‘Everything is connected,’ Tom said.
Leary nodded. ‘When you’re up hard against the pattern, you can’t see the pattern at all. What I’m going to tell you now you have to keep secret for your own safety.’
More showmanship, Church thought.
‘A couple of years ago I was contacted by a woman named Mary Pinchot Meyer at my office at Harvard University. She’d been following my experiments with LSD very closely. Mary is an artist in Washington, and she wanted to organise an LSD session for some friends.’ He paused for dramatic effect. ‘Mary was JFK’s principal lover. Forget Marilyn – Mary was always the one.’
Gabe was aghast. ‘You’re saying the president took drugs in the White House?’
Leary smiled at the teen’s naivety. ‘JFK smoked pot and took cocaine, which was his favourite. But the important point here is that he turned on to acid. Mary arranged several trips for him. He was expanding his consciousness … starting to see the way the world really works.’
Gabe looked as if he might be sick. ‘My dad … I mean JFK … He really did this? I’m sorry. I’m starting to get confused.’
‘The day after JFK was assassinated, Mary called me up.’ All traces of showmanship had been replaced by a deep unease. These were her exact words: “They couldn’t control him any more. He was changing too fast. He was learning too much … They’ll cover everything up. I gotta come see you. I’m scared. I’m afraid.” They’ve left Mary alone so far, but she’s still living in fear.’
‘You’re saying JFK was assassinated because he dropped acid?’ Church couldn’t hide the note of incredulity in his voice.
‘Not because he dropped acid – because he began to understand some universal truths. I’m saying he was a charismatic, influential and powerful person who, although flawed, was starting to open his eyes. It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking metaphorically or not – “spider-people” is a good way of describing those who buy into the whole Anti-Life agenda – kind of like the pod people in that Body Snatchers movie. The spider-people are everywhere, and every year that passes they control more and more of the world. But they have to carry out their business from the shadows, because otherwise they’d ruin the illusion of what they’re trying to create.’
‘How do you recognise them?’ Gabe said anxiously.
Leary thought about that for a moment, and then said simply, ‘You don’t.’
6
‘I know what you’re doing, Tom,’ Church said when they were back at the apartment. ‘You’ve learned a lot of manipulation skills out there in the Far Lands. But if you think you can get me back wasting my life in a fight I can’t win, you’d better think again.’
Tom shrugged and acted as if Church was speaking nonsense.
‘Especially now you’ve told me I’m supposed to be fighting some kind of universal god of darkness. It’s just insane.’
With infuriating aloofness, Tom ignored Church completely, dropped an LP onto the record player and turned the volume up full.
7
In July, author Ken Kesey took his first Magic Bus Trip to New York on an LSD-fuelled quest to discover America, at the same time as President Lyndon Johnson was signing the Civil Rights Act.
On the night of 19 July, Niamh dragged Marcy into the apartment. Blood streamed from a gash on Marcy’s head and Niamh had a stunned expression that Church had never seen before.
Gabe ran to help. ‘Who did this?’
‘The police,’ Niamh said. ‘They came at us as if we were vermin being driven from a sewer.’
Marcy sat in a chair in the kitchen, clutching a towel to her wound. ‘It was a Congress of Racial Equality protest in Harlem,’ she said. ‘The cops went crazy. Shot one guy dead, hundreds more injured. There was blood all over the sidewalk.’ She stared into the middle distance with an expression of mounting horror. ‘We only wanted a voice, just black people saying who we were.’ She smiled weakly at Niamh. ‘Sorry for dragging you into it, darlin’.’
‘Do not apologise. I need to see these things.’ She rested a hand on Marcy’s shoulder. Church could see that a bond had grown between them similar to the one between Gabe and himself.
‘We need to get out of this city,’ Gabe said, demoralised.
‘No,’ Marcy replied defiantly. ‘We need to fight.’
They buried their differences for the rest of the summer and into the autumn. But then in October, as the cold winds blew harder, Tom came across a small article in the newspaper. Timothy Leary’s presidential contact, Mary Pinchot Meyer, had been murdered as she walked along the Chesapeake and Ohio towpath in Georgetown. It looked to have been the work of a professional hit man. The first bullet was fired into the back of her head, and when she did not die immediately, a second shot was loosed into her heart. The evidence showed that in both cases the gun was almost touching Meyer’s body when it was fired.