The Inventor. W. E. Gutman

scenario, he savors and commits to memory the following gems:

      … The war for Christ is a territorial war. The “territory” is the human mind. The more completely captured in its raw state, the sooner it can be led to embrace our sacred doctrines and, in turn, programmed to help spread it. Once the mind has been breached, the “political animal” is defeated; God triumphs and the Church can recapture the leadership and hegemony it once exercised in shaping the World in the Catholic tradition.

      … In order to obtain optimal results, Christ’s Soldiers must be among the most devout and obedient Catholics. They must be highly motivated. They must clearly understand the solemn nature and grave consequences of their obligation, and they must steadfastly justify their actions if unmasked or challenged. Sworn to secrecy, under no less a penalty than excommunication and spiritual death, they must be willing to suffer the vicissitudes and discomforts associated with our Holy Struggle, our war against infidels, and they must endure the animosity their mission will engender until we rise victorious.

      … Well established citizens -- doctors, attorneys, business tycoons, teachers, journalists, and community leaders, all God-fearing, pious, church-going Catholics, shall be considered prime candidates for recruitment.

      … When their participation in what inevitably will appear to be a covert operation is revealed to them they must be eager to proceed and infiltrate their social and professional circles.

      … They will in turn receive instruction in techniques of persuasion and control of target individuals and groups. Awareness of and dedication to our noble struggle will be reinforced by –-

      Keeping the recruits highly motivated and inspired;

      Encouraging the support of segments of society for an insurrection against heresy and for the overthrow and reconstruction of our current system of governance;

      Impressing upon them that defeat will result in the adulteration and death of true Christianity, and in persecution;

      Campaigning against avant-garde clergy, especially those who preach Liberation Theology, support the ordination of women to the priesthood, advocate the repeal of celibacy and endorse abortion, stem cell research and same-sex unions.

      … Conscription will be carried out with due diligence in private consultations with recruiters who do not initially reveal their true identity. Recruits will then be informed that they are already inside the movement and that a change of heart is futile and carries severe penalties.

      … Once trained, this legion of Christian soldiers will be charged with infiltrating unions, student groups, peasant organizations, school districts and regional legislative bodies.

      In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

      If the verbiage gives off a strange odor of sulfur it’s because it brazenly and tackily plagiarizes a clandestine and rather crude CIA training manual, Psychological Operations in Counterinsurgency Warfare, which was distributed in Nicaragua in the 80s by attaching clusters to balloons and floating them down into the countryside. Drafted in Spanish, the 90-page manual advised U.S.-backed Contra rebels to “kidnap and neutralize selected Nicaraguan government officials,” a directive interpreted by Contra leaders to include assassination. It also suggested blackmailing Nicaraguan citizens into joining the rebel cause.

      On February 5, 1984, the House Intelligence Committee concluded that production of the manual by the CIA violated a 1982 law that forbids U.S. personnel from taking part in the overthrow of the Nicaraguan government. Printed in Honduras, about 2,000 copies were distributed in 1983 to guerrillas of the Nicaraguan Democratic Force, the largest CIA-funded rebel force. Those attached to balloons were part of a 3,000-booklet edition cheaply printed at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Predictably, the House Intelligence Committee’s ruling did not thwart future U.S. political, military and economic forays in Central America or, for that matter, elsewhere around the globe, all spearheaded by the CIA, which American author, Trevor Paglen, characterizes as

      “an agency designed to operate outside the law … free to pursue its vision of a new world, to create new geographies, and to keep that world’s details far from the public record.”

      At odds with the modern world, Father Hubert believes that Catholic activists have too often struggled between their faith and the misguided or wavering convictions of the flock. Perhaps the enactment of a Catholic sharia (modeled after Islam’s “divine” law) could greatly ease the Army of Christ’s awesome task. Perhaps such sharia could also include a fatwa, or decree, that sanctions, in the name of the Lord, the formation of death squads charged with the ritual execution of heretics and apostates. Spurning the lessons of history, trembling with sacramental fervor, Hubert François de Ravaillac, the descendant of Huguenot King Henry IV’s assassin will be ready if called. After all, he was named in honor of Saint Hubert, the patron saint of hunters.

       Letter from Rotterdam

      Late on the afternoon of October 2, 2008, the phone chimes in the cluttered riverfront office of Michel Montvert, director of the Institute of Symbolic and Hermetic Arts in Paris. On the line is Dr. Manuel Albeniz, a colleague and specialist in Medieval history in Madrid.

      “I received a letter this morning from a certain Jan van den Haag. Did you?” Albeniz asks in heavily accented French.

      “I don’t know. Why.”

      “His signature is followed by a CC addressed to you.”

      “Let me look.”

      Montvert, a tall, angular, graying man, leans across his desk. The in-box brims with sheaves of documents and unopened mail. He finds the envelope. Peering at the tight, florid script in which his name and address are inscribed, he turns around, leans back in his high-winged leather chair and stretches his feet on the credenza. Through the window, across the slate-colored Seine, the filigreed spires of the Sainte-Chapelle shimmer in the pale pastel colors of dusk. Frozen in time, stupor or lethargy or anguish etched on their granite faces, winged and serpent-like, their shadows stretching over the battlements, gargoyles fix vacant but ever-watchful eyes on the city below.

      “I found it.”

      “Will you have a chance to read it soon?”

      “I doubt it. I’ve been swamped. I’m exhausted. Yesterday I gave a lecture on Frida Kahlo at the Musée d’Orsay. This morning we had a retrospective of the late Jules Perahim’s work. The Bauhaus Museum in Berlin has invited me to address a symposium. I’m flying out tonight. I’ll try to read it on the plane.”

      “Do that,” Albeniz presses with some urgency. “You’ll find it … intriguing. Let me hear from you when you get back.”

      “De acuerdo. Hasta pronto, hermano.” Deep in thought, Montvert lets out a wearied sigh, fans himself distractedly with the envelope, and stows it in his breast pocket.

      In his office at the El Prado Museum, Albeniz, an older man with a high forehead and a lion-like mane of silvery hair, rereads the missive. He frowns, and shakes his head. Grimace turns to grin, grin to sneer.

      “Nah, debe ser una broma.” Must be a joke. There’s more hope than certitude in this assessment. Something in Jan van den Haag’s language, in the elegance of his syntax, in his carefully articulated esotericism and allusions reveals broad scholarship and implies initiation into and familiarity with the symbolism and objectives of Freemasonry. His entreaty has the resonance of truth. Most enticing are the data he promises to share in future communications, should Albeniz and Montvert express serious interest.

      That evening, as the Airbus that carries Montvert to Berlin descends toward