A Swedish Shield Maiden Declares War on Satan

Chapter Ten

Vivi Meets Julia Child at the Gourmet Food Tasting!

© Richard L. Thornton, Architect and City Planner

The Shenandoah Valley and Union Station in Washington, DC

July 2021 Revision

A tsunami of drug-related corruption

Originally,  a couple of FBI agents were assigned the task of responding to 16 complaints from Northwest Virginia families, whose son, daughter or husband had been murdered, after sending information to the heavily publicized Virginia Drug Hotline.  Almost as afterthought, Bob and Sara were asked to examine what happened to drug informants in western and northern Virginia, who were honest citizens with no criminal records.  The Danby’s discovered that an astonishing number of these people were dead within a few months after providing intel.  Most of the deaths were labeled “accidents” or “suicides” by county coroners.

There was a smaller group of people like me, who complained of persons in US Army combat uniforms, committing serious crimes on private property . . . generally at night. I was the only one, who had proof that would hold up in court.  I furnished the task force high resolution, time-date stamped, color photos of a gold Jeep Cherokee repeatedly parked at the end of my driveway. It had a Maryland license plate and Fort Detrick decals on the rear bumper and left front windshield.  Its occupants were always the same US Army colonel and major wearing combat fatigues. My telephoto lens shots clearly showed the faces and ranks of these criminals. I also furnished two blurred infrared photos of ghost-like figures near my barn, wearing starlight lens night vision goggles.

Everywhere the US Justice Department Task Force poked, they found governmental corruption, particularly in the law enforcement agencies.   Profits from illegal drug sales were fueling a regional organized crime system that apparently developed during the Reagan Administration.  It dwarfed the “Good Ole Fashion” Mafia. The Task Force’s agents and citizen volunteers repeatedly photographed or videotaped large drug shipments being protected by uniformed law enforcement. 

Volunteer firemen in northern Fulton County, GA (Atlanta Metro) were getting incredibly wealthy by transporting marijuana and cocaine in their motor boats on Lakes Allatoona and Lanier.  The marijuana and cocaine bales were being dropped by US Air Force C-130 cargo planes, based at nearby Dobbins AFB.   Guns that were supposed to be in the evidence lockers of Georgia police and sheriff’s departments were being used to commit crimes in the northeastern cities.

Narcotics detectives from throughout Florida . . . US Coast Guard officers from South Florida and US Air Force officers from the Florida Panhandle  were building million-dollar mansions in the mountains of North Carolina.  One Shenandoah County deputy, making $32, 000 a year, paid cash for a $650,000 house.  Another deputy, making $28,000 a year, purchased $4.5 million dollars of commercial real estate in one year. *Double the numbers to get the equivalent dollars in 2020.

Within the federal government itself were competing factions and many moles for outside interests. It became increasing clear to me that Bob and Sara were more afraid of evil people within the FBI and Department of Justice than they were conventional criminals. They were increasingly convinced that the mass murders of journalists and covert federal agents going on in 1991 was being orchestrated by people within the federal government, probably within the Justice Department or Department of Defense.  Therefore, a major concern of Bob and Sara was keeping Susan Karlson safe.  She had received standard FBI small fire arms training, but just did not have a “killer” instinct.  Unlike me, she had absolutely no military training.

I enter the private world of Susan Karlson

Early on a Thursday morning, two days after I gave my first making out lessons to Susan Karlson, a standard US Postal Service delivery truck rolled up my driveway.  The driver, in the standard USPS postal carrier uniform, deposited something the size of a work boot box at my front door.  To the reader, the scene might not sound suspicious, but it was.  Our farm was served by Rural Free Deliver postal carriers, who didn’t wear uniforms and drove their personal vehicles.  Our regular postal carrier dropped off mail at the roadside mailbox later in the day.

The return address was that of the US Department of Agriculture’s main offices in Washington, DC.  That instantly told me that this was from the Justice Department’s Task Force.  I opened the box.  There was a typed note from Bob and another box with the Justice Department’s seal on it.

