The Illuminati

by Larry Burkett

  General Abbott spoke up, “We do, General. And we have already established the initial steps to secure the government.”

  Marla West had moved her team into position several hours before the meeting was scheduled to begin. The room was monitored with the latest sound-powered micro-detectors that were virtually undetectable. The receivers were set up in one of the rooms nearby. Two high-fidelity audio recorders would pick up every sound.

  The agent in charge of the equipment listened intently as the general spoke. After nearly ten minutes he turned to Marla West and asked, “Do you have enough?”

  “Yes,” she said ecstatically. “With a little selective editing, this tape should make the evening news and get several generals shot.”

  “Be sure you get that list,” she warned the agents preparing to assault the room. “With it we can purge the traitors from the military.”

  As quietly as possible, the ten agents moved down the hallway; they were so intent on their mission no one seemed to notice that there was no guard at the door. The inexperienced Marla West noticed it but simply thought to herself, Stupid, overconfident fools! Seconds later, the agents burst into the room where the meeting was taking place.

  “You’re all under arrest!” the first agent shouted as he leveled his automatic weapon at the officers.

  “What is the charge?” General Gorman asked calmly, still seated. He had spent three years in a prison camp in Iraq during the Middle East war. He was not a man to spook easily.

  “Treason!” the agent shouted again. “Now stand up and put your hands on your heads!”

  Everyone stood obediently as the agents checked them for weapons.

  “They’re clean,” the agent said into the small transmitter he was holding.

  At that moment, Marla West stormed into the room. Sarcastically she said, “It looks like you and your good ole boys have stepped in it, doesn’t it, General?”

  “Perhaps,” Gorman replied. “But you don’t honestly expect to get away with arresting the commanding officers of the army, navy, and the air force do you?”

  “Absolutely, General,”West said laughingly. “With a little editing of our tapes of this meeting, you’ll make headlines until the day you’re all shot. And we’ll have that list of your conspirators.” She turned to Major Brian Philmore, motioned for him to take the sheets from General Gorman, and said, “If you don’t mind, Major, you can hand that list to me now.”

  “Brian! You’re a part of this madness, too?” the general said disgustedly. “You’re a disgrace to that uniform and to your country.”

  “He’s on the right side, General,” West said mockingly. “You are a traitor!”

  “It’s you and your Society that are the traitors,” Gorman said bitterly. “You don’t really expect the American public to swallow your line, do you?”

  Marla smiled as she looked down at the lists in her hand. “They will believe what the media tells them. And the media will believe what we feed them. They’re bigger than you are General.”

  Looking at the sheets of paper Philmore had taken from Gorman, Marla frowned and then snarled at the general, “What is this?”

  “Just what it says,” Gorman answered, smiling. “You might want to read it for the benefit of your commandos here.”

  The big agent who had led the raid snatched the papers out of West’s hands. “What the—?”

  “Surprise!” the general responded as he quoted what he had written on the sheets surrendered to Philmore. “Smile, you’re on Candid Camera.”

  With that, several army assault troops stepped though the door brandishing automatic weapons. The sergeant leading them leveled his assault rifle and said, “If just one of you twitches a muscle, my men will cut you in half!”

  “He really means it too,” the general said casually. “You see, he has a sister locked up in one of your camps.”

  The secret service agents carefully laid their weapons down. They were woefully outmanned and outgunned, and they knew it.

  “You won’t get away with this,” Marla West screamed as she was handcuffed. “I’m the attorney general.”

  “Yes, and I’m the commanding general, so I outrank you,” Gorman said with a big grin across his face. “Sergeant, I would rather appreciate it if you could keep these people out of sight for awhile. At least until we clean some of their friends out of our business.”

  “It would be my pleasure, General. You just say the word and they will be permanently out of circulation.”

  “I hope that won’t be necessary, Sergeant. But feel free to do so if our friends here give you any trouble.”

  29

  ESCAPE

  Rutland was afraid for the first time in his life. He had always assumed the Society would win, and he would be a part of it. Now it seemed that every plan they made went wrong. He had no idea what had happened to Marla West and the men who went to arrest Gorman. They had simply disappeared. Not even the FBI could get a lead on where they were being held. All he knew was that Gorman and the others were still free and constantly surrounded by elite combat troops. Even worse, one by one the top-level military officers committed to the Society were disappearing. The others would panic very soon if the Society couldn’t come up with a solution.

  Razzak was mad with rage.

  “I am surrounded by incompetents,” he screamed at Rutland and President Alton.“Everything will be lost if we lose control of the military. You must order the FBI to arrest General Gorman. With him gone, the others will collapse.”

  “That is not possible,” Kathy Alton explained for the third time. She was frightened too, but she knew that Razzak was irrational in his demands. She simply could not command control of the armed forces. They would follow their leaders’ commands, not hers. They had made that very clear.

  “If we press the issue, the army will revolt against us,” she said calmly. “At least now we don’t have them against us.”

