The First Horseman

by John Case

  ‘Mankind United sprang up in the early thirties,’ Stern said. ‘It was run by a guy named Arthur Bell, who spun a conspiracy theory about our secret masters,’ the “international bankers” –’

  Uh-oh,’ Frank joked, ‘here come the Jews.’

  Stern laughed. ‘You’re right! He was a big-time anti-Semite. But he was selling the millennium, too, just like the Taborites. Except in his case, utopia had more to do with air-conditioning than land reform.’

  Annie giggled.

  ‘But he had the same idea. He said there was going to be a bloodbath, a natural catastrophe followed by an Armageddonlike war that would kill – I don’t know how many people – most of the people – in the world. And this would be a good thing, he said, because it would usher in the New Age. A.k.a. “the millennium.” A.k.a. “heaven on earth.” After the war, everyone would have free air-conditioning, a $25,000 house, and a sixteen-hour workweek – unless you wanted to be retired, in which case you’d be given a pension.’

  ‘Works for me,’ Frank joked.

  ‘It worked for a lot of people. Bell got rich.’

  ‘So what you’re writing about,’ Frank said, ‘is the fact that these two guys, Jan the Pious and Arthur the Air-Conditioned, shared a dream.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Stern said. ‘Them and a million others, down through the centuries. They all shared – they all share – the same bloody dream. You want more tea?’

  ‘Sure,’ Frank said. ‘Please.’

  Stern filled his cup, and turned to Annie. ‘So,’ he said, with a let’s-get-down-to-business tone. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Up?’ she asked.

  ‘Well,’ Stern said, ‘I know you didn’t call to say you love me – and, anyway, you said you were working on something. You said you and Frank were working on something together.’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ Annie replied, ‘we are. We’re working on this . . . thing.’ Then she turned to Frank and, smiling, came as close to batting her eyes as a microbiologist can come. In this way, the ball was put firmly in his court.

  Frank sighed, and cleared his throat. ‘We’re interested in the Temple of Light,’ he said.

  For a moment the air seemed to go out of Stern. His body tensed, ever so slightly, and then he leaned back in his armchair and held them with his gaze. He didn’t say anything for long time. Finally, he turned to Annie with a look that might have been reserved for someone who’d tried to sell him a fifty-dollar Rolex. ‘What is this?’ he asked.

  Annie blinked. Frank frowned. ‘What do you mean?’ she replied.

  ‘“What do I mean?” Jeez, Annie! I haven’t seen you for what – two years – and then you call me up out of the blue and say, “Oh! by the way! This is my friend, and we’re interested in the Temple of Light?” Is this a joke?’

  ‘No,’ Frank said, ‘it’s not a joke.’

  Until now, Stern had been looking at Annie. Abruptly, he turned to Frank. ‘Who are you with?’ he asked in a matter-of-fact voice.

  ‘Who am I with?’ Frank repeated. ‘I’m not with anybody. I’m with Annie.’

  ‘He writes for the Post,’ Annie said.

  ‘Really!’ Stern cocked his head. ‘What’s your phone number?’

  ‘My phone number?’

  ‘Yeah! At work. What happens if I call you at the Post?’

  ‘Well, actually, I’m on a leave of absence.’

  Stern rolled his eyes. ‘Give me a break,’ he said.

  ‘I’m serious! Look.’ Frank took out his wallet and showed him his press pass and his Washington Post ID.

  ‘Anybody could make one of these,’ Stern said. ‘It’s a piece of shit.’

  ‘Right! That’s how you know it’s authentic: the Post’s cheap,’ Frank said.

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ Annie declared. ‘It’s me, Ben! What are you thinking?’

  Stern ignored her, looking at Frank. ‘So if you’re on leave, what are you doing?’

  ‘I have a Sam Johnson fellowship.’

  ‘Which is what?’

  ‘They have a sort of contest every year. Reporters submit proposals, saying what they’d do if they had a year to write about what they’re interested in. So I gave them a proposal and . . . they liked it.’

  Stern held his gaze. ‘And this was about the Temple of Light?’

  ‘No,’ Frank said, ‘it’s about emerging viruses.’

  Stern’s frown deepened.

