The Hellfire Club(86)

The Hellfire Club was more than just a haven of depravity, Temple Franklin would write years later to his half brother; it had tremendous social and business benefits. The bond of the shared illicit and secret experience was one aspect, but more powerful was the knowledge that you could ruin an ally with these secrets—and that he could do the same to you. It meant that one member would do almost anything for the others because they would do the same for him; no one had a choice. Sir Francis Dashwood labored mightily to fund the colonies before the American Revolution, Temple noted. He did everything Ben Franklin wanted him to do. And Franklin was a great supporter of Dashwood’s in every conceivable way.

The flip side must have been true as well, Charlie realized as he listened to Bernstein. Members of the club were prevented from retaliating against one another as they might have done otherwise, not unlike the modern geopolitical concept of mutually assured destruction. The men of the Hellfire Club were thus bound together forever. A member’s secrets were safe but only because everyone knew a betrayal would mean the indiscreet betrayer would soon see his secrets spilled as well.

Which was not to say that the monks of the Hellfire Club of the eighteenth century all got along famously. Lord Mayor of London John Wilkes and John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich, loathed each other. But they had to limit the damage they inflicted, since treading too far beyond an insult at a tavern might result in the full force and fury of the club striking them down. They were all to be protected. Temple Franklin mentioned pages who had disappeared after attempts at blackmail and prostitutes whose pregnancies were taken care of via mysterious means.

“So the Hellfire Club was about much more than pleasures,” Margaret said. “It was about alliances.”

“Oh my God,” Charlie said.

“What?” asked Bernstein.

Charlie gazed at Margaret and then at Bernstein. “There’s a Hellfire Club in Washington, DC—today. And I went to one of its parties.”

He explained how many oddities he’d witnessed that night at Conrad Hilton’s penthouse that had to have been traditions handed down from Sir Francis Dashwood’s perverse clubhouse. From Strongfellow using the password “Do what thou wilt” to gain entrance to the library to the two small stone statues holding fingers to their lips outside its doors, there were far too many similarities for it to have been anything else. The engraving Hospes negare, si potes, quod offerat, the stained-glass portrayals of important men posed pornographically with naked women, the portraits of presidents and prostitutes—it was a twentieth-century version of what Temple Franklin described in West Wycombe, England.

“Good Lord,” Margaret said.

“I don’t know anything about this party,” Bernstein said.

“It was last month, a wild affair,” Charlie said. “Everyone was there. McCarthy, Cohn, Carlin, the Kennedys, Strongfellow, Allen Dulles…”

“So you’re saying they’re all members of this deviant club?” Bernstein asked.

“Not necessarily,” said Margaret. “Because Charlie’s not a member and he was there.”

“I assume most there weren’t actual members. Just as in England, Ben Franklin wasn’t a Medmenham Monk, though he enjoyed a lesser affiliation in the club, since he was trusted to keep his mouth shut. There were twelve monks plus the Christ figure, right? Maybe it’s the same here? I didn’t even know what I had walked into.”

“Some of those guys must be monks, though,” Margaret suggested.

Charlie massaged his temple, trying to recall details. “The room Strongfellow knew the password to get into, the library. Maybe that was where the monks were? Carlin was there, and McCarthy. Um…Whitney from General Kinetics. Dulles from Central Intelligence. Sam Zemurray from United Fruit was there. They had the stained-glass portraits and such, though I didn’t recognize everyone in them, and to tell you the truth, I was pretty drunk and didn’t really study them.”

“That’s a lot of powerful people in that library,” Bernstein said.

The three sat in silence, a ticking clock the only noise in the room.

“Okay, this is now officially kind of scary,” Margaret said.

“Why?” asked Bernstein.

“Charlie’s getting a lot of pressure from this group to do whatever they want him to,” Margaret said. She squeezed the bridge of her nose and thought about the notes she’d made that night at Polly’s Lodging when Charlie had divulged everything. Pressure from a shadowy, powerful group. That was what Charlie was experiencing. And with what she knew about Van Waganan and MacLachlan, he likely was far from the first to have been so squeezed.

“Well, it’s a good thing LaMontagne called the jack of hearts the illegitimate son of the one true king,” Bernstein said, always looking for bright sides. “You had your brainstorm and from there all I had to do was look under William!”

“Under William?” asked Charlie.

“Under William Temple Franklin,” she said. “First I looked under Temple but then I remembered that wasn’t his actual first name.”

“Ah, right,” Charlie said.

“Under William,” Margaret said.

“Yes, under William,” Bernstein said.

“Under William,” Margaret repeated, almost to herself.