Behind her, in a somber tone, Billie Egret said to us, “He’s gone. The Everglades took him. It had to be. If you give bad, you get bad in return. If you take, you have to give-and Shiva, he took souls. ”
None of which made any sense to me until I looked where Billie was now pointing. The amphitheater’s concentric levels of seating remained. But where the stage and acoustic dome had once stood, there was now…
I had to stare to be sure, brain scanning for explanation… where the stage and acoustic dome had once stood, there was now a circular lake, water roiled and murky, lots of trash and flotsam on the surface.
Billie told us, “When the first tremors started, the Ashram followers were so excited. I thought they’d won. I thought Shiva had won. But then, after the third tremor, chunks of the dome began to fall. Then the whole stage collapsed and fell, like going down a waterfall. The earth collapsed beneath it. A sinkhole.”
Karlita added, “People were terrified. They panicked. It was frightening to watch.”
His voice subdued, perhaps in awe, Tomlinson asked, “When it happened, was he alone? Was Shiva the only one on stage?”
“Yes. He was alone. I wish you had been here to witness the… power of it.”
We would witness it. Worldwide, anyone with a TV could witness what happened that Easter Sunday over and over because Shiva’s film crew had captured it on video. The segment became standard fare for reality-based disaster shows: Jerry Singh-Bhagwan Shiva-in his purple robes, still leading his followers in that metonymic chant.
We will…
Boom!
Move the earth.
Boom!
I will…
Boom!
Make the earth move!
Then there is a close-up of Singh grinning triumphantly as the camera lens begins to vibrate with one… two… three earth tremors… his followers cheering but still chanting; chanting faster now:
We will…
Boom!
Move the earth.
The close-up continues as Shiva’s expression changes from joy to a kind of stunned surprise as chunks of stucco begin to fall on him from the acoustic dome. He’d been sitting in full lotus position, but he gets quickly to his feet, perplexed.
Then all color drains from his face-an illustration of fear, then horror, as the rear of the stage collapses. The initial collapse created a momentary, marble incline, water already boiling up to take it.
The last shot shows Shiva clawing desperately, trying to keep from sliding into the pit below. He’s screaming something, but there’s so much peripheral noise, his words are indecipherable.
Above him, the laser hologram of the solar system continues to orbit, unaffected.
Then he is gone; the stage, dome, the prophet of Ashram, all swallowed up by a flooding darkness.
Three days later, The Miami Herald reported that a charter captain, his boat loaded with tourist scuba divers, found Shiva’s body floating off Marathon and Molasses Reef, more than a hundred miles south of Sawgrass.
Geologists from the University of Florida provided an explanation. The sinkhole created by the series of explosions had collapsed into an underground river-the Long Key Formation. The river had swept Shiva’s body along beneath sawgrass, swamp, mangrove fringe and all of Florida Bay, before jettisoning him into open sea.
Billie Egret had a more succinct explanation for me: “Reciprocity.” chapter thirty-one
Eleven days later, on Thursday, the first day of May, two FBI agents came to the marina, asking for Tomlinson. They had a warrant to search No Mas, and they impounded his computer.
Aboard his sailboat, in the icebox, they found a sandwich bag filled with what appeared to be cannabis.
The agents used the discovery as leverage. They told Tomlinson that they were investigating what may have been an eco-terrorist bombing at Sawgrass in the Everglades. They said they had cause to believe that he might have been a participant. If he cooperated, talked freely, they’d forget they found the marijuana. If he didn’t, he was going to jail now.
He requested a few minutes alone with me before he decided.
“What’ll happen if they arrest me?”
“Ask a lawyer, not me.”
“But I am asking you.”
I said, “If they arrest you, you’ll be taken to the jail in downtown Fort Myers. Tomorrow, you’ll have your first court appearance, where the judge will consider bail-which you won’t get. Not if they have you pegged as an eco-terrorist. Then you’ll go back to jail until your hearing, where you’ll be formally charged. After that, you’ll go back to jail until your trial’s over, which will be a very long time. Call an attorney.”
