Chapter 5

The following characters appear in this chapter:

Bob

Retired CIA agent, 5’-9’’ tall, 180 pounds, 80 years old, blue eyes, fringe of gray hair

George

Retired CIA agent, 5’-11’’ tall, 185 pounds, 65 years old, Hazel eyes, gray hair and mustache

Ray

CIA agent, 5’-11’’ tall, 170 pounds, 43 years old, brown eyes, black hair

That same night, there was a meeting in Virginia prompted by the police reports of the slaughter at the warehouse in Charleston. It was held in a secure room with no electronics or electricity. Those attending had brought their own non-electric illumination. There were no windows or other openings than the door which was of very thick wood and there was a thick tapestry drape hanging a foot or so in front of it to prevent sound from passing through it.

From this one might think that those attending the meeting were paranoid, but all three of them had worked for the CIA over time, and one was still working for them. They wanted NO ONE to know what they were about to discuss or rather WHO.

The oldest man was called Bob. He considered it as good a name as any. The other two went by George and Ray. They all knew each other, and who the meeting was about. Bob was the one to start once they were settled in their metal chairs and the door had been securely locked and the drape drawn. The oldest participant started the meeting.

“I’m called Bob, and I started working for the CIA in the early sixties and wound up in Viet Nam from 1966 to 1972,” I started. “George, I believe that you started working for them in the mid-1980s. You were in the Middle-East during the Gulf War and then Bosnia. Ray, you are the youngest and started working for them in the mid-2000’s. You spent time in Iraq and Syria. You’re still working for them, at least part time,” I continued, before adding with a chuckle, “of course those aren’t our real names. WE aren’t that stupid.”

“Did each of you bring a picture with you of you and the man we are here to discuss?” I asked. Each man placed a color photograph on the table. The pictures showed them when they had been active agents and another individual. The problem was that it was the same individual in all three pictures which had been taken over a period of fifty-five years!

What the pictures revealed was a young man of about 32 years of age. He was about 5’-10’’ tall, maybe 170 pounds. It was hard to tell from the various types of camouflage clothing that he was wearing. His hair was a dark brown in the picture where he wasn’t wearing a hat or a beret. He was obviously very fit. There was one other thing in each of the pictures. That was the short sword or Wakizashi that he habitually carried. The blade was about twenty inches long.

We had all changed over time, but HE hadn’t. On seeing the three pictures side by side, the other two started cussing.

“What the fucking hell?” Ray said on seeing the pictures all together.

“You got to be shitting me!” George exclaimed in surprise, while I didn’t say anything.

“Could those in the later pictures be his son and grandson?” Ray asked after a short time.

“We don’t know,” I told him. “Other than the fact that all three of us worked with the individual in the pictures, there is NO real information on the individual shown in them,” I continued.

“You’ve checked?” George asked.

“Even though I’ve been retired for a long time, I still have a few contacts in the Company ... High Level contacts. They have checked and gotten no response, or any further than I have,” I told them.

“Have they checked the retired files ... even the RED files (Retired, still Extremely Dangerous)?” Ray asked.

“Yes, even those files, and they are extensively redacted. I couldn’t recognize the part that I knew about. They also checked the still active files and nothing. It’s like he never existed. I personally know that he was paid very well in Viet Nam. Hell, he made more than I did at the time, but no pay records exist either, I personally checked,” I told them, remembering how what he made had upset me at the time.

“Yeah, he was paid very well in Bosnia and for Desert Storm also. He always had money,” George agreed. Ray exhaled heavily on hearing this.

“You’re right. He made a bunch in Iraq, and even more when we worked the thing in Syria,” Ray admitted.

“So, just who the hell is he or they?” both George and Ray asked.

“Obviously, he is the best kept secret in the CIA,” I told them, as I had spent a lot of time thinking about this. “Since there is nothing about him in the records, he must have been a contract employee the entire time,” I told the others.

“I thought that was no longer allowed,” Ray said. George laughed at that.

“Since when has the Company allowed a little thing like something being illegal to stop them or even slow them down?” he asked. We all knew the truth in that statement.

