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Authors: Craig Smith

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That was the genesis of Richland's long journey back to faith. He met the woman he would eventually marry a year later in Bible class and soon after that transferred to a Christian college. At seminary he honed his oratory skills and fashioned a less radical dogma. When he returned to the ministry there were no outraged husbands, not even the hint of indiscretion. In fact Richland's return to the pulpit appeared to be a genuine conversion.

His ministry was even marked by a relative degree of sophistication, according to people who knew about such things. He was no longer healing the lame, curing cancer, and giving sight to the blind on a nightly basis. He built a broad base of support among the middle class and formed critical alliances with people who provided a sound financial underpinning to the ministry.

The most important early friendship turned out to be Nicole North's father. Nicholas North helped Richland exploit cable TV in the 1970s, letting him compete with the likes of Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, Pat Robertson, and Jerry Falwell.

Richland was not the biggest name in televangelism in the early days, but after Swaggart stumbled badly with a New Orleans prostitute and Jimmy Bakker went to prison, Richland took market share. While a number of preachers including Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell began to politicize the evangelical movement, J. W. Richland steadfastly refused to drift from his message. His strategy began to pay off by the early 1990s, the decade his face first made the cover of
Time.
Richland had become a household name. His refusal to deal in politics ended with the new millennium. Some thought because he had previously been reluctant to join the fray his support made the difference. He was a man, certainly, with a favour owed him.

Recent news articles on Richland dealt with his illness and dramatic refusal to be treated. According to some of the more reputable reviewers of his new book, Richland had returned to the message of his earliest ministry, proclaiming in effect that doctors weren't needed if one had faith. There was concern about the effects of such simplistic dogma, but on the whole the media treated Richland with surprising kindness, the result no doubt of the preacher's imminent demise.

When he turned to Jonas Starr, Nicole North's uncle, Malloy found a different kind of man. The founder of the NorthStarr Institute had spent his life promoting archaeological digs that, according to the institute's mission statement, 'verified Biblical history'. Interestingly enough, a long time member of the board of directors for the NorthStarr Institute was none other than J. W. Richland. Jonas Starr had been involved in Richland's comeback.

In fact it was Starr's influence with Nick North that got Richland's ministry on cable TV in the first place. Until his death Nicholas North had been an enthusiastic supporter of both men and the causes they represented. And Nicole North's father had the money to pursue any enthusiasm he fancied. Nick North came from old Texas money, meaning cattle and oil. By the mid-1980s, he had diversified into several industries and was rubbing shoulders with the likes of the Hunt brothers and Ross Perot. Jonas Starr, on the other hand, had been born poor. Possessing an amazing if undisciplined intellect and a faith in God that was so intense he even impressed his fellow Texans, Starr realized early in his life that he wanted to serve God. Having neither the voice nor looks for the pulpit, Starr discovered his true calling at the University of Texas: archaeology.

From the age of twenty onwards, Jonas Starr travelled the Middle East in search of proof that everything in the Bible was literally true. Nick North's sister, then a graduate student in archaeology at the University of Texas in Austin, was on one of Starr's earliest expeditions. Jonas Starr was clever enough to court her.

The marriage produced a great deal of success, with every significant discovery wildly publicized. Jonas Starr's greatest moment came in the mid-1980s, when he uncovered a six-thousand-year-old fishing boat in the mountains of eastern Turkey. Calling it Noah's Ark, Starr and his wife built a museum in Fort Worth to house their treasure.

Those members of the media sympathetic to the cause stressed the fact that Starr's boat was found where no body of water was known to exist, proof, it seemed, that a flood had carried it there. Radiocarbon dating supported the thesis as well, placing it almost exactly in the time of the biblical Noah. J. W. Richland, who apparently spent a great deal of television time reporting on the 'amazing discovery of Dr Jonas Starr', announced to his viewers that science had finally confirmed what the faithful had always known: the Bible was true not only in matters of the spirit but in matters of history and evolution as well!

Naturally the secular world struck back. Jonas Starr had found the hull of a boat in a region that had once been part of the sea. Moreover, the discovery of a boat in no way made it Noah's mythical craft. As one humanist put it, the only thing less trustworthy than the Bible's version of history was Jonas Starr's. Undaunted by his critics, Starr continued his life work, careful to stay close to the money of his brother-in-law and the publicity it could engender.

Following the death of his wife Jonas Starr's career seemed to stall. In the mid-1990s, at an exploratory dig not far from the ancient site of Antioch, Starr unearthed a Roman era drinking cup that he claimed was the legendary Holy Chalice, the cup Jesus had passed among his disciples on the night of his arrest. The media's initial response to the discovery was both credulous and excited. All that changed after one of Starr's own team accused him of buying the cup from Bedouin looters.

For a time Starr's friends stood by him, J. W. Richland in the forefront. Richland stressed the importance of the cumulative work of Jonas Starr. He said the people who attacked Jonas Starr were motivated by the fear that the Bible was ultimately right. Richland and others pilloried the graduate student who reported Starr's fraud, but the accusation did not go away. In fact other stories began leaking out. These suggested
that in his desperate attempt to match the glorious finds of his youth Starr was always on the lookout for black-market treasures he would claim to have found himself.

After the Holy Chalice debacle, which even his friends later admitted harmed Starr's reputation, there were increasing accusations of fraud and a few notorious failures, the most prominent being a search in eastern Ethiopia for the lost treasure of Solomon. Heartily promoted before the expedition, the failure to find anything besides starving Ethiopians was advertised widely by a media that no longer took Jonas Starr seriously. In the late 1990s, after a series of disputes with the Israeli government, the Antiquities Authority of Israel refused to allow Starr permits to dig. There was even talk of keeping him out of the country altogether.