He said, “I think I’ll talk with them. They’ve got to know it was all Izzy Kline.”
I told him, “Call an attorney! That’s exactly what you should do.”
He thought about that for a moment, twisting a lock of hair with his long, nervous fingers. “I don’t know. Jail might be kind of peaceful. It’s getting worse and worse, you know.”
He meant the number of daily visitors the marina now received; devotees of Tomlinsonism.
Long before the events of Easter Sunday, unknown to any of us, several of Shiva’s own followers-now former followers-had been deeply touched by Tomlinson’s paper. It was they who were now spreading the word, via the Internet, that Tomlinson had been in attendance at the Cypress Ashram that amazing night. That he had personally exposed Bhagwan Shiva for the fraud he was.
It was also Tomlinson’s powerful aura, they suggested, that had catalyzed Shiva’s doom. So, ironically, Tomlinson had won the devotion of a growing number of people who had once followed the only man that I feel he genuinely despised.
“Get a lawyer,” I repeated.
But Tomlinson was shaking his head. “Nope. I’m going to sit down and tell them the truth. Frankly, I’m pulling for some jail time.”
He didn’t get it. Two weeks later, one of the agents phoned him, said that he was no longer considered a suspect, and he was free to travel anywhere he wanted.
The next day, Tomlinson slipped his mooring before sunrise, and sailed for Key West.
I’d been carrying on an investigation of my own. Quietly. Privately.
By FedEx, I’d sent the shotgun shell that, hopefully, carried Klein’s fingerprints, to Hal Harrington. No one had more varied intelligence assets available than Hal-not even the FBI.
I enclosed a six-word note: “Find him before the Feds do.”
The FBI was looking for Kline. I knew that from my own intelligence assets. Working with Interpol. They’d lost his trail in Paris, but they were pretty sure he was still somewhere in Europe.
Harrington replied via e-mail with a six-word note of his own: “Will try. But quid pro quo.”
I knew what he meant by that.
Mostly, I worked hard at becoming the individual I’d once been, but had somehow allowed to slip into physical and emotional decline. It had happened slowly; taken nearly a year, and it was frustrating that recovery seemed doubly slow.
I cleaned and rearranged everything in my house and lab, and updated all my files. I was meticulous. I took great joy in obsessive attention to detail.
I worked out every day, seven days a week. Hard.
Dewey Nye, and my cousin, Ransom Gatrell, became my tag-team partners. Every weekday at noon, Ransom and I would ride our bikes, pumping furiously, always keeping the pedal revolutions between seventy-five to a hundred a minute according to our little handlebar computers. Twice a week, we rode to the gate at South Sea’s Plantation and back-27 miles. Three times a week, we rode to Lighthouse Point and back-10.5 miles.
In the afternoons, Dewey and I would alternate between running, lifting and swimming. Years ago, we’d started an informal group we called the Teaser Pony Swim Club. Now, we revived it, and did a long offshore swim every Sunday.
Saturdays, I worked out alone. Those became the hardest, most dreaded workouts, because that is when I punished mysel
f for past indulgences. In the morning, I’d swim toward the horizon for twenty minutes. I would then turn and fight to beat my time coming back.
Memories of my encounter with the bull shark were always with me. He was still out there, on a feed.
Ignoring the fear, forcing myself to stroke and kick in rhythm, was a kind of penance.
Once ashore, after chugging a quart of water, I’d run on the beach until it felt as if my heart were going to explode.
I ate protein. Mostly oysters, scallops and fish I’d caught myself. I threw the cast net a lot. I ate a lot of broiled mullet.
I also ate a steady diet of grouper, sheepshead and snap-per. I used mask, fins and speargun. When it comes to those three species, if you know where the random, rocky places are, it’s like going to the grocery store.
I drank nothing but water. I didn’t allow myself food after 10 P.M. Once a week, I weighed in and noted the weight and date in pencil on the wall.
By the last week of June, I was down to two twenty-three-close to my goal. But I decided to keep working, keep driving and see just how far I could push the physical envelope.
