Flicker (81 page)

“Albi?”

“You would be working behind enemy lines. Certainly you could return to Zurich, to Dr. Byx. You could find out more than any outsider has yet known. Your tour of the Zurich orphanage with Byx, do you realize how remarkable that was? I doubt such a thing has happened before. And some of the volumes Brother Justin has loaned you from his private library, these are unknown outside the orphans' own circle. With time, who knows how much more you might learn?”

“Look, Eduardo, I'm a scholar, not a spy. And anyway, what would I be after? What else is there to know? It's all there in my article, isn't it?”

Angelotti settled back, reining himself in with great deliberation. “What if I were to tell you, my friend, that everything you have learned so far, the entire amazing tale of the orphans, their survival, their connection with the cinema—all this is but a fraction of what there is to know? The tip of the iceberg, no more. Have you not sometimes suspected as much?”

He caught me off guard, but he was on the button. “Yes, I have.”

“You see, Jon, that is why Oculus Dei has moved so slowly, more slowly than poor Rosenzweig could tolerate. It is because there is so much more that must be brought to light.”

“Yes, but what? What exactly?”

He smiled enigmatically and suddenly said, “Eggplant parmigiana. The best in New York.” He bounced up and gestured me toward the kitchen. I glanced at my watch. Dinner time so soon? “I hope you don't mind if we go vegetarian.”

“No, not at all.”

“Good. I guarantee you will be delighted.” Once he'd unpacked the makings and spread them on the table, Angelotti was a whirlwind of activity: a hungry man preparing a feast. He'd assembled an impressive spread at my expense. Lots of pricey antipasti in little cartons and a main course that he popped into the oven.

“Salad?” he asked. “The Italian dressing is excellent.”

“Yes, yes.”

“Then perhaps you will not mind?” He was putting me to work on a head of lettuce, some endive, tomatoes, red peppers. While I started
in at my chore, he bustled about setting the table, humming all the while. From one of the bags, he drew out some small brown bottles and clinked them at me. “German beer. My favorite. Will you join me?”

I said yes. I would have said yes to anything. My mind wasn't on eating; I wondered how his could be. “You have rather extravagant tastes,” I commented as he arranged some giant-sized olives and an artichoke on a plate.

He folded his hands prayerfully as if pleading for forgiveness. “It is an indulgence I permit myself when I am on special assignment.”

“What's the special assignment?”

For just a moment, he fixed me with an odd, blank stare. “Why,
you
are, my friend. I expect great things to come of our meeting.”

“Do those things have to do with 2014?”

That brought an end to his bustling and humming. “Indeed so—2014 is the answer to the one question you have not asked. The most obvious question of all. I'm not surprised you have not raised it. No doubt you believe there is no answer to be had. But there is. I know the answer. Or at least a part of it. And until you have that, your research is incomplete. You know what I mean? The great hole at the center of the story.”

I knew. I asked. “
Why?
Why are the orphans doing it? What are they after?”

“Exactly.”

“At first, I assumed it was to convert the world to their religion. They were using the movies to peddle their heresy.”

Angelotti smiled knowingly. “But clearly that is
not
what they are doing.”

“Because it's all too subliminal. What sort of victory would it be for people to become Cathars and not know it? It doesn't make sense.”

“They have no intention of converting the world, Jon. They may be fanatics, but not fools. In any event, they have no time for that. How many converts could they expect to make by 2014?”

“… it's a date?”

“You didn't know?”

“Clare left a note. She said, ‘Ask Eddy about 2014. That's the zinger.'”

We took our places at the table and began working our way through the breadsticks and antipasto. Or rather Angelotti did. He ate; I
nibbled and watched. “Ah well, then we must return to basics. True: 2014 is a date. And it is indeed a zinger. The end of the world.” He dropped the words so casually I wondered if I'd heard him correctly. I simply stared back at him, waiting. “Our dualist friends work from a different calendar. Our 2014 is their 2000. Two thousand years after the Supplantation.” He saw that I didn't understand. “The most important earthly event in history, as the orphans see it. The moment at which the physical Jesus was supplanted by his ghostly double. It is their equivalent of Easter.”

“That's what they're waiting for? The end of the world … in 2014?”

“Not waiting. Working. Remember, it is their belief that the true God must be assisted by his followers. Christmas morning 2014, they will put an end to history.”

He wasn't joking; he wasn't mocking the idea. But I thought he should be. “So ultimately they're a bunch of cranks after all.”

“Hardly. They intend to do it, Jon. And there is every chance they will.”

“But how?”

“Consider what you have learned about the orphans and the motion pictures, how they have worked in the shadows to midwife this technology step by step, so skillfully, so secretly. A remarkable achievement, is it not?”

“Yes, I agree.”

“People gifted with such patience, such cunning … they might be capable of accomplishing anything, given enough time, enough secrecy.”

“I suppose.”

“Very well, then. Apply the same pattern elsewhere.”

“Elsewhere?”

“At Zurich, at Zuma Beach, at several other orphanages, the students study film. But in Edinburgh, in Frankfort, in Tokyo, in Copenhagen …”

Copenhagen clicked. I remembered the little girl I'd met at St. James School on my first visit. “Physics. In Copenhagen, they study physics.”

“Correct. And so too in Tokyo. In Edinburgh, it is microbiology. So too in Frankfort.” He continued talking while he fetched the eggplant from the oven and placed it carefully on the table. It was a magnificent-looking dish, but I didn't have the appetite to do more
than pick at it. “From these schools come not film editors, but highenergy physicists, neurobiologists, genetic engineers. A small, steady stream of scientists and technicians—gifted pupils, all excellently trained. An intellectual elite corps that finds its way into the best research facilities, the finest laboratories. Incidentally, they earn quite well at what they do. Top-dollar men and women. A major source of the orphans' wealth.”

“And what's this all about? What are they up to?”

“It can be easily summed up. Bombs and germs.”

“Weapons?”

“The deadliest. The means of universal destruction. Understand, Jon, they are soldiers in a great war. For them that war is not a mere metaphor. The combat is invisible but real. They have every intention of winning that war—right here on this earth, a palpable victory. Come, you know their teachings. The body is the stronghold of evil, the prison of the spirit. How else can the God of Darkness be defeated but by the destruction of that body—all bodies, every single one, gone in the flames.”

“War? They mean to start a war?”

“The
war, my friend. The final event in history. The great cleansing. It was all laid down by the three elders at Gerona, the grand strategy of Armageddon. The church in exile would struggle on two fronts. In their parlance, these were called
voluntas et potestas.
Will and power. What you have learned so far has all to do with one front, the struggle to propagate
voluntas,
the will to self-destruction. For this, the movies have been their chosen medium. No better way to infiltrate the mind of the masses, to fill it with nihilistic imagery, to loosen the grip on life.

“But how actually to
do
the deed? How to annihilate the physical basis of life which is the Dark Lord's citadel? Of course, the elders at Gerona had no clear idea. They knew it would take centuries. Still, the orphans never wavered in their commitment. Somewhere, they knew there must lie the secret of a power great enough to overthrow their cosmic enemy. One hundred years ago, this would have seemed like madness. But as we now see, it is all within the realm of possibility. You and I, we would regard the bomb, the toxic gas, the lethal virus as tools of the devil. But that is not how the orphans see things. For them, these are the means of salvation.”

“But you said they don't believe in killing.”

“And it is so. They will not shed blood. There is one exception. At
the final hour, on the field of battle, it will be the true God's will that all flesh be expunged, if possible every last living cell.”

“In other words, murder no, but universal genocide, okay.”

“You call it universal genocide, they would call it universal deliverance. In their theology, it makes perfect sense. It is blasphemy, I grant you, but there is an undeniable grandeur to the project, no? One can almost admire the dedication, the dogged persistence, the unflinching discipline.”

He was speaking now with an exuberant intensity that touched me with a small, secret shudder. If I'd found the least trace of admiration in myself for the orphans' grand design, I would have smothered it immediately.

