Conspiracy Theory (29 page)

“But that isn't what it means,” Gregor said, dredging up the Latin he'd learned in high school, so long ago he could no longer remember the name of the woman who taught it to him. “
Novus Ordo Seclorum
. It doesn't mean New World Order. It means A New Order of the Ages. That's what they thought they had, people like Jefferson, because they were getting rid of monarchy for democracy—”

“They didn't get rid of monarchy,” Kathi corrected. “They only pretended to. The world is still run by the same thirteen families it's been run by for a thousand years. Maybe longer. They're the real Merovingian dynasty. It's supposed to have died out, but it didn't. It's still around. Anthony van Wyck Ross was a member of that dynasty. So is George Bush and George W. Bush. So is Al Gore. They never give you a choice between one of them and a real person. They don't want you to have a choice. They're the only ones who are ever allowed to be in control. They look like people, but they aren't really. They're reptilian. They're the offspring of humans who mated with a reptilian race and now they can do things nobody else can do. They can learn faster than real humans. They can remember more. They can invent things. You don't think people could have invented space travel, do you? We're not that intelligent. We're not that creative. But they can't just do it on their own, because they want to. They need us. They need to have us subjugated.”

This was,
Gregor thought,
the talk she gave people who were already slightly involved in the movement, the ones who had the specifics down and only needed somebody to put them together.
Since he knew nothing at all about any of this, it wasn't making sense. The Merovingian Dynasty was, he thought, something from the early Middle Ages—Pepin the Short, and a line of kings so incompetent they had collapsed under the weight of their own stupidity. What exactly that had to do with the Masons, or a race of reptiles, or George W. Bush, he wasn't sure. He wasn't completely convinced that Kathi Mittendorf was sure.

She had been standing in front of him, rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet. Now she turned abruptly and walked out of the room. A moment later, she was back, carrying a thick book and a small sheaf of papers.

“Here,” she said. “Read it all. You'll be able to understand if you let yourself. There is no such thing as a coincidence. Everything is orchestrated. Everything. We're already more than halfway to a One World Government. Once that government is in place, they'll have what they want. They'll be able to control everything, even people who know them for what they are. Look at what's happening around you. The United Nations. All those appeals to ‘international law.' There is no international law. They only want you to think there is so that they can talk you into letting them run your life and everybody else's. So that they can have control.”

“Why?” Gregor said.

“Some of the people in the movement think they're really Satan,” Kathi Mittendorf said. “They see that the Illuminati subject their own children to satanic ritual abuse and they think that means the Illuminati are in league with Satan. They see that the Freemasons worship Satan and they think the same thing. But it isn't true. There is no Satan. Religion is something they invented, the Illuminati, to make it easier to control ignorant people. But it doesn't matter. We make common cause with the Christian freedom fighters. They
are
freedom fighters. They've just accepted the metaphor as the reality. And they're looking for the bodies.”

“The bodies?”

“The bodies of the infants,” Kathi Mittendorf said. “The Illuminati make their children participate in rituals. They sacrifice infants. They've sacrificed hundreds of thousands of them in the last twenty years alone. Then they subject these children to ritual sexual abuse. It's the MKUltra mind control system. It was invented by the CIA. Do you know that the FBI doesn't even bother to track the numbers of children that go missing every year.”

“That's not true,” Gregor said. By now, he was beginning to feel desperate. “There's an organization called the Center for Missing and Exploited Children. There's a special agent of the FBI attached to it. They collect all the figures every year, how many children are missing, how many children are found, what happened to them—you can get that information on-line any time you want to. They publish it.”

Kathi Mittendorf seemed to hesitated for a moment. Then she smiled. “Don't be ridiculous,” she said. “They probably make it all up. They don't dare collect the real figures. Then they'd know that there is no such thing as False Memory Syndrome. The memories are all real. The children really did see infants sacrificed and small animals mutilated. It happens all the time. It happens in day-care centers. It happens in schools. They have to get to as many people as possible to make sure that they're brainwashed. They can't afford to leave any serious opposition. That's why they're trying to kill us.”

“What?” Gregor said.