  “We have the bombs!” Razzak ranted. “Are the bombs in place yet?”

  “No, sir,” Rutland said as he looked at Alton. “Only one is. We were going to test its effect before installing the others.”

  “Put them in!” Razzak shouted. “We will use them to force the army to serve us. If they refuse, we will annihilate the camps.” Razzak could feel the momentum shifting away from him. It was as if the dark lord had already accepted failure. No! a voice from inside him shrieked.We cannot fail! The prince of darkness will torment us both forever, just as he has the others who have failed.

  Razzak knew that he was going insane. The voices that had guided him so clearly in the past now filled his mind with unbearable sounds. The fear they released inside him made him frantic. He could not fail! He must not! The abyss awaited those who failed.

  “We can’t annihilate the camps . . .” President Alton started to say.

  “You can, and you will!” Razzak screamed at her. “If you don’t, you will die too. Move the bombs to the camps immediately. The Christians will die and everything will be back as it was.”

  The next morning as he tried to get out of bed, Jason Franklin felt his weakness return. Franklin never slept late, but this morning he rose earlier than normal. He had a pain in his stomach that would not subside. As the morning passed, the pain grew more intense. He panicked when he realized what it was—the cancer again! Even as he thought about it the pain grew worse. He reached for the phone to call Razzak.

  “Yes, who is it?” Razzak screamed into the phone that rang in his study. He hadn’t slept for more than three days now; he feared closing his eyes. Each time he did the demons cried out to him, taunting him.

  “You will burn in hell,” the demons cried out to him. “You thought the master would save you, but he will find another. You will burn!”

  “No! Help me, Master,” Razzak shouted as he blinked his eyes open when the phone rang.

  “It is Mr. Franklin, sir,” the guard who kept constant watch over his room said fearfully. “He says h
e needs to talk to you.”

  “Tell him no!” Razzak screamed. “I cannot help him. I will not help him!” With that, Razzak slammed the phone down. His piercing black eyes sunk back in their sockets. They swept from side to side in a constant search for something, anything that would help relieve the madness that welled up inside. The guard heard him scream as he pressed his hands to his eyes. He was ranting, “Help me, Master. Please!”

  Jason Franklin could hear Razzak’s wailing over the phone even through the door to the guard’s room and across the phone line. He heard the guard say, “I’m sorry, Mr. Franklin. The Leader is unable to talk with you right now.”

  As Franklin dropped the phone to the floor, the pain was so intense that he gasped. He collapsed on the bed, where he sat for several minutes, trying to get some strength back. Then he reached into the side table drawer beside his bed and took out the small automatic he always kept close by. He ratcheted a cartridge into the chamber and pressed the gun to his temple.

  The housekeeper would find him when she arrived later that morning. Jason Franklin realized the eternal error he had made long before that. As he passed through the long dark corridor that met him the instant after he pulled the trigger, the demons were swirling around him. “Another one of us,” they screeched as they raked him with their claws.

  Franklin screamed as the pain hit him. But I’m dead, he thought. You can’t feel anything when you’re dead.

  At the new CRC headquarters in Dentville, Mississippi, the plans to launch a propaganda assault on the Society were going well. The third issue of Truth was in circulation and the Data-Net system was in chaos.

  Jeff Wells was pleased with himself. The transfer of credits from the government had virtually stopped President Alton’s ability to fund the anti-Christian campaign. Many of the government agents in the field had their credit cut off and had not been paid for several weeks. They were experiencing firsthand what the Christians had experienced earlier: It is very hard to live in a cash-less society without credit. Most had already taken to robbing merchants at gunpoint to get needed supplies. As a result, the police were treating the agents like criminals, too.

  The underground network for Christians, which John Elder had organized, was working so well that it was virtually impossible to locate them. When the police attempted to dispatch teams to suspected safe houses, the messages were intercepted and warnings sent to the CRC members. All the police found when they arrived were copies of the underground Truth.

  The police departments that were particularly aggressive in pursuing Christians suddenly found their credit cut off—personally and corporately. Wells had even been able to scramble the phone lines between Washington and the rest of the country so that messages often had to be sent by couriers, who were sometimes stranded in distant parts of the country without credit. As more of the Truth newspapers made their way into the public’s hands, the anti-Society movement picked up momentum. Often, reluctant police officers simply refused to arrest the Christians they were able to find.

  Jeff was putting the finishing touches on a new program to cut off funds to the abortion centers and organ banks when suddenly Shepperd rushed into the room. “Jeff, we have an emergency!” he said. “General Gorman has learned that Razzak ordered bombs installed at the other camps. He’s planning to use them to blackmail the generals. He may be crazy enough to use them. We’ll need to launch Project Truth as soon as possible. Are you ready?”

  “I will be in a few more days,”Wells said.

  Shepperd had conceived a plan to make public all the information his men had assembled on the Society.

