Friday Flash Fiction - The Inner Circle

I had finally worked my way into the inner circle. The Illuminati, the most secret of secret societies, those who run the world. I was sitting at a table with the puppet-masters themselves. They all wore masks, but mine had cameras at every angle the tech boys could figure out how to jam them in. Maybe we wouldn't get their bare faces, but we'd get their voices at least.

I had worked my way quickly up through the ranks of the Sydney criminal organisations, found their contacts in local politics and followed the unofficial chain of command up from there. It took years to get in contact with the upper-echelon bankers online and get them to agree to this meeting. I could bring them all down at once. It would make my career, if anyone could ever hear about it.

Everyone at the table seemed to be waiting for someone else to take control of the meeting, so I figured I should probably let them know I had called it and why. It seemed unlikely they would be happy about it.

Just as I was going to open my mouth, however, a woman at the other end of the table, wearing a mask made of crow feathers, spoke up.

"You've been called here to attend an important meeting. You have no idea just how important it is." She took off her mask with a flourish, and it was a second before I realised that there were no gasps of surprise from the other members. "My name is Special Agent Regina Flores, FBI, and all of you are under arrest for several varieties of conspiracy that I'll be happy to go over with you later."

I was about to pull off my own mask when two men sitting beside Agent Flores stood up and introduced themselves as CIA agents. "We'll take over from here," they said, without any humour or recognition of any growing absurdity.

Then someone else stood up - MI5, apparently - and FSB and several other national intelligence agencies announced themselves. In the midst of the shouting, I tried to bring out my badge and tell people I was with ASIO, but the arguments about jurisdiction and rage about blowing years of cover work had started, as would be expected. There were lots of fists pounding on the table and someone started shoving. It looked like nobody was actually with the Illuminati at all, and I made a quick exit before the full-on brawl began. As I slunk quietly out of the building, I started mentally composing a report on the matter, preparing to close it off, then I thought, wait a minute, someone did send us here. This intelligence community nightmare might have been exactly what they wanted. Expose all the rats at once and go on with their business. Perhaps I still had work to do.

That's the thing about secret societies, though. You never quite know when you're done with them, or, really, if you've even started.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This one just seemed like fun to me.
PPS - It was one of those random thoughts that occur to me sometimes.