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By Root 1258 0

the summer of 1976, the Guardian's Office had become distracted by the apprehension of Meisner and Wolfe in Washington, D.C. By the following summer, the government had seized a huge cache of files from the church's headquarters in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., which revealed the full extent of Operation Snow White. Hubbard's name was not found on any of the documents. This, his aides knew, did not mean he was not involved: Hubbard had not only ordered Snow White, but he had also quite probably been aware of every aspect of the operation. Mary Sue, the "Controller," had always been careful to brief her husband verbally so as to prevent any documentation of his connection to sensitive Guardian's Office operations. Nonetheless, Hubbard worried that the FBI might come looking for him.

One week after the government raid, Hubbard and three of his Messengers got into his Buick station wagon just after dusk, drove through the gates of "W," and sped off into the desert. At the wheel was Pat Broeker, age twenty-nine, who was at the time one of the few male Messengers at La Quinta. With him was DeDe Reisdorf and a third Messenger, Claire Rousseau. They arrived later the next day in the low-rent city of Sparks, Nevada, on the Truckee River. Here, they decided, was an out-of-the-way spot where no one would think to look for the flamboyant Commodore. Broeker was charged with finding Hubbard a suitable hideout. To make the hunt for lodging look legitimate, he and Rousseau posed as a married couple. Reisdorf was a cousin, and Hubbard an elderly uncle. Four days later, after spending a few nights at a motel under assumed names, the group moved into an anonymous little two-bedroom apartment.

Hubbard spent the next six months in Sparks, highly paranoid (at one point, Reisdorf recalled, Hubbard, believing FBI agents might be lurking in the bushes, wouldn't even walk in front of a window for fear of being spotted). But he quickly settled into a routine. He arose late in the morning, had a snack, and then did a solo auditing session. Then he began writing film scripts. In the evening, Reisdorf and her "uncle," often disguised in a hunter's cap, would walk to the grocery store or to a nearby K-Mart. "Along the way he would make up songs and sing to me. His big joke was to try to push me onto those tiny little carpeted areas in these stores in Nevada that have the slot machines. Then he would say rather loudly, 'Look, she isn't twenty-one!! Arrest her!'" (Reisdorf, who was only nineteen when they left La Quinta, turned twenty in Sparks.) Back at the apartment, the group would watch a late movie. Then Hubbard would turn in for the night. In his bedroom, Reisdorf gave him a backrub while the other two Messengers sat on the floor with Hubbard's ashtray and a glass of water or juice as he told stories or chatted to them about his latest writing project.

Only Broeker maintained contact with the rest of the Church of Scientology. When Hubbard ran out of money, or needed to pass on important orders, Broeker would notify the ranch, then meet another Messenger in Los Angeles. Broeker, who'd joined Scientology in the late 1960s after graduating from high school in Buffalo, New York, was an adventurous young man who had previously worked as a finance courier for L. Ron Hubbard, traveling back and forth from the Apollo to Luxembourg with a suitcase of cash. A passionate reader of spy novels, he was nicknamed "007." Having studied up on all things espionage related, he took Hubbard's pronouncements about maintaining security very seriously. To avoid detection en route to and from California, he'd switch planes, dye his hair, change his clothes, or even, recalled Reisdorf, stuff cotton balls in his cheeks to alter his appearance. The La Quinta–based Messengers, in the meantime, would alert Broeker of the meeting place by putting an advertisement in the Los Angeles Times classified section, indicating the location: the Los Angeles International Airport, a movie theater, or someplace else.

By the late autumn, Hubbard was getting tired of being on the