It would be easy enough to pass her off as a dingbat. But her words explained a lot. From time to time Eleanor would feel an uncomfortable shock of recognition as Lady Wilburdon's explanations matched up perfectly with what she herself had noticed. Consciously she kept an open mind. Subconsciously she had long ago decided that everything Lady Wilburdon said was true.
"If what you're saying is true," Eleanor said, "an unbelievable amount of money has been spent."
"It's all relative," Lady Wilburdon said. "It's all part of a long-range strategy."
"How long-range?"
"Centuries."
"Centuries?"
"There are only five entities in the world with sufficient wisdom to pursue consistent strategies over periods of several centuries," Lady Wilburdon said. "These entities are not national or governmental in nature - even the best governments are dangerously unstable and short-lived. Such an entity is self-preserving and self-perpetuating. A world war, or the rise and fall of an empire or an alliance such as the USSR or NATO, is no more serious, to it, than a gust of wind buffeting the sails of a clipper ship."
"What are these entities?" Eleanor said.
"In no particular order, one is the Catholic Church. One is Japan - which is nothing more than a group of zaibatsus, or major industrial combines. The third is a loose network of shtetls. After the expulsion from Spain in 1492, they forcibly realized the importance of long-range planning, and in the intervening years have accumulated formidable assets. The fourth one we don't know much about; it seems to connect many of the recalcitrantly traditional cultures of the Third and Fourth Worlds and to be headquartered somewhere in Central Asia. And the fifth is the Network. It is an alliance of large investors, both individual and institutional, predominantly European and American. You might think of it as the legacy, the residue, of the East India Company, the Hudson's Bay Company, the American railway companies, Standard Oil, and the technological empires of our time. It is the most decentralized of the five entities - really just an effort to pursue investments, and certain other activities, in a coordinated fashion. Before the war its funds were managed by a lovely Scottish gentleman who lived in an old castle near Chichester. Afterward it was moved to the interior of the States and placed in the hands of an American fellow, a mathematical prodigy who attended the Lady Wilburdon School for Geniuses on the Isle of Rhum."
"The Network owns Ogle Data Research?"
"Yes."
"And by implication, Cozzano?"
"Yes."
"So you're saying that the Network is going to take over the United States?"
"The Network wouldn't want it," Lady Wilburdon said. "Governments, as I mentioned, are dodgy. All the Network wants is to stabilize the return on its investment in the national debt."
"Wait a minute. You're saying that the Network would put together this incredible conspiracy just to get a couple of extra points on a loan?"
The idea did not seem troubling to Lady Wilburdon. She seemed a bit surprised that Eleanor didn't accept it. "My dear lady," she said, "do you have any idea how much money your government has borrowed?"
"A lot," Eleanor said. "Ten trillion dollars." It was a figure she had to cite regularly during campaign debates.
"Well, you certainly can't expect to borrow that much money from someone without incurring certain obligations, can you?" Lady Wilburdon said, as if it were all perfectly obvious. And it was, in fact, perfectly obvious.
"Of course, not," Eleanor said, "you're right."
"When a business borrows money from a bank, and does so irresponsibly, and is profligate and incompetent, what happens?"
"It goes bankrupt. And the bank takes it over."
"Yes. The bank simply wants what is best for the business. It gets rid of the dead wood, fires the miscreants who drove the business to ruin, cleans it out, and sets everything right, so that the business is once again able to meet its obligations."
"And I'm one of the people who is supposed to set everything right."
"You and Mr. Cozzano, yes. And I'm sure you'll do a splendid job of it."
"You are? Are you kidding?"
"Of course not. I've been following your career, Ms. Richmond. Everything you've been saying in the last year about the failure of American politics is correct," Lady Wilburdon said. "Without going round and talking to them personally, I daresay that most of the people in the Network consider you something of a folk hero."
Eleanor's mind was whirling, and not just because she had taken two glasses of sherry. She had to see Mary Catherine. And providentially, one of her assistants broke through and signaled it was time to go. Eleanor had been listening with such rapt attention that she had not moved for an hour. One of her legs had gone to sleep, and the sherry also had reduced her coordination. When she stood up, it showed.
"You need to do some stretching exercises," Lady Wilburdon said. "Take it from me - I travel even more than a presidential candidate."
"I'll keep that in mind, Lady Wilburdon. Thank you for an illuminating chat."
"It was my pleasure, I assure you," Lady Wilburdon said, seeing her to the elevators. Eleanor had now been enveloped by her campaign staff.
"Good-bye," Lady Wilburdon said, as the elevator arrived, "I should enjoy paying a call on you at the Naval Observatory, if you would have me. I love telescopes."
53
The Prince of Darkness arrived at Dulles Airport at one p.m. on the ninth of October, in a chartered Learjet with the windows painted black. He was met on the end of the runway by a black limousine that gave the terminal building a wide berth as it swung on to the Dulles Access Road. The limousine made its way into the stream of traffic, headed directly in toward the District of Columbia, trailed by a dark sedan full of men in sunglasses and suits.
Within half a mile the limousine had changed lanes all the way over to the left edge of the roadway and was traveling in excess of ninety miles per hour. In the back of that limousine, an astonishingly loud, grating voice was egging on the driver, like a hot poker shoving him in the ass. There were only two men in the vehicle, the driver and the passenger, they had been together for less than sixty seconds, and the driver was already fighting a nearly uncontrollable urge to pull on to the shoulder, vault the seat, and wrap his fingers around the Prince of Darkness's neck.
They were less than a mile from the airport when the limousine's brake lights flared and it suddenly veered on to the shoulder. The black sedan grumbled to an emergency stop directly behind it, spraying gravel. The high-speed traffic in the left lane of the roadway veered, screeched, and honked, nearly rear-ending this strange little caravan.
The door of the limousine had been flung open before the limo had come to a full stop. Jeremiah Freel, the Prince of Darkness, climbed out and jerked the driver's side door open before the driver even had time to set the parking brake.
"Out out out out!" he screeched in his terrible, grinding voice.
People who had run afoul of the Prince of Darkness vied for ways to describe the sound of his voice: "like a cattle prod in the armpit," one had said. Like snorting pure Mace from the can. Like putting a single crystal of Drano in the corner of each eye. Having a killer bee stuck in each ear.
"Get out, you nigger!" Jeremiah Freel screamed at the driver, which was an interesting choice of words since the driver was a white boy.
He was a white boy with a southern accent. A rural, uneducated southern accent. And as Freel had obviously figured out, simply by listening to this man say, "Good afternoon, sir," the single most insulting thing you could call him was nigger. So he got out of that driver's seat in a big hurry and drew himself up face-to-face with Freel, or chest-to-face, actually, since Freel was short enough to sleep comfortably on an ironing board.