"I've heard of these but never held one. Cute little baby." He reached under his camo top to the small of his back and came up with a 1911A1 Colt .45. "Here's it's daddy. Best damn handgun ever made."
Jack smiled. "I'll be glad to play 'mine is bigger than yours' some other time, but right now I'd like to know why you were following me."
Kenway pointed his .45 at Jack's chest. "I'll be asking the questions here."
"Ooh, scary," Jack said, broadening his grin. "We both know you're not going to fire that. Lose it now or I'm out of here."
Jack met and held Kenway's gaze. He didn't exactly know that Kenway wasn't going to shoot him, but he was pretty damn sure. A .45 makes one hell of a racket, especially indoors. Kenway had to know that the whole floor would hear it and someone would call the desk to see what was going on.
Finally Kenway sighed and stuffed his pistol back inside his shirt.
"You're a cool one," he said, handing back the Semmerling. "Whoever you are. And don't give me that Jack Shelby shit because I ran a background on you and you're not Jack Shelby."
Background ... the very word sent snakes of dread crawling through his veins. He'd known from the start that a paranoid guy out of Army Intelligence would be trouble, but he hadn't counted on a full background check.
"Strange," Jack said, trying to keep cool, "that's what my First Annual SESOUP Conference badge says."
"Don't play cute."
"Well, if I'm not Shelby, who am I?"
"Damned if I know!" He took a sip of his scotch. "Can't tell you your real name at this point, only that it isn't Jack Shelby. That's probably just something you pulled out of the air. But I'm willing to bet those NWO operatives know who you are."
New, bigger dread-snakes wriggling in Jack's veins.
"Maybe they came up empty too," Kenway said. "And maybe they were following you for the same reason as I wasto find out who the hell you are. What I found is you're some kind of creepa lousy Peeping Tom."
"A Peeping Tom?"
"Don't play innocent with me. I saw you watching that woman out in Queens. Christ, fella, get a life!"
Jack ran a hand over his mouth to hide an incipient grin. This guy follows me around and watches me watch the Castlemansand he thinks I need a life. He wondered if Kenway had seen the fight.
"You watched me all night?"
"Only for a few minutes," Kenway said, "Then I waited in my truck." He narrowed his eyes. "And I bet that story of your experience out in the Jersey pines is as bogus as your name."
"How do you know I didn't change my name because I don't want to be connected with that story? Maybe I have a job and a family and I just don't want everybody thinking I'm nuts. That ever occur to you?"
"Of course it did. Nobody knows better than me how people fear the truth. But some of us have the guts to stand up and be counted. If what you said is true, you probably stumbled on a New World Order outpost. They tend to set up in remote areas, especially in national parks. Did you see any black helicopters?"
"You asked me that the other night. I told you, it was darknight, remember?"
"Oh, right. I do remember. But did you hear a helicopter?"
"Not that I recall." Jack wasn't interested in black helicopters. He wanted to turn the discussion toward Melanie Ehler. "Maybe you should ask Melanie. She seemed to know all about what happened to me."
"I wish I could. If there's an NWO outpost in the pinelands, I want to know about it."
"What about her Grand Unification Theory? You think?"
"Frankly I don't give a damn about her theory. If it doesn't center on the New World Order, then it's flat-out-wrong."
A little heat there, Jack thought. If he could get Kenway rolling, maybe he'd make a slip.
"What's this New World Order you keep mentioning? Wasn't George Bush talking about that after the Gulf War?"
Kenway nodded vigorously. "Damn right he was." He leaned forward, and Jack got the impression he'd been waiting for Jack to ask about the NWO. "Remember how he was the hero of the country then, of the whole damn so-called free world? His reelection looked to be a sure thing, didn't it. But he slipped up, got carried away and spilled the beans about the New World Order. That was a no-no. Not bad enough to be punishable by death, but they had to take him out of the limelight. And that's why 'the guy who couldn't lose' was not reelected. When people talk about the 1992 Presidential race, they always mention Bush's lame, lackluster campaign. That's because he'd been told he was going to lose."
"So who's behind this New World Order?" Jack said. "Aliens?"
"Aliens?" Kenway said with the expression of someone who'd just stepped into a Portapotty at the National Chili Eating Contest. "I see Zaleski has been bending your ear. Look, Jim and his kind mean well enough, but the UFO types who aren't outright kooks are dupes. These flying saucers they're seeing aren't from outer spacethey're from right here on Earth, experimental craft built by the One Worlders."
"What about Roswell and?"
"Stagedall staged. That alien saucer crash baloney is all disinformation to distract people form the real truth. And I've got to hand it to them, they've done a masterful jobthat intentionally clumsy fake cover-up at Roswell was a work of genius. But if you want the real skinny, you've got to go back to the nineteenth century." He finished his scotch. "You sure you don't want one?"
"Well, if we're going back to the eighteen hundreds ... maybe a beer."
"Good," Kenway said, pulling a Heineken from the bar. "It all starts with a guy named Cecil Rhodes. You remember Rhodesia? He's the Rhodes in Rhodesia. A British financier and statesman. A true believer in the Empire. He formed a secret society called the Round Table whose members were dedicated to seeing the entire globe under one world government. And to their minds at the time, the ideal One World government was the British Empire. Rhodes's special interest was Africa. Wanted to add the whole continent to the Empire, became a small-scale tyrant in the process, but ultimately failed. His One World legacy lives on, however."
Kenway popped the top on Jack's beer and handed it to him.
"After World War One, the British Empire fell apart, so Rhodes's heirs had to try a different tactic. They formed two front organizations: the Council on Foreign Relations, then the Trilateral Commission. You've heard of those, I take it?"
"Heard of them," Jack said, sipping his beer. "But damned if I know what they do."
"Hardly anyone knows what they really do. But in a 1975 report the Trilateral Commission said that there could be, in certain situationsand I quote'an excess of democracy.' Can you believe that?"
"Can you believe how little I'm surprised?" Jack said. "Or care?"
"You damn well should care. Between NATO and the EC, they've got Europe pretty much in their pocket. And the UNwhich they runhas the Third World sewn up. The only piece missing is the old US of A and they're making great headway here. Just consider: nearly every president and secretary of state is or was a member of the CFR and/or the Trilateral Commission. Bill Clinton's an even better example: he's with the Trilateral Commission, the CFR, and he's a Rhodes Scholar! He went to Oxford on Cecil Rhodes money! That's why he was tapped to replace George Bush."
"This is a little scary," Jack said, and meant it. Kenway's scenario wasn't quite as easy to dismiss as aliens and antichrists.
"A little scary? You don't know the half of it. Europe has pretty much surrendered, but the American people aren't playing ball. That means it's dirty tricks time, and the all-time masters of dirty tricks work for the CIAwhich the NWO has controlled since its inception. It's public-knowledge now that the CIA has been running mind-control experiments since the fifties. MK-ULTRA is the best-known. That one was exposed in Congress and the government has had to pay off the victims of those early LSD experiments."