Spontaneously the group had begun singing Christmas hymns as the burden of the cross passed from one person to the next. As they entered the long gravel drive to the shrine’s parking lot, the short, middle-aged woman in front of Billy Paul stumbled under the burden of the cross and fell to her knees. Amid gasps from the crowd of onlookers, the aging Reverend reached out to steady her. “Let me take this burden from you,” he said, feeling the spirit of Simon of Cyrene filling his limbs with strength.
Hoisting the heavy wooden cross to his bony shoulders, he trudged forward. By the time Billy Paul was navigating the last steps to the front of the chapel, the sharp edges of the cross had bitten deeply into the flesh of his shoulders. His breath came in aching gasps and his heart labored against his ribs like a jackhammer. He dragged the now-painful burden toward the chapel entrance, his mind and body reeling under the weight and from the thin mountain air. The woman he had helped joined him and whispered, “This is going to be a special Christmas like the first.” One by one, others in the procession came forward, each touching a part of the cross, some lifting it with their hands while praying.
The group swept forward, singing hallelujahs and chanting prayers. By now Billy Paul and his burden were being half-carried along by the crowd caught up in the exultation of Christ’s final journey on Earth and oblivious to his gasping wheezes and staggering steps. At the small rock path leading to the now open chapel doors, one end of the cross lurched sideways and slid heavily on Reverend Paul’s shoulder, breaking the skin. Blood trickled down his back, staining his white cassock red. A sharp pain lanced down his leg. He lost his balance and stumbled away from the group grabbing a hold of a small wooden sign identifying the Christ Chapel. The men and women carrying the cross left him behind as if he didn’t exist. Even the bulk of the crowd—engulfed in a state of spiritual excitation—passed him by unnoticed.
Deeply saddened by this callous dismissal of his fellow cross bearers, Billy Paul sank to his knees. Moments later a gentle hand touched his shoulder.
“Are you okay?” asked a deep voice.
Turning, the TV evangelist immediately recognized the speaker from the video clips Beecher had provided. “Adam,” he whispered. A sudden blissful joy filled his body and then, just as suddenly, excruciating pain gripped his chest and he crumpled into the shrine caretaker’s strong arms.
The pain vanished in an instant. A sense of ease filled Billy Paul with a simplicity and strength he had not experienced since the time, as a teenager, when he had swiped oranges from the groves surrounding his Southern California home with his pals. Accompanying the peace and calm was a sense of floating in a bright white cloud. He looked down on a brown, dusty earth, now slowly receding. He recognized the cottonwood tree and the nearby Christ Chapel. They glowed with a soft inviting light. Beside the white gravel walkway leading to the chapel’s entrance he saw his limp frail body cradled in the lap of Adam, his limbs curled up in a fetal position. Faceless human forms were gathered around the two of them. They seem to be attending to me! thought Billy Paul with great surprise. Who are they? But a sudden dread filled him, and the tranquility he had experienced only moments before vanished. The faceless beings darkened. They bent down toward him, talons extended, ready to grasp and rend his flesh. NO! DON’T LET THEM TAKE ME! he shouted at Adam.
The figure of Adam did not move. Billy Paul shouted until his voice was hoarse, but Adam ignored his pleas and continued to rock Billy Paul’s lifeless body to and fro without a care in the world.
Frantically, Billy Paul drew up his legs and kicked forward, his hands making desperate swimming motions as he tried to swim back through the air toward his body. He had to stop the dark angels from taking his soul to hell! He seemed to move imperceptibly through air that was thick as jelly. His breathing hoarsened. He could no longer move at all. The last thing he remembered as his hands beat futilely against the thick air were the demons descending on him, fangs and claws bared as they prepared to take his soul to hell.
Reverend Billy Paul had awakened in a dimly lit hospital room in Taos, New Mexico. Fortunately the shrine had paramedics on the scene for just such emergencies. He had been resuscitated and helicoptered to the hospital.
