"In the second place, if you want to recruit people into a conspiracy, besides idealism and whatever other noble motives you might exploit in them, you would always exploit hope. You would exaggerate the size and power of the conspiracy, because most people want to join the winning side. Therefore, all assertions about the actual strength of the Illuminati should be regarded, a fortiori, as suspect, like the voters' polls released by candidates before elections.
"Finally, it always pays to frighten the opposition. Therefore a conspiracy will exhibit the same behavior that ethnologists have observed in animals under attack: it will puff itself up and try to look bigger. In short, potential or actual recruits and potential and actual enemies will both be given the same false impression: that the Illuminati is twice, or ten times, or a hundred times, its actual size. This is logical, but my first point was empirical- the memos do exist- and therefore logic and empiricism confirm each other: the Illuminati are not able to control everything. What then? They've been around a long time and they are as tireless as the Russian mathematician who worked out pi to the one-thousandth place. The probability, then, is that they control some things and influence a hell of a lot more. This probability increases as you think back over the memos. The two chief Arabic branches- the Hashishim and the Roshinaya- were both wiped out; the Italian Illuminati were 'crushed' in 1507; Weishaupt's order was suppressed by the Bavarian government in 1785; and so forth. If they were behind the French Revolution, they influenced rather than controlled, because Napoleon undid everything the Jacobins started. That they had a hand in both Soviet Communism and German Fascism is plausible, considering the many similarities between the two; but if they controlled both, why did the two take opposite sides in the Second World War? And, if they ran both the Federalist party, through Washington, and the Democratic Republicans, through Jefferson, what was the purpose of the Aaron Burr counterrevolution, which they are also supposed to be behind? The picture I get is not a grand Puppet Master moving everybody on invisible strings, but some sort of million-armed octopus -a millepus, let's call it- constantly reaching out tentacles, and often drawing back nothing but a bloody stump, crying, 'Foiled again!'
"But the millepus is very busy and quite resourceful. If it controlled the planet, it could choose either operating in the open or retaining secrecy, but since it doesn't have that omnipotence yet, it must choose to be as anonymous as possible. Therefore, many of its tentacles will be probing around in the areas of publication and communications. It wants to know when somebody is investigating it or getting ready to publicize an investigation he has already completed. Finding such a person, it then has two choices: kill him or neutralize him. Killing may be resorted to in certain emergencies, but will be avoided when possible: you never know when a person of that sort has stashed extra copies of his documents in various unexpected places to be released in the event of his death. Neutralization is best, almost always."
Saul paused to relight his pipe, and Muldoon thought, The most unrealistic aspect of Doyle's stories is Watson's admiration at these moments. I'm just irritated, because he makes me feel like a chump for not seeing it myself. "Go ahead," he said gruffly, saving his own deductions until Saul was finished.
"The best form of neutralization is recruitment, of course. But any crude and hurried effort at recruitment is known as 'taking your pants down" in the espionage business because it makes you more vulnerable. The safest approach is gradual recruitment, disguised as something else. The best disguise, of course, is the pretense of helping the subject in his investigation. This also opens the second, and preferable, option, which is leading him on a wild goose chase. Sending him looking for Illuminati in organizations which they have never really infiltrated. Feeding him balderdash like that stuff about the Illuminati coming from the planet Vulcan or being descended from Eve and the Serpent. Best of all, though, is telling him the purpose of the conspiracy is something other than it actually is, especially if the story you sell him is in keeping with his own ideals, since this can then shade over into recruitment.
"Now, the sources this Pat unearthed mostly seem to come to one of two conclusions: the Illuminati doesn't exist anymore, or the Illuminati is virtually identical with Russian Communism. The first I reject because Malik and Pat have both disappeared and two buildings, one here in New York and one way down in Mad Dog, have been bombed in a series palpably linked with an investigation of the Illuminati. You've already accepted that, but the next step is just as obvious. If the Illuminati tries to distort whatever publicity cannot be avoided, then we should look at the idea that the Illuminati is communist-oriented as skeptically as we look at the idea that they don't even exist.
"So, let's look at the opposite hypothesis. Could the Illuminati be a far-right or fascist group? Well, if Malik's information was in any way accurate, they seem to have some kind of special headquarters or central office in Mad Dog- and that's Ku Klux and God's Lightning territory. Also, whatever their history before Adam Weishaupt, they seem to have gone through some reformation and revitalization under his leadership. He was a German and an ex-Catholic, just like Hitler. One of his Illuminated Lodges survived long enough to recruit Hitler in 1923, according to a memo that might be the most accurate one in the lot for all we know. Considering the proclivities of the German character, Weishaupt could likely be an anti-Semite. Most historians I've read on Nazi Germany agree to at least the possibility that there was a 'secret doctrine' which only the top Nazis shared among themselves and didn't tell the rest of the party. That doctrine might be pure Illuminism. Take up the many links between Illuminism and Freemasonry, and the known anti-Catholicism of the Masonic movement- add in the fact that ex-Catholics are frequently bitter against the church, and both Weishaupt and Hitler were ex-Catholics-and we get a hypothetical anti-Jewish, anti-Catholic, semi-mystical doctrine that
would sell equally well in Germany and in parts of America. Finally, while some left-extremists might want to kill the Kennedys and Reverend King, all three were more likely targets for right-wingers; and the Kennedys would be especially abhorrent to anti-Catholic rightists.
"A last point," Saul said. "Consider the left-wing orientation of Confrontation, The editor, Malik, would probably not give much credence to most of the sources quoted in the memos, since the majority are from rightist publications, and most of them allege that the Illuminati is a leftist plot. His most probable reaction would be to dismiss this as another right-wing paranoia, unless he had other sources besides his own Research Department. Notice how cagey he is. He doesn't tell his associate editor, Peter Jackson, anything about the Illuminati itself- just that he wants a new investigation of the last decade's assassinations. The bottom memo is so old and yellow it suggests he got his first clue several years ago, but didn't act. Pat asks him why he's hiding all this from the reporter, George Dorn. Finally, he disappears. He was getting information from some place else, and it revealed a plot he could believe in and really fear. That would probably be a Fascist plot, anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish and anti-Negro."
Muldoon grinned. For once I don't have to play Watson, he thought. "Brilliant," he said. "You never cease to amaze me, Saul. Would you glance at this, though, and tell me how it fits in?" He handed over a piece of paper. "I found it in a book on Malik's bedside table."
The paper was a brief scrawl in the same handwriting as the occasional jottings on the bottoms of Pat's memos: