The Sixth Station (20 page)

•
On March 22, psychic Benjamin Torre took an ad in the Los Angeles Times proclaiming, “The Christ is now here.”

•
Rev. Pat Robertson took to the airways to declare on his
700 Club
TV show, “I guarantee you by the end of 1982 there is going to be a judgment on the world.”

My first thought was: freaky, rapture-obsessed loonies. My second thought was even crazier: These freaky, rapture-obsessed loonies were all only off by a few decades!

I started thinking, and couldn’t stop, and turned on the screen on the pop-out computer terminal attached to the seat. No log-in was required for searching, and I keyed in “disasters of the new millennium.”

Christ!—no pun intended. It reads like the end of the world, for real!

There are too many to cite here, but it was the new millennium that had kick-started the chain of natural and unnatural disasters, right off the bat with devastating floods in 2000 in Southeastern Africa, which killed nearly 1,000 people. This was followed in 2001 by the World Trade Center attack, which in turn triggered the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, followed by constant war and unrest around the world—particularly in the Mideast—which have killed millions.

On Boxing Day 2004, there was the giant tsunami along the coasts of landmasses bordering the Indian Ocean, killing something like 230,000 people in I-don’t-know-how-many countries and destroying thousands of acres of land.

In 2005 there was Hurricane Katrina, which killed nearly 2,000, displaced millions, and ruined forever thousands of acres of land in the South.

In 2010–2011, the devastating floods in Australia, the 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and subsequent nuclear plant disaster in Japan …

As the info was flowing, it all started blurring together in my tired brain: earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, plagues, pestilence, floods, forest and city fires, which had killed millions. No country was immune.

In fact, world-changing disasters had become so common that we had begun, I realized, to lose our collective memory about what “normal” was supposed to be.

Tabloids hardly even put giant disasters on the front pages anymore, unless they killed at least 500.

Maybe we do need a Second Coming. Shut up; you sound like a moron!

That was the last thought I had before I nearly jumped out of my seat when the cabin lights came on and the flight attendants started passing out hot towels, as dawn was beginning to break.

18

Yes, for the first time in recent memory I had actually fallen dead asleep on an overseas flight. My mouth was hanging open, and I could feel drool down the side of my chin. The Best Rate Motel folder was on the seat next to me, but all the news clippings were scattered under the footrest on the floor.

I felt like those people that you pray are never seated next to you on a flight, let alone an overnighter. I opened the shade and could see that the sun was starting to rise and the sky was turning orange.

The captain informed us that it was currently 6:00
A.M.
local time and that it was a glorious day in Paris. That announcement would have gladdened my heart and excited my senses at any other time in my life. Now, it just gave me anxiety.

I made my way to the lavatory and used everything in the bag of goodies they still offered in the expensive seats: mini sizes of toothpaste, hand sanitizer, a tiny oxygen spray, and a comb that no one who wasn’t sporting a St. Anthony haircut could possibly get through their hair.

We landed on time, and as I figured, I had to shuttle it to another terminal, but thank God Turkey had just entered the EU finally, and I didn’t have to go through French customs, just passport control, which was a breeze.

I actually made the next flight, although it required begging my way through security so that I arrived just as they were closing down the gate and taking the last passengers aboard. I was able to board quickly after a brief check of my passport and e-ticket by the gate agents.

Same business-class deal for the three-and-a-half-hour flight—more coffee and a basket of croissants, which I planned not to eat, but did.

No one will ever recognize me after these last two days: I must have gained forty pounds!

The hours spent flying gave me a false sense of security—as though I were just that same old reporter being sent somewhere terrific to cover something horrific. But no news organization had my back any longer. In fact, no one had my back any longer.

Not true. Dona and Donald …

I read and then re-read all the news clippings in the envelope. Two were follow-ups on the missing child, Theo Bienheureux.

One detailed the police investigation, in which an elderly neighbor who’d been walking her two Yorkies at dawn on the Saturday in question swore that she saw a sleepy child with a blanket around her being taken into a car, along with a man, a woman, and a priest!

She said the priest even tipped his fedora hat to her. It looked a little odd, but since the chauffeur carried and then loaded several suitcases into the car, she assumed it was just another nouveau riche family off to meet their private plane to take them somewhere “fabulously sacred,” the woman acidly stated. Her disgusted sniff practically jumped off the page.

The dawn episode, I knew, was a good cover, but it seemed like really bad news for the child.

Someone—and it sounded like the trio that Wright-Lewis had described to me—had abducted the girl from her apartment. But what about her damned parents?

The next clip was supposed to have explained it all:

People Magazine

April 27, 1981

Exclusive

“Missing” Theo Isn’t Missing After All!

By Harry Francescani

Little Theotokos Bienheureux, who had been reported missing by her teacher at the prestigious Friends Seminary school in NYC, has been found alive and well, and as it turns out, was not missing at all!

The twelve-year-old, who hasn’t been seen since she disappeared from school in March, had simply moved to a remote region of the Amazon with her parents, Leah and William Bienheureux, who are missionaries with the Catari Relief Services Worldwide.

According to Leah, thirty-five, in a letter to
People
magazine, which was forwarded to our offices from the CRSW Brazilian office:

“We wish to thank all our New York friends and neighbors for their concern about the whereabouts of our beloved daughter, Theo, who is safe and sound with us in our new missionary post.

“Our organization, you see, was the first to be informed by the Brazilian government last month that two lost tribes consisting of just twenty and twelve people, respectively, had been discovered deep in the Amazon rain forest by two engineers working on a dam project in the area.