Susan does her legal research

On Friday morning I received my first call on the new cellular phone.  It was Susan.  She first thanked me profusely for complaining to her bosses after our meeting at her house.  She also was concerned by the safety of the house, where they placed her.  However, being brand new to the FBI, she hesitated to complain.  Her employers were bringing new furniture  to the condo from DC and were going to move her personal belongings over the weekend. She even got to pick out the furniture from a GSA catalogue.

Susan then announced that she felt no pain when she hugged me.  (What the heck?)  She then explained that when she turned 13, her Pentecostal church in Minnesota gave her a pamphlet named, Becoming a Christian Woman.   The pamphlet told her that menstruation was God’s punishment on all women for Eve’s rebellion against Him and “If a maiden alloweth a man to toucheth her breasts, she shall become unclean and God will striketh her down with unbearable pain.”  Susan had checked the Biblical citations for several statements in the pamphlet and found that only the one about Eve’s rebellion was actually in the Bible and it was only in Genesis, not the New Testament.

After our first session on Tuesday,  Susan had stayed up much of the night reading the Bible.  From those many hours of legal research, God had revealed a new understanding of our mission to transmit criminal evidence from the Shenandoah Valley to Washington, DC.  She opened up her revelations with the statement, “Richard, I have wonderful news for you.  You do not have to feel guilty. Richard, how many times has <estranged wife’s name> asked for a divorce?”

I answered, “I don’t know . . . at least 24 times, maybe more.”

“Wonderful Richard . . . both the Old Testament and the New Testament state that a spouse only has to ask for a divorce three times and then in God’s eyes, you are no longer married.  Has she lain with another man?”

“Yes,” I answered, “Many times.  A detective got photographs and an audiotape this past January to prove it.”

“Wonderful Richard . . . that means that according to both the Old and New Testament, you are free to find another woman and in God’s eyes, she will be your first wife . . . but I have even better news that made me feel more comfortable with our mission.”

“In many parts of the Bible it says that any act that is in service to God can never be a sin.  We are not doing this for lustful reasons, but in service to God and our fellow humans.  Therefore, we can do anything . . . ANYTHING . . . and God will both justify and bless our efforts.  Now, I am not ready yet for . . . . you know . . . because I have much to learn first . . . but it will be blessed by God.”

I told her that we did not have to be concerned about, you know, but only had to convince anyone monitoring our activities that we were having a real affair.

Susan then informed me that she was studying three R-rated movies that she rented from Blockbusters.  She was writing down all of her questions for me on a note pad.   She had also bought a book at Walden’s Book Store called, Human Intimacy, but probably would only have time to read the first chapter before our second session, because of moving to the new townhouse.

Susan suggested that she fix us some lunch rather than eating at a restaurant.  It would give us more time to practice at her condo. She also asked if we could meet on Wednesday instead of Tuesday, since she needed time to get settled in her new residence. That all made sense to me.

Finally, Susan asked me for my license tag and driver’s license numbers.  She had told the management at the condo project that I was her boyfriend, so they were issuing me a key card to get through the gate.  After I went outside and read to her my tag number, she told me that I could pick up my key card at the sales office before going through the gate next Wednesday.

After we ended the conversation, I got to thinking.  Well, she was right in telling the condo staff that I was her boyfriend.   It would be very likely that a VBI or sheriff’s department detective would call them.  If they instantly said that I was Susan’s boyfriend, the appearance of an affair would seem quite plausible to the detective . . . but it was rather surrealistic.  To my family and one set of friends, I was the loyal husband as ever.  To the folks in Washington, Vivi and I had met the loves of our lives.  In Winchester, I would be that new woman attorney’s hot boyfriend.  Hm-m.

Second lesson, not same as the first

Everything went smoothly in getting a key card.  Using that “boyfriend” card automatically noted Susan that I was on my way to her townhouse.  When I rang the doorbell, I heard her shout, “Come on in.  The door is unlocked.  I am busy in the kitchen.”  

