As soon as the firing began, security police emerged from the building. Several were cut down by the gunmen, but the odds were in favor of the policemen. As more armed guards appeared, the masked men bolted away to a waiting car. The car was roaring down Pennsylvania Avenue when several heavily armed security guards—part of the elite force recruited for protection of Washington officials—stepped out into the street. They poured a fusillade into the accelerating car, killing the driver instantly; the vehicle went out of control and burst into flames as it crashed into a parked car. Within seconds, the gunmen’s car was an inferno.
In the White House press office, the phone rang a few minutes later. As the wail of sirens sounded in the background, Cal Rutland heard the voice on the other end say, “It’s done. The car burned with the bodies inside.”
Rutland hung up the phone. It’s time for Phase Two, he said to himself quietly.
The news media carried countless scenes of the justices lying on the sidewalk in front of the Supreme Court building. Then the scene would shift to the burned-out vehicle where the two gunmen and their driver were cremated.
The TV anchorman from WNN was questioning one of the many Washington police officials on the scene: “Is it true that the gunmen have been linked to the CRC—the militant religious group that has been making threats on government officials?”
“I can’t comment on the case at this point,” the deputy commissioner replied.
“Do you expect any arrests?” the newsman asked in typical reporter fashion. “Is the arrest of John Elder in any way linked to this assassination?”
“I can’t comment. Mr. Elder was released yesterday by order of the district judge. We will be questioning members of his group about his present whereabouts.”
Before the news interview was over, the Insta-pol showed that 78 percent of all those polled believed Elder and the CRC were responsible.
Later that day at Elder’s church in Atlanta, a hastily called meeting took place. “John, what’s going on?” Bill Frost asked. “It looks like the whole U.S. government is coming down on us. Why?”
“I don’t really know, Bill. But remember, we talked about coming under persecution. We’ve taken some unpopular stands on some issues, and when a country gets into trouble, politicians begin to look for scapegoats.”
“I guess I really never understood the true meaning of that term before,”Ann Boatman said through her tears.“How can people allow this to happen? We’re Americans too—we’re just trying to do what’s right.”
“I suppose that’s the same thing the Jews asked in Germany,” Elder said. “There seems to be a mass mentality that takes over during times like these. People just want to blame someone for their troubles.”
“What about the assassinations, John? This is serious. They think we’re some kind of terrorist group. It’s getting likely they’ll shoot first and worry about the facts later.”
“It’s hard to believe this is happening, all right. As soon as the meeting is over I’m going to surrender to the local authorities.”
“But John, you’re already under suspicion. I don’t know if they will even set bail this time,” Archie Warner, the attorney representing the CRC, said. “I couldn’t believe it when they shipped you off to D.C. after the last arrest. You should have been arraigned in Atlanta.”
“That was peculiar,” Elder agreed. “I’ll tell you, I was a little frightened there for awhile. They treated me like I was John Dillinger, not John Elder.”
“Who?” Ann asked.
“Never mind,” Elder said with a grin. “I guess you’re too young.”
“You know, John, I think you were set up by someone in the government. They wanted you in Washington when this assassination took place. What better way than to arrest you, ship you off to D.C., and then release you just before the assassination?” Warner said as he paced around the table.
“I’ve been thinking about that too, Arch. As unbelievable as it seems, I have to agree.”
Just then the telephone in the outer office rang.
“I’ll get it,” Frost said. “I asked a friend in Washington to call if he heard anything.”
Picking up the receiver he answered, “This is Frost.”
“Bill, this is Sam. You’re in real danger. The Justice Department just got warrants for Elder and all the district leaders of the CRC, including you. You’re all being charged with terrorist activities and are to be held without bail—indefinitely. Listen to this, though: Justice also got a court order to shut down the CRC and confiscate all CRC’s property as evidence. Bill, I’m afraid this thing is rotten at the highest levels here. I wouldn’t doubt if they planted evidence.”
“What do you suggest, Sam?”
“Have your people surrender to the local police there in Atlanta. Things are so hot here, an accident might happen when the Feds make the arrests. A special antiterrorist force is being dispersed. The whole scene here in Washington is chaos. It looks like something out of the Middle East. My God, three justices gunned down right in front of the Supreme Court!”
Bill Frost was visibly shaken as he hung up the phone. He had been a practicing attorney for more than thirty years and couldn’t believe what he had just heard. The United States government involved in framing a religious leader—it was almost too incredible to believe. Then it struck him: It was too incredible not to believe. Most Americans would accept the government’s case as fact, given the current atmosphere about religion in the country. Christians had taken on some unpopular causes and had made some powerful enemies, especially in the media.
A web was being woven by their enemies. The more they struggled, the more they would be entrapped. “At the highest levels,” Sam had said.
I wonder just how high the level really goes, he wondered silently.
