Chapter 19

January 7, 3:47 p.m.

Larson took his time walking to Marajo’s room. He kept looking around to made sure no one was watching him and he wondered if he was acting so suspiciously he‘d attract attention anyway. He hoped not. But he did turn around twice as if he was lost and looking for something – the way he imagined one of his fictional tough guys would do, before he walked around to the back of the motel to room 244 and knocked on the door. He couldn’t help but feel he was living a scene out of one of his mystery novels.

All I need is some high tech weapon that shoots a thousand rounds a minute and a dozen bad guys closing in on me. I’ll kill’em all. He grinned a foolish grin.

He heard the bolt on the door being moved then the door being unlocked and opened.

“Come in,” Marajo said, stepping back as soon as she’d opened the door and saw it was him.

He didn’t have time to say hello after he entered before she closed, locked, and bolted the door shut.

“Everything okay?” he asked as he looked about the warm, typical looking motel room. He spotted the bathroom door off in the right corner and rushed toward it dropping his bag and taking off his coat as he did so.

“So far,” she answered, ignoring his move to the bathroom.

Ten minutes later he opened the bathroom door and walked out drying his hands on a towel and asked, “So what’s the next move.”

“You made a statement in the cabin I took you to after I untied you and before you left,” Marajo said. She was sitting on the bed.

“I remember. The cabin you took me to after you tried to cave in my skull,” he corrected her.

“If I’d tried that you’d be dead. You said you know where the Society keeps their information.”

“Yes, I do.” He walked back to the washroom and hung the towel back on the rack and came out and sat down in a chair next to the desk.

Marajo stared at him with an unbelievable expression.

“What?” he asked, looking at her as if he’d done something wrong.

“How the hell did you get that?” she asked, sitting across from him on the bed.

“Julian gave it to me,” he said.

“Why would he do that?”

He told her in fifteen minutes about the letter and the trip to the cabin and the laptop and two drives Julian gave him.

“You have this information in your com-cell?”

“Yes. The second drive he gave me told me how to remove the chip from that drive that had the information on it and place it in my com-cell. And I did it.”

“I knew Julian knew a lot about computers, but I didn’t know he knew enough to put an information chip in a flash drive,” she said.

“Well, I followed the information he put on that second drive and the darn thing worked,” Larson told her.

“Why the hell would he choose a retired high school history teacher to expose the Society?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea. And considering that blow on the head I got from you, I wish the hell he hadn’t. I wish to hell I’d thrown that damn letter in the trash after I read it.”

“By the way what did you hit me with?” he asked her.

“A tire iron,” she answered.

“That is just nasty,” he told her in an angry voice. “You could have killed me.”

“I didn’t hit you that hard,” Marajo said.

“Well, it damn sure felt like you hit me as hard as you could,” he told her.

“Julian wouldn’t have chosen you at random,” she said with a thoughtful expression on her face. “He would have had a specific reason for contacting you and giving you those drives. How did he contact you?”

“By mail.”

“E-mail?” she asked.

“By regular mail delivery.”

“No e-mails?” she asked, standing up. “We’d better prepare to leave. The Society’s killers are probably on to me by now.”

“No e-mails.”

“That makes sense,” she said. “E-mails can be easily traced by the Society.”

“Just goes to show you our modern computerized e-mail system isn’t as safe as the software companies would like us to believe.”

“Think,” she said as she walked to the closet and opened it.

“Think about what?”

“Something that could have made you his choice to contact me,” she pulled out of the closet a large, worn black leather traveling bag and walked to the bed and sat it on the bed.

“Look, Marajo. You don’t mind me calling you Marajo, do you?”

“No, I don’t. I’ve already told you that. Though that’s not my real name,” she replied, opening the bag.

“I never met, or heard of Julian Franks, before I got that letter from him. I read it and I answered it just out of curiosity. Something I can guarantee you I will never do again. I’m a retired high school history, thirty-six years as a teacher I may add, who writes fiction for a hobby. My success as a writer has made my retirement salary, which I may also add is large enough for me to live comfortably on, into pocket change for me. I can’t imagine any reason Julian Franks would have had for selecting me to destroy the Hidden Society.”