  ‘You can call the foundation. They’re in the book.’

  ‘And how do I know they aren’t a front?’ Stern asked.

  ‘The Johnson Foundation? For what?’

  ‘For the Temple.’

  ‘The Temple?!’

  ‘Why not? The Temple gives money to half a dozen foundations – the Institute for Religious Experience, the Gaia Foundation. They spread it around. It’s good P.R.’

  ‘Maybe. But they don’t give money to this foundation. Trust me. Old man Coe would have a heart attack.’

  Stern continued looking at him, and then he nodded, as if he’d just made a decision. ‘Let me show you something,’ he said. Getting to his feet, he crossed the room to a desk beside the window. Pushing aside a pile of papers, he picked up a newsletter and returned with it to his chair. ‘Check it out,’ he said, and tossed the newsletter onto the steamer trunk between them. Then he sat back down.

  It was the spring issue of Armageddon Watch – thirty-two pages of heavy stock paper, stapled down the middle. The cover blazed stories about the Church of Scientology and the Internet, a Santería sect in western Louisiana, and a brainwashing spa in the south of India.

  Frank turned the pages one after another until he came to page eight. There, embedded in a column under the heading, ‘Personalities,’ was a picture of Luc Solange, squinting into the sun as he gripped the wheel of what must have been the Crystal Dragon. The cutline read, Helmsman.

  Frank showed it to Annie. ‘He’s handsome,’ she said, sounding a little surprised.

  Beneath the picture was a short paragraph.

  A rare glimpse of Temple of Light guru, Luc Solange, at sea aboard the Temple’s flagship, the Crystal Dragon. After 15 years in the U.S., the Swiss-born Solange is once again on the road, traveling most recently to Tokyo, where he addressed the Chosen Soren organization this past November. (Photo: Anon.)

  ‘Nice job,’ Frank said.

  ‘I’ve got 341 subscribers,’ Stern told him. ‘Mostly academics and parents. A couple of journalists, a few P.I.’s – and, of course, the cults themselves. They’re the ones with P.O. boxes for addresses.’

  ‘Have you written a lot about the Temple?’ Frank asked.

  Stern shook his head. ‘This is the first piece in more than a year. I’m sort of testing the waters.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Annie asked.

  ‘I mean it’s dangerous,’ Stern replied. ‘It’s a hassle. I don’t need it.’ He paused for a moment, then went on. ‘Remember the last time we got together?’

  Annie nodded. ‘I was submitting my grant proposal. Two years ago.’

  Stern nodded. ‘How’d that go, anyway?’

  Annie glanced at Frank. ‘They turned it down.’

  Stern winced in sympathy. ‘Bummer. Anyway, that was the last time I wrote anything about the Temple – until this.’

  ‘What did you write about the first time?’ Frank asked.

  ‘Some of the same stuff that I’ve been telling you about. I drew connections between Solange and earlier cult leaders, pointing out the similarities. I called him “a secular apocalyptic” who’s substituted the principles of deep ecology for the Ten Commandments. And he’s proactive, too. He wants to bring it on.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The apocalypse. Armageddon. Whatever you want to call it. If you read what he’s written, Solange says that he’s the last “world historical” figure –’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Jesus, Buddha –’

  ‘Solange,’ Annie suggested.

  ‘Exa
ctly. And his importance lies in precisely that fact: he’s the midwife to the End-times. Or so he says.’

  ‘But why would anyone want to be that?’ Annie asked.

  Stern’s eyebrows bounced up and down. ‘Solange doesn’t see things the way you and I do. His worldview is an ecocentric one.’

  ‘Earth first,’ Frank said.

  ‘Exactly. People aren’t the most important actors. Nature is. What Solange is after is the restoration of Eden – which, among other things, means the end of industrial civilization.’

  ‘Sounds like a dangerous man,’ Frank remarked.

  ‘You bet. That’s why they call him “the First Horseman.”’

  ‘The First Horseman?’ Annie repeated.

  Stern nodded. ‘Yeah. Of the Apocalypse.’

  The three of them fell silent for a while, and sipped their tea. Then Frank said, ‘So what happened to you? I mean, between you and them? You said you were “testing the waters” when you published his picture.’

