by R. Chauncey
Derrick looked at him with blood shot eyes and moaned, “I’m the Leader of the world’s most powerful organization. I can do anything for you. Get me a doctor, and I shall make you both richer than King Midas.”
“Not anymore,” Marlene said from a distance. “You’re finished, Leader, and so is the Hidden Society.”
“No, no,” he moaned. “Not I. I am the Leader of the powerful Hidden Society. It will last another thousand years, and I will guide it.”
“Considering that hole in your stomach I doubt if you’ll last another five minutes,” Larson told him.
“No, no,” he moaned in a pain filled voice. “I am the Leader of the Hidden Society.”
Larson shook his head at Derrick’s refusal to accept reality and walked back to Dodge.
“Then it is good-by and good luck,” Larson said as he extended his right hand.
“Same to you,” Dodge said as he ignored Larson’s hand and knelt down and picked up Dorothy’s body. Carrying her like she was a bride being carried over the threshold of her new home he walked toward the exit.
Marlene and Larson watched him until he left the center.
“I wonder why he didn’t shake your hand,” Marlene asked him as she watched Dodge carry Dorothy’s body up the stairs and out the door.
“Maybe he wants no memories of his past life,” Larson said.
“Let’s go,” Marlene said to Larson.
Without a glance in Derrick’s direction they walked out of the center into the light of day.
“Where to now,” Larson asked as they walked away from the open door of the information center.
“Back to the Highlander and then to Las Vegas,” Marlene said.
Larson laughed.
“What’s funny?”
“We’re going to have to spend another night in this desert,” he said.
“But after that it’s Las Vegas and a suite in a five star hotel,” Marlene answered.
“You’re going to put quite charge on your American Express Card, unless you’ve got some money,” he said, opening his parka and pushing it back and opening his shirt and reaching into the money belt he wore and pulling out a handful of bills. “In all the excitement I’d forgotten I was wearing this thing. You got any money?”
“About three thousand dollars,” she said, opening her parka and reaching into her pants pocket for her money. She pulled out a small brown leather change purse and opened it.
Inside was a roll of bills.
“Between us we’ve got a little more than ten thousand dollars,” Larson said, putting his money back into his money belt and closing his shirt and parka.
Marlene closed the purse, put it back in her pocket, closed her parka, and looked at the mountain behind them. “I suppose we’re going to have to climb this mountain and walk back to the Highlander.”
“Yeah, unless you want to go through that gap between these two mountains,” he replied as he started up the mountain.
“No, I don’t,” Marlene said as she followed him.
“But look on the brighter side.”
“What brighter side?”
“No one is going to be hunting us.”
Neither of them noticed the stone door closing.
Derrick looked up at the lights in the ceiling and watched them go out one by one as he screamed, “I am the Leader of the Hidden Society!” Then he fell silent and waited for a lonely, painful death in the darkness.
***
Chapter 58
January 16, 7:45 a.m.
It had taken Marlene and Larson a bit longer to walk back to the Highlander than it had taken them to walk to the Simpson Park Mountains because they slept at night next to a small campfire, and walked during the day admiring the beauty of the desert and the uniqueness of the animals they were lucky enough to see; and because no one was hunting them. They didn’t have to be careful though they did avoid contact with the animals. Even those animals that looked harmless to them.
As Larson warned Marlene, “Some of the cutest animals in the world are the most deadly.”
As they walked they worked out a story to explain their being in the desert. They were just two friends on an outing to enjoying the beauty of the desert and its unusual plants and animals. They decided not to say anything about the absence of cameras to take pictures of the beautiful desert with its unique plants and animals.
They reached the Highlander just before sundown on the fifteenth and decided to sleep in it before they drove for Las Vegas the next morning.
Both were up an hour before sunrise, and had a breakfast of coffee and fruit bars before they started the Highlander and drove to Route 305 and from there to Route 376 and then to US 95 and directly to Las Vegas. The sky was clear and they didn’t have to worry about snow storms or slippery roads. They took their time driving and reached Las Vegas in just over eight hours. Neither of them wanted to stop in some small town and clean up. They were anxious to reach Las Vegas. Especially Marlene who wanted to start her new life free of fear in bright Las Vegas.
By the time they reached Las Vegas the only thing on the radio news stations and the radio and TV talk shows, and the cable channels was the Hidden Society and its history. Not even the wild and sex filled lives of Hollywood stars was of interest to the world. Only the Hidden Society was discussed. It was the talk of the world. Many European Historians now had answers to questions about certain unexplained events that had taken place in Europe from the fifteenth century up to today.