I walked into an entirely different environment than the dilapidated used furniture in the old shot gun mill house in Winchester.   Susan was darting about the kitchen in a very loose-fitting Mexican type Indian blouse . . . holding a wine glass . . . holding a wine glass?  She shouted, “It’s wonderful to see you again, pour you some wine.  My book on intimacy said that drinking wine helps grease the wheels when men and women first meet.  It keeps you from doing and saying stupid things like I did when you were at my old house.  I am sorry about being so crazy.  I was just scared and didn’t know how to tell you.”

“Since you said that you worked in Sweden, I am making you a typical Swedish lunch . . . köttbullar  (meatballs) and stuffed cabbage. “

I was shocked to know that she even knew how to cook.  In fact, she seemed quite comfortable in the role of a gourmet cook.  However, she was getting a little tipsy from drinking a third of a bottle of wine.  That was a surprise. “Susan,  I thought you said that you had never drunk, smoked or used drugs?”

She grinned sheepishly, “Oh,  I never have smoked marijuana or used hard drugs. <She changed the subject.>  How do you like my new blouse? It is really loose and comes off easily. That will help us when practicing. ”   

I answered, “Would you be offended, if I said that you look very sexy in it?”

“No silly,  I am not offended.  I am tired of looking like an old maid. See, I am even wearing lipstick today!  Is that a problem?”    

“No, it’s not a problem gal.  You look great . . . but be sure to rub it off my face and neck before I leave.  We will be practicing kisses.”

“Do you like my new couch?  I picked it out so we could practice in many different positions.” I told her that we would not be laying down in the car! . . . but it was a very comfortable looking couch combo.

She smiled sheepishly again and then said, “I was not being truthful to you about smoking. I was afraid that you would think I was a bad girl. You see my parents are Pentecostals.  They don’t drink or smoke. They think like most everybody else that I don’t drink alcoholic beverages or smoke.”

“You see all my grandparents are Swedish Lutherans.  I would often stay at their farms in the summer.  I was much happier when living with my grandparents, because they let me do anything. Both my grandfathers smoked pipes.  Both my grandmothers smoked little cigars.  They all drank home-made wine.”

“When I became a teenager, they let me drink their wine.  I smoked pipes with my grandfathers after dinner.  That was fun.  When I became 18,  my mother’s father gave me a beautiful hand-carved pipe, made in Sweden. Well, I did experiment with little cigars and cigarettes in college, but I didn’t let the other students see me.”

“ I have regular pipes for everyday use.  I love to smoke my beautiful Swedish pipe on holidays like Christmas and remember how happy I was during those summers. Maybe we can smoke together after practicing today?  If you like it, I will get my grandparents to send me a fancy Swedish pipe for you.”  

I had totally misjudged Susan.  Her puritanical parents had created a miserable, workaholic nerd, who no one wanted to be around . . . but hidden beneath that façade was a fun-loving country girl.  Hm-m.  Interesting though . . . smoking must have sexual connotations with young women.   Vivi repeatedly pressures me to smoke her Benson-Hedges cigarettes, after we have known each other in a Biblical way.

After an amazing lunch, we moved to the sofas.  Her dining room and living room were all the same space.  Susan pulled out a yellow note pad from her office desk . . . where I saw several often-smoked pipes on display. She wasn’t kidding me.  As I changed locations I informed her that we actually had a very important intel transfer today.  I told her, “Susan, you will have to take this intel to your sister in Manassas, Virginia this afternoon so she can give it to her husband to take into the FBI in the morning.” 

“A Virginia State Wildlife Ranger used a night vision camera to photograph drugs and counterfeit airplane parts being unloaded at the Basye Airport Monday night.  His camera produces micro-negatives . . . the type that had to been hidden under your bra.  On Tuesday morning, an employee at the airport, who is a volunteer like me, photocopied the jet’s flight report.  It had originated in Miami and was next flying to Chicago. We will have to figure out some way to hide it also.”

“Richard, I prayed a lot this past week and now am ready to do the very best job of hiding the negatives.  I have many questions from watching the movies.  First though let’s practice a special hug that I saw on the movie, “Romancing the Stone.” She flipped the note pad to reveal two beautiful sketches of Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas embracing. 