  ‘Well, yeah,’ Stern said. ‘The piece I wrote back then was pretty straightforward, actually. Mainly, it was a pull-together of things that other people had written – journalists, mostly – and a little historical perspective along the lines I just gave you. The only new material, really, came from a couple of reports I got from a friend in the A.G.’s office in California: his son disappeared into the Children of God about ten years ago, and he’s been an activist against new religions ever since. Anyway . . . they came after me.’

  ‘Who came after you?’ Annie asked.

  ‘The Temple. Or, as they like to call themselves sometimes, “the meek.” They put me under surveillance.’

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘No,’ Stern said. ‘It was just like the movies. I had a tail. There was a car outside my apartment sixteen hours a day, from six in the morning to ten at night, seven days a week.’

  ‘Sounds expensive,’ Frank remarked.

  ‘I was flattered. I joked about it with them when I passed the car. Then they killed my dog.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, nooo,’ Annie said. ‘Not the Lab. Not Brownie!?’

  ‘Someone gave him a steak, marinated in warfarin. You know what he was like! He’d eat anything, as long as it wasn’t dog food. Poor guy . . . And then the phone started ringing all night long, no matter how often I changed the number, or had it unlisted – so I pulled the plug. The next thing you know, people are showing up at my office, screaming at me. I mean, these were not people you could talk to.’

  ‘What did they look like?’ Frank asked,

  ‘They looked like students. They looked normal. The only thing abnormal about them was that they were yelling at me – and throwing blood all around.’

  Annie blanched.

  ‘Once, a woman burst into the library, dragging a little kid behind her, screaming that she’d “caught me” with him! Right after that, a couple of people in the department, including one of my thesis advisers, started getting e-mail.’

  ‘What kind of e-mail?’ Frank asked.

  ‘Oh, it was this really jejune stuff. Hate mail. I mean, one of the people in the department’s gay – it’s no secret – so naturally he receives this homophobic diatribe. And my thesis adviser’s African American, so guess what he gets? All this Christian Identity crap!’

  ‘And your name was on it?’

  ‘No, they’re much more subtle than that. They signed it the “White Avenger,” or something. But that didn’t matter, because they routed it through my computer, and the police were able to trace it.’

  ‘How’d they route it through your computer?’ Frank asked.

  ‘Easy,’ Stern replied. ‘They broke into the apartment when I was out, logged on, sent the e-mail, and that was that.’

  ‘That’s horrible,’ Annie said.

  ‘I was arrested,’ Stern went on. ‘They were going to charge me! With a hate crime! Can you imagine?’

  ‘But you beat it,’ Frank said.

  Stern nodded, then laughed. ‘Yeah, they fucked up. I was teaching a seminar when the e-mail went out. It was right there in the header: Thursday, two-fifteen Pee-emm. I couldn’t have sent it.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘Nothing. The cops got in touch with the Temple’s lawyers, and you know what they said? They said I was so crazy, I’d probably poisoned my own dog. And then they said, “Maybe he changed the clock on his computer” – which, in fact, would be easy. I could have done that, but – duh! Why bother, when you could send the letters through an anonymous remailer, and there wouldn’t even be any headers?’

  ‘So . . . was that the end of it?’ Frank asked.

  Stern shook his head. ‘No. It went on for months. They filled out a change-of-address form at the post office – so my mail disappeared, which was a problem, because somebody started charging things on my Visa and MasterCards.’

  ‘What things?’ Annie asked.

  ‘Embarrassing stuff, the kind of stuff that could get you in trouble – just for being on the mailing list. Violent pornography. Grow lights. Precursor chemicals for meth. There were a thousand dollars in calls to 900 numbers, and subscriptions to newsletters from the North American Man-Boy Love Association and the Church of the Mountain.’

  ‘What’s the Church of the Mountain?’ Annie asked.

  ‘It’s a Nazi thing. But the point is, I had a lot of collection agencies on my back – not to mention the DEA and Customs.’

  Annie rolled her eyes.

  ‘Then they filed a libel suit –’

  ‘What for?’ Frank asked.

  ‘Why not? They could afford it. And it cost me an arm and a leg just to get it thrown out of court.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then nothing. They stopped.’

