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CHAPTER II

THE BEAST OUT OF THE SEA

          Not long after I moved into the little room at the boarding house I met another man that was to affect our lives enormously. One afternoon I decided to take the plans for the Gokstad, which I had finally arrived at our PO Box to a lounge around the corner called Redds Restaurant and Lounge. After I had spread the plans, consisting of three separate large pages onto several tables a man sitting at the small bar asked me what these plans were for. This man, who introduced himself as Halsey, appeared weather-beaten, in his early 50's, with salt and pepper hair and beard. He also wore an outdated dark blue captain's hat, and he could have been right out of Moby Dick, which is where his character most certainly derived from. He was certainly a literary piece of fiction created for my consumption, the bait on the hook for a man whom held a somewhat nostalgic taste for all things of the sea.

Halsey quite convincingly struck up his best effort at a casual conversation with me, a contrivance carefully planned by men with a specific political agenda. He asked to look at these rare plans, and inquired as to the nature of my interest in ancient ships. He then expressed his own interest in ships and pointed to a simplistic mural on the wall depicting people on a river engaged in water sports, sunbathing, etc. He told me he had painted this mural for the owner. I should have had a clue that this encounter was more than mere coincidence from his name alone, but I was far too preoccupied to pay that any mind. The plans had been postmarked from Norway in July, but I had not received them until late November and I was anxious to get moving on that project. The fact was that the reason the plans were late was due to Damien’s ability to retrieve my mail at our PO box. This occurred to me at the time, but I did not correlate Damien with Halsey’s interest in the Gokstad. My mind is also primarily cerebral, and my tendency is to relate to existence on a lineal level. Thus I have always tended to treat coincidence as just that.

Halsey then launched into a tale of an art gallery he once owned in San Francisco and of his valuable art collection that had been lost in a fire. I mentioned that I used to live in San Francisco, and I asked him where his shop had been located. He described its location as being near the top of the hill in Pacific Heights on Fillmore Street. At the time I thought this was a unique coincidence, as my sister had lived on Washington Street, just around the corner from his shop.

Upon inquiry I then explained to this man that I was in the process of creating a nonprofit corporation called Merisol Services Inc. in the Portland metropolitan area. The construction of the Gokstad was the pilot project and initial vehicle for the corporation's mission, which is the creation of paid job programs for at-risk youth and financially disadvantaged heads of families. Halsey inquired as to whether I had located a construction site for the ship, which is 76' 6" long. I mentioned that I had been offered a site on the Columbia River, and I was merely waiting for construction to be completed. What I did not know at the time was that these people had already quite effectively torpedoed any possibility of Merisol ever moving there.

Halsey mentioned that it was possible that this project could be located on land where he was currently living, on the banks of the Willamette River. Halsey described the owner as being a generous philanthropist who enjoyed supporting creative projects such as mine. The owners' name, 'Gary Tour' struck a chord with me, as ‘Tour’ was the surname of my sister's husband when she was living on Washington Street in San Francisco, around the corner from Halsey's purported art gallery. Gary was also the name of the man who had offered to locate Merisol on the Columbia River.

After several hours of reminiscing on ships and related topics he asked if he could stay at my place for the night, as he had missed his bus. I had to decline and apologized to him, explaining that I had no room for putting up a guest for the night. I was living in a tiny room with my daughter, and there was simply no place for him. He insisted, stating that he would not be a burden, and that he would just like to sit up and draw pictures. He then offered to draw a picture of a ship for my daughter. I capitulated, and brought him to my residence. He was most courteous to my daughter, and proceeded to skillfully draw with an engineer's style and precision a well-rendered picture of a sailboat on a river. I tentatively agreed to meet with Gary Tour at his property the following weekend.

The next day I called Barb and described the opportunity that had been offered to me. There was a large building on the property, which had room for offices, training centers for the students and a large floor with enough room for the construction of the ship. I also told her of the additional benefit of choosing between several abodes on the property. My wife promptly returned to Portland, and I brought Halsey over to meet her and our one-month-old daughter. Halsey seemed put out with Barb, and Barb described his look at her as shocked and angry. Shortly after this meeting with Halsey we moved into a motel in Portland. I met an elderly appearing black man who said his name was 'Rat' at a convenience store across the street, and I offered to pay him to move us out to Gary Tour's place. A day or so later Rat came by and we packed up our belongings and drove out to the property. When we arrived I proceeded to clean up the loft on the second floor of the warehouse for our residence, no small task in itself.

This building was 75' long and 50' wide, with an additional 50 foot by 25 foot two story section on the other side of a wall. There was a huge industrial winch set below the level of the concrete floor, but at the time I could not perceive its purpose. I also noticed a small bathroom against the far wall, but it appeared to be locked from the inside. I thought this an odd arrangement, as there were no windows or access from another room. How would someone be able to get out of a bathroom while leaving the door locked? I pondered on possible explanations for this, without success.

I thought this property was indeed an ideal setup for the mission of the nonprofit corporation, and I was quite pleased. There was a large fading sign hanging in front of the building, which read: "New Era Boat Works." "New Era" was the name of a pre-Colonial Russian community that used to be located across the highway. There were still a few buildings left standing. This place appeared to be a godsend. It has often been said that I specialize in impossible tasks, and this was a task which I savored taking on. My motivation for this project was to offer the community within which I had been raised a positive and beneficial program to help the youth of the community. The mission was to create a positive and constructive life within which they could learn a trade within an enjoyable context. Perhaps I could offer my talents towards solving a problem that desperately needed help: The lack of direction and focus, and addressing the employment needs of our community's youth.

I met Gary Tour a few days after we arrived. He seemed on edge, but he was impressed with my project and offered us living quarters. In return I agreed to acquire funding to finance the lease of the warehouse for Merisol. I offered to remodel the mobile home on the south end of the property in exchange for our habitation of this wonderfully scenic place on the banks of the Willamette River. It was at this time that I learned that Halsey was going to be staying in the office that overlooked the main warehouse floor until Merisol was established.

Within a few days of our arrival a quite different sort of woman came up to the office to take a shower that was located on the same floor. This individual wore curly shoulder length brown hair, and she had brown eyes. Barb later told me that she thought that this woman had been staring at me, and Barb felt this quite inappropriate. Several days later this woman again came up to the office, but this time her hair was silver, very full and wild looking. She was also wearing bright green contact lenses. Upon my inquiry of this woman and the reason for her presence on the property Halsey described her as being one of Gary's people whom he had taken under his arm. He had invited her to move into a small trailer between the warehouse and the mobile home I was remodeling. Although I had been told that she had just moved there, it appeared that she had been there for quite some time. Halsey initially told us her name was Natasha, but a few days later he told us her name was Natalie. When I asked her what her name was she introduced herself as Nadia. At least she knew what her name was. I was certainly beginning to wonder. Nadia had a very masculine figure, fairly tall and carrying fairly broad shoulders. She also had small breasts for a woman, to say the least. She alternately wore both pants and a skirt, or pants with a long dress. Although it took us over one year to put all this in perspective, we now know Nadia to have been a man, an extremely clever and powerful man.

When we first arrived, the warehouse was full of perhaps eighty used washers, dryers, refrigerators and other miscellaneous appliances. Two men showed up one day and proceeded to clear out all of this junk. I was introduced to them as Mike and Ralph. Coincidentally "Rat" showed up that day with a blonde haired young Caucasian man. It appeared quite appropriate for him to be there as I had told him that he could have all of that equipment for free for removing it from the property. Rat wandered around to the back of the building, ostensibly to peruse future earnings in his world of recycling. He shortly thereafter ran back into the warehouse, with a man at his heels screaming that he would bring out his rifle and shoot any black man that I ever brought onto the property again. I later asked Halsey who this man was, and the nature of his relationship to the property. Halsey told me that his name was Alan, (coincidentally enough my middle name), and that this man was 'a sort of full time caretaker of the property," and an old high school friend of Gary Tours'. I pondered over the ramifications of having a crazy man living on the property on which I was in the process of establishing a corporate entity with young students present, not to mention the staff and board of directors. This was a project that would embrace students of all races and nationalities. Halsey tried to assure me that Alan kept to himself, and that nobody paid him any mind.

A fairly young brunette woman came by the office occasionally to use the shower. She seemed quite distant, and Halsey explained to me that she lived in the small trailer behind the warehouse with her boyfriend. I had occasion to drop by their trailer a few times, but they always took longer than necessary to answer the door, and inexplicably they seemed angry at the inconvenience of even having to open their door. Neither of them was ever very friendly. Their trailer was tiny, and I wondered how two people could spend all of their time in such a small dwelling. When they answered the door two aggressive guard dogs always accompanied them, but their trailer lacked smell that is associated with two large dogs being closed up in such a small space.

I soon thereafter began work on the mobile home, and within a week we were able to move in, albeit in sparse conditions. Most of the interior covering of the walls had been removed, offering an interior view on the East wall of bare fiberglass insulation and exposed electrical wiring. Except for a small addition adjacent to the kitchen on the southern end of the trailer, the entire western wall, which faced the Willamette River and was surrounded by a wide deck, was made entirely of floor to ceiling glass. In the bedroom at the base of the closet there was an odd sloping metal chute going down below the floor. I could identify no purpose for this device, and considering I had been involved in home construction for over thirty years this should have raised a red flag to me, but I was too preoccupied to pay this more than a passing moment of wonder. I proceeded to replace the wiring, set up a functional kitchen with a sink and cabinets, and I then plumbed the bath and kitchen. The pump house was across the access road to the warehouse. The supply line that was constructed of 2 inch PVC ran underneath the access road and branched off in the field 75 feet from the river. This triple-junction branched off in three directions: left to the warehouse, right to our mobile home and directly down into the earth. The latter direction made no sense to me at the time, and when I asked Halsey about the pipe that branched off straight down he said that it was the supply line for the water. That response was ridiculous, as source and feed lines cannot share the same line, but I assumed that he just did not know what he was talking about.

I bought and installed insulation for all of the exterior walls that needed it, and I offered to install sheet rock for the entire building. Halsey and Gary walked through the trailer several days later, and Gary declined my offer, commenting that he thought there was a potential of shorts when I installed the sheet rock over the cutouts in the framing for the electrical wiring. I thought this somewhat odd. I was formerly a General Contractor, and I am well aware of the need to install steel plates over electrical wiring that pass through the walls. Adding sheet rock and finishing out that trailer would have been a good investment and his decision made no sense.

The small addition built onto the front served as a living room. The deck running the length of the trailer extended over the water of the Willamette River when the water level was high. An immensely overbuilt vertical H-beam set onto a large concrete pad supported the southernmost edge of the deck. When I mentioned this to Halsey he responded that Gary had used the heavy I-beam to make use of spare materials he had lying around. The addition’s exterior and interior walls were both incomplete, to put it mildly, consisting of small pieces of ill-fitting plywood patched with mismatched pieces of tarpaper. The weather was cold, typical of early January in the Pacific Northwest, and Alan suggested I use one of the large old commercial heaters that were buried in a dark corner of the old shingle mill. After somehow managing to lug one of these behemoths over to the trailer I installed it only to discover it was inoperable. I was left with no other option but to disconnect it, drag it out of the mobile home, and haul the remaining heater from the mill, whereupon my fortune fared better. After a bit of tinkering I ended up with an obnoxious looking but somewhat functional heater, considering that the entire place leaked air like a sieve.

