“That’s okay,” Locke said. “Miles Benson has hired a private firm for our security. They’re on the way to pick us up now.”
Perez raised an eyebrow. “Fine, then. When I know anything about your attackers, I’ll let you know.” He and Agent Harris walked away together.
Dilara turned on Locke.
“How could you give up so easily?” she demanded. “Coleman could be the key to this whole thing! We need to know about Oasis.”
Locke looked directly at Dilara. “I don’t give up. We’re going to get into Coleman’s office tonight.”
“How? Without a warrant…”
“We don’t need one,” he said.
“Why not?”
“I don’t think John Coleman died in an accident. I knew him. He was a great engineer, very careful. Which means somebody murdered him. And anyone who could plan an oil platform disaster could have staged an accident that killed John. He may not have even known he was in danger. He wouldn’t have been involved in something criminal, at least not wittingly.”
“How does that help us?” Dilara pressed, sounding frustrated. “How can we get into his office?”
“You said Sam Watson told you they killed your father. Would you let someone search his office if you thought that person could find his murderer?”
“Of course. In a second.”
“Well, let’s hope your reaction is universal. John Coleman has a daughter.”
TWENTY-THREE
Pharmacologist David Deal awoke drenched in sweat. His eyes fluttered open and took in the sparsely decorated room he had been confined to as part of his final initiation as a Level Ten. Other than the single bed with its thin blanket and sheet, the only objects in the room were a metal desk, a cane-backed chair, and the coveted Final Chapter of the Holy Hydronastic Church. An alcove held a sink and toilet. The thick door was the lone exit from the 10-foot-square room.
Human contact occurred only when meals were brought in three times a day during the last six days of the initiation that all Hydronasts aspired to. As a faithful Level Nine, he had been deemed worthy just two days ago and had been flown out to Orcas Island for the Ritual, as it was known. There were only 300 Level Tens in the entire church, and he felt blessed to be asked to achieve his ultimate goal.
He’d been through a process much like this for each level, but this one had been the most intense, the most spiritual. He had read and reread the Final Chapter until he had memorized it verbatim. Suddenly everything he had learned in the Bible made sense. It was as if his soul had been mired in quicksand, and the teachings of the faithful leader, Sebastian Garrett, had plucked it from its thrashing and soothed it with his wise and beautiful words.
He knew the isolation was an important part of the Ritual, and it didn’t bother him at all. Dressed only in a pure, white robe, he was able to explore the visions he saw with rapt attention.
Since he didn’t have a clock, Deal didn’t know how long it had been since he finished dinner, but he had had enough time to read the Final Chapter halfway through again. The mind-expanding power of the words filled his head until he could feel his soul transcending its normal boundaries. The light weightlessness was the first sign of the impending vision, and he fervently waited for its arrival.
Then a firework of light exploded in his brain, causing Deal to fall backward into the bed. He opened his eyes, and the brilliant starbursts faded away. He had been told that the Final Chapter wasn’t the whole Truth, that the visions were his personal insights into what the Final Chapter actually meant, and each individual Level Ten was the recipient of his own Truth. That was why he desperately wanted to see another vision, to reveal the last bits of Truth.
Then it came. The sounds, the lights, the words. They told of a new beginning for the earth, a beginning that he was to be an instrumental part of. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever experienced.
As he caressed the back of Svetlana Petrova, Sebastian Garrett watched David Deal on the three monitors, and the ecstasy on the man’s face told him everything he needed to know. Another sheep had entered the fold.
“I love watching this,” Petrova said in a Slavic purr from her perch on Garrett’s desk. “It’s so sexy. The power. The control.” She ran her hand through Garrett’s hair, sending a tingle down his spine.
“I thought the indoctrinations were complete,” she said. “The target number was 300, no? We’re almost evenly split between men and women. Why do we need this man?”
“He has special skills, ones that I thought Watson would bring to the project. With Watson gone, I thought it was prudent to bring in someone else to replace him.”
“You are truly a wise man. That’s only one of the reasons I love you.”
Since he had his own vision for the Holy Hydronastic Church ten years before, Garrett had scoured the universities for the best and brightest scientists, engineers, and thinkers. It had been a lengthy and arduous process to recruit the men and women he felt would be amenable to the church’s teachings. He had to find the right combination of intelligence and receptiveness to his philosophy.
The indoctrination process was finely honed through years of development. At the beginning, initiates didn’t even know a church was involved. It was more about a common goal for a better planet, one rid of both human suffering and contempt for the earth’s natural treasures.
Then they were wined and dined and brought to one of the church’s facilities in a resort destination: Maui, the Bahamas, Acapulco. There they were treated not only to a fine vacation, but also to spirited discussions about how to improve humanity’s lot. If they continued to show a willingness to further the same goals Garrett’s church had, the next step was a trip to Orcas Island.
When they arrived, they were asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement so iron-clad that breaking it would bring penalties severe enough to make the signatory a pauper for the rest of his life. The NDA was intended to keep malcontents from revealing the church’s practices. There were no exceptions, and those who wouldn’t sign were immediately escorted off the property. Garrett didn’t care about them; they weren’t the types who would be useful to his cause anyway.
Then came the real test — the Leveling. David Deal was in his last Leveling to Level Ten, the most mind- altering of them. Each person progressed in Leveling at a different rate, but only the ones who showed the most promise were promoted to anything above Level Five. Garrett needed a pharmacologist in his New World. He thought it would be Watson, but he’d been disappointed when he found that Watson had betrayed him. Deal was his next choice, which was why the scientist was now staring in rapture at the hologram projected into his room.
It was a state-of-the-art setup, with hidden projectors in multiple corners of the room. The air was suffused with a light smoke, barely visible until laser light was played over it. The drugs that had been developed by Garrett’s company and laced into Deal’s food made him more susceptible to the suggestion that the images were a product of his imagination rather than technology.
All of these procedures were necessary to ensure that each person received the most deeply-felt religious experience of his life. Of course, there were risks associated with such an intense process. It was during one of these sessions that Rex Hayden’s brother had a seizure and subsequently died. The autopsy had shown a genetic defect in his heart, and Garrett had been grateful that the man hadn’t survived to become a flawed member of his New World.
Ever since the death, Rex Hayden had been relentless in trying to expose the inner workings of the church, which he felt was responsible for his brother’s death. Cutter’s idea to test the Arkon on Hayden’s plane had been a just method for punishing Hayden’s interference.
For the rest of Garrett’s adherents, the effect of the leveling was profound. Few coming out of these rooms doubted that what they had seen was a spirit guiding them to a better life. The ones who still questioned what had happened were either excommunicated from the church, or they were disposed of in more permanent ways in the
