The Adam Enigma (4 page)

C
ARLOTTA
M
OORE STOOD
on the porch of her adobe home. She was a tall, large-hipped, big-busted woman, sculpted like the ancient depictions of Gaia, the earth goddess. Hair rolled down her back in a waterfall of white and yellow curls. She wore an olivewood circlet around her head and a gauzy white dress that flittered upward in the afternoon breeze, revealing legs shaped like muscled pillars. Her eyes were dark and piercing, and yet she held out her arms and hugged Ramsey to her like an old friend.

“Let's sit outside,” she said and led him to a side porch where a carafe of coffee and two cups sat on a glass table. “I was glad you called. I'm happy to talk about that first night.”

Ramsey raised his eyebrows at the mention of
first night
.

She sat facing the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and the Milagro Shrine, which Ramsey, looking over his shoulder, could just about make out in the distance. The large cottonwood tree seemed brighter from here, and yet ethereal. He suddenly felt as if its essence had crossed the miles of rabbit grass and mesquite and now hovered about him in whispers of wind. Ramsey paused for a moment, trying to translate what the breeze was telling him.

“So you're a human geographer. Remind me again what they do.”

“We study the importance of place in every kind of human activity. Some of the most important places in the history of humanity are sacred places.”

“Like you said on the phone, you might study the history of the shrine?”

“I'm interested in how it got started. It'll help me decide if I want to proceed.”

“So, what would you like to know?”

If Ramsey had a special skill it was his ability to listen. To listen to a place. To listen to people while setting his personal preferences aside. “It is perhaps the most important skill a human geographer can have,” Jared Diamond had told him when Ramsey arrived at UCLA. From that moment on Ramsey consciously practiced developing that capacity.

“Rosa from Café Rio said you were at the Milagro Shrine from the beginning.”

“There was no shrine then. I'm the only one left from the original group.”

“What happened to the others?”

“They've all passed on.”

“They're dead?”

She laughed lightly. “I meant they've gone out into the world. That night changed us all.” Carlotta took a sip of coffee. Ramsey did the same and pursed his lips against the strong taste. “I brew it until a wooden spoon can stand up in the mix by itself. Then I add a little water. It's better for you that way.” She set hers down and leaned back.

Ramsey relaxed, his smile inviting her to tell him all about the original group and that first night.

“Back at the turn of the millennium a group of us teachers from our county started coming up here in August during the Perseid meteor showers. We thought of it as a way to inaugurate the new school year. If you've ever taught you know there's something special about the beginning of a new year. Gathering together to watch the meteor shower became sort of a ritual or pilgrimage. The place was special because it had a single cottonwood growing on a dry ridge. Plus the owner of the land didn't mind us being there. Then in 2003
we trooped up to the top of the hill and something different happened this time. It was August 12, at the height of the meteor shower. They were zipping across the night sky like Fourth of July fireworks. They seemed brighter than usual as though the gods had breathed fire into the night sky. The cottonwood tree shivered with every meteor that passed behind its massive branches. We were all gathered, sitting at the base of the tree, and that's when it happened.”

“What happened?” Ramsey asked.

“It was like a benediction . . . a feeling of deep peace and love fell over everyone. We all felt joy and goodness. Not just the good you feel waking up every morning glad you're still above ground, but good like you can go out and tackle the world. You believe in that kind of possibility?”

Ramsey gave a slight nod. “Go on.”

Carlotta smiled at him and said, “Guess how old I am.”

Ramsey sat back. In some of the Indian tribes he'd studied in the Amazon, a woman's age was a mark of respect and wisdom. Women in the U.S. weren't so blasé about getting older. “I'm thinking forty-five,” he ventured, ready to take it back in an instant.

She laughed loudly and said, “Fifty-five, but I feel half that age and have every day since that night. I have the energy of people thirty years younger than I am. The feeling has never gone away.”

“That's remarkable. Can you tell me what happened to the others?”

“The most amazing transformation was of a teacher from West Fork named William Benedict. He had rheumatoid arthritis. By the time we walked down to the cars he was flipping coins in the air and catching them. It was a true miracle.”

“Any other ‘miracles'?”

“Within a month Agnes left a bad relationship. My best friend, Francis, resigned from a job she loved and hadn't wanted to leave and went home to take care of her ailing parents. It was like we all experienced our own special miracle. I would say
transformational
miracle.”