A week or so later Nadia brought over what were in her words a gift of three large attractive and well-insulated curtains. I hung them over a portion of the wall-to-wall sliding glass doors to offer some resistance to the winter cold, at the expense of blocking the attractive view of the Willamette River. I felt a familiarity with those curtains that brought me to the realization that eighteen months before Nadia presented them to me at New Era my previous wife had bought those very same drapes and had hung them over the dining room windows shortly before she passed away. Therefore those curtains held a very special place in my heart.

At that time my interest actually concerned less of how Nadia had gained possession of those curtains, but why. I knew they would have been available from only a select group of a few people, which tells me how well they knew Nadia. Nadia had complete knowledge of the significance that those drapes held for me, and it was that and the number of drapes that were of significance. Also, they were not given to me as a gift in the sense that most people associate with that term.

My recognition of the origins of those curtains led me to keep my mind open to the potential ramifications of complex interrelationships established among people, to what extent it could affect my family and towards what motives could possibly be involved to carry through such an intricate chain of events.

After a couple of weeks I noticed there were sparks and smoke coming from the service entrance pipe just above its entrance into the breaker box in the closet of our bedroom. I questioned Alan about this, but he merely shrugged and said, “That happened to me when I stayed there last winter. I think it is just old wiring. It is nothing dangerous." Somewhat aghast at his response, I again inspected the breaker box and the service entrance closely. I did not see any evidence of a short, leading me to believe that the amperage passing through those wires was exceedingly high.

Alan was a dark complexioned man, with unkempt dark shaggy hair. The character that Alan maintained as a 'caretaker of the property and an old high school friend of Gary's was in the short term believable, as he was adept at using fits of rage and stories of his poor health to divert attention from a closer analysis. However, I noticed over a period of time that his stories were inconsistent with Halsey's tales of him, and indeed with his own descriptions of himself. Halsey had told me on various occasions that Gary had been raised right there at the shingle mill, that a train had killed his father at the railroad crossing on the property, and that he and Alan were old school buddies. However, I was raised within the same school district as New Era is located, and I knew neither of them. Despite my first encounter with Alan when he appeared quite agile as he came storming out from behind the mill chasing 'Rat' off the property, he later told me a tale that he had had one lung and the ribs on one side of his chest removed due to a heart condition. When I responded that my father had faced a similar operation, and the doctors had discussed replacing his ribs with artificial aluminum ones Alan quickly added that he also had aluminum ribs implanted in his chest. He thereby presented himself over a fairly short period of time as both a thin and quite weakened individual with serious medical problems, and also as an extremely strong and agile man.

After a short but noticeable absence Nadia began to appear on the property with increasing regularity. While I was walking over to the mill from my trailer on day she began rattling on about comments Gary had made to her, saying, “If Mike and Ralph can make money from recycling metals that they scrounge from the property, then I can do the same thing.' After that conversation I noticed Nadia rummaging about on the property on a few occasions, but soon thereafter she began spending the majority of her time rummaging through the scrap metal in the vicinity of our trailer. I observed her spending hours stripping aluminum, stainless steel and copper from appliances, old doors, engine parts, electrical wire or anything else from which she could recover those metals. It seemed that every few days she had collected enough metal to fill up her old Toyota pickup truck. The motor in my Dodge Pickup had burned up, so at that time I had no vehicle. Nadia would occasionally offer to give me a ride to the store in Canby, four miles south of New Era, which was usually followed by a stop at the US Bank so she could cash a check from Alan's tugboat business, A&W Towing, whereupon she would often ask me to help her load some heavy and unwieldy metal object into or out of her Toyota P.U. On several occasions Nadia asked me to sign my name as the payee of these checks, as she had no ID. I later asked Alan of the significance of those transactions. He smiled and said that she had taken him for quite a ride. The impression I got from that conversation with him was that he thought it humorous. What was humorous to him was that I was buying into their game. Nadia also asked me on three different occasions to accompany her to a metal recycling plant adjacent to The Port of Portland Pier Number 4, an international shipping port at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, to sign for her payment.

Everyone at New Era went to great lengths to provide their best rendition of a convincing cover for their various personages. I expressed my concern to Gary Tour over what began to appear to me as the permanent resident status of Nadia at New Era. Gary explained that Nadia was in the doldrums as she had recently undergone a destructive relationship with her previous boyfriend, and that her presence there was temporary. Gary was merely attempting to create sympathy on my part for Nadia, with little concern over whether it would survive extended observation.

While helping Nadia clean up some of the metal and trash surrounding the mobile home Nadia and I ended up speaking about our ancestry. I mentioned to her that I had some Jewish heritage, and she smiled, threw her head back and proudly declared, "I am Palestinian!" As I looked at her I thought that probably was Palestinian, but I did not perceive that declaration as a threat.

When our housing was reasonably habitable I set up my computer system and then went to work on the complex tasks of organizing Merisol Services Inc. as a viable entity. I put up a wall sized world map on the back wall to cover at least a portion of the exposed insulation. To relax from my work I placed pins on various ports and connected them with colored thread to chart the ideal route to sail during a circumnavigation of the world on a schooner I planned on building in the not too distant future. I also covered the remaining areas of the walls with construction plans for a 9th century 76’ 6” Viking ship called the Gokstad. The pilot project and initial vehicle for the mission of Merisol Services, Inc was the construction of a full sized replica of this ship, and apparently it was deemed as an ideal cover for the operations that were being undertaken unbeknownst to me with a far greater degree of secrecy.

As my work on Merisol developed, I also labored intensively to clear out the enormous quantity of junk piled up wall-to-wall in two sections of the second story of the mill. These areas were designated respectively for the large multimedia center and the administrative offices. There was also simultaneous progress in clearing out the remnants of marine engines, refrigerators, and countless other piles of the rusting remnants of boats and mill parts bound for the recycling plant.

There was a huge old rusty oceangoing barge parked against the bank of the river just downriver from Alan's docks. I asked Halsey what history lay behind this behemoth and the reason for its presence at New Era, and he responded that Gary was involved in a project to turn the dilapidated barge into a simulated side-paddle-wheel steamboat with a plush convention center and restaurant project he was purportedly attempting to sell to the City of Milwaukie. Gary then began to make spot appearances of short duration on an almost daily basis at the office, and due to my continued progress in completing various tasks necessary for the incorporation of Merisol Services, Inc., I took advantage of his increased presence to drop by and discuss project developments and critical tasks scheduling.

Gary and Halsey began to carry out in a businesslike manner a series of tasks replete with timetables and even (purportedly) attending City Council meetings. Halsey went to task drawing a number of quality color renditions of the barge reconstructed into their vision of a restored side-paddle-wheel steamboat with their plans to reserve one whole deck for conference rooms, plush convention areas and a restaurant. Gary consulted with me concerning the inclusion of a local historical library on the steamboat to enhance their ability to qualify for nonprofit funding sources. One evening a suave and genteel mannered man was at the office with Gary and Halsey when I stopped by. He was finely dressed in expensive clothing and his hair was colored brilliant silver. I was told that he was a local investor who had successfully created a number of unique commercial projects in the area, and that he was considering investing in Gary’s floating convention center. Gary talked of his ongoing negotiations with the city of Milwaukie, Oregon to locate the "museum" at the city marina on the Willamette River.

Meanwhile Gary informed me that Mike and Ralph, the men who had removed all of the appliances from the warehouse, had taken over the small smelting operation located on the property. This building was on the other side of the railroad tracks from our trailer. These tracks run from Vancouver BC to Mexico, and cut right down the middle of the full length of the property. I went over to observe this smelter operation only a few times, and although they were polite it was apparent that I was in the way.

There were several aspects of this operation that struck a wrong cord with me, however. They were supposed to be recycling used aluminum transmission cases, using a smelting pot with a large wand sized torch and burning propane as fuel. At my request Halsey brought me over to see the smelter operation, and Mike made quite a show of his operation. He was directing a nozzle several feet long with a large flame blasting out of it at melted ore in a round ore pot. He then poured this ore into long ingots, and purportedly he took it to the Alcoa aluminum smelter to sell it. In reviewing my observations of this operation I thought that there were large gaps in their portrayal as running a legitimate business. To begin with, propane is prohibitively expensive to use in any kind of smelting operation. During the last week that they were there they received a delivery of 1000 gallons of propane I actually saw them using this 'smelter.' In an operation of this sort I would have expected to see their shop floor littered with transmission in various states of disassembly. On one occasion I observed a greasy transmission lying alone in the expansive shop floor. I never observed vast clouds of black smoke rising from their ore pot, which should have been the case, unless they spent an inordinate amount of time and expense degreasing these transmission cases. Another aspect to that kind of an operation I should have seen was delivery trucks loaded with used transmissions. I was surprised to see Mike was demonstrative with motions of flurry as he scraped off the dross from the top of the molten ore.

One day as I glanced out of the window next to my computer I was surprised to see Rat parked at the entrance to the smelter with his pickup piled high with what appeared to be appliances. Considering the vehemence with which Alan had displayed while driving Rat from the back of the mill and the speed at which Rat had jumped into his truck and sped off, his presence there was indeed a peculiar sight. I got the distinct impression tat that scene between Alan and Rat had been staged.

Halsey spoke to me of a friend of his that he said I should meet. He called himself 'Free Money Ted,' and was described as being an old 'carnie,' or carnival hustler. Halsey explained that Ted was interested in the nonprofit I was working on, and that perhaps it would be beneficial for me to meet him. I agreed, and Ted took me out to lunch that day and on three other occasions. On the third luncheon he described an idea of his to me of offering electronic bingo game boards to people in hospitals. He said that this game would be connected to the Internet, and that it would require the use of a device called a transponder to monitor and transmit the identity of the playing pieces. I decided not to share my thoughts concerning his idea with him

Ted told that he would pay me $200.00 for information that I could provide to him concerning transponders that would assist him on his project. I researched the subject for a few days, coming up with several pages of information from a number of sources on transponders. The last time I met with him over lunch I told him of my results, but he just smirked and tossed a manila envelope on the seat next to me containing perhaps a dozen or so articles on transponders, all of which had been downloaded over the Internet from 'The Transponder News'.

A transponder is a microchip that emits a preset radio frequency. Intelligence agencies and security companies use transponders as precise location identifiers. Transponders can also be used as bugs to transmit audio waves such as conversations.

Ted was never interested in paying me to research transponders for him, nor was he interested in the nonprofit I was creating. He was only interested in the extent of my familiarity with transponders.

Several nights later Halsey introduced me to a couple that were visiting him in the loft next to the office, 'Jim and Suzy'. These people lived in a large wooden schooner that they said they had sailed from Copenhagen. Halsey brought me over to visit them at their ship, which was docked underneath the Ross Island Bridge at the Staff Jennings Marina in Portland. They showed me their schooner, a good 60 feet in length, and a small tugboat they said belonged to Gary's son. That was the only time I had heard any mention of Gary having a son. They also showed me a new black water taxi they were selling, complete with dual outboard Mercury engines. I was also told that they were managing the marina, which gave them free dockage and a small income. At the time I did not connect the fact that this couple was from Copenhagen with the phone charges we did not place to Copenhagen back at our apartment at Damien’s house. Apparently he had called them to instruct them to come over to the US. They had a reason for being there, and their timing was certainly no coincidence.