  ‘“They stopped”?’ Annie repeated.

  ‘Yeah. They just . . . stopped. Like they’d made their point, and now they were moving on to more important things. I guess it was a warning.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Frank whispered.

  ‘So that’s why I’m a little paranoid,’ Stern added. ‘I mean, I put Solange back in the newsletter – and, the next thing I know, you show up, asking about the Temple. You can see where I’m coming from.’

  Frank nodded. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I can.’

  ‘I’ll make some more tea,’ Annie said, getting to her feet. Wordlessly, she took the teapot from the top of the trunk and carried it into the kitchen.

  Stern looked at Frank. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘the one thing they never did: they never tried to kill me.’

  ‘Yeah, well . . . the night’s young.’

  ‘But they would have, you know. I mean, if I’d been anything more than a nuisance.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘I know so. And I mention it because – I don’t know what you and Annie are doing –’

  Frank started to say something, but Stern cut him off.

  ‘– and I don’t want to know. I just think you ought to be careful. For her sake.’

  ‘I will be,’ Frank said. ‘I’m kind of fond of her myself.’ He paused for a second, then went on. ‘But the thing that can help us the most is information.’

  Stern shrugged. ‘What can I tell you? How much do you know?’

  ‘Solange is Swiss.’

  Stern nodded. ‘He came to the States in ’eighty-two. They say he was broke.’

  ‘Why’d he leave?’

  ‘I think he wanted a bigger canvas. I think Switzerland was getting a little claustrophobic. He’d run for parliament on the Green ticket, and split the party by insisting on a lot of ultra positions – which got a bunch of people mad at him. And then, about the same time, his business went under.’

  ‘What business was that?’

  ‘He had a homeopathy clinic in Montreux, and a couple of patients died of kidney failure – some kind of herbal remedy that backfired.’

  ‘So he came to the States.’

  ‘Yeah, he came to the State
s. And he opened a clinic in L.A. Did pretty well. Got involved in environmental politics. Started something called “Verdure,” which was a little like Earth First! but a lot more secretive. Got some press, got some followers. Started to give lectures in the U.S. and abroad.’

  ‘Then what?’

  Stern’s cigarette had been out for a while, so he lit another, and blew a long stream of smoke into the air above Frank’s head.

  ‘Well, he got bigger. And bigger. I think it was around ’ninety-two . . . a guy who’d been in the Moonies took over “the recruitment hat.”’

  ‘What do you mean – “hat”?’

  ‘They have a “hat” for everything: finance, recruitment, intelligence.’

  ‘Intelligence?’

  Stern nodded. ‘Yeah. They’ve got an in-house intel bureau that’s as good as it gets. Anyway, this guy from the Moonies – I mean he used to be in the Moonies – he comes in, sits down, and reorganizes their recruitment operations. So, now, all of a sudden, they’re really aggressive. And diabolical. They go after two groups: people in their twenties, because they’ve got energy; and people in their eighties, because they’ve got pensions. They set up nonprofits “to help” unwed mothers, “counsel” kids with drug problems, and “care” for the elderly. But what they’re really doing, of course, is getting close to a lot of vulnerable people – who turn out to be the easiest people to recruit. They even started lonely hearts clubs in half a dozen cities, just so they could arrange dates between members and people they wanted to recruit.’

  ‘I see why you called it “diabolical,”’ Frank said.

  ‘It was amazing. They paid ten thousand dollars for a database composed entirely of deadbeats. I mean, people who were drowning in debt. They ran their credit histories, and built up dossiers on every one of them. Then they banged on their doors and promised to show them a way out. “You’re a victim,” they said. “You’re not to blame. It’s America that’s at fault! Amerika with a K. It’s consumerism! Pack a bag, burn your bills, and come with us. We’ll give you a job, instant friends, and a place to stay.” And that’s what they did. Only they forgot to mention that the jobs didn’t actually pay anything, and the place to stay was a dorm where people were sleeping four to a room. Not that it mattered. By then they’d been love-bombed by every babe or baldwin in the org, and sleeping four hours a night, every other night!’ Stern paused and caught his breath. ‘It was a helluva recruitment operation,’ he said.