He took a winding back road through the mountains of Carson National Forest. During the ride, he connected his iPhone and played Iron Butterfly’s In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.
Ramsey only half listened, his mind working on integrating what he’d just seen. Is it as simple as the number-one axiom of modern human geography? People shape place and place shapes people in an ever-expanding spiral. Was it that somehow the open-minded nature of the people on pilgrimage created subtle-field coherences and these coherent fields in turn changed people’s mental states, the biofields of their bodies, and maybe even their life directions? The idea was intoxicating. But he knew there was an even bigger question that had to be added to the mix. How does Adam Gwillt fit in?
Ramsey glanced at his dear friend. How much should I involve Pete? Should I engage him anymore? He knew he couldn’t do what he wanted to do without Pete’s skillset and equipment. He turned down the music and brought Pete up to speed on his investigation, starting with his conversation with the ghost-like Adam Gwillt. It was slow-going at first. Pete scoffed and wisecracked his way through Ramsey’s story, particularly at every coincidence he brought up, like the chance encounter with Malcolm Grossinger in the airport.
But the coincidence that blew Pete’s mind was that it was their old teacher and advisor, Myriam, who had hired Ramsey. He laughed and said: “Myriam was never the substitute mother for me that she was for you.”
Ramsey grit his teeth, annoyed with the observation.
Pete must have noticed because in the next second he pounded the steering wheel. “Sorry about the mom reference. It was out of line.”
True but it was also genuine, thought Ramsey. Certainly the memory of Myriam’s refusal to see him in Peru had stirred up the old fear of abandonment he’d experienced when his mother died. Ramsey smiled ruefully. “No problem.”
‘Thanks.” Pete paused. “Funny coincidence that she was only a hundred miles away from me for such a long time huh?”
By the time they exited the forest, Taos was right in front of them. Pete roared down the main drag and stopped in front of Murphy’s Pub. “The porter here’s like nectar. They make it themselves.”
Savoring the first sip, Ramsey turned to Pete. “One thing puzzles me. How come you had so much geophysical information from around the shrine ?”
“Funny you should ask. One evening around five years ago, shortly after I began my research, I was sitting right here at the bar and this young man asked me if it would be okay if he sat with me. He was one of those city guys that come up here to push their limits biking and hiking. He said he was from Phoenix where he was a programmer. Guess I was getting a little drunk and I must’ve told him that I was looking for diamonds.”
Ramsey remembered that Pete could never keep a secret. “How many slips of the tongue do your employers give you?” Ramsey joked.
“You’re right, touché.”
“Back to my weird little tale. He gave me this funny little wink and said, ‘I’ll be right back.’ When he returned he was carrying a white sample bag. He pulled out some of the best-looking kimberlites I’ve ever seen. One chunk contained a perfect little blue diamond.”
“Talk about coincidences,” Ramsey joked.
“Indeed. So, naturally I asked where he got the kimberlite. He replied he found it someplace southwest of here. When I pushed him for more details he couldn’t say exactly where he found it. He assured me he’d gone back dozens of times, but no luck. But he knew the general area. He joked that maybe I could find it. At one point the bugger jumps off his stool and shouts to whole bar, ‘We’ll be rich!’”
“Bet that went over well.”
Pete shrugged. “A streaker ran through here once; a girl I think.”
“You think?”
“No one even bothered to look up and stare.” He laughed. “That’s how interested folks around these parts are in strange goings on. At any rate, when this city dude settled down, he said he could give me the general whereabouts.” Pete waited for a few seconds. “Then there’s a funny part, funny in being strange-like. You’ve read Carlos Castaneda?”
“Every book.”
“It was like when he described talking to the coyote. There were no words. It was as if my body was receiving a map of the area where he found the kimberlite. Weird. Then he handed me the largest piece of kimberlite and said, ‘Keep this. I’ll know if you find the kimberlite pipe and then we’ll both be rich. I know I can trust you.’ He got up without another word, handed me his business card and took off.”
