Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

The three of them checked in using false names: Hubbard was Lawrence Harris, Preston was Don
Shannon and Dincalci was Frank Morris. Dincalci then went across the street to a deli and bought
lunch. Back in the hotel, he asked the Commodore if he should return to the ship, but Hubbard did
not seem to understand the question. Next day, he sent Dincalci out to buy clothes for all of them
and to look for a place to live; the question of Dincalci returning to the ship was never mentioned
again.
Dincalci soon found a suitable apartment in Queens, in a fifteen-storey building with its own heated
swimming-pool called 'The Executive'. It was in a safe, upper middle-class residential area close to
Forest Hills and convenient for the subway. For the first few weeks, Hubbard did nothing but watch
television all day long, switching from channel to channel, absorbed by everything from soap
operas to rock music shows.
The America to which Hubbard had returned after an absence of nearly a decade had changed
beyond his recognition, particularly when viewed through a colour television screen. It was a
country obsessed with the unfolding revelations of Watergate, haunted by a war incomprehensibly
lost in Vietnam and beset by crises, not least in confidence. The Commodore of the Sea Org knew
little of the black crisis, the urban crisis, the drugs crisis, the energy crisis or any of the events that
were branded into the American conscience by place names such as Kent State, Attica and
Chappaquiddick.
While Preston stayed in the apartment to look after Hubbard, Dincalci went out every day to the
United Nations building to research international extradition laws. A few days before Christmas
1972, he returned to the apartment and told Ron he was in the clear; he had established beyond
doubt that the United States would not extradite its own citizens. Hubbard began making plans to
travel, to visit the org in Los Angeles. He even thought about throwing a party, but within a couple of
days a message arrived from the Guardian's Office in California telling him he was still not safe
and to stay undercover. It was a cheerless Christmas.
The Guardian's Office was the conduit for communications with the Commodore and the strictest
security prevailed to prevent his whereabouts being discovered. Preston picked up and delivered
the mail every other day at a post office box in New Jersey. Everything was in code and no personal
mail of any kind was forwarded. Telephone calls were similarly coded, using the page numbers of
the American Heritage Dictionary - 345/16 was the sixteenth word from the top on page 345.
Preston would go to a payphone well away from the apartment, call the Guardian's Office in Los
Angeles and reel off the numbers. If there was an incoming message he used a small tape
machine to record it and transcribed it when he got back to the apartment.
When they were out and about in New York, both Dincalci and Preston went to inordinate lengths to
ensure they were not being tailed, frequently back-tracking and crossing from an uptown to a
downtown train. Travelling on the subway, they would choose a stop at random, hold open the
doors as they were beginning to close and leap out at the last moment.
Inside the apartment, a routine was soon established. Dincalci got up early and went out to do the
day's food shopping and buy the paperback books that the Commodore read voraciously. 'I soon
got to know what he liked,' said Dincalci. 'It was all blood and thunder escapist stuff. I'd choose
them by the cover - the more lurid the cover, the more he liked them.' Hubbard woke at about ten or
eleven o'clock; the television was turned on immediately and stayed on for the remainder of the day,
even if he was reading or writing.
While Dincalci was out running errands for the Commodore, Preston stayed in the apartment to