"Soon you'll understand more," said Malaclypse. "About the history of man, about some of the esoteric knowledge that has been lying around for tens of thousands of years. Eventually you'll know all that's worth knowing about absolutely everything."
(Tobias Knight, the FBI agent monitoring the bugging equipment in Dr. Mocenigo's home, heard the pistol shot the same time Carmel did. "What the hell?" he said out loud, sitting up straight. He had heard the door open and footsteps walking about and had been waiting for a conversation… and then, without warning, he had heard the shot. Now a voice spoke, "Sorry, Dr. Mocenigo. You were a great patriot, and this is a dog's death. But I will share it with you." Then there were more footsteps and something else. .. Knight recognized the sound: it was liquid being poured. The steps and the pouring liquid continued, and Knight abruptly tore himself out of his state of shock and pressed the intercom. "Knight?" asked a voice which he recognized as Esperando Despond, the Special Agent in Charge for Las Vegas. "Mocenigo's house," Knight said crisply. "Get a whole crew out there double-quick. Something is happening, one killing at least." He released the intercom and listened, paralyzed, to the footsteps and the liquid sounds, which were now mixed with subdued humming. A man doing an unpleasant job, but trying to keep his cool. Knight recognized the tune, finally: "Camp-town Races." The humming and walking and slurping continued. "Do-da-Do-da…" Then the voice spoke again: "This is General Lawrence Stewart Talbot, speaking to the CIA, the FBI and whoever else has this house bugged. I discovered at two this morning that several people in our Anthrax Leprosy Pi project have accidentally been subjected to live cultures. All of them are living at the installation, and can easily be isolated while the antidote works. I have already given orders to that effect. Dr. Mocenigo himself unknowingly received the worst dose, and was in advanced morbidity, a few minutes from death, when I arrived. His whole house, obviously, will have to be burned down, and I am also, due to my proximity while examining him, too far gone to be saved. I will therefore shoot myself after setting fire to the house. There is one remaining problem. I found evidence that a woman had been in Dr. Mocenigo's bed earlier- that's what comes of allowing important people to live off base- and she must be found and given the antidote and each of her contacts must be traced. Needless to say, this must be done quietly, or there will be a nationwide panic. Tell the President to see that my wife gets the medal for this. Tell my wife that with my last breath I still insist she was wrong about that girl in Red Lion, Pennsylvania. In closing, I firmly believe that this is the greatest country in the history of the world, and can still be saved if Congress will lock up those damned college kids for once and for all. God bless America!" There was a scratching sound- my God! Knight thought, the match- and the sound of flames, in the midst of which General Talbot tried to add a postscript but couldn't get the words out because he was screaming. Finally, the second shot came, and the screaming stopped. Knight raised his head, jaw clenched, repressed tears in his steely eyes. "That was a great American," he said aloud.)
Over cigars and brandy, after George had been sent off to bed to be distracted by Tarantella, Richard Jung asked pointedly, "Just how sure are you that this Discordian bunch is a match for the Illuminati? It's kind of late in the game to change sides."
Drake started to speak, then turned to Maldonado. "Tell him about Italy in the 19th century," he said.
"The Illuminati are just men and women," Maldonado replied obligingly. "More women than men, in fact. It was Eve Weishaupt who started the whole show; Adam just acted as her front because people are used to taking orders from men. This Atlantis stuff is mostly bullshit. Everybody who knows about Atlantis at all traces his family, or his clan, or his club, back there. Some of the old dons in the Maf even try to trace la Cosa Nostra back there. All bullshit. Just like all the WASPs tracing themselves back to the Mayflower. For everyone who can prove it, like Mr. Drake, there's a hundred who are just bluffing.
"You see," Maldonado went on more intensely, chewing his cigar ferociously, "originally the Illuminati was just a- how do you call it- a kind of 18th-century women's liberation front. Behind Adam Weishaupt was Eve; behind Godwin, who started all this socialism and anarchism with his Political Justice book, was his mistress Mary Wollstonecraft, who started the woman revolution with a book called, uh…"
"Vindication of the Rights of Women," Drake contributed.
