SAYING SOMETHING

Wanda Chu knocked on David Sato's door and did not wait for him to bid her in…. she simply opened the door. Instead of entering, she just stood in the doorway itself, leaning against the jamb.

He looked up from his papers and quipped, "hey, Wanda, you've just saved me coming down the hall to suggest coffee….." She wasn't listening, it was obvious that her mind was elsewhere.

Bowing to the obvious, Sato put down everything he was working on and remained sitting while lifting coffee to his mouth. In the years he had known Chu, he finally succumbed to giving her the time - especially, like now - when she appeared lost in her thoughts.

Finally Chu said to some distant object, "how do you say something when by saying something, you're saying something?"

Putting down the cup, he asked, masking some incredulity, "what on earth are you talking about?" It then occurred to him that he perhaps knew what was bugging her.

So Sato risked, "Is this the Jennings account?"

Chu finally came to and looked at him, "students aren't 'accounts', David."

"Okay, okay - touché, Wanda. But you know what I mean. We've had this discussion." Sato then tried to recover by accommodating her, trying not to appear too patronizing. "I still don't know what you mean about, 'saying something'. Why don't you just say it….. whatever 'it' is?"

Chu came in and sat in the chair, the one reserved for parents who'd come up to St. Edwards, either to pay a bill, or (like the Jennings) beg and plead for some sort of extension. Instead, the answer to her own question caused Sato to sit up.

She confessed to her faculty colleague that she was mulling over calling the police.

He said, "I thought we were talking about Henry Jennings?"

Chu stood nervously from the chair, "right now, I'm talking about me. Do the police need to be involved?"

Sato asked, "about what!? Hey, did something happen to you back home, during Thanksgiving? That was two weeks ago, Wanda!" When she said nothing, just sat there fidgeting, so he continued, "look, Wanda, we've been friends for a long time. What's eating you? Is it the - pardon the expression, sorry - Jennings 'account'? It doesn't seem like it. You're not one to talk in riddles….."

At that Sato's phone rang. Chu prepared herself to leave his office to give him some privacy, but stopped when she heard him say, "it's for you!" The main-desk receptionist, she told Chu that it was the FBI… so much for the decision to call the police!

SPECIAL AGENT STAN BEEMAN

Racing past the reception desk to her office where she could close her door, she motioned to the secretary to transfer the call. Her phone rang just as she got to her chair.

Wanda Chu: Hello, this is Ms. Chu, Academic Advisor, St. Edwards school, how can I help you?

Stan Beeman: Hello, Ms. Chu. I'm Special Agent Stan Beeman from the Washington office of the FBI. I'm calling about Henry Jennings.

Chu: Henry? You're with the FBI? Henry? Is everything all right?

Beeman: That's what I want to talk about. I will be coming up to St. Edwards to see him, I'll be there tomorrow, mid-afternoon - I'm driving from D.C. I need you to be aware that there may be stuff in the news that Henry or his friends will pick up on. I'd prefer it if I was the one to confer with him about things. It's a 9, ten-hour drive - I'm leaving tomorrow at first light.

Chu: - silence - I think today and tomorrow, Henry is at all-day hockey practise, both days. They're preparing for the Christmas regionals. - pause - Can I ask you something?

Beeman: Sure, ask away. Please be advised, Ms. Chu that I am FBI. To be blunt and up front, I am calling in that official capacity.

Chu: - silence - Is this about his sister?

Beeman: - surprised - You mean, Paige? Paige Jennings? Why do you ask?

Chu: Um, maybe we can meet when you get up here.

Beeman: I'd appreciate it if you could give me a heads up now, Ms. Chu. I'll be on the road tomorrow. - pause - Sure, let's meet before I catch up with Henry….

Chu: Um, I'm not sure I should be telling anyone this…..

Beeman: Ms. Chu, I need to say that any information you provide is vital. Like I say, I will be out of contact tomorrow until early afternoon, on the road….. this is a matter of national security.

Chu: - pause, weighing words - I don't know if what I've done is illegal. Do I need a lawyer?

Beeman: Slow down…. it's certainly your right, Ms. Chu. It's my opinion only, ma'am, but I'm sure you're safe in telling me. I just know that whatever you can say about the Jennings will help me in meeting with Henry tomorrow. - silence - All of this is time critical. - pause - You were asking about Paige Jennings…

Chu: - silence - Okay. Last September when Henry came back for term, he asked me to hold a package for him. He told me that the two items were his family's. One was a diary with a locked clasp on it, the other was an audio tape. At first I thought the diary was his…..

- long silence -

Beeman: - silence - And…

Chu: It's going to sound silly, but when he left for Falls Church just before Thanksgiving two weeks ago, I had opportunity to ask him about his family. First of all, and this is confidential, the Jennings may be having difficulty with tuition…..

Beeman: Full disclosure, Ms. Chu, I am an FBI agent, but I'm also the Jennings' neighbour in Falls Church. In fact, they'd had a turkey dinner invite to my home… Mr. Jennings he discussed his family finances with me…..

Chu: You're the neighbour Henry talked about? - silence - What's going on? - pause - Henry said his parents, they ducked out of that dinner… left him, as he said, 'with the neighbours for Thanksgiving.'

Beeman: - sharply - Ms Chu, what is it that you've done, that you fear is illegal? Again, I am a Special Agent….

Chu: …. I read parts of Paige's diary, it wasn't Henry's it was his sister's. The one Henry gave me for safe keeping. I think he did that because he couldn't trust himself NOT to read it, and it was awkward for him to return it.

