The Adam Enigma (10 page)

The email chimed again. Beecher read the third email from the Reverend Paul. ‘Has that matter been taken care of yet?'

It was an old Comanche tradition that if someone made a request of you three times, you had to follow through. The odd superstition stated that bad luck would befall the man who failed to carry out such an earnest request. He didn't want to think about the reverend's order and yet he had to. As the leader of the Brothers of the Lord in the Southwest, troubles in New Mexico were his responsibility.

Then Beecher remembered Sam Conklin had mentioned a contact of his. “He's a miracle worker. He's known as the ‘magic man'. Believe me he can make trouble disappear.”

Could use some magic right about now
. He made the call to Conklin. Beecher was both relieved and horrified by what he heard.

March 27, 2016
Des Moines

R
amsey walked toward his car parked in the luxury lofts' visitors lot. It was already late afternoon and it would be dark by the time he returned to Grinnell. But the trip to meet Grossinger and see Adam's loft had been exactly what he needed. He had already decided how to handle Myriam's request.

Pulling his phone from his pocket, Ramsey paused. He thought to himself,
How do I want to play this? I need to test these guys to find out how much they really need my expertise
. He decided to make an outrageous demand, one that no savvy business person would accept.

He texted Myriam. ‘I'll take the job. Results totally my property. 50 K. I'll have my legal draw up a contract. If you agree here's a link to my lawyer. I'll let her know you'll will be contacting her.'

Ramsey paused again.
If they agree to my writing the contract and that the results will become my intellectual property, what does that mean?
There was the obvious. But there was something behind it they weren't telling him. Unexpectedly, a new concern filled him. The shrine project felt like crossing a boundary. Peru welled up in his thoughts but he quashed it. At the same time his interest was piqued, and in spite of the absurdity of the contract he knew they would accept his terms.

He then sent a separate text. ‘Email what you know about Adam Gwillt.' Ramsey also sent an email to his lawyer explaining what was going on. He scanned through all the incoming emails of the
day. Somebody had hacked his email and was using it to push cheap Internet firearms. But there was one from an old buddy, from his Eugene days, Pete Miami.

I wonder if Pete's still doing his crazy GIS stuff in New Mexico
.

March 28, 2016
Grinnell, Iowa

R
amsey made himself breakfast. Things were moving fast. By the time he had arrived back home from Des Moines the promised signed contract was in his inbox waiting for his signature. He had confidence his lawyer had gotten the terms he asked for, so he gave it a superficial read, mostly interested in who the other party was. It turned out to be a group called the Abilene Friends of Rio Chama de Milagro Shrine. Research showed they were a nonprofit group incorporated in Abilene, Texas. The chairman of the board was a waste disposal businessman named Hiram Beecher. Other members were an assortment of Texas businessmen and of course Myriam. It was Beecher who signed the contract.

After a good night's sleep, Ramsey was ready to go to work. He started by reading over Myriam's response to his request for information on Adam Gwillt. He learned that the Friends of the Shrine had paid him a token amount to clean up trash every day at the site; at the same time, many visitors seeking miracles had reported that his presence greatly enhanced their experience. Myriam also included the story of her friend Nancy and how she got involved with the shrine after her healing. Lastly, she made the observation that Adam's disappearance had brought “a big black cloud over the shrine.”

Ramsey wondered what Myriam knew about Adam's disappearance. She hadn't mentioned it to him.

Myriam closed by assuring Ramsey he was making the right choice, and by summarizing his assignment in her own words. “I have poured ten years of my life into the goodness this place has brought to so many people. I need to know if there's some way this power can be restored. Is it somehow being blocked? I'm sure if anyone can figure this out, it's you.”

Ramsey wondered if she was hiding something.