He could see the fear on the faces of most of the others in the group. They were the leaders of the CRC that had started the nationwide organizations to link churches together. It’s no longer an academic exercise in free speech, he thought. Reality has come home to this group. I wonder how many will be able to stick it out?
After Frost hastily relayed the latest news, John Elder stood up.
“Christian friends, this is what we all feared most, and yet what we all really expected. Perhaps the persecution has come a little sooner than I had predicted, but here it is. Now each of you must decide Whom you will follow this day. Things look bad, but the Lord is still with us. Just remember, our enemy is not the people who seek our destruction; it is the enemy of Christ. This battle has been planned from the beginning of time. We’re just the foot soldiers. Take heart and don’t deny what you know to be the truth. God will prevail, even if we fail. Let’s pray. . . .”
The pastor led his accused leaders in prayer for more than an hour. After the others left, Elder, Frost, and Warner sat in the pastor’s study for nearly another hour waiting for a reply to Archie’s call to a friend in the Atlanta police department. He had asked his friend to ensure that the local police place them in custody before the federal officials could serve their warrants.
“I need to share something with you that I never shared with anyone except Julia,” Elder told his friends. “I was always concerned that people would think me some kind of kook, or worse.
“For years, when I was a child, my mother said I would sit up in my bed with my eyes wide open, as if I was in trance. She said my eyes would be moving just like I was watching a scene in front of me. But when I woke up, I couldn’t remember anything about it.
“This continued for quite some time—until I was thirteen years old. Then, she said I sat up one night and began describing what I was seeing. She had been waiting for that moment, so she was able to record everything I said. I’d like for you to hear it.”
Elder opened his desk drawer and took out a cassette. “I made a copy from the original reel-to-reel,” he explained as he dropped the tape into the player on his desk. “Remember, this took place nearly forty years
ago.” The men listened to the voice of a young boy as he told of thousands of Christians being arrested and imprisoned because of their faith and tens of thousands of others hiding from the police. Trials were held, with religious leaders from around the world testifying to the guilt of those accused, especially one—a pastor, known to be their leader.
Elder stopped the tape momentarily and explained, “The pastor in my dream was accused of treason against the government and sentenced to be executed. He was brought before a man of great power who had become the leader of the United States, although he was not the president. This man was heralded as a great peacemaker who had been able to save the world from destruction, but he was the enemy of God’s people and intent on seeing them imprisoned or destroyed.” Then he started the tape again.
The voice on the tape began a two-sided dialogue:
“I have the power to set you free,” the man said to the pastor. “All I require is your pledge of allegiance to me.”
“Never,” responded the pastor. “You are the enemy of my God and, therefore, my enemy.”
“Then I will destroy you and all that are yours,” the leader threatened. “You are entirely in my control, and I alone have the power over life and death.”
Again the pastor repeated: “Never!”
The tape ended there with the young boy waking from his dream and his mother telling him what she had heard.
“I never had the dream again,” Elder said. “I often wondered if it really was the imagination of a young boy, or if perhaps it was a premonition from God.”
“Maybe it was your imagination, combined with Bible stories your mother had told you,” suggested Warner, the attorney.
“Perhaps,” Elder responded.“But you see, my parents weren’t believers, and I had never read the Bible at that point. It was listening to this tape that made me start to see some answers in my life. I became a Christian because of it, and later a pastor—maybe the pastor in my dream!”
The phone ringing interrupted their conversation. Warner picked up the receiver. “Warner here,” he said.
“Listen, Arch, this thing is really big. The Feds have a warrant out on your pastor that reads like a Mafia contract—it’s ‘dead or alive.’ The others are wanted for conspiracy. By the way, you’re not listed on the warrants but Frost is.”
“What should we do?”
“I talked with that detective friend of mine who is willing to take Elder and Frost into custody on my assurance that Elder is not dangerous. He’s not, is he?”
“Absolutely not. I’m sitting with him right now. He’s about the meekest terrorist you’ll ever find,”Warner said with a weak smile.
“You need to get him out of there and down to the station as soon as possible. The Feds are having a little trouble convincing the local judge that all these people are involved in a plot to overthrow the government, but they’ll find a district judge who will accept their D.C. warrants if he won’t.”
“Meet us outside the police station. We’ll be there in thirty minutes,” Warner said as he hung up the phone.
“Come on John, we need to get out of here,”Warner said anxiously. “Once the government realizes that a lot of other people know you’re in custody, they’ll walk a lot softer.”
Within an hour, Elder, Frost, and six other CRC members on the federal warrant were being held in the Atlanta city jail in protective custody. It took less than twelve hours for the federal marshals to get a federal judge to give them custody. Elder was whisked away in a waiting car. Frost and the others were herded out to a waiting van.
9
CONTROLLING THE ECONOMY
Events were moving so fast that most Americans could scarcely keep up with them. The nightly news programs were expanded to a full hour on all the networks and carried the highest prime time ratings. Each network was vying for the latest details on the economy, the assassinations, and the crackdown on the religious “terrorists.”
