Get your own Free Homepage
When the bellboy comes for the dishes, I'll ask about sporting girls. Dr Bruhn's eyes closed. Oh, yes. Long hair, maroon and fine---- large rich areolas circling nipples firm and erect---- soft ivory skin, yielding, moving, sighs---- touch gently along to the maroon bun---- part it---- moist places---- oh, yes . . . ! A knock sounded. Eagerly, he answered the door.
"Mind if I step in?" asked Thomas, stepping in. Thomas sat down at the table by the view and the breakfast artifacts. Another knock to answer.
As if choreographed, the bellboy rolled in his cart, cleared the dishes, accepted a tip, and left.
Bruhn inclined his head to one side and smiled.
He sat, facing Tom.
"I'm a free man, Thomas. I don't have to listen to you, or go with you. I resigned."
"I can get the Detroit police to hold you, but I won't."
"How did you find me?"
"The tracker I put in your dispatch case, months ago."
"How could you treat me like that?"
"How else could I treat you and still be professional?"
"Well, Thomas, I'm a civilian now. And I've always been a civilian. I never took a military oath. So you have no hold over me, save the eternal bonds of comradeship."
"D.T.," Tom replied, going to the courtesy fridge and returning with bourbon, ice, and glasses, "let's drink some whiskey and talk things over." He held up his hands, open, palms out, and moving them, shook his head. "Believe me, you don't have to fear becoming the star of the Defenestration of Detroit."
"Only because you can't push me out windows you can't open." "Don't you trust me?"
"Sometimes, Thomas, I don't even trust myself."
"You can both trust me," said Mosca, alighting on a bed lamp. "That's my exact thought. As Angleton liked to say, life in the Company takes place in a world of mirrors." He turned back to D.T. "We've been in this all our adult lives. I don't know about you, but I've always aspired to earning the Donovan medal, even though they never let you keep it. And I've wished for a cornucopia to pour creative energy into the world. And you know what? I think we've got it. Mosca."
"I think we have it in Tesla's physics and solar technology. Earth is a battery. One sun ray can light a city. We can use heat differentials to create commotion which we can then adjust to the natural resonance and with very slight solar input augment and intensify indefinitely. Everything is in equilibrium. Upset the stasis, you get action. Go for the natural vibrations and their harmonics, and the world becomes a Stradivarius violin, and you develop power of a scope and intensity beyond imagination. And you do it by playing . . .
the lost chord." He raised his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. "Thomas, the development of technology, impressive as it seems superficially, is in fact immensely irrational. If only we could back up to nineteen-hundred, forget better war machines, and do it over again."
Thomas refilled their glasses. "That would be like backing up a country-western song to where your wife's at home, your dog's alive, and you're out of jail."
"Thomas, God damn it to Hell, you don't have any substance. You're charming and facetious. Yes. Your trouble is you were reared in a marsupial pouch, a chrysalis, and you're still in it. You're a scion of the Spofford and Cortlandt families. You went from an exclusive residential prep school to an exclusive residential college, and thence to another private club, this time with walls of secrecy erected inside your head: CIA. And in all those years you never really learned anything except how to charm and manipulate, and how to pose as something you're not."
"And in all that time you've been an acned adolescent hiding in the cocoon of science."
"We're face to face with the inevitable and immediate demise of complex terrestrial life."
"I know that. But it sets up a dilemma for me because my kids don't."
"We know what we want. The object, ours, the Company's, the country's---- the world's---- should be liberty and justice for all. So, how do we get there? First, limited entry. Birth control. Sterilization. Abortion. Abstinence. Reward it. Homosexuality. Exalt it. Then what . . . ? Infant kill. Expose them. Make post-natal abortion an option for the first six months."