“The Brazilian relief organization Indigenous Peoples Relief and Rescue contacted our group, the CRSW, who then negotiated with the Brazilian government to secure for these indigenous peoples a protected area consisting of twenty square miles, deep within the Amazon.

“Our hope is that they can form a new clan together and begin to rebuild their families.

“As you can see from the attached photos, Theotokos is thriving in our new jungle home. Although she is only twelve, she is the official ‘teacher’ of the group and is working with the five children who are clan members.

“We have much work to do and we will remain here as long as needed. When Theo comes of college age, she can choose to attend a university or remain here doing what we think of as ‘God’s work.’”

The rest of the article was an apology from the mother, who said both she and her husband were distressed that they had caused concern, but because they were (supposedly) not American-born, they therefore didn’t understand our customs.

Like pulling a kid out of school without formal paperwork or even an explanation? Right. They knew how to enroll her in school, but they didn’t know how to terminate that enrollment.

The story was accompanied by grainy photos of the family in their new home, which looked like a bunch of thatched-roof, open-sided huts amidst giant vegetation. The child in the pictures looked like Theo Bienheureux, but black-and-white photos of a twelve-year-old with her hair all frizzy from the Amazon air and wearing native dress could make any differences between the real deal and an imposter hard to decipher. And since the story had been reduced to fit the 8½ × 11-inch fax paper, the photos were very small.

At any rate, other pictures showed Theo “teaching” in an open hut while five little kids sat on a long bench alongside an indigenous bare-breasted woman who was nursing an infant. Across the photo in a young girl’s foolishly fancy script was scrawled in what looked like crayon, “I love it here!”

And finally, I pulled out the last clipping, which, if possible, was the strangest of the lot. It was a full-page story with photos from my own newspaper.

Special to
The New York Standard

By Joe Michael Dogherty

October 3, 1979

The Sermon on the Mound

Yesterday Pope John Paul II greeted the masses at Yankee Stadium and succeeded in doing what the Bombers have failed to do this year: come up number one!

To a packed house, the pope delivered a stirring message of hope, peace, and tolerance.…

The rest of the long-winded article was a gushing report about a New York event assigned to a reporter who was clearly a Catholic overwhelmed by seeing His Holiness in person.

But, what the hell? What did this have to do with anything I’d asked Dona to find for me?

I read the whole thing and found nothing of interest. Then I studied the photos, of which there were two. The faxed copy had again been reduced to fit 8½ × 11-inch paper, so again, the pictures were very tough to see.

I could barely even make out the caption, but then I saw something that would have made my hair stand up on end if it weren’t already doing so on its own.

Standing next to the pope, as he touched the crowds on a receiving line, was an ordinary priest. Odd, because every other cleric around the pontiff was a cardinal. The caption listed two cardinals—one from Boston and one from India, and then, “Father Paulo Jacobi, Istanbul, Turkey.” Could it be one and the same? I had assumed the name was spelled with a
y
but that had been just a guess.

This Father Jacobi looked to be in his forties, very thin. Most odd was his body language. While the cardinals and everyone around Pope John Paul II in the photos displayed submissive, adoring postures while gazing in awe at the pope, this Jacobi guy—a mere priest—stood next to him as an equal. Or a close friend.

Blessed is she who comes in the name of the news. Dona—you are one helluva reporter!

I had to laugh thinking of how she wrangled this. God knows what librarian she’d suckered into going into the basement at midnight to dig up and search through all those old files.

Just then, the plane touched down with a tough thump, bringing me back to my senses, and within seconds all the rushing passengers were hopping out of their seats before we were supposed to and grabbing their bags from the overhead compartments. Since I wasn’t sure where the hell I was supposed to go other than to try to get through immigration and, if I managed that feat, to head to the Europacar counter, I took my sweet time.

Customs was fairly easy—especially since
again
there was a problem that took the attention away from me. I had nothing to declare, and no one asked to look in my carry-ons, which saved me not just from myself but also from the possibility that I would again start in with the Pan Band insanity that had beset me earlier.

I was starting to think that God or someone even more powerful, someone who could play with immigration, which was even beyond God’s control in this day and age of paranoia, was watching out for me. Yes, I said “God.”

First thing I did in the airport was to go to a currency exchange—or in plain English, “money changer”—to convert my dollars into euros. The place charged so much interest it probably qualified as a sin. I kept one hundred dollars in American and converted the rest to euros at the terrible rate of exchange. No wonder Jesus wanted to beat the crap out of their predecessors at the temple.

The next thing I did was to look for the Europacar counter. I hurried along the corridors filled with high-end shops bustling with tourists fat with cash, and stopped at an Internet kiosk, sat down, and logged in to find I had three messages.

Two were from my new Internet best friend, “HotSexyViagraMale,” and one was from [email protected].

Again in Italian. What was with Dona and/or Donald anyway? Whichever one it was sure was digging the cloak and dagger, but meantime, I was in no mood for idiotic games. This was anything
but
a game.

It said: “
Informazione importante dentro l’automobile manuale
.” My Italian wasn’t that good. What a pain in the ass this was. The best I could come up with at that hour was: “Information on how to drive a manual car is”—something or other.

Like I didn’t know how to drive stick? Had to be Dona. Donald knew this about me. I had driven everything ever invented.

Europacar had my reservation, but I knew there’d be a hitch—or worse—when I handed them my license, which was under the name “Russo,” even though my passport was under “Zaluckyj.”

“I’m divorced,” I told the clerk, who happened to be dressed in a full burqa with
EUROPACAR
emblazoned on the head scarf and on the front of her “uniform,” while the other women at the counter were dressed in a modern miniskirted uniform.
My luck.