I noticed one day that the large fading sign (Halsey was adept at painting, apparently faded or otherwise) on the front of the warehouse which had read "New Era Boat Works" appeared to have fallen down and was hanging against the side of the building from one corner, exposing another fading sign which read Ossuma. I mentioned the fallen sign to Halsey, and he explained that that was just the name of the former owner. His story seemed somewhat plausible, but it was an unusual name from my experience. It was one year later before I discovered that Ossuma is a Muslim reverential title given to Usama bin Laden by the Afghanistan Mujahadeen rebels in honor of his military, logistical and financial support for their successful war against the USSR's occupation of Afghanistan.

Halsey asked us to come over to his office the next day, as he had something to show us. When we arrived, he was acting very nervous, undoubtedly having been disciplined for making such a blunder as to fail to properly explain the significance of the name of Ossuma on the new sign. He showed us a stack of seven tax bills, one for each of the separate lots on the property. He even showed us a plot map of the subdivision, explaining that Gary was under severe pressure to pay off his property taxes. I noticed the house across the Highway 99E from my trailer and set up on the hill was also numbered on the plot, but Halsey insisted that that house was not part of Gary's property. Had they known of my surveying background they would likely been more careful before showing me plot maps, and they might have foreseen several other blunders as well.

The name on the envelope window was 'Omundson,' and Halsey claimed that this was the same name that had been on the sign (OSSUMA) but that some letters were missing. Naturally the sign was gone, but it was of no matter, as I knew very well that his statement was not accurate. This added to the serious questioning I had been forced to make concerning exactly what I had had gotten ourselves into, who these people actually were, and what on earth they were up to. This attempt to divert our questions on this matter was a serious flaw in their strategy, as we had been discussing the name Ossuma and numerous other incongruities and outright falsehoods in our trailer. There was no longer any doubt that our conversations had to have been monitored for such a response as this. The possibility of Halsey spontaneously providing reasoning for questions that we raised in what we thought was the privacy of our trailer was beyond the bent.

Halsey's explanations were always just barely sufficient to answer our questions, but not enough to satisfy our sense that there was something very unusual going on out there at the New Era property. Usama bin Laden’s place in this complex web of events was woven at our expense, and that of more than a few federal agents.

A few days later I observed Halsey and another man removing some items from a small boat across the railroad tracks from our trailer. I sauntered over to take a look at this activity. Halsey introduced this man to me as Ken Smith. Not very original, but then it is much easier to blend in with the crowd if you have a common name. Halsey told me that Gary had bought this boat for $100.00, a price certain to catch my attention. I offered to help them clean out the contents of the boat, as I was told Gary planned on using the engine and junking the hull. They offered to give me a two-section base for a queen bed with drawers on both sides. This was the same size of bed Barb and I were sleeping on, and I happily agreed. This piece even had a central open area that ran down underneath the length of the bed for additional storage. Ken told me that he was from Molalla, which was perhaps 20 miles from New Era. Perhaps a week or so later he said tat e was from Mulino, another small town about ten miles further southeast from Molalla. He then told Barb and I that he was from Missouri. It began to appear that nobody in New Era knew anything about anybody, much less himself. I did not see either of these men for almost two weeks, and when I saw Alan he joked about this, suggesting that they had shuttered themselves up in the office, and were engaged in an amorous relationship. He may have believed that my motivation for making Merisol succeed would override any concerns I might have about those peoples business. That was not too far from the mark. However, I was spending between twelve and fourteen hours a day working on my computer, and I had a full view of every vehicle that came and departed from the property. I had seen neither Halsey nor Ken leave the property, and I knew they were not holed up in Halsey's office.

I inquired within the boat building community of Portland, Oregon for a Master Shipwright. I was referred to a Norwegian man, named Bent. Bent was a retired professor, and had completed a four-year apprenticeship program in Norway building replicas of ancient Viking ships. When he came by and showed me his resume I hired the man as Master Shipwright for Merisol on the spot. I took him on a tour around the property where the entire program would be operated from, and I then brought him over to meet Alan, who was working down on his dock. We spoke of Alan's business and of his activities recovering logs which he spotted floating down the river, in addition to his work removing trees from people's riverbanks. Bent commented on the large Ash log which was in the water next to Alan's dock, and of its' value to our project. That log shortly thereafter disappeared, and I thought it out of character for Alan to let a log worth over a thousand dollars just float on down the river. I had seen him chase considerably smaller logs, docks and other assorted and assundry items with his cute little tugboat when flooding created havoc. I had sat in his trailer several times as he placed and answered phone calls, addressing his business, A & W Towing, as a marine salvaging and waterfront repair company. The initials for Alan’s ‘business’, ‘AWT’, is a reference to the aerial bombing of TWA Flight 003 over Lockerbie Scotland. This is a reflection on their joyous celebration of the reverse order of satanical forces, and further elucidation towards the diabolical nature of al Qai’da.

Bent and I made an appointment to tour the woodlands, which Gary was purportedly logging. Gary had told me that there were numerous oak trees that he thought Merisol could use in building the Gokstad. Halsey escorted Bent and I over this forest, and certain as night there was Gary driving a small bulldozer, dragging logs while his partner cut down a few trees. A logging truck was appropriately picking up a load of logs upon our arrival. The scene was contrived, but very convincing. The trees were of marginal value to us, but Bent was gracious and stated that several trees were of value to the project. Halsey had even brought along a barely functional spray can to mark the trees Bent chose for cutting.

Ken Smith in the meantime reappeared, and he moved into a rotting 45-foot relic of an old navy vessel (in Gary Tour’s words) that had been renovated into a fishing trawler that had been parked not far from our mobile home. Ken came by to visit us quite a few times with a beer in his hand to chat, watch our satellite TV, and eat our food. He rambled on about his wife Sandra, not at all coincidentally a name my sister had used in the past, and his two children back home in Missouri. He expressed frustration with Halsey and Gary, and rambled on about whether he should buy the trawler. This man claimed to be a roofer, and quite frankly he looked the part. He was perhaps 6'2", with light brown hair to his shoulders and a scraggly light brown to reddish beard. He was determined to demonstrate his character to me as valid, to the point of showing me pay stubs. He even stopped off at what he identified to me as being a roofer's union hall in Oregon City Oregon, while he was giving me a ride to the grocery store. I have since verified that there has never been a roofer's hall in Oregon City. It was probably someone's house they had converted for a day for my benefit.

These people had studied us thoroughly. They knew I would sympathize with Ken's efforts to keep working, as I have been involved in the construction business off and on for over thirty years. Ken also complained of his poor mileage he was getting on his Ford truck, an obvious attempt to form a connection with my long-standing interest with trucks.

One evening Barb insisted that I take a look at our phone bills from our earlier residence at Damien’s house. Barb had previously taken it upon herself to keep track of all of our household bills, but our phone bill was replete with massive overcharges. After two days of analyzing our phone records with US West I compiled a documented history which demonstrated a pattern of multiple phone calls made almost simultaneously, some of which were literally billed as being made one minute apart to the same numbers but lasting for many minutes. There were calls made to Copenhagen, California, Texas, Michigan, Missouri, New York and Arizona, calls that we had never placed. I have often thought that I was efficient with the telephone, having been trained by IBM in the arts of sales and sales calls. I am not so efficient as to be able to make two international calls to the same number, with both calls overlapping. Nor am I that inefficient. Neither is US West computer systems so constructed that two calls lasting several minutes could be placed from one phone number to another same number one minute apart. I had gone over this time and again with US West, but to no avail.

My wife and I began to speculate as to the potential connection of our ID having been stolen when we lived in the apartment at Damien’s house and these ridiculous phone charges. We traced the connection back to Damien, and came to the inescapable conclusion that this man was using her ID and the phone system to mask interstate and international phone calls. We recalled Damien’s statement to me that he had a friend in the Seattle area that had developed a device that allowed them to enter the computers of US WEST. We also determined that it was also likely that this man was also using Barb's ID to open up bank accounts in her name. We have since learned this is but a minute aspect of these people's manipulation over our identities.

We speculated on the inconsistencies in Halsey's description of who Nadia was, her relationship to Alan, and Halsey's reference that Nadia and Alan were cousins. He had also told us that they were from Beaverton Oregon, and that Alan and Nadia were bikers. Then we speculated upon our growing perception that Nadia was in fact not even a female, but a man. At that point I heard a loud voice from somewhere underneath our trailer shout "There goes my cover!" This was followed by a loud "thunk!" which at the time I thought was a block of wood being knocked over from underneath the trailer. Amy stated that it was a trap door closing underneath our trailer. I thought about this, and decided to investigate. I knew that had been the voice of Nadia. After a few minutes of discussion with Barb I drove over to the warehouse, with the intention of getting there in a hurry. I backed out the driveway and up the small rise, attempting to back around and over the railroad crossing. However, my windows were fogged up and I inadvertently missed the crossing. My left rear tire drove over a track, and I was stuck. Gary was coincidentally walking towards the RR crossing with Chris, a young man that Alan had earlier said was his nephew. They immediately came up and attempted to push from behind the car to help me get over the rail. I decided to back up while turning to the left, thus driving onto the crossing platform and then forward and off the tracks. All of a sudden Ken Smith appeared in his truck, having driven down the driveway from the Highway 99E, and pushed my car off the track. I then drove over near to the warehouse and got out of the car. Gary walked up to me, but Ken and his truck had disappeared. Halsey then came up to us from the warehouse, disheveled and having blood coming out of his ear. He was shaking hard, and his voice was stuttering and weak. He told this story that a man who was visiting upstairs in the office had taken a six-pack of beer from the refrigerator, and when Halsey challenged him he flipped out and repeatedly jammed a screwdriver into Halsey's ear. I immediately walked over to the warehouse, where I saw Alan. He was just getting up from the floor, and he explained that he had been looking for his glasses. He was also disheveled and extremely upset. He showed a degree of anger and violence that belied his earlier presentation of himself as a weakened individual. When he put his bottle glass glasses on he even set them on his face awry. Then Nadia suddenly walked up from my left, and took control of the conversation away from Alan, attempting to calm him down. She said that the man whom had rammed Halsey's ear with a screwdriver had gone into the woods behind the warehouse. Gary even went so far as to wander off into the trees himself for to look for this madman. I was beginning to seriously question the existence of this individual. When I offered to take Halsey to the hospital he adamantly refused. Nadia asked me to follow her and Halsey upstairs to the office, where she asked me if I would try and convince Halsey to go to the hospital. He again refused. I then went downstairs to inquire further from Gary about this whole scenario, but he was still out wandering the trees looking for this phantom attack man. When I again went back up the stairs and opened the door to the office, there was Nadia embracing Halsey, and looking into his eyes. Nadia immediately was aware of my presence, released him and resumed her act of indifferent caring. My feeling at the moment was that this was contrived.

Alan did in fact totally lose control when he heard us speak of Halsey's statement to us that Alan and Nadia were cousins, and that they were bikers. These people in fact owned the Hells Angels. That was one of their primary covers. Another aspect to this episode is that it was Nadia who attacked Alan to defend Halsey's life, for Alan was a lethal killer. Most informative of all, however, was that both Alan and Nadia were at the warehouse before I got there. These people were in fact listening to our conversations from underneath our trailer, and they had the ability to move rapidly underground from one end of the property to the other without being seen. Another aspect to this whole scenario that escaped my attention for quite some time was the timing of Ken Smith's arrival at such a propitious time, and then his immediate disappearance. I knew that he had driven onto the property from the 99 E Highway, but the timing was too close to have been a coincidence. There is a house across the street up on the hill above the highway, and overlooking the entire property. This is one of the original buildings from the Russian community that was called New Era. Ken Smith was living across the street up on the hill where he had a bird’s eye view of everything that went on at New Era.

