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Conspiracy Theory(134)

By:Jane Haddam


“What about Michael Harridan?” Gregor asked. “Would you say he’s one of the other people?”

“Oh, definitely,” Henry Barden said. Something was happening with the coffee. Cameron went to get it. “And it’s not only that he hadn’t had any presence in any of the other organizations before starting his own. For one thing, his stuff is much too precisely targeted—”

“Excuse me,” Jackman said. “I’ve seen that stuff. It isn’t targeted.”

“I mean relative to the stuff these organizations put out. You see, the usual procedure is to produce a comprehensive overview of your version of the meaning of world events. Go look at the sites sometime. Quite a few of them start their explanations with the dawn of civilization. Most of them go back at least until nineteenth-century Bavaria, with the founding of the Illumi-nati. Did you know that? There really was an Illuminati, a group of Bavarian business and professional men who founded an offshoot of the Freemasons that lasted maybe two-dozen years. They were political radicals in the context of their time. They disappeared, but their name has proved nearly irresistible to the anti-Masonic conspiracists, and especially to the Catholic Church, which has been using them in anti-Mason propaganda for more than a century now. Although, of course, the anti-Masonic propaganda these days is much more sophisticated. You’d be surprised at how unsophisticated some of the stuff is from the late nineteenth century. Conspiracy nuts in high places. And, of course, in this country, conspiracy theories in response to rising numbers of Catholic immigrants and rising hysteria among anti-Catholic natives.”

“But Michael Harridan doesn’t go back that far,” Gregor said.

“No.” Henry Barden returned to the subject. Cameron began passing out cups of coffee. “He makes no attempt to produce a comprehensive explanation at all. He publishes The Harridan Report. He non-gives a few lectures—”

“What?” Jackman said.

“—and he maintains the Web site, that’s it. He hasn’t written a single book. He doesn’t have a single publication for sale. Most of these guys have several of each. Most of them sell all kinds of things. Audiotapes, videotapes, pamphlets, books, you name it. It’s like I told you. These are businesses. Their owners may be intellectually and emotionally committed, but at the end of the day they get paid for what they do and they have to get paid to keep on doing it. Michael Harridan doesn’t seem to have to get paid for what he does and he isn’t even trying to.”

“What did you mean about giving non-lectures or whatever it was you said?” Jackman asked.

“Well,” Henry said. “It’s very interesting. Not only are these businesses. They’re part of a circuit, a subculture with its own rules and members and events. Most of these guys give lectures to the same people in the same places. There are groups all over the country that sponsor speakers. Michael Harridan isn’t on the circuit, although I’d bet he’s been asked.”

“Why?” Gregor said.

“Because there’s a little notice up on his Web site explaining why he can’t accept speaking engagements in ‘outside’ venues,” Henry said, “which means, I’m sure, venues where he isn’t in control. With any other group of people, this might have been suspicious, but we’re dealing here with people who make paranoia a profession. At any rate, he doesn’t accept those, but for a while he did do talks and speeches, sort of. I say sort of, because he never actually appeared at any of them. People would come in, sit down, and listen to an au-diotape. That lasted for”—Henry checked his papers—“seven months. At the end of that seven-month period, what we find is that the talks are being set up by one Kathi Mittendorf, and all requests for lectures are being routed through her.”

“So, do you mean to say that Kathi Mittendorf is Michael Harridan?” Jack-man asked.

“No,” Henry Barden said. “I think that what happened was that Michael Harridan managed to recruit Kathi Mittendorf, to get her to do things for him so that he didn’t have to be physically present himself. Probably, when he first started, he would be in the audience himself when he non-gave his lectures. He’d set up and sit back and pretend to be one of the audience. Or maybe he’d stand up and say he was somebody else. But I’m also guessing that this wasn’t very safe for him. My best guess here is that he had reason to be concerned that somebody could recognize him, if not at the time he started then later. He didn’t want somebody seeing him as himself in the newspapers or on television and leaping up to say, ‘I know that man! That’s Michael Harridan!’ ”