Ramsey's mind was racing.
It was the old paradox—did these people make the place miraculous or did the place make the miracles?

“Then what happened?”

William was a science teacher and wanted to test to see if it would happen again. The next night he brought some other people with different illnesses and some of them got better. The shrine grew from that time to what you see out there now. People coming here getting healed finding new direction in their life, until . . . I'm sure you know what's happened.”

She stopped, reached for her coffee. Her hand shook slightly as if a great sob were about to escape from her chest. Ramsey could see there was something more about the first days of the Milagro shrine she wanted to share, something that brought a touch of sadness and uncertainty to her life. He let his eyes smile, sending out gratitude and support to her. It was an interview technique he'd honed to get people to relax so they would speak more honestly about issues.

She tapped her fingers against the cup. “There's something I believe you should see.” Carlotta got up and went into the house, bringing back a picture. “Here's the original group a couple years later.”

Ramsey studied the photograph. Ten people were clustered about the cottonwood tree. It was late summer, judging by the dark brown grass. The sky was dark blue without a cloud. Everyone was dressed in shorts and t-shirts. They smiled brightly and a couple on the far left held up fingers in a
V
for peace. Ramsey's eyes were drawn to the man next to the couple. He was standing a bit apart, as though not really a member of the group.
That looks like the person I saw under the cottonwood this morning.

He pointed to the man and asked, “Who's that?”

“My half brother. He wasn't part of our teacher's group, but I brought him along because I thought the exercise would do him good. He'd been in a terrible motorcycle accident a few months earlier while living in Des Moines.. I brought him here to convalesce. At the time he could barely walk and couldn't talk at all. It was like his brain and body had been pulverized. My two sons and me are his only living family. As he got better, he became sort of the unofficial caretaker of the shrine. That is, up until around two months ago.”

Ramsey raised his eyebrows. “Where is he now?”

Carlotta's jovial manner deadened and she shook her head. “Don't know. He just disappeared. A tear fell from her eye. “No explanation, no good-bye. At the shrine on a Tuesday and gone on Wednesday.”

Ramsey briefly wondered if he should say anything to her about the man he saw, but he couldn't be sure it was the same person, and he didn't want the conversation to get stuck here. Instead he asked, “His name is . . . ?”

“Gwillt. Adam Gwillt. His father was a Scot. He died two years after Adam was born. Mom returned to the states and married Clement Moore, my father. I wish Adam were here; he could tell you a lot more about the everyday working of the Milagro Shrine than I can. Of course, you can always talk to Father Michael.”

“I might,” Ramsey said, remembering the former priest he'd met at the shrine.

“Good.” Carlotta frowned, the sudden disappearance of her brother still quite painful. “Call him . . . Father Michael can answer the questions I can't.”

Ramsey nodded, wondering what those questions might be. In the next instant, he stifled a yawn, realizing he would never call Father Michael to find out. The visit with Carlotta was interesting, but it didn't change his mind any about taking the job.

He got up to leave. “Thanks for the coffee and I'm so sorry about your brother. I hope Adam turns up.”

She followed him out to the driveway. As he started to get into his car, she put her hand on his and said, “You really should call Father Michael. I have his number.”

“Thanks. If I come back, I'll get it.” Ramsey was anxious to leave. The correlation between the person who spoke to him under the Cottonwood tree and Adam Gwillt had shaken him. He searched his memory for what he knew about apparitional experiences. Apparitions were at the heart of many sacred sites. Appearances of Mary or even Christ at holy Christian sites were common phenomena. In some cases, mass apparitions were at the center of a sacred site's beginnings. He also remembered that many people experience ghostly apparitions of recently departed lovers, friends, and family members. A few months ago he had read an article about how quantum scientists postulated
that our linear time is flexible in higher dimensions and that we can on some occasions slip in and out of our four-dimensional world and experience apparitions of celestial beings. One researcher even speculated these dimensional shifts could account for phenomena such as the sudden appearance of guardian angels. Ramsey reasoned that if he just experienced an apparition of Adam Gwillt it meant that he must be dead. Or did it?

July, 2012
Abilene, Texas

“I
just got another demand from Reverend Billy Paul,” Hiram Beecher said, shaking a huge fist at the notebook computer and its collage of photos from the Rio Chama de Milagro Shrine in New Mexico. “He wants us to investigate this supposed new Christian healing shrine in New Mexico. He thinks it might be an opportunity for us.”