Ramsey’s eyes narrowed. “And the search area just happened to contain the coordinates of the shrine.”
“Bingo. So when you asked me to run the scans, the work had already been done. I just never noticed the big anomaly at the shrine site. “
That’s crazy, thought Ramsey. Another encounter with a mysterious bringer of information. What are the odds on that? “So, what did you do with the kimberlite sample he gave you?”
“The sample was rich in micro diamonds, the telltale sign of a highly productive pipe. Using the kimberlite he gave me, I was able to build a rock microfracture signature by subjecting it to minor pressures delivered by my compression machine. Once I had that I could scan for the kimberlite signature with my drone as it flew across the landscape. Lo and behold– ”
“You found something?”
“Indeed, in one of the most impassable areas of New Mexico, thirty miles due west of your shrine. How’s that for a coincidence?”
“Anybody know about this?”
“Well, I hired this local Hispanic woman from Rio Chama to help me navigate through the property rights in the area. It’s a hodgepodge of private, Indian, and national forest lands. By the way it’s same woman who made the kickass chili. She owns the Rio Chama Café. Name’s Rosa Cisneros”
“Get out of town,” Ramsey said laughing. “I met her a few days ago when I went down to Rio Chama. Hey, one question. Did you ever contact your lucky guy?”
“The card was bogus. None of the numbers connected to anyone.”
“And you didn’t think it was odd he hands you a bag of diamonds, says he can trust you and you’ll both be rich, but gives you a bogus card?”
“Hey for one thing it’s northern New Mexico we’re talking about. You can’t throw a rock without hitting something strange. And in my defense, I was hammered.”
Pete’s binges were legendary and Ramsey could almost accept his excuse, but something nagged at the back of his mind. “What was his name?”
Pete pulled the card from his wallet and handed it to Ramsey. The name read “Reginald Hermes—special programmer.” He looked on the other side. It was blank. On a hunch he held it up to the light and he could see a watermark in the lower left hand corner. It was an image of a coyote. He smiled to himself. “What did he look like?”
“I don’t know. He was tall and thin, I guess, about your height. . . . short blond hair. He looked like a Viking. I mean all he needed was the helmet with the horns and a war axe. He had these crazy kind of eyes. They were blue like a Norwegian fjord, and he never really looked at me when he was speaking. He seemed to stare at me from the side, as though he was seeing something other than just me, like my aura or something. At one point he even shouted at me, ‘Quit the drinking or you won’t live to see thirty!’ It was then that Ramsey recalled Pete hadn’t had any of the margaritas, nor had he touched his beer all night. Occasionally he looked at it or moved it around the bar.
Pete laughed. “I believed him.”
February 2016
Pretoria, South Africa
Rain slashed the windows of the DeVere chairman’s private penthouse suite. Low clouds obscured the Magaliesberg Mountains. Pieter Haas half listened to the long discussion about the search for a productive diamond pipe located in northern New Mexico. The man delivering the report had briefed DeVere’s CEO days earlier. Haas already knew the decision the Mining Group would make—continue buying as much property in the area as they c
ould. But he was interested in much more than the diamonds.
Haas’s narrow and ascetic face belied his many passions and multifaceted worldview. In business he believed capitalism was the only vehicle for unleashing the creative power of the individual. Yet he practiced gaining every competitive advantage, legal or illegal he could find, tilting the playing field to his company’s advantage. Diamonds were a ruthless business and Hass was well prepared mentally and physically to deal with any adversity. He was accustomed to getting what he wanted and as long as he made enough money for DeVere he could do what he pleased.
The long report was finally ending. From the looks on the Board member’s faces, the group was ready to call it quits. The boring geologic details of diamond hunting weren’t the reasons these Board members sat through these meetings. At the end of the day, all they needed to know the research money was well spent and their annual bonuses would continue to grow.