  When the first underground newspaper had been published with facts about the society and its roots in the government, the media had tried to discredit it, but as more and more information became available, several major newspapers began to pick up the articles. Try as they might, Rutland and his secret service could not locate even one of the twenty presses now printing nearly fifty million copies of the Truth each week. Since financing was no problem thanks to Wells’ Data-Net contacts, the paper was available nearly everywhere. Shepperd’s plan required the support of a major television network. At this point, however, he didn’t have one.

  At Data-Net headquarters Dr. Loo was pondering what to do about Jeff Wells. Loo was a man without any real allegiance to the Society. He delighted in infuriating Cal Rutland when he reported Wells’ interference in the system. To Kim Loo, the matching of wits with Jeff Wells was no more than a chess game.

  I really wish I could have worked with Wells, Loo thought to himself. He is a genius when it comes to computers.

  Loo had been trying unsuccessfully to set traps to detect how and when Wells entered the main computer. To date, his efforts had yielded him absolutely nothing. It was as if Wells was a phantom. The system logged no use of his time. It showed no use of the telephone network. And even when Loo knew that Wells was active in the compiler, the system showed no trace of his access.

  There is no sense in getting frustrated about this, Loo told himself. Wells is simply better than I am at what he does. He has designed a system that I thought was impossible with our present technology, and now he has created a computer program that leaves no sign that it even exists—brilliant. Together we could tap into any computer system in the world. With very little effort we could become the richest men in the world!

  For the last several weeks, catching Wells had become an obsession to Dr. Loo. But he was no closer than when he started. It is like a two-year-old child playing chess with a grand master, Loo admitted to himself. Wells’ capabilities are so far beyond my own that he thinks in another dimension. I will never trap him.

  Suddenly Loo had another thought. What about Dr. Eison? Would Wells be careless enough to allow his girlfriend’s father to have access to the system? Yes, he probably would, he thought as he suddenly got excited, because Wells’ single weakness is caring about others around him. He is sentimental; therefore he is vulnerable.

  Loo thought about calling Rutland, but then he decided against it. Rutland was far too emotional about Wells. He might want to take over the plan that Loo had in mind, and Loo wasn’t about to allow that to happen. Once he had a solid lead on Wells’ whereabouts he would negotiate a reasonable fee with Rutland for the information.

  Immediately Dr. Loo contacted his long-time friend in the drug business, Ku Chow Li.

  “Li, this is Kim Loo,” he said as the other man answered the phone call. “I need your help.”

  “I assume this is something other than a social call, Dr. Loo,” the head of the Chinese drug traffic in San Francisco replied coolly.“Things have not been going well for me since your cash-less system went into operation.”

  “I understand,” Loo said amiably. “Even I have been reduced to working for the government. But I can assure you this will be very profitable to both of us. Do you have something to write with?”

  “Yes, go on,” the other man said as he shifted his position so that he could write on the tablet by his desk.

  “I need a tap placed on Dr. William Eison’s telephone.”

  “Who is Dr. Eison?” Li asked.

  “He is a scientist at the Livermore laboratory.”

  “It will be very difficult to tap a line at the research facility,” Li said, stating what he knew was the obvious.

  “You will be very well compensated when I get the information I seek,” Loo said. “I need a record of all Dr. Eison’s calls to a particular number somewhere in the south—a number he will call very seldom, so there must be no mistakes.”

  “Old friend,” Li said smoothly, “you know I don’t make mistakes. In my business you rarely get more than one. I will arrange what you ask. You will hear from me again when I have the information.”

  As Loo hung up the phone, he was feeling more positive than he had in weeks. He knew that Dr. Eison had to be the one who warned Wells. Although he had no proof, he needed more. It would have taken a computer expert to un
derstand Wells’ logic enough to get into the system. Loo knew that Dr. Eison had that ability. He had seen more than once that Eison was his own equal; few others were even close enough to consider.

  In another room in the basement of the White House, the FBI agent monitoring Dr. Loo’s phone lines called Cal Rutland’s office.

  Rutland’s secretary buzzed him to say that agent Grimes was on the phone. “Rutland here,” he said, irritated by the interruption. “What do you want?”

  “Mr. Rutland, I’m on duty, monitoring the White House lines. I was instructed to call you immediately if anything unusual happened.”

  Suddenly Rutland was alert. “Yes, what is it?” he said more pleasantly.

  “Dr. Loo just placed a call to San Francisco where he talked with a Ku Chow Lithe made arrangements for a Dr. Eison’s telephone to be tapped at a government laboratory. I thought you would want to know.”

  “Yes, thank you.” Rutland beamed as he hung up. Loo’s on to something, he thought to himself. He called the FBI headquarters. When the receptionist answered he said, “Put me through to Randall.”

  Without hesitation she punched the FBI director’s private intercom line. She knew better than to tell Rutland that he was in conference. Her boss might run the Bureau, but it was clear that Rutland ran him.

  “I want you to put two of your best agents on someone by the name of Li in San Francisco. I believe his first name is Ku. I have the telephone number; you can get his address from the files.”

  “Do you mean Ku Chow Li?” Randall asked.