Blown for Good Behind the Iron Curtain of Scientology (46 page)

After a few days, I decide to turn my Nextel phone back on so I can delete the Int Base phone numbers and then sell it on eBay. No sooner than I turn it on, Claire calls. I answer.

“Marc! Are you there?” she asks.

“Yeah, I am here.” I answer. “I am sure that Security or someone from RTC is listening so I am not going to say anything to give away my location.”

“Where are you?” she cries.

“Don’t worry about that. I am fine. Why are you calling me? You know I am never coming back, right?” I say coldly.

“I want you to come back.” she says. “COB wants you to come back! He said that if you came back that you would not be in trouble. You did not do anything wrong. It was the guys that took you off post that screwed up. All the guys involved are in big trouble for pissing you off and letting you leave. COB talked to Jenny Devocht and told her that she was to get you back by any means necessary. The whole thing was a giant screw up. He could not believe that you had sold those projectors and that they were throwing them away and somehow you were selling them for tons of money. He said you are going to get all the people you need, the money you need, everything. He has ordered that the Systems department be manned up right away and that anything you need, you get. ”

“Claire, you dream,” I start in. “That is exactly why I am not coming back. If Dave Miscavige has ordered all that, it is a sure sign that it will
never
get done. That in fact guarantees it won’t ever get done. Go ahead, think about all the hundreds and hundreds of things he has ordered to get done. That is why nothing ever gets done. Tomorrow he will order another area manned up with people and that will cross order Systems getting manned up! It is the same story. Dave orders it, it does not get done, people get sent to the Rehabilitation Project Force for not doing it and now we have even less people around to get all of Dave’s orders done. You know I cannot believe that I ever stayed there that long. After a few days of sleeping and proper food, I feel like I have come out of a trance. You would have to experience it to understand what I am talking about. I have literally woken up! Everything is so clear to me now. I was unable to leave that place for fifteen years and the only thing holding me there was that I was told that if I left, all these bad things would happen to me, I would not be able to get a job, I would be a bum, I would end up on the street, I would get mugged, you name it. Well I left. And what happened, I have been sleeping and eating. I am working and making more in one hour than I was making in a week. Yeah it is really terrible on the outside!”

“Well, what about us?” Claire is crying now. “You have to come back. Everyone is saying that Systems will be manned up in the next week. They already have people lined up to go in there and it is really going to happen this time!”

“You know I love you more than anything else, but that is part of the trap.” As the words are coming out of my mouth I am realizing more and more how this has kept me there all these years. “If you and I had never met, I would have left years ago. I only stayed because I loved you and would never do anything to hurt you and just wanted us to be together forever and be happy. We were never together and when we were, it was for minutes at a time. I could not take it any longer. I was not there for me and I was not happy in any way whatsoever. You were not happy either. You will see, Systems is NOT going to be manned up. Nothing that Dave says is going to get done, and I won’t be gotten back. If they were going to get me back, they would have done so already. I have been watching this TV show, they say if you don’t find the people in the first 48 hours, it ain’t going to happen. 48 Hours. Don’t the security guys at the base have that same rule? If they don’t recover the person in the first two days after they blow, they don’t come back. Now I know why. It takes a few days for the spell of that place to wear off. After two proper nights of sleep and two days of proper nourishing food, that’s it, they cannot lie to you anymore.” Now I start to get emotional.

“I don’t know what I am gonna do. I want you to come back. I love you so much,” Claire cries.

“Well, I will never come back to that prison. Ever. Never. Never Ever. Never. Never. Not gonna happen! I am just not going to do it. I have tasted real freedom and once you taste that, you can never go back to that place and be a prisoner again. No matter what. I am sorry. Do not call this number again. I am selling the phone so you will not be able to reach me anyway. I have to do this, Claire. For both of us. I am sorry. Like I said. I will love you always and forever. You know that. Bye.” I hang up.

