Chapter 3

Saturday, 4:33 a.m. January 4, three hours and thirty-three minutes earlier

Larson had made it back to his suburban home outside of Chicago within seven hours in spite of the snowstorm. He could have done it in four or five hours, but unlike far too many drivers during the winter, he didn’t believe in driving like a damn fool during a snowstorm. Such drivers seldom made it home, but they did attract the attention of the local paramedics and the state police, as well as the new media desperate for interesting and exciting news to tell their viewers. 

As soon as he entered his garage and closed the overhead door, he did exactly as Julian Franks had told him to do.

Lucky for him he believed in having a smoke and heat detector in his garage even though garage fires were now very rare now that internal combustion engines were now no

longer manufactured except for the few eccentrics who believed internal combustion engines were more romantic than electric engines. Some of the eccentrics even kept gasoline in their garages in plastic containers. Very foolish considering the heat internal combustion engines produced.

Larson also kept a box of six nine volt batteries on the narrow work bench at the back of his garage, one could never tell when you’d need a nine volt battery – at least that’s what Larson told himself, and the batteries still had two years to go before they reached their expiration date.

The plastic computer boxes in electric cars in the last quarter of the twenty first century sat on top of the engines and were red in color making them easy to identify. That way an electrical automotive engineer, mechanics were a thing of the past, could pop the air-watertight plastic cover off the box, plug his or her diagnostic machine into the car’s computer’ s USB port and adjust the car’s engine back to its original 99.89 percent efficiency level. Nothing was one hundred percent.

An electric engine, unlike an internal combustion engine, produced very little heat. Burnt hands and elbows were a thing of the past, and no toxic fumes. But they produced a tremendous amount of voltage, and warning signs were placed right where anyone could see them on top of the engine and the computer box. Government regulations required Danger High Voltage warning signs in red two inch high letters.

The computer box was bright red in color when the car was new but now it was a dull, dirty red after twenty-eight years of driving. It was twelve inches by twelve inches by one and a half inches in thickness with a lid that could be easily popped opened with the tip of a screw driver, one that didn’t conduct electricity. The travel chip was incased in its own little plastic box, and like the computer box easily opened. Placing a nine volt battery against it, positive to negative, would wipe out the last trip a person took in their car, motor bike, or any other electric-automotive vehicle. Someone as unfamiliar with electric engines, as was Larson, could do it in ten minutes or less. It took Larson seven minutes and he wore heavy rubber gloves he’d taken from the bench to be on the safe side. Then he removed the chip, put it in his pocket, and closed the plastic box and the hood of his car. 

He walked into his kitchen five minutes later, hung his coat on the wooden coat peg sticking out from the wooden bar in the kitchen closet, removed his shoes and put on his slippers, and closed the door and walked into his first floor twenty-five by thirty-two feet study a few minutes later.

I should get some sleep, he thought as he placed the laptop and the two flash drives next to it on his ebony, brown leather covered desk. But no I want to read the bullshit this Julian Franks guy put on this laptop. I may get a good story out of it. But coffee first.

Twenty minutes later Larson placed a gray clay mug of hot coffee on a coaster on his desk and settled down in his high back black cloth chair, opened up the laptop Julian Franks had given him and turned it on.

‘For security reasons this computer will not respond to verbal commands or respond verbally.’ appeared on the monitor.

Larson smiled and shook his head. Melodramatic as hell. Hope there’s no song and dance show, because I’m tired. He reached for the keyboard and pushed enter.

‘Please place flash-drive one in the USB port,’ appeared on the screen.

He looked at the two flash drives laying to the right of the laptop and picked up the first one and stuck it into the USB port and pushed enter.

‘This is flash drive two.’

Larson removed the drive and put the other one into the USB port and pushed enter.

After you have read this drive either destroy it or hide it some place where no one will look. And do not let anyone know you have it. Do not place it into a safety deposit box. The Hidden Society can get into any safety deposit box in any bank in the world at any time.

Larson shrugged and continued reading.

