LEARNING CURVE

One of these days Philip was going to learn. If he didn't want Elizabeth to know something, don't bring the Seattle P.I. newspaper into the apartment where she might see it. He knew that by habit, she had not ever bought an actual newspaper, not in Falls Church, not during their recent 5-year respite in Moscow. Not Pravda, when she'd had the chance.

'Popular Seattle United Methodist clergy found murdered,' was the headline. Philip had known that when she had returned from Canada by Greyhound, that Elizabeth had sat with a female reverend, who Philip had thought Elizabeth had said had been a United Methodist.

He did not wish to hide things from her, all he wanted to know was the lay of the land so that he could control her reaction. Yeah, like he'd ever managed to control his wife!

But because of his involvement, this time he was at least going to try.

Fortunately, the main story about the murder had been pushed lower on the front page, it was below the fold. Above was the continuing coverage of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

'Police have ruled out robbery, but have not ruled out sexual assault. It remains that the congregants of Seattle's largest United Methodist Church, in the shadow of the Space Needle, start their mourning for their clergy. The Reverend Doctor Susan Hyack.'

When Elizabeth's key surprised him by being inserted in the door, Philip offered an audible, 'oh shit', then turned the paper face up - revealing only the New York terrorist coverage. He now assembled his poker-face, but it had to be his Elizabeth-poker-face. She had long since seen through his garden variety, operational attempts to appear innocent.

Marriage does that to you.

DEAR DIARY, AGAIN

Okay, she's gone - from White Rock. My guess, for good. A mystery if there ever was one. Tonight before coming home, I stopped by her rental basement suite in White Rock proper - the upstairs landlady had already rented out downstairs to someone else.

Gone. There goes my own little conspiracy. I'd wanted her to meet the young woman who has started coming to church - the girl (woman?) who works at 'Seasons' in Vancouver, who's got a shift when the Presidents of Russia as well as The United States have a lunch there in April. Me, even me, I'd got a call from the United States Treasury Department about her, I'd not known that the US Secret Service was part of that department. Not even a call from the RCMP or CSIS.

I'm not sure why I'd wanted them to meet. I thought they'd bump into each other last Sunday at the service, but the young woman, she was a no show. A rare Sunday where she'd been absent. I mean, she had been on the dock to give a report to the congregation about the local Women's Place, for battered women and their children. Me, I had to improvise that report on my own. Made me mad.

Okay, the older woman, she's now gone. You know what? As hard to believe as it is, I'll write it here, and some future reader can disbelieve me if they want.

I never got her name. I'd come to introducing her to others at church as, 'our American mystery woman'. I mean, I didn't even know if she was a Yankee…. she appeared to be, and other than at first laughing, she never corrected me.

In the short time she was in White Rock, she sought me out a number of times. For my counsel. Wow, was I out of my depth. My oh my, those were some heavy sessions, I was readying myself to refer her to proper counselling. I'm convinced, she'd have refused the suggestion. Only once were we alone in my office, mainly my secretary had been in the outer office, or we reprised our first meeting at the restaurant, the one across from the bank.

She kept bringing up three names. Paige. Gabriel. Richard Patterson. She even mumbled two others, I think they were Leanne and Gregory. It was a bigger surprise to hear her verbalizing stuff which was that specific. Looking back on the way she presented herself, she'd weep while speaking, every once in awhile lapse into something coherent, then 'catch herself', and get fuzzy again.

Mentioning those names….. I mean, I'd only known her for a little over two weeks, but that seemed uncharacteristicly…. ah, er, open!

This was a upper-middle-aged woman, obviously been around the block. Out of thousands I have met in my ministry career, I'd vote her best able to handle herself in a donnybrook. Why? Not sure. It's not that I'd seen her duke it out.

She, though, was pained. Seemed a textbook example of 'moral injury' - I'd taken the course last summer at the Vancouver Seminary. Johnathan Shay taught it, the guy who'd coined the term. 'Moral injury is when someone does something against their morality, because they'd been told to do it by someone in authority. Moral injury is about values-betrayal by a trusted authority.'

Had this woman had a lifetime of betraying her own values? I haven't a clue, I don't even know what she was doing in White Rock, other than going catatonic on seeing that bank, or shaking in my office - while avoiding the very counsel that could crack her 'injury' open.