It was a complex assignment, and Ramsey knew he had to formulate a detailed plan. The world of geographical data collection and analysis had grown exponentially since his sacred-site investigation more than a decade ago. Having made his mark in political and economic geography, he only superficially kept up with advances in GIS. Geographical Information Systems was where all the action was for the bright boys and girls in geography. Employing supersensitive remote sensing equipment to capture in real time a multiplicity of geophysical variables, GIS programmers, using high-speed computers, were able to analyze and integrate the data collected in ways unimaginable just ten years ago. The result was the revelation of hundreds of geophysical patterns never before detected.

Ramsey knew that was the kind of capability he needed to research the Milagro Shrine, but was ill-equipped in every way to make it happen. Then he remembered the annoying phish email from his old postdoc drinking buddy Pete Miami. He was simply the smartest guy Ramsey had ever met. After getting his PhD in physics from Stanford at age twenty-one, Pete had moved to Oregon, where the two first met. The first night they had hit the bars together he told Ramsey, “GIS is the cutting edge of scientific investigation. That's where I can make my mark, not physics.”

Pete liked to call Ramsey “the old man,” since he was already twenty-eight. The last time they were together was at a world geographic conference in China. China, more than any other nation, was embracing the analytical power of geographical thinking to guide decision-making at the highest level.

Ramsey recalled one odd thing about Pete's client work. Pete had said he was running a major watershed analysis of northern
New Mexico. At the time Ramsey wondered why this ambitious and brilliant scientist had taken on such a low-level scientific investigation. Then the last night of the conference, after many drinks, Pete had let it slip out that a company named the DeVere Diamond Group had funded the project.

Laughing, Ramsey had chided him, “What are you doing? Looking for diamonds in the New Mexico high desert?” Ramsey recalled that Miami's reaction was, “Whoops, did I say that to you. If I did I shouldn't have.” They laughed it off.

It dawned on Ramsey that this could be an important coincidence. A quick Internet search revealed a number of articles about
kimberlites
, the material in which diamonds are embedded, having been found around Raton and near the Colorado-New Mexico border. He dialed his old friend.

“Jonathan you old bugger, how the hell are you?”

“Fine, Pete! Hey, old bud, remember the time I talked that Eugene cop out of taking you to jail?”

“Only every time we talk.”

“Well, this time
I
need the favor.”

“Nothing about how are the kids and family, or about people you have kept up with from the old days?”

“What? Did you do kill them all again? . . . But I really need a favor. It'll be fun. By the way, I figured out what you're doing, you're looking for kimberlite pipes without a whisper to locals and government. It took me a while to understand why you would relegate yourself to a mundane watershed project.”

“Bright boy. Are you blackmailing me?” asked Pete.

“Me? I'm way too ethical. What have you got going there?”

“With the kind of money I have you wouldn't believe the kind of remote sensing instruments I'm developing.”

“And I have a project made for it,” Ramsey said. “I take it you have a lot of long-term data stored someplace. There is this area I need checked out. All you need to do is tell me if anything unusual has gone on in and around this area over the last 10 years. You know, any unusual readings.”

“Like what?”

“Remember when I was investigating sacred places, looking for any kind of energetic or physical factors that might be responsible for so-called religious experiences?”

“You're not going there again, are you?”

“I'm going to let you do it. How's that?”

Pete hesitated. “As I recall, it didn't turn out so well for you last time.”

“I guarantee you won't have to move a step from your armchair to do this for me.”

“So, where is this place?”

“I'll send you a link. . . . You'll do it?

Pete hummed a little tune that Ramsey recognized from their drinking days. It was the old Jeopardy final round theme. When the last note ended, he said, “I'll do it. Maybe I'll find God for you. Then you'll really owe me.”

“You'd like that. How long you think?”

“Maybe tomorrow I can get you some preliminaries.”

“That's crazy.”

“That's what they say about me. Stay free and silly, old man.”

Ramsey texted Pete the Rio Chama de Milagro Shrine link.

The next thing he had to do was look up Orensen's New Gnostics website.

