by R. Chauncey
When Julian learned their father’s accidental automobile death was a cleverly arranged murder that convinced him someone in the Society was making a move to acquire absolute power in the Society without the knowledge of the Council of Twenty or the other two leaders. Which meant the Council of Twenty and the other leaders would have to go next. And there was only one person Julian knew who had the ruthlessness to do that, his own brother. It didn’t take Julian much time or effort after that to secretly get into the records the two doctors had kept of the implants and learn about them. Once the implants were put into a person there was no need to replace them since they had a life expectance of two hundred years, and the person’s body supplied them with power. The records after all were in the information center and Julian as a leader had access to it.
When Julian learned about the implants and his father had authorized them he realized that, it probably took the fool only a few days to confirm what he suspected, that it was he, Derrick, who was behind their father’s murder and was moving to take over the Society as its sole leader even though Derrick was only the brother of a leader at the time.
Julian would have known once that happened, the Hidden Society which had existed for over a thousand years as a secret democratic society would become a Society of One whose power in the modern world would have no limits.
Derrick had no way of knowing what was in his brother’s mind. They had never been close. Not even as children. He hadn’t spoken to Julian since the death of their father over twenty years ago. Julian was elected by the members to replace his father as a leader.
Even after the death of their mother, which Derrick also arranged with the help of an excellent undetectable poison, the only time they met was on the anniversary of her death. Derrick did an excellent job of acting like the grieving son. But once their father was dead, Derrick was convinced that’s when Julian began putting his plan together to expose, and ultimately destroy the Society.
As the replacement for his father Julian was in an excellent position to gather information on the Society without arousing an ounce of suspicion.
He should have realized when Julian didn’t try to be re-elected as a leader that he was up to something. But he was too busy guaranteeing that he’d be elected as a replacement for Julian and making plans for his moves against Sally and John and the Council to pay any attention to what Julian was doing. The fool had quietly stepped back as a former leader, after he had gathered the information he needed to destroy the Society, to avoid attracting attention two years ago so he could put the final part of his plan into action. Find someone he could give the information to and send them out to make contact with the person he’d chosen twenty years to do what he couldn’t do.
No one had paid any attention to Julia during those last two years. Many ex-leaders had faded away after their term as a leader had ended. Some for personal reasons such as bad health or because they wanted to avoid the responsibilities former leaders were expected to assume by the members and soldiers. Derrick certainly didn’t complain since he replaced his brother, and was glad to be rid of him. Little did Derrick know what Julian was up to until he disappeared a few weeks before he died by suicide.
But he would stop Julian’s well prepared plan from becoming successful. All he had to do was kill this fool Marajo Smith /Marlene Done, or whatever the bitch’s name was, Julian had put into position twenty years ago waiting for the person Julian had chosen to help her expose the Society. Plus kill those who were helping him, he couldn’t afford to have anyone alive who knew the truth, and he’d have as much power in the world as God. As for what would happen after he died of old age? He didn’t give a damn.
As he left his house, his housekeeper watched him leave carrying a single large dark tan leather suitcase and wondered what was so important for Mr. Franks to leave his lovely home? She had wondered about that meeting Mr. Franks had in his lounge on Saturday the fourth with that cold, expressionless man. She had met cold people before but Mr. Winters was the only person she’d ever met who deserved his last name. She had also wondered about those strange com-cell calls he’d received over the last few days, and his departure on the sixth at 9 p.m. But she hadn’t said anything to him. Mr. Franks was such a polite gentleman with excellent manners. His type of person was so rare these days. It was a pleasure working as his housekeeper. He trusted her completely, and Mrs. Hammer returned his trust by running his lovely home in an extremely efficient manner. The six other servants who worked for Mr. Franks felt the same as Mrs. Hammer.
They should have since they were all paid double the salary their jobs required with the best dental and medical benefits for them and their families along with an excellent retirement plan. Money bought a lot of loyalty especially when it came from such a fine, kindly gentleman as Mr. Derrick Franks.
Derrick walked to his six car garage, tossed his bag into the back seat of his black two door Bentley, got behind the wheel, started the engine, and drove out of the garage and down the driveway of his ten acre home to the highway. He turned east and settled down for a six hour drive to the town of Eureka, Nevada where Lester Painter and his assistant Charlie Daniels were awaiting him.
They were told to wait for him ten miles west of the town and to have provisions for all of them to live for a few days in the wild. They were told nothing else. And they didn’t ask for any more information. They weren’t stupid. And that was good.
Dorothy had also been told to await his arrival outside of Eureka also, but not to be seen by anyone. Once he’d killed the bitch Marajo/Marlene and the fool working with her, he’d have her clean up the rest of his problems and return to his Big Sur home as Leader of the most powerful secret organization the world had ever known right after he’d killed Dorothy. But his power would be greater than that of any king, emperor, or pharaoh that ever lived. Because no one would know about the Hidden Society, or that he was its absolute master.