Governments all over the world, especially the democratic ones, were gathering the information on the Internet about the Society as fast as they could get it off the Internet, and creating special legal committees with well-armed police squads to investigate the people listed as members of the Hidden Society and the criminal information about the Society on the Internet.
News people were predicting the arrests of all the members and thousands of others who had associated with the Society and made money off them at the expense of others in the trillions
of dollars.
It was the detailed murders of so many important people in the last fifty years that interested the governments of the world. Unexplained deaths and murders of famous people over a hundred years ago were now answered because of the detailed information on the deaths from the Society’s files. Even some of the dictatorships were talking of arresting powerful people within their countries and cooperating with the democracies in their prosecutions. In addition, they closed the borders of their countries to Society members and soldiers looking for a safe place to hide.
Politicians who had profited from their associations with the members of the Hidden
Society were refusing to speak to reporters and hiding in their homes. Only their lawyers were talking to the press and they were claiming their clients were innocent of any wrong doing.
Some politicians had to hire new lawyers because their regular lawyers were arrested because their names appeared in the information released, and they were charged with various felonies associated with the Society.
As for the members of the Hidden Society, all of those who hadn’t been working on their computers found themselves being picked up by Federal, State, and Local police around the world and brought to police stations for questioning.
The ten members who had been working on their computers and on the Internet when the information was downloaded killed themselves rather than talk to the police.
The vast fortunes of the members of the Hidden Society were confiscated along with all their other possessions because their fortunes and possessions were the direct result of criminal activities
. That included the fortunes and possessions of those who had profited from the Society’s criminal activities. Overnight thousands of people when from rich to poor, and had to rely upon public defenders to defend them in court. Hundreds used suicide to avoid that.
*
When Marlene and Larson checked into Caesar’s Hotel, there wasn’t music coming from the speakers scattered about the lobby, but talk of the Hidden Society and who was in trouble because they associated with it. People were so interested in the news stories about the Hidden
Society the clerk at the registration desk of Caesar’s Hotel paid almost no any attention to the dirty appearance of Larson and Marlene, or the dirty backpacks they carried. Though the pretty young black woman who registered them told them the hotel had a variety of women and men clothing shops available to guests as well as to the public.
“Will you two be sharing a suite?” the young black woman asked them.
“No, ma’am,” Larson said. “Separate suites on the same floor if that’s possible.”
“We’ve got two across the hall from each other on the twenty-third floor,” the young woman said.
“How much are they?” Marlene asked the clerk.
“Five hundred dollars a night,” she answered.
Marlene looked at Larson and said, “Not what we wanted but they sound okay to me.”
“We deserve them,” Larson told her with a big grin of happiness on his face.
“That will be just fine thank you,” Marlene said to the young woman. “We’ve been in the desert for a few days, and we realize we don’t look like normal guests.”
“How many days are you staying?” the young woman asked.
Larson looked at Marlene and asked, “Three days should be enough, right?”
Marlene looked at the young woman and said, “Three days it is.”
“Think they’ll let us in those dress shops in the hotel looking like we do?” Larson asked the young woman.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Western,” the young woman said with an apologetic smile on her face. “Just don’t brush up against anything.” Then she added, “Aren’t these stories about this Hidden Society shocking?”
“They certainly are,” Larson said with a straight face. “I can imagine how such an organization could exist in this world today.”
“We’ve only heard about them over the radio,” Marlene said. “I wonder if they’re true.”
“Oh, I think they are or those politicians in Washington wouldn’t be so interested in them,” the clerk said as she handed them the keycards to their suites.
“I think I’ll listen to the news reports about this strange society while I’m in the tube,”
Marlene said.
“Eh, can we get the clothes we’re wearing cleaned?” Larson asked her.
“Just call room service. They’ll send someone up to get them and clean them for you,” she said as she gave them a careful looking over.
“Don’t look too clean, do we?” Larson asked the young woman. He had seen her carefully look the over.
“No, you don’t,” she said.
“Let’s go to the shops and pick out something new to wear, Larson, before we go to our suites,” Marlene said.
“Please remember not to brush up against anything,” the clerk reminded them as she handed them their room key cards.
Larson laughed and said, “Don’t worry, Miss, we’re very good at keeping our distance from people and things.”
They picked up their backpacks and looked for a bellboy.
Ten minutes later they each paid a bellboy ten dollars to carry their backpacks to their suites while they went shopping in the shop concourse for new clothes. They attracted quite a few stares from guests as they walked about the concourse looking for a shop to stop in. Marlene chose a dress shop. The salesgirl in the fashionable women’s shop they stopped in front of rushed to the door to ask them what they wanted. When Marlene showed the well-dressed saleswoman her American Express card she let them enter, making sure they didn’t brush up against anything, and sold Marlene two evening dresses and a half dozen shorts, slacks, jeans, and blouses. Along with underwear and stockings and shoes and three swim suits. Marlene told the salesgirl to have the clothing delivered to her suite.