This time, Kathi Mittendorf's smile was wide and glittering. “That's why they're trying to kill us,” she repeated. “That's what you're here for, isn't it? To see if you can get the information out of me. And if you don't you'll go back and tell them, your reptilian masters, and they'll send somebody out to kidnap me. They'll bring me in and torture me. And when they're finished with me, they'll kill me, because they know that as long as I'm alive, I'm a danger to them. I'm as much of a danger to them as somebody like Michael, because I'm just an ordinary person. I'm not some kind of nut. People will see me and realize that you don't have to be a lunatic to see the conspiracy. And they'll start to think. I know who you are, Mr. Demarkian. I pretended not to know when you got here, but I know. You're one of them. You live with a reptilian master, with that Bennis Hannaford woman, whose bloodline goes all the way back to the Merovingians through the British monarchy. You know I'm telling the truth. And you can't let me get away with it. But watch out. This whole house is wired. Cameras have been taking down this entire conversation and sending it to people I trust. They won't let you get away with it. They won't let you win. It doesn't matter if you stand there right now and shoot me dead.”

By early afternoon, Ryall Wyndham was as wound up as he ever thought he could be—too wound up to function, really, but he wasn't as worried about functioning as he used to be. It was a big day. Murder or no murder, the Philadelphia social season was in full gear. In the next few weeks, there were enough hunt balls to make you think foxes were about to become an endangered species, and that in spite of the fact that this wasn't the big season for hunting. Then there were the private debutante balls, the really important parties that marked a girl's “honest” coming out, in contrast to the mass presentation balls, which were tacky, but everyone “did” them. Ryall would never have admitted it in public, but the truth was, he liked new-money debutantes more than he liked old-money ones. Old-money debutantes had no sense of fun. Half of them got their ball gowns at Sears, and he knew at least one, only two years ago, who had arrived at the Philadelphia Assemblies with a pair of sneakers on under her dress. New-money debutantes liked to make a splash. Ryall was all for splashes. He liked to make splashes himself. This year, the big status symbol for new-money debutantes was to have two dresses for every ball. They danced until midnight, then repaired to the powder room or a convenient bedroom and changed clothes: dress, shoes, gloves, jewelry. It was not only extravagant, but utterly mindless. That was the way it was supposed to be. Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn would never have made a go of
The Philadelphia Story
if the general public had ever known what really went on in those big old-money houses on the Main Line.

Today, the important thing was to look solemn, and to make sure not to say anything stupid while on the air. He was due to tape at four-thirty. He was going to be expected to say something about the murder of Charlotte Deacon Ross, and the trouble was that he had a lot to say. Which was that the old cow deserved to be dead, for one thing—God, how he hated those patronizing people, the ones who treated him as if he were their personal publicity agents, but too damned dumb and uncultivated to know the difference between Shakespeare and Dohnanyi. But it wasn't just that. It was the attitude, that half-distracted look that told you you weren't really on the same planet with this great, good, and important Goddess. She listened to you like she listened to the stereo when she'd put it on as background music. She'd notice if you were annoying, and she'd do something about you too, but otherwise you might as well have been in the next state. It was too bad he still needed to be careful about what he had to say about these people. He could tell the world a lot about Charlotte Deacon Ross: her rages, smashing crystal and dinnerware on hardwood floors when she wasn't getting exactly what she wanted exactly as she wanted it; the way she fired help without cause or warning, sometimes in batches of twos and threes; her relationship with her oldest daughter, which resembled the relationship Medea might have had with
her
children if she'd allowed them to grow up. The only thing Charlotte didn't do was screw. That made her infinitely different from most of her friends, who engaged in adultery the way they kept up their tennis, but it was mostly a matter of intelligence. Ryall Wyndham might have been a bug on the wall as far as Tony Ross was concerned, but he'd known that man well enough to know that if Charlotte ever gave him cause, he'd be out of that marriage in a shot.
There
was something for the tabloids and the infotainment programs. Men like Tony Ross do not get divorced, not ever. Men just a rung below them on the ladder sometimes did, but men like Tony did not. It was too damned dangerous, and too expensive. Still, Tony was looking for a reasonable excuse to get a divorce from Charlotte, and even Charlotte knew about it.