As full awareness returned, the Reverend had an overpowering realization. Adam Gwillt was not Christ. No, he was the worst thing possible. The world’s people had to know that Satan walked in their midst, disguised as the Milagro Shrine’s healer!
Beecher’s email program chimed. He leaned forward and a second email from Reverend Billy Paul appeared. It was the same message—‘Has that matter been taken care of yet?’ He noticed his hands trembled at the idea of what the leader of the Brothers of the Lord was ordering him to do. That cursed pilgrimage is responsible for his changed attitude.
A few weeks after the heart attack, Beecher had received an ill-tempered call from a highly agitated Billy Paul. The televangelist had started right in without saying hello or asking about Myriam. “That Adam caretaker is the secret leader of a heretic group and is able to transfer his divine power from his body to those who follow him. They’re going to claim that this will be the equivalent of Christ rising from the dead. This two-bit hustler, Adam, can’t be allowed to take on the robe of our savior . . . He needs to be stopped for the salvation of our souls.”
Beecher had reeled from the angry diatribe. “That’s impossible!” he blurted.
“Do you doubt my revelations, Brother Beecher?” Billy Paul had asked, his displeasure clear at Beecher’s lack of faith.
“Of course not. It’s just—”
“Then heed my words. Adam has dark and dangerous powers.”
“But . . . but how do you know this?” Beecher had asked, the certainty behind the Reverend’s words rattling him.
“I had a vision when I visited the shrine for the pilgrimage. It showed me that Adam is not the second coming of Christ. He is Satan.” He paused. “It’s time Adam Gwillt left the shrine. You’re close to it and him. Take care of it.”
“What do you mean? Take care of it how?” Beecher asked taken aback by the Reverend’s hardline tone.
“Do I need to say more?” the Reverend mocked Beecher in an angry voice. “You’re a resourceful former military man. Do what needs to be done. Am I clear?” He had disconnected without another word.
Beecher leaned back in his chair. Outside his Amarillo office, rain began to fall, hard enough to clean the dust off windshields. He wished it could clear up this matter for him. He hadn’t liked the implications of Billy Paul’s order. It was clear the televangelist wanted Adam Gwillt to disappear permanently. The idea was distasteful, but Beecher had always been a good soldier. But how to carry out the order?
He had wrestled with that question for a number of sleepless nights. He had not traveled to the Milagro Shrine nor spoken with Myriam except on the phone. If only he could talk with her, maybe he could find the answers he needed. But he knew that way was blocked. He was in way too deep with Billy Paul and the reverend’s plans for Adam. If he told her the truth now about what he knew, he’d lose her forever.
He had wracked his brain finding a way to entice Adam to move to a more comfortable place. He talked to Carlotta to see if she could induce her brother to move to Hawaii to avoid New Mexico’s bitter winters. She laughed at him, saying Adam had a permanent home at the shrine and wouldn’t leave it if another ice age descended. Next, Beecher contacted Adam’s longtime friend, Malcolm Grossinger in Des Moines, to see if he would be willing to take care of him back in Iowa. However, Grossinger had danced around the question and his attitude just seemed troubling to Beecher. In the end no inducement could get Adam to leave the Rio Chama Shrine.
The email chimed again. Beecher read the third email from the Reverend Paul. ‘Has that matter been taken care of yet?’
It was an old Comanche tradition that if someone made a request of you three times, you had to follow through. The odd superstition stated that bad luck would befall the man who failed to carry
out such an earnest request. He didn’t want to think about the reverend’s order and yet he had to. As the leader of the Brothers of the Lord in the Southwest, troubles in New Mexico were his responsibility.
Then Beecher remembered Sam Conklin had mentioned a contact of his. “He’s a miracle worker. He’s known as the ‘magic man’. Believe me he can make trouble disappear.”
Could use some magic right about now. He made the call to Conklin. Beecher was both relieved and horrified by what he heard.
March 27, 2016
Des Moines
Ramsey walked toward his car parked in the luxury lofts’ visitors lot. It was already late afternoon and it would be dark by the time he returned to Grinnell. But the trip to meet Grossinger and see Adam’s loft had been exactly what he needed. He had already decided how to handle Myriam’s request.