These men arrived and departed constantly, changing personages and using their increasing bizarre behavior to create distance in time and distance from us when they had business either out of our view or elsewhere.

Ken Smith came by a few days later, ranting about how Halsey and Gary were reneging on their agreement with him on the price of the boat. He stated that he wanted to sell his truck, an older model flatbed Ford, while simultaneously complaining vociferously that he was getting a mere five miles per gallon while driving fifty miles every day back and forth to work. I offered to buy his other vehicle instead, which was labeled as a brown 1976 Ford LTD. This car he showed us was in pristine condition inside and out. He told us the classic story that this was his grandparent's car and had sat in a garage for eighteen years, except for the occasional trip to the store. There was a small dent on the right rear fender, which he explained had just recently happened. He knew I needed a car, and he knew this offer was irresistible. Nadia was there at my trailer the day we made the formal agreement. She began to rant about a car that was virtually identical to Ken's that she would sell to me for only $350.00. I assumed at the time that the auto she was referring to was of questionable background, and perhaps not entirely legal. I told her "Fine, I will buy that car also. We can talk about that at a later date." I then gave Ken a $300.00 payment, whereby Nadia immediately shouted, jumped up, and stormed out of the trailer. It was a very convincing act. I then printed out a contract on my computer, which we both signed. He gave me the keys, tax receipts, and an application for registration for the car. He explained that his wife had just received the title, and that he would have it in a week or so. In Oregon, a bill of sale and registration papers are sufficient documentation to receive registration, license plates and expiration tags for a vehicle. Thus this arrangement seemed apropos at the time. Ken and I then went outside and proceeded to clean out his belongings from the car. He offered to give me his VCR and a stack of home-recorded movies. The selection of tapes that he gave to us is a unique key into how these people think and operate. The tapes that he gave me were Red October, OP Center, Miracle in the Wilderness, Star Trek VI, Unforgiven, Beastmaster II and a few others. There are several similarities among the tapes. One of the coincidences that stand out is the presence of Kim Kattrall in three of the tapes, Op Center, Star Trek VI and Miracle in the Wilderness. Op Center is a show about disgruntled members of the KGB selling MIRVs, or multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles, which are nuclear bombs, to terrorists. Red October is a movie about a Russian submarine crew bringing a submarine equipped with nuclear missiles to the US and requesting asylum. That submarine ended up sailing up a river into US territory. The gift of these tapes to me was a flat out declaration of what these men were up to. In addition, all of the movies were taped in Springfield, Missouri, providing another basis for Ken Smith's cover that he was from Missouri.

Shortly thereafter Halsey informed me that Gary had asked Nadia to move off the property, ostensibly to address my concerns of her erratic behavior. In addition, Gary also told me a few days later that he had also asked Alan to move, in his attempt to allay my concern about getting the property ready for the use of Merisol Services Inc. Gary allowed Nadia to move her trailer into the warehouse while she purportedly waterproofed it. Ken was up on her roof one night helping her apply white tar to seal it against leaks, and he explained to me under his breath that it had been so long since he had been with a woman that he was going to take Nadia to a motel that night. It was three days before we saw Ken Smith again.

My wife was returning one night from a trip to Portland with her mother when Ken appeared right behind them, frightening them both out of their wits. He tried to give Barb his phone number and address in Missouri, stating that he was leaving immediately. Barb told him he needed to talk with her husband, so he came inside and walked right up to me. He then rapidly blabbered on about this unseeming story about his wife's desperate need and spontaneous desire to make immediate amends over his past transgressions. Thus he was leaving immediately to Missouri. He shoved a piece of paper into my hand, which he said was his phone number and address. When I inquired about the title to the car he said he would mail it to me, and promptly departed. Barb and I later discussed his obtuse behavior, wondering if perhaps there was some relationship to his strange behavior with his expected night in the motel with Nadia. We speculated upon our suspicions that Nadia was in fact a man were accurate. I suggested that perhaps Nadia had hurt him with a vengeance. This was merely more subterfuge on their part, but quite effective. They were playing on our speculations, and turning them into their advantage.

Barb and I awoke several nights later to see the car seat in which our four-month-old daughter was sleeping in gently rocking. This continued for quite some time. I was not certain of the cause for this, and quite frankly it did not make me feel comfortable.

A day or so later Nadia came by and asked if she could wash her dishes. Alan had asked me earlier that morning to accompany him while he drove down the road fifteen or so miles to take possession of and bring back a fifth wheel trailer he said he had bartered for with some logs. In actuality he and Nadia merely wanted me out of the way to allow Nadia to have access to Barb for several hours. My presence was certainly not needed with Alan. He even asked me to stop at a tavern along the way where he bought me breakfast. Alan was driving an old model flatbed Ford, a truck that looked identical to the flatbed truck Ken Smith had owned. The only difference was that this truck had a carriage built in the bed for hauling a fifth wheel trailer. I was certain that this was Ken Smith's truck, but he had supposedly left a couple of weeks earlier in a mad hurry to reunite with his wife, Sandra. Barb later told me that Nadia launched into what she referred to as a "woman to woman talk" with her. Nadia offered to baby-sit our daughter, Bunny, and she brought by a playpen, clothes for Bunny and clothes and boots for Barb. The boots and clothes for Barb were Nadia's, and thus Barb was soon dressing in Nadia's clothes. At one point she purportedly told Barb, "I do not like men, and I absolutely hate women, but I do like you, and I will never hurt you, if you know what I mean." This individual, Nadia, demanded a response from Barb, again saying forcefully, "Do you know what I mean?" The truth behind this insistent demand for a response is that this beast was demanding consent from Barb in some manner or form in order for him to fulfill his intentions.

One night I walked out of our bedroom unclothed to the table I had set up in the next room. I used this table to make leather purses taken from an old Sioux Indian design. These are elaborate purses, with multiple layers of long fringe and beads which I have been making on and off for over thirty years. I had left my cigarettes on the table, and when I lit a cigarette I heard a 'hoot!' or a holler from outside the window on the deck. As I looked out there was Nadia standing there with her mouth agape. She called to me, motioning to me to come outside. I shook my head, and walked back into the bedroom in disgust. She hollered again, and I then came back out from the bedroom, this time with my bathrobe on. I walked down the hall to the living room addition and opened the door a crack to see what she wanted. She was visibly upset, as if I had denied it the pleasure of further amorous visual treats. I had not realized that it was possible to see into the bedroom through the curtains. Nadia asked me if she could borrow my car to push her little Datsun pickup truck out of a mud hole. I refused categorically, and she shouted and stomped off. It was apparent to me that her motivations for using my car were not altogether honest.

Several days later Nadia came by the trailer and asked me if she could leave some boxes on our deck for a while. I had no problem with that, and as she was walking out the door she threw up her fist in the air and shouted, "Let the games begin!" Needless to say Barb and I thought that ominous at best.

The day Nadia was supposedly moving off the property, she asked us if I would give her a ride to the convenience store in Canby so she could call the police on Alan. She launched into a tirade that he had broken several windows in her trailer. When she made the call, I noticed that she was looking at us while talking, and she was laughing. This was not a normal attitude for someone to be having when they were supposedly calling the police on someone. When we returned I dropped her off at the entrance to the warehouse, where Alan was standing alongside another man whom I did not recognize. There was an expensive tricked out new red Toyota extended bed pickup truck parked next to them that was loaded with furniture. Nadia walked right up to these two men and stated that I had given her a ride to call the police on them. They then all turned towards us and began to laugh.

I was struck by the naïve nature of my incessant tendency towards altruism. This perception was compounded the following morning by the fact that there had been perhaps two moving vans full of furniture in that warehouse, none of which had been there before, and all of which had disappeared by the next morning. I had not seen pickup trucks making multiple trips in and out of the property that night, much less moving vans. That truck did not leave either, although it was not in the warehouse the next day. I was in a position to know, because all vehicles that came and left from that property had to pass by our trailer, and my desk was right next to the window. This was not the kind of low-grade furniture you might find at a garage sale either. I tried without success to imagine several households of furniture being moved into that warehouse, and then disappearing along with that truck, not to mention untold others.

Gary was generally gone during the week, supposedly up at his girlfriend's house near Mt. Hood from where he allegedly ran his logging operation. The story I was told was that his girlfriend did not allow either her phone number to be given out, or her address. The result was that there was no way to independently verify anything about him other than his occasional presence on the property.

Halsey finally called the telephone company to connect the business office phone line. This turned out to be an interesting and quite revealing occurrence. There was a five-gallon bucket that was placed upside down on the ground outside our mobile home. Underneath this bucket were a large bundle of telephone lines just lying on the ground. Alan's story was that Gary had inadvertently dug them up with his bulldozer while leveling the ground around the trailer. I have extensive experience with bulldozers and it is a certainty those wires were not dug up by a bulldozer. He also stated that the previous owner used all of these lines. This did not correlate with Halsey's story that Gary had grown up there at New Era, nor was it logical that the boat building company that supposedly operated from there needed fifteen phone lines. A telephone repairman showed up, inspected the wires, and shortly thereafter he left. He returned later that day with another repairman. They followed the lines north down river from our trailer and climbed two telephone poles, explaining to me that they were attempting to locate a fault in the line to the warehouse. They returned the following day and successfully connected the phone service. When I told Halsey that they had been by he was extremely interested, and he seemed quite upset upon learning that the repairmen had climbed up the poles. Alan then showed up and opened up the wiring, explaining that he was receiving static on his line. He rewired a few wires and left, muttering to himself.

I took a day to drive to Salem, the capital of Oregon, to file incorporation papers for Merisol Services Inc. I listed the address furnished to me by Halsey, 21449 South 99E, Canby OR. When the formal acknowledgment arrived in the mail, Halsey removed it from our mailbox while we were away shopping. When we returned he came over to our trailer quite visibly upset, exclaiming that I had used the wrong address He waved a letter in his hand from the State of Oregon Secretary of State's office, which held the incorporation papers. Halsey was actually yelling at both of us, ranting and raving that I had used the wrong address box, that I should have used 21419 instead, and that the box I was using was for Gary's use only.

These people did not expect me to follow through on my commitments, more than ever to the point of filing incorporation papers. When the documentation arrived they realized the property was not only on record with the Secretary of State's office, but also with the Federal Government, as all non profits are required to file for Federal Tax ID numbers. This was altogether more than these men had expected.

Several days later I saw that the entire set of mailboxes had been knocked over. Both Gary and Alan claimed that they had just fallen down, but upon my close inspection it was obvious that these had been solidly planted in the ground as a set with a concrete base. Someone had knocked over those mailboxes with a truck.

Meanwhile Gary and Halsey were making a considerable effort to make it appear that they were actively pursuing their paddlewheel museum and conference center project. I offered to let them use my 2 line ‘Home Receptionist’ phone, showing Halsey some of the advanced features such as the removable processor with LCD screen, caller ID, 50 call memory, and so forth. Several days later I came by the office to ascertain their progress towards transitioning the office to the needs of Merisol Services, Inc. I noticed that the phone I had installed had been disconnected, and was laid aside on a bookshelf. Halsey appeared entirely out of character, being very nervous, and he obviously wanted absolutely nothing to do with that telephone. In reality he acted as if he was afraid of it.

