Robert Wilson - The Illuminatus! Trilogy

"Which way do we go?" George asked, buttoning his shirt.

"You go," Drake said. "Down the stairs and out the back, to the garage. Here's the key to my Silver Wraith Rolls Royce. It won't be any use to me anymore."

"Why aren't you coming?" George protested.

"We deserve to be dead," Drake said, "all of us in this house."

"Hey, that's crazy. I don't care what you've done, a guilt trip is always crazy."

"I've been on a crazier trip, as you'd call it, all my life," Drake said calmly. "The power trip. Now, move!"

"George, don't make no bull moves," the Dutchman said. "He's talking," Sergeant Luke Conlon whispered at the foot of the hospital bed; the police stenographer, F. J. Long, began taking notes. "What have you done with him?" the Dutchman went on. "Oh, mama, mama, mama. Oh, stop it. Oh, oh, oh, sure. Sure, mama." Drake sat down in the window seat and, too nervous for a cigar, lit one of his infrequent cigarettes. One hundred and fifty-seven, he thought, remembering the last entry in his little notebook. One hundred and fifty-seven rich women, one wife, and seventeen boys.

And never once did I really make contact, never once did I smash the walls… The wind and the rain were now deafening outside… Fourteen billion dollars, thirteen billion illegal and tax-free; more than Getty or Hunt, even if I could never publicize the fact. And that Arab boy in Tangier who picked my pocket after he blew me, my mother's perfume, hours and hours in Zurich puzzling over the Dutchman's words.

Outside Flegenheimer's livery stable in the Bronx, Phil Silverberg is teasing young Arthur Flegenheimer in 1913, holding the burglar's tools out of reach, asking mockingly, "Do you really think you're big enough to knock over a house on your own?" In the Newark hospital, the Dutchman cries angrily, "Now listen, Phil, fun is fun." The seventeen Illuminati representatives vanished in the dark; the one with the goat's head suddenly returned. "What happened to the other sixteen?" Dutch asked the hospital walls. The blood from his arm signed the parchment. "Oh, he done it. Please," he asked vaguely. Sergeant Conlon looks bemusedly at the stenographer, Lang. The lightning seemed dark, and the darkness seemed light. It's taking hold of my mind completely, Drake thought, sitting by the window.

I will hold onto my sanity, Drake swore silently. What was that rock song about Jesus I was remembering?

"Only five inches between me and happiness," was it? No, that's from Deep Throat. The whiteness of the whale.

The waves covered his vision again: wrong song, obviously. I have to reach him, to unify the forces. No, dammit, that's not my thought. That's his thought. He's coming up, up out of the waves. I must rise. I must rise. To unify the forces.

Dillinger said, "You're right, Dutch. Fuck the Illuminati. Fuck the Maf. The Justified Ancients of Mummu would be glad to have you." The Dutchman looked right into Sergeant Conlon's eyes and asked, "John, please, oh, did you buy the whole tale? You promised a million, sure. Get out, I wished I knew.

Please make it quick. Fast and furious. Please. Fast and furious. Please help me get out."

I should have gotten out in '42, when I first learned about the camps, Drake thought. I never realized until then that they really meant to do it. And next Hiroshima. Why did I stay after Hiroshima? It was so obvious, it was just the way Lovecraft wrote, the idiot God Chaos blew earth's dust away, and back in '35 I knew the secret: if a cheap hoodlum like Dutch Schultz had a great poet buried in him, what might be released if any man looked the old whore Death in the eye? Say that I betrayed my country and my planet, but worse, add that I betrayed Robert Putney Drake, the giant of psychology I murdered when I used the secret for power and not for healing.

I see the plumbers, the cesspool cleaners, the colorless all-color of atheism. I am the Fate's lieutenant: I act under ardors. White, White void. Ahab's eye. Five inches from happiness, the Law of Fives, always. Ahab schlurped down, down.

"This Bavarian stuff is all bullshit," Dillinger said. "They're mostly Englishmen, since Rhodes took command in 1888. And they've already infiltrated Justice, State and Labor, as well as the Treasury. That's who you're playing ball with. And let me tell you what they plan to do with your people, the Jews, in this war they're cooking up."

"Listen," the Dutchman interrupted. "Capone would have a bullet in me if he knew I was even talking to you, John."

"Are you afraid of Capone? He arranged to have the Feds put a bullet in me at the Biograph and I'm still sassy and lively as ever."

"I'm not afraid of Capone or Lepke or Maldonado or…" The Dutchman's eyes brought back the hospital room. "I'm a pretty good pretzeler," he told Sergeant Conlon anxiously. "Winifred, Department of Justice. I even got it from the department." The pain shot through him, sharp as ecstasy. "Sir, please stop it!" He had to explain about DeMolay and Weishaupt. "Listen," he urged, "the last Knight. I don't want to holler." It was so hard, with the pulsings of the pain. "I don't know, sir. Honestly, I don't. I went to the toilet. I was in the can and the boy came at me. If we wanted to break the Ring. No, please. I get a month. Come on, Illuminati, cut me off." It was so hard to explain. "I had nothing with him and he was a cowboy in one of the seven days. Ewige! Fight… No business, no hangouts, no friends. Nothing. Just what you pick up and what you need." The pain wasn't just the bullet; they were working on his mind, trying to stop him from saying too much. He saw the goat head. "Let him harness himself to you and then bother you," he cried. "They are Englishmen and they are a type and I don't know who is best, they or us." So much to say, and so little time. He thought of Francie, his wife. "Oh, sir, get the doll a rofting." The Illuminati formula to summon the lloigor: he could at least reveal that. "A boy has never wept nor dashed a thousand kim. Did you hear me?" They had to understand how high it went, all over the world. "I would hear it, the Circuit Court would hear it, and the Supreme Court would hear it. If that ain't the payoff. Please crack down on the Chinaman's friends and Hitler's Commander." Eris, the Great Mother, was the only alternative to the Illuminati's power; he had to tell them that much. "Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast."

"He's blabbing too much," the one who wore the goat head, Winifred, from Washington, said. "Increase the pain."

"The dirty rats have tuned in," Dutch shouted.

"Control yourself," Sergeant Conlon said soothingly.

"But I am dying," Dutch, explained. Couldn't they understand anything?

Drake met Winifred at a cocktail party in Washington, in '47, just after the National Security Act was passed by the Senate. "Well?" Winifred asked, "do you have any further doubts?"

"None at all," Drake said. "All my open money is now invested in defense industries."

"Keep it there," Winifred smiled, "and you'll get richer than you ever dreamed. Our present projection is that we can get Congress to approve one trillion dollars in war preparations before 1967."

Drake thought fast and asked softly, "You're going to add another villain beside Russia?"

"Watch China," Winifred said calmly.

For once, curiosity surpassed cupidity in Drake; he asked, "Are you really keeping him in the Pentagon?"

"Would you like to meet him, face to face?" Winifred asked with a faint hint of a sneer in his voice.

"No thank you," Drake said coolly. "I've been reading Herman Rauschning. I remember Hitler's words about the Superman: 'He is alive, among us. I have met him. He is intrepid and terrible. I was afraid of him.' That's enough for my curiosity."