The Illuminatus! Trilogy

Celine, she went on, was a brilliant but twisted personality, the son of an Italian pimp and a Norwegian prostitute. Raised in the underworld, he early developed a contempt and hatred for ordinary, decent society. The Mafia, recognizing his talents and predilections, took him in and financed his way through Harvard Law School. After graduation, he became an important mouthpiece for Syndicate hoodlums in trouble with the law. On the side, however, he also took some cases for American Indians, since this was a way of frustrating the government. In one particularly bitter battle, he attempted to stop the construction of a much-needed dam in upstate New York; his unbalanced behavior in the courtroom (which helped lose the case) indicated his deep attraction for the occult, since he had obviously been taken in by the superstitions of the Indians he served. Mafia dons conferred with leaders of the Cult of the Yellow Sign, and soon, Hagbard, who had been wandering around Europe aimlessly, was recruited to start a new front for the Cult, to fight the United States both politically and religiously. This front, Mama Sutra said, was called the Legion of Dynamic Discord, and, while it pretended to be against all governments, it was actually devoted only to harming the U.S. He was given a submarine (which he later claimed to have designed himself) and became an important cog in the Mafia heroin-smuggling business. More important, his crew-renegades and misfits from all nations-were indoctrinated in a deliberately nonsensical variety of mysticism.

An important center of Celine's heroin network, Mama Sutra added, was a fake church in Santa Isobel on the island of Fernando Poo.

Obviously, Mama Sutra concluded, Joseph Malik, the editor of Confrontation,

was investigating the IIluminati, deceived by the lies spread against them by Celine and the Yellow Sign adepts. As for Professor Marsh, his explorations in Fernando Poo may have revealed something about Celine's heroin ring.

"Then you think they're both dead," Danny said somberly. "And, probably, Goodman and Muldoon and Pat Walsh, the researcher, also."

"Not necessarily. Celine, as I have told you, is both brilliant and quite insane. He has perfected his own form of brainwashing and it amuses him to recruit rather than destroy any possible opponent. It is quite possible that all of these people are working for him right now, against the Illuminati and the United States, which they will believe to be the major enemies of humanity." Mama Sutra paused thoughtfully. "However, that is far from sure. Events in the last few days have changed Celine for the worse. He is more insane, and more dangerous, than ever. The assassinations of April 25 all across the nation appear to be his work, engineered through the Mafia. He is striking out blindly against anyone he imagines may be an Illuminatus. Needless to say, most of the victims were not actually in the Illuminati, which is, as I have mentioned, a very small organization. Since he is in this violent and paranoid frame of mind, I fear for the lives of anyone associated with him."

Danny was slumped forward in his chair, drunk, dejected and depressed. "Now that I know," he asked rhetorically, "what can I do about it? My God, what can I do about it?"

I finally got around to reading Telemachus Sneezed on the flight to Munich, a touch of appropriate synchronicity, since Atlanta Hope (like the Illuminati's pet paperhanger) had an umbilical connection backward toward Clark Kent's old enemy Lothar and his festive burgher's unsure God. In fact, Atlanta wrote as if she had her own Diet of Worms for breakfast every morning. What made it even more fan-fuckin'-tastic was that she was on the same flight with me, sitting, in fact, a few seats ahead of me and to port, or starboard, or whatever is the correct word for right when you're in the air.

Mary Lou was with me; she was a hard woman to get out of your system once you'd made it with her. John had advanced me only enough money for my own passage, so I'd hustled some Alamout Black on Wells Street to raise the extra fare for her, and then I had to explain that it wasn't just a pleasure trip.

"What's all the mystery?" she had asked, "Are you CIA or a Commie or something for Christ's sake?"

"If I told you," I said, "you wouldn't believe it. Just enjoy the music and the acid and whatever else is coming down, and when it happens you'll see it. You'd never believe it before you see it."

"Simon Motherfucking Moon," she told me gravely, "after the yoga and sex you've taught me these last three days, I'm ready to believe anything."

"Ghosts? The grand zombi?"

"Oh, there you go again, putting me on," she protested.

"See?"

So it was more or less left at that and we smoked two joints and hopped a cab out to O'Hare, passing all the signs where they were tearing down lower-middle-class neighborhoods to turn them into upper-middle-class high-rise neighborhoods and each sign said,