***
Chapter 24
January 7, 7:45 p.m.
Dodge and Betty returned to the Land Rover immediately and drove to where the chopper was waiting.
The pilot saw them coming and opened the ramp for the Land Rover. As soon as they were inside and the Land Rover was locked down, and they were strapped into their seats he took off.
“Take us back to where you picked us up,” Betty told him.
“Right,” the pilot said. He asked no questions about where they had been or what they had done because he didn’t care. He was paid to fly the helicopter not ask questions.
The chopper took off in a cloud of snow dust and headed back the way they had come. The marks left by the chopper in the snow didn’t concern any of them. No one knew they had landed and no one saw them take off. If some curious person should happen to come to the spot and find the tracks left in the snow by the chopper, so what?
While the chopper took them back to the Ames Ranch and Hotel, Betty took out her buzzing com-cell and answered it.
“This is Karl, Betty.” He didn’t have to ask who he was speaking to. All com-cells of members and soldiers are programmed to be answered only by their owners letting the caller know exactly who they were speaking to. “When you and Dodge land you’ll find everything you need waiting for you. Follow us in the Land Rover to the coordinates you were both given. Don’t rush here. I figure this woman Marajo is really Marlene Done, and whoever she’s with they’re probably a half day ahead of us at most. Willow and I will be in place waiting for them. You and Dodge come slow using country roads not the main U.S. routes I don’t want you attracting attention. Report any unusual movements you see by people acting as if they’re trying to hide.”
“She’s driving a special built Toyota Highlander. Dirty gray green in color with extra wide tires and a high suspension system for off road drivi
ng,” Betty told him.
“Aren’t too many of them around,” Karl said thoughtfully. “It should be easy to spot.”
“No, there aren’t,” Betty agreed. “But we can spot them only if the weather stays good.”
“That’s about to change for the worse,” Karl told her. “Make sure you’ve both got warm clothing. You’re going to be out doors in the cold.”
That didn’t make Betty happy. She hated the cold. But she could kill in cold, warm, wet, dry, or hot weather. Killing was killing to her.
“Will do, sir,” she replied.
Karl hung up.
Betty told Dodge everything Karl had said.
Dodge’s flat expression didn’t change but he thought things might just be to his liking.
Four hours later the chopper sat down in the area behind some hills two miles to the south of the Ames Ranch and Hotel, and they drove the Land Rover back to headquarters. They didn’t care about the car parked a few yards from where the helicopter had landed. If someone found it, they’d assume it was the property of the Ames Ranch and Hotel and someone had left it for some reason.
*
An hour later, after changing into warm clothes and boots, and putting the plastic containers of supplies Karl had left for them in the Land Rover, Betty and Dodge were driving the Land Rover west over a two lane road that had been cleared of snow and even salted. But there were still icy patches that required Dodge to drive carefully.
“We’re at least half a day behind them,” Betty said thoughtfully from the passenger’s seat. “Why don’t we just pickup Marlene Done’ family, and issue her an ultimatum?”
“It wouldn’t do us any good,” Dodge said.
“Why not?”
“If this Marlene/Marajo is smart, she’s probably got a basic throwaway cell phone. No computer abilities. No way for us to contact just her. Make a threat over the Internet or a cell phone call, and we’ve done a lot of their work for them. The FBI and every local and state police department in the country are going to start asking questions the Society’s leaders and Council of Twenty and members aren’t going to want to answer.”
“We’ve probably got people in the FBI,” Betty said. “They could stop any FBI investigation. Or at least keep us informed.”
“No doubt,” he agreed. “But they’d risk exposing themselves. And what good would they be to the Society then? Anyway Done’ been dead to her family for years. It would be a waste of time picking them up.”
Betty pushed the reclining button on the right side of her seat and sat straight up.
She opened the glove box and removed the small computer inside. “Maybe we can get a track on her Highlander’s travel chip. I don’t know how old that Highlander is but it’s probably not more than ten years old so it should have a travel chip in it. Not a modern chip. But it should have a travel chip in it even though it may be on a different frequency. But I should still be able to pick it up.”
“If it has one,” he said, looking at the dark clouds gradually rolling toward them hiding the starry sky. “Which I seriously doubt. This woman’s no fool, Betty. She’s proven that by successfully hiding for twenty years. If she’s running it’s because she’s made contact with whoever Julian gave that drive to, and she knows we know who she really is and we’re after her. There won’t be any travel chip in that Highlander because she’s removed it.”
Betty pushed the computer back into the glove box. “Then how the hell do we find them?” she snapped.