I told her that she was an outstanding artist.  She responded, “Yes, I guess sketching and water color painting are my favorite hobbies. “

A Pentecostal (closet Lutheran) pipe-smoking lawyer, who is also a talented artist?  Didn’t see that one coming?

What her sketches showed was first me behind her with arms outstretched, then I bring my arms completely wrapped around her then both of our arms together.  This must be a fantasy of hers. Her first kiss was much better than a paper manikin – maybe an age 13, but the next was an age 16 and the final one was an age 18.  She was maturing quickly.

On her note pad was listed 14 kinds of kissing and 8 kinds of hugging.  She had big questions about kisses when the mouths were opened wide, where it looked like a tongue was sticking out, kissing ears, long kisses on the neck and multiple kisses from the top of the head to the toes.  Her notes said that the camera in “Romancing the Stone” stopped moving downstream, after the man kissed the actress’s belly button.  She wanted to know what happened next after he moved south of the belly button.   I told her that we probably would not have to be concerned about that. Perhaps we could discuss that in a future lesson.

Well, after about 15 minutes of practicing, we were able to do the kissing down to the belly button, so I showed her how I would normally hide an 8 1/2” x  11” size document under my shirt.  I would be in the passenger seat of her car.  She was to cover the view of most of my shirt with her body . . . wrap her left arm around my shoulder then use her right hand to unbutton my shirt and slip the document behind her seat.

The next document transfer was the critical one today . . . hiding a micro-negative.  I could tell that she had highly anticipated the learning of this skill.  For this type of drop off, I would be in the passenger seat in her car.  Both of us would turn our torsos perpendicular to any cameras.  I would then slip my right hand under her blouse and insert the micro-negative.  Susan insisted that we practice both sides of the bra seven times, since it was a holy number. After achieving perfection with that skill, her skin (well my skin too) was blazing hot.  She then sighed and asked if I would like smoke a pipe with her.  I said okay.

Susan had to show me how to load the tobacco and light it.  I was surprised how feminine looking she made pipe smoking seem . . . actually she looked rather “sexy.”  Maybe she practiced smoking in front of a mirror?   Pipe smoke smells better than it tastes, but certainly doesn’t have raunchy odor of large cigars.

For about three minutes she asked me questions like one gets on a first date . . . do you want children . . . how many . . . how many brothers and sisters do you have? . . . etc.  Something happened next that I was not expecting.  She put down her pipe and announced, “Smoking with you makes me want to practice again.”  She grabbed my pipe and put it on the pipe stand too then knocked me flat on the sofa and said,  “I want to practice all 14 types of kisses, including the one that the movie didn’t show.” 

It was quite obvious that she was ready to “you know,”   Maybe if I had been a totally single guy with neither the-wife-from-hell, nor French goddess, it would have been different.  The fact was, though, we were about to embark on something quite serious, that might prove dangerous.   I tried to slow her down by saying that we barely knew each and never would have to do this in passing information.  Her response?

“It’s alright Richard. Remember in God’s eye you are a single man and it is okay for us to practice anything.”

After several minutes of fighting a losing battle with Susan, I finally triggered the stoic, logic side of her brain by reminding her that it was her assignment by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to transmit those film negatives as quickly as possible. “Susan, I think this is the first time in your life that  full doses of female hormones have raced through your veins. You will be happy tomorrow morning that we stopped right now.”

She sighed, slapped me on shoulder and said, “You’re right!  We can practice again next week, but can I lay on top of you, until I cool down.  Let’s talk some more.”  I asked her to tell me about her family background.  Both of sides of her family were ethnic Swedes, living in the part of Finland that was invaded by the Soviet Union in 1939.  The Lutheran Church in the United States sponsored them as political refugees and located the families in a rural area of Minnesota, where there were several abandoned farms. 

Her father was too young to be drafted in World War II and fortunately got married before the Korean War began.  Susan was the youngest of four brothers and sisters, but she really did not want to discuss her parents or her siblings.  She never did. After I was legally single, she would spend her Christmas holidays with me, if possible.  Yes, the reader is in for a big surprise on this story.

