Fallen Masters (62 page)

The girl would inherit Mama G’s legacy—and her fortune. Mama G spent little during her life, but she had banked some impressive sums in later years when she became world-renowned as a seer, adviser, and astrologer.

Indeed, she felt as if she had a lot of work yet to do. It would take a while, Asima told her, before she could relax and enjoy this new dimension of existence. But one thing she felt already, and quite strongly: Her faith had sustained her in both life and death.

Faith had always been the foundation of her life and the source, she believed, of whatever psychic powers or knowledge she might possess. She did not give herself a lick of credit for any of it. In fact, she fully expected that one day she would wake up and have none of the special abilities that she had stewarded over the past several decades.… It was all a gift. All of it. Even life itself.

Mama G was not in a position to tell anyone what they should do, now or ever. But she certainly wanted to share her insights into the meanings that she saw clearly in the revelation the late President’s young son had shared with the world. She worried a bit about him and promised herself that she would reach out to him and his mother. They were in her prayers, to say the least, and she looked forward to the possibility of meeting them.

Still, she wanted to help … Dave Hampton, for example. Maybe she could guide him along his path. She had been working on his chart before she died, and she had seen something remarkable. She was grateful she had been able to speak to him before she left for her flight to LAX, her final flight on Earth.

On that fateful day, she phoned Dave Hampton in New York. He picked up immediately.

She said to him, simply, “You will run for political office. I see it so clearly, it scares even me.”

“Will I win?” Hampton asked.

“You know I cannot answer that. But if you ask me, I would say, yes, you must win—and after you win, you must make the right choices. If not, we haven’t learned anything from what has just happened. Good-bye, young man. Be well.”

Vatican City

The week after the amazing events at the Academy Awards ceremony, Dave Hampton traveled to Rome to interview the pope again. It was always a long shot, if not an impossibility, to get the Holy Father on camera, but he had been lucky before with such an “impossible” interview, so he chartered a flight for producers and crew and flew out of JFK. He had a few shows in the can for the first part of the week, and he would broadcast live from a studio facility in Italy, so his bases were covered.

Against all odds, within twenty-four hours of touching down at Leonardo da Vinci Airport in Fiumicino, outside Rome, he had been personally invited by the pope to an audience in the Vatican, so the lights and cameras were set up in the papal garden with a spectacular profile of the dome of St. Peter’s in the background of the interview—and, fortunately, excellent spring-like temperatures and sunshine.

At the appointed hour, Pope Genaro I, accompanied only by his communications man, a youngish priest who had been in the job less than a year, appeared and took his seat so that he could be miked up and a bit of pancake applied to the face and high forehead. He tolerated all the fussing and made small talk in English with Hampton and the crew. It all went amazingly well and put Dave off guard a bit; he had been expecting a more aloof or taciturn subject for the interview, but the pontiff seemed very much at ease and in control without showing any symptoms of entitlement or discomfort.

Not knowing how long he would have with the pontiff, Dave plunged right into his questions for the religious leader.

“Thank you for agreeing to speak to us, Your Holiness. Why don’t you tell our viewers exactly what the so-called Council of Faith was all about.”

Genaro spoke in concise, clipped sentences in perfect English. He explained that he had been inspired to call together the leaders of the world’s religions at a time that boded ill for all people of Earth, to rally the forces of peace from a spiritual perspective.

“After all, one could argue that all of our problems as human beings are of a spiritual nature. It is when we wish to disconnect ourselves with our Creator that we experience the deepest pain and frustration. For so many people in our world, the choices they make without proper guidance or prayer are wrong, destructive choices.”

“Was that the cause of the threatened upheaval in your opinion?”

“The cause was evil, the absence of good, the absence of grace. Evil will fill the moral vacuum wherever it exists. That is the purpose of evil, to turn men and women away from the light for a destructive purpose.”

“So, do you think religion is the answer?”