I know if I do not hang up that the crying will just get worse and worse. I am already outside in the snow talking on the phone and crying my eyes out. I have to take a few minutes before I can go back inside. I have just hung up on the best thing that ever happened to me in the worst place I had ever been. The contrasts between the two are enormous, but neither cancelled the other out. I have been married to Claire for thirteen years. That is a long time to know someone and be in love. As much emotional torture as I endured while at the Int Base, Claire almost made it tolerable. Almost was not enough anymore. As much as I love Claire, we could never have the family we wanted or be truly happy in that hellhole. I really believe that. I am not sure how I will ever love another after Claire, but no matter what, I know that I will have to suck it up and stick it out.

I cry myself to sleep that night thinking about all the times Claire and I had together.

I have been working and doing my thing for a few weeks now. I have sold off my Nextel phone and have no connection with the Int Base. They do not know where I am and they have no way to contact me. My sister has stopped calling my dad and as far as I can tell, they have given up on finding me. Good. I am just starting to get over the whole thing and becoming accustomed to a normal life on the outside.

I am getting to know my way around town and am getting new computer clients on a regular basis. I even have some businesses that are going to have me come out once a month and service all the computers they have at their facilities.

Granted, I do not have much to cover in terms of food and rent since I am depending on my dad for that, but I know that if I keep going, I will be able to live on my own with no problem whatsoever.

One day I get an email from an address I do not recognize. It is Claire’s sister, Becky! The message reads:

“I have a new phone number. Call me at 6:00
a.m.
tomorrow! I love you! Claire”

Somehow Claire has managed to remember my old hotmail address that I had. I had rarely used it at the base as that was strictly prohibited, but somehow she remembered it and has managed to get her sister to send me that message! If she is now going below the radar to contact me, I know that there is a chance that she is not being listened in on or directed by RTC or Security to do so.

I cannot sleep that night. I call at 6:00
 a.m.
LA time. I block my number from showing in case it is a trap from RTC or Security Gold. She answers.

“Marc?”
Claire says.

“Yeah?” I ask.

“I want to come with you!”

“What? How are you going to do that? You know that if you come out here, they are going to declare you an SP and you will never be able to see your family again.” I tell her this while my mind is racing, imagining what could happen if she did get out of there.

“I know that, but maybe that does not have to happen,” she says. “After I last spoke to you, they switched out my phone so you would not have the number.

The phone has been sitting in the main booth in case you call it. Did you call it?” she asks.

“No, I told you I got rid of my other phone and deleted all the numbers in it.” If they tried calling me on my old phone, they probably got some 12-year-old kid in Indiana who got the phone for his birthday from his dad! I sold it to some guy on Ebay that was looking for a gift for his kid.” I tell her, laughing at the thought of someone from RTC talking to some kid about where I was and who he got the phone from.

I am pretty sure that they are not going to let someone who worked in RTC for almost a decade under Dave Miscavige walk out of there and not make a fuss about it. I know that springing her out of there will be tricky as hell.

“Well,” Claire continues, “I am coming. I have decided that I am not going to be able to stay here without you.” Her voice seems steady and she is not crying.

Maybe she really is serious. This could be it. Maybe I will get Claire out and then we really can be happy and start our lives over again.

“How many people are in Systems now, huh?” I ask, already knowing the answer.

“Okay, you were right. No one has been put in the systems area since you left. It has gotten even worse here over the past few weeks. I have not been home once since you left three weeks ago. All of CMO INT is restricted to the base and has to sleep under their desks. It has been crazy. I am leaving and I want to be there with you.”

“Be where?” I ask.

“In Kansas City where your dad lives,” she says. “I know that is where you are. I even told Security that is where you were and told them that COB said to get you back and if that is where you were, then why didn’t they send someone to get you? They have not done anything. There have been other flaps since you left and no one is even thinking about it anymore,” Claire is really starting to make me think about busting her out of there.

“Well, maybe you can leave during cleaning time on Sunday morning,” I say.

