Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

Virginia Downsborough did not observe any broken limbs, but recognized that Ron needed
nursing. 'I moved into an adjoining room in the hotel to take care of him. He refused to eat the hotel
food, so I got a little hotplate and cooked meals for him in the room, simple things, things that he
liked. My main concern was to try and get him off all the pills he was on and persuade him that
there was still plenty for him to do. He was sleeping a lot and refused to get out of bed.
'I don't know what drugs he was taking - they certainly weren't making him high - but I knew I had to
get him over it. I discussed it with him and gradually took them away. He didn't carry on about it. He
had brought a great pile of unopened mail with him from Tangier, a lot of it from Mary Sue, and I got
him to start reading her letters. After about three weeks he decided he would get out of bed and he
started taking little walks and then he got interested in what was happening on the Enchanter and
after that he was all right.'
Mary Sue flew in to Las Palmas as soon as Ron was back on his feet and Virginia Downsborough
was instructed to find the Hubbards a house. She rented the Villa Estrella, a pretty white-painted
hacienda with a red-tiled roof on a rocky promontory facing the sea, about forty-five minutes drive
from Las Palmas. 'I cooked dinner for them at the house every evening,' she said. 'Ron used to like
to sit up and talk half the night long after Mary Sue had gone to bed. He had this intense ability to
communicate and it was fascinating to listen to him. I was intrigued by the concept he presented of
himself as being a constant victim of women.
'He talked a lot about Sara Northrup and seemed to want to make sure that I knew he had never
married her. I didn't know why it was so important to him; I'd never met Sara and I couldn't have
cared less, but he wanted to persuade me that the marriage had never taken place. When he
talked about his first wife, the picture he put out of himself was of this poor wounded fellow coming
home from the war and being abandoned by his wife and family because he would be a drain on
them. He said he had planned every move along the way with Mary Sue to avoid being victimized
again.'[4]
When the Enchanter came off the ways in the harbour at Las Palmas, Hubbard took her out on
extended cruises round the Canary Islands to search for gold he had buried in previous lives. 'He
would draw little maps for us,' said Virginia Downsborough, 'and we would be sent off to dig for
buried treasure. He told us he was hoping to replace the Enchanter's ballast with solid gold. I
thought it was great fun - the best show on earth.'
All these activities were supposed to remain a closely guarded secret and Hubbard insisted on the
use of elaborate codes in Sea Org communications. In a despatch to Saint Hill he urged his
followers not to feel '007ish and silly' about security. 'When you have had the close calls I have had
in intelligence through security failures,' he said, 'you begin to believe there is something in the
subject. I was once in 1940 ordered out on a secret mission by the US to a hostile foreign land with
whom we were not yet at war. It was vital to mask my purpose there. It would have been fatal had I
been known to have been a naval officer. On a hunch I didn't leave at once and the following day the
US sent a letter to me that had I left would have been forwarded to me in that land, addressing me
with full rank and title, informing me to wear white cap covers after April 15 in Washington. Had I
departed, that letter, following me, would have sentenced me to death before a firing squad!'[5]
While Hubbard was in Las Palmas he developed phobias about dust and smells which were the
cause of frequent explosive temper tantrums. He was always complaining that his clothes smelled
of soap or he was being choked by dust that no one else could detect. No matter how frequently the
Enchanter's decks were scrubbed, she was never clean enough for the Commodore. Similarly, the
routine drive between the harbour and the Villa Estrella became an ordeal for everyone in the car.