George Rhodes, the man in charge of the company’s North American interests, leaned back in his chair. He was a roughneck who’d started as a digger in South Africa’s Premier Mine and worked his way up to become a manager and then a director. Rumor had it he could smell diamonds like a pig hunts truffles. Five years ago Haas put him in charge of North America and never regretted it. “The initial kimberlite chunks found by amateur rock hounds were richer in diamonds than any found South Africa,” Rhodes told the others. “The source of the kimberlite could be bigger than all of Saskatchewan and Michigan put together.”
The rest of the Board nodded approval.
“When will you know?” asked Haas.
“By July at the latest. Our researcher over there, Pete Miami, believes he’s getting close. Hell, he keeps expanding the search area and I’d wouldn’t be surprised if Miami has the entire Northeast region of New Mexico geo-magnetically mapped by then.”
“What’s happening on the land front?”
“We’re at the point in the process where we have enough private land that we should be able to make a trade with the forest service if the diamond pipes turn up on federal land.” Rhodes laughed. “We’ve become the largest private landowners New Mexico.”
Haas smiled, pleased with the initiative Rhodes had taken. But he was also pleased that under the cover of diamond hunting, they had found an even bigger treasure no one on the Board knew of. And they won’t know it until we have it secured.
Haas said, “Excellent. Is there anything else?”
Rhodes shook his head.
“Gentlemen, to success,” Haas said. He bowed his head in prayer and the others followed suit. It was a custom DeVere’s founder had initiated a century ago.
“Until next month, everyone,” Haas said after half a minute.
The men filed out.
Greta Van Horn waited outside. When the others had cleared the room, she came in. She carefully closed the door.
For the thousandth time, Haas rued the company rule that didn’t allow women on the Board of Directors. Greta could run circles around the others. “What do you have to report?”
“I have Lindstrom waiting outside, and he has something you’ll want to see. It has to do with this parcel of land at the center of that region of strange readings I showed you last fall. I looked into it like you asked.” She handed him a map of northern New Mexico with the town of Rio Chama circled in red and smaller circle just north of the town also circled. “In the process of acquiring land we were urged by our local real estate man Raphael Núnez to buy the property called the Rio Chama Milagro Shrine. For the last decade it’s been touted as the greatest healing shrine in the world, better than Lourdes in France. We did as Núnez asked and at his request gave it a cash infusion and put him on the board to oversee our investment.”
Haas nodded his approval “Smart man, drive up the local real estate values.”
Greta continued, “Here’s the interesting part. A man named Hiram Beecher associated with the shrine hired a crew from the popular cable television show Psychic or Psycho to investigate the shrine’s paranormal healing powers, supposedly located in a 200-year-old cottonwood tree. The TV crew and the producer spent four days, interviewed dozens of pilgrims and shot about a hundred hours of specially processed video. The show was supposed to be broadcast but never saw the light of day.”
Haas frowned. “Not unusual for a production company to pull the plug on a project if they didn’t find anything interesting for its viewers.”
“That’s just it. They did find something. I urged our man Núnez to do a little digging. It cost him some money but he was able to pry loose from the producer what was really going on. It seems the healing power of the shrine was not in the cottonwood tree but in the shrine’s groundskeeper, a man named Adam Gwillt.”
Greta touched her iPad. She handed it to him. On it was a screen grab from a video captured during the shoot
Haas’s heart seemed to stop. With his fingers he enlarged the center of the picture. It was electronically processed in a way he didn’t recognize and the man’s features were strangely blurred, but the otherworldly emanations surrounding the figure were unmistakable. His mind reeled. “I want to meet this groundskeeper immediately.”
“That would be difficult, sir.”
“Why?”
“Apparently, he’s disappeared.”
“I need to find him as quickly as possible.”
“I anticipated as much. That’s why Lindstrom is waiting. He has something that might be of interest to you.
