Amnesia

by Michael Cross

  I had to wait two days for my opportunity. And it was only by dumb luck that I got it. It was while I was doing some more research on Blankenship when I stumbled across an article announcing a dinner being held in his honor in his hometown of Portland.

  A quick Internet mapping told me it was a brisk forty-five minute trip down to Portland. I figure two hours for dinner and the speeches, then forty-five minutes back. That gives me a window of roughly three and a half hours—three, just to be safe—and the place is mine.

  I check my watch again. It’s time. Dropping my binoculars back into my bag, I pull out an electronic jammer I’d ordered online and had sent to a mailbox I’d rented.

  “Now or never,” I whisper.

  I pull the balaclava down over my head so that just my eyes are left exposed through a narrow slit. The mask is made of a thin material that’s supposedly easy to breathe in, but it’s still stuffy as hell. No matter, there’s nothing that can be done about it now.

  I break cover and cross the expansive rear grounds quickly. As I approach the rear doors of the house, I keep my head down instinctively but hit the button on the device I’m carrying. A moment later, it chirps, and the light flashes green, the frequency of the alarm system displayed on the screen.

  On one of my earlier scouting ops, I made note of the security system wired to the place thanks to a handy sign posted that announced the name of the company. I quickly scoured the internet and found what I was looking for in a matter of moments.

  And, if it worked as advertised, the security system will now be disabled. If not, I’ll likely see flashing red and blue lights coming down the driveway and be out the back door long before the cops arrive anyway.

  I’ll of course grab a couple of things on my way out to make it look like a robbery to keep my real op intact. But this trip into his house tonight is simply to answer the questions I have and to satisfy my own curiosity. It’s foolish and reckless. And if the High Priestess knew what I was up to, no doubt she would be pissed. But—well—screw her. If she’s not going to give me answers to my questions, I’m damn sure going to find out on my own.

  I pass beneath a security camera mounted discreetly under the eaves and see the red lights are off. That’s a good sign. I get to the back door without incident and drop to a knee. Pulling a small black pack from my bag, I unzip it and extract a lockpicking gun. I have the door open in ten seconds and drop everything back into my bag and shoulder the pack again.

  With one last look around the grounds, I step inside and leave the door ajar behind me. The house is silent and completely still. My every sense heightened, I stand still for a moment, just watching and listening. The house just feels empty. I roll up my balaclava, so it looks like a watch cap atop my head and take in a deep and unencumbered breath.

  Slipping my Glock out of the holster on my hip, I keep it pointed at the ground and take a tour of the lower level. I pass from room to room, surveying my surroundings and getting an idea of how Miller Blankenship lives—which is really goddamn well, apparently.

  The house is loaded with antiques and expensive looking things, and yet he still manages to pull off the delicate balancing act of showing off his money without being ostentatious about it. No, there will not be gold plated toilets in this house. If you could humblebrag in a visual medium, it would be Blankenship’s house.

  I walk carefully, avoiding bumping into or knocking over anything. He may have more money than I’ll make in my entire lifetime, but I get the sense he’s a guy who would notice a broken or missing bauble.

  After clearing the bottom level, I move quietly up the stairs to the second floor. I’m confident there isn’t additional security in the house—I’m sure I would have run into them downstairs—but I don’t take chances. All I find are spare bedrooms, bathrooms, and a couple of offices.

  I rifle through all of the papers in his office, looking for something that ties him to this Hellfire Club. Not that I think they have official letterhead or anything. A group doesn’t survive in the shadows as long as the Hellfire Club allegedly has by being overt and stupidly clumsy. Which means I’m not sure what I’m looking for, but I’m hopeful to know it when I see it.

  According to Publius’ research, I should be looking for something bearing a flower called a syringa—the state flower of Idaho—and the number 1851. It’s the birth year of Fred Dubois, a nineteenth-century senator from Idaho who is credited with being the founder of the Hellfire Club at Yale and was well known for being an elitist and a racist. Which is just a fantastic foundation for a club meant to influence policy and rule the country.

  If Blankenship really is a member of this club and truly espouses their beliefs, it is going to be an absolute pleasure to take him off the board and blow a hole right through their plans. I’m looking forward to it, in fact—if he’s guilty.

  “If I were a token for a racist organization, where would I hide?”

  I wander back through all of the rooms on the first floor and then the second, looking closely for something—anything—that looks anything remotely like what Publius described.

  But I come up empty.

  I stand out on the back balcony I saw Blankenship through my binoculars on that first day. I look out over the rear grounds and see a group of deer walking along the edge of the forest beyond, grazing on what they find. It’s an idyllic image in an even more idyllic setting. It’s peaceful out here, and I like it. I could get used to this.

  As I watch the deer melt into the shadows of the forest, I start to think that this Hellfire Club is nothing more than a conspiracy theory like the Illuminati. I think maybe this is the thread that, when pulled, unravels all of the work Publius published. It’s a great story and an interesting theory to contemplate, but I have found absolutely nothing to prove its validity.

  It’s really starting to look like Miller Blankenship the man truly is the squeaky clean, All-American, milquetoast image he projects.

