"Maybe I'm not going fast enough," Saul said. "An organization that has existed for a couple of centuries minimum and kept its secrets pretty well hidden most of that time might be pretty strong by now." He trailed off into silence, and closed his eyes to concentrate. After a moment, he looked at the younger man with a searching glance.

Muldoon had been thinking too. "I've seen men land on the moon," he said. "I've seen students break into administration offices and shit in the dean's waste basket. I've even seen nuns in mini-skirts. But this international conspiracy existing in secret for eight hundred years, it's like opening a door in your own house and finding James Bond and the President of the United States personally shooting it out with Fu Manchu and the five original Marx Brothers."

"You're trying to convince yourself, not me. Barney, it sticks out so far that you could break it into three pieces and each one would be long enough to goose somebody up in the Bronx. There is a secret society that keeps screwing up international politics. Every intelligent person has suspected that at one time or another. Nobody wants war any more, but wars keep happening-why? Face it, Barney-this is the heavy case we've always had nightmares about. It's cast iron. If it were a corpse, all six pallbearers would get double hernias at the funeral. Well?" Saul prompted.

"Well, we're either going to have to do something or get off the pot, as my sainted mother used to say."

It was the year when they finally immanentized the Eschaton. On April 1 the world's great powers came closer to nuclear war than ever before, all because of an obscure island named Fernando Poo. But, while all other eyes turned to the UN building in apprehension and desperate hope, there lived in Las Vegas a unique person known as Carmel. His house was on Date Street and had a magnificent view of the desert, which he appreciated. He liked to spend long hours looking at the wild cactus wasteland although he did not know why.