Chapter 12

Monday, 2 a.m. January 6. In an abandoned cabin

Larson woke up and his head felt terrible. Never in his life had he had such a headache. It didn’t have the mild throb as his headaches usually had when he got one, which was very rare. It was just one long line of continuous pain. And there was a painful lump on the back of his head. It hurt him to even open his eyes. When he did he was surprised by darkness.

My God, he thought. Am I blind? He felt a cloth tied about his eyes. I’m blindfolded.

He felt uncomfortable and confused. He focused a few seconds on his body and realized he was lying on his back with his arms behind him. He tried to move his right hand from behind his back to touch his face. He couldn’t! Something was holding his right hand behind his back with his left hand. It took a few seconds of thinking through the terrible pain of the headache and painful lump on the back of his head for him to realize he was tired up.

What on earth for, immediately flashed through his pain racked head.

He tried to move his body right then left. He felt something soft under him like he was lying on a bed. He tired moving his legs and realized they, too, were tied together. Somebody had knocked him unconscious then him tied up and blindfolded him.

Events came rushing back to him. He was getting ready to get into his rented Jeep parked in that dark corner of the movie theater’s parking lot after the movie when he felt something was behind him and then something struck him on the back of the head knocking him unconscious. And now here he was tired up and blindfolded.

“Who did this to me?” he demanded in an angry voice. Fortunately he wasn’t gagged.

“Who are you?” the female asked in a calm voice. She was standing a few yards away from him.

The voice sounded as if it came from his left near his head.

“Who the hell are you?” he roared in return. The pain in his head increased.

“The person who knocked you unconscious and tied you up,” she said. “Now answer my question.”

“I’m not answering any fucking questions until I’m released.”

“Your name is Larson Western. You are a retired high school history teacher for the Chicago Public School System, and a successful mystery writer. You live in the suburb of Oak Park just west of Chicago.”

“If you know all that then release me,” he demanded.

“The Society is resourceful,” she said. “Using the identity of a real person is not above them.”

“The Society?” he asked.

“There are two questions I want an answer to, Mr. Western. Are you really who you say you are? And why are you here?”

“Check my ID,” he told her. “And untie me.”

“The Society can make fake ID that’ll past any inspection.”

“Call the police. They’ll check me out.”

“The Society would intercept the call and send their soldiers dressed as the police. Why are you here?”

“I was doing research on a novel I’m writing,” he lied.

“No one comes to Westport to do research. Anything you wanted to find out about this town and its people you could have gotten off the Internet. I’m growing impatient, Mr. Western, and this cabin is isolated and has no heating system. It’s going to snow tonight, and the temperature is going to drop to twenty below. I walk out of here and it will be days before your body is found. The people at the Westport Hotel will miss you within twenty-four hours. But maybe as much as a week will pass before your body is found. And freezing to death is probably not a pleasant form of death.”

“I’m just a writer doing research for a novel,” he told her.

“I will ask you one more time, Mr. Western then I’m leaving you to a cold and most unpleasant death. Who are you?”

Her voice had a serious sound to it Larson couldn’t have missed even if he had tired.

“I’m waiting, Mr. Western,” she said in a voice that had the sound of finality in it.

Larson decided the truth was the best way to go if he wanted to avoid freezing to death.

“Two weeks before Christmas I got a letter from a Julian Franks to come to his home in northwestern Illinois. I went there earlier this month and he gave me a flash drive about a Hidden Society originally known as the Society of Merchants.”

The woman’s hardened expression softened the moment Larson said Society of Merchants. That was a name she hadn’t heard in years. Julian had told her that was the original name of the Hidden Society when she agreed to help him. Many members and soldiers of the Society didn’t know the original name of the Society. He had also told her anyone locating her would probably mention the name as proof they came from him.

“He said this Society has been around for over a thousand years, and that it was very powerful with unlimited resources. Greed and power for control are its only reasons for existing he said, and it must be stopped before it dominates the world, and destroys democracy. And, according to Julian Franks, the only way to do that is to expose it to the world.” He stopped wondering if the woman believed him. He wouldn’t have if he was in her position.

The woman looked at him with an expression that said she didn’t know whether to believe him or not. She had been waiting for twenty years for someone to show up and help her do exactly what this man had told her Julian said must be done to destroy the Society.

“Oh, one other thing,” Larson said. “Cherry Wood. Don’t ask me what the hell that means because I don’t know.”

The two words stunned her and her face went blank. She backed to a dirty wooden chair next to an equally dirty wooden table and dropped down onto it with a thud. A small cloud of dust rose up from the seat of the chair. They were the code words Julian told her a contact would give her. She had a lost expression on her face.

