“I’m trailing him right now,” he said. “The
thing is, I have him in my sights at long last and hate to lose
him. Susan could take the car and head for home. I would feel
better.”
“Where is he?” she asked before we agreed on
it.
“Turn slowly and look down into the
concourse,” Josh said. “Do you see the man on the fourth bench
over, in the red jacket, black toque, and a small black duffle
bag?”
I shook my head and we all leaned over the
railing scanning the people for a red jacket. He’d gone. “Keep your
hands in view,” a voice hissed from behind. I felt a pistol pushed
hard into my side. He grabbed Susan by the arm. “Move!” He
indicated the direction with a nod of his head, and half-shoved
Josh and I into a restricted maintenance area which posted signs
for employees and work crews only. He forced the three of us up
against several locked doors and searched Josh and I for weapons,
finding Josh’s gun.
“Who else is here following me?” he said to
Josh, staring at him with hatred.
“Following you?” Josh said.
“I know who you are,” he said.
“Turn yourself in,” I said stupidly. He hit
me in the face with his gun. I fell to my knees and my nose began
to bleed profusely. I saw stars and did everything I could to stop
myself from fainting. Blood covered the front of my shirt and Tim
put the gun to my head. “Who is with you?” he repeated with a hiss.
He hit me again with the pistol and I fell hard to the floor. “You
made a mistake in following me.” He turned to Josh. “Who’s with
you?”
“I’m alone.”
“Where’s your father and his partner?”
“Out of town.”
“Drop your weapon,” Ashe shouted from behind
us.
Tim spun, and at the same time, pulled Susan
into him as a shield, shooting Ashe. Ashe dove for protection. Tim
crouched down with Susan still in front of him and began to
scramble back out of the line of fire. Josh rushed him but took a
hit in the leg. A short exchange of gunfire occurred between Ashe
and Tim.
“Don’t shoot,” I yelled at Ashe, “you might
hit Susan.”
Alarms had sounded and people shouted and
ran in panic. Holding Susan by the hair, Tim disappeared around a
corner. I jumped up and chased after him as the evil forces who
carry out The First Law of Life crashed down on me. When I came to
an open maintenance door, I found Susan on the floor with her
throat slit. I covered her gushing wound with my hand, pinching the
jugular shut, but I gazed at her open unblinking eyes and feared
the worst. “Susan, don’t go,” I whispered desperately. I could
hardly breathe but managed to call for help. I screamed. I heard
Ashe rushed up from behind, calling 911 on her cell. A great hole
opened up inside my stomach.
Ashe raced off after him, and for a minute I
was alone with Susan in the grey corridor, watching her blood seep
into my clothes like a slow wash. In a minute, I knew she had fled
the world. I wept until the ambulance took her body away.
After the funeral, I devoted my time to
Tappets and withdrew from the world, I became a recluse. As far as
I was concerned, they had won: Lloyd, the Family and whatever being
set up the system which had invented The First Law of Life for
those born unlucky and especially orphans. It seemed unjust, but
what could I do? They were more powerful than me. I told Peter to
stop the investigation before anyone else got hurt. I was unaware
that behind my back, the Zucker family paid Josh to continue
hunting Tim Daniels.
In regards to The Family of Truth, I cleared
my mind of them, and was glad I had. It wasn’t until two years,
three months later, on Friday, October 12, 1990 at La Guardia
Airport, when I found myself once again forced to face the painful
past. It was a grey raining day, apropos, and Una, Mary, Stan, and
myself traveled to the airport to watch the arrival of Love Moses
as he was delivered to the American authorities who had finally
settled the extradition case with the Swiss.
They brought him forward through the throng
of press and film people. Some of them were wet, and some held
umbrellas. Unlike at my trial, no one shoved or pushed, instead
they shouted their questions from a respectful distance. The
Federal Officers and the Swedish Police tried to keep an area just
in front of Love Moses and Divine Love open so that some progress
was made.
A female care-giver in a nurse’s uniform
pushed Love Moses, who was now a crippled old man in a wheelchair.
