The Illuminatus! Trilogy

"Of course," said Hauptma

Hagbard looked around the room and said, "Have you considered the possibility that these men, old as they are, might have unknowingly imbibed LSD and suffered heart failure or some such thing?"

There were twenty-three dead men in the suite. Thirteen were in the large parlor where Hagbard and Hauptman were sitting. The dead men, too, were seated, in various attitudes of total collapse, some with their heads lolling back, others bent forward at the waist, heads hanging between their knees, knuckles resting on the floor. There were nine more old men in the bedroom, and one in the bathroom. Most of them were white-haired; several were completely bald. Not one could have been under eighty years of age, and several appeared to be over ninety. The man in the bathroom had been caught by death in the embarrassing position of sitting on the toilet with his pants down. This was the old gentleman with the white mustache and the unruly forelock who had spoken harshly to George in the lobby the night before last.

Hauptma

"Do you have any idea who they are? Why did you say I might have been able to help if I were Jewish?"

"We have found their passports. They are all Israeli citizens. That in itself is quite odd. Generally, Jews that old do not care to come to this country, for obvious reasons. However, there was an organization co

"Oh, yes," said Hagbard. "The Illuminati of Bavaria, wasn't it? I remember hearing about them When we first arrived here."

"The organization was founded by an unfrocked Jesuit, and its membership consisted of freemasons, freethinkers, and Jews. There were also some famous names in politics and the arts: King Leopold, Goethe, Beethoven."

"And this organization was behind the Zionist movement, you say?"

Hauptma

"Well," said Hagbard, "if the Illuminati are of no importance in the history of Israel, what are these twenty-three old Israelis doing here on the day of the organization's founding?"

"Perhaps they thought the Illuminati were important Perhaps they themselves were members. I shall make inquiries to Israel about their identities. Relatives will probably claim the bodies. Otherwise, the German government will see that they are buried in Ingolstadt Jewish cemetery with proper rabbinical ceremonies. The government is very solicitous of Jewish persons. Nowadays."

"Maybe they were freethinkers," said Hagbard. "Maybe they wouldn't like being buried with religious ceremonies."

"The question is wearisome and unimportant," said Hauptma

"Lots of cream and sugar," said Hagbard.

"Black for me," said Hauptma

"How do you know somebody hasn't dosed the coffee or the pastry with LSD?" said Hagbard, smiling mischievously.

Hauptma

"Now that we're being a little more sociable and drinking coffee together," said Hagbard, "let me ask you a favor. Turn me loose today. I have interests to look after in the U.S., and I'd like to be leaving."

"You were originally pla

"I was pla

Hauptma

"To begin with, Freiherr Celine, there is the disappearance and possible death by drowning of the four members of the Saure family, known as the American Medical Association. Accounts of what happened to them are garbled, fantastic, and contradictory, as are those of every other incident that occurred last night. As I reconstruct it, they drove their car straight into the lake."

"From which side?"

Hauptma

"Were they the only well-known casulaties?"

"Who can say? We have no accurate record of who was attending the festival. No list was kept of those who bought tickets, as should have been done. A thousand young men and women could have drowned themselves in that lake and we wouldn't know about it. In any case, the Saures, as you may not know, were the moving spirits behind the Ingolstadt festival. Very patriotic. They wished to do something to promote tourism to Germany, particularly of Bavaria, since they were native Bavarians."

"Yes," said Hagbard, "I read that Ingolstadt was their home town."

Hauptma

"There are parts of the U.S. where it's still illegal," said Hagbard. "It's not illegal in Equatorial Guinea, because we've just never had a drug problem there."