Randy White - Everglades

As we walked out of the trees, we could see people running. Men and women in their bright robes; some in regular clothes, too. Some seemed to be running aimlessly, as if panicked or crazed. Most, though, were running toward the parking lot where a line of cars had bottlenecked at the exit. Horns blaring, some drivers were cutting cross-country to escape the line and get back to the main road.

One thing was clear-people were fleeing the area out of fear.

Holding Sally between us, we walked against the flow of people toward the amphitheater. We headed that way partly out of curiosity-what was happening?-but mostly because we wanted to find Billie or James. They both had cell phones, and I wanted to notify law enforcement just as soon as possible. Klein might be at an airport right now, waiting to fly out.

I also wanted to call an EMS chopper for Sally. I’d checked her eyes. Her pupils weren’t dilated or fixed, but that didn’t guarantee that she hadn’t suffered a concussion.

As we approached, we could see that the amphitheater had emptied. To the right, though, off in the cluster of trees where I’d first found Tomlinson, the Egret Seminoles had gathered, their colorful shirts and blouses dulled by the fading light. Karlita was with them.

She walked toward us, saying, “I’m sorry, Tomlinson. I know you don’t approve, but we had no choice.”

Behind her, in a somber tone, Billie Egret said to us, “He’s gone. The Everglades took him. It had to be. If you give bad, you get bad in return. If you take, you have to give-and Shiva, he took souls. ”

None of which made any sense to me until I looked where Billie was now pointing. The amphitheater’s concentric levels of seating remained. But where the stage and acoustic dome had once stood, there was now…

I had to stare to be sure, brain scanning for explanation… where the stage and acoustic dome had once stood, there was now a circular lake, water roiled and murky, lots of trash and flotsam on the surface.

Billie told us, “When the first tremors started, the Ashram followers were so excited. I thought they’d won. I thought Shiva had won. But then, after the third tremor, chunks of the dome began to fall. Then the whole stage collapsed and fell, like going down a waterfall. The earth collapsed beneath it. A sinkhole.”

Karlita added, “People were terrified. They panicked. It was frightening to watch.”

His voice subdued, perhaps in awe, Tomlinson asked, “When it happened, was he alone? Was Shiva the only one on stage?”

“Yes. He was alone. I wish you had been here to witness the… power of it.”

We would witness it. Worldwide, anyone with a TV could witness what happened that Easter Sunday over and over because Shiva’s film crew had captured it on video. The segment became standard fare for reality-based disaster shows: Jerry Singh-Bhagwan Shiva-in his purple robes, still leading his followers in that metonymic chant.

We will…

Boom!

Move the earth.

Boom!

I will…

Boom!

Make the earth move!

Then there is a close-up of Singh grinning triumphantly as the camera lens begins to vibrate with one… two… three earth tremors… his followers cheering but still chanting; chanting faster now:

We will…

Boom!

Move the earth.

The close-up continues as Shiva’s expression changes from joy to a kind of stunned surprise as chunks of stucco begin to fall on him from the acoustic dome. He’d been sitting in full lotus position, but he gets quickly to his feet, perplexed.

Then all color drains from his face-an illustration of fear, then horror, as the rear of the stage collapses. The initial collapse created a momentary, marble incline, water already boiling up to take it.

The last shot shows Shiva clawing desperately, trying to keep from sliding into the pit below. He’s screaming something, but there’s so much peripheral noise, his words are indecipherable.

Above him, the laser hologram of the solar system continues to orbit, unaffected.

Then he is gone; the stage, dome, the prophet of Ashram, all swallowed up by a flooding darkness.

Three days later, The Miami Herald reported that a charter captain, his boat loaded with tourist scuba divers, found Shiva’s body floating off Marathon and Molasses Reef, more than a hundred miles south of Sawgrass.

Geologists from the University of Florida provided an explanation. The sinkhole created by the series of explosions had collapsed into an underground river-the Long Key Formation. The river had swept Shiva’s body along beneath sawgrass, swamp, mangrove fringe and all of Florida Bay, before jettisoning him into open sea.

Billie Egret had a more succinct explanation for me: “Reciprocity.” chapter thirty-one

Eleven days later, on Thursday, the first day of May, two FBI agents came to the marina, asking for Tomlinson. They had a warrant to search No Mas, and they impounded his computer.

Aboard his sailboat, in the icebox, they found a sandwich bag filled with what appeared to be cannabis.

The agents used the discovery as leverage. They told Tomlinson that they were investigating what may have been an eco-terrorist bombing at Sawgrass in the Everglades. They said they had cause to believe that he might have been a participant. If he cooperated, talked freely, they’d forget they found the marijuana. If he didn’t, he was going to jail now.

He requested a few minutes alone with me before he decided.

“What’ll happen if they arrest me?”

“Ask a lawyer, not me.”

“But I am asking you.”

I said, “If they arrest you, you’ll be taken to the jail in downtown Fort Myers. Tomorrow, you’ll have your first court appearance, where the judge will consider bail-which you won’t get. Not if they have you pegged as an eco-terrorist. Then you’ll go back to jail until your hearing, where you’ll be formally charged. After that, you’ll go back to jail until your trial’s over, which will be a very long time. Call an attorney.”

He said, “I think I’ll talk with them. They’ve got to know it was all Izzy Kline.”

I told him, “Call an attorney! That’s exactly what you should do.”

He thought about that for a moment, twisting a lock of hair with his long, nervous fingers. “I don’t know. Jail might be kind of peaceful. It’s getting worse and worse, you know.”

He meant the number of daily visitors the marina now received; devotees of Tomlinsonism.

Long before the events of Easter Sunday, unknown to any of us, several of Shiva’s own followers-now former followers-had been deeply touched by Tomlinson’s paper. It was they who were now spreading the word, via the Internet, that Tomlinson had been in attendance at the Cypress Ashram that amazing night. That he had personally exposed Bhagwan Shiva for the fraud he was.

It was also Tomlinson’s powerful aura, they suggested, that had catalyzed Shiva’s doom. So, ironically, Tomlinson had won the devotion of a growing number of people who had once followed the only man that I feel he genuinely despised.

“Get a lawyer,” I repeated.

But Tomlinson was shaking his head. “Nope. I’m going to sit down and tell them the truth. Frankly, I’m pulling for some jail time.”

He didn’t get it. Two weeks later, one of the agents phoned him, said that he was no longer considered a suspect, and he was free to travel anywhere he wanted.

The next day, Tomlinson slipped his mooring before sunrise, and sailed for Key West.

I’d been carrying on an investigation of my own. Quietly. Privately.

By FedEx, I’d sent the shotgun shell that, hopefully, carried Klein’s fingerprints, to Hal Harrington. No one had more varied intelligence assets available than Hal-not even the FBI.