"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 space—they're from right here on Earth, experimental craft built by the One Worlders."
"What about Roswell and—?"
"Staged—all 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 job—that 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 situations—and 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 UN—which they run—has 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 CIA—which 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."
"I read something about that a while ago," Jack said.
"Big embarrassment. They slipped up on that one. But there are so many other projects that've remained secret—remote viewing, HAARP, mind-control implants, brainwashing. The agents you dealt with tonight are the results of their mind-control and programming experiments."
"Yeah?" Jack said, rubbing his sore wrist. Something more going on with those two than mind control.
"Trust me: they were. The NWO has been dabbling in programmed suicide too—the Jonestown and Heaven's Gate mass suicides are their most successful tests—but they've generally failed in their quest to program the whole country. So lately they've been concentrating on the US military."
"You're ex-military, I'm told."
"With the emphasis on ex," Ken way said. "I got a look at some NATO papers that scared the shit out of me. That's why I retired. You see, the New World Order bosses have resigned themselves to the fact that force will be necessary to tame America. But first they have to soften us up. The plan is to weaken the American economy by shipping jobs out of the country with treaties like NAFTA, and hamstringing industry with whacked-out environmental restraints. Then they'll try to push us toward Kosovo-style anarchy with church bombings, and more Ruby Ridge and Waco-type incidents. When all hell finally breaks loose, United Nations 'peacekeepers' will be called in to 'quiet' things down. But the forces won't have to be shipped in because they're already here; As I mentioned before, foreign UN troops are secretly camped out in our national parks and in wildernesses like the pine barrens, and when they charge out, our own soldiers will put on blue UN helmets and join them. Why? Because they've all been brainwashed by the CIA mind-control projects I told you about."
Kenway paused for breath and unlocked the briefcase on the desk. He pulled a map of the United States and handed it to Jack. Little hand-drawn stars were scattered across the country.
"These are confirmed UN troop locations and planned concentration camp sites. Black helicopters will darken the skies and people like me will be rounded up and placed in concentration camps where we'll be 're-educated.' But not without a fight, brother. I and others like me will fight to the death to keep America from becomifig enslaved."
Jack handed back the map and said nothing. It would be so easy to get sucked into Kenway's world—the reasoning and pseudologic were so convincing on the surface—but he wasn't buying.
"Well?" Kenway said. "Want to join me? I saw the way you handled yourself tonight. We can always use someone like you."
"I'll think about it," Jack said, hoping to avoid a sales pitch. "But I can't help wondering why these New World Order types should bother with an armed takeover. I mean, considering how nowadays people are slugging away at two and three jobs to make ends meet, how Mr. and Mrs. Average American are working until mid-May every year just to pay their federal income tax, and then on top of that they pay state and city income taxes, and then after those they've got to fork over sales taxes, property taxes, excise taxes, and surcharges, not to mention all the hidden expenses passed on in day-to-day prices jacked up by license fees and endless streams of regulations from OSHA and all the other two-bit government regulatory agencies. By the time Mr. and Mrs. Citizen are through they've surrendered seventy-five percent of their earnings to the bureaucracy. Seems to me like the NWO boys have already got you right where they want you."
"No, no, no!" Kenway said, his face reddening as he vigorously shook his head. "An armed takeover! That's how it will happen! That's how they'll take away our freedoms and make us slaves, make us property!"
A little touchy, aren't we? Jack thought as he finished his beer. Let's try one extra nudge.
"As I see it, that's pretty much what you already are. If and when this takeover comes, the only difference will be you'll no longer be able to kid yourself that you're not property."