“No you don’t get it, we can’t leave! No one is even going home at all for anything. We are all restricted to the base. No one is allowed to leave for any reason at all.” As she says this, I realize getting her out will be harder than I had realized.

“Well, you know how just about every person has ever blown, what’s the best way to get out of there?” I ask, thinking about the people I knew that had blown.

“I think the Jan Sims method will work the best,” she says

“What is the Jan Sims method?” I ask, wondering who the hell Jan Sims was. “Wasn’t that the chick that was in RTC back in the 1990s?”

“Yeah. She blew after Dave broke his leg in 1992. She had a doctor’s appointment that she had to go to and never came back,” Claire says.

“Can you get a doctor’s appointment?” I ask.

“I already have one to renew my prescription for contacts. I can’t do anything without being able to see. There is no way they can tell me not to go get new contacts. I will get them in a few days at Wal-Mart in town.”

“You know they are going to be watching you like a hawk,” I warn. “The spouses almost always end up trying to blow after the first one leaves.”

“Yeah, I have already had a lot of RTC staff come up and tell me not to worry, that Dave ordered that you be gotten back and to keep going and it will all get worked out. Meanwhile, nothing was done to get you back.”

“When is your appointment? We have to work this out,” I say, now convinced that I can get her out.

“It is 10:15 on Monday morning.”

“Dave will be gone for four days at the Fort Harrison anniversary event in Clearwater, so that will hopefully make it just a little bit easier for me to make it to the appointment.”

“Good. So what you do is call a cab for that exact time and have it wait for you at Wal-Mart. Get it under another name. Have it take you to the Riverside Greyhound bus station. I will get you a ticket for whatever bus that leaves there, as close to that time as possible no matter where it is going. That will get you moving fast so that they cannot find you. You will have at least an hour or so head start before they discover you have made a break for it. Don’t call the cab until the night before so that if they are watching your phone traffic, they will not see it until the next day after you are gone.

“When you get to the bus station, call me from a pay phone and I will tell you your ticket info so you can get on the bus. I will have already paid for your ticket and it will be waiting there for you.”

“Okay. Why don’t I just call you on my Nextel?” she asks.

“No you cannot use the Nextel! They will use the GPS in it to track you. I have seen my sister do this in HCO. You turn it on and they can find you no matter where you are. They will see that you are at the Greyhound station. They will send someone there and they will find you in a matter of minutes. Meanwhile, they will call the bus station and pretend to be your sick mother and ask which bus you got on. Trust me. These guys do this enough to know all of the tricks for tracking people down. Also, if you call me on the Nextel, not only will they know where you are, but they will know where you are going. Do not use that Nextel at all once you get into the cab.”

“Okay. So how will I know where to go?” she asks.

“I already found a bus online that leaves around 12:45
 p.m.
It is only going to take you around twenty minutes to get there from Wal-Mart. You will have a few minutes to call me, get your ticket and get on the bus. It is going to Barstow. When you get to Barstow, call me from a payphone and I will give you your ticket to Kansas City and I will pick you up there. As long as you can get to Barstow okay, you will be fine. We can get you the rest of the way. Barstow is north and even if they do figure out that is where you are going; you will be heading a totally different direction once you get there.”

“Okay, so I am going to do this,” Claire says. “I have to go, I think someone is coming.”

“Okay, call me when you get to the bus station! I love you!” I say before she hangs up.

Wow, is this really happening? I think to myself. I think it is. If she gets out of there, we are going to have to figure out what she can do. We might be able to actually have some kids! Wow, this is going to be great! I try not to get my hopes up too much as she could get caught and then they would lock her up for good. It would be years before she was ever allowed off the property again, if ever. I have seen that happen enough times to know that for a fact. The wife or husband leaves and then the other one gets caught trying to leave. They make the person a dishwasher for the next ten years and restrict them to the base forever. That is probably what happened to Annie Tidman. She was married to Pat Broeker and was restricted to the Ranch and then the Int Base for years. Wow, I hope that does not happen to Claire!