Whether by coincidence or as a result of the ban, the following year Jonas Starr resigned the directorship of his institute in favour of his niece, Nick North's daughter, Nicole. When Dr Nicole North, then twenty- seven, took control of the institute, people who bothered to comment suggested that the institute would inevitably fold. What they failed to appreciate was the unlimited funding North could make available to her institute.

Just how important that was became clear the following year when Nick North passed away. His will provided the institute with a seventy-five million dollar
endowment. Moreover, as sole heir to her father's vast
fortune, Nicole got the rest, a tidy seven hundred million in cash and liquid assets, as well as control of her father's business interests, worth roughly three billion dollars. Real estate and inventory valued at close to a billion dollars more put the inheritance at around five billion dollars: real money, as they say in Texas. That is assuming one could trust the accountants.

The last anyone had heard of Jonas Starr was the publication of his autobiography. He wrote only briefly about the Holy Chalice of Antioch, denying the charge of fraud, yet offering nothing beyond his good name as evidence of its legitimacy. Probably the only matters of interest came from Starr's recounting his earliest adventures. While these occasionally diminished the importance of his wife's participation, at least one sympathetic reviewer had referred to the couple as Mr and Mrs Indiana Jones.

Archaeological scholars who bothered to comment on the book asserted that there was nothing of value in the lifework of Jonas Starr. One academic journal called his autobiography a vanity publication. Another quoted a renowned French antiquarian who was even less kind. He called Jonas Starr 'a fraud, a liar, and a thief.'

At that point in his research Malloy was forced to shut down his computer. His plane would be landing in Zürich shortly.

Zürich
, Switzerland

October 7, 2006.

Malloy held up a Swiss passport as he walked past the immigrations officer. He collected a single bag at the luggage carousel, passed through customs without
incident, and ten minutes later boarded a train for Zürich's main station.

At the Gottard Hotel on the Bahnhofstrasse he spoke Swiss German and registered under one of the four names he had used regularly over the years, part of the agency-issued identities that stayed with an operative even after retirement, the assumption being old warhorses still had their uses. It was not usual procedure for an operative to try to pass as a native. Accents being what they are, it was probably the easiest method of drawing attention to one's cover, but Malloy felt comfortable with his Swiss German.

As opposed to High German, Swiss German is a language few foreigners bother to learn and almost none master. Having no written form, it can really only be acquired if one has an extraordinary talent for language or has grown up in Switzerland. Malloy boasted both talent and experience, having learned it in the streets of Zürich during the seven years his father worked at the American Consulate, then stationed in Zürich. Both a diplomat with the Consulate and intelligence officer for Langley, his father had spoken fluent High German, the literary language of the Swiss. His mother's second language was French, which she loved as some people love chocolate. Swiss German, sometimes called Farmer German, was his alone. Malloy's friendships had required it, and at seven one adjusts to necessity no matter its face.

It was this peculiar skill, the ability to speak as a native, that Malloy firmly believed had inspired Jane Harrison to offer him an assignment in Zürich at the beginning of his career. For the Swiss, the ability to
speak Swiss German is tantamount to uttering a password or offering a secret handshake. Getting access to the private accounts of a Swiss bank had required all of that.

Once in his room Malloy made a cursory examination for cameras and listening devices. Satisfied the room was clean he settled down for a long nap. He woke up just as the sun was setting. Still suffering from a night without sleep, he ordered a pot of coffee sent up and took a couple of hours to run through the remainder of the material Gil Fine had sent him. This mostly dealt with Nicole North and North Industries and turned out to be the least useful of the three folders. Even though Dr North was neither a public figure like J. W. Richland nor a publicity hound like her uncle Jonas Starr, Homeland had culled material from several hundred articles about her.

Of course as a major shareholder in most of the media conglomerates producing the information, Nicole North came off unscathed. In fact Malloy could find almost nothing negative about the woman. She was the belle of Dallas society, a major source of charitable donations, a respected scholar, the dynamic director of NorthStarr Biblical Institute, the driving force for any number of church related issues, and of course the chairperson of the board of a Fortune 500 company. If her managerial skills were a matter of unrivalled excellence, the intimate looks into her life were even more celebratory and shallow. Her house was one of the treasures of Dallas. Her munificence was sometimes for the public good, sometimes just to help a stranger in need. All of it carefully nurtured PR. And not a breath of scandal.

North's real passion appeared to be the NorthStarr Biblical Institute. Since taking nominal control of the institute, she had abandoned her uncle's passion for collecting and had begun retooling it so that many presently considered NorthStarr the premier evangelical think-tank in the country. It went without saying that a fairly substantial publishing concern had developed as a result of the Institute's new direction. The museum was still open, of course, but except for the occasional travelling exhibition nothing had changed since Jonas Starr had passed the directorship to his niece. There was still the hull of an old boat dominating the main floor and a brass cup carefully stored in a transparent high-tech security case. There were tools and scrolls and maps and video clips, all of it like a real museum. Just no crowds.

Malloy had hoped somewhere in the mass of files to get something about Nicole North's private life, especially her relationship with J. W. Richland, but that secret was too carefully guarded. While it was clear Dr North always managed to have an escort where an escort was appropriate, there was no speculation about her sexuality. She had been married briefly nearly a decade ago but the nuptials had been overshadowed by the groom's terminal cancer. He died a few months later. So far as Malloy could tell there had been no one since. From the context of various articles it was clear J. W. Richland was a family friend, but that was the extent of it. No one had linked the two romantically. Of course, they were not the kind of celebrities who inspired gossip.

BOOK: The Painted Messiah
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