Ryall fixed his bow tie. He never wore ordinary ties, because they made him look even more like Porky Pig than he usually did. He checked his cuff links. He'd learned long ago that only French cuffs would do with the people he cared most about talking to. The self-buttoning kind were for middle managers and people who had jobs teaching in community colleges. He went to the door of his bedroom and looked down the short hall to the woman pacing back and forth across his living room carpet. Then he made a face. God, how he hated these women who pretended not to have money when they did. There was something beyond snobbish about an American upper class that prided itself on looking as if it were sleeping in Dumpsters, or worse. He wondered where she had gotten that stretchy-tunic thing she was wearing: Price Heaven, Kmart, Wal-Mart, Marshall's. Even when he was flat broke and eating ketchup in hot water for lunch, Ryall Wyndham had bought his ties from Asbury's and his shoes from John Lobb.

He checked himself out in the mirror one more time. If there had been plastic surgery to make you taller, he would have had it. He considered liposuction. He could get it done, but he would have to be careful not to let it get out. He really
did
prefer the nouveau riche in some ways. They wouldn't have given a damn if he'd got himself sucked, and some of them would have sympathized.

He brushed off his jacket—a good tweed, from J. Press—and went out toward the living room. She heard the door open and stopped where she was to wait for him. She had a copy of
Town and Country
in her hands, one of the ones he kept on the coffee table because they contained stories he had written, or pictures of himself in the parties columns. She put the magazine down and straightened up.

“So sorry to have kept you waiting,” he said. “I'm afraid I really do just kick back and pay very little attention when I'm at home. I shouldn't, really. It gets me in the
most
difficult situations, and more often than you'd like to know.”

“There's nothing difficult about this situation,” Anne Ross Wyler said calmly. “I surprised you. That happens. I should have called first.”

“No, no. Drop in any time. Really. I love to have company. And at a time like this, I find it perfectly understandable. You must be
awash
in grief. I know I am. Charlotte was one of my oldest and dearest friends.”

Ryall caught the sharp uptick of the left eyebrow. He'd been expecting it. Annie Wyler was famous for her eyebrows. He ignored it. He did not ignore the fact that he got a deep and abiding sense of satisfaction from the fact that he'd anticipated it.

“Sit down, sit down,” he said. “You look positively exhausted. And I don't blame you a bit, of course. Two family funerals in the same week. I don't know what's happening to the Main Line. Even a few years ago, it was the safest place on earth. You could go anywhere there, even at night. Of course, Charlotte and Tony had security, but that was because of Tony's position. He had to worry about international terrorists. I don't know what I'm going to do if it turns out that international terrorists have begun to target Society. I'll be scared to death to go out in the evenings, and it's my life's work.”

Anne Ross Wyler sat down, without looking behind her to see if a chair was there. Ryall felt his mouth purse up and did what he had to do to straighten it out again. He hated this about these women too. He hated the way they just expected things to be where they needed them to be, and the way the things were always there. Any normal person would have looked around to make sure she wasn't about to fall on her ass.

“So,” he said. “What can I get for you? Coffee? Tea? I've got some excellent Ceylon, just arrived. I order it from a company in Bangkok. It's the only place on earth you can still get decent Ceylon, I don't care what anybody says.”

She was staring at him, placidly, waiting. Why didn't she talk? God, he hated this about them too, the way they never got wound up, the way they just let you go on until you'd made a complete fool of yourself. Somebody ought to be appointed to teach some manners to the women of the old Main Line.

“Well,” he said.

Anne Ross Wyler took her tote bag off the floor and put it down on her lap. She reached inside it and came up with a long manila envelope. She opened the envelope and came out with a small handful of snapshots. Whatever was she going to do? Ryall didn't think she would be bringing him family snaps of Tony and Charlotte to use in the column. She didn't like the column, and she hadn't seen too much of Tony and Charlotte over the last few years. She couldn't stand Charlotte. There was something
else
he'd love to tell the world: How these old families stuck together in spite of the fact that they found each other's company poisonous; the way Charlotte Deacon Ross had alienated even Tony's long-suffering relatives. Surely, Anne Ross Wyler was long-suffering. She was also that creature he despised most in the world: the victim of social conscience guilt. She probably thought she was so damned holy, running a house for prostitutes, giving up on parties and expensive clothes just so that the rest of the people she knew would feel utterly and irredeemably inadequate.