Larson got a very disapproving look from the salesman in the high end men’s store they stopped in, and the same response Marlene got when he flashed his American Express blue card. He bought a suit, sport coat, swing trunks, slacks, shirts, shoes; and jeans in a men’s shop. And underwear. He thought the prices were ridiculously high, and had them sent to his suite. Afterwards they went to their individual suites, ordered room service, ate, and got into hot baths for an hour.
*
Dodge didn’t get home until four days later to a family that was happy to see him. His wife was deeply worried about the news stories about the Hidden Society she knew he was a soldier of. He assured her she had nothing to worry about. He was safe from any legal charges. The next day he and his family packed their personal belongings, found a real estate agent to handle the sale of their house, and flew to Vancouver, Canada. A week later they moved to a small town in eastern British Columbia where they started a new life among people who were still talking about the news of the Hidden Society.
Dodge got a job in as a mechanic in an auto shop he had always been good with electric cars, and decided to live off the salary for two year even if the news about the Hidden Society died down before the two years were up. Afterwards, he contact the foreign bank where he had a numbered account and begin to use the eight million dollars he’d saved from his years of killing for the Society.
For the first time in his life Dodge felt like a completely free man.
*
Over the next six months thousands of wealthy businessmen and women who had willingly done business with the Society, were arrested and charged with knowingly profiting from crimes committed by the Society crimes from blackmail to manslaughter and murder.
All but three of the Society’s soldiers fought to the death when the police came to arrest them for questioning regarding murders they had committed for the Hidden Society. Those three who surrendered without a fight became witnesses for the various governments of the world because their lawyers had made legal arrangements for them to receive lighter sentences if they testified against members of the Society.
The Society members, realizing there was no place in the world they could run and hide, surrendered peacefully to the police after their lawyers managed to get legal guarantees they wouldn’t get death sentences in countries that still had death sentences. They made promises not to commit suicide and to tell everything they knew about the Hidden Society and the crimes that had been committed by it while they were members.
All the wealth and property of all the members was confiscated, their families embarrassed, and their influence wiped out. Those that had dealt with the Society for profit were too busy saving themselves by agreeing to testify in the courts of the various nations for lighter sentences to be even concerned with helping the members. And their families, like those of the members were embarrassed.
The FBI arrived at the Society’s information center in the Simpson Park Mountains within two days after the information about the Society was downloaded on the Internet. They spent five months taking the place apart after they shipped the bodies they found to the FBI pathologist lab in Washington in sealed coffins.
Dorothy’s body was never found because Dodge had buried her body a mile from the center in an unmarked grave. He had made sure there was no evidence of a grave being dug where he buried her.
Derrick’s body was of little interest to the FBI, but h
is com-cell had a large amount of valuable criminal information on it about Society members and people who’d done business with the Society. Especially about murders committed for him by a soldier named Dorothy. But her body was never found nor was there any information about her in the vast number of files that had been downloaded on the Internet. Not even her Denver, Colorado condo was discovered by the police. Eventually she would be listed as missing, probably dead by the FBI. There was nothing in the files about Dodge.
The campers, Land Rover, Derrick’s Bentley, the infrared heat detecting device found on the hill facing the Simpson Park Mountains were all found and taken apart for close examination.
In Derrick’s home in the Big Sur area of California the FBI found information about the Ames Ranch and Hotel.
The New Mexico Police and the FBI went to the hotel and after a careful search found the underground headquarters of the Society and the conference room and corridor with the bodies of the other two leaders and Council of Twenty. Their expensive cars were found in the sealed garage. All of their names and what they had done were among the files downloaded on the Internet.
Marlene reestablished contact with her family and told them what she had done and why. She didn’t tell them about Larson, because she had promised him she’d keep his part in exposing the Society secret. Her family was delighted she was alive and healthy, and promised never to mention to anyone what she had done. Neighbors and relatives were told that she had been living alone because she didn’t want to be bothered by anyone.
Much of the Hidden Society’s records were historical and historians from all over the world descended up on those records like vultures on a dead animal. Many unanswered historical questions were answered once the historians began going over the records. What surprised most historians were the Hidden Society’s involvement in some of the greatest historical events in the history of the world since its creation in 1049. It amazed the historians how thorough the Hidden Society had gotten into the lives of famous and powerful people of the pass as well as the present. How they had killed famous people though accidents and murder to further their own interests. Every historians who was given the privilege of reading the historical records of the