Pulling his phone from his pocket, Ramsey paused. He thought to himself, How do I want to play this? I need to test these guys to find out how much they really need my expertise. He decided to make an outrageous demand, one that no savvy business person would accept.
He texted Myriam. ‘I’ll take the job. Results totally my property. 50 K. I’ll have my legal draw up a contract. If you agree here’s a link to my lawyer. I’ll let her know you’ll will be contacting her.’
Ramsey paused again. If they agree to my writing the contract and that the results will become my intellectual property, what does that mean? There was the obvious. But there was something behind it they weren’t telling him. Unexpectedly, a new concern filled him. The shrine project felt like crossing a boundary. Peru welled up in his thoughts but he quashed it. At the same time his interest was piqued, and in spite of the absurdity of the contract he knew they would accept his terms.
He then sent a separate text. ‘Email what you know about Adam Gwillt.’ Ramsey also sent an email to his lawyer explaining what was going on. He scanned through all the incoming emails of the day. Somebody had hacked his email and was using it to push cheap Internet firearms. But there was one from an old buddy, from his Eugene days, Pete Miami.
I wonder if Pete’s still doing his crazy GIS stuff in New Mexico.
March 28, 2016
Grinnell, Iowa
Ramsey made himself breakfast. Things were moving fast. By the time he had arrived back home from Des Moines the promised signed contract was in his inbox waiting for his signature. He had confidence his lawyer had gotten the terms he asked for, so he gave it a superficial read, mostly interested in who the other party was. It turned out to be a group called the Abilene Friends of Rio Chama de Milagro Shrine. Research showed they were a nonprofit group incorporated in Abilene, Texas. The chairman of the board was a waste disposal businessman named Hiram Beecher. Other members were an assortment of Texas businessmen and of course Myriam. It was Beecher who signed the contract.
After a good night’s sleep, Ramsey was ready to go to work. He started by reading over Myriam’s response to his request for information on Adam Gwillt. He learned that the Friends of the Shrine had paid him a token amount to clean up trash every day at the site; at the same time, many visitors seeking miracles had reported that his presence greatly enhanced their experience. Myriam also included the story of her friend Nancy and how she got involved with the shrine after her healing. Lastly, she made the observation that Adam’s disappearance had brought “a big black cloud over the shrine.”
Ramsey wondered what Myriam knew about Adam’s disappearance. She hadn’t mentioned it to him.
Myriam closed by assuring Ramsey he was making the right choice, and by summarizing his assignment in her own words. “I have poured ten years of my life into the goodness this place has brought to so many people. I need to know if there’s some way this power can be restored. Is it somehow being blocked? I’m sure if anyone can figure this out, it’s you.”
Ramsey wondered if she was hiding something.
It was a complex assignment, and Ramsey knew he had to formulate a detailed plan. The world of geographical data collection and analysis had grown exponentially since his sacred-site investigation more than a decade ago. Having made his mark in political and economic geography, he only superficially kept up with advances in GIS. Geographical Information Systems was where all the action was for the bright boys and girls in geography. Employing supersensitive remote sensing equipment to capture in real time a multiplicity of geophysical variables, GIS programmers, using high-speed computers, were able to analyze and integrate the data collected in ways unimaginable just ten years ago. The result was the revelation of hundreds of geophysical patterns never before detected.
Ramsey knew that was the kind of capability he needed to research the Milagro Shrine, but was ill-equipped in every way to make it happen. Then he remembered the annoying phish email from his old postdoc drinking buddy Pete Miami. He was simply the smartest guy Ramsey had ever met. After getting his PhD in physics from Stanford at age twenty-one, Pete had moved to Oregon, where the two first met. The first night they had hit the bars together he told Ramsey, “GIS is the cutting edge of scientific investigation. That’s where I can make my mark, not physics.”
Pete liked to call Ramsey “the old man,” since he was already twenty-eight. The last time they were together was at a world geographic conference in China. China, more than any other nation, was embracing the analytical power of geographical thinking to guide decision-making at the highest level.