“Hay!” Larson yelled at her noticing she was quiet after hearing her sit down. “Are you still here?”

“Yes.” she quickly replied blinking her eyes to bring her mind back to the present situation. “Be quiet. I have to think.”

“Think about untying me,” he advised her.

“Quiet!” she yelled at him.

Larson shut up. It sounded like the safest policy.

Years ago when we faked my death he told me someone would come to me with information that would expose the Society. And he said that person wouldn’t be like anyone I’d expect. She looked at Larson tied up on the dirty cot and thought. I could never have imagined in a thousand years someone like this person. I expected a trained, experienced killer. And I get a retired high school history teacher who writes mysteries. What the hell was Julian thinking when he chose this man? Her mind went blank as she stared at him. What should I do? After five minutes she made up her mind. After twenty years of waiting it was time to take a chance because there was nothing else she could do.

She got up and walked over to the cot and took a hunting knife out of her right coat pocket, removed the black leather sheath from the sharp silvery blade, rolled him over on his left side, and cut the ropes that held his hands and feet together. “Set up,” she said. “Remove the cloth from your eyes, and listen to me.” She put the knife back in its sheath and put the knife back in her pocket and backed to the chair and sat down.

Larson freed his hands from the ropes, swung his feet over the left side of the bed, sat up, and removed the cloth from his eyes. A small flash light set up as a lamp on the dirty wooden table hit him in the eyes and increased the pain in his head. There was just enough light for him to stare into the face of the woman who had been at the information desk in the Duffy Electric Parts Company.

“You!” he exclaimed in a surprised voice.

“Remove the rope from your feet,” she told him. She was pointing a pistol at him.

Larson leaned over, the pain in his head got worse, and quickly untied the ropes from around his ankles. “Lady, what the hell is this?” he growled angrily as he straightened up.

“A forty-five caliber, six shot Smith and Wesson colt revolver. And I know how to use it.”

He looked at the dark colored pistol she was holding in her right hand and ignored it. There was nothing else he could do other than suffer with the terrible headache and the painful lump on the back of his head, and do as she said or get shot. And he had no doubt she was capable of that.

“Don’t forget I have this,” she advised him as she moved the pistol up and down.

“I have no intentions of doing so,” he assured her in a voice that didn’t have a sound of friendliness in it.

“Very wise of you, Mr. Western,” she replied.

“You knocked me out and brought me here?” he asked, looking around a dirty, dust dominated wooden cabin. The dust on the wooded floor of the cabin was so thick he could have written his name in it, erased it and written it again without touching the wooden floor underneath. “Where is this place?”

“Yes, but it wasn’t easy. And where it’s at is not your concern. You weight a lot.”

“Because of that damn fictitious nonsense about a Hidden Society Julian wrote about?” The angry expression on his face indicated the headache and the lump on the back of his head hadn’t declined in the least.

“Nonsense?” she asked in a surprised voice.

“Yes!” he snapped at her. “Nonsense!”

Larson stood up to stretch his legs and arms ignoring the pistol in her right hand. His legs and arms felt stiff from being tied up.

“How long have I been here?” he asked her.

She ignored his question. “If there is one thing the Hidden Society isn’t, Mr. Western, it’s nonsense. They are a ruthless society of blood thirsty fanatics who are willing to do anything to maintain their secrecy, their wealth, and to increase their power.”

“Marajo,” Larson said as he started to brush dirt and dust from his clothes. “That’s what Mr. Duffy called you.”

“Sit down and listen to me, Mr. Western,” she said.

“Lady, Marajo, all I want to do is go home,” he replied.

“Sit down!” she ordered him.

Larson looked at the pistol in her right hand, realized he wasn’t in any position to argue even if he was free of restrains and could see, and sat down on the dusty cot. A small cloud of dust arose around him.

“If you have a family as if this moment, their lives are in great danger,” she said. “So are those of your relatives, friends, and neighbors. The Society will kill anyone close to you to get their hands on that flash drive Julian Franks gave you.” She sighed and added. “And now so are mine if they know who I really am and where I live.”

The tone of her voice shocked him. “The information this guy Julian gave me on that flash drive was true?” His voice contained a touch of disbelief.

“Yes. And it doesn’t surprise me you don’t believe what you’ve read. I didn’t believe the story Julian told me about the Hidden Society over twenty years ago. Until he showed me some of the intimate information the Society had on six very powerful political leaders in the world. When he predicted the deaths of five of those leaders by accidents two years before they died, I believed him.”

“Wait a minute,” he said. “How do you know I got a flash drive from Mr. Franks?”

“Because he told me years ago someone would come to meet me with information about the Hidden Society, and a flash drive is a convenient way to carry such information.

And you just told me you got a flash drive from Julian Franks.”