The pope smiled. He seemed very tired, his thin frame even more wraithlike than it always had been. His spokesman shifted in his seat off camera, but the pontiff waved at him to sit still. Despite his apparent exhaustion, there was a palpable sense of power and authority in the man. His answer surprised Dave Hampton.

“No. Although I am by vocation a priest and I live a religiously oriented life, I do not think religion is the answer to everything. I know this may shock you, Mr. Hampton—and your many viewers. But I will say that people everywhere may find answers in the religion of their choice. The questions we face each day as human beings—the choices we must make—almost always boil down to choices between right and wrong, good and evil. In small matters and large.”

Pope Genaro I took a sip from the water bottle the priest had handed to him.

“You made such a choice yourself. When the forces of darkness were reaching into men’s lives and causing many to lose their faith and opt for the negative, you could have fueled the dark side in your broadcasts. After all, it was a sensational situation, an apocalyptic scenario that would have made for some incredible television shows. Your ratings likely would have gone through the roof, as you might say.”

Hampton couldn’t help smiling at the man’s turn of phrase, and he was intrigued by his point. He kept his mouth shut and let the pope continue to speak his mind.

“Instead, you chose to emphasize the good, to seek out people who represented the positive outcome for humanity. In that way you played a part in the ultimate outcome of the crisis. You helped tip the scales of history for good, not evil.”

“I’m going to play that clip for my many critics, Your Holiness.”

“As well you should. I do not mean to give you credit beyond what is due. After all, you are but one man, as am I. But when we come together for the common good, as I did with the representatives of faith traditions with whom I often disagree, it can never be wrong. And the result is almost guaranteed to be positive. Do you agree?”

“All I know is that I felt guided in some way—I don’t know by what or whom—to seek out the positive energies that seemed to be in danger at the time. Maybe it was instinct. Maybe it was faith. It definitely was something that I still don’t understand.”

“But you will understand one day. I can guarantee you that,” Genaro said. “If you keep asking questions, keep pursuing the truth. More will be revealed to you and more questions answered than you can even conceive to ask.”

When the interview was over, Dave was still pumped—and would be for days to come. Then his producer panicked, came running over to the anchor. “There’s a problem with the playback. There’s no audio—and no video!”

The pope chuckled and reached out to touch Dave’s arm and calm him. “Perhaps this was a part of God’s plan all along,” Pope Genaro said.

“But I can get the message out to millions and millions of people!” Hampton protested.

The pope smiled and said, “Faith is not something that can be demonstrated in an interview. It comes from within and is demonstrated in our experience. All the preaching and all the TV broadcasts in the world mean nothing if the human heart is not touched.”

Dave Hampton heard the words, but he was still devastated by the loss of the interview.

“Every true teaching is meant to inspire and increase human understanding, not to tell people what they must believe,” the pope said. “The word of God is clear in every language and in every heart. That alone is our guiding light…”

Then Dave remembered Mama G’s words to him. He knew that his on-camera career was over. He also knew in that moment that his political career was about to begin. He would say nothing about it, but something inside him had changed fundamentally.

Los Angeles

Rae Loona offered her electronic airline ticket to the gate attendant. “Honey, if this flimsy thing will get me on a plane, I’m gonna fly far away!” She flashed her trademark smile and entered the jetway along with her fellow passengers in the first class section.

Tyler had insisted that she fly first class on the return to Atlanta. She had not wanted to leave on her own. Tyler wanted to stay behind for a few days for what he called a “retreat” farther up the California coast. He was insistent. She didn’t yet trust that the good doctor had fully recovered his senses and his spiritual balance. But she knew she had to trust him, and she knew that the events of the Academy Awards night had made a deep imprint on his soul—as well as on hers and on people around the world. Something was different, even in the quality of the air she breathed.

Her seat was in the third row by the window, and when she stepped onto the aircraft she saw that someone was occupying the aisle seat already. She brought on only one small bag, a colorful
Grease-
themed carryall that held her makeup, billfold, and various sundries that she rarely used or even noticed. So she clutched the bag to her and said, in her sweetest Nurse Loona voice, “Excuse me, sir, I—”

The man raised his head from the magazine he was reading and smiled brightly, then quickly stood to allow her to scoot into her assigned seat.

