"When the time came where technology allowed the Illuminati to move more quickly, they, and that includes me, made bolder moves to change the world. Along the way, we got lost. Just like organized religion, we perverted the original ideas, and became bigger bastards than the very people we set out to rid the world of. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, Jason. It always has and it always will. If you ever want to test the true nature of any person, then simply give them a little bit of authority and watch what they do with it. I've seen perfectly decent people commit acts of horror that would turn your stomach, all in the pursuit of the tiniest scrap of power."
Heller wolfed down the pecan pie and apple pie, stopping only for loud slurps of coffee along the way. The guy was eating like he hadn't seen real food in years. It was like watching a bear attacking a lump of venison. Truth be told, it kinda put paid to Jason's appetite, and he found himself picking at the rest of his steak and eggs instead of eating them. The sights and sounds of old people eating had a habit of doing that to him. Heller might be dying, but his appetite was as alive as any man's.
Heller had noticed that he wasn't eating. "You not as hungry as you thought?" Jason looked down and realized he hadn’t touched anything on his plate yet. For once in his life, Jason found himself lost for anything but a handful of words. "Yeah, I suppose my appetite isn't what I thought."
"Or you just had your stomach turned by the sight of some old guy eating a small mountain of pie like a savage, maybe?" Heller guessed.
Jason found himself snorting a reply. "Well, you do have a certain style of eating, Bill."
Heller sat slowly back in his chair and reached into his jacket pocket with his right hand. For a split second, Jason realized he was getting ready to grab whatever was coming out of that pocket, and, in his mind, that was a gun. He couldn't have been more wrong though as Heller produced a pack of smokes.
"Do you mind if I..?" Heller asked with a flourish of the cigarette in his hand, clearly demonstrating he didn't give a fiddler's fuck what Jason said or thought on the matter.
Jason nodded back. "Go right ahead, Bill, I quit years back, but don't let me stop your fun."
Heller closed his eyes, snicked a bright flame into existence with his worn Zippo, lit his Pall Mall, inhaled deeply, and sat back. It looked like the best cigarette in the world at that point in time, and Jason found himself feeling just a tiny bit envious of the look on Heller's face.
"I was the guy who put a bullet in Kennedy, but then, these are the little bullets that got me, Jason. The little sons of bitches." It was strange to hear Heller swear like that. It seemed out of character, but Jason figured it was best to leave it alone.
"So where were we? Ah, yes, the Illuminati and murdering Kennedy. It was no secret that the Kennedy's were a very powerful family whatever way you looked at them, and what made matters worse was that they had powerful allies. What bugged my associates more than anything else was that Kennedy wasn’t the war-monger they needed in office. Kennedy had served in the United States Navy in the Pacific, so he'd had his fill of war for life - he had no desire to send other young men away to die in pointless wars, as I've already said."
Heller went on, "By this stage, the Illuminati weren't about enlightenment anymore. They just wanted control of the most powerful army in the world, and the resources of the most powerful nation in the world. So they figured out how to take America away from Americans, using the exact same techniques used by organized religion for thousands of years. Fear."
"Are you telling me that there was an actual coup? That the Kennedy assassination was a secret military takeover?" Jason said.
"Somewhere out there, there's always someone who wants to make the world as messed up as their head is, Jason. They don't know how to be happy, so their only goal is to make everyone as unhappy as they are right at that point in time. They're the kind of people I wound up working for in the end. Kennedy had to go for the war in Vietnam to be kept going, and for the Communists to be defeated the way the group I worked for wanted them to be."
Heller paused. “It’s also worth remembering that some of the biggest companies in the United States were making tens of billions of dollars from the Vietnam War – the United States lost over 10,000 aircraft in that war. Each of those had to be replaced, and someone was making a lot of money from that. Big business drives big war as much as any political idea, you’d do well to remember that.”
Jason knew that, back in the 50s and 60s, the whole Western world was living in fear of Communism and the looming threat of a Soviet Bear armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons. Of course, placing nuclear missiles within spitting distance of Florida was a dumb move, no matter what way you look at it, but Kennedy had called Khruschev's bluff on that one. And the world? Well, the world was saved from becoming a gigantic, radioactive fireball for a couple of hours, and then a frozen wasteland for the next 20 to 30 years. Convincing people that Communists were bad people was easy. The masses always preferred to have an enemy they could easily identify, and if they weren’t American, that made it even easier.
"We found a willing partner-in-crime in Lyndon Baines Johnson, too. Good ole LBJ had been embarrassed by Kennedy once too often, and had been quietly muttering about revenge for years. In private, he called the Kennedys 'the Irish Mafia', but tried to keep that one under his hat. Except when he lost his temper, and LBJ did that a whole heap,” Heller explained through a small cloud of smoke. “For a guy who looked like he said his prayers and drank warm milk before bed, he had an evil temper on him, and once he got going, anyone willing to listen would hear just how much he hated the entire Kennedy family. We didn't have to convince LBJ to work with us. We didn't have to bribe him or force him, he'd have done it for free! He was sick of being controlled by the Kennedys, so whoever wanted them gone got a gold star of approval from him."
Trying to process this much information at once can be too much for most people, and Jason found his mind spinning trying to keep up. There'd always been some questions about what happened to Kennedy, but no one ever had any real answers. The conspiracy nuts blamed everyone they could think of from the CIA, to the mafia, to a secret military coup, but there was no consistency to their answers to these questions, and opinions and theories were changed often as underwear. LBJ had never really come into the equation, from what he could remember. Then again, it wouldn't have been much of a conspiracy if the President-elect was fingered in the murder of the man he'd just replaced.
Chapter 14
The background noise in the diner was always present but not loud enough to distract Jason from his train of thought, or to distract Heller from his story. It was just the usual mumbled conversations, with the odd burst of laughter thrown in. Diners were like a tiny, compressed version of the outside world. It’s like seeing every aspect of society crammed into one big room, all fighting to make their voices heard, grabbing their few seconds in the spotlight of life.
Jason found himself whispering across the table in surprise, "So now you're telling me the vice president of the United States was in on the deal, too? That seems a bit far-fetched Heller. People would have talked. Something would have leaked out!" This was followed up by a nervous glance over his shoulder to see if anyone had heard what the old man had just said.