The Illuminati (56 page)

“The very same,” Shepperd said.“He knows about your recent meeting with members of the general staff. You and the others are in great danger.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Gorman snapped, suddenly very wary.

“You had a spy in your group, General. I wish I could tell you more, but we don't know who it is at this time. General,we're the ones who sent your aide the information on the camps. Most of it came from the Mossad. A few of their people are working with us.”

“I understand,” the general said as he relaxed. “Thank you, Mr. Shepperd. I'll handle it from this point.”

“General, is there anything you can do?”

“I'll have to deal with first things first,”Gorman said. “First we'll deal with the infiltrators. How can I get in contact with you?”

“You can't, General. But just leave a note in your Pentagon message box addressed to me. We read your computer mail regularly.”

“But how can you . . .”Gorman started to ask, but the line had gone dead.

General Gorman called in his aide, Major Brian Philmore. “I want you to hand-carry some messages,” he told Philmore, the son of a longtime colleague from the academy.

The message read: “Most urgent we meet immediately. Same place, Wednesday, 0700.”

“Be sure you hand-carry this to General Abbott. No one else is to see it.”

“Yes, sir,” the youthful-looking major said. “I'll do it.”

That next Wednesday morning the conspirators met to discuss the information that Shepperd had provided.

General Gorman began, “Gentlemen, I don't have to tell you that our nation faces a grave danger from within our government. This Society is a cancer that has taken root in the very heart of the present administration. It has been nearly a year since the Congress was last convened, and there appears to be no move to reestablish a constitutional republic. I believe we have no alternative but to use our combined military power to force the Alton administration to reconvene the Congress and expose this plot to destroy democracy. Do you have your lists of field-grade officers that we know to be loyal to our cause?”

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

E
SCAPE

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.