggested laying a trap for whomever Julian gave the flash drive to their area of action was reduced in size. All she and her accomplice would have to do is wait and be very careful, and not kill each other.
Dorothy picked up the empty package the extra com-cell she’d bought a few hours ago from her bed and decided to take a horseback ride in the desert. She liked riding horses because she liked horses. They were the closest thing to a pet she’d ever had. Once she was far enough in the dry countryside, she’d find a place to hide the extra com-cell with its valuable information, and the package it came in.
She couldn’t afford to throw the empty package into one of the four trash cans in her suite. One of the maids might find it, and talk and Lawrence might hear about it and wonder why a guest needed a new com-cell. Lawrence wasn’t much when it came to intelligence, but he wasn’t completely stupid and Dorothy didn’t believe in leaving a trail for someone to follow.
If she found herself in a deadly position where she couldn’t get out, all she had to do was push a button on her regular com-cell and everything on the cheap com-cell would be loaded on the Internet. Even the Society’s computer experts wouldn’t have time to stop the download, because they wouldn’t know about it until it was too late. Derrick’s murder of the Council of Twenty and the other two leaders would be known to the world.
*
Derrick knew the moment he gave the code to Karl to locate the three hiding places of the Society’s information Dorothy would also get it. And that was a shame for two reasons. He’d have to leave his comfortable home in the Big Sur and go to the desert and wait with Dorothy to kill Karl, the soldiers working with him, and this ass Julian had given the information to. And he’d also have to kill Dorothy to make sure she’d never talk. And that was unfortunate because she was such a good, obedient soldier.
As he returned his com-cell to his pant pocket, he wondered who he could replace Dorothy with from among the Society’s soldiers. It had to be someone like Dorothy. So average looking most people didn’t notice them until they spoke to them. It had to be someone, obedient, easily controlled, and completely ruthless.
Decisions, decisions, the price of being the Leader, he thought as he removed his com-cell from his pocket and called Dorothy.
“Yes, sir?” Dorothy answered.
“I’m going to send a map to you with some coordinates,” he said. “Go there and arrange a camper for me to live in. Make it comfortable, and get one for yourself and the two men who’ll be waiting for you at those coordinates.”
“Yes, sir,” she said.
Derrick hung up and called
the two men who checked on the Society’s information center in the Simpson Park Mountains.
When the senior man answered, Derrick told him to be waiting outside the center for a woman to contact him along with his assistant.
The man agreed to do as he ordered.
Derrick hung up thinking, all of this inconvenience for me because my stupid brother developed a conscious.
***
Chapter 18
January 7, 1:10 p.m., the office
“What have you got?” Karl asked, walking back into the office and closing the door.
“Marajo Smith works for the Duffy Electric Parts Company,” Willow said. “As a receptionist in the building’s lobby. Been there seventeen years.”
Karl stopped at his desk but didn’t sit down.
“Worked for a local mom and pop grocery store for a year, and then worked as a registration clerk in the town’s hotel for another year. The Westport,” Betty said. “Then made out an application at Duffy and got the job as a receptionist.”
Karl looked at them with a blank face and said nothing.
“Marlene Done worked in her older brother’s garage for a little over five years,” Dodge said. “She started there at fifteen and worked until she graduated college at the age of twenty. Two months before her twenty-first birthday. According to the jobs she was given by her brother she was apparently a damn good electrical auto mechanic.”
“Are you fucking people crazy?” Karl screamed at them.
“No, sir,” Betty said, glancing up at him from her computer.
“Then what the fuck are you looking at receptionists and electrical auto mechanics?” he yelled. His face was red with rage.
“Who works for seventeen years as a receptionist in a company? Even though she did do a lot of other overtime jobs for the Duffy Company after closing hours,” Betty said.
“Or as an electrical auto mechanic?” Dodge asked, looking directly into Karl angry eyes.
Karl stared at them while he thought over Betty’s and Dodge’s questions. A minute passed before he slowly answered in a calmer voice. “Someone who wants to be in a position keep an eye on who comes and goes from Duffy Electric Parts Company. Someone waiting for someone to show up and ask questions that would indicate electrical parts is the one thing they’re not interested in.”
“Julian would have known that someone with the skills of an electrical auto mechanic would be very valuable in revealing the Society’s information,” Betty said.
Karl turned his gaze on Dodge.
“Let’s make the assumption, Karl, that whoever made contact with Marajo Smith is going to join her in revealing the Society to the world, but they’re not going to remain in Westport while they’re doing it,” Dodge said. “Because they know we’re going to be looking for them. And someone who knows something about electric powered cars would be an absolute must, because it may be necessary to steal a car when you need a new one.”
Karl didn’t say anything.
“You know, Karl,” Dodge continued. “Theft of cars had dropped sharply since electrical cars replaced the old internal combustion cars in the 20’s.”
Karl looked at him with a questioning expression on his face.
“If you don’t want to leave a travel trail for us to follow, Karl,” Dodge said. “You steal a car. You leave a trail, of course, but a thief’s trail is a bit harder to pick up than someone traveling by public transportation.”
“A man checked into the Westport Hotel on the morning of January fifth and went to the Duffy Electric Parts Company on the sixth at 11:30. And left the company at 12:30,” Betty told him.
