Halvar Griffin had made a rule that the Group of Six, as he had named them, must never be all in the same place at the same time. It was simple enough to communicate by telephone cable and wall speakers; watching lips move and faces going through various expressions was superfluous.
Halvar Griffin missed his wife and children, and wondered how they fared now that their husband and father, none other than Konstantin LeBlanc Cordas, had been sliced and seared in that awful tragedy of the flying boat.
But each day Madelon became less real, more ethereal, as did the children, for that was how it must be. They belonged to another life, another time.
The program to assemble the many elements of international power, despite its success, continued to wind a torturous and at times rocky path. Halvar Griffin had been known in his former life as a financier and industrialist, but at heart, and throughout his days at schools and universities, he had become an extraordinarily gifted evolutionist, a man mixing everything from history and anthropology to the psychological and social sciences into a single frame of reference for what constituted the human race. It was not, despite what the moralists claimed with such shrill vehemence, a single race. It was not true that all men were created equal, or that they thought alike, or yielded to the same desires and dreams, or enjoyed the same opportunities for health and wealth.
Mankind was a polyglot of fierce and demonizing emotions, a great field of reeds able to be bent by the slightest wind, poisoned by greed, avarice, selfishness, and, above all, that eternal and infernal need for the power to dominate as many other men as possible, no matter what the cost in lives and destruction. The very survival of the race was at stake.
It was Griffin—and he was slowly disconnecting the final traces of his former self from even his manner of thinking and speaking—who understood that the key to the success they sought as benevolent masters of the planet's future lay in mastering the workings of the social sciences. They must develop the means, through semantics, lust, reward, fear, and every other emotion available, to bring all men to believe that survival and their greatest rewards could come only through this benevolence.
That was their goal. So long as none of the members of the Group of Six sought open recognition as power brokers, their task, attempted so many times by so many great empires in the past, had every opportunity to succeed. And they had planned well, and so far had executed very well indeed their opening moves to command the attention, then the fear and wonder, of the world. Acquiescence and obedience would follow.
There is nothing so deeply believed, accepted, feared, and even revered more than what Griffin knew had been a dominating power through all history. The Great Lie. Calculated disinformation could disintegrate powerful armies, suck the energy from national drive, turn millions of people as easily as a shepherd and his dogs drive a flock of sheep. You did not have to prove to the masses what you wished them to believe; you needed only to bring them to a condition of acceptance. Then they would believe in whatever they wished, from sorcerers and witches to gods and goddesses.
And an alien race of vast scientific, technological, and military superiority, come here to Earth.
At first the concept seemed ridiculous. Would people really be brought to accept space aliens as real? Griffin laughed at the idea, but his laughter, soon joined by that of his elite group, was one of belief rather than rejection.
'Think of what people believe,' he told the others.
'There are spirits in the water, the air, in wheat and temples and lightning and clouds. There are powerful, fullbosomed women who carry dead heroes on winged horses to Valhalla. There are gods who rise from the waters, gods who dwell in the clouds, spirits of trees and bears. Millions of filthy little cats are demonic messengers and servants of Satan. Men turn into werewolves. Vampires are men by day and winged horrors at night. If you lack the wooden stake or the silver bullet, you cannot kill them. The world is flat and you may fall off its edge; millions of people still absolutely believe this is so.
'Ah, our aliens. Yes, yes; but they will not be imaginary. They will be real—seen, heard, visible, and lethal. They will play with human lives as easily as do the winged messengers from Hades, but they will negotiate with the human race.
After all, they will impose only discomforting rules, but to break them is to risk destruction.
Fair enough! If the people of the world come to believe this is heavensent protection to avert the slaughters of future wars, they may well rally to the cause we set. Of course,' Griffin grimaced, 'they may do quite the opposite. But I believe if we plan carefully and execute precisely, we shall succeed.'
Griffin's disciples, three of them in the chateau with him, the other two listening by radio speaker, yielded more and more to his spellbinding oratory.
John Scruggs—a terrible name for a wily Spaniard who was the dominant dealer in opium and narcotics in global trade—motioned for attention. Griffin nodded.
Scruggs, with the cunning of an underworld figure who had amassed enormous power and influence, always cut to the heart of annoyances.
'Several matters, Griffin.' He smiled. 'How long, my friend, do you believe the governments we deal against will accept the charade of aliens from space blasting their way around the world?'
'The governments? As for the scientists, engineers, military men, leaders—not very long at all. Quite a few do not believe it now. They do not know what they face. They are baffled, angry, frustrated, but they have suffered these problems before and before too much time passes they will decide that the rest of this solar system remains uninhabitated.' He locked his eyes on Scruggs. 'But I tell you this. The masses will believe. They believe now, and we shall sustain that belief.'
Scruggs shook his head. 'You stretch the truth too far. You offer a fairy tale and—'
'Damn you,' Griffin snapped. 'Don't you ever observe what people really believe in? Chicken entrails and the tossing of bones to tell the future so they may know what to do, and when to do it. Do you trust your life to tarot cards, John?
No? Well, then, how about crystal balls? Or the muttering of a gypsy reading tea leaves or your filthy palms! Do you wonder about the wheeling and juxtaposition of planets and moons that will foretell your ulcers or your love life?
Anyone who believes in such things, in luck and charms and amulets and all that idiotic nonsense, can be led to believe in aliens! Especially in aliens, as you put it, blasting their way around the world. So far, I remind you, with spectacular effect and unstoppable fury which, I assure you, we will magnify a thousandfold for those superstitious wretches we must guide to their own future.' 'Another question, then, Master Griffin.' Griffin ignored the surly title.