“You do not care for the food?” he asked, noticing I'd hardly done more than rearrange what was on my plate. My stomach was knotted in a combination of excitement, alarm, horror. I apologized and offered to let him finish my serving. He didn't have to be coaxed, but dug in with gusto, talking all the while. The story he proceeded to unfold was far more than I could take in. The sudden shift in our conversation left me groping. It was as if, in the middle of the movie I'd come to see, a reel from some other film had been slipped on the projector; without warning the screen was filled with scenes from some far grander production.

Angelotti was drawing in a vast array of new historical allusions and a whole new cast of characters. He must have spent the better part of an hour picking his way through a thicket of late medieval alchemists whose relations with the orphans seemed of supreme importance. He spent nearly as much time on the Rosicrucians (the
original
Rosicrucians, Angelotti was at pains to specify, as if that would make some difference to me). Their connection with Galileo and Newton (a few names I could finally recognize) was also highly significant, though for no reason I could grasp. As if he were delivering a prepared lecture, Angelotti skipped rapidly through the early history of modern chemistry, biology, atomic physics. Behind all the great figures, he was convinced the dim outlines of orphan scientists could be discerned filtering their research into the mainstream, steadily moving the world toward newer, greater forms of energy. And damned if it didn't make a weird, seductive kind of sense. It was surely a dazzling display of erudition; beside it, my slender research in the secret history of the movies began to shrink to nothing. What was a Max Castle compared to a Pasteur, a Curie, an Einstein?

But how much of this could I believe? Was this anything more than another, grander paranoid rhapsody? If so, Angelotti was quite swept up in its drama. His eyes had taken on an eager shine, and his words flowed from him with flawless eloquence. By the time he'd brought his narrative down to the development of the intercontinental ballistic missile, I decided to rein him in if I could.

“Eduardo,” I interrupted, struggling to introduce a note of healthy skepticism, “you're saying that the whole course of modern history has been practically dictated by a very small number of people, who …”

“Small? Minute. Not more than several hundred over four, five hundred years.”

“You honestly believe so few can be credited with so much power?”

“Not power. Influence. The orphans rarely wield power. Power is too visible. But they are masters of the art of influence. They position themselves next to people of power. They move those people; those people move the world. Leverage, Jon. That is the secret. As Archimedes taught: one man standing in the right place can move the earth. The orphans have a gift for finding the right place. That is where they station their members. And of course there is the factor of time. They have not been in a hurry. Can you imagine the infinite patience? There must have been periods when generations of Cathars came and went, their entire lives devoted to achieving just a few small steps forward along their path, never knowing for certain that they had chosen the right way, never expecting to see the final result of their efforts, but believing steadfastly that there must be a means to accomplish their great end. Can there be such a thing as diabolical faith? Surely this is it. If you are leaving this …”

What? I looked down to see him pointing at a breadstick I'd left uneaten on my side of the table. I suddenly realized that the food was gone; Angelotti had consumed it all, the eggplant, the antipasto, the salad, the beer. I pushed the breadstick toward him. How could I eat even crumbs at a time like this? My head was spinning. In the course of the last hour alone, he'd been telling me the inside story of the first atomic bomb, marking out the obscure figures, presumably orphans, who had guided J. Robert Oppenheimer along the road to Hiroshima. He'd made it sound utterly convincing. But the tale left me in a state of cruel perplexity.

“Yes, I know how you feel,” he said at last in a pitying tone. “I have lived with these facts for so long they have ceased to amaze me.
But I can remember when I was first told, I also found it hard to accept.”

I needed to know if there was any proof for what he had told me. He laughed softly. “Such as? Documents? Authoritative records? Of course not. Nothing that matters in the history of the world is ever set down in writing. Word-of-mouth, private conversations, gentlemen's agreements, a nod, a whisper, a wink. This is how fortunes are built, great crimes planned, atrocities and holocausts perpetrated. Among the powerful, there is almost a form of ESP. Very little needs to be said, let alone committed to paper. But what could documents tell us that is not already staring us in the face? I mean the whole shape of modern times. Is that not the real evidence, all that a reasonable man requires?”