Tom smiled and raised a toast. "Here's to fat runts running." And then, for Tom, as the whiskey receded, the conversation began to seem at once candid and profound. Bruhn confessed he likes animals, except for monkeys, better than people, and went on to speak of the heartbreaking results of trying out chemical and biological weapons on helpless creatures, and that brought to mind a bird study going directly from the Smithsonian to Detrick. Thomas described how CIA had used the international organizations of the labor movement as weapons in the cold war, corrupting them utterly with money, using them to prepare pools of trained coolies for companies moving out of the States, and to support despots, and to suborn elections to favor conservatives, as in Guyana, where massive infusions of money---- some coming from union dues---- had defeated the prime minister and elected a sociopath who later played both sides against each other. Jonestown had been an MKULTRA project, as had others in Guyana which never drew the attention of the media. "I went out there from the Pegasus Hotel in Georgetown. Not all nine hundred plus of those people had killed themselves. Some had been murdered, either on the spot, or hunted down when trying to escape. I know a hell of a lot more about it, probably, than anyone else alive today. Around the world, CIA, through the years, must be responsible for millions of deaths, as are the brethren of the KGB, Mossad, France's Fifth Bureau, or UK's MI6. And you wonder why I seem facetious! CIA has more personnel overseas than does the Department of State. CIA's into everything. It associates with multinational business, and world-wide crime syndicates, and international banking, and all of them work in concert. CIA suborns journalists. And governments, too. So I know what's going on, but what the fuck can I do about it? You don't know how menacing this coming new order is. You just know your one little piece."
He sighed and looked out over the maritime traffic moving on the Detroit River, and it made him think of traffic on the Hudson, and on the Saint Laurence, and he sucked whiskey and told D.T. about the Hudson Highlands, and Montréal and Québec and operation KMBUZZ and his father who, though an artesian well of lectures on good citizenship, always refused to vote, probably because mom was keenly into Republican polities. When she confided in the old man her plan
to run for Congress in the Republican primary, he said, 'You do that and I'll run against you.'
"D.T., that would have been one hell of a campaign. I'd have enjoyed every second of it, were it not that mother would have drafted me into her service. Pater would not have run, of course. For him, it would have been more in character to have her killed."
All this time, Mosca had been circling above Tom's reach. "Put me back in Pedro, you two guys, or some better vehicle, and I'll run and I'll win and I'll find the World War III button, and I'll push it."
"You wouldn't get near it. Believe me! Not even if you became president. They disconnected the presidential button in Nixon's time, and to this day have neglected to reconnect it. Our constitutional officers compose the cosmetic government. The secret government wields the real power. It's the true sovereign. Like the communist party back in the old Soviet Union, the secret government, now multinational, stands alongside all levels of government, and sits on top, too, and presses connected buttons. So, Mosca, you want sparks? That's the button you have to push."
"Spoken," said Bruhn, "like Doubting Thomas."
"What the fuck did he doubt?"
"I don't know. I never read the Bible."
"I'll tell you. When that J-boy said he'd come to supper late because Mary had made him clean his room, Thomas, who'd been around the block too many times to believe a story like that, said: Bullshit." Tom fetched more ice, sat again. "Pal, I still don't think you see the picture. To Mosca, what I'm saying is no big deal, but, because of your species, it should be to you. The secret government has roots. CIA's mentor was Donovan's OSS which, in turn, was instructed by British military intelligence. KGB is the great grandson of the Czar's secret police. Intel agencies are covert military forces, old-time Jesuits serving their popes. Who tells intel what to do? Whom to kill? Whom to suppress? Whom to support? Who are the real sovereigns? Now we're looking at an ancient ancestry. The Bilderburgers. The Trilaterals. The Templars. The Rosicrucians. The Initiates. The Illuminati."
"You forgot the Sovereign Military Order of the Knights of Malta "
"Shut up you dumb shit and listen! Our Company, CIA, the fraternal order whence come our pay checks and in which we've spent our lives, is an arm of a worldwide techno-synarchic plot working, militating, to destabilize all governments, by whatever means practical. The means? We know them all. Well, probably not you, but I've practiced most and witnessed all. No. You don't know. That's why I'm boss, not you."
"Don't leave out the Masons."
"The means? Disinformation. Bribery. Subornation. Blackmail. Graft. Revolution. War. Exacerbating bigotry. Chauvinism. Coup d'état. Inflation. Theft. Murder. Torture. Pandemics. Poison gas. Famine. Botulism. And more and more and more."
"Is that s0?"
