Last we saw of Fibel he was hooking, stretching, and running shock cord for that Horst Achtfaden back in his gliding days, Fibel who stayed on the ground, and saw his friend on to Peenemünde—saw him on? isn’t that a slice of surplus paranoia there, not quite justified is it—well, call it Toward a Case for Bland’s Involvement with Achtfaden Too, if you want. Fibel worked for Siemens back when it was still part of the Stinnes trust. Along with his design work he also put in some time as a Stinnes intelligence agent. There are also still loyalties to Vereinigte Stahlwerke in effect, though Fibel happens to be working now at the General Electric plant in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. It’s in Bland’s interest to have an agent in the Berkshires, can you guess why? Yup! to keep an eye on adolescent Tyrone Slothrop, is why. Nearly ten years after the original deal was closed, IG Farben is still finding it easier to subcontract the surveillance of young Tyrone back to Lyle Bland.

This stonefaced kraut Fibel is a genius with solenoids and switches. How all this machinery got “out of the glue,” as they say over there, is a sinful waste of time even to think about—he dives into topologies and color-codes, the odor of rosin flux goes seeping into the poolrooms and saloons, a Schnipsel here and there, a muttered also or two, and before you know it he’s got most of them working again. You can bet there’s a lotta happy Masons in Mouthorgan, Missouri.

In return for his good deed, Lyle Bland, who couldn’t care less, is made a Mason. He finds good fellowship, all kinds of comforts designed to remind him of his virility, and even a number of useful business contacts. Beyond this, all is just as tight as that Business Advisory Council. Non-Masons stay pretty much in the dark about What Goes On, though now and then something jumps out, exposes itself, jumps giggling back again, leaving you with few details but a lot of Awful Suspicions. Some of the American Founding Fathers were Masons, for instance. There is a theory going around that the U.S.A. was and still is a gigantic Masonic plot under the ultimate control of the group known as the Illuminati. It is difficult to look for long at the strange single eye crowning the pyramid which is found on every dollar bill and not begin to believe the story, a little. Too many anarchists in 19th-century Europe—Bakunin, Proudhon, Salverio Friscia—were Masons for it to be pure chance. Lovers of global conspiracy, not all of them Catholic, can count on the Masons for a few good shivers and voids when all else fails. One of the best of the classic Weird Mason Stories has Doctor Livingstone (living stone? oh, yes) come wandering into a native village in, not even the heart, but the subconscious of Darkest Africa, a place, a tribe he’s never seen before: fires in the silence, unfathomable stares, Livingstone ambles up to the village chief and flashes him a Masonic high sign—the chief recognizes it, returns it, all smiles, and orders every fraternal hospitality laid on for the white stranger. But recall that Dr. Livingstone, like Wernher von Braun, was born close to the Spring Equinox, and so had to confront the world from that most singular of the Zodiac’s singular points… . Well, and keep in mind where those Masonic Mysteries came from in the first place. (Check out Ishmael Reed. He knows more about it than you’ll ever find here.)