  And it also leaves me in something of a moral quagmire. Delta and the Tower want him dead. They believe him to be dangerous—or at least, dangerous to their objectives. Which makes me wonder what those objectives are. Is it true there is no cabal within the government, and the real existential threat to this country is the Tower itself? It’s starting to seem like that may, in fact, be the case.

  I think I’ve seen all I need to see out here. I turn and am about to head back inside, but a gleaming light catches my eye and stops me in my tracks. I look up and see a stained-glass window above the deck I’m standing on. I wouldn’t have noticed it during the daylight hours. I wouldn’t have given it a second thought.

  But standing here in the deepening gloom of the evening, I see a light on behind that stained-glass window. I thought it was a decorative window. Maybe an attic on the third floor. But the light on behind it, for some reason, is intriguing to me. I know it seems unlikely, but for some reason, it suggests the existence of another room. A secret room.

  Sure, it could just be an attic. Maybe Blankenship crawled up into the attic before he left to retrieve some artifact from his life to display at this dinner honoring him. It’s possible. But every instinct in my body is pinging hard. I would be an idiot if I didn’t at least check it out.

  I walk back into the house, careful to close and lock the door behind me, and quickly search the second floor. My stomach tightens, and I feel a rush of excitement, as what I don’t find partially confirms my suspicions—there is no staircase or trap door leading to a third floor or attic. At least, not one that’s visible unless you know it’s there. Whatever is up there behind that stained-glass window is not something Blankenship wants to be seen.

  I carefully search all of the second-floor bedrooms but still don’t find the way up to the mysterious room. I walk into the last room on the floor—Blankenship’s private office. I look around, gazing over the books on the shelves and the ornate desk. Nothing jumps out at me right away. I frown as I look around, and then my gaze falls to the floor. My
lips pull back into a smile of triumph.

  The house is all wood, including the floors. His office has a few rugs—a large one beneath the desk and the pair of wingback chairs in front of it. One beneath the sideboard that has bottles of top-shelf liquor lined up like soldiers on top of it. And there is a long runner that sits in front of a large, oak bookcase.

  But in the gap between the rug and the bookcase, I see deep scratches in the wooden floor. It’s been buffed and polished, but it’s like Blankenship couldn’t get the grooves out, so he threw a rug over the area to try and cover it. The grooves left behind look as if they’d been made by a swinging door.

  A secret door.

  Moving over to the bookcase, I grab hold and try to pry it open, but it doesn’t budge. It’s locked. So I then search all of the shelves, searching for the way to unlock it. And on the third shelf, behind a couple of signed and framed Sandy Koufax baseball cards, I find it. It’s subtle, but it’s a button—so I press it.

  I hear the distinct click of the latch unlocking, and a moment later, I swing the secret door open. It moves quietly, the hinges obviously well-oiled. It seems like Blankenship has fixed the problem with the door as it doesn’t drag on the ground anymore, simply passing over the runner.

  An electric thrill runs through me as I ascend the hidden staircase, looking at the family photos that extend back generations that line the walls on either side of me. The stairs creak and pop beneath my feet as I walk up the steps. To me, the room seems like it’s original to the house, which is at least a hundred years old, and that Blankenship had it walled in and created the hidden door and thus, the secret room.

  The stairs lead me up to what looks like a room that was once an attic. It’s been refurbished and turned into a large open office space. All of the wood is lacquered and well taken care of, and he left the high, vaulted ceiling with its exposed beams as they were. With the large stained-glass windows at either end of the room and all of the highly polished wood, it almost has a church-like feel to it.

  On the other end of the room is a man-cave of sorts. There are a pair of large, plush recliners that look well used, separated by a round wooden table, set in front of a massive television with all the bells and whistles. Some signed sports memorabilia hangs on the walls around that side of the room. He’s obviously not always as prim and proper as his image would suggest.

  On this side of the room sits a long wooden table that serves as a desk. There’s a computer sitting on top of it, but when I hit the space bar to wake it up, I’m greeted by a password-protected login screen.

  “Of course,” I sigh. “I’m not going to get that lucky.”

  I rifle through the papers on the top of his desk but don’t find anything incriminating. A tall chest of drawers sits against the wall to my right, and half a dozen framed photos hang on the walls above and around it. I cut a quick glance at the photos and see his lacrosse team pictures and the class photo from his frat—Delta Kappa Epsilon. They all have that same look of the rich and entitled.

  Shaking my head, I open the bottom drawer first and rifle through them all, working my way upward. I get to the top drawer and slide it open, not expecting to find anything interesting, having gotten used to the sting of disappointment already.

  When I open the drawer, I see an array of watches, his Yale class ring, obviously expensive cuff links, and tie tacks. Once again, nothing of real interest to me. I wonder why in the hell he went through the trouble of crafting a secret room to hide—well—nothing. There isn’t anything incriminating here.

  I guess I’d been expecting to see Nazi flags and memorabilia, or maybe a KKK uniform, or—something. At the very least, I’d been hoping to find posters or banners announcing the Hellfire Club. Something. Anything. Not finding anything feels more than a little deflating.

  Clearly, I’m invested in finding something to tie Blankenship to this club. But I also know deep down the investment is because I’m searching for some way to justify assassinating him.

