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There was a knock on the door. Jamee called out for the person to come in.

Jennifer entered the room with a man. She introduced the man as Paul Bradley, an agent for the FBI.

The man approached me and placed a few envelopes in my hand. He explained: "I picked up some of your mail before I came."

"Isn't tampering with the mail a federal offense?" Jennifer inquired.

"Yes, it is," the man acknowledged, "and if I were you, I would report it to the nearest federal agent. If you do not wish to file your complaint with me, then in the not too distant future, there may be a whole bunch of federal agents who will be clever enough to find there way to this farm just as I have done and, if you like, you can register your concerns with them.

"Beth Idaho did not show up for work and, apparently, has disappeared once again. The wrecked car that you abandoned has been found, traced and a determination has been made that a person, or persons, unknown performed unsolicited, and quite lethal sorts of adjustment to your car's braking system.

"You both are wanted for questioning by the FBI in conjunction with the possible kidnaping of Beth Idaho. Furthermore, there are a number of other developments which I can't go into, strongly indicating you are in considerable danger."

"Have you come to bring us in?" Jennifer asked.

"No," he replied. "I've come to get you out of here. I have reason to believe that if you were to be detained officially at this time, you could be killed, possibly by elements from within the intelligence community - maybe even from within the FBI.

"I don't know what you have done to stir things up, but the temperature in this whole situation is rising very quickly, and the heat that is bringing this about is coming from a variety of directions.

"Whatever we decide to do, we don't have much time. If we are lucky, we might have six to ten hours head start before authorities, of one sort or another, find their way here.

"Up to this point, there is no all-points-bulletin on the two of you. Whoever, ultimately, is attempting to locate you both, is applying a considerable amount of pressure, but this is being done in a way that won't attract a lot of unwanted attention.

"Officially, I'm on holidays. Consequently, I have a few days to help us all try to sort out this mess."

"Dr. Phelps, your friend, Dr. Ormsby, has informed me you have amnesia as a result of the accident. Is this correct?"

I nodded my head in affirmation.

"Do you know who I am?" he inquired.

I shook my head in negation. "I remember pretty much everything except for the personal events of my life, including anyone I may have met prior to the accident.

"If I have met you before, I don't recall it. I don't even remember my relationship with Dr. Ormsby which I have been told has been very close."

I looked at the mail that had been given to me. I felt strange getting personal mail when I didn't feel much like a person and, very likely, when the contents of the envelopes would be meaningless to me.

One of the envelopes had a return address on it with Dr. Ormsby's name. I decided to open it first.

Inside was a poem. There was no accompanying letter, but at the top of the poem was a brief note which read:

'Dearest David,

I love you, and since you have been courageous enough to share with me some of your literary efforts, I thought I would return the favor in kind.'

The title of the poem was: 'Life: A Work-in-Progress'. It read as follows.

"Echoes of death lap the shores of my being -

Harbingers of a tide that is yet to come,

When negation rolls in and life ebbs away.

Time stalks me, haunts me, taunts briefly, then is gone

An undertow which lures and sweeps me along

According to a purpose that's, yet, unknown.

Transformations mark stages of becoming

Along chaotic paths that disappear in mists

Of incompleteness, leaving no trace to find.

Deep within, a mystery I am feeling -

Not clearly, but in colored shadows that move

Like an owl in the night, asking: who, who are you?

My spirit yearns to see what is calling to

Me from behind the veil of life's mystery -

To know why I am, rather than not at all.

Caught between forces of give in and go on,

While waiting for the first light of dawn, my heart

Fights back tears laced with the salt of earthly fears.

Beauty weaves a melody which mingles

With my soul - harmony flowing from God's Grace

Against counterpoints of discord from me.

Alien places, inviting and vaguely

Familiar, reach out through framed symbols

Of estrangement, trapped beneath life's surface hues.

Winds of loneliness swirl about me nightly,

Bringing the chill of freedom to mortal bones -

Around me, I wrap my cloak of friendship tightly.

Doubt kindles a smoldering uncertainty;

Questions boil in a caldron of possibility;

Answers whisper their secrets with subtlety.

On the edge of a truth, much is left to see.

The other envelope was much larger than the first. There was no return address on it, nor was there any postal mark.

While I went about opening the envelope and perusing its contents, a conversation went on around me concerning what to do. As I became engrossed in the contents of the envelope, I lost track of what was going on elsewhere in the room.

There was a covering letter, together with a map of Maine that had a red circle drawn around the northernmost end of what seemed to be an elongated and fair sized body of water known as Eagle Lake. In addition, the envelope contained photocopies of a number of articles from different newspapers in various parts of the US.

I went back to the covering letter. The signature at the bottom was just Mary, but it meant nothing to me.

Dear David,

Given what happened to your friends Ken and Pam, and in the light of the events in Chicago, as well as the abduction attempt about which you told me, I have decided to take a few precautions. One of these precautions involves a plan for ensuring you get a copy of the results of my inquiries, meager though these may be.

If you receive this package, David, it probably means I am dead. I had left instructions with a friend to release certain materials to you in the event of my demise, irrespective of whatever the apparent causes of my death might be.