The Hidden Society was formed in the year 1049 in Lyons, France. It began as a guild of various types of merchants whose only desire was to get their wares safely to the nearby village markets as soon as possible and without trouble from the local highway men that operated on the roads in of all Europe at that period in European history. The members quickly learned to get their wares to the various village markets they would need the help of the most vicious band of highway men in France. The Society of Merchants, as the Hidden Society was known then, hired these highway men, and from 1049 till the First Crusade it prospered.

The highway men gave their protection to the Society of Merchants because a

Society member convinced them they could make more money, and live better protecting the Society’s goods than stealing from the Society’s merchants and killing them. The local

powerful feudal lords would not bother the highway men if they protected the movement of

goods through their fiefdoms because the lords would be able to collect taxes on the goods moving through their fiefdoms and taxes on those goods sold in the various villages of their fiefdoms.

It was an arrangement in which everyone prospered especially the Society of Merchants and the highway men who worked for them.

The victory of the Frank Crusaders over the Moslems during the First Crusade opened up a whole new world of trade for the Society of Merchants. They relocated part of their operations from Lyons to Venice, and began trading with the Moslems. To avoid attracting the attention of the wealthy merchants of Venice, The Society divided their trading operations in Venice into five different companies, and met only once a year, and never on the same day or date or in the same place to develop plans to stay in business.

By this time the Society of Merchants consisted of a hundred and two members with a force of a thousand well paid military supporters. None of these soldiers, as they became known, looked or acted like soldiers though all were well trained in the use of weapons of the period. From board sword and battle ax and even poison which was considered a woman’s weapon.

Unlike the Templars Knights, the Society of Merchants operated in secrecy. Never attract attention, pay your taxes, respect those in power, and avoid displaying the Society’s wealth became the unwritten motto of the Society of Merchants. By the end of the Crusades in the 13th century, the Society of Merchants had become richer than the Templars, but remained unknown to the powerful princes and kings of the period. Even the Popes of the

Catholic Church knew nothing of them.

The Society of Merchants would do business with anyone regardless of their religious views as long as they could make a profit on what they bought and sold.

This ability to remain unknown was due to the Society’s practice of never allowing any one member to accumulate great wealth in gold and silver, and having no great land owners among the members. By constantly diversifying, spreading their wealth in gold and land into the hands of all the members the Society never appeared to be anything but a small collection of obedient, moderately prosperous merchants and of no interest to any prince, king, or the Popes of the Catholic Church.

To convince the powerful kings, princes, and lords of Western Europe, the area where they found it best to operate because of the growing power of the kings, they were no more than individual merchants who were sometimes successful. Certain merchants of the Society were told to make foolish decisions that cost them their businesses.

But no member ever went poor. The other members would always secretly come to the failed members’ assistance. And the failed member would always move into a town or city where the Society had no one, and start up in business again. That way the Society continued to expand and not attract the attention of kings who were always in need of money because of their continuous wars, which the Society secretly financed and profited from.

With wealth comes the problem of inheritance. Medieval Europe did not believe in women inheriting large estates or wealth. And since no male member could guarantee they would have only male children, and not all arranged marriages are happy and produce male heirs, the Society allowed women to inherit secretly. A blood male member whose loyalty was proven inherited for a female member with the understanding that the property he inherited belonged to the female member, and the females worked hand in hand with the males to keep the Society of Merchants wealthy, powerful, and secret.

And secrecy, plus the policy of keeping all members, including the highway men of the Society of Merchants well paid and happy was the secret of the Society’s long life.

In the 14th century the Bubonic Plague, which killed nearly sixty percent of the European population, solved the problem of the growing membership. Too many members endangered the Society. Since too many members meant too much idle talk and talk endangered the secrecy of the Society of Merchants. And more members meant more soldiers to protect the members and their businesses. The Plague killed off four-fifths of the members and soldiers leaving only fifty members and eighty-one highway men, soldiers, alive out of a membership of over three hundred and nearly six hundred soldiers.