“Yes, I did, didn’t I?” he asked. “This headache and that painful lump on the back of my head is confusing me.”

Marajo said nothing.

“Then you believe me?” he asked as he looked around for his hat.

“Give me your wallet?” she said.

“Why?”

“Give it to me!”

He stood up and unzipped his parka from the bottom up to his stomach and reached into his front left pants pocket and took out his wallet and tossed it to her. He turned around and looked on the other side of the cot and saw his hat lying on the floor. He sat down and leaned over and picked it up, but didn’t put it on his head. The lump on the back of his head was too sensitive for his hat.

I’m slipping, she thought. I should have taken his wallet earlier when he was unconscious. She placed his wallet on the wooden table next to her and reached into her parka pocket and removed her com-cell. “Turn around with your back to me. Put your hands on the cot by your sides where I can see them. And don’t argue with me. I’m tired and not in the mood for an argument.”

Larson did as she said, thinking, She’s not in the mood for an argument. Hell, neither am I! And my head hurts.

She placed the pistol on the table and opened his wallet to his driver’s license, removed it, and removed her com-cell from her coat pocket and punched his driver’s license number into her com-cell. Within a minute she had everything about him on her com-cell. From his date of birth, schools he graduated from to his marriage, divorce, bank accounts, mortgage, and when he paid it off to the title of his first novel and his literary agent’s name, home phone number, com-cell number.

“Your mother’s maiden name was Ruby Lockers. She was born in a small town in Louisiana, and moved to Chicago, Illinois when she was young where she met your father a few years later who was also born in a small town in Louisiana,” she said. She returned his driver’s license to his wallet, and put her com-cell back in her pocket.

“How do you know that?” he asked without turning around.

“We live in a world, Mr. Western, where getting information on people is easy, if you have the proper equipment.”

“Paul Duffy’s all-purpose chip,” he said. “You’ve got one.”

“The chip was important, Mr. Western, but it’s what the Society did with the chip that gave them the ability to go anywhere in the cyber world they wanted to go whenever they wanted to without anyone knowing it.”

“And you’ve got that chip in your com-cell?” he asked her.

“Yes,” she answered.

“Julian gave it to you?”

“Yes.”

Larson thought for a few minutes then said, “Software. That’s what makes the chip so valuable to the Society.”

“Exactly. Software only the Society has and no one knows about.”

“They’d have to update it every year or so,” he said.

“They do. Their software experts are members of the Society and the best in the world. And they are all one hundred percent loyal.”

“So all of this nonsense about a Hidden Society is really true?” he asked. The pain in his head had lessened some, but not the lump on the back of his head and he still felt terrible.

“Yes, all of it,” Marajo said.

Larson shook his head and asked, “What about me?”

“I have two choices. Kill you. Or let you join with me in exposing the Society.”

“Which one do you intend choosing?”

“My options are very limited.If I kill you the Society will find me anyway, because of your stupidity. If I let you join me, we could both fail. And everyone we love will die terribly painful deaths, and Julian’s fear of what the Society will do to the world will become a reality.”

“Since Julian told the truth on that flash drive, my options are the same as yours, Marajo.”

“We both appear to be fucked.”

Larson yawned and said, “So we join forces and avoid trying to be fucked.”

“So the situation appears, Mr. Western,” she said as she put the pistol in her coat pocket. “Turn around, Mr. Western.”

He turned around to face her, and was glad to see she wasn’t holding the pistol.

 “The absence of the pistol says we’re allies?” he asked.

“It says I’ve no choice, Mr. Western, but to work with you.” She tossed his wallet to him. “And neither do you.”

“Call me Larson, Marajo. You don’t mind Marajo, do you? I don’t know your last name.”

“No, I don’t mind Marajo, Larson.”

“So we’re going to allies. How much time have we got?”

“As of this moment, the Society’s soldiers are hunting me and you. By now they know or at least suspect I’m alive. Where? They probably don’t know yet. But it won’t take them much time to find out. And once they’ve located me finding you will be much easier.”

“I shouldn’t have used my real name. Should I?”

“All that is prologue as the saying goes. What we’ve got to do is find out where the Society keeps its information and reveal it to the world. Then we will be safe.”

“They’ll be too busy running and hiding to care about us,” he added.

“Or hiring high priced lawyers to lie them out of the mess they’ll be in,” she said, standing up.

“But we’ll be safe and our families, too,” he said.

“Yes, but only if we are successful,” she replied.

As he stood up and put his wallet back in his pocket, he said, “I know where they keep their information hidden. It’s on a chip I’ve got.”

Her mouth fell open in surprise.

He looked at her. “You look surprised.”

“I am,” she said.

***