He was standing in the boardroom of the Brothers of the Lord, a worldwide Christian ministry, whose regional headquarters for the Southwest United States was in Abilene, Texas. The top floor offices looked down on historic Cypress Street, once busy with cars and pedestrians visiting its small shops. But the district was still as empty and dusty as it was during the first year of the Great Recession. Clustered around him were the eleven other members of the board, all of them waiting for Brother Beecher to tell them what he wanted.

Beecher enjoyed his position of power in the Brotherhood. He was a giant, florid man, in his mid-60s, as hard as the oilrigs he had worked on as a teenager in Gregg County in Eastern Texas, and as tough as the Airborne Rangers he'd joined at the height of America's war effort in Vietnam. His clothes were plain; his dark beard was flecked with gray like his hair. The last two fingers were missing from his left hand. They had been mangled by twisted parachute lines during a jump into Laos. He'd cut them off, bandaged the hand and completed his clandestine mission.

“What does he want, Brother Beecher?” Sam Conklin asked. He was the youngest board member. He was shorter than Beecher and not as thick. “I hear the shrine heals the sick and gives peace to all who visit. It's located near the ruins of a sacred mission, where God's priests were slaughtered by heathens.”

Beecher was surprised that Conklin knew a lot about something he had never heard of. Conklin was headstrong at times, blurting out whatever he thought instead of watching and waiting, but Beecher needed his connections to the oil and cattle wealth in central Texas.

“He wants as much information as we can find on this shrine,” said Beecher. “The New Mexico region is part of our responsibility for the Brothers of the Lord. I'll take the lead on investigating the shrine's healing powers. I want the rest of you to find out who owns the land. Is it for sale? When did the shrine start?”

August, 2015
New York City

“
I
am the archetype of transformation. I am Hermes, I am Loki, I am Coyote.”

His human name was Edward Caine and he loved hearing himself say, “I am Coyote, the creator of the world.” But today he would be Coyote the Trickster.

Edward Caine waited patiently for the battle to begin. The sky was clear and the morning already warm. By noon it would be hot and humid but by then it would no longer matter. He smiled to himself. This was a milestone in his life—4000 years of prodding humanity forward, of shaking humans from their complacency. The event he planned for today was magnificent, and worthy of Hermes, messenger of the Greek gods; of Loki, the Norse god of fire; and of Coyote, the Lakota creator of the world.
And why not
, he thought.
Are they not come alive again in me?
He breathed in deeply, felt the first rays of the morning sun prickle his skin.
Thank you Helios for your gift of light so all can see when I let loose the dogs of havoc
.
For is not Hermes also the Thief? . . . is not Loki the God of Chaos, and is not my favorite, Coyote, also the Trickster?

Caine often appeared as a man of thirty-one, five feet, ten inches tall, a trim 150 pounds, dark haired, with green eyes. But today he looked like a modern-day Falstaff—long hair the color of wet sand pulled back in a ponytail with a length of tarred hemp; plump cheeks crosshatched with the blue streaks of broken veins from drinking
too much. A huge belly pushed through the patched sackcloth tunic and overflowed the motley pants he wore. He limped across the field, leaning on a staff for support.

Edward Caine took great delight in what he was about to do. He marveled at the brilliance of his plan. Today he was playing a common soldier in the army of Henry Tudor, leader of the House of Lancaster and rival to Richard III, head of the House of York and King of England. Both sides were made up of re-enactors from the Society for Creative Anachronism, staging the Battle of Bosworth Field at Sheep Meadow in New York City's Central Park on the 530
^th
anniversary of the real contest.

Caine had not yet spied his quarry, Frank Ketterman. He was playing the role of John Howard, First Duke of Norfolk. A supporter of King Richard, Howard died at the Battle of Bosworth from an arrow in his face while defending his liege lord. Ketterman, the top asset manager at Citibank, had been the Bank's principal overseer of the subprime mortgage market throughout the first decade of the millennium. The government bailed out Citibank and the others but did almost nothing for the homeowners. Seven years later Ketterman was Wall Street's principal representative in secret negotiations with the U.S. government to settle all liability issues that might be brought against the banks.

Caine took his eyes off the Yorkists and checked the onlookers behind the police barricades who had come to watch a medieval battle reenactment. A few policemen on horseback rode quietly through the crowd. Other cops were scattered throughout, most paying no attention to the people but gazing at the field, grinning and pointing.