The sharp reduction in the population of Europe favored the Society. Trading opportunities expanded, and so did learning. The Bubonic Plague had helped bring about the age of science and exploration. And both favored the Society of Merchants.

By the mid fifteen hundreds the Society of Merchants was no longer involved in just trade, they were involved in banking and financing and profited from both. Smalls sums from the various members were invested in trading and banking, and made millions for the Society. They didn’t care how the money was made by trading or what was traded, or what banking agreements were made as long as the Society’s members made money. Profits were the only concern of the Society of Merchants. And God help the merchant or banker who was foolish enough to think they could cheat the Society of Merchants.

The Society of Merchants grew richer than the most powerful state in the World.

To guarantee the Society’s existence a decision was made in 1660 by the three most powerful leaders that the future membership of the Society must never be larger than one hundred. The number of highway men was also reduced to one hundred, and they as before remained soldiers educated, trained, and armed with the best weapons in secret. But their services were only for the Society of Merchants. This decision also meant that only the smartest sons and daughters of the members would rise to membership level. And from their ranks three leaders, always the most intelligent, were chosen. One of which was the Leader. Murder by poison became a way of eliminating those that were considered undesirable. And any sign of weakness and disloyalty to the Society by any member was immediately punished by a slow, painful death. Fear was now combined with wealth to keep members obedient.

As for the relatives of the member and the soldiers, they were kept ignorant of the Society and lived normal lives.

If one is to kill members for weakness and disloyalty, one must acquire the information that exposes weakness and disloyalty.

By 1693 the three leaders were required to report their yearly activities to a council of twenty senior members chosen from among the other ninety-seven members. That way the three could not dominate the Society. Any attempt by any one of the three to dominate the Society resulted in that person’s immediate painful death. If the three were working together to dominate the Society, all three could be killed and quickly replaced by members who were loyal and three others from among the relatives of the dead members were chosen to replace them to keep the membership at exactly one hundred. But only after the three replacements were thoroughly examined by the Council of Twenty and approved of as replacements. The same rule also applied to the members of the Council of Twenty.

The Council of Twenty also had control over the soldiers of the Society who were kept comfortable. In addition to being well paid, educated, and trained, all were experienced, in every method of killing known to humans. Some were even sent to Asia to learned Asian methods of fighting and killing. When they returned to Europe, they taught their fellow soldiers, with the approval of the three leaders and the Council of Twenty, these Asian killing skills. Within a short period of time, fifty years, even the killing skills of the fable ninja assassins of Japan paled in comparison to the killing skills of the soldiers of the Society of Merchants.

Such methods guaranteed the Society of Merchants would remain secret.

The Age of Exploration increased the Society’s wealth. The leaders didn’t invest money in exploration. They didn’t care whether explorers made contact with undiscovered civilizations or not. All they wanted to do was make money off secret trading agreements with those civilizations, or financing the destruction of those civilizations if it was more profitable.

Much of the gold that resulted from the destruction of the Aztec and Incan Empires went into the pockets of the Society right after it passed through Spain, because the Society secretly financed the expansion of the Spanish Empire in the New World. The same thing occurred with slave trading out of Africa or anywhere else for that matter. But no member or soldier ever participated in the expansion of the Spain Empire, or the empires of any of the other European nations. They just made money off the expansions regardless of the cost in blood or human suffering.

The Society of Merchants was well placed to profit handsomely from the Scientific Revolution. They profited from every scientific invention, regardless of the impact it had upon humanity.

But the improvements in communications and the rise of powerful nation states threatened the secrecy of the Society. No one knew about them, but the development of intelligence agencies within these new developing nations threatened to expose the existence of the Society. Two things occurred to prevent that.

The Society eliminated the name Society of Merchants and became simply the Society or Hidden Society as its members and soldiers referred to it, and infiltrated the intelligence agencies of the various nations. But only at the lower administrative levels where they weren’t required to make decisions, but were in positions to know what decisions were made by the various intelligence agencies. The Society, as it continued to be called by its members, wasn’t interested in controlling a nation’s intelligence agency. They just wanted to know if the nation knew about them. That way the leaders of the Society were capable to making decisions that guaranteed the continued secrecy of the Society and its accumulation of wealth.