Ramsey recalled one odd thing about Pete’s client work. Pete had said he was running a major watershed analysis of northern New Mexico. At the time Ramsey wondered why this ambitious and brilliant scientist had taken on such a low-level scientific investigation. Then the last night of the conference, after many drinks, Pete had let it slip out that a company named the DeVere Diamond Group had funded the project.
Laughing, Ramsey had chided him, “What are you doing? Looking for diamonds in the New Mexico high desert?” Ramsey recalled that Miami’s reaction was, “Whoops, did I say that to you. If I did I shouldn’t have.” They laughed it off.
It dawned on Ramsey that this could be an important coincidence. A quick Internet search revealed a number of articles about kimberlites, the material in which diamonds are embedded, having been found around Raton and near the Colorado-New Mexico border. He dialed his old friend.
“Jonathan you old bugger, how the hell are you?”
“Fine, Pete! Hey, old bud, remember the time I talked that Eugene cop out of taking you to jail?”
“Only every time we talk.”
“Well, this time I need the favor.”
“Nothing about how are the kids and family, or about people you have kept up with from the old days?”
“What? Did you do kill them all again? . . . But I really need a favor. It’ll be fun. By the way, I figured out what you’re doing, you’re looking for kimberlite pipes without a whisper to locals and government. It took me a while to understand why you would relegate yourself to a mundane watershed project.”
“Bright boy. Are you blackmailing me?” asked Pete.
“Me? I’m way too ethical. What have you got going there?”
“With the kind of money I have you wouldn’t believe the kind of remote sensing instruments I’m developing.”
“And I have a project made for it,” Ramsey said. “I take it you have a lot of long-term data stored someplace. There is this area I need checked out. All you need to do is tell me if anything unusual has gone on in and around this area over the last 10 years. You know, any unusual readings.”
“Like what?”
“Remember when I was investigating sacred places, looking for any kind of energetic or physical factors that might be responsible for so-called religious experiences?”
“You’re not going there again, are you?”
“I’m going to let you do it. How’s that?”
Pete hesitated. “As I recall, it didn’t turn out so well for you last time.”
“I guarantee you won’t have to mo
ve a step from your armchair to do this for me.”
“So, where is this place?”
“I’ll send you a link. . . . You’ll do it?
Pete hummed a little tune that Ramsey recognized from their drinking days. It was the old Jeopardy final round theme. When the last note ended, he said, “I’ll do it. Maybe I’ll find God for you. Then you’ll really owe me.”
“You’d like that. How long you think?”
“Maybe tomorrow I can get you some preliminaries.”
“That’s crazy.”
“That’s what they say about me. Stay free and silly, old man.”
Ramsey texted Pete the Rio Chama de Milagro Shrine link.
The next thing he had to do was look up Orensen’s New Gnostics website.
September 2015
Pretoria, South Africa
Greta Van Horn scrolled through the computer files the GIS expert showed her on his tablet. Eyes narrowing, she asked bluntly, “Are these numbers accurate?”
Doctor Philippe Lindstrom nodded. “The results of the computational analyses are quite remarkable,” he said, his Danish accent a pleasant lilt.
She stared at the displays again. “Anyone else know about this?”
“I’m the only one who has seen these, Ms. Horn. You were the first person I called.”
“Keep it that way. I don’t see any reason to bother Pieter Haas with this until there’s something more substantial.”
“Yes Ms. Horn.”
Greta quickly downloaded the files into her data stick. Pieter had to see this right away. She hurried down the hall to the elevator. Pressing the button, the door opened instantly. It was the only entrance to this part of building. No one knew of the secret research lab one-hundred meters beneath the soaring office complex of the DeVere Mining Group except for members of the board of directors. Ignoring the elevator buttons on the panel, she pulled out a round shaped key and inserted it into the lock at the bottom of the panel. She turned it clockwise. The elevator hummed upward to the chairman’s private office.
The Adam Enigma Page 9