Dr. Paul Lindstrom fidgeted with his hands. Pieter Haas spoke in low tones with Greta Van Horn, ignoring the Danish geologist. Above a long side table was an oil portrait of the Voortrekker leader Andries Pretorius, for whom Pretoria was named. He held a musket in one hand and a Zulu knobkierie in the other. A team of oxen pulling a covered wagon followed him. The artist had captured Pretorius’s self confident smile as he looked out upon the Transvaal, the area the Boers would conquer and hold for a half century until the second Boer War ended in 1902. Rumor said the current DeVere Group’s chairman was a descendant and just as much a visionary as the Transvaal’s conqueror.
Haas looked up from the file Lindstrom had given him. His pale blue eyes cut through the geologist with the same icy stare of Pretorius. “These readings show us what exactly?”
Lindstrom hesitated before answering. “For want of a better term, they show a baffling energy anomaly associated with the Milagro Shrine.”
“So?”
“It’s been there at least since Doctor Miami’s drones started collecting geo-physical data. And now it’s gone.”
“Where is it?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps we can get Dr. Miami to initiate a search. Sir, if you want to track the anomaly or even possibly pinpoint its location, you need to have feet on the ground.”
Haas smiled. “You mean boots on the ground.”
“Yes, sir. You need someone who could work real time with Doctor Miami. What he’s doing is way above my pay grade.”
“Thank you Doctor Lindstrom, that will be all.”
Haas waited until the geologist left. He turned to Greta Van Horn. “Find out everything about this Beecher fellow. I’m sure he didn’t undertake the documentary on the Milagro Shrine by himself. There has to be an organization behind what he did. It could be they even have the caretaker. Find them and him. It’s your number one priority. And you’d better call Goren. Have him get the team together.”
Greta shivered. The ex-paratrooper was no one to cross. “Anything else, sir?”
“Tell him to meet us in Cape Town. Have him prepare for New Mexico, the terrain and the climate. Let’s see if we can’t find the elusive caretaker.”
When he was alone once more, Haas went to the window. A sudden squall battered the glass, but he didn’t flinch, loving the wild, hooting wind that descended on Pretoria out of the Magaliesberg Mountains. At that moment the clouds parted revealing a headland that looked remarkably like a cross. He shuddered inwardly. The electronical
ly processed image of Adam Gwillt brought up something out of his past so long buried he thought it dead.
It was like an image from another time, before he had begun his meteoric rise in the diamond business to become head of DeVere. “They have to find him,” Haas said aloud. “They will find him.”
March 15, 2016
Indianapolis, Indiana
Haas strolled alone on Indianapolis’s New Jersey Street toward the Old National Centre. Goren and his paratroopers remained in the van with Greta. They wouldn’t be needed for this part of the job. It had been relatively easy for Greta Van Horn to find the information he’d wanted about Hiram Beecher. The trail led here.
The hundred-year old building was easy to find. A tall minaret at the front guided him perfectly. It was now an entertainment center and its 2,500-seat performing arts theater was where the Reverend Billy Paul televised his daily show for the faithful. He stopped and checked his watch. The taping of the show should be ending now.
The building was also oddly apropos for his meeting. Greta’s research indicated it was originally known as the Murat Temple and had been built by the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine—Freemasons.
Once more the old memories surfaced.
As a kid Haas had been raised in the bush from the lush veldt of South Africa to the wild plains of Ethiopia by his wildlife photographer parents. Much of the time his only companion had been his younger sister Madeline.
Another shiver rippled through him. It’s been a long time since I thought of Madeline almost dying . . . and now twice in less than six months.
It had happened along the Kenya-Somali border in the Danakil Desert. His little sister had contracted malaria. Trapped by tribal conflicts, his parents could only look on in horror as she began to slip away. Then out of nowhere there appeared the Samburu shaman. He was as tall as a Zulu warrior, dressed in a leopard skin his face and neck and chest painted with red ochre earth. He had picked up Madeline’s limp body, and while Haas’s parents stood frozen in place, walked off towards an elephant watering hole. When he came back in what seemed to young Haas to be just minutes, the shaman was walking hand-in-hand with his sister. While she ran to her parents, the shaman had turned to Haas and said, “There will come a time when you will see me again and when you do you must act.”
The Adam Enigma Page 13