"You're god-damned right it's s0. The Apocalypse has a hell of a lot more than four horsemen and here they all come. Can't you fucking hear them? The Grand Masters want to start Armageddon, and thus destroy evil and social order and prepare man for the rule of righteousness. At the moment the most recent phase of their strategy is coming to climax. After softening civilization with World War I, they built, armed, then destabilized the USSR so as to liberate and diffuse its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and thus bring on the final war. Everything will collapse into chaos. Tribal war with world-class weapons. Then, the Masters will begin to assert their authority. And our part in all this? The Director of Central Intelligence, the DCI, is always a member of their secret cenacle." He smacked his hand.
"Why? Because, with the help of Donovan, Alan Dulles, our real founder and, by chance, a seasoned initiate, set us on that course."
"What about the Protocols of Zion?"
Thomas sprang to his feet, upsetting the whiskey bottle, and seized Bruhn by the shoulders.
"You dumb shit! Who the fucking Hell is facetious, superficial, now? Can't you see! To the Grand Masters, MKMOSCA is a very promising project. We're fucking it up. That's intolerable. If we blow it---- and we have blown it---- they'll develop the Mosca project in some other way. And when they do, they won't want us around telling the tale. We've got to hit them before they hit us. So, it's write that on their tombstones---- or on ours."
His fury faded.
He unhanded Bruhn.
"Excuse me for being rude. I'm upset."
He leaned against the wall.
"I'm truly sorry, D.T. We're in a very tight spot, serious danger, and we have to do something about it."
"What would you suggest?"
He paced the room, then came back to the table and dropped into his seat.
"I filed your letter in the shredder. We're not committed yet. You're still on the payroll and thoroughly trusted, by Company standards. Nobody but us knows you're here. So . . . okay. Here's how I see it. We take Mosca back to the lab. We develop his powers. We try them out. Not in CIA's interests, but ours."
"That sounds reasonable. I left without telling anyone, s0 I still have my house." He rubbed his mouth. "If I agree, I want you to promise I can expand my lab to make inexpensive physical and electrical experiments."
"Put it in writing. Whatever you propose, I'll approve."
"There's more."
"Yes. Go on."
"On the personal side, Thomas, as much on my mind as anything else is that having retired and having enough money I'd be free to spend some time with the sporting girls. Maybe, back in Baltimore, the Company can make arrangements."
"You come back, and I'll fix it."
"What will you do for me?" buzzed Mosca, flitting between them over the whiskey puddle through the fumes.
"What do you want?"
"Freedom to come and go as I please."
"It's dangerous for you to leave the dipterary, except to stay in my personal lab where nobody is admitted. Even in my lab, outside of my private area, for you, it's perilous. You'll need our help. We need yours. So . . . ? Yes, I promise. Within the confines of reason, you'll be at liberty."
Then, Thomas spoke.
"Yes. You'll come back with us. You really don't have much choice. Nor do we. We have to submit progress reports about you that please my superiors. S0 we have to train your powers, and keep you happy, which is exactly what you want. But when our supervisors learn you still have will and emotion, when that happens, when they find out how imperfect you are, they'll feel obliged to liquidate the three of us and start over. We'll use power now while we have it. My immediate supervisor, Mosca, is the Deputy Director for Science and Technology, the DDS&T. Above him is the Executive Director of Central Intelligence, and at the next level is the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence. Then comes the big boss, the DCI, who runs CIA and about ten other intelligence agencies, all of which I want to destroy for the good of life on earth."
"And," said Bruhn, "to save the three of us."
"Of course," said Thomas, our Thomas.
Mmmmmmm, thought Mosca.
Nodding, Bruhn raised his hands before him, fingers spread, and beamed at them.
"And let us begin," said Mosca, "by downsizing the human population."
"Yes," replied Thomas. "And of that population, the first to go will be my boss. I think if we eliminate him artfully, they will appoint me to replace him as the chief of the Directorate of Science and Technology."
She looked out at the senescent city and its oily river and back to hir companions. "Right now, I feel like a child adrift, thrashing and paddling for dear life in the diarrhea of power."
Get your own Free Homepage