As I drove over to a construction site, north of Winchester, I pondered the early afternoon’s experience. I had not anticipated any moral issues as long as Susan was an ice queen-nerd.  However,  this afternoon she had become a she-tiger in a matter of a few minutes. I finally decided that the tobacco pipe had been her only companion during the many years of total loneliness.  The nicotine calmed her nerves and the pipe brought back happy memories of her loving grandparents. I only looked about five years older than her at that time, but was actually 16 years older.  Maybe being able to smoke with an older man made me become her psychological grandfather, while casting out her many inhibitions.  There was no doubt that an older man smoking a pipe had an aphrodisiac effect on her.

Well, I was wrong about one thing.  She called me on the cell phone early the next morning to tell me that she couldn’t sleep last night because I talked her into driving to Manassas. She regretted her decision as soon as I drove off.  I could have gone to Manassas with her. How soon could we get together again to practice and smoke pipes together?

After the first practice session in her new house,  Susan threw away most of her drab, conservative clothes.  You can see in the photos that I have of her that she became quite the colorful, fashion queen.  Her personality changed 180 degrees.  She was soon known publicly as being a highly intelligent, likable professional, who was a non-drinker and non-smoker, plus who just didn’t seem to need a man in her life.  What “they” didn’t know?

Susan joined Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church in Winchester and completely stopped those crazy rants that almost drove me out of her house the first time.  As much as ever, Susan believed that Satan had taken possession of the Shenandoah Valley and perhaps even much of our federal government, but she no longer trusted in voodoo . . . sprinkling so-called holy water on property lines or reciting magical pseudo-Christian chants.

For the first few weeks that we met in the parking lot at the Wayside Inn, we pretended that we were just doing our job and nothing more. Each time, Susan would beg me to go smoke a pipe with her.  Sometimes I had the time or on other days, she would just accompany me to an architectural project site with her two pipes.

The truth was that both of us eagerly looked forward to the make-out session and didn’t want it to end. After the second make-out-in-the-parking lot session,  unmarked Virginia Bureau of Investigation cars began to park near us.  The FBI’s cameras observed VBI agents placing solar powered cameras in some of the trees in the parking lot, late at night when the restaurant was closed.  Susan and I eventually realized that were all along bait to attract crooked cops to candid cameras.  We didn’t care since the make-out sessions had become such an important part of our weekly schedules.

July 12, 1990 – Amazing Intel

On this day, I transmitted two of the most important messages to Bob and Sara of 1991. Susan was to take them straight to their offices in the basement of the Smithsonian. Bob didn’t want to take the chance of a traitor in the J. Edger Hoover Building either reading them or “burying” them.

The minister at St Paul’s Lutheran Church in Strasburg, VA had contacted the FBI Hotline. A 17 year old girl, who recently graduated from Strasburg High School came to him in tears. Someone in the sheriff’s department was trying extort her into delivering illegal drugs to customers then after she entered the University of Virginia, selling marijuana. If she refused, they were going to send photos of her at age 16, nude and having sex with other girls and boys in their youth club.

Yep . . . that’s the Shenandoah Sheriff’s Department Youth Club. It was a prototypical program being heavily funded by the Justice Department to discourage use of illegal drugs and alcohol, plus encourage chastity. In reality, the sponsors of the club were manipulating the young people to consume drugs and alcohol then commit kinky sex acts while they were drugged or drunk. Initiation into the senior division of the club at age 16 required smoking some strange substance in a pipe that “made them not care about anything.” This was followed by same sex intercourse. The kids were photographed in these acts so that they could be controlled for the rest of their lives.

A friend of hers had received the same demand. Once she had delivered drugs, then the deputies were demanding that she have sex with certain important married men in the region on a regular basis until she went off to college.

The minister was directed to buy cheese from me at the farm and then give me the notes from this girl and from her parents, demanding an FBI investigation. FBI involvement was legal, since the corruption of these young folks was being funded by the US Department of Justice.

