Chapter 57

  Jesse’s cell phone rang, and he looked at the caller ID and noted the time. It was just after 10:47 PM. He wasn’t surprised at the lateness of the call. General Jackson, the co-founder of the company he worked for, often worked late. He found a convenient place to pull over his GMC Tahoe, and when he finally came to a complete stop, he hit the answer button and said, “Taylor.”

  “Do you have a minute? We need to talk.”

  “Yes, sir, I’m in my car, but I’m pulled over. What’s up?”

  “I just got off the phone a short while ago with the Deputy Director of the CIA. Their assets in Thailand got a heads-up from someone in the Thai National Police. It seems the man you had a close encounter with in Prague appeared on their radar. Ivan Rakov and a small group of men, who have yet to be identified, attempted to question a man named Tim Choi in Phuket approximately three days ago. Choi managed to escape, but they killed one of his hired men after they interrogated him. Shortly after his escape, he took a photo of Rakov outside his office and sent it to someone in the Thai National Police. From the photo, they positively identify Rakov as one of the men involved. Mr. Choi rejected their protection and went into hiding. Apparently, he doesn’t trust the police.”

  While his boss filed him in on the events, Jesse mentally ran through the list of men at his disposal. There were few. Almost all of them were on assignments. He assumed that the Deputy Director had offered his assets in Thailand the assignment to either eliminate Rakov or capture and interrogate him. However, it soon became apparent that neither was the case.

  "Did Mr. Choi give the police any indication as to why they wanted to question him?"

  "The police report was sketchy. Apparently, the men were trying to find out who hired him for a job he had recently accepted, although the report didn't elaborate on what it was. The assets looked into Mr. Choi's background for a possible motive and found that he's a small-time private investigator with some interesting clients; however, nothing in his past raised any serious alarms. They were also able to obtain Choi's phone, e-mail, and internet search records from his providers. The assets sent all the documents to Langley to try and find a motive behind Rakov's visit. The director told me that Mr. Choi's e-mails were encrypted with extremely good software that few governments and fewer private companies or enterprises would be able to decipher. Because Rakov had been in our crosshairs since he allegedly was involved in killing one of our U.S. diplomats in Germany several years ago, the director personally requested the help of the NSA to break Choi's encrypted e-mail only to find that all of his e-mails, along with IP addresses, had already been broken several days before the incident in Phuket and given a medium-high priority status by the technician that worked on it."

  Jesse raised his eyebrows.

  “Okay, you’ve piqued my interest. What was in the e-mails that gave it that status? I gather from our conversation that it had something to do with Rakov’s visit to Choi’s office. And if that’s the case, how were they able to get this information?”

  “At this point, we’re unsure if the e-mail had anything to do with Rakov and his friends questioning Mr. Choi. It could have been an entirely different matter, although the timing is suspect. I’m not going to elaborate on the status of the e-mail or speculate on how they got their hands on it if, indeed, that’s why they paid a visit to Mr. Choi. But I can tell you that he sent the e-mail to his grandson in LA. I’m going to let Director Clayson expand on these points tomorrow. I have scheduled a meeting with him at Langley at 0- 900 tomorrow to discuss this and several other things we are working on, so I hope you don’t have any plans?”

  “Nothing that can’t be rescheduled.”

  “Good, but now I want to tell you the interesting part of this whole little story. The director hopes that YOU will have insight into all of this, and frankly, so do I.”

  “You mean what happened in Prague?”

  “No…your name was in the e-mail Choi sent to his grandson. Whoever hired him was looking for you.”

  Jesse immediately wondered if someone was targeting him in retaliation for an operation he had been involved with.

  “Okay, you’ve got my attention. But are you sure that it’s me? Jesse Taylor is not an uncommon name.”

  “I’m sure there were not that many who were stationed at Xuan Loc in 75.”

  Jesse was extremely surprised to hear this, and his thoughts of retaliation quickly vanished, “No sir, I’m fairly certain that I was the only one.”

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  “And besides yourself,” they were also looking for a General Bennett, but in the e-mail, Choi wrote Colonel Bennett. I placed a call to him tonight. He didn’t pick up, so I left him a message for him to call me as soon as possible. Perhaps both of you can make some sense of this. I’m going to send you the e-mail correspondence. Call me after you have time to digest it because there’s a lot to think about, and frankly, I don’t know where this will lead, and I don’t want to go into tomorrow’s meeting blind. Now I have another call to take unless you have any more questions?”

  “No sir, I don’t, and after I read the correspondence, I hope to have some answers for you.”

  “Good, call me when you have something.”