I had previously offered to sell Gary Tour a computer system at near wholesale prices, as I still maintained wholesale accounts from my previous computer businesses. However, when I dropped by a few days later Halsey demonstrated in his typical contrived manner their own solution towards their stated business need of a computer system on his desk, but the Microsoft Windows 95 Operating System installed on this computer was an expired demonstration version that lacked any documentation, and therefore was nonfunctional. In addition, they had no parallel cable to connect the computer to their printer. This apparent lack of business acumen was contrary to their attempts to present Gary Tour as a sharp businessman engaged in negotiations with state and city agencies.

Two days later Halsey asked me to give him a ride to Computer City, a discount house in Troutdale which was an hour and a half drive away, to buy a printer cable. I was not happy about this, but I reluctantly agreed. He then had the audacity to ask me to pay for this cable at the checkout stand, saying he would pay for it when Gary came out to New Era.

 Several days later Halsey came by our trailer and again asked me to give him another ride to Computer City, this time to buy a functional operating system for their computer. It was early in the morning, and the weather was dark and raining. I told him I was not interested in again driving for several hours in the rain, and he responded by asking me if as an alternative he could borrow my car instead. I was not at all pleased at this idea, but he insisted, saying he would not be gone for a very long time and they needed their computer system up and running. I reluctantly agreed, as he was essentially working for Gary, who was contractually my landlord.

After more than eleven nerve-wracking hours Halsey did eventually return a car to me, although it was late at night when he returned it, and the weather for the next several weeks was dark and wet. The car he returned was in fact from initial appearances the same brown 1976 Ford; with the same license plates, dashboard, seats, dashboard VIN number, and in fact was almost identical to the car Ken had sold to me. Barb insisted a week or so later that we were not in the same car I had bought from Ken Smith, and although I agreed with her statements, the fact was that due to the sudden onset of hysterical moodiness which began on the evening of her previous session with Nadia I was inclined to dismiss many of the things Barb stated before and after we left New Era. Some easily noticeable changes in the car, such as the tires, seat buckles and hood ornament stood out early, whereas other less visible changes were not noticeable until some time later.

The Hale-Bopp comet appeared during this period in colorful radiance in the Northern sky, presenting a memorable sight from the deck of our mobile home over the Willamette River in the very late night and early morning sky. I will always look at celestial bodied from a different perspective.

Approximately two weeks after Nadia left I was watching TV in the living room when I was startled by the sound of footsteps pounding up the stairs directly in front of me. This person then loudly (and obviously purposefully) slammed his or her hands on the sliding glass door facing me, turned around and disappeared into the darkness. The next day an officer came by our trailer and asked to see Barb’s ID. When she showed her identification to him he asked her if she was 'Miranta', and took out a photo that according to Barb looked more like her than her ID did. She assured this (Federal) officer that she was not the woman on the picture, and he then turned and literally ran off the deck and up the driveway to his car.

The next day Gary came by the trailer, and looking at the stack of phone records I was going over he said with a smirk, "Having trouble with your phone bills?" We told him of the visit by the officer the previous day and he said, "Federalis, huh?" We then walked out onto the deck, and Gary began talking of the recent light flooding we had been experiencing, all the while leaning over the railing and studying the level of the river. His nerves were as always on edge, and as usual he was distant in his conversations with me. Gary came by every day for the next few days, constantly preoccupied with the level of the water.

I saw more of Gary Tour during these few weeks than I had seen of him during my entire presence at New Era.

One evening I walked over to see Alan, and I noticed that the light was on in a workshop set on one of the docks below his trailer that just appeared one day. As I looked down I saw an attractive woman leaning against a workbench on the far wall of this workshop. My initial thought was that this woman was Nadia, but even at a distance of thirty feet her physique appeared to be considerably more feminine than Nadia’s. In hindsight she looked more like a blonde or silver-haired version of Barb. I told Alan that I thought I had just seen Nadia in his workshop, but he vociferously denied that it had been Nadia. He persisted in an increasingly vehement manner in what was without doubt an impromptu but critically important attempt to convince me of the insignificance of what I had seen. This in itself bespoke of the extreme significance he attached both to the fact that I had seen a woman there on the docks in the first place, and also to the possibility of any recognition or even potential future association on my part of the woman that I had seen. He further demonstrated the importance of this event by launching into a line of reasoning that I must have seen a mannequin, and embellishing on this ridiculous claim by stating that there were several mannequins around the warehouse. This was a major gaffe on Alan’s part, especially considering his weak attempt to support that claim by placing a mannequin at various locations in the warehouse over the next five days or so.

Changing the subject, he began bemoaning his lack of resources, and complained that he was missing a number of his business checks. I responded that Nadia had asked me to cash a few checks he had written to her and signed, and that she had later asked me to write my name as the payee and cash two checks he had signed for work she had provided for him, expressing my hope that I had not been a party to any possible deception on her part. I never had any misgivings concerning the appropriateness of my actions in this matter, as there was an almost palpable bond between these two people. Behind a wry smile Alan predictably stated, ‘yes, she bled me pretty good.’

Alan also complained that he did not have enough gasoline in his tugboat to drive down-river to the marina to fuel his gas tanks. Over the next several days I noticed Alan drive onto the property a number of times with several 55-gallon drums, which he said contained gasoline for his tugboat. One day we returned from a trip to the grocery store to find Alan standing next to our trailer wiring a 12 volt battery to the type of fuel pump that is inserted into a 55 gallon drum. He explained to me that he was going to use this to refuel his tugboat. It made no sense that he would want to start refueling his tugboat so far from his dock, but especially from where our trailer was located, as it was an almost vertical drop of between eighteen to twenty-two feet down to the waterline of the river, whereas there was a dirt road adjacent to his trailer which led right down to the water. Early the next morning I noticed two men whom I did not recognize unloading a 55 gallon steel drum out of a pickup truck right off our porch where Alan had rigged up the fuel pump. They then unraveled a long hose and laid it down over the riverbank. The older of the two men was chiding the younger one, and I heard him say, "Well of course they noticed, you were up at 4:30 in the morning!" I was concerned over the presence of those two men, but they looked clean cut, apparently at work, and therefore I put my concerns on the back burner.

A day or so later Halsey came by the trailer escorting a man in a green uniform whom he introduced to me as a representative of the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ). Halsey explained to this gentleman that I was the director of a nonprofit corporation called Merisol Services, Inc., and he spoke of the wonderful things I was engaged in doing for the youth and for the community. He was obviously quite nervous about this man’s presence, which was certainly disconcerting for me. Halsey’s intent was self-evident through his obvious use of myself to assuage any possible concerns that officer or his superiors may have had concerning any activities at New Era they might have deemed unusual, and therefore suspect. The very fact of his presence there was a clear indication that a governmental agency was definitely interested in what was going on there, and in retrospect it became clear to me that the nature of that officer’s preliminary investigation was not the environment. I invited him inside, and showing him the plans for the 9^th century Viking Longboat, the wall-sized world map, and I explained to him the corporation's mission, the vehicle and pilot project I had chosen to fulfill the corporation’s mission. He seemed impressed, although it is certain this man was not from the DEQ, an observation certainly not lost on the people at New Era. Meanwhile, as the DEQ officer and I were talking Nadia ‘just happened to come by at that particular time’ to retrieve the boxes she had previously left on our deck. Observing Nadia scrambling back and forth through the floor to ceiling glass, pausing each time and apprehensively eyeing first the officer and then myself, it occurred to me that I had not previously seen Nadia demonstrate any level of concern towards anything whatsoever.

Early the next day I walked out to the living room, and taking in the wonderful view of the river I saw Alan darting up the steep walls of the riverbank outside our home with speed and agility that far exceeded any human or animal I have ever observed. He immediately grabbed the hose that these men had used to pump what I had preferred to presume until that moment was gasoline, turned and scrambled back down the gully, all of which occurred in the flash of a few moments. A short-lived thought passed through my mind to walk out onto the deck to see just where he had gone to, as the dense thorny blackberry bushes hugging the steep cliff running up and downriver effectively prevented passage by anyone from that point unless they went out on or in the river. I would have been aware of the presence of his tugboat had it been parked there. My decision to refrain from walking out onto the deck was certainly a blessing of God's good grace. I thought better of it, and this may very well have saved my life. If I had walked out onto that deck I would have truly blown a cover vastly more important to these men than my notice of the woman standing on the dock below Alan’s trailer. I would have initiated a different chain of events that would have secured my fate prematurely and outside of God's purveyance.

One evening while working at my computer desk creating employee manuals, writing proposals for funders, etc. Barb came out of our bedroom to visit after putting Bunny to bed. She suddenly said that she felt something was wrong, and immediately got up and went straight back to the bedroom to check on our little daughter. Upon returning, Barb described her discovery that Bunny's bottle was in her mouth with the nipple unscrewed, and how milk was pouring out of her mouth and down her chin. Barb said she picked up her daughter and slapped her back, and milk shot straight out of her mouth in a fountain. Barb had just left Bunny not more than a minute before, and she expressed her concern that someone had entered the bedroom and done that to Bunny.

I met a woman whom I was introduced to as ‘Tammy’ at Alan's mobile home one day, and Alan explained to me that he had rented his fifth wheel to her. Tammy stopped by our mobile home one day to look at the leather purses I was making. She was interested in buying one of the purses that I had been making, saying she liked leather, and that she was particularly interested in black leather pants, coats, and chaps for riding on Harleys. I told her that I used to own two leather shops in the early 70's, and that I would be happy to make some 'leathers' for her if she was interested. I told her of the problems that I had had with two of my daughters' involvement with the Eighteenth Street Gang, and she then told me that she knew the founder of the Eighteenth Street Gang down in LA. A week or so later I was with Alan and Tammy arrived in the accompaniment of a rather dominating woman who appeared to be both physically supporting her while also preventing Tammy from going anywhere of her own accord. Later that evening at home I realized that Tammy appeared to have been beaten, as her entire face was swollen. Another aspect that later struck me about her condition was that even though she was wearing makeup, it appeared as if she had been beaten by someone wearing boxing gloves or some other padding. There were no apparent bruises or contusions on her face, and she did not have black eyes. It was as if the person who had done that to her had known how to severely hurt someone while maintaining a high degree of control over any visually apparent indications of physical abuse.

I discussed this with Barb, and we speculated on the reason why this woman might have been so severely beaten. We discussed the possible connections of Tammy's statements to us: She knew the people out at New Era, she knew the founder of the Eighteenth Street Gang, and my two daughters were involved with the Eighteenth Street Gang. I never saw her again. We also speculated on the ferocity that Alan had directed at Halsey when he had told Barb and I that Alan and Nadia were cousins and bikers. It was apparent that this gal had been punished for identifying connections that these people had with bikers and with the Eighteenth Street Gang. This development further reinforced my perception that these people were in fact bikers themselves. The concept that the events of our lives had been manipulated by a group of men and women since Barb rented that apartment at Damien’s house was developing in my mind, but the long range and sophisticated planning necessary for this to occur was far too complex to justify any scenario I could fathom at the time.

I went up to the office a number of times over the next few weeks, but when Halsey was there he was vigilantly staring out the large window with a set of binoculars, offering him a bird’s eye close-up view of both the trailer I lived in and also of the Willamette River. There were bald eagles, beavers and river otters to be seen, but when I pointed them out to him his response was tepid. He was certainly not bird watching.