Accompanying the notes from the girl and her parents was a bombshell from one of the honest deputies in the Shenandoah Sheriff’s Department. He was a member of St. Paul’s Lutheran. Tim Conner, the 17 year old boy, whose body had been found next to our rental house on October 21, 1987 – had been executed in our barn by nine members of an initiation class of the Sheriff’s Department Youth Club! The sheriff had given the order.

Because several people high up in the Justice Department were interfering and burying intelligence from the Shenandoah Valley investigations, Bob and Sara took a strategy that we saw again and again in the TV X-files. They gave all information, except that affecting national security to a team of law professors at American University. Those gentlemen and ladies then contacted key people in the television industry, who disguised the intelligence as information gathered by their own investigative reporters. No wonder, some people in the federal government were trying to kill off all our honest journalists!

The letter from the honest deputy that put under Susan’s bra was presented to the nation via television on October 28, 1991. (See below) In February 1992, I watched in complete admiration as the brave young lady from Strasburg gave a calm and very credible testimony under oath to a room full of federal attorneys and executives of major network news organizations at the top secret Georgetown hearings. You will learn about them in a subsequent chapter.

Relocation to the townhouse

On August 16, 1991,  Susan was informed that her bosses had identified the VBI agents, state troopers and local law enforcement, who would be “persuaded” to become assets and witnesses for the FBI in return for being given immunity.   We were allowed to move our transfers to the much safer location of her townhouse.  That’s when our physical relationship really intensified.  Susan knew good and well that the justification of making out to conceal service to God no longer applied,  but she had become just addicted to me as she was to her tobacco pipes.

As stated in an earlier chapter, this was during the period when my wife, Diana, was repeatedly urging me to find a young woman so we could have an open marriage, with no questions asked.  I think she assumed that I was flirting and doing some looking, but had not found an alternative partner.  On the other hand, I did not hassle her when she said she was going to be gone for a period of time. My wife and I also worked together pleasantly, hawking cheese at wine festivals.  We got along fine as business partners, but she still gave me no physical nurturing whatsoever  . . . not even a kiss.  I was pulling in the money from both the cheese and my architecture clients.  That seemed to be all she cared about at the moment.

Of course, almost every day I traded instant messages with Vivi.  I still loved her and missed her very much, but was rapidly getting to the weird state of wanting both of them beside me simultaneously.  They were so different.  Because it was expected of her to sleep with men when she did work in the past as an agent for the Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure,  Vivi assumed that I was sleeping with Susan from day one.  It didn’t seem to bother her a bit. She told me that if men don’t have regular nurturing, they lose their fire. So, she wanted me to be in tip top shape the next time she came to Virginia.

In many transmissions Vivi even asked me if I had been able to thaw out the Swedish Ice Queen. Did she do anything that I would like Vivi to do?  I honestly told her that we had never slept together – at that time. Vivi responded that she expected me to try harder and soon!

This is funny, but the only thing that made Vivi jealous was the communal pipe smoking.  I thought Vivi would think it funny for me to be working with a woman, who smoked pipes.  Instead, Vivi demanded that henceforth I smoke with her also, or she would be very angry.  Women are funny, aren’t they?

In final phase of our intel transmission partnership during late October and November 1991,  Susan began “play acting” in an aggressive effort to seduce me.  She first smoked the little cigars like her grandmothers smoked, while presenting herself to me, barely dressed, as a Swedish prostitute.    She said the cigars made her house stink.  They did. From then on, she only smoked them occasionally, while sitting on her deck overlooking Opequon Creek. (Her pipe smoke had a perfume-like fragrance, which didn’t bother me at all.)

For her second attempt at seducing me, Susan spoke French and sought to impersonate a sophisticated coquette from Paris such as Vivi.  She dangled long brown cigarettes from her fingers. That didn’t seem to weaken my defenses.  Finally, she just straight-up told me that she was on birth control pills and wanted me to make a woman out of her.  There was not a whole lot of defense I could put up.   Meanwhile, my brain was getting mighty kornfuzed.  How could I be in love with two exceptional women at the same time, while still legally married to the wife from hell?