Beeman: None of that is particularly illegal, Ms. Chu.

Chu: - silence - Wait for it, Agent Beeman, wait for it. I'm trying to say something without saying something.

THE DIARY

Years later, it was unclear how much of what appears below, was related to Beeman by Chu during that phone call, or told to him when they'd had a moment before seeing Henry at St. Edwards. But below is the gist of it

The thing that made deciphering Paige's diary difficult, was that pages were missing. Whole pages. Some ripped out, other pages with sentences carefully cut out with scissors. The clasp? It had a toy-lock, easily defeated with a hairpin. It was hard to believe that Henry had resisted temptation.

Most of Paige's diary was filled with standard, middle-class teenaged girl's angsts. It was clear that this was only one of many Paige had kept through her life - this one, though, began with her involvement with Reed Street Church, where 'Pastor Tim' and his wife 'Alice' had been influential in her life. She also wrote extensively about a friend she'd met on a long-distance bus, 'Kelli' who had been traveling between her divorced parents, who lived in separate States. Kelli had introduced Paige to the church.

A key theme of the diary throughout had been how someone needed to take care of her younger brother, Henry. Absent her traveling parents, the text made it clear the times that Paige, on her own, had thrown everything aside to make sure that he was seen to.

It was her involvement in Reed Street Church, and eventual baptism, where pages in the diary began to be physically redacted - sentences clipped out, or whole pages ripped out.

Such reactions made it difficult to follow Paige's train of thought as put to paper. Suffice it to say that the last things to be included were Henry's departure from the Jennings home, to attend school in New Hampshire, and Paige beginning her studies at George Washington University. She herself had moved out of home to share an apartment near GWU with a girl named Gwen. Gwen was someone who Paige went out of her way to say knew nothing of 'the family business'.

The 'family business'!?

THE FAMILY BUSINESS

On hearing Chu's account of what remained in the diary, the first thing that exploded in Stan Beeman's mind was how Pastor Tim had just lied - bald faced lied - to the FBI. Just a few days previous, Beeman had made a similar long distance call to Buenos Aires, where Tim was now working. He'd asked Tim outright - with all the standard law enforcement cautions - was there anything about the Jennings which would interest the FBI.

Tim hadn't even struggled with how to say something without saying it.

Pastor Tim had said no, there was nothing. He'd lied. Paige's diary, it said different. Sort of. It was plain that both Tim and Alice had an oar in the Jennings' 'family business' of some sort. Not just with Paige.

Henry himself, he seemed clear. Then again, there was all the missing material.

Paige Jennings and her roommate, Gwen, were obviously close. Both political science majors at GWU. Both active in 1987 in the university bar scene.

But backing up to the diary's accounts from 1984 - the first few pages of which were missing. The remaining text started with Paige quoting from someone else's diary, one that she had (apparently) surreptitiously read.

"Are they monsters? I don't know. But what they did to their daughter, I'd have to call monstrous. I've seen sexual abuse, I've seen affairs, but nothing I've seen compares to what P.J. has been through." That's what Paige had transcribed from some other diary-source, which Stan Beeman could only believe was Pastor Tim himself. Given the nature of THAT, given that it had not itself been redacted, Beeman wondered what stuff had been worse necessitating it being removed.

Beeman was stunned at the catch-up…. just days previous to him reading for himself, Tim had bald-faced lied about the Jennings. Whereas nothing in what Paige wrote specifically made the connection - Beeman's patented counterintelligence instincts (and recent events with Russian Orthodox priests) presented it as obvious.

Pastor Tim - and probably Alice, too - knew that Philip and Elizabeth Jennings were Soviets.

The dangerous 'glitch' to all this for him? After facing them down in Paige's apartment garage, Beeman had let them go!

In a later entry, Paige had written about how angry she'd been with her parents - that they had sought out Pastor Tim for 'teenager advice'. This had been just before he left Reed Street Church, and his family relocated to Buenos Aires. Her most angry entry about that had what appeared to be what was concerning Philip and Elizabeth about Paige and Henry.

It seemed to be about their own relocation - the destination of which was artfully cut out. The unknown redactor (Paige?) was frustratingly efficient and precise about what they wanted to reveal, in what was supposed to be a private diary.

Then there were the entries about Paige being engaged in the 'family business'. How her mother would take her into the garage for self-defence lessons, or take her out on the street to train her how to be aware of surroundings. How to memorize car-tags, to manage the barrier between 'short term' and 'long term' memory. Memory tricks…..

…... none of which made much sense to Wanda Chu…..

PREPARING TO CONFRONT HENRY JENNINGS

…... but to Beeman, it was pure tradecraft. Without once calling it as such, Beeman recognized the basic skills that a ground-level spy would need. Someone 'in the field' but also at a distance from their 'command and control'. Deep cover spies they were on their own, sometimes for years.

Paige even wrote once that unknown 'others' only knew her as 'Julie'. These 'others', Beeman agonized over. There was one mention, of an older woman important to Paige's parents - 'Claudia'. Beeman thought, tradecraft, tradecraft, tradecraft.

If, though, the Jennings had had their time in the USA 'blown up' by Russian Orthodox priests, Beeman bet that all of these others were now long gone. If, indeed, they at all related to the 'family business'.

So when Wanda Chu said to FBI Special Agent Stanley Beeman, 'how do you say something, when by saying something, you've said something', he knew exactly what she meant.

Ok, now to go talk to Henry, and blow up his world…

(to be continued…..)