Like I'd written before, this was a women who knew how to deflect a question, making it seem like she'd answered, when later it became plain she had not even been close. I'm sure that she could survive well, even a waterboarding. (That's stupid to write, I'll admit. Don't judge me. But it's true.)

Who were those people she'd slipped up with, and mentioned to me?

My hunch? 'Paige' had been the other, younger mystery woman new at church. Why? I don't know. But that's insane for me to write. Of course that young woman isn't 'Paige'. If she's the one hanging around our church, working at 'Seasons', volunteering here at 'Women's Place' - this is more involved than I could possibly know. Why do I write that? I haven't a clue. I'm piecing it together, slowly - but my woman and this 'Paige' seem to trigger one another. Why? As far as I know, they've never met. I'm being stupid. After church at coffee, I'm tempted to just blurt it out… 'Hi Paige!', instead of the name I know her by. Would that be smart? What was in that bank to cause my older mystery woman to go all catatonic? If not this 'Paige'?

STAND-UP

I mean, let me be clear, dear reader. This fifty-year-old, now gone, she was remarkable. Man oh man, could she read a room. At seminary during our homiletics training, it had been drilled into us that when delivering a sermon, one had to 'read the room'. Think stand-up comedy. Not control the sanctuary, 'control', they said, was the engine of abuse. But our preaching had to be relevant to the people hearing…..

…. one had to read the room. Black churches in the USA, that's what they did. Me, I had never got close.

For her, in just two Sundays, she'd told me things about my flock that I'd not known in three years. It's not (quite) that people, for her, were objects to be used. But they were certainly subjects in a social ecosystem - pardon the jargon. A dangerous ecosystem? Where if you didn't read the tea-leaves, you'd die? Too melodramatic? If you didn't read things right, you sustained even more 'moral injury'?

I may be overthinking this. But I don't think so.

Except that me, I could not 'place' her in any ecosystem, dangerous or otherwise. I assume she's an American, up here in Vancouver (White Rock) for some professional reason that disinterests her. I asked her, she deflected - like a pro.

I'm assuming Seattle, but there is also something 'eastern seaboard' about her.

TURNING THE PAIGE, HANDS AND GLOVES

While I should have been home glued to the TV, an hour before this session I'd been with that younger woman, a transient who'd settled in White Rock a month previous. Who commuted from our suburb into Vancouver, where she was a server at 'Seasons' at Little Mountain within the city.

Her claim to fame? She lucked into being a server for the big Vancouver Clinton-Yeltson lunch there as part of Yeltsin's western charm offensive. She was going to meet the big men - she said she had been assigned to the 'Yeltsin-hosted bar', where Seasons had brought in a ton of expensive, Russian vodka. Other restaurant servers in our congregation said in awe, 'imagine the tips!'

It was that coming Summit which had been eclipsed on CNN by the Trade Center bombing.

But this woman, this young lady. Like I'd written, she'd also volunteered locally at our Women's Shelter, she always came out to our church's Sunday night meals for the homeless. She occasionally spoke, right there during the service. As to why she did what she did, she'd quipped one Sunday, 'it's what Pastor Tim would have done.' She never said who this 'Pastor Tim' was.

When I write about it, I want to write about hands and gloves, but that would be too absurd. I mean, you wouldn't know it by the flow of writing here, but I just this moment, just now I ended a full ten minutes of staring into my home-study's darkness, it's now well past midnight. My catatonic stare broken only by my wife sticking her head in and saying, 'are you coming to bed?'

Hands and gloves. It's stupid to even write it. But I now regret not introducing that young woman to that older mystery woman. There's something 'hand and glove' about them.

I mean, something other than that they both are probably Americans, not that they'd ever said, but they both present as such.

It would do no good, though. The older, mystery woman is gone. Probably back to Seattle, the destination of which is only an assumption, I'll admit. She'd never said.

Okay, what about me? Why am I hooked so?

GREYHOUND

'Elizabeth,' Susan called out.

The Reverend Doctor Susan Hyack had boarded the Greyhound at the main Vancouver bus terminal. She was returning to her Seattle pulpit after a week at the Vancouver seminary at a course, 'Islamic Christian dialogue'.

That the World Trade Center bombing in New York had happened while she'd been in Canada, was one of those moments of synchronicity that helped her believe in God, where others only saw 'chance' at play. On the bus ride from Vancouver to the US border, she'd already composed (in her head) her sermon for her anxious, terrorist-fearing flock who gathered in the shadow of the Space Needle. Which was now closed for security concerns.