I hoped soon to rendezvous with Izzy Kline. He’d somehow managed to overpower a far better man than I-Frank DeAntoni.
I wanted to be in top shape for the meeting.
Because she visited Tomlinson regularly, I got to know Karlita better, and actually came to enjoy her company. She really did have extrasensory powers, Tomlinson told me. In truth, she was the leader of the Cassadaga group, but didn’t want anyone to know.
“A television psychic,” he explained. “Can you think of a more brilliant cover for someone who actually does have the gift?”
I didn’t believe that she had extrasensory powers, of course, but now that I knew she was part of the Cassadaga group, she didn’t behave like such a pompous flake. Not surprisingly, that made her more physically attractive: long legged, lean, with glossy Irish-black hair and good cheekbones. We had some nice talks.
Karlita stopped by the lab so often that Dewey, I think, began to get a little jealous. I found that surprising.
Dewey and I have had a strange relationship. We’ve been lovers, and we’ve been friends. In the end, friendship seemed to be winning out. I’d never felt closer to her. On our long runs, we’d discuss every subject imaginable.
Once, I caught her staring at me. When I asked why her expression was so intense, she’d replied shyly, “I was having impure thoughts about you. Thinking maybe the two of us should hop in the shower and suds up.”
I thought she was kidding. So I’d laughed, and reminded her that I was still occasionally dating Grace Walker, the busty, mahogany-dark realtor from Tampa. We had an exclu sivity agreement, so I’d have to tell her first. I did not care to invite that woman’s wrath.
At least once a week, I drove to Coconut Grove and spent time with Sally. She seemed undamaged by what had happened; was doing lots of charity work for her church, spreading her money around. She’d accepted the insurance check for her husband’s death, and he was dead. Izzy Kline had told her that.
“How that creep knew about Geoff,” Sally said, “I have no idea. But the way he said it, I believe it’s true.”
On the way back from Coconut Grove, I fell into the habit of stopping to visit with the Egret Seminoles. I got to know Billie Egret much better; felt a familial closeness to her. In July, she and her people received formal notice from the U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Branch of Acknowledgment and Recognition, that they were now confirmed as a legal, independent tribe-with all the rights, privileges and obligations that went along with it.
“My only regret,” she told me, “is that my father isn’t here to see what he created.”
Some people live in a way that they are forever missed. Joseph Egret was one of those people.
Billie showed her business savvy, as well as her dedication to the Everglades, by forming a fast alliance with the new chairman of Sawgrass’s board of directors-Carter McRae. He’d gotten the board to agree to sell the tribe the massive acreage on which Shiva had planned to put his casinos, and also to help them plant and restore the land.
“Mr. McRae’s a nice man,” she said. “I’d always heard what a tough businessman he is, but I’ve never met anyone so generous. I think it’s because his wife’s out of the hospital. He’s happy, so maybe there’s no reason to be tough anymore.”
It was around then that I read a satirical piece by a Tampa Tribune columnist that supposedly explained the sudden absence of Swamp Ape sightings. It was hilarious. But when I told Tomlinson about it, he said, “That’s not the reason. In your heart, I think you know the reason.”
By late August, Dewey and I were running at a pace that was consistently under seven-minute miles, and I was bench-pressing a hundred pounds more than my own weight-which was now down to two-oh-five.
It was the least I’d weighed since a couple of years after high school.
So I was fit and ready when, one day, I checked my e-mail to find a two-word message from Harrington: Granada, Nicaragua.
Three days later, I flew American Eagle to Miami, and then COPA to Managua. chapter thirty-two izzy
Izzy knew Ford was in Granada the day after he arrived, the big, nerdy biologist who’d behaved like such a smartass know-it-all on the skeet range.
That’s one of the reasons Izzy loved Nicaragua. If you had money, you could buy anything, including security.
Izzy had the money, so he had spies everywhere. Had his own efficient intelligence network that kept him informed. If anyone new came into town, anyone suspicious, Izzy got the word pronto.