  In my heart, I know I’m not a stone-cold killer. I don’t take lives for no reason at all. I don’t know much, but that is one thing I know about myself with absolute certainty.

  But I also know if I don’t do this—if I don’t take Blankenship off the board for the Tower, I may wander through the rest of my life with no idea who I am. Unless, of course, they decide to kill me. Which is a possibility.

  I’m just about to close the drawer when my eyes fall on a small ring box. I’m about to write it off as insignificant, but my gaze lingers on it for a long moment.

  Leave no stone unturned when doing your due diligence. That’s what you always said, right?

  I can’t say if I actually said that, but the advice is sound, nonetheless. I reach in and pull out the ring box. I flip it open and feel my eyes immediately grow wide as my mouth falls open simultaneously. I take out the lapel pin that’s nestled among the black velvet and hold it up, staring closely at it.

  “Son of a bitch,” I whisper.

  The lapel pin is round and edged in black. In the center is a flower I can only assume is a syringa—it’s got four white petals and thick yellow stamens. And across the face of the pin in a large, scarlet font are four numbers—1851.

  This is it. It’s confirmation of Publius’ theory. I raise my eyes and look closer at the photos on the wall in front of me. Mixed in with the class and team photos, I see one that I didn’t notice before. Stepping closer, I look at it more closely, and for the second time in less than three minutes, find myself drawing in a sharp breath.

  In the photo are about two dozen men and women, in impeccable suits, all of them glaring at the camera imperiously—nobody is smiling—and with that same sense of entitlement on their faces I see in Blankenship’s frat photo. Only the entitlement radiating from their faces is amplified even more. Like these are the elite of the elite—the one percent of the one percent, as Publius had noted. Disbelief is washing over me as I read the caption: Hellfire Club, Class of 1992.

  No names are listed, and I suddenly hear Delta’s soft English accent chirping in my head—anonymity is our greatest strength. I guess in this case, the members of the Hellfire Club aren’t exactly anonymous, given that they take class photos, but they still have some plausible deniability since nobody knows what their club is or what they do.

  Moving on instinct, I slip a digital camera out of my pack and take pictures of everything—the lapel pin, the class photos, the jewelry drawer with the pin inside of it—everything. I don’t know why I need them yet, but I just have a feeling they’ll be important to me at some point.

  You can never be too prepared, right? That’s another of your pearls of wisdom, isn’t it?

  I have no idea whether it is or isn’t. But I agree with the principle. Granted, this is proof of nothing. This isn’t proof that Publius’ theories are correct. However, it takes the Hellfire Club out of the realms of myth and tinfoil-hat conspiracy theory and plants it firmly in the realm of reality. This is real. And if this is real, is it a far leap to make to believe everything else is real as well?

  Packing everything up just as I found it, I back out of the house, making sure to lock the doors behind me and reset the alarm systems once I’m out of range of the cameras.

  I take one last glance back at the house as I trot back toward the woods and the path that will lead me back to my car, my mind spinning with confusion. As messed up as this whole situation is, maybe I really am on the right side of things after all.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The following night I’m back at the Lobster Pot for dinner, sifting through all of the information I’ve uncovered in my head. All of the pieces have started falling into place, and I feel a sense of cold certainty that taking Blankenship off the board is the right thing to do.

  I’ve read more of Publius’ work on the Call and learned about more of what the Hellfire Club is up to. He’s written about legislation they’ve gotten passed, Congresspeople they’ve had installed, and f
ederal judges they’ve had appointed. It’s a vast and sprawling network that has been secretly crafting and shaping the policies that will mold the country in the form they deem fit. It’s a scary thought to consider, quite frankly.

  But that train of thoughts gets me thinking about Publius himself. Who is he? Or she, I suppose. Whoever they are, they seem to be incredibly knowledgeable. More than that, they seem incredibly well connected. To have the paperwork they have access to, not to mention the inside information, they are either part of the government themselves, or have somebody very well placed feeding them.

  It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that Publius is a member of the Hellfire Club themselves. Maybe somebody who is disillusioned with their methods or objectives. Maybe somebody who doesn’t hold to the same Utopian ideals the club espouses—turning America from the land of the free and home of the brave, to the land of the rich, home of the elite.

  But that’s just speculation. When I get a minute, I plan on doing a deep dive on Publius to see if I can find out who is behind the name. Part of me thinks that, since I’m still unsure about the Tower’s motives and agenda, Publius could be an ally.

  But that’s a fight for another day. I’ve got a pretty full dance card at the moment. The twenty-sixth is fast approaching, and I’ve got a job to do.

  “Still here, huh?”

  I look up into the irritated face of Sheriff Cedars. He glares down at me imperiously, as if I’m an unwelcome rodent in his little fiefdom. I give him a smile.

  “We have to stop meeting like this, Sheriff,” I reply. “People will start to say we’re in love.”

  His expression only darkens further. “Uh huh.”

  I shrug and hold up my sandwich. “Can’t get enough of these lobster rolls,” I say. That, at least, isn’t a lie. They’re excellent. “They’re good enough to make a man think about moving here.”