At about this time I noticed there was a channel dredging operation towards the other side of the river from our trailer. However, I noticed later that day that the dredge had suddenly been moved all the way to the bend upriver from me later that afternoon, and the next morning it had been moved back past me all the way downriver to that bend, and then the next day it would be back in front of my trailer again. The cycle lasted for perhaps two weeks, but during that time there were a number of days when the dredge was nowhere to be seen. I thought this was an odd way to conduct a dredging operation. I grew up a few blocks from the Willamette River, and I have worked as a surveyor on the construction of the I-205 Interstate Bridge and on the construction of dry-docks on the Willamette River. Channel dredges are an almost constant sight on the rivers, and they move at a glacial pace up the channel, with a clam shovel slowly lifting the material out from the river bottom one bucketful at a time, depositing it on the barge, and then dropping back into the water for another. It typically takes several days for a barge to move the distance this barge would move in an afternoon, and then to see it change locations back and forth a few more times definitely caught my attention.

 One day I observed a large ocean-going tugboat parked at a new dock Alan had parked less than one hundred feet from my mobile home. Two days later there were three large tugboats parked at that dock. Alan explained that they were renting dock space from him, but I could see no logical reason for the presence of three tugboats of that caliber to be twenty miles upriver from the Port of Portland. There presence there was disturbing to me.

A day or so later Barb pointed out what she said was another tugboat not too far downriver from our trailer. I looked out over the water and spotted a large gray oval-shaped structure with what looked like long antennas rising from its top. I could not discern exactly what it was, but it certainly was not a tugboat. I was impatient with her at the time and I merely told her that what she was seeing was not a tugboat. I thought that it looked like the conning tower of a submarine set just above the water but that idea did not seem very likely. This was in April, less than two months before the Rose Festival, when US and Canadian ships and submarines sail upriver and dock in Portland, less than twenty miles from New Era.

A few days later, on the first Friday of March 1997 at 1:30 in the morning I was startled out of bed by a deafeningly loud roaring sound, apparently coming from out on the river. I jumped out of bed and went to the kitchen window to find the source and reason for that overwhelming chaos. I looked out to see a large tugboat driving across the water towards me, accompanied by the deafening roar of the engine, when suddenly a blinding light struck my eyes. This tugboat had four extremely bright searchlights mounted on top of the cabin, flooding our trailer and restricting my vision, which prevented me from seeing much of anything other than the lights and foredeck of the tug, which undoubtedly was their intention. This boat was not Alan’s, but one of the large oceangoing tugboats that had been parked at one of the more recent docks Alan had put together recently. The repeated and deafening noise of the engine was far too loud for a tugboat. As I looked at this huge boat with searchlights roaring towards me on the water (eyes agape, I imagine), the sliding glass doors, windows and the tin roof began to rattle, increasing in magnitude to where the entire trailer was shaking violently in a cacophony of sound. Hoping to change my viewpoint from the direct beam of the lights, I moved to look out through the sliding glass doors of the living room, but as I looked out the window I then saw that there were people on our deck. Putting my face against the glass to see what was going on, I saw people scattering from different places against our trailer across our deck in every direction and disappear into the darkness. I quickly walked back into our bedroom and described to Barb the extent of what I knew was going on outside. I went back out to the living room, and drawing the curtains open I saw that there were people lined up all along our trailer on the deck, stationed every five feet or so along every window and at all five sliding glass doors, a menacing sight at best. When I approached the sliding glass door next to the addition I could clearly see a very tall man outside, standing still as if on guard. I went back to our bedroom and grabbed a large wooden dowel that was over two inches in diameter and a couple of feet long. I thought that this would make for quite an effective club. I walked back out to the living room, and approaching one of the sliding glass doors while slapping the club in the palm of my hand, I called out, "OK, come and get some!" I had come to the conclusion that wit the odds outside my only defense was to mount a good offense. I had no telephone service, so I had no recourse to call the police. This would not have been an option anyway, as these people could easily have come into the trailer if they had wanted to. Their apparent intention was to intimidate us into submission, not to storm in and take our lives. Then the rattling of the doors and windows began again, which I believed to be a ruse to deflect my attention from focusing on the reason for the violent shaking of the trailer. I could see Alan outside our main entrance; bent over and appearing as if he was trying to pry open or pick the lock of our door. I was surprised to see him out there as I had assumed it was Alan in the tugboat gunning it engines and shining the four enormously bright halogen lights at my trailer. I had not sheathed the interior walls at Gary tour’s request, and I could have easily knocked out any number of panels in the addition with my foot. Any one of the men outside could just have easily done the same.

I went back into the bedroom, which was located downriver at the far northern end of the trailer There was a large tree that the deck had been built around, and I had looked at the cable before and pondered as to the reason for the continued presence of a cable that had been looped around a heavy branch of the tree. It had been there for many years, as the wood had grown around it in several places. We then heard a sound that I identified as a heavy steel cable being run across metal, a sound that continued for over an hour and a half, and which was accompanied by the violent shaking of the trailer. Several hours later the violent shaking and rattling of the trailer, lasting again for well over an hour. My perception at the time was that these people identified by Halsey as 'bikers' perhaps had a very large underground drug lab. I thought that they could be removing a long cylinder from below the deck, using the large tugboat and cable to raise it up. I had in mind some type of automatic lab, which they could fill with chemicals, drop down underground and turn on. This seemed to be a plausible guess at the time for our high electric bill and the occasional shorting out of our breaker box. I was reaching for any reasonable explanation in an extremely unreasonable situation that could at best be described as life threatening. I had heard intermittent conversations throughout the night, but four and one half to five hours after this whole episode began I heard people discussing something outside of our bedroom when a man say, "Kill them." Barb had been hysterical for hours, (screaming), and I desperately needed her to calm down so that I could gain a clearer perspective of what was going on. I also needed to prepare myself spiritually and psychologically for the violence that I felt certain was soon to come. When I repeated this threat that I had heard to Barb several times and emphasized the importance of her absolute silence, the intense danger we were facing finally dawned on her, and she calmed down. Less tan an hour later we then heard a woman say, "I don't think we should kill them. They have a baby!" Not long afterwards it began to get light outside, at which point I could neither hear voices or movement outside. I got up a short time later (we were lying prone on our beds, absolutely still) and walked down the hallway to the living room and looked outside to ascertain if there was anyone on our deck, or whether other potentially lethal treat were waiting outside. I saw no one.

Needless to say we had not slept that night. Later on in the morning I saw Alan working on some thing or other (undoubtedly likely a ruse) up by the pump house. He did not appear to be a threat, but acted as if it were just another. I decided that those people would have already killed us if that were what they were planning on doing, and I knew it was in our best interest to remain calm. The activity of the night before convinced me that we had for some inexplicable reason been lured out to the New Era property by a group of Hell's Angels engaged in large-scale drug manufacturing. Barb and I discussed the numerous covers that these people were maintaining, and why I had been led out there in the first place.

I had been investing all of my spare time on the nonprofit Merisol Services, Inc project for the last five months, 14 or more hours a day, and therefore we had absolutely no cash with which to move. We had no family who would help us, as I would learn later thanks to Damien, and we had no other place to go. We decided against calling the police, as I correlated that idea with a Mafia man calling the police on the Godfather. We would not survive that action, as a contract would be put out on us immediately. I decided that anything other than going on as if nothing had happened would be an instant death sentence on the three of us. So we went on, maintaining our daily routine. I bought the tools I needed to obtain work as a carpenter, and immediately began to look for employment and housing in Portland, Oregon.

I had no naïve conceptions concerning the Hells Angels and their predilection towards drugs and violence. I had known bikers back in the sixties and early seventies, and I found them to be extremely tough individuals. They were prone to violence when pushed; as are many Americans, but when Hells Angels become violent the result is almost invariably far more lethal. I have always avoided violence, and therefore I have generally found that violence avoided me. It was apparent to me that these people were in fact 'Hells Angels,' and that we had been lured into a complex trap to create a cover for their apparent drug-manufacturing lab on their property. My decision to ''hang tight' until our resources provided us with the means of a reasonably unpretentious escape seemed to be the only viable option I had.

  One night Barb and I were in the front of the trailer, where I had my office next to the living room addition. Barb exclaimed that there was a woman dressed in white walking towards us down the hall from the bedroom. I got up and looked, and I saw a faint image of a woman appearing to be dressed in a blue and white robe hovering in the hallway, moving first towards us, then away, and then forward again.

On April 11^th, 1997 Barb and I drove into Portland to look for an apartment to rent. I stopped by a drugstore in the Hollywood district, as there was a public phone on the corner. As I pulled into the parking space around the corner from the phone both Barb and I focused on a very tall but stooped man sitting on a bench. He was leaning over almost double, as if he were extremely ill.

To reinforce this perception he had an oxygen line under his nose leading from a portable oxygen tank sitting on the sidewalk next to him. Barb did not want me to park right in front of that man, stating that he was dangerous. I told her that he was obviously an invalid and certainly harmless. I got out of the car and walked around the corner to call the several phone numbers I had that held the promise of a place to live away from New Era. Suddenly Barb came running up to me, carrying our baby in the car seat, and she was absolutely frantic. I had to calm her down so I could make sense of her incoherent and frenzied babbling. She then explained that this 'invalid' had straightened up after I walked around the corner, dropped the oxygen tank and walked over to our car. He then plastered his face against the window right next to her and said 'Hi!' in a slurring and almost delirious manner. He looked at Barb, and then the baby, and then he looked at the keys that I had left in the ignition. This man then proceeded to walk forward to a tan colored van that had just parked in front of our car, reached into the sliding door that had opened as he approached and pulled out a handgun. He put this under his belt, put a stocking cap on his head, crossed the street, walked down the block and disappeared around the corner behind Damienia Furniture. He again reappeared back down around the other end of the block, crossed the street and walked into the US Bank that was across the street from our car, and Barb. After hearing this I immediately took Barb and daughter into the drug store and told them to call the police, as Barb had just seen a robbery in progress. When the officers arrived a man walked right up to Barb and the officer who was interviewing her, looked at both of them, and then walked across the street. Barb realized that this was the same man who had walked into the bank with the gun. She immediately identified that man to the officer, and he asked how she could tell. She responded, "Because there are several of them, they are all big, and they stand out in the crowd." The immediate result of our actions was that we prevented a bank robbery. Barb told me that the US Bank had large cash reserves deposited periodically on a predictable day, and therefore we believe this robbery was planned to be a major heist. After the officer departed an old woman with shaggy gray hair and a limp came right up into Barb's face and said, "Why did you call the police? What are you, a snitch?" Needless to say this upset Barb to no end, and she then came across the street to where I was waiting. She did not want to go outside again. I explained to the owners that we had just prevented a bank robbery, and I needed a few minutes to calm Barb down. In the meantime, I noticed a tall, slim man who was wandering around aimlessly against the far wall of this building, constantly turning his head in our direction and observing us closely. After much coaxing on my part to get Barb to go outside and cross the street, we got into our car and left.

When we arrived back out at New Era a car was pulling up onto the property right behind us. As Barb caught up with me on the steps she told me that a man got out of that car and lunge towards us, shouting something. Two other men jumped out of the car, and restraining him they dragged him back into their car, whereupon they drove down the road behind the warehouse. Upon hearing Barb's description of this man I recognized him as Chris, the nephew Alan had staying with him. Chris had always appeared to me as a calm, almost timid young man, and despite what I had recently experienced this news for some reason did not make sense to me. Chris had somewhat long blonde hair and a trimmed blonde beard, and appeared to be in his twenties.