She stopped as she was reaching into the open the bag and looked at him. “If you and Julian never met, then it was probably something you wrote that attracted his attention and convinced him to use you.”

“Outside of my work as a teacher I’ve never written anything but fiction,” he said.

He face took on a serious expression. “Unless?”

“Unless what?”

“Well, when I was working on my Master’s Degree I wrote a paper entitled ‘Greed and Power’.”

“What was it about?” she asked, returning to the leather bag.

“It was about how the accumulation of wealth and power in the hands of a few greedy people was the greatest threat to democracy and freedom in the world. I pointed out, from my research, that some people, mostly men, were willing to deal with terrorists and criminals to acquire more wealth and power. I pointed out that wealth and power with some of these men had replaced their families and God as the most important things in their lives.”

Marajo stopped unpacking the bag and looked at him. She was holding a brown cardboard box in her left hand as she said, “My God!”

“What?”

“Julian was desperate when he mailed that letter to you asking you to come and see him. He had been searching for years for someone to help me expose the Hidden Society, and he hadn’t found anyone till he came across your Master’s Degree paper. You were the last person he had to turn to. That’s why he didn’t keep you long. He knew the Society was on to him, or soon would be, and he had run out of time.”

“He was at one time one of the three leaders of the Society according to the first flash drive. Why couldn’t he have exposed the Society?”

“He may have been a leader, but his power was limited by the Council of Twenty and two other leaders and the other members and soldiers. If they had detected any action on his part as a threat to the Society, they would have killed him immediately,” she said as she placed the box on the bed next to the bag. “What have you got in that bag of yours?” She nodded toward his traveling bag on the floor next to the chair in which he was sitting.

“Change of clothes, extra pair of boots, six pairs of sock and underwear, and a medical kit. Plus the standard personal gear. Toothbrush, toothpaste, shaving equipment.

And I brought a pair of binoculars and a flashlight just in case we need them.”

“Long underwear I hope. We’re going to be outdoors until we succeed. And it’ll be cold even though we’re heading southwest.”

“Yeah, I’ve got two sets of long underwear,” he answered, looking at the box in her right hand. “Let me guess what’s in that box. A couple of pistols with ammunition “

“Two semi-automatics that can hold fourteen round magazines with three extra loaded magazines for each of us. Pistols, six shooters, have too many moving parts. They tend to jam. Grab the towels out of the bathroom. And pack them in your bag. You should have a backpack. The sun will be setting in a few hours and we’ll leave then. Get some rest if you need it.”

“Why did Julian pick you?” he asked.

“Long story. Tell you on the way. And no we weren’t lovers. By the way when did you write this paper Greed and Power?”

“May of 2038. I was attending Chicago State University. I got my bachelor’s degree there, too.”

“The University published the paper?”

“No it wasn’t a Master’s thesis. They just put it in the history department computer files.”

She didn’t say anything because she was thinking.

“Anything odd about that?” Larson asked.

“Julian had apparently become so desperate to find someone to help me expose the Society he started reading information from colleges. He came across your paper and did some checking on you and decided you were the person I needed. You were probably his last hope.”

“You know my professor said it was an unusual and original subject for a paper. He wanted me to develop it into a thesis for my Master’s. But I didn’t need a thesis to get a

Master’s. I wasn’t interested in trying for a Doctor’s Degree.”

“Why not?”

“You don’t need a Doctorate’s Degree to teach in high school. Even a Master’s isn’t necessary for that,” he said.

“Then why did you get a Master’s Degree?” she asked as she put the box on the bed and removed a faded blue heavy cotton backpack from her leather bag.

“To get into another lane for an increase in salary,” he answered.

“Do you have a backpack?”

“No. Don’t need one, do I?”

“I’ve another one in the Highlander outside. Easier to carry our things in than a regular bag,” she told him, setting the bag on the floor. “Let get some sleep after I’ve put my things in this backpack. You can repack your things in the backpack in the Highlander once we’re on our way.”

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