The only stop before the 49th Parallel was in White Rock, the border city between Canada, and Blaine, Washington.

At which, a woman got on, showed her passport and ticket to the driver, which she'd have to have ready momentarily at US customs, just a quarter-mile to the south.

It wasn't just that literally the only empty seat was beside Rev. Hyack. It's that Susan had embarrassed herself by calling out Elizabeth's name!

Elizabeth panicked somewhat, because her present US passport was in someone else's name.

Sitting in that only available seat, Elizabeth asked as unpanicked as she could, "….. and you are?"

"I'm really sorry, I yelled that, didn't I?" Trying to recover, she said, "I'm Pastor Susan Hyack, I'm with 1st United Methodist in Seattle. I'm not always this rude."

Her seat companion looked straight ahead, then said, "well, I'm not Elizabeth." She thought of opening and showing her passport to the reverend, but remembered a tip which had been hard-baked into her KGB Directorate-S training, albeit it 30 years previous - never volunteer anything.

They sat silently through the border check, then the Greyhound settled onto Interstate #5, with only a stop in Marysville before Seattle's main bus terminal.

There they were, three hours captive to each other. On a Greyhound bus.

RECOVERED MEMORY SYNDROME

Three hours together, maybe more depending on Seattle traffic. Susan, being a talker, couldn't leave it alone.

"For some reason, when I see you, I think of a colleague, Dale Woods. A United Methodist, in Washington D.C." The reverend turned to look at her seat-mate, "I used to date Dale, we met in Vancouver, back in 1983."

Elizabeth tried to let her silence signal her extreme disinterest. No dice. Her fervent wish was that the religious mouthpiece beside her would be silent for the rest of the trip.

Then it hit her. Dale Woods. Reed Street Church. Pastor Tim. Pastor Dale had been Tim's assistant. Paige's church before Paige had come to her senses. Had Elizabeth just been made? On a Greyhound a full continent away from D.C.?

"Dale Woods," Elizabeth asked, "you know, I've never been to the eastern seaboard."

"Well, then you have a twin sister." Susan then swiveled 45 degrees to the right to face her, and said, "look, I'll shut up if you want. But since we broke up, I've never talked about Dale. Now I'm talking about him to a complete stranger." She then looked back out the window to the left.

"No, that's okay," Elizabeth said, knowing that she now needed to hear just how much she had, and if, she'd been made.

Susan said to the window to the left of her, "World Council of Churches general meeting, July 1983, at the seminary I was graduating from in Vancouver. Dale, he was a lecturer at Wesleyan Seminary in D.C., had come out for the Council. We'd met at a colloquium by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, about Apartheid in South Africa. Let's just say that from there, we dated."

Elizabeth listened, trying to make mental note of the 'religion-speak' that her companion had lapsed into. But it was what Susan said next that convinced Elizabeth that she needed the woman to say more, not less.

The following is what Elizabeth had memorized, she was going to have to keep the woman talking, then report to The Centre.

"At the Council, Dale and I ran into each other again at the parallel Christian Peace Conference. Dale had been alarmed that because of the CPC, that the Council had refused to condemn the old Soviet Union for its interference in Eastern Europe. In fact, both Dale and I were approached, privately, by people in Vancouver who he later found out had been KGB agents. I'm not making that up. Me, I thought that it was exciting. Dale didn't. If we'd not been in Canada, Dale would have called the FBI. Later, Dale found out that former WCC president, Metropolitan Nikodim of Leningrad, had been a KGB agent himself."

"In 1984, I went to Washington D.C. to visit Dale, to 'date' him some more. By then he was full-on conspiratorial about the KGB and the WCC. I went with him once to an Arlington, Virginia, independent congregation where he was preaching. I swear, I saw you there. The woman must be your twin."

When back in Seattle, Elizabeth surprised Philip by saying one Sunday morning, that she was going off to church. Yes kiddies, Philip thought, Elizabeth had found Jesus. This time without Paige.

As per standing orders from The Centre, he reported this up the chain.

Zotov himself, ordered Philip to get to the bottom of it. The operations within the growing Seattle tech-world were too important to risk to random exposure like that.

What did Philip find out about The Reverend Doctor Susan Hyack?

That Rene Beeman, she, apparently, was a Methodist. She went to her church.