“And what is the truth? What is the reality?” King asked angrily.
“The truth is that we’ve always been there, behind the scenes,” Langley replied casually, either not noticing the archaeologist’s growing resentment towards him, or not caring. “Many people think of the Illuminati or the Freemasons as shadowy groups behind the scenes of world governments, pulling the strings of presidents and prime ministers, working towards their goal of creating a new world order. But the truth, Ben, is that we are not trying to create anything, merely preserve it. Civilisation has always balanced on the edge of a knife. The Urshu, the Templars or whatever you want to call them, have always been there to bring us back from the brink of annihilation.”
“And you do that by abducting innocent people?” King snapped, glowering at Bill. “By shooting an unarmed woman in the knee and terrorising her children?” He glanced at his bandaged hand, considering the irony of sitting in front of the man who only days ago had run the appendage through with a nail. Those days seemed like a lifetime ago now.
“We do it,” Langley cut in before Bill shot back a heated retort, “by any means necessary. The world has changed in the last five thousand years, and so the group has needed to change too. Our ideal method is to work peacefully behind the scenes. That was my job at the U.N., to sway the thoughts of the Security Council so that the next time a Saddam Hussein, or an Adolph Hitler, arose, they would not sit idly by and wait for millions to die before acting.” He continued. “Sometimes our methods are to manipulate information, to make governments do our work, to make those in power make decisions that will help humanity, not just America, or Britain, or Russia. We fed the White House faked information about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq so that they would take down Hussein, for example.”
“Langley,” Bill warned, uncomfortable with letting him reveal their secrets.
“Relax,” Langley said smoothly. “They’re not going to tell anyone.” He glanced at Raine and King in turn, and then smiled slyly. “Besides, who would believe them?”
“But what you did in Jamaica and Chile wasn’t covert,” King pointed out.
“No,” Langley admitted. “It wasn’t. Sometimes it has been necessary to take a more active role in the course of human events, and that is where people like Bill, here, come in. The ‘Field Unit’ of the group, if you will; ex-Special Forces soldiers, posing as mere mercenaries, who will do whatever it takes to protect the world from its enemies.”
So Bill’s team had nothing to do with the Russians after all, Raine realised. It wasn’t West or Nadia that had been feeding the mercs information, enabling them to hound their every step. It was Langley. Venezuela, Jamaica, Patagonia. He had orchestrated it all, even pulling in a favour with the Peruvians to delay the team on their pursuit of King and Sid to Argentina.
“What enemies does the entire world have in common?” Raine asked, re-entering the conversation after absorbing all that his former C.O. had said. “One nation’s enemy is another’s ally.”
“And yet not all men think in terms of nations, Nate, do they? Some have much larger visions… global conquest: Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan… Adolph Hitler. Their downfalls and deaths were all orchestrated by us.” He paused for a second, as though deciding whether to reveal more. “Lincoln. JFK.” Raine glanced up, shocked by the mention of such prominent names from his own nation. “Powerful men control the fates of millions. But some men, even the ‘good’ ones, can be too powerful.” His eyes caught Raine’s and then King’s in turn. “Too dangerous,” he added ominously.
King looked incredulous. “But what did you achieve by killing Hitler, or any of the others? They still killed millions of people.”
“We’re not fortune-tellers, Ben. To begin with, Hitler was nothing more than an outspoken politician. A petty thug. By the time anyone realised the danger he posed, it was too late. He’d surrounded himself with only his most trusted circle which even we couldn’t infiltrate. We tried. We made several attempts on his life. But we failed. Right until his regime began crumbling around him and we were able to get a man into his bunker. The same with all the others. We had to wait until they were at their most vulnerable.”
“And is that what you’ve done here?” Raine snarled. “Waited until we’re at our most vulnerable?”
Langley laughed. It was a genuine sound which seemed out of place given the circumstances. “You’re good Nate, but I’m not ready to put you in the same league as Alexander the Great just yet,” he joked. No one laughed.
Langley composed himself and then continued, as smoothly as if he were addressing the UN. “It is not just people that are dangerous, is it?” It was a rhetorical question. “There are… things in this world, objects which hold such powers or such secrets that they could wrench a chasm through civilisation.” He smiled his usual grandfatherly smile but Raine knew it hid more danger than he had ever imagined. “I don’t know all the details. Even to members of the group we know only of rumours, myths and legends; The Tower of Babel, the Ark of the Covenant, the Holy Grail. The lost prophesies of Nostradamus. The original Codexes of the Maya. Members of the group have spread from Egypt throughout the world, sometimes as soldiers, sometimes as politicians, sometimes as missionaries. The conquest of the Americas was a particularly active time for them, a terrifying era when unknown beliefs and unknown ‘technologies’ for want of a better term, threatened the established civilisations of the Old World.”
“The Franciscan priests and missionaries,” King realised, appalled. “They destroyed most of the indigenous knowledge of the ancient people of Mesoamerica and the Andes. They were members of your group.”
“No,” Langley corrected him. “They merely did our bidding, without even knowing it. We are simply the cogs, within the wheels, within the machines of governments and religions. A gentle suggestion to a monarch or to a religious leader; nowadays to a politician, a president or prime minister; normally that’s all it takes. Rarely do we have to get our hands so dirty to preserve the fragile status quo of this world.”
Raine’s face twisted in indignation. “You say you ‘preserve’ the status quo, but, in reality, you are the embodiment of the urban-legends about the Illuminati and the Masons: a secret cabal, working behind the scenes, employing whatever means necessary to manipulate the course of human history!” He shook his head in disgust.
“Don’t pass judgement on us, Nathan,” Langley snapped with an angry twist to his voice. “You of all people know what it takes to maintain some semblance of peace in this world. In order for the many to live, a few, even the innocent few, must die.”
“But there is a line!” Raine was angry now and he knew that it was more than just shock at learning of a secret society which had manipulated the course of history. It was personal. Alex Langley, his former C.O., his mentor, his friend, his surrogate father, had lied to him. Betrayed him. “And you crossed it!”
“Don’t lecture me about lines!” Langley took Raine’s assault just as it was intended. Personally. “Tell Mrs Marley about that ‘line’ Nathan. You were happy to cross it when your friends’ lives were in danger.”