The map of Maine with the circled area identifies the general location of the research facility that is connected to the Bettinger Foundation and the parent company, Futures Unlimited. I have been informed the buildings are set back into the woods about a hundred yards from the shore somewhere along the northern end of the lake, near to where there is a river or stream which links Eagle Lake with Long Lake.

I don't know if the photocopied articles are of any value to you since there is no obvious linkage with the Bettinger Foundation or Futures Unlimited in any of them. However, they are the only ones that could be found on short notice that, per your request, had an out of the ordinary sort of religious flavor to them.

I'm sorry there isn't more to offer you. I had been waiting for a few more things to come in but decided to make sure you got at least this much in case something happened in the meantime.

Obviously, I ran out of time. Don't feel badly about what has happened, David.

I'm a big girl - or, I was - and knew the risks. I died doing what I love, and there aren't a lot of people who can say as much.

I've always had a lot of admiration for you, David. I wish you the best of luck in fouling up whatever these maniacs are trying to accomplish.

Love Mary

I turned next to the photocopied articles. Several of them were about a number of religious leaders, each from a different tradition, who had disappeared for a time - anywhere from a week to ten days - but had returned, seemingly none the worse for wear, with various kinds of plausible accounts of where they had been and why they hadn't informed anybody about their absence.

There were a second series of articles about altercations, of one sort or another, within a variety of different religious communities. In each case, the problem seemed to center around the efforts of a single individual trying to persuade her or his community of a different, possibly better, way of engaging the faith.

One article was about someone in the Christian community who seemed to be stirring up a storm of controversy with comments concerning certain words attributed to Jesus - namely, "I am the truth and the way and the life."

The person at the center of the issue, Carrie Thomas, claimed the "I" being referred to in the statement is the same 'I' that spoke through Krishna, Buddha, Muhammad, Moses, and so many others, both known and unknown.

According to Thomas, this 'I' was always the same Divine I. The locus through which this Divine I was given expression varied according to time and circumstance.

Apparently, a lot of Christians had taken exception with this interpretation. There had been a variety of violet clashes at some of the public functions at which Thomas had appeared.

Another article gave an account of similar sorts of disturbance within the Jewish community. In this case, however, a young Rabbi, Isaac Goldhar, had been critical of the way many Jews were interpreting the meaning and significance of ideas such as 'God's Chosen People' and the 'Promised Land'.

Goldhar claimed the Jews were not the Chosen People of God. Instead, he argued God's Chosen People were those individuals - whether Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jain or Native - who bowed in submission to God's command and attempted to live their lives in accordance with the wishes of Divinity.

In addition, Goldhar maintained that anyone who tried to interpret the meaning of the Promised Land in a literalist, material sense was making a fundamental mistake. According to him, the Promised Land was of a spiritual nature and people who killed and terrorized one another over the issue of whom should own or control mere physical land, were engaged in a conflict with no spiritual value or purpose.

A third article was about a Buddhist monk, Qwan Tzu, who was upsetting a lot of people in that religious community with commentaries built around a sort of Zen koan. The statement at the heart of the commotion was this: Buddhism is wrong because it is right.

As best as I was able to gather, the issue had something to do with the nature of ultimate reality and the issue of Divinity. In any event, quite a few influential Buddhists, as well as some of those from among the rank and file, had taken rather strong exception to both the statement and the monk's commentaries on the matter.

The next article was about a Muslim activist, A'isha Ahmed, who was giving talks in which a prominent theme was how many Muslims around the world had become a community of idol worshipers. More and more Muslims everywhere, Ahmed claimed, were worshiping, and bowing down to, money, fame, power, alcohol, sex, material comforts, and their own theological interpretations, while forgetting their spiritual obligations, responsibilities, and the purpose of their existence.

She further argued that the proof of the truth of her assertion was the increasing disarray, ruin, dissolution, death and misery in which Muslims around the world were becoming inextricably entangled. Citing a spiritual authority, Ahmed said words to the effect that when God wishes to destroy a city, God causes its people to live at ease, and they commit sin therein and, thus, is God's word proved true against them, and, then, God destroys them utterly.

A fifth article was about a Hindu woman, Sita Prashad, who was endeavoring to convince others in her religious community that there was only one Divinity. She was alleging that the multiplicity of gods on which different people called upon in certain aspects of Hinduism were, in reality, Divine attributes that, through a mistaken understanding arising a thousand, or more, years ago, had been conceptually separated off from Divinity and, as a result, were being accorded an undeserved ontological status as individual, self-contained, independent deities.

As had been the case with the individuals discussed in the articles concerning the other religious traditions, this Hindu woman had been threatened, or confronted by, violent protests of one sort or another. As also had been true in relation to the other stories about spiritual dissidents, the central figure of the story - in this case, Ms. Prashad - had disappeared.

Although foul play of some sort was suspected in each case, there was no tangible evidence to verify any of these suspicions. All attempts to pursue the available clues concerning their possible whereabouts - whether alive or dead - had come up empty-handed.

The articles came from newspapers in widely separated parts of the country. The incidents covered a period of time beginning, approximately, in early May of this year, and ending in mid-June.

While going through these articles, I had put the map of Maine, with the circled portion, on the table in front of me. Unknown to me, Jamee had picked the map up and was looking at it.

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