This was possible because few members were required to the run the Society. Those that didn’t work directly for the Society got jobs working in the various intelligence agencies of the various nations, and their loyalty to the states they worked for was never questioned because they never did anything to bring their loyalty into question.

Many an insignificant clerk working for a European intelligence agency was a member of the Society.

The Society was safe, and far more ruthless than it had been when it was first created. It was now a Society dedicated to its own existence. And nothing and no one mattered except the Society and its members and soldiers.

In 1874 the Society relocated its headquarters to the United States, because it was a country where money was more important than God and could buy most politicians then as well as now. 

By the beginning of the 20th century the Society’s wealth was over a hundred billion dollars. But only the three leaders and the Council of Twenty actually knew the Society’s true wealth because it was spread among numerous businesses in numerous countries under different names.

The Society made money from every invention and improvement in human life. Its members had become addicted to wealth and the power that came with wealth.

Both World Wars made the Society richer and more powerful, even though the

Society had nothing to do with starting or ending the wars. They dealt with all sides during the World Wars, and cared nothing for those millions who suffered as long as the Hidden Society grew richer and more powerful. The Society sold a hundred thousand insurance policies to Jews for a thousand dollars each with the promise they would be gotten out of Germany or Europe after the Nazis had conquered Europe. Not one of those Jews ever got out of Europe or survived the Nazis.

Not one member or soldier of the Society served in any of the armed forces of the nations that fought in those wars. The same was true of the Cold War. The arms race made the Society more money than it made the producers of the weapons of destruction. The Society profited by making many small investments in the small companies that made parts for those larger companies that built the weapons of mass destruction. They used that money to finance the political careers of greedy and stupid American Congress members who kept America buying weapons it had no use for. And they eliminated anyone who was a threat to their profits.

The invention of the microchip gave it unlimited power when it became involved with the development of chips that allowed it get into every computer in the world. The best computer experts worked for them as well as the world’s best hackers. Though none of these people knew they were working for the Hidden Society. Anyone with such skills who refused to work for the Society, after being approached was murdered in cleverly arranged accidents. Others were shot down in the streets. The Society didn’t care who took the blame for the killings. Large amounts of money convinced most computer experts and hackers to work for the Society.

But just as computers worked in the Hidden Society’s favor, they also worked against it. Computer viruses threatened the Society with exposure when independent computer experts proposed that viruses were the creation of a ruthless and secret cabal that deliberately created viruses to steal money from the world’s banks and cover their tracks.

These experts were right, because the Society’s computer hackers and experts created the best viruses.

By 2012 governments and private computer labs around the world were searching for an evil virus producer. Even though there was no evidence of any kind that supported the existence of such a producer. Those working for the Society knew better than to talk, but they all warned the Society’s leaders it was only a matter of time before some government or private company computer expert traced a virus to the Hidden Society.

What saved the Society from exposure was Paul Duffy.

Duffy worked for the Arden Chip Company as a software developer in the town of Arden, fifty-six miles southwest of Las Vegas, Nevada. In his basement workroom in his

home he built over a period of twenty years a chip he called the all-purpose chip with a software program that worked only with his all-purpose chip. It was a thick, large square chip a little larger and thicker than a half dollar. It consisted of five individual parts which fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.

The first chip was the master chip which enabled the other four chips to work together, and to do their jobs separately while protecting them all from viruses and hackers by detecting their presence before they could get into the computer’s hard drive. It was controlled by the software Duffy had developed to allow it to work with any software program in the world. It also enabled the other four chips to do the same thing. 

The second chip was a security chip. The chip analyzed a computer’s firewall for weaknesses. If one was discovered the user was alerted allowing the user to upgrade their firewall anytime the user wished and with any code they wanted.