Karl sat down. “Get anything else?” he asked.
“Yes,” Willow said.
Karl looked at him.
“A Mr. John W. Strong, from Chicago, checked out of the Westport Hotel on the morning of the seventh. He was one of four people who boarded a train for Chicago at 2:30 p.m. on that same day.”
“Was that the man who went to the Duffy Electric Parts Company?” Karl asked.
“Possibly,” Willow said.
“What do you mean possibly?”
“The Duffy Company has an excellent security system. Cameras and such. But three hours of the security disk for the sixth was erased. From 10 a.m. till one p.m.”
“Marajo Smith didn’t show up for work this morning, did she?” Karl asked.
“No she didn’t,” Betty said. “She called in and told the company’s payroll clerk she was taking three weeks of the eight weeks of vacation time she’s got coming.”
Karl looked at her.
“There’s no record of her telling the company she was going on a vacation until this morning,” Betty told him. “Rather sudden wouldn’t you say?”
“John W. Strong was the person who went to the Duffy Company on the sixth?”
Karl asked Betty.
“I don’t know because the receptionist’s log in book hasn’t been downloaded on their computer system. But I do know whoever walked into the lobby of the Duffy
Electric Parts Company worked for an Oakland Electric Company in Chicago. Or said he did. But I checked the Oakland Electric Company and found out none of their buyers of electrical parts have left Chicago in three months. And there is no John W. Strong working as a buyer for the Oakland Electric Company.”
“How did you get that information if the company’s security system was shut down and the receptionist’s log in book hasn’t been downloader on the company’s computer system?” he asked Betty.
“Mr. Harold Duffy, head of the company, met with this John W. Strong of the Oakland Electric Company and recorded the meeting on his computer,” she told him.
Karl nodded and thought for a few minutes while the others stared at him.
“We’re closing up here,” Karl said.
“Why?” Willow asked.
“Because we don’t have to look for whoever Julian gave that drive to,” he said. “I know where he’s going.”
“We’re setting up an ambush?” Dodge asked him.
“Right, but we need to get some idea of who we’re going to ambush,” he said. Karl looked at the three soldiers and wondered who he could pair up to work together.
His choices were very limited.
Willow and Dodge had already proven they couldn’t be trusted to work together without arguing with each other.
Willow liked to shoot from the hip and find out later if he’d killed the right person. Then shoot his way through any nosy bystanders who just happened to be around. The man didn’t give a fuck about collateral damage.
Dodge believed in identifying his target before he killed, and then he would kill only when it didn’t attract immediate attention, or endanger any innocent lives, giving him plenty of time to get away without harming anyone else.
Put them together and they’d end up killing each other in less than an hour.
Betty didn’t care about collateral damage either, but she thought before she started shooting. And she could hold her temper.
“You and Dodge, Betty, get to Westport, Kansas and find out everything you can about Marajo Smith. Don’t worry about this John W. Strong. I doubt if you’ll get anything on him of value since he wasn’t in town long enough. You probably won’t find much on Smith if she’s Done. Go the address you’ve got on her and look over her place. We need to know more about this woman.” He looked at Willow. “You get everything you can on this John W. Strong from the computer. You probably won’t get a damn thing, but that’ll be good. Because it’ll prove Marajo Smith is Marlene Done and John W. S
trong is the person Julian gave the drive to.”
“If they are who we think they are, they’ll long gone by now,” Dodge told him. “Unless they’re very stupid.”
“If you can’t find Smith at home, then that proves we got the right people,” Karl said. “Because if she’s running, she’s made contact with the person Julian gave the drive to, and they’ve gone.”
“Where?” Willow asked him.
“Where you and I will be waiting for both of them, Willow” Karl answered him.
“Do we fly or drive?” Betty asked Karl.
“Take a Society long range helicopter,” he said. “We’ve got a small helicopter base a few miles south of here. It’s a privately owned training school for pilots. I’ll give the manager a call and tell him to send a chopper here for you two. Pick it up two miles from here. You’ll have wheels in the back for you.”
“So once we prove they’re who we want how do we catch them?” Dodge asked.
“Leave that to me,” Karl told him. “You and Betty call me if you find out Marajo and this John guy are running. I’ll tell you what to do and where to meet Willow and me.”
“Yes, sir,” Dodge and Betty said at the same time.
“In the meantime the three of you go to lunch,” Karl told them. “Make it short.”
Without question the three of them stood up and walked out the door.
As soon as the door closed behind Willow, the last to leave, Karl went to his computer and turned it on and typed HD Code Apple into his computer. A minute passed before he got the information. Information he knew only the Council of Twenty and the leaders should have. The possession of which he knew meant his death.
It ain’t going to be easy killing me, Derrick, he thought as he read the information on his computer. I know every fucking trick in the killing book.
*
From the moment Dorothy saw what Karl had brought up on his computer, she knew Derrick would know she knew what Karl knew. But she didn’t care. All she was concerned about was keeping the plan from Derrick. And she knew he was too arrogant to even suspect she’d have such a plan. She was just the short, plump bitch who killed for him. Her problem was how to inform her accomplice of what she knew whoever he or she was.