These men were constantly changing their identities. There was a pattern to the timing of each of their appearances, such as Ken/Mike, Gary/Ralph, and Halsey/Chris. Neither Barb nor I ever saw the two of these men together at the same time. I observed these men and women repeatedly create a convincing construction of an individual, and flawlessly duplicate that character numerous times. Repeated repetition of patterns seen tend to belie coincidence. As the saying goes in intelligence circles, there is no such thing as coincidence.

There were several items that connected with my past that showed up in Nadia's possession. I found the little stuffed toy bear hanging in a basket from a miniature hot air balloon in a 55 gallon barrel next to where Nadia had parked her trailer several days after it was moved off the property. I took this little toy bear in a hot air balloon back to our trailer and showed it to Barb. The presence of that teddy bear hanging from the hot air balloon was a connection dating back to March of 1996 when we lived at Damien’s house. I returned it to the store where it came from, as it had not been for sale. This link indicated to me that Damien had even followed us during our walks, without our detection, and therefore he was under the guise of another.

Nadia had given me the set of curtains that my previous wife had hung in our house in Portland a few months before her death. However, the curtains predated the period when Barb and I resided at Damien’s house. My previous wife in our home had installed those curtains before she passed away in 1994, and I had not seen those curtains since January of 1995. That was eleven months before Barb rented her room from Damien.

However, Damien’s house was only about eight blocks from my former house. I knew several people that I later learned had close ties to the Hells Angels, one of whom had threatened my life on several occasions, both verbal and written, as a result of his jealousy over a woman. Another applied his considerable computer skills towards breaking into government and other high security computer systems. The connection between Damien and the Hells Angels was stronger than indicated here, but I am not at liberty to discuss this in further detail. Nonetheless, I had not yet identified Damien with Nadia. I imagine that was partly due to my impression that Nadia seemed to have a larger stature than Mr. Hachey does. That is one reason why Nadia always wore cowboy style boots, more accurately called Spanish dancing boots, with their signature high heels, and why she was always putting layer upon layer of makeup. This is also a reason why Nadia always wore pants over a long skirt, hoping to present itself as an aging female hippie. Damien also modeled the appearance of Nadia after the woman I saw on the dock at the New Era property, allowing them to switch roles. That woman also was very similar in appearance to Barb, allowing each of them a third identity, while creating resolutions towards questions that arose throughout this entire journey.

Shortly before we left New Era Alan came by and asked us if we would walk over to his trailer with him, as he had some parting gifts for us. He gave us three items: A small white hammock, which I thought was a small fishing net, a polished amethyst cut in the shape and size of a large egg, and a small wooden box from India with decorative inlaid brass with a hand written label inside which I discovered spelled 'Black Bunny.' This was one of those small matchboxes made in India, and inside this box was a piece of black pitch or tar of some sort that at the time I thought might be incense.

Alan also talked of Nadia, saying that she was not really Nadia but Natias or rather not ia but Natas. He said this with his characteristic wry smile, but at the time it was a flyby. Natas is Satan spelled backwards. The realm of Satan flows backwards. Alan derived great pleasure from the reversed nature of The Evil One, and he mimicked this often, such as ‘AWT,’ the initials of his business at the New Era site. Unlike Damien (Nadia), Alan was not hesitant to allude to their connection with Satan in front of me, a flagrant admission to his addiction of the power and perverse, inhuman gluttony they derived from that unity. The dichotomy of Damien and Nadia was very bright and sophisticated subterfuge, indeed at it's best, for there was no such person as Nadia. Nadia without the 'ia' is Damien spelled backwards; that is Damien. My wife had told me just before we moved out of our apartment at Damien’s house that she thought he was a Satan worshipper. All of these people at New Era participated in Satan's delight in confounding the innocent. He had to grasp onto all of delight he could manage, as this was as close as he was ever going to come to the light. I say this now in retrospect.

Alan also complained that he did not have enough gasoline in his tugboat to drive down-river to the marina to fuel his gas tanks. Over the next several days I noticed Alan drive onto the property a number of times with several 55-gallon drums, presumably containing gasoline for his tugboat. One day we returned from a trip to the grocery store to find Alan standing next to our trailer wiring a 12 volt battery to the type of fuel pump that is inserted into a 55 gallon drum. He explained to me that he was going to use this to refuel his tugboat. It made no sense that he would want to start refueling his tugboat so far from his dock, especially from where our trailer was located, as it was an almost vertical drop of between eighteen to twenty-two feet down to the waterline of the river, whereas there was a dirt road adjacent to his trailer which led right down to the water. Early the next morning I noticed two men whom I did not recognize unloading a 55 gallon steel drum out of a pickup truck right off our porch where Alan had rigged up the fuel pump. They then unraveled a long hose and laid it down over the riverbank. The older of the two men was chiding the younger one, and I heard him say, "Well of course they noticed, you were up at 4:30 in the morning!" I was concerned over the presence of those two men, but they looked clean cut, apparently at work, and therefore I put my concerns on the back burner.

A day or so later Halsey came by the trailer escorting a man in a green uniform whom he introduced to me as a representative of the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ). Halsey explained to this gentleman that I was the director of a nonprofit corporation called Merisol Services, Inc., and he spoke of the wonderful things I was engaged in doing for the youth and for the community. He was obviously quite nervous about this man’s presence, which was certainly disconcerting for me. Halsey’s intent was self-evident through his obvious use of myself to assuage any possible concerns that officer or his superiors may have had concerning any activities at New Era they might have deemed unusual, and therefore suspect. The very fact of his presence there was a clear indication that a governmental agency was definitely interested in what was going on there, and in retrospect it became clear to me that the nature of that officer’s preliminary investigation was not the environment. I invited him inside, and showing him the plans for the 9^th century Viking Longboat, the wall-sized world map, and I explained to him the corporation's mission, the vehicle and pilot project I had chosen to fulfill the corporation’s mission. He seemed impressed, although it is certain this man was not from the DEQ, an observation certainly not lost on the people at New Era. Meanwhile, as the DEQ officer and I were talking Nadia ‘just happened to come by at that particular time’ to retrieve the boxes she had previously left on our deck. Observing Nadia scrambling back and forth through the floor to ceiling glass, pausing each time and apprehensively eyeing first the officer and then myself, it occurred to me that I had not previously seen Nadia demonstrate any level of concern towards anything whatsoever.

Early the next day I walked out to the living room, and taking in the wonderful view of the river I saw Alan darting up the steep walls of the riverbank outside our home with speed and agility that far exceeded any human or animal I have ever observed. He immediately grabbed the hose that these men had used to pump what I had preferred to presume until that moment was gasoline, turned and scrambled back down the gully, all of which occurred in the flash of a few moments. A short-lived thought passed through my mind to walk out onto the deck to see just where he had gone to, as the dense thorny blackberry bushes hugging the steep cliff running up and downriver effectively prevented passage by anyone from that point unless they went out on or in the river. I would have been aware of the presence of his tugboat had it been parked there. My decision to refrain from walking out onto the deck was certainly a blessing of God's good grace. I thought better of it, and this may very well have saved my life. If I had walked out onto that deck I would have truly blown a cover vastly more important to these men than my notice of the woman standing on the dock below Alan’s trailer. I would have initiated a different chain of events that would have secured my fate prematurely and outside of God's purveyance.

One evening while working at my computer desk creating employee manuals, writing proposals for funders, etc. Barb came out of our bedroom to visit after putting Bunny to bed. She suddenly said that she felt something was wrong, and immediately got up and went straight back to the bedroom to check on our little daughter. Upon returning, Barb described her discovery that Bunny's bottle was in her mouth with the nipple unscrewed, and how milk was pouring out of her mouth and down her chin. Barb said she picked up her daughter and slapped her back, and milk shot straight out of her mouth in a fountain. Barb had just left Bunny not more than a minute before, and she expressed her concern that someone had entered the bedroom and done that to Bunny.

I met a woman whom I was introduced to as ‘Tammy’ at Alan's mobile home one day, and Alan explained to me that he had rented his fifth wheel to her. Tammy stopped by our mobile home one day to look at the leather purses I was making. She was interested in buying one of the purses that I had been making, saying she liked leather, and that she was particularly interested in black leather pants, coats, and chaps for riding on Harleys. I told her that I used to own two leather shops in the early 70's, and that I would be happy to make some 'leathers' for her if she was interested. I told her of the problems that I had had with two of my daughters' involvement with the Eighteenth Street Gang, and she then told me that she knew the founder of the Eighteenth Street Gang down in LA. A week or so later I was with Alan and Tammy arrived in the accompaniment of a rather dominating woman who appeared to be both physically supporting her while also preventing Tammy from going anywhere of her own accord. Later that evening at home I realized that Tammy appeared to have been beaten, as her entire face was swollen. Another aspect that later struck me about her condition was that even though she was wearing makeup, it appeared as if she had been beaten by someone wearing boxing gloves or some other padding. There were no apparent bruises or contusions on her face, and she did not have black eyes. It was as if the person who had done that to her had known how to severely hurt someone while maintaining a high degree of control over any visually apparent indications of physical abuse.

I discussed this with Barb, and we speculated on the reason why this woman might have been so severely beaten. We discussed the possible connections of Tammy's statements to us: She knew the people out at New Era, she knew the founder of the Eighteenth Street Gang, and my two daughters were involved with the Eighteenth Street Gang. I never saw her again. We also speculated on the ferocity that Alan had directed at Halsey when he had told Barb and I that Alan and Nadia were cousins and bikers. It was apparent that this gal had been punished for identifying connections that these people had with bikers and with the Eighteenth Street Gang. This development further reinforced my perception that these people were in fact bikers themselves. The concept that the events of our lives had been manipulated by a group of men and women since Barb rented that apartment at Damien’s house was developing in my mind, but the long range and sophisticated planning necessary for this to occur was far too complex to justify any scenario I could fathom at the time.