Only after we had gone through the belated coming of age ceremony and began smoking her pipes afterward did Susan confess the true nature of the past three months.  When she first met me at the Wendy’s Restaurant in Front Royal, VA, she immediately decided that I was going to be the first and last man in her life.  She thought God had brought us together because I was a shepherd and farmer like her grandfathers.

What I thought was Pentecostal mumbo-jumbo near my barn on the Toms Brook Farm was actually an ancient royal wedding ceremony practiced by Hebrew kings and queens. (See Chapter 12)  At the time, Susan said that she was anointing me with holy oil to give me protection.  She was actually anointing me a king and when she placed the oil on her forehead, a queen.  The intermediary Hebrew words were Susan bonding herself and her soul to me for all eternity!

The intermediary years are going to be described in future chapters, but let it suffice to say that I would be with Susan intermittently for the next 15 years. She would appear in a rental car or taxi with little warning, asking to spend the night, weekend or week with me . . . most often at Christmas, Easter, her birthday or my birthday.  From 1994 onward I never knew where she was living or what she was doing professionally. I moved several times during that era, but being a good spy, she always knew where I lived.  She did not come around the 2 ½ years that I was dating an Indonesian musician, but appeared almost immediately after the musician dumped me, to comfort me . . . well, actually to remind me that she was my eternal wife.  LOL

Although through the years she had many, many dates because of her good looks, she insisted that I was the only man, who she ever wanted to be intimate with.  She repeatedly reminded me that I was the only man, who knew that she clandestinely smoked pipes and little cigars, plus the only man, other than her grandfathers, who had smoked a pipe with her.   I was one of very few people knew that Susan was a talented artist. Her townhouse walls were filled with beautiful sketches and water colors of nature.

While intimacy was “fun” for Vivi, Susan took it very seriously as a religious rite.  She was a very good person inside.  When were “together” I could feel a spiritual substance pouring into me from her soul and body. It was the Balm of Gilead. She always claimed that I was the only man, who she had known “in a Biblical way.” It sounds unbelievable, but I can understand why.

It was same situation as Vivi. I knew all of all of her secrets. I knew that she was covert and had a high security clearance, so that there were many things about her work that she could never tell me. With any other man she met, she would have to lie constantly. With me, she knew that I understood the situation and so she could just relax and be Susan . . . as eccentric as that may have been.

Yet, there was always a wall in Susan’s psyche, which I could not penetrate that concealed a terrible memory, while with Vivi, I could see into the depths of her soul.  I think that something very traumatic happened to Susan, when she first entered adolescence. It made her not want to be around her father or brothers, but she adored being with her grandfathers. She never had a good word to say about her father and was estranged from both her mother and her father.  This suggests that she was molested by her father, but we will never know for sure.

Or was it something else? Was she bisexual? When we were not physically together in the same house, there would be almost no communication from her. Was she living with a woman? She never said that she had not had biblical knowledge of a woman. The imitation of her grandfathers by taking up pipe-smoking as a teenager may have been an expression of a male personality in her. Maybe that’s silly on my part, but the truth is that she was always very affectionate with me and we never had an argument.

Meeting Julia Child

Vivi was extremely excited about meeting the famous chef, Julia Child, at the October 14, 1981 Market Tasting at Union Station.  Chef Child was fluent in French.  She had worked in France during World War II as an intelligence officer for the OSS, forerunner of the CIA and had a diploma from the Cordon Bleu.   The original game plan was for Vivi to help serve cheese to the members of the Greater Washington Chapter of the American Institute of Wine and Food.

I called Sara via the yellow button on my cell phone to make sure Vivi could stay at her house that weekend and I could visit on Monday the 14th.  She said that she would love to have us, but I needed to be careful at the actual event.  At least two of the women, who Liz had sent to the Christmas Party to set me up, were in the Greater Washington Chapter of AIWF.  Sara was also a member.

