Page 80 - Psychoceramics and the Test of Fire

Hitler’s Ghost

I found Roy Ludwig on a bench in Green Pocket Corner Park. He
wouldn’t meet me elsewhere: yet another paranoid crackpot. It would
be superfluous to describe such types as megalomaniacal; in their
internally coherent rationalizations they had to be extremely
important to warrant the imagined threats coming in from all
directions. Thieves, of course, plotting to steal their ideas, and
assassins (whose existence, could it only be demonstrated to
outsiders, would confirm those bizarre theories) constituted the
primary dangers. Beyond that omnipresent menace were mid-level
threats posed by lesser mortals, those whose idle curiosity or
similarity of outlook made them jealous, spiteful or proselytizers for
their own mission—irritating swarms of insects rather than top-of-
the-food-chain predators. My goal was to present myself to men like
Ludwig as none of the above. Instead I sought to convince them that
my intentions were benign, and then make an offer of financial
support far beyond their fondest hopes and wildest dreams. But years
of rejection and ridicule had taught these people to damp down their
expectations of others; ironically, that pessimism often was balanced
effectively by unshakeable belief in themselves.
Al Magnus had chosen me, from a field of applicants for an
unknown job, to give a dozen psychoceramics their big break—and
keep him out of the picture. Apart from any bad publicity my efforts
might give him, effectively stopping his plan before it completed and
adversely affecting his business interests, the task did involve some
personal risk for me. I’d already experienced a bit of it in pursuit of
the handsome and ever-increasing rewards dangled in front of me,
and knew that my chameleonic ability to create and then erase an
identity tailored to each of my “clients” was only part of why I had
been hired. So I had to run hot and cold: exude enthusiasm about a
stranger’s over-the-top scheme to the point of gaining his acceptance
of a fictitious source’s funding, then vanish as quickly as an old con
artist’s fake gambling den once the mark had placed his final,
extravagant bet. Roy Ludwig, per the dossier I had been given by the
anonymous researchers Al Magnus also employed, would be as tough

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