The illuminatus! trilogy Read Online Free

increase in manpower.”
    Saul relit his pipe. “One more thing. We might be hearing from the FBI.”
    “We might indeed.”
    “They get nothing.”
    “You’re really taking me way out on this one, Saul.”
    “Sometimes you have to follow your hunches. This is going to be a heavy case, agreed?”
    “A heavy case,” Muldoon nodded.
    “Then we do it my way.”
    “Let’s look at the fourth memo,” Muldoon said tone-lessly. They read:
    ILLUMINATI PROJECT: MEMO #4
    7/24
    J.M.:
    Here’s a letter that appeared in
Playboy
a few years ago (“The Playboy Advisor,”
Playboy
, April, 1969, pages 62-64):
    I recently heard an old man of right-wing views—a friend of my grandparents—assert that the current wave of assassinations in America is the work of a secret society called the Illuminati. He said that the Illuminati have existed throughout history, own the international banking cartels, have all been 32nd-de-gree Masons and were known to Ian Fleming, who portrayed them as
Spectre
in his James Bond books—for which the Illuminati did away with Mr. Fleming. At first all this seemed like a paranoid delusion to me. Then I read in
The New Yorker
that Allan Chapman, one of Jim Garrison’s investigators in the New Orleans probe of the John Kennedy assassination, believes that the Illuminati really exist….
    Playboy
, of course, puts down the whole idea as ridiculous and gives the standard
Encyclopedia Britannica
story that the Illuminati went out of business in 1785.
    Pat
      Pricefixer stuck his head in the cafeteria door. “Minute?” he asked.
    “What is it?” Muldoon replied.
    “Peter Jackson is out here. He’s the associate editor I spoke to on the phone. He just told me something about his last meeting with Joseph Malik, the editor, before Malik disappeared.”
    “Bring him in,” Muldoon said.
    Peter Jackson was a black man—truly black, not brown or tan. He was wearing a vest in spite of the spring weather. He was also very obviously wary of policemen. Saul noted this at once, and began thinking about how to overcome it—and at the same time he observed an increased blandness in Muldoon’s features, indicating that he, too, had noted it and was prepared to take umbrage.
    “Have a seat,” Saul said cordially, “and tell us what you just told the other officer.” With the nervous ones itwas sound policy to drop the policeman role at first, and try to sound like somebody else—somebody who, quite naturally, asks a lot of questions. Saul began slipping into the personality of his own family physician, which he usually used at such times. He made himself
feel
a stethoscope hanging about his neck.
    “Well,” Jackson began in a Harvard accent, “this is probably not important. It may be just a coincidence.”
    “Most of what we hear is just unimportant coincidence,” Saul said gently. “But it’s our job to listen.”
    “Everybody but the lunatic fringe has given up on this by now,” Jackson said. “It really surprised me when Joe told me what he was getting the magazine into.” He paused and studied the two impassive faces of the detectives; finding little there, he went on reluctantly. “It was last Friday. Joe told me he had a lead that interested him, and he was putting a staff writer on it. He wanted to reopen the investigation of the assassinations of Martin Luther King and the Kennedy brothers.”
    Saul carefully didn’t look at Muldoon, and just as carefully moved his hat to cover the memos on the table. “Excuse me a moment,” he said politely and left the cafeteria.
    He found a phone booth in the lobby and dialed his home. Rebecca answered after the third ring; she obviously had not gotten back to sleep after he left. “Saul?” she asked, guessing who would be calling at this hour.
    “It’s going to be a long night,” Saul said.
    “Oh, hell.”
    “I know, baby. But this case is a son-of-a-bitch!”
    Rebecca sighed. “I’m glad we had a little ball earlier this evening.