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Excursion that he says Cruise acquired using the Scientology eet discount. Katie was
pregnant and wanted a new vehicle with a baby seat. Miscavige had wanted to impress
the couple by renovating the Excursion at a local custom shop, but the job was poorly
done. Miscavige purchased another Excursion for Cruise to replace the one that had
been botched. Meanwhile, Brousseau spent the next six months personally rebuilding the
original Excursion. He ripped the vehicle down to its frame and installed handmade
reclining seats and wood paneling fashioned from a burl of a eucalyptus tree that had
been toppled in a storm. He spent about two thousand hours on the project. The
materials were paid for by Cruise’s production company, but according to Brousseau, his
labor, and that of about ten other Sea Org members, was not compensated. “It was a
half-million-dollar beauty all done by me, with other folks from Scientology,” Brousseau
said.
Brousseau had even carved a matching Montblanc pen out of the burl, its own hidden
storage case in the vehicle. When Cruise showed it to Katie, she was dazzled. She turned
to Brousseau and asked, “Oh, J.B., did you make that?”
“Don’t thank me,” Brousseau quickly responded. “I’m just the hammer. This—,” he
said, pointing to Miscavige, “is the hand that wields me.”
Cruise, who became a pilot while lming Top Gun, keeps a hangar at an airport in
Burbank for his airplane collection. Sea Org members completely renovated the hangar,
installing a luxurious oce that had been fabricated at Golden Era Productions.
Brousseau says that the furniture—a dry bar, table and chairs, desks, et cetera—was
milled at an RPF base in Los Angeles. Brousseau took dozens of photographs
documenting his handiwork on the star’s behalf.
No member of the Sea Org has spent more time in Cruise’s service than Tommy Davis,
who was viewed within the church as the star’s special handler and personal assistant.
Although Davis maintains that he provided similar services for other celebrities, his
assignment to Cruise was his primary duty between 2000 and 2004. However, he
asserted, “None of the Church sta involved were coerced in any way to assist Mr.
Cruise. Church sta, and indeed Church members, hold Mr. Cruise in very high regard
and are honored to assist him.”
IN JUNE 2006, Shelly Miscavige disappeared.
She had spent her whole life conveying orders and gathering intelligence for a
powerful, erratic, domineering church leader, rst for Hubbard and then for her
husband. She and Miscavige were always respectful toward each other in public, if not
openly aectionate. As he gained power within the church, she began to see the two of
them as reincarnations of Simón Bolívar and Manuela Sáenz, and the lesson she drew
from that previous existence was that she needed to be ercely protective of her mate,
and to keep him from making the kinds of mistakes that his character was destined to
commit. In the eyes of some Sea Org members, Shelly was brittle and imperious, but
Rathbun noted that she sometimes objected when Miscavige’s physical assaults
threatened to get out of hand. No one else did.