September 2015
Pretoria, South Africa

G
reta Van Horn scrolled through the computer files the GIS expert showed her on his tablet. Eyes narrowing, she asked bluntly, “Are these numbers accurate?”

Doctor Philippe Lindstrom nodded. “The results of the computational analyses are quite remarkable,” he said, his Danish accent a pleasant lilt.

She stared at the displays again. “Anyone else know about this?”

“I'm the only one who has seen these, Ms. Horn. You were the first person I called.”

“Keep it that way. I don't see any reason to bother Pieter Haas with this until there's something more substantial.”

“Yes Ms. Horn.”

Greta quickly downloaded the files into her data stick. Pieter had to see this right away. She hurried down the hall to the elevator. Pressing the button, the door opened instantly. It was the only entrance to this part of building. No one knew of the secret research lab one-hundred meters beneath the soaring office complex of the DeVere Mining Group except for members of the board of directors. Ignoring the elevator buttons on the panel, she pulled out a round shaped key and inserted it into the lock at the bottom of the panel. She turned it clockwise. The elevator hummed upward to the chairman's private office.

DeVere had been the largest diamond company in the world for more than a century. There were younger companies nipping at their heels, especially in North America where new diamond possibilities had reportedly been found in Saskatchewan, Michigan, Wyoming and New Mexico, where DeVere held substantial interests.
And now this
, she thought, glancing though the papers a second time.

The elevator pinged and stopped. She straightened her conservative dark blue silk suit before hurrying across the hall and entering the closed door without announcing herself.

Pieter Haas was starring out the window at Pretoria. He didn't turn around. “It must be important, Greta,” he said. “You didn't knock.” The chairman of the DeVere Mining Group was a thin, well-groomed South African of Boer descent. His family traced their lineage back to the Voortrekkers who had escaped English rule in Cape Town and moved north and east into the Transvaal nearly 200 years ago.

“You'll want to see this,” Greta answered. She had been in the chairman's private penthouse many times, but the room never ceased to awe her. The suite was spacious with large picture windows on three sides giving an aerial view of the Magaliesberg Mountains forming a ring-like wall north of South Africa's third capital. Thick carpet covered the floor. Rare oil paintings of the Great Trek of the Dutch colonists, interspersed with Zulu and Ashanti art and artifacts, adorned the walls.

Haas turned slowly. His pale blue eyes narrowed as she walked across the room and handed him the thick file. “What's this?”

“Lindstrom, the Danish geologist who you have working with Pete Miami in America, gave it to me.” She handed him the data stick and he downloaded the information into his computer. She waited patiently as he scanned through the files. When his eyes widened, she added quickly, “Lindstrom's the only one who's seen this and I made certain you and I are the only ones he'll speak with about it.”

Haas nodded and strode to his desk. He gestured to Greta to sit down. “Does Doctor Miami suspect anything?”

“Not as far as I know. His drones have been sending us raw data looking for kimberlite signatures in the area of northern New Mexico. Lindstrom's the one who's been crunching the numbers.”

“We need to follow up,” Haas said. “Who's the man we've been using to buy land there for the company?”

Greta Van Horn didn't have to consult her notes. She instantly replied, “Raphael Núnez. He owns the Rio Chama Real Estate Company.”

“Have him ask around. See if he knows anything.”

She nodded, not taking any notes.

Haas smiled his pleasure at Greta Van Horn's abacus mind. She wasn't a smasher—too wide in the shoulders and hips, eyes slightly askew on her broad face—but she was precise and never forgot an order, a business contact, or the fine print in any contract. She never left an embarrassing paper trail of emails or memos, and on this project that was essential.

“Anything else, sir?” she asked.

Haas shook his head and watched her leave. Then he returned to the window. A low haze covered the mountain range. It was hot and humid outside. Inside his office the air and temperature were perfectly controlled, yet he could feel stickiness in his armpits. Unbidden into his thoughts came an image of the Samburu shaman he had met nearly forty years ago and the prophecy the strange old man had told him.

Maybe the old man was right.