  *****

  Ten minutes later, Jesse pulled into his driveway at his Fairfax, Virginia, home when the e-mail arrived on his phone. He ignored the small device and headed for his desktop computer in his den. After he stopped, he pulled a can of Coke out of his fridge. Sitting behind his mahogany desk, he logged onto his secure government website and found the e-mail the General had sent at the top of the list. He opened it and downloaded the encrypted PDF attachment.

  Hello David,

  I hope all is well with you. I’m doing fine. Are you still seeing that same girl? If so, you should marry her, she seems very nice.

  Jesse quickly skipped through the rest of the personal dialog until he got to what he was looking for.

  I have a job for you if you’re interested and have the time. Because of the recent events in the U.S., I have a client who is looking for the parents of a CIA analyst who was killed in Xuan Loc, Vietnam, in March of 75. I believe you know who I am referring to, but I don’t want to use his name. I was told that his death was under unusual circumstances. My client has in his passion a letter that he believes was penned by this man just before he was killed and that it would identify his killer. The problem is. The letter is encrypted, and he believes this man’s parents hold the key to unlock it.

  Another problem is my client doesn’t know the name of this man. I know you have some government connections, but it might be hard to get any information from the CIA unless you have a direct contact there. If not, my client knows of two other people who can possibly identify this man and, hopefully, where his parents live. The first man is Colonel Paul Bennett. Bennett is believed to be from Southern California, although he’s not positive, and the 2nd man is Staff Sergeant Jesse Taylor from somewhere in western New York. My client doesn’t know if these men are still in the army, and their ranks were from 75. Both of these men were Green Berets who served together in Vietnam back in 1975. Bennett would be in his late 60s to early 70s, and Taylor is mid to late 50s.

  But before you decide to take this job, I need to give you a little warning. On the surface, this looks very benign, but it is far from it. This letter could be very damaging to someone very high in the US government, and that person would not want this to see the light of day. As a precaution, I am not using my client’s name. You know who may be listening. As a result, some people may try to protect this individual at any cost. If you take this job, you may want to tread lightly because of where this may lead.

  Let me know if you’re interested.

  Take care, young man.

  TC

  He read the first e-mail, and he pushed himself back in his chair with a slightly bemused look. Thinking back, a flood of memories from his last days in Vietnam overwhelmed him. He recalled the conversation that he had with Dave Sanders and the letter he was reading while the two were sitting in his Jeep. He recalled that Sanders was going to turn the letter over to the CIA Station Chief Tom Polgar when he returned to Saigon. But that must not have happened.

  Jesse decided that he had to make a phone call. He did not know how to contact the man, but he had resources that did. Ten minutes later, his cell phone rang.

  The conversation with Tom Polgar lasted only ten minutes, but he learned a great deal in that time. He had no way of knowing that Dave Sanders had died by sniper fire the same day he and Shawn made their last fateful recon trip with the Tigers and that he had not received any letter from Sanders as Jesse described it to him. Now, he wondered what happened to the letter Sanders had put in his pocket. If Sydney had put his things together after he was killed, and he was fairly sure that she would, then she must have found the letter in his pocket. And if that was the case, why didn't she turn it over to Polgar? That could mean only one thing. She was somehow involved in Jensen's death. Now, there was only one man who had knowledge of the encrypted copy of that letter, and that man was Shawn Harris, and he had no idea why he was living in Thailand.

  After Jesse’s post-surgical recovery at Bethesda, Colonial Bennett informed him of Shawn’s problems in Florida and the subsequent warrant for his arrest following his stepfather’s death. Shawn had called Bennett to thank him for putting in a good word for him, but he turned down his offer of help with his legal problems and his offer for a job. When Jesse had fully recovered, he reached out to Shawn’s family in Middlesboro, Tennessee. No one would tell him anything about Shawn’s whereabouts other than that he had gone to Florida. He had simply vanished.

  As he leaned back in his chair, Jesse had another thought. Who hired Rakov for this job? Was it because of the e-mail Choi sent to his grandson, or was it on an unrelated issue Choi was working on?

  There was another possibility. Someone or some group was monitoring Choi’s e-mail and had the capability to decode his encrypted e-mail. That was highly unlikely.

  He had a lot of questions but very few answers. Hopefully, he will find out more after his meeting tomorrow. One thing was sure of. He didn’t believe in coincidences.

  In the subsequent e-mails, Jesse learned that David had accepted the offer and had located General Bennett in Oceanside, California, through a veterans search website. Jesse let out a little snort when he learned that the now-retired General was reluctant to talk without knowing more about the person seeking him. He also learned that Bennett had set up a personal meeting with David. After he read this, he quickly picked up his cell phone and found Bennett's number. Maybe the man who now employed him had a few answers.