“This Land Rover has radar on it,” he said, pointing to the dashboard.
“That ain’t going to help us.”
“Yes it will,” he disagreed. “There’s a storm rolling in toward us if those are storm clouds in front of us.”
She looked at the window at the clouds. “Maybe a big one, too,” she said.
“Turn on the radio to the weather station.”
She turned it on.
They rode quietly for ten minutes while they listened to the weather woman say there was a major snow storm moving east across the western plains heading for the Midwest. An extra five to seven inches of snow was expected to fall on the already seven inches on the ground. Fifteen miles per hour winds out of the northwest would make driving hazardous. Blizzard conditions will develop with visibility down to only a hundred yards.
“I figure she’s over twelve hours ahead of us,” Dodge said.
“How do you figure that?” Betty asked him.
“This way. Julian gives this person he met a flash drive containing information about the Society on the third. This person checks out the information. Probably because he thinks it’s a load of crap. Finds out there really was a Paul Duffy and finds out everything he can about him. But he’s careful. Instead of using his computer on the Internet, he uses a public computer. They’re harder to trace.”
“The Harold Washington Library in Chicago,” Betty said. “If Strong is the person with Marlene. That Oakland Company is in Chicago. The Harold Washington Library would be the perfect place to go to get on the Internet.”
“Yeah, maybe” Dodge agreed. “Thousands of people every day use that library’s computer system and access it through the Internet.”
“Millions,” Betty added.
“Yeah, right,” he said.
“You don’t understand me, Dodge,” she said. “Millions of people every day use the Harold Washington Library computers. Around the world. All he had to do to hide his trail is to jump on the tail of someone on the Internet. We could be looking for days.”
“I don’t think he did that,” Dodge said.
“Why not?”
“Julian sends a letter to this person, and he goes to see Julian. Where Julian tells him about the Society then gives him a drive about the Society.”
“Okay. I accept that.”
“Would you have believed Julian’s story or what’s on that drive right away?”
“Not unless I checked it out. And Paul Duffy would have been the key to convincing me.”
“Marlene Done/Marajo Smith worked for the Duffy Company. She learns that this person has come to Westport. Someone she’s been waiting to meet for the last twenty years.”
“She meets this guy, and together they leave Westport to expose the Society.”
“While we spent days sitting on our asses looking for them,” Dodge said.
“We’ve lost,” Betty said in a defeated tone of voice with just a touch of fear.
“Maybe not,” Dodge said.
“They’re at least half a day ahead of us. And probably heading for this spot in
Nevada,” she said. ”They’re ahead of Karl and Willow.”
“Maybe,” he said.
“Maybe my ass, Dodge!”
“Listen, Betty, wherever they are they are not going to be moving fast. Do that and they attract a lot of unwanted attention. We started from Albuquerque, New Mexico. They started from Westport, Kansas. They’re a half day ahead of us, but moving slower and are farther behind us. And there’s a storm coming. I’m willing to bet they are somewhere in central or western Colorado.”
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll agree with that, but what does that mean for us?”
“Think, Betty,” he told her. “They may be ahead of us in time spent on the road, but they’re behind in distance.”
“So what?” she said.
“We may be able to set up an ambush on them,” he said.
“To ambush them we’ve got to find that Highlander they’re driving,” she said.
“Let me think about how we do that, okay?”
he asked her.
“While you think about that,” she said, reaching for her com-cell. “I’ll tell Karl about your ambush hopes. I hope he agrees with you.”
***
Chapter 25
Wednesday 6:10 a.m. January 8
The sun was up and Marajo felt a little better as she drove. The surrounding snow covered terrain looked cold and forbidding, and the cloudy gray sky didn’t help reduce the forbidding look of the terrain. But the sunlight did at least give the terrain a feeling of being normal and made the road easy to see.
“How about that long story of how you got involved in this adventure?” Larson asked her as he looked out the window at the cold country and enjoyed the beauty of the countryside and the warmth inside the Highlander.
“I worked for Julian Franks as the general manager of his chain of hardware stories. I worked in the main store in Augusta, Maine,” Marajo began. “Started out in 48 as a common clerk and worked my way up to general manager of the main store in 51.” She smiled as she thought of how proud she was when she was promoted to general manager and continued, “He noticed me in March of 51. Said I was a good worker, and made me the senior supply accountant for all his stores.”
“Supply accountant?” Larson asked sitting next to her in the passenger seat.
“Yeah. Hardware stores carry thousands of different products. Things you can’t always find in some of those big home repair chain stores. Small lock washers, odd size drill bits. The big stores don’t like carrying things like that because they can’t sell them on a regular basis. Hardware stores stock parts that have been around for years. Many people don’t believe it, but modern homes require the same little do dads that homes have required since the sixteenth century.”