Easing forward through the Lancaster lines, Caine positioned himself at the front.

The battle's start was fifteen minutes late. The combatants were waiting for the re-enactors, King Richard and the Duke of Norfolk, who had not yet emerged from the Yorkist's ornate pavilion. It rose golden behind the lines of troops. A standard with the Royal Coat of Arms for England fluttered at the entrance. The top half beneath a jeweled crown bore three French crosses and three
lions passant
while the bottom half-reversed the same images. Beneath the shield
in lettering large enough for all to read was the monarchy's motto in French:
Dieu et mon droit
(“God and my right”).

The Trickster nodded.
Very apt. The bankers think of themselves as barons and untouchable. But I can bring every one of them bad fortune whenever I please
.

The tent flap swung open and Caine watched Ketterman stride through the men at arms. He wore a metal cuirass over chainmail armor, mailed gloves, greaves, and a helmet with a face guard. On his shoulder was a white rose surrounded by the colors of his house—black and red. He yelled at everyone and kicked the young page who held his sword.

Caine took his eyes off his target and checked the field. The armies were lining up on opposite sides, readying for the horn blast that would send them hurtling across the field at each other. The early morning sun glinted off chainmail and helmets. Pennants showing the red rose of Lancaster and the white rose of York fluttered in the breeze. These were anachronisms, of course. In the real dynastic wars for control of England, neither the House of Lancaster nor the House of York had chosen a rose as their emblem. To which gods each side prayed, Caine was not sure, but he was sure the Trickster had been there, bringing good and bad fortune to each side.

Any moment now, Caine thought. A horn sounded once. The re-enactors readied themselves. Another blast and they raised their weapons—harmless foam maces and broadswords—high into the air. He checked his own weapon. The staff concealed a tiny needle coated with
ethyldichloroarsine
, a nerve agent that caused burning pain, sneezing, coughing, vomiting, and pulmonary edema—followed by death.

A third wail from the horn and a great yell rose from nearly five hundred throats. The lines charged each other.

The Trickster zigzagged through the melee, never taking his eyes from his quarry. Reveling in the chaos, he avoided battle with Yorkists when he could. When forced, he quickly dispatched opponents with sharp blows from his staff to the soft tissue behind the knee, knocking them down and leaving them unharmed. But at last Ketterman stood in front of him. The man's faceplate had swung open. He was four inches taller than Caine and sneered at him.

“Henry Tudor dispatches a fat old man to fight me. Let the usurper send a champion who is worthy.” He raised his foam broadsword to strike.

“It isn't Henry Tudor I fight for,” Caine said.

Ketterman's blow halted in the air above the Trickster's head. “”What is this?”

Taking advantage of the bigger man's hesitation, Caine jammed the staff into the armpit at the weakest part of the armor and released the dart. The thin needle slipped easily through the chainmail's linked metal rings. Ketterman jerked once. “What!” he gasped. He tried to take a step and fell to his knees. His face contorted in a grimace. Hands clawed at his cuirass and he cried out against the sharp itching pain. He slid over onto his side. Violent coughing wracked him and his arms fell shaking to the ground. “Who are you?” he rasped.

The Trickster watched the banker struggle, his movements growing weaker. Panic filled the man's eyes. He could no longer speak. Bloody foam rimmed his mouth. Caine leaned in close and whispered, “Today I am your bad fortune.” He closed the faceplate. Turning slowly, he saw that the battle had by-passed him. He stared down at Ketterman who now lay still as a corpse, though he wasn't yet dead. That would come much later after much pain. He walked away casually toward the northern edge of Sheep Meadow and the Neil Singer Lilac Walk. Tomorrow there would be a slight downtick in the financial markets and the public would not know why. But those in power would.

Ketterman was the third principal bank negotiator he had dispatched in a year. Bringing bad fortune to these people was Caine's way of destroying and re-creating the world.
I have done well and had fun doing it.

During the preceding few weeks Caine had shocked a number of people who in one form or another were in conflict with Ketterman with the tweet “Ketterman will soon join his ancestors.” His death would work to their advantage if they prepared to act quickly. One of those people was Sam Conklin. That's how the Trickster and Conklin met over a simple tweet. Conklin thought it was a miracle, but Caine knew better.