His white stringy hair almost covered his unfocused eyes. He looked
as though demented. I knew Una was a happy witness. Her eyes were
almost laughing. Divine Love’s tall graceful figure hadn’t changed
that much. The smile and vacant eyes had disappeared, replaced by a
pout and a condescending gaze. Her long blond hair was combed
behind her and had faded–her thin face appeared still fervent. How
her life had been distorted, I could only imagine, and she was
still entangled in it. “Forgive me for saying so,” Una said, “but
he looks like a mad scientist with his distraught daughter.”
“He’s a pathetic caricature of a man,” I
said, “the end of an evil idea brought forth by a fool. Look, he’s
stopped to say something. We should get closer.” Una shook her head
at me in refusal. “He’s justifying himself to his followers,” I
said. “He’s nothing but a Nazi.”
“He’s responsible for murdering several
people,” Stan broke in, “not for killing six million Jews. Watch
what you say in public. The press are everywhere. Don’t think for a
minute that we’ve gone unnoticed.”
Except for Una, all of us looked right and
left as though to make sure we were alone, but after all, I knew
Stan assessed it correctly, and oddly enough, even though I’d
expected it, the attention Love Moses received, surprised me. “They
say he’s completely mad,” Una said, “and now that I’ve seen him,
I’m more inclined that it’s true.”
“If he’s crazy,” Mary said, “they won’t be
able to touch him.”
“I’m glad we’ve come tonight,” Una said,
“seeing him now, well, he’s nothing but a shriveled up old man, and
his followers are here, and seeing their thin bodies and worn old
clothes is sad, but when the press flash their cheerless faces all
over the world, that’s when people will know that a bad thing came
into being and is now being brought to justice.”
“Yes, wait until they see him,” I agreed.
“They’re expecting a vibrant and inspired leader. He’s
decrepit.”
“You’ve done well, Christian,” Una said and
hugged me. “I’m proud of you. God bless you.”
“That’s right,” Mary joined in, “you’ve
every right to be proud about your instrumental role in bringing
this day about. He fought extradition right up to the end. He’s
truly afraid. It’s almost completely behind us now. Sally and Susan
would be proud of you.”
Love Moses and Divine Love passed where we
stood, and for a moment, they had a clear look at us. “He knows who
we are,” Una whispered.
It was true, I saw the recognition on his
face, and then the throng swallowed him up again. “What a lecher,”
Mary said. “I guess he is sane after all.”
“They call this closure now,” Una said, “but
it sure feels like victory.”
I smiled and wished it felt like victory. I
returned to work, and in the months ahead, spent almost all my time
at the office. Isaac told me sometime after this that I was now
called, The Monk. Stan turned sixty on July 20, 1992 and we held a
party at The Vanderbilt Office. He said he would remain on the
board and work two or three days a week. It was about this time
that Divine Love received immunity from the government and reverted
back to her original name, Sabrina Light. She confirmed that Love
Moses ordered the creation of The Hostility Branch, the murder of
Rick Edwards, Barry Wall, Anna Chapati, and Sally Tappet. She
couldn’t confirm, but lent credence to the idea, that Tim Daniels
also had a hand with the killing of Susan Garland, Graham Robert,
and Hiroyuki Nakamura.
In the fall of the next year, she was
reportedly killed in an automobile accident. I took notice of it,
but Josh couldn’t discover anything suspicious about her death. By
1996, I owned and controlled much of a trimmed-down Tappets. I
realized I had become a bit of a hermit and Una, Mary, and Stan,
complained about it, but I ran the company successfully and since
they were the direct recipients of that windfall, what could they
really say? I continued to live at home, but was seldom there.
Many a night in a hotel room left me
depressed. My name kept coming up in the papers as the most
eligible bachelor in New Jersey. I supposed that was a joke.
On Saturday, February 7, 1998, in Los
Angeles, California, I attended an unveiling ceremony for Rick
Edwards at Splinter-Pearl Park, now Edward’s Gardens. Although the
temperature had risen steadily, a cool breeze blew in the grassy
park which fell out to a wooded area. The temporary stage I stood
on, was adjacent to a monument which had just been unveiled by
Janice Edwards. It was a large stone carving of Rick Edwards
surrounded by an extensive flower garden, mostly annuals, but some
bushes and flowering trees. The statue, bolted to a huge polished
granite boulder, held a memorial tablet on either side, giving a
short history of Rick Edwards and FOCUS.
