And he turned the card over, and on the back was an address on Beacon Hill with the words "8:30 tonight." He looked up at the janitor, who backed away deferentially, saying, "Thank you, Mr. Drake, sir," without a touch of irony in his face or voice. And it hadn't surprised him at all that, for deliberate contrast, the Grand Master he met that night, one of the five Illuminati Primi for the U.S., was an official of the Justice Department. (And what had Jung said about power?) "A few of them will have to fall. Lepke, I would recommend. Perhaps Luciano also." No mystical trappings: just a businesslike meeting. "Our interest is the same as yours: increasing the power of the Justice Department. An equal increment in the power of the other branches of government will proceed nicely when we get the war into gear." Drake remembered his excitement: it was all as he had foreseen. The end of the Republic, the dawn of the Empire.
"After Germany, Russia?" Drake asked once.
"Very good; you are indeed farseeing," the Grand Master replied. "Mr. Hitler, of course, is only a medium. Virtually no ego at all, on his own. You have no idea how dull and prosaic such types are, except when under proper Inspiration. Naturally, his supplied ego will collapse, he will become psychotic, and we will have no control over him at all, then. We are prepared to help him fall. Our real interest now is here. Let me show you something. We do not work in general outlines; our plans are always specific, to the last detail." He handed Drake a sheaf of papers. "The war will probably end in '44 or '45. We will have Russia built up as the next threat within two years. Read this carefully."
Drake read what was to become the National Security Act of 1947. "This abolishes the Constitution," he said almost in ecstasy.
"Quite. And believe me, Mr. Drake, by '46 or '47, we will have Congress and the public ready to accept it. The American Empire is closer than you imagine."
"But the isolationists and pacifists-Senator Taft and that crowd-"
"They will wither away. When communism replaces fascism as the number one enemy, your small-town conservative will be ready for global adventures on a scale that would make the heads of poor Mr. Roosevelt's liberals spin. Trust me. We have every detail pinpointed. Let me show you where the new government will be located."
Drake stared at the plan and shook his head. "Some people will recognize what a pentagon means," he said dubiously.
"They will be dismissed as superstitious cranks. Believe me, this building will be constructed within a few years. It will become the policeman of the world. Nobody will dare question its actions or judgments without being denounced as a traitor. Within thirty years, Mr. Drake, within thirty years, anyone who attempts to restore power to the Congress will be cursed and vilified, not by liberals but by conservatives."
"Holy God," Drake said.
The Grand Master rose and walked to an old-fashioned globe nearly as large as King Kong's head. "Pick a spot, Mr. Drake. Any spot. I guarantee you we will have American troops there within thirty years. The Empire that you dreamed of while reading Tacitus."
Robert Putney Drake felt humbled for an instant, even though he recognized the gimmick: using one single example of telepathy, plucking Tacitus out of his head, to climax the presentation of the incredible dream. At last he understood firsthand the awe that the Illuminati created in both its servitors and its enemies.
"There will be opposition," the Grand Master went on. "In the 1960s and early 1970s especially. That's where your notion for a unified crime syndicate fits into our plan. To crush the opposition, we will need a Justice Department equivalent in many ways to Hitler's Gestapo. If your scheme works- if the Mafia can be drawn into a syndicate that is not entirely under Sicilian control, and the various other groups can be brought under the same umbrella- we will have a nationwide outlaw cartel. The public itself will then call for the kind of Justice Department that we need. By the mid-1960s, wiretapping of all sorts must be so common that the concept of privacy will be archaic." And, tossing sleeplessly, Drake thought how smoothly it had all worked out; why then was he rebelling against it? Why did it give him no pleasure? And what was it Jung had said about power?
Richard Jung, wearing Carl Jung's old sweater and smoking his pipe, said, "And next the solar system." The room was crowded with white rabbits, Playboy bunnies, Bugs Bunny, the Wolf Man, Ku Kluxers, Ma-fiosos, Lepke with accusing eyes, a dormouse, a mad hatter, the King of Hearts, the Prince of Wands, and Jung was shouting over the din. "Billions to reach the moon. Trillions to get to Mars. All pouring into our corporations. Better than the gladiatorial games." Linda Lovelace elbowed him aside. "Call me Ishmaelian," she said suggestively; but Jung handed Drake the skeleton of a Biafran baby. "For Petruchio's feast," he explained, producing a piece of ticker tape. "We now own," he began to read, "seventy-two percent of earth's resources, and fifty-one percent of all the armed troops in the world are under our direction. Here," he said, passing the body of an infant that had died in Appalachia, "see that this one gets an apple in its mouth."
A bunny passed Drake a 1923 Thompson machine gun, the model that had been called an automatic rifle because the Army had no funds to buy submachine guns that year. "What's this for?" Drake asked, confused. "We have to defend ourselves," the bunny said. "The mob is at the gates. The hungry mob. An astronaut named Spartacus is leading them." Drake handed the gun to Maldonado and crept upstairs to his private heliport. He passed through the lavatory to the laboratory (where Dr. Frankenstein was attaching electrodes to Linda Lovelace's jaws) and entered the golf course again, where the door opened to the airplane cabin.
He was escaping in his 747 jet, and below he could see Black Panthers, college kids, starving coal miners, Indians, Viet Cong, Brazilians, an enormous army pillaging his estate. "They must have seen the fnords," he said to the pilot. But the pilot was his mother and the sight of her threw him into a rage. "Leaving me alone!" he screamed. "Always leaving me alone to go to your damned parties with father. I never had a mother, just one nigger maid after another acting as mothers. Were the parties that fucking important?"
"Oh," she said reddening, "how can you use that word in front of your own mother?"
"To hell with that. All I remember is your perfume hanging in the air, and some strange black face coming when I called for you."
"You're such a baby," she said sadly. "All your life, you've always been a big baby." It was true: he was wearing diapers. A vice president of Morgan Guarantee Trust stared at him incredulously. "I say, Drake, do you really think that is appropriate garb for an important business meeting?" Beside him Linda Lovelace bent in ecstasy to kiss the secret ardor of Ishmael. "A whale of a good time," the vice president said, suddenly giggling inanely.
"Oh, fuck you all," Drake screamed. "I've got more money than any of you."
"The money is gone," Carl Jung said, wearing Freud's beard. "What totem will you use now to ward off insecurity and the things that go bump in the night?" He sneered. "What childish codes! M.A.F.I.A.-Morte Alla Francia Italia Anela. French Canadian bean so up- the Five Consecrated Bavarian Seers. Annuit Coeptis Novus Or do Seclorum-Anti-Christ Now Our Savior. A boy has never wept nor dashed a thousand kim-Asmodeus Belial Hastur Nyarlathotep Wotan Niggurath Dholes Azathoth Tind-alos Kadith. Child's play! Glasspielen!"