Rae’s jaw dropped nearly to the floor of the jet as she saw who was standing there, big as life, gesturing for her to take her place by the window in the luxury seat. She stuttered, “You’re—you’re—you’re—”

“Yes, ma’am, I’m John,” the tall man said. He had a full head of dark hair and an unmistakable face with a million-dollar smile and warm eyes. “Please take your seat. You don’t want to hold up these other nice folks.”

There was no question that Rae’s pulse rate had increased, just as before, from the moment she realized that she was right next to her all-time idol and the true love of her life—again. Having met him face-to-face at the Academy Awards, she had thought then that her life was over … or that nothing could ever top that moment. Now she felt the blood rushing to her face in embarrassment, and she looked down at her hands—the hands that had touched her all-time idol and true love.

“Yes, yes, I’m fine,” she managed to say. “I guess I was just shocked to see you sitting there. And me right next to you. I thought … I mean, I didn’t think … Oh, I don’t know what I mean. Do you know what I mean?”

“Yes, I think I do,” Travolta said. “It happens to me all the time. In my business I get to meet a lot of people who I’ve never seen before except on TV or in the movies, and they don’t even seem real when I finally do meet them. My wife and I talk about it all the time. But then, after a while, I realize they’re just plain people, like me and my family.”

“I suppose you’re right. Well, I
know
you’re right.” A calmness passed over Rae Loona at that moment, and she felt at home. Despite the stream of passengers onto the aircraft, it was as if there was no one else there and they were sitting in her living room. She laughed, though a bit more discreetly than her normal loud cackle.

“So, I guess it wasn’t a coincidence that we met the other night,” he suggested with a rakish grin.

“I—I guess not…” Rae managed. Barely.

The flight attendant brought water for John and hot tea for Rae as the final group trickled onto the plane. Soon the door was closed and the large jet was preparing to taxi over to the runway for takeoff.

“I thought you flew your own planes everywhere,” she said,

“I usually do,” he said, “but this was an unexpected trip, and I had to leave the family behind, so I thought I’d just hop on one of these commercial flights and try to remember what it was like in the old days, flying with the hoi polloi.” He said it with a wink, so she knew he was teasing her.

She felt a strong sense of his humility as a person and genuine warmth and interest in her. He didn’t seem bothered by her staring at him and questioning him.

“If I were you,” Rae said, “I would tell me to shut up and mind my own business.”

“That’s the difference between us,” Travolta countered. “I’m just a regular guy who wants to be liked, and you’re a celebrity totally wrapped up in yourself and your own ego-world.”

Now she let loose with a huge cackling laugh that caused several passengers to turn to the source of the disturbance and the attendant also to glance her way. “Oh, John, you’re such a hoot,” she said. “I could take you home and have you for supper!”

“I hope you’re really hungry,” he said out of the side of his mouth.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the voice over the plane’s PA system announced, “we are third in line for take-off, so we’ll be airborne shortly.”

John leaned over to Rae and half-whispered, “Does that apply to those of us who are not ladies, nor gentlemen, either?”

“Oh,
John
,” Rae Loona said. In her mind, she was thinking:
Lord, I have died and gone to Heaven! Please don’t let me wake up from this dream … ever.
Then she thought,
I wish Dr. Tyler Michaels were here to see me now. He wouldn’t believe it.

Silently, she said a prayer for her friend who had lost his wife and child so tragically, and who had regained life and purpose after all that. She felt her stomach drop as the jet aircraft lifted off from the tarmac into the sky.

In that same moment, she felt John’s hand touch hers, but she could not tell whether he was just comforting her or feeling the moment of uncertainty between heaven and earth as a passenger on a flight over which he had no control instead of in the pilot’s seat as he was used to.