A few days later, on the first Friday of March 1997 at 1:30 in the morning I was startled out of bed by a deafeningly loud roaring sound, apparently coming from out on the river. I jumped out of bed and went to the kitchen window to find the source and reason for that overwhelming chaos. I looked out to see a large tugboat driving across the water towards me, accompanied by the deafening roar of the engine, when suddenly a blinding light struck my eyes. This tugboat had four extremely bright searchlights mounted on top of the cabin, flooding our trailer and restricting my vision, which prevented me from seeing much of anything other than the lights and foredeck of the tug, which undoubtedly was their intention. This boat was not Alan’s, but one of the large oceangoing tugboats that had been parked at one of the more recent docks Alan had put together recently. The repeated and deafening noise of the engine was far too loud for a tugboat. As I looked at this huge boat with searchlights roaring towards me on the water (eyes agape, I imagine), the sliding glass doors, windows and the tin roof began to rattle, increasing in magnitude to where the entire trailer was shaking violently. Hoping to change my viewpoint from the direct beam of the lights, I moved to look out the living room glass doors, but as I looked out on the deck I then saw that there were people on our deck. Putting my face against the glass to see what was going on, I saw people scattering from different places against our trailer across our deck in every direction and disappear into the darkness. I quickly walked back into our bedroom and described to her the extent of what I knew was going on outside. I went back out to the living room, and drawing the curtains open I saw that there were people lined up outside our trailer on our deck, stationed every five feet or so along every window and at all five sliding glass doors, a menacing sight at best. When I approached the sliding glass door next to the addition I could clearly see a very tall man outside, standing still as if on guard. I went back to our bedroom and grabbed a large wooden dowel that was over two inches in diameter and a couple of feet long. I thought that this would make for quite an effective club. I walked back out to the living room, and approaching one of the sliding glass doors while slapping this club in the palm of my hand, I called out, "OK, come and get some!" My only option was a good offense, as we had no telephone, so I had no recourse to call the police. This would not have been an option anyway, as these people could easily have come into the trailer if they had wanted to. Their apparent intention was to intimidate us into submission, not to storm in and take our lives. Then they began rattling the doors and windows, a ruse to deflect my attention from focusing on the reason for the violent shaking of the trailer. I could see Alan outside our main entrance; bent over and appearing as if he was trying to pry open the lock of our door. I had not sheathed the interior walls at Gary tour’s request, and I could have easily knocked out any number of panels in the addition with my foot. There was a large tree that the deck had been built around, and I had pondered as to the reason for the cable that was looped around a heavy branch of the tree. This cable had been there for many years, as the wood had grown around the cable in several places. We heard a sound that I identified as a heavy steel cable being run across metal, a sound that continued for over an hour and a half, and then several hours later started back up, lasting again for over an hour. My perception at the time was that these people identified by Halsey as 'bikers' perhaps had a very large underground drug lab. I thought that perhaps they were removing a long cylinder from below the deck, using this large tugboat to raise it up. I had in mind some type of automatic lab, which they could fill with chemicals, drop down underground and turn on. This seemed to be a plausible explanation at the time for our high electric bill and the occasional shorting out of our breaker box. I was reaching for any reasonable explanation in an extremely unreasonable and highly dangerous situation.

Several hours after this whole episode began I heard a man outside the window of our bedroom say, "Kill them." Barb was quite hysterical, (screaming), and I desperately needed her to calm down so that I could gain a clearer perspective of what was going on. I also needed to prepare myself for the violence that I felt certain was soon to come. When I repeated this threat that I had heard to Barb several times and emphasized the importance of her absolute silence, the intense danger we were facing finally dawned on her, and she calmed down. An hour or so later we then heard a woman say, "I don't think we should kill them. They have a baby!" Not long afterwards it began to get light outside, at which point I could neither hear voices or movement outside. I got up a short time later (we were lying prone on our beds, absolutely still) and walked down the hallway to the living room then outside to verify that there was no longer anyone on our deck. I saw no one.

Needless to say we did not sleep that night. Later on in the morning I saw Alan working on some thing or other (undoubtedly likely a ruse) up by the pump house and acting as if everything was normal. I decided that these people would have already killed us if that were what they were planning on doing, and I knew it was in our best interest to remain calm. The activity of the night before convinced me that we had for some inexplicable reason been lured out to the New Era property by a group of Hell's Angels engaged in drug manufacturing. Barb and I discussed the numerous covers that these people were maintaining, and why I had been led out there in the first place.

I had been investing all of my spare time on the nonprofit Merisol project for the last five months, 14 or more hours a day, and therefore we had no cash with which to move. We had no family who would help us, as I would learn later thanks to Damien, and we had no other place to go. We decided against calling the police, as I correlated that idea with a Mafia man calling the police on the Godfather. We would not survive that action, as a contract would be put out on us immediately. I decided that anything other than going on as if nothing had happened would be an instant death sentence on the three of us. So we went on, maintaining our daily routine. I bought the tools I needed to obtain work as a carpenter, and immediately began to look for employment and housing in Portland, Oregon.

I had no naïve conceptions concerning the Hells Angels and their predilection towards drugs and violence. I had known bikers back in the sixties and early seventies, and I found them to be extremely tough individuals. They were prone to violence when pushed; as are many Americans, but when Hells Angels become violent the result is almost invariably far more lethal. I have always avoided violence, and therefore I have generally found that violence avoided me. It was apparent to me that these people were in fact 'Hells Angels,' and that we had been lured into a complex trap to create a cover for their apparent drug-manufacturing lab on their property. My decision to ''hang tight' until our resources provided us with the means of a reasonably unpretentious escape seemed to be the only viable option I had.

  One night Barb and I were in the front of the trailer, where I had my office next to the living room addition. Barb exclaimed that there was a woman dressed in white walking towards us down the hall from the bedroom. I got up and looked, and I saw a faint image of a woman appearing to be dressed in a blue and white robe hovering in the hallway, moving first towards us, then away, and then forward again.

On April 11^th, 1997 Barb and I drove into Portland to look for an apartment to rent. I stopped by a drugstore in the Hollywood district, as there was a public phone on the corner. As I pulled into the parking space around the corner from the phone both Barb and I focused on a man sitting on a bench. He was leaning over almost double, as if he were ill.

To reinforce this perception he had an oxygen line under his nose leading from a portable oxygen tank sitting on the sidewalk next to him. Barb did not want me to park right in front of this man, stating that he was dangerous. I told her that he was obviously an invalid and certainly harmless. I got out of the car and walked around the corner to call the several phone numbers I had that held the promise of a place to live away from New Era. Suddenly Barb came running up to me, carrying our baby in the car seat, and she was absolutely frantic. I had to calm her down so I could make sense of her incoherent and frenzied babbling. She then explained that this 'invalid' had straightened up after I walked around the corner, dropped the oxygen tank and walked over to our car. He then plastered his face against the window right next to her and said 'Hi!' in a slurring and almost delirious manner. He looked at Barb, and then the baby, and then he looked at the keys that I had left in the ignition. This man then proceeded to walk forward to a tan colored van that had just parked in front of our car, reached into the sliding door that had opened as he approached and pulled out a handgun. He put this under his belt, put a stocking cap on his head, crossed the street, walked down the block and disappeared around the corner behind Dania Furniture. He again reappeared back down around the other end of the block, crossed the street and walked into the US Bank that was across the street from our car, and Barb. After hearing this I immediately took Barb and daughter into the drug store and told them to call the police, as Barb had just seen a robbery in progress. When the officers arrived a man walked right up to Barb and the officer who was interviewing her, looked at both of them, and then walked across the street. Barb realized that this was the same man who had walked into the bank with the gun. She immediately identified that man to the officer, and he asked how she could tell. She responded, "Because there are several of them, they are all big, and they stand out in the crowd." The immediate result of our actions was that we prevented a bank robbery. Barb told me that the US Bank had large cash reserves deposited periodically on a predictable day, and therefore we believe this robbery was planned to be a major heist. After the officer departed an old woman with shaggy gray hair and a limp came right up into Barb's face and said, "Why did you call the police? What are you, a snitch?" Needless to say this upset Barb to no end, and she then came across the street to where I was waiting. She did not want to go outside again. I explained to the owners that we had just prevented a bank robbery, and I needed a few minutes to calm Barb down. In the meantime, I noticed a tall, slim man who was wandering around aimlessly against the far wall of this building, constantly turning his head in our direction and observing us closely. After much coaxing on my part to get Barb to go outside and cross the street, we got into our car and left.

When we arrived back out at New Era a car was pulling up onto the property right behind us. As Barb caught up with me on the steps she told me that a man got out of that car and lunge towards us, shouting something. Two other men jumped out of the car, and restraining him they dragged him back into their car, whereupon they drove down the road behind the warehouse. Upon hearing Barb's description of this man I recognized him as Chris, the nephew Alan had staying with him. Chris had always appeared to me as a calm, almost timid young man, and despite what I had recently experienced this news for some reason did not make sense to me. Chris had somewhat long blonde hair and a trimmed blonde beard, and appeared to be in his twenties.

These men were constantly changing their identities. There was a pattern to the timing of each of their appearances, such as Ken/Mike, Gary/Ralph, and Halsey/Chris. Neither Barb nor I ever saw the two of these men together at the same time. I observed these men and women repeatedly create a convincing construction of an individual, and flawlessly duplicate that character numerous times. Repeated repetition of patterns seen tend to belie coincidence. As the saying goes in intelligence circles, there is no such thing as coincidence.

There were several items that connected with my past that showed up in Nadia's possession. I found the little stuffed toy bear hanging in a basket from a miniature hot air balloon in a 55 gallon barrel next to where Nadia had parked her trailer several days after it was moved off the property. I took this little toy bear in a hot air balloon back to our trailer and showed it to Barb. The presence of that teddy bear hanging from the hot air balloon was a connection dating back to March of 1996 when we lived at Damien’s house. I returned it to the store where it came from, as it had not been for sale. This link indicated to me that Damien had even followed us during our walks, without our detection, and therefore he was under the guise of another.

Nadia had given me the set of curtains that my previous wife had hung in our house in Portland a few months before her death. However, the curtains predated the period when Barb and I resided at Damien’s house. My previous wife in our home had installed those curtains before she passed away in 1994, and I had not seen those curtains since January of 1995. That was eleven months before Barb rented her room from Damien.

However, Damien’s house was only about eight blocks from my former house. I knew several people that I later learned had close ties to the Hells Angels, one of whom had threatened my life on several occasions, both verbal and written, as a result of his jealousy over a woman. Another applied his considerable computer skills towards breaking into government and other high security computer systems. The connection between Damien and the Hells Angels was stronger than indicated here, but I am not at liberty to discuss this in further detail. Nonetheless, I had not yet identified Damien with Nadia. I imagine that was partly due to my impression that Nadia seemed to have a larger stature than Mr. Hachey does. That is one reason why Nadia always wore cowboy style boots, more accurately called Spanish dancing boots, with their signature high heels, and why she was always putting layer upon layer of makeup. This is also a reason why Nadia always wore pants over a long skirt, hoping to present itself as an aging female hippie. Damien also modeled the appearance of Nadia after the woman I saw on the dock at the New Era property, allowing them to switch roles. That woman also was very similar in appearance to Barb, allowing each of them a third identity, while creating resolutions towards questions that arose throughout this entire journey.

Shortly before we left New Era Alan came by and asked us if we would walk over to his trailer with him, as he had some parting gifts for us. He gave us three items: A small white hammock, which I thought was a small fishing net, a polished amethyst cut in the shape and size of a large egg, and a small wooden box from India with decorative inlaid brass with a hand written label inside which I discovered spelled 'Black Bunny.' This was one of those small matchbox sized brass ornamented wooden boxes form India, and inside this box was a piece of black pitch or tar of some sort that at the time I thought might be incense.

Alan also talked of Nadia, saying that she was not really Nadia but Natias, or rather not ia but Natas. He said this with his characteristic wry smile, but at the time it was a flyby. 'Natas' is Satan spelled backwards. The realm of Satan flows backwards. Alan derived great pleasure from the reversed nature of The Evil One, and he mimicked this often, such as AWT, the initials of his purported business at the New Era site. Unlike Damien (Nadia), Alan was not hesitant to allude (but not state outright) to their connection with Satan in front of me, a flagrant admission to his addiction of the power and perverse, inhuman gluttony they derived from that unity. The dichotomy of Damien and Nadia was very bright and sophisticated subterfuge, indeed at it's best, for there was no such person as Nadia. Nadia without the 'ia' is Damien spelled backwards; that is Damien. My wife had told me just before we moved out of our apartment at Damien’s house that she thought he was a Satan worshipper. All of these people at New Era participated in Satan's delight in confounding the innocent. He had to grasp onto all of delight he could manage, as this was as close as he was ever going to come to the light. I say this now in retrospect.