She took the handful of snapshots and leaned over to put them down, one by one, on the coffee table. Ryall leaned over to look at them and stiffened.

“Do you know what these are?” she asked.

“They're very murky snaps,” Ryall said. “It's not possible to see much of anything in them, is it?”

“It is if you blow them up.” She reached into her tote bag again and came up, this time, with an eight-by-eleven glossy.

“It's still murky,” Ryall said, after he'd had a chance to get a look at it. Still, it wasn't as murky as the other one. It was just—but not absolutely—identifiable. “Maybe you ought to take lessons on how to operate your camera. You seem to need instructions on using a flash.”

“I was there, you know. I took these pictures myself. I stood just three feet from you on the night my brother Tony died and watched you take Patsy Lennon into that car.”

“I don't know anybody named Patsy Lennon.”

“I'm sure you don't. God only knows what name she's using on the street these days. Did you know she was just thirteen?”

“I still don't know what you're talking about,” Ryall said. “If you're insinuating that these are pictures of me, I'll ask you to leave right this minute. I don't think I've ever been this insulted in all my life.”

“I'm not going to leave,” Anne Ross Wyler said, “and you're not going to throw me out. I was there. I stood on that stretch of sidewalk and watched you pick up a minor—more than a minor, what's technically a child—and get her into your car to blow you. I moved in and looked through the windows and saw her.”

“I don't have a car.”

“You had a rental car. Don't bother to whine. I checked.”

“You didn't find my name on a rental agreement,” Ryall said. “I assure you, I did not rent a car.”

“Do you mean you did it under an assumed name? That won't be hard to unravel. Maybe I'll ask that Mr. Demarkian to do it for me. Don't bother to protest, Mr. Wyndham. You're not James Bond. I'm sure you've left traces a backward four-year-old could follow.”

“You've got nothing at all but a lot of murky pictures. It's impossible to identify anybody in them, except of course the girl, who, I'll admit, looks very young. But if you seriously think you can get me arrested on that kind of evidence—”

“Oh, no,” Anne said. “I don't want to get you arrested. What would be the point? I followed you afterwards, you know. I followed you right up to the gate of Tony's house. I know what you saw.”

“What are you trying to do? You know what would happen in books at a time like this, if what you're alleging is true. I'd kill you now and dump your body in the incinerator.”

“You won't kill me. And this building doesn't have an incinerator.”

“Well, Mrs. Wyler, I really don't see the point to your visit here. You don't want to get me arrested. You're not trying to get me to kill you. What do you want?”

“I want you to keep your mouth shut.”

“About what?”

“About everything that happened on the night Tony died. About who else you saw there. About what was going on at the gate when you arrived. About all of it. I saw it too. And I want you to do the one thing you've never been able to do in your life. I want you to shut up. Because if you don't, I'll use these pictures.”

“There's nothing in those pictures to use.”

“Not for the police to use, no,” Anne said. “But I can think of a few other venues where they might be useful. I could, for instance, file suit against you for endangering the safety of a minor. Patsy Lennon has spent quite a lot of time at Adelphos House, did you know that? She's a very troubled and fragile girl. The court might not grant me standing, or it might, but it wouldn't matter, because I'd have made the charge a matter of public record. Then all I'd have to do would be to make sure it's reported.”

“You couldn't get a charge like that reported. The papers would be afraid of lawsuits. And besides, they'd find it trivial.”

“They'd find it trivial that their new media star and prominent witness to the Tony Ross murder is being sued on charges that he enticed a child into sex?”

“She wasn't a
child
,” Ryall said, and bit his lip.

“She was thirteen,” Anne said. “And don't kid yourself that the newspapers wouldn't be interested, or the television news shows, either. Even the ones I don't own significant stock in would be interested. The ones I own significant stock in might see some reason to make the story a priority. Did you know that I still had all that stock?”

“People like you always do, don't you?” Ryall said. “You make a grand show of being Mother Teresa, but you never let go of the money and you never let go of the power. I ought to do a nice little exposé on you. Just so that the city of Philadelphia can see that you're not anything at all like a saint.”

“I've never pretended to be a saint. Please get me all the publicity you can. Adelphos House can always use donations.”