The third chip allowed the computer user to program the second chip to improve the computer’s firewall automatically, and explain to the user how this was done. The user’s computer was safe from hackers.

The fourth chip was a language chip. Any known human language or numerical system, ancient and/or still in use, could be read and reduced to the user’s language.

The fifth chip was a decoding chip. Working with the language chip it was capable of decoding any code if the code was based upon any known alphabet system making it the most valuable of the five chips.

Duffy told the company he worked for about his all-purpose chip and its special software program, and they agreed to a demonstration. But Duffy’s program and all-purpose chips were not perfected, there were still problems with it, and the Arden Chip company didn’t want to spend the money required to work out the glitches in the program and chip. So they rejected his program and chip, and. Duffy then got a federal patent on the chip.

The Society found out about it because its computer people had accessed the government’s patent offices’ computers years ago, and immediately acquired the patent rights in 2034 to the chip legally through a small silicon chip company one of the members owned. Duffy was paid seventeen million dollars, and he retired. It was decided by the leaders and the Council of Twenty not to kill Duffy even in an accident, because it might attract attention since the Arden Chip Company knew about Duffy’s chip though they had rejected it. And the Society didn’t want anyone, especially the police, developing a case on Duffy’s death.             

The Hidden Society’s experts went to work on the chip as soon as they acquired the legal rights to it, and within five years improved upon the chip and the program. The new all-purpose chip was capable of accessing any computer in the world via the world’s telephone system and satellites. The Hidden Society now had absolute power through knowledge because there wasn’t a computer in the world their experts couldn’t get into. And to guarantee they’d keep that power certain soldiers within the Society were trained to spy on all members and soldiers. There was always the risk that someone within the Society would develop a conscious and tell the world about the Hidden Society.

I, Julian Franks, was one of the three leaders of the Society from 2044 to 2064 and I knew the Society had to be exposed, because it had become a threat to democracy. If not stopped through exposure before it became too powerful to stop, it would rule the world. I had to be very careful in gathering the information I’ve put on this drive. Any indication to a member or soldier that I was gathering information to betray the Hidden Society would have immediately resulted in my death by the most inhuman methods.

As a leader I had the right to examine the Society’s records to make sure they were intact and safe. I also knew who were the soldiers who spied on the members and soldiers, and I managed to avoid arousing suspicion about my activities. No one in the Society knew what I was doing. When I stepped down as a leader in 2064, I had all that I needed to expose the Society except one thing. A person I could rely upon to expose the Society.

Knowledge is the real secret to the Society’s power. There is no need to control heads of powerful states or corporations when whatever they know is also known by the Society whether it is made public or not.

I was a born to one of the three leaders of the Society sixty-five years ago, and became a leader myself. I realized after forty-six years of being a member and one of three leaders that the Society had to be destroyed. I will not deny that I had personal reasons for wanting to destroy the Society, but those reasons will remain mine to take to my grave.

The Society’s greatest strength is that it is unknown to the world. The best way to destroy the Society is to let the world know of its existence and power, and the vast information it possess. And that can be done only by dumping its files on the world Internet. Flash drive two will explain how that is to be done.

If you do not believe what I have written here, then I have failed, and the Society will one day rule the Earth as its private fiefdom.

Larson looked at the laptop monitor for a few seconds before he burst out laughing.

“That is the biggest crock of shit I’ve read in my entire life,” he said between the roar of laughter. He laughed so hard and long he began to cough from the lack of breathing. He pushed his chair back and stood up laughing and coughing between snatches of breath. He stumbled toward the door his study, walked out into the hall, and headed for the bathroom on the first floor. He ran cold water in the face bowl, splashed some on his face to calm himself down, and dried his face with a towel. Then he went to the kitchen for another mug of coffee. By the time he reached the kitchen he wasn’t laughing or coughing anymore. He was thinking about the empty coffee mug on his desk. He went back to his study, got the empty mug, and walked to the kitchen thinking, What if it’s all true? Nonsense.

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