Milwaukee’s tracks; the one bit of his public background that wasn’t far from the truth. He’d left home when he was seventeen or eighteen and joined the army where he learned how to take care of himself physically, and where he used his street smarts to run several illegal operations at each base he was assigned to; gambling and prostitution rings as well as trafficking tax-free booze and cigarettes from the PX, which he sold on the black market in Europe.
But he’d apparently run through the money he’d made, and after the army he’d ended up broke and busted in San Francisco at the age of twenty-one. Newly released from the county lockup he’d stumbled into a small storefront church that fed the homeless, and it was there, according to Gunther’s researchers, that Deutsch found his salvation — his financial salvation.
Changing his name, he took up the old-time religion, which initially included faith healing, to conceal the exact amount that his growing flock of believers invested in God through the Reverend Jeremiah. He opened storefront churches all up and down the California coast, raking in money by the tens of thousands at first and then into the hundreds of thousands.
And Schlagel was not only very good at his preaching, he was a charmer, Gunther wrote in his report. Parishioners gave him money, which he supposedly invested for them, giving them a good return and only keeping a tithe for the church. In actuality he’d been running a highly successful Ponzi scheme that depended on the continual growth of his ministry and investors, and the provision that if a member left the church, his or her investments would remain with the church — to do God’s will.
Eventually he sucked in beat cops, then police chiefs, local businessmen, and finally the mayors of some of the small towns where he preached, as well as state legislators.
He bought his first radio station in Fresno in the late eighties, then another in Port Angeles, Washington — by then he had branched out to a half-dozen western states, so that he was raking in enough money from ordinary contributions that he was able to pay off the last of his Ponzi scheme investors.
Then eleven years ago Schlagel moved his ministry to McPherson, a small town in western Kansas, built a huge church and television studio and started his own Soldiers of Salvation (SOS) Network that was initially based on Pat Robertson’s 707 Club on the Christian Broadcasting Network. Within five years, his television and radio networks, as well as newspapers and magazines across the country, made him not only one of the most popular preachers on air, but brought him to the attention of presidents, and just three years ago
Besides money and the good life he led in secret, Schlagel’s chief ambition had become the same as Pat Robertson’s; he wanted to be President of the United States, and he was willing to do whatever it took to get there.
They shook hands when she reached him, and she smiled. She was going to get him the White House, and Hutchinson Island would be his start as well as her salvation.
“You’re looking particularly chic this evening,” he told her. He was dressed in a smartly tailored charcoal gray suit, and the look on his face was that of a man who was supremely confident that he was about to be handed the universe.
“Thanks,” Anne Marie said, and they sat down.
Schlagel had already ordered a bottle of Krug champagne, and he poured her a glass. “It’s your favorite,” he said. “I remembered, though when I’m alone I prefer a cold Bud. Simple tastes for a simple man.”
Anne Marie had to laugh at his disingenuousness. “Bullshit, Donald,” she said softly, and he became suddenly wary, like an animal who figured he was being backed into a corner and wanting to get out rather than fight.
“Interesting name,” he said, his smile fading.
“Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea you coming here. We shouldn’t be seen together.”
“After tonight we won’t be,” he said. “But something like this cannot be trusted to some Internet connection, or satellite phone, even if it’s encrypted.”
“What do you want?” Anne Marie asked.
“Is Hutchinson Island the opening gun?”
“Yes,” Anne Marie said, and she watched as the ramifications of the disaster began to hit him, what it could mean for him, and how it could be manipulated to his advantage.
“What’s in it for you?” he asked.
“I want you to turn public sentiment against nuclear energy. It’s your new cause. You had your revelation that something like this was going to happen, and now it has. Nuclear energy is against the laws of God and nature, and should be damned. The devil’s business.”
“Never preach to a preacher,” Schlagel said. “All I want to know is what’s in it for you, because I don’t even want to hear how you pulled it off. Where’s the gain for you, ’cause sure as hell you can’t believe that simply shutting down the hundred or so nuclear power plants in the States will have any serious effect on the price of oil. Anyway you’ve been selling short, so you’ve made money on the way up and on the way back down.”
“Never talk financial dealings with a Harvard MBA and a hedge fund manager who has no risk of going broke anytime soon.”
Schlagel laughed. “But Hutchinson Island is just a start. I can make it something my people will believe in, but there’ll have to be more.”
“Even if it was possible to cause another meltdown, it’s too risky.”
“Haven’t you been watching the news?” Schlagel asked. “You ever heard of Eve Larsen, an environmental scientist working for NOAA?”
Anne Marie shook her head. “Should I have?” she asked, but something in Schlagel’s change of attitude all of a sudden was bothersome.
“Yes, because she’s just become my new cause. Hutchinson Island is good, the timing is perfect, but Dr. Larsen has become even better.”
“What are you talking about?”
“She’s been preaching alternative energy sources. She wants all the nukes to be shut down, but she also wants to shut down coal-fired electrical plants as well as natural gas facilities and she wants all cars to run on electricity.”
“Won’t happen anytime soon,” Anne Marie said. “People hammering away at that idea are a dime a dozen. Everyone listens, but just to be polite. Oil is here to stay at least through the end of the century.” But even as she said it, something in the way Schlagel was watching her made her afraid.
“She wants to buy an oil platform and put it in the Gulf Stream, and stick some sort of paddle wheels into the water to generate electricity. She says she can supply all the electricity we need without burning coal or gas or use nukes.”
“Wouldn’t work.”
“Wait, there’s more,” Schlagel said, his deep brown eyes flashing. He was into a sermon, but he was enough in control to keep his voice low. “And it keeps getting better. Where do you think she wants to put her rig? Right offshore from Hutchinson Island. She wants to send her power through underwater cables to the plant’s electrical distribution system, and shut down the reactors.”
Anne Marie had heard nothing about this, and she knew she should have. “Coincidence?”
“Doesn’t matter. She’s promising not only cheap electricity to power our trains, planes, trucks, and cars, but she’s preaching that she’ll change the weather. Get rid of all those nasty hurricanes and such.” Schlagel’s grin broadened. He was reaching his point. “Now that’s God’s work she’s setting herself to do. Her own private little God project.”
Anne Marie’s anxiety eased a little. “The woman is a crackpot.”
“Well, the crackpot has just gone and won herself the Nobel Peace Prize, what do you think about them apples?”
Anne Marie sat back, trying to see the advantages, because surely they were there, hidden somewhere in the clutter. “She’ll have to fail,” she mumbled half to herself, but Schlagel picked up on it.
“You’re damned right. Hutchinson Island will be my rallying point, but the woman’s God Project will be my battle cry, and I’ll need as much time as possible to get my people behind me — to get the entire country so up in arms against nuclear power, and against the kind of tinkering she wants to do on God’s playing field that our oil will