Americans flocked to their banks to surrender their currency in exchange for bank credits. To encourage the process and to reduce any potential opposition, Russell Siever came up with an ingenious idea: The exchange would yield a dividend for the public. For each dollar surrendered, a depositor would receive a 50 percent bonus in exchange credits. This quieted all opposition to the new system.
Drug dealers, accustomed to carrying large amounts of cash, had a problem: how to exchange their currency without tipping off the IRS to their illicit business. Siever quickly found a solution to that problem also. He worked out an amnesty program whereby they could make a onetime exchange, no questions asked. The dealers with savvy could read the handwriting on the wall and grabbed the opportunity to cash in their profits. With the removal of all currency, the sale of illegal drugs would be very difficult.
Media interviews with reformed drug dealers helped to sell the no-currency system to the public. Shortly after a WNN news interview with ten reformed dealers, public acceptance of Data-Net shot up to over 90 percent. Had the Insta-pol included the Christian community in their statistics, which they purposely did not, it would have shown overwhelming opposition to the idea. Christians feared the control that such a system could yield to the government, but since they were ignored by the media, their voices went unheard.
The subject of the cash-less economy was debated on the WNN evening news by members of the National Civil Liberties Union (NCLU), who expressed concern over the potential invasion of privacy. Russell Siever represented the government’s position.
“Dr. Siever, how can we be sure that the government won’t use this system to control its citizens? After all, the control of someone’s ability to buy or sell carries an awesome power, doesn’t it?” challenged Fred Lively, the head of the NCLU.
“Certainly, Fred, and we’re acutely aware of that. But remember that we are a democracy and the people of this country rule by the way they vote. Any politician who attempts to control the freedom of the American people will quickly find himself on the outside looking in.”
“But what about the rights of the minorities?”
“Well, if you mean the drug pushers, criminals, and anarchists, they will have a difficult time of it because we will be able to shut them down. For us to do that, the honest people of this country have to give us a little flexibility. But I can promise you this, Fred, and you know me well enough to know I do what I say: If you, or any other member of the NCLU, see any abuses of this authority, I’ll help you bring it to the attention of the president. But, also think of the positive side. Criminals will no longer be able to rob honest merchants who work for their money. With no cash in the registers, all a thief can get is a computer tape, or maybe a refrigerator, if he can run with one on his back.”
Lively laughed heartily. He had been well coached in what to ask of the nation’s budget manager. His instructions from the Society’s inner circle had been clear: “Ask the questions, then support the program.”
The Insta-pol showed that nearly 100 percent of the viewers supported Dr. Siever and the new monetary control system.
Within one month, all currency had been converted and the Data-Net system was up and operating, with only a few glitches in the start-up. Sometimes, due to an overload on the telephone lines, the computer-operated cash registers would hang up while trying to access the central processor. Once new fiber-optic lines were added, however, the system improved greatly.
Merchants loved the new system because they were able to receive their funds transfers immediately. However, those without computerized registers had to fill out debit vouchers to get paid. This delay in converting sales into profits ensured they would change over quickly. One huge advantage of the new system was the ability to determine immediately whether or not customers had the funds available. If not, the transaction would halt while the customer arranged a credit loan from the central bank. These loans were closely monitored and payments deducted from the customer’s account automatically each month. It truly looked like a win
-win situation for all involved.
The transfer to a total electronic system was extraordinarily simple. Most people perceived any change as better than the status quo. With nearly 30 percent of the working population unemployed, the emotional strain was taking a fearsome toll. Crime was up several hundred percent in most cities from the previous decade. Suicides, especially among the young, were epidemic. What most of the public didn’t realize was that while the transfer over to electronic money had slowed the drug traffic, it had not lessened the demand for drugs in the inner cities. The result was a new crime wave with gangs of youths stealing everything from plasma television screens to cars and bartering them for drugs. The media was quick to blame the Hunt administration for not doing enough to stop the crime and put people back to work.
“I don’t know what they expect of me!” President Hunt said angrily as he slammed the paper down on the breakfast table. “How am I supposed to put people back to work? The government’s dead broke.”
“Mr. President,”Cal Rutland began in his normal, condescending tone.
Hunt glanced over at his aide. Just the way he uses the title is disrespectful, Hunt thought. He acts like he’s the president and I’m his lackey. Mark Hunt had been trying to decide how to divest himself of “the shadow,” a name he had overheard other staff members refer to Cal Rutland. He knew he would have to be careful. Rutland was a direct link to the Society, and it wouldn’t be wise to oppose them yet. But I’ll dump him as soon as possible.
“Yes, Cal, what is it?” he asked in controlled annoyance.
Appearing not to notice Hunt’s irritation, Rutland replied, “Dr. Siever has an idea that may be of merit. He asked to see you later this week.”
“Schedule an appointment immediately,” the president commanded.
The Illuminati Page 9
