Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

two U-Haul trailers parked outside. They would leave that night for the long drive across the
continent to Los Angeles.
Overland Avenue was a wide tree-lined street with low-rise apartment blocks on one side and the
usual American suburban parade of shopping plazas, filling stations and used-car lots on the
other. It was middle-class and anonymous, the kind of place where people could come and go for
months without ever being noticed by their neighbours. Armstrong had already set up a telex link
before the Commodore arrived. Special decoder equipment was installed to provide direct secure
communications with Clearwater and the Guardian's Office in Los Angeles, code-named Beta.
Overland Avenue's code name was Alpha.
Among early telex messages to arrive at Alpha was the news that Gerald Wolfe, agent Silver, had
been arrested at his desk at the IRS building in Washington and a warrant had been issued for the
arrest of Michael Meisner, who was missing from his home. Hubbard was not surprised by
Meisner's disappearance - he was staying at Beta, where he was being provided with a new
appearance and identity. Mary Sue's plan was that he should 'lose himself' in some large city.
Mary Sue soon joined her husband at Overland Avenue to discuss the situation and some pressing
family problems. She persuaded him that they would be able to resume family life in safety if they
could find a remote ranch somewhere in southern California, but the truth was that the family had
already disintegrated under the stress of constantly being 'on the run'. Diana's marriage was in
trouble, Quentin was supposed to be working for the org in Clearwater but was constantly absent,
reckless Suzette was dating 'wogs' and Arthur had dropped out of the California Institute of the Arts
after gentle Jim Dincalci had pulled strings to get him a place. 'I took his portfolio along,' said
Dincalci, 'made up a story about him and gave him a false hyphenated name to disguise who he
was. He was accepted on the strength of his portfolio and his mother and father were very happy
with it, but he didn't last long.'
Not unreasonably, Mary Sue longed for some kind of stability and missions were despatched to
find a property for the family, although Hubbard insisted that there had to be enough space to
accommodate his messengers and his ever-changing court of loyal aides. The Commodore could
not countenance life without a bevy of nubile messengers at his beck and call.
Kima Douglas went to look over a beautiful farm with its own beach not far from Santa Barbara and
pleaded with him to buy it, but he said it was too expensive at $4 million. Then a mission scouring
the Palm Springs area reported back on a promising property in the desert at La Quinta, on the
east side of the San Jacinto Mountains, which was on the market for $1.3 million. Hubbard drove
down to look at it in his new red Cadillac Eldorado convertible, wearing a jaunty little cap pulled
down over his straggling long hair, which had at last turned grey. It was not a car that guaranteed
him a low profile, but he had insisted on having it. He swept in through the high gates of the Olive
Tree Ranch at La Quinta, took a quick look round, professed himself satisfied and returned
immediately to Los Angeles.
La Quinta was about twenty minutes' drive from Palm Springs and was a quiet little community of
cheap low-roofed houses that simmered on a flat patch of sun-scorched earth between the
mountains. Olive Tree Ranch occupied the land behind the seedy La Quinta Country Club and
perversely grew dates and citrus fruit rather than olives. The main house was a sprawling white
adobe hacienda with a red-tiled roof built around a courtyard. There was a swimming-pool with an
island in the middle sporting a single, surprising, palm tree and two other smaller houses, one
called Rifle and the other The Palms.