WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES

"Say, Dennis, you go to church…." Beeman had just ridden the elevator to the Counter Intelligence floor wondering how he was going to broach that subject in the office. Mixing work and religion with a fellow Special Agent? Awkward territory.

Yet Stan was also just fresh from telling the Deputy Attorney General to 'go to hell', with regards to Oleg Burov. Stan was not going to blackmail Burov just to find out what was what with the Martha Hanson debacle, Agent Gaad's secretary, now on the run. (Agent Gaad now dead.) Stan had said what he'd said, just casually walking past Aderholt to deposit his trenchcoat at his cubicle. But also to continue his inner-focus on the little stuff - now obscured by Gaad's death.

Then he sauntered innocently back to his friend's desk, to give the guy time to collect himself.

Stan knew that Dennis would recognize what he was going to do - ask a dangerously open ended question. Couldn't be helped. With what was rattling around in Stan's brain, he did not want to poison the line of questioning with his own agenda too soon!

"Why do you ask? About church?" Aderholt returned. Aught-owe, thought Beeman, 'all I may have succeeded in doing, is getting Dennis's hackles up!'

So Beeman said, "look, my family never was religious. My grandma used to drag us to Christmas Eve services at an Episcopalian place when I was 10. Sandra and I, we never got involved - hell, when in St. Louis, I was undercover with White Nationalists - I learned some of their religious rhetoric. I couldn't believe that they represented anything 'normal' when it came to 'church'."

"We were raised in the Black church in Oakland," Dennis reflected. "Those were heady days, what with Dr. King and all."

"Well, that's why I'm asking, Dennis. Churches these days, they cover a lot of real estate," Stan said.

"You mean the church buildings?" Dennis asked, looking confused.

"No, no, no," Stan said pulling up a chair so he could sit at Dennis's desk. "From White Nationalists to Dr. King. Everyone says that they speak for God."

Aderholt gave one of his classic, 'what's going on, Stan?' looks. He said, "Get to the point Stan, I've got things to do."

Stan leaned back, "I mooched a meal last night from Philip and Elizabeth. Henry, he literally forced me on to his parents. They were having guests over - their pastor, Pastor Tim from that Reed Street Church."

"Okay….." Aderholt offered as a lingering comment, hoping that Stan would soon narrow in on something of importance to C.I. Aderholt, like all the agents in the C.I. office were focussed on bigger fish. They'd just tied Martha Hanson to a KGB agent with a pseudo of 'Clark Westerfeld'.

Finally Stan asked, "what do you know about the World Council of Churches?"

RATTLING IN STAN'S BRAIN

Stan had not so much meant to interrogate Aderholt about religion. Like most times, Stan just needed to talk out-loud about what was confusing him on the inside. Confusions he could not let go of, confusions buried under the obvious stuff about Gaad and Martha.

Here's what was troubling to Stan, presented in narrative form, most of which never found verbiage to his friend, Dennis Aderholt.

Somalia. Pastor Tim had just come back from a mission trip to what is, essentially, a Communist client state. By his own admission, not to convert the locals, but to help prop up their food supply. In the early 80s, Somalia had entered an uncharacteristic calm in an authoritarian government that simply has to fall.

What was Pastor Tim doing there? Food aide? While not formally aligned, Reed Street Church was certainly aligned with the general aims of 'The World Council of Churches'. In 1983 the WCC had been suspected of being infiltrated by the 'Fifth General Directorate' of the KGB. That year, the 5th Directorate had sent 47 proven agents to the WCC assembly in Vancouver to ensure the election of an 'acceptable candidate' as General Secretary.

All of that was according to the C.I. file on the WCC held at the J. Edgar Hoover building in Washington.

Dennis Aderholt? He himself was sensitive to red-baiting, given that in the 1960s everyone close to Dr. King had been investigated unfairly as communists - investigated by the very same FBI that Aderholt now worked for. So Dennis expressed skepticism that the FBI was now being fair to the WCC.

Yet there had been the dinner at the Jennings, a dinner for six which had become a dinner for seven given that Beeman had not wanted to eat alone across the street at home. When he'd knocked at the Jennings' door and Henry had seen him, Henry had just grabbed Beeman, dragged him to the table - where Pastor Tim and his heavily pregnant wife, Alice, sat.

Henry being Henry, he bragged that Pastor Tim had once been arrested - for chaining himself to a government fence to protest nuclear weapons. Stan being Stan immediately thought that jerks like Pastor Tim rarely chained themselves to Soviet fences for exactly the same thing.

But none of that had been what had set off Stan's hunch-machine, or had initiated confusions which would not let him go. There were a lot of naïve, do-gooders like Pastor Tim in the United States.

No, it had been Pastor Tim's wife. Mainly silent and not engaging in the somewhat awkward conversation between her husband and Stan, she had betrayed 'something' about 'something' - just what it had been…. well, Stan wasn't sure. It just sat there, had left Stan intriguingly confused, in a manner in which his brain would not let go of.

It had started when Pastor Tim had asked, 'Say, Stan, what is it that you do?' that bells had gone off.

Stan had answered, 'Oh, I'm FBI, I work in Counter Intelligence.' You would have had to have been blind not to notice Alice's reaction to that.

Alice gave both Philip and then Elizabeth quick, panicked glances. Almost unnoticably so. That was it. Alice's glances had almost gone unnoticed.

And then there was Paige. Head down concentrating on her meal. Trying to ignore the conversation around the table - as if it was dangerous. Seemingly wanting the topic to change.

Okay, okay, Stan thought in his mind, 'I'm obviously going nuts, like Sandra used to say, seeing communists delivering the mail in Falls Church!' Beeman wondered how he could turn off his overpowering, 'hunch machine'.

BACK TO THE ROOM

Aderholt finally said, "you're really annoying when your hunch-machine goes off, Stan. You know that don't you?" Dennis then pointed to the open file that he was holding, a brand new one fresh with the marking, 'Martha Hanson' at the top. Below that one was a file with 'FRANK GAAD - THAILAND' printed at the top. He finished by saying, "we have pressing work, Stan. Agent Gaad is gone, and Wolf has ordered us to get to the bottom of it all… both his death as well as the Martha debacle! That's a lot of stuff, Stan."

But. Pastor. Tim. World. Council of. Churches. Mission trip to. Somalia. Communists. Henry blabbing, bless his heart. Alice with fearful glances at Philip and then Elizabeth. Paige's head bowed down towards her dinner.

Beeman thought, 'Dennis is right, how do I turn this off?'

REED STREET CHURCH

Agent Beeman was senior enough to be able to map out his own day. New head of C.I., Agent Wolf, had yet to try to rein him in.

So it was that today, Beeman had planned to show up at Reed Street Church, unannounced - after confirming with the church secretary, Jackie, that Pastor Tim would be in.

It was the secretary who asked Beeman to wait in the outer office, and when she came back out of the pastor's office, Tim was in tow.

Tim strode up to him and offered a hand, "Agent Beeman, what a surprise!" After shaking hands, Tim quickly turned to Jackie, then back to Beeman and said, sarcastically, "I'm not under arrest am I!?"

No one laughed. Beeman hated it when people played around like that, especially if only in jest. But he continued, "No, Pastor Tim, you're not. After meeting you at the Jennings, I just thought it would be good for you and I to have a chat."

"A chat to do with business?" Tim said with another self-conciously sarcastic giggle. He finished with, "do I need a lawyer?"

Beeman decided to keep this formal, so he answered, "Look, I don't think you need a lawyer, but I am here as an FBI agent, so you certainly have a right to one."

Jackie looked anxiously confused, just went to her chair and waited for the two men to leave her space.

Noticing Jackie, Pastor Tim said to Beeman, "Look, let's go talk in my office. Jackie here, she takes care of me." Turning to Jackie, Tim said, "hold my calls!"

In his office, he showed Beeman where to sit, Tim closed his door then went around the desk to sit with a bit of protection between him and the FBI - the protection being the desk.

Still a little nervous, Tim took the initiative, he said, "look, Agent Beeman, we had a nice meal at the Jennings. I got the feeling that you did not approve, not really, about this church's peace work."

"Well, you said you'd been arrested, but I'm not here about that, not really," Beeman said.

"So then," Pastor Tim replied, "what is it that I can do for you?"

Beeman just sat there. Now that he was in the pastor's office, now not even he knew, not really, why he'd come. Beeman had already established that he was there in an official capacity, but anything he could say from this point might just get the pastor's hackles up. Let's face it, Beeman thought, 'I am actually on a fishing trip here. Tim seems to be a smart man, so I won't even try to hide it. Maybe get right to the point,' Beeman thought, 'if I even know what my line of suspicion actually is.'

"I'll be up front with you, Pastor," Beeman began, "if you think I'm on a bit of a fishing trip here, I wouldn't blame you. If you threw me out, I wouldn't blame you. If a lawyer were here, he'd tell you not to answer ANY of my questions."

"Am I suspected of anything, Agent Beeman? Is that what this is about? I mean, I've just got back from Somalia. A country that many describe as being part of the Eastern Bloc." Pastor Tim studied Beeman and noted a bit of confusion about the man, so said, "Look, Agent Beeman, I'm an open book. Our east-African food-initiative, we're an open book. I can put the FBI on our mailing list if you want."

"No, no, no," Beeman replied. "You're right about Somalia, by the way. Of all the countries in the world needing food, Somalia is an odd choice, but hey - that's your call. You've done nothing illegal - as long as you're writing proper tax-receipts for the donations…..."

"So, Agent Beeman," Tim said seizing back some of the initiative. "Why are you here, if not to question me about Communist countries?"

HUNCH MACHINE ON OVERDRIVE

"The dinner at the Jennings," Beeman began, "when I told you that I worked counter-intelligence, that seemed to upset the room, if I could put it that way."

"Upset 'the room'?" Tim exclaimed. "How so?"

"It's hard to put my finger on it. It was so odd," Beeman continued, "that I had to come over to ask about it. It's probably nothing."

Pastor Tim sat silently, not knowing if he should be choosing his words wisely or not.

Not knowing what to say, Tim said, "You know I got lost in Somalia during our trip. Me and a buddy named Al Woods drove by ourselves to another village, without telling anyone in our group. We ran out of gas 30 miles out, tried to walk back - got lost. Apparently, people back here went insane, not that I blame them, the whole thing had been my fault."

So far, Beeman had had no answer to why his own announcement about his profession had 'upset the room'. Pastor Tim's comments betrayed that perhaps neither did he. Maybe Beeman had to find another way of putting it.

Unprompted, Pastor Tim continued.

"When I was lost, all I thought about was who I would miss if I'd not survived. My wife, my baby to be born. I also thought about the Jennings. I mean not just them, all the parents in my church. All the things that being a parent can mean. There were many parents who I would need to apologize to."

Beeman sat stunned. What on earth did that mean? 'So much for trying to find another way of putting it,' Beeman thought. 'What the hell did Pastor Tim just say!? What the hell had he just admitted to?'

As confused as this whole visit was, Pastor Tim had just poured gasoline on Beeman's hunch machine. After hearing the Pastor's story, there was no way, no way in hell that this unfocussed hunch was now going to leave Beeman's head, any time soon.

He had to run all this by Aderholt. Even if all Aderholt did was call him a horse's ass….. Beeman needed to put words out there, words that wouldn't leave him alone.

Just like with Martha Hanson.

(continued, chapter 2)