He hadn’t eyeballed Ford personally. But one of his staff-the kid who did his legwork in town-had sneaked a digitized photo of the man sitting at the pool bar of the Colony Hotel, right next to the park in the old part of the city.
It was Ford, all right. He looked thinner, almost gaunt in the photo, but not sick-looking. Just different.
At first, it had shocked the hell out of Izzy. Those first few seconds looking at the photo, he’d thought, I’m out of here.
But then he told himself to hold on, slow down. Think about it. He’d been living peacefully on his little island for more than three months under the name of Craig Skaar, not a hint of trouble. The way Izzy had worked it, covering his trail every step of the way, not even the FBI could have found him. So what were the chances of some dopey biologist accomplishing what the FBI couldn’t?
Nil.
So Izzy had one of his people, Giorgio, talk to a couple of the staff at the Colony. Turned out, it was a total coincidence. The nerd was in Granada to study some kind of weird freshwater shark that lived in the lake.
“What the hell’s a bull shark?” Izzy said when Giorgio told him.
He’d been swimming off his beach in the lake every day, and hated the idea of sharks being out there.
Smiling, Giorgio had clacked his teeth together, and said in Spanish, “The kind that bites, Chief.”
So Izzy had nothing to fear. Not from Ford, anyway. But his being in Granada was a big pain in the ass for two reasons: One, living on an island, Izzy had learned, was boring as hell. And, two, Granada really was a fun town.
Izzy enjoyed walking the streets and open markets, looking for young girls. He liked the Spanish architecture, everything painted in Caribbean pastel blues, corals and greens. He liked the feel of the old mansions, the way they were built around a central park that had a bandstand where marimba groups played almost every night.
Izzy liked eating and drinking at the Mediterraneo and Dona Conchi’s, where the American adventurer William Walker had supposedly dodged a firing squad. He especially like a quirky little bar outside town, Restaurante Aeropuerto 79, that served excellent and unusual food, such as crab-and-iguana-tail soup.
When he got bored with Granada, he’d hop in the Land Rover he’d bought and drive to Masaya, a little village famous for its two massive markets-that was always inte
resting. There were lots of bars there; plenty of women.
Nicaragua was also famous for its volcanoes. There were dozens of them; maybe hundreds. At night, from his island, he could see them glowing in the distance.
Once, Izzy decided to have a look at a volcano just to see what it was like. Masaya supposedly had one of the largest, so he’d driven miles up the mountain road, got out and stared into the mouth of the volcano for which the village was named.
Mah-SIGH-uh -that’s the way the locals pronounced it.
The crater was huge, smoky. It smelled of heat and sulfur. If he really leaned over and looked, he could see orange lava way down there, nearly a thousand feet below.
No more volcanoes after seeing Masaya, Izzy decided. If there really was a hell, that’s the way it’d look. Plus, there were plenty of other things to do around Granada.
But not with Ford around. Ford being in town was a pain in the ass because it made it impossible for Izzy to leave his island. Granada was not a large town, and he couldn’t risk being seen.
Which meant he’d just have to wait patiently until the nerd got on a plane and left. Which he almost certainly would. Soon.
As an extra precaution, though, Izzy had his people spread the word: Let him know immediately if the biologist rented a boat, a canoe, anything that floated. If he was on the water, Izzy wanted to know where.
Otherwise, he was safe, and hidden away. After all, Izzy’s island was more than a mile offshore. What was the guy going to do? Swim?
Ford arrived in town on a Tuesday. Now, five days later, Izzy was going stir-crazy. Every night, he had his staff bring out a different woman; two, sometimes three at a time-so it wasn’t too bad. But today was Sunday, and nobody in the whole country worked on Sunday, not even the hookers.
Fucking Catholics.
It was the only day of the week when Izzy was alone on the island, so he’d come to despise Sundays.
So what he did was work on his Internet stuff. He had to keep the generator running outside to do it. The massive casa he was building wasn’t done; he hadn’t yet gotten the electric cable laid from Granada, so the wood-and-tile house in which he now lived was primitive but comfortable.
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