It had been built only a few miles from
where Rick had been assassinated. Rick’s family, including his
oldest son Adam’s four grown children, and his wife, Isabel, stood
on stage with Janice Edwards and myself. An enormous orange-brown
apartment-building complex off to my right and a highway overpass,
no more than a half a mile to the north, could be seen from the
stage. I could hear the traffic and the sound of horns off in the
distance.
Adam was about his father’s height but
wasn’t plain-looking like Rick had been, but rather muscular and
fashionably dressed. With his prominent brown eyes, shaved head,
and broad smile, his dad’s dynamic inner self seemed to have
manifested itself outwardly. As for Janice Edwards, she had gained
some weight since I had last seen her, but to me, pretty much
looked the same. She had already spoken to the crowd of over
fifteen hundred people and her speech was inspirational. I admired
her greatly. At age fifty-one, she remained devoted to the cause of
her late husband.
On stage with me, also stood Josh and Yan,
as well as three famous people from the cult intervention movement
as they now called it, the head of Cult News Network, the creator
of Vanguard Week, and the author of the best selling book,
Combating Cult Mind Control, all ex-cultists, and all who would
speak after me. After a few words about what a great dad Rick
Edwards was, Adam introduced me to the audience. Many of them were
members of FOCUS or former cultists who had been deprogrammed using
Rick’s methods. I received a warm welcome and was happy for that. I
usually faced sympathetic audiences at work and didn’t know what
kind of reception I would receive here. I mentioned how in April of
1993, over ninety Branch Davideans, an outbreak of the cultist and
doomsday teachings of Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah’s
Witnesses, died. Large speakers at the back of the crowd, gave my
voice a strange echo effect. Vernon Wayne Howell, a.k.a. David
Koresh, from Waco, one time wrote: ‘I have seven eyes and seven
horns. My Name is the Word of God and I ride on a white horse. I am
here on earth to give you the Seventh Angel’s Message. I talked
about how in 1996 over thirty cultists of the Heaven’s Gate Group
in Los Angeles, committed suicide to meet their believed destiny
with a spacecraft and how last year 10,000 people were helped by
FOCUS.
When my short speech was done, the applause
was sustained, and when I shook Janice and Adam’s hands, a
translucent event occurred. In the back of the crowd, I suddenly
caught sight of the weathered figure of Tim Daniels out of the
corner of my eye. A shudder passed through my entire body. I was
certain it was him. “Tim Daniels is here,” I whispered to Josh
stepping to the side of the stage and pointing. We both rushed off
the stage even as the crowd continued to applaud, Yan followed
directly behind us. We ran to the back of the park only to catch
sight of a bright red Jeep speeding away. When we reached my car,
we found the four tires slashed.
“Shit!” Josh said.
I watched the Jeep disappear. I didn’t know
if every person’s occupation was written on his person or not, but
certainly for Tim Daniels it was the case. The man undoubtedly
looked like the predator he had become, a psychotic killer and I
could pick him out in a crowd. “This means he is hunting me,” I
said sadly, thinking of The First Law of Life for orphans.
Neither Josh nor Yan disputed it. The next
week, I entered into an agreement with Josh to hunt him down and
kill him. Both Stan and Mary disapproved of it, but Una asked them
what else I could do.
Una had told me that Gandhi had one time
said that a great orator is to be feared, that he was dangerous
because men killed for ideological beliefs and could be moved by an
inspired speaker to murder others. She was reading, The Essential
Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr., in tandem with the
Time Warner Audio Book, A Knock at Midnight, the original
recordings of Martin Luther King, Jr. Gandhi’s criticism hadn’t
applied to Martin Luther King, Jr. He’d always been careful to
promote democratic values and nonviolence, just like Gandhi
himself, and John Locke. All of them were believers, but they had
all preached tolerance. I wasn’t a believer nor ideological, just
afraid for myself and the ones I loved.
In March 2000, more than a thousand cultists
of the Movement of the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God
at Entebbe, Uganda committed suicide or were murdered, most were
burned to death. Joseph Kibwetere, their leader, claimed to talk
personally to the Virgin Mary. I’d have never believed Jimmy Jones’
horrible record of the number of murder-suicide victims would have
been topped. At Jonestown, the international media played the story
for days, the story at Entebbe didn’t last one news cycle. America
was sick of hearing about cults.