www.roanoke.com

Marion G.

Note: If you haven't read part 1, please read that first. This part will make a lot more sense with that under your belt.

The day after my telephone call to Pat, photographer Stephanie Klein-Davis and I got an early start on our jaunt up to Bath County. Even though Pat Robertson had sharply objected to us taking pictures of his mansion (which I could understand), we still needed that photo.

A story about a mansion without a picture of it is about as useful as a car with no tires, you know?

We took the newspaper's white Ford Explorer, which sported signs on each side with "The Roanoke Times & World News" in large, hard-not-to read letters. Bath County is about two hours north of Roanoke by car.

The only problem was, we didn't know exactly where Pat's 11,000-square-foot house was. All we knew was it was off the road that ran along the spine of the Warm Springs Mountain.

A little geography lesson is in order here: Warm Springs Mountain tops out at a little more than 4,000 feet above sea level. It's a long damn mountain -- 20 or more miles long, and it runs kind of southwest to northeast, more or less.

On the west side is the valley through which U.S. 220 passes. This is the main drag through most populated part of Bath County, and it touches the unincorporated and incorporated villages of (from south to north) Carloover, Healing Springs, Hot Springs, Mitchelltown and Warm Springs.

On the mountain's east side is another valley -- this is where the lower elevation sections of Virginia's Douthat State Park are located.

The first thing Steph and I did was to drive up and down those valleys and see if we could spot a grand mansion on the mountain's top. After all, it was 11,000 square feet, which is about quarter-acre of floor space. Steph had an ungodly long lens that looked like it could shoot a closeup of a fly's teeth at 5 miles.

It took us a few hours to realize we'd struck out that front. So we went to the Bath County Courthouse in Warm Springs where I gathered some more documents. Then we decided to go up the mountain and look for the house up there.

We drove south along U.S. 220 a little past Carloover, then headed east on the Virginia 606 that goes up the mountain. At the top we made a left (north) on Virginia 703, which runs along the mountain's spine.

There were driveways here and there along that road. But the problem was, the houses were all set way off the pavement, and the land is thick with trees. Even though it was late December and the leaves had long fallen, we couldn't make out much through those trees, and we couldn't tell driveway belonged to Pat's place, anyway.

Our last shot was to drive to the airport, which is all the way on north end (a dead end) of Virginia 703. It is now called Bath County Airport but back then it was called Ingalls Field. It's the highest airport east of the Mississippi, and the runway is long enough to land a 727 (or maybe even a larger jetliner).

(The airport serves the grand old hotel-golf resort known as the Homestead in Hot Springs, as well as the Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va, where the federal government in the 1950s built a secret bunker in case of a nuclear attack. That bunker is now a casino).

Someone in Bath County had told me that one way to find Pat's place was to drive all the way to the airport, turn around, begin driving back the way I came, and "look up." So that is what we did.

It was sunny that day and by then it was rather late in the afternoon. The sun was in our eyes as we headed back down that road. We rounded one bend, looking up, and -- holy smoke! -- suddenly from a distance saw what looked like an enormous black pyramid through the trees. It was on a hill slightly above the road. That was it!

We found the driveway that corresponded with that structure and stopped the SUV in the middle of the road.

From this perspective we could make out a little bit of the house through the trees. Stephanie climbed  climbed up on top of the Explorer so she could see better. She had just raised the camera to her eye when this guy came out of those thick woods.

He was a white guy, middle-ged, with a medium height and build,  gray hair and a mustache, and he wore blue jeans and a leather bomber-style jacker.

And he had a silver semiautomatic pistol in his hand and he was waving it at us. In another had held a badge.

"The sheriff's been called," he shouted as he walked toward us. "He's going to be here in a minute."

"Excuse me," Stephanie said. "This is a public road. We have every right to be here."

"You were told yesterday not to come," he said.

"Yeah, well, like she said -- it's a public road," I added. "What's that badge you've got?" Can I see it?"

It turned out to be a city of Chesapeake deputy's badge, issued by that city's sheriff. (Chesapeake, Va., for those who don't know, is 250 or so miles east of Bath County. So the guy was way, way, way out of his jurisdiction.)

The guy's name was Herbert Hicks. And once he calmed down, we started talking to him.

Hicks explained that he was Pat's bodyguard. More than once he had foiled a threat upon Pat's life, he claimed. And he went on and talked about what a great man Robertson was, and how much good he had done for poor, sick and spiritually deprived people all over the world.

Hicks lived in the 2,000-square-foot "guard house" that was just a little ways up the driveway. Pat had gotten his pal, the Chesapeake sheriff, to make Hicks a "special deputy" so Hicks could carry a concealed weapon. This was back in the day before concealed-carry permits were simple to get in Virginia.

During our talk Hicks was still holding that pistol, but not in a menacing way. He had his hand turned in an odd way, so that the flat side of the pistol was parallel to the ground. But the barrel was pointed at me, and I didn't like that.

"Can you put that thing away?" I asked, motioning to the gun. He reacted as if he'd forgotten he was holding it. "You don't seriously think we're a threat, do you?"

"Oh, sure," he obliged. And he went to put the run his his right jacket pocket. But it didn't fit easily, and he dropped it on the road.

Thankfully, it didn't go off. That was the only frightening moment. I jumped just a bit as it his the pavement.

After about a 20-minute conversation, we left and headed back to Roanoke. We stopped at a restaurant for dinner along the way, and got back about 9:30 p.m.

With no photo.

The next day at work that little encounter was the talk of the newsroom. Back then the photo editor was a guy named John Cook. Cook was a good guy, but he had a temper. And when he got angry, which wasn't that often, everybody knew it.

And he was angry when he heard about Hicks and the gun.

Cook disappeared into his office and emerged a few minutes later.

"Stephanie!" he barked. "Get your ass up to the airport. There's a plane waiting for you."

Steph left, then reappeared in the newsroom later that day. And oh my, did she ever get a picture. I wish I could show it to you, but I can't (we have looked all over through the newspaper's archives, and can't find it).

It was no black pyramid -- that would have been too macabre. That's just what it looked like seen from the side, and from a distance, through thick but leafless trees, when the sun was behind it from our point of view.

Th sprawling and stately villa had four large wings, and was set on a what looked like a 3-acre clearing surrounded by 22 more acres of woods. And a big, kidney-shaped pool, surrounded by a large patio, with a separate pool house. (Pat later added a tennis court; that looked roughed-in in the photo.)

Here's one way I still use to visualize it: my 4-bedroom home is about 1,850 square feet. It's like 6 of those put together.

Nice weekend home, eh?

My story with Stephanies photos ran in the paper the following Sunday, under the headline: "Pat Robertson's hideway." Here's the top of that story:

They say faith can move mountains. If the Rev. Pat Robertson is any example, perhaps it also can build mansions on top of them.

When he grows weary from feeding the hungry, saving souls, collecting millions for his Christian ministry and charting a conservative political course for the future, the nation's leading televangelist unwinds in a stately mountaintop villa high over U.S. 220 in Bath County.

Robertson moved into the remote $1.17 million house about a year ago, setting tongues a-wagging among the area's residents.

(Read Part 3, the actual newspaper story)