THE small town of Manassas, Virginia, has seen more than its fair share of conflicts, including the First Bull Run one of the bloodiest civil war clashes. But none has had the bizarre quality of the court battle unfolding this week, a case involving a disgraced former FBI counter espionage agent (along with his alter ego "Ed"), his gun toting Bureau wife, a Methodist preacher and world famous crime author Patricia Cornwell - all swapping accusations of adulterous lesbian affairs, attempted murder and lunacy.
All of which sound like typical ingredients for one of Cornwell's unique literary cocktails, part pot boiler, part crime mystery. The title of her latest offering, Hornet's Nest, could hardly be more apt.
Although Cornwell is refusing to comment on the case, she is likely to be called to court. It was her alleged affair with Margo Bennett that last summer sent Eugene Bennett careering into the last, entirely unofficial, mission of his life. On June 23rd, in a fit of jealousy, Bennett met Edwin Clever, pastor of the Prince of Peace Methodist church - where Margo Bennett worshipped - on the pretext of donating food. He then pulled a gun.
"My initial reaction was that tie must be joking," the pastor said later. But then the former FBI man strapped explosives to his body and forced Clever to lure Margo Bennett to the scene. Suspicious, she came armed and almost shot her spouse.
After a four hour stand off at his home, Bennett finally surrendered. He claims it was "Ed", the other half of his personality - split in two by decades of state sponsored deceit - who committed the crime. When he walked out of the house, he told police: "I've locked Ed in the garage." Bennett is now facing nine felony charges, including attempted murder, abduction, burglary and possession of an explosive device. His main defence is insanity. But if the Manassas jury returns a guilty verdict, the ex agent could face two life sentences.
Although Cornwell is giving little away about her role in the proceedings - after previously describing Margo Bennett as a great, great, great friend" - she said last year that she was relieved Eugene Bennett was behind bars: "I'm not afraid of him so long as he is locked up."
The saga began in 1991, at the FBI's training base at Quantico. Margo Bennett, an expert in interrogation and, ironically, hostage crises, was lecturing young agents. Cornwell was a regular visitor, taking courses and scouring the base for useful material.
Using her legendary charm, she won over countless officers to gain inside knowledge for her series of books, which feature a medical examiner, Kay Scarpetta. "I have this very cagey way of worming my way in," Cornwell has said. "I'm an infection. Before you know it, you can't get me out of your system.
It appears Margo Bennett caught a dose of the Cornwell bug. Close friends have confirmed that the two started a relationship, which has since finished. They no longer talk to each other, those same friends say.
Eugene Bennett became suspicious and employed his years of experience trailing Eastern Bloc spies to snoop on his own wife. According to his divorce papers, obtained last year by a local radio journalist, Bennett described what he saw. "Mrs Bennett met and became totally infatuated with Cornwell in late 1991 and 1992. She would secretly meet with Cornwell for romantic candle lit dinners and would visit Cornwell's Richmond home, accepting expensive gifts and clothes from her."
Using high tech surveillance methods, Bennett says he observed the couple "hugging and kissing in their cars". All of which, he says, set a bad example for their two daughters, now in their teens. "Mrs Bennett displayed moral bankruptcy in her personal and sexual preference," he said.
His rage began to prompt more appearances by alter ego Ed, who is the bad guy, according to Bennett. One of his personalities, after staking out his wife and Cornwell all night, claimed to have removed Margo Bennett's "lingerie, sex toys, lesbian pornographic material", apparently for DNA testing. When he confronted his wife, he says she mocked the time it had taken him to discover what was going on and called him a "square".
BENNETT'S career was then ruined when his wife, incensed by his watching, told the FBI that he had falsified a $17,000 expenses voucher after the couple moved, in 1987, from Georgia to Washington DC, where he had landed a White House job. He was fired and put on trial. Pleading guilty to defrauding the Bureau, Bennett served a year in jail in 1994-95.
During his time behind bars, his anger at what he saw as the stealing of his wife by a shameless seductress grew to dangerous proportions. By last June, he was allegedly ready to dispense justice to his wife himself in the gloomy interior of her Manassas church. Police found a gym bag in the church containing a "death kit" of syringes, sodium chloride and ammunition. A pipe bomb - possibly intended for Cornwell - was later discovered in a locker rented by Bennett.
The trial will do no harm to Cornwell's profile and her apparently unshakeable bankability. Her publisher, Putnam, paid $24 million for a three book deal. And even though Hornet's Nest departs from her heroine, Scarpetta, and moves the action from Virginia to Charlotte, North Carolina, where Cornwell cut her teeth as a crime reporter, sales are projected in the millions.
"We'll find out whether people are interested in me or in Scarpetta," Cornwell said at a book launch last week. On current evidence, the intensely private Cornwell has nothing to worry about.
The Manassas tale has re focused attention on the strong parallels between fact and fiction in Cornwell's work. She has always borrowed extensively from real life. Like Scarpetta, she used to work in a medical examiner's office. Scarpetta's niece in the books, Lucy, is openly lesbian and Cornwell has described Lucy as "a lot like me when I was younger".
In Hornet's Nest, the author takes aim at illiberal America - "red necks" who think hunting, drinking beer and killing queers - are "their highest calling" - while describing police chief Judy Hammer tiring of her dull husband: "At this stage in his life, he was so much like a spineless, spiteful woman that his wife wondered how it was possible she should have ended up in a lesbian relationship with a man.
Friends of Cornwell say she is being targeted for malicious gossip because of her alleged sexuality and because she is a successful, independent woman in the male world of crime. She has some powerful friends who will stand by her through the trial. Utah senator Orrin Hatch - role model for a character in her novel The Body Farm - has said: "For as long as I have known Patsy, somebody has been trying to take advantage of her. She's used to being beaten up, but she knows that the people who know her will know the truth."