I came up with an alternate plan.  Vivi was to wear her fanciest Parisian Fashion Salon dress and a big diamond ring.  She was to present herself as the co-owner with her husband of a company that planned to build a winery in Virginia.  No one there would even consider the possibility of there being a romantic connection between the goatherd and the wealthy, glamourous lady from Paris.

The plan worked like a charm . . . literally.  Vivi introduced herself to Julia Child and she was charmed.  Julia knew that she was a French entertainment celebrity and so “sucked up” to Vivi.  They chatted off and on throughout the three-hour event.  What I didn’t know until later was that Vivi had told Julia in French that we had secretly married on December 16, 1990.

As instructed,  Vivi talked up our cheese.  She told Julia that we were not trying to produce French goat cheese, but rather creating entirely new types of cheeses.  I used the same bacteria used to make Southern-style buttermilk in the soft cheese varieties.  I used yogurt bacteria to make our hard, aged cheeses. That was absolutely true. Dang that girl is smart and learns quickly!

Vivi’s strategy worked.  By the way, Julia Child was almost as tall as me! When Julia walked up to our table, she first congratulated me on marrying a beautiful, intelligent French lady, then raved about the many varieties of cheeses that I was making. We were chosen for an Award of Excellence plaque because all of our products were first class!  Vivi walked away with an autographed photo of Julia Child.  Julia was equally excited that Vivi had promised to send her an autographed photo of herself. 

On October 28, 1991, the day that the Sally Jesse Raphael Show was scheduled to broadcast their investigation of the Tim Conner murder, my wife, Diana, obtained approval to take a day off from Central Shenandoah High School. Just before the program was to begin, our doorbell rang. It was Sheriff Marshall Robinson. He said that he was just stopping by to see if everything was okay on our farm. That was obviously not the reason he came, because some advertising for the program had mentioned “the sheriff of Shenandoah County as being involved with Tim Conner’s murder. That had to be one of the spookiest moments in my life.

The Christmas 1991 Party

Bob and Sara’s 1991 Christmas Party was scheduled for December 14.  Vivi was invited and got permission to bring her daughter, Aimee.  The other 12 guests were all involved heavily with the Shenandoah Valley investigations.   We did not want to take any chances on a slippage of the tongue letting classified information get out. 

Sara told me on the FBI cell phone that she did not think it was appropriate for us to sleep together with the little girl in the house.  Sara was fluent in French, so she was going to take care of Aimee, while we had “quality time” together in the Guest Room downstairs during the daytime, but that I would have to sleep in one of her son’s upstairs bedrooms at night.  Both sons were college and not due in Alexandria for Christmas Holidays until the 20^th.

On Sunday morning, October 13, Vivi hopped on the Concorde with her pretty little daughter, Aimee.   On the morning after our first time together,  Vivi had prayed for a long time.  One of the things that she said in her prayer was a promise to God that she was going to be a good mother from now on, and no longer leave her daughter with a nanny for long periods of time.

Vivi said that from now on, her daughter’s happiness came first.   If Aimee did not like me or enjoy being in the rural areas of the United States,  we would just have to remain secret lovers.  Aimee had never been in the country, having grown up in a Paris apartment building.

Well, Aimee took care of that problem.  Immediately after I said Bonjour Aimee, she raced up to me and hugged my legs.  She then said, “Veux-tu être mon papa pour pouvoir coucher avec ma maman? Ma maman est triste et pleure dans son lit, car elle doit dormir seule.”    I only understood bits and pieces of the message. Vivi was embarrassed by her daughter’s words, but Sara said it meant, “Will you be my Daddy so you can sleep with my Mommy?   My mommy is sad and sometimes cries in bed because she is alone.”

While Sara was playing with Aimee that evening,  the little girl requested that her palate be moved from the Guest Quarters to Sara’s bedroom, because she wanted Sara to be her grandmother.  The little girl then asked if Ree-shard could sleep with Mommy so she will be happy again.  Aimee barely knew her father because he took off while Vivi was still nursing her.  Life is indeed a box of chocolates.

In Chapter Fourteen, you will learn how Vivi, Susan and I made this crazy situation work. Their solution was really the only option they had other than quitting their covert jobs and having normal lives.