“Just what do we know about this guy or guys?” Ray asked, appearing to take charge of the meeting. “Tell us what you know about him, Bob, as you were the first to meet him that we know of,” Ray continued,

“I arrived in Saigon in late sixty-six and spent some time there getting to know what was going on, and who the people in charge were. Shortly, the boss called me into his office and informed me that I was going to be handling one of the new people who had been hired, and who was going to be working with MACV-SOG (Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group). I looked at the boss like he was nuts,” was how I started.

“‘Just what is this ‘Studies and Observation Group, sir’,” I asked instead.

“‘Don’t let the name fool you, Bob. These are the people that carry out all of the over the border operations, plus long range reconnaissance, rescue operations, and a lot of other classified stuff,’ “ the boss told me. I was also assured that he was experienced, very experienced.

“You never met him?” I asked.

“‘No, I’ve never met him, but that word comes directly from the mouth of the Director’,” he assured me.

“Okay, when do I meet him and where?” I asked, as it was a big country.

“‘He’s finishing Recondo School and should be here in a few days’,” the boss told me.

“Recondo School?” I asked having never heard of it.

“‘It’s mainly held in Nha Trang and a few other places. It’s a three week course. A rather intense three week course, I am given to understand’,” the boss told me. “I wondered just what I was getting into from his remarks,” I told the others.

“Just what is this guy’s position in relation to us?” I asked instead.

“‘While he will be in SOG, he will be working for the Agency. He is a hired contractor and NOT an employee of the Agency, giving us deniability for his actions. He is paid monthly. The money will go directly to a bank account. He also has an expense account for items that he needs, but I have been informed that he will normally get most of what he needs from the Army, or whoever he is working with’,” the boss told me, leaving me no wiser than before.

“He arrived a few days later. The boss had already told me that he had graduated second in his class, but that those at the school were upset that he hadn’t done better, as he could have if he had tried harder. Of course, a good third of those who start the school don’t graduate for various reasons. ‘It’s a tough school with a lot of long hours, so I don’t consider second place any kind of a problem. It’s just that some of the people at the school don’t think that he tried hard enough’, the boss continued,” I told them.

“Did he try hard enough?” George asked.

“Actually, he brought up the subject later. I had congratulated him on graduating second. He told me, ‘You don’t want to be first. If you are first, they put your name and unit up on the wall, maybe even your picture. I don’t and you don’t want my name or my picture up anywhere the VC might get a look at it, or for them to know who I work for,’ he told me with a grin.

“How did he work out?” Ray asked.

“He worked out very well. He selected a team from those available after interviewing them. They were mostly Montagnards and a few Nungs (Chinese Mercenaries). He didn’t care for most of the lowland Vietnamese, but he got along especially well with the Yards. You need to understand, that those in SOG, especially those on the teams, had a 100% causality rate. Everyone was at least wounded. A lot of them were killed or just disappeared on a mission. Nick always brought his team back and usually in fairly good shape. A few were killed and a number were wounded, some badly. Nick managed to pick up a minor wound himself,” I told them.

“He had been there for some time when the incident happened. He had been visiting a local young woman in one of the nearby villages for a month or so. The VC found out about them and killed her in a grisly fashion. When he learned of it, Nick lost it and just disappeared, vanished for a time. No one had heard or seen him leave. We checked with all of those who were on guard that night. No one had heard or seen anything. It was as hard to get out of that camp as it was to get in, and still no one heard or saw him leave. He hadn’t said anything to anyone, and all he took with him was a pistol and that sword of his.

“Seven days later, he just reappeared in the camp and in the daylight. No one had seen him enter the camp. He looked like he had been out for a walk in the park. His clothes were clean. He was shaved and had a fresh hair cut. When I asked him where he had been, he simply said that he had some business to take care of.

“We had already been finding out about that business. High ranking people from the LLDB (Vietnamese Special Forces) had already been to see us with questions about dead VC squads they had found in the area. They wanted to know if it was our work. There had also been people from the local governor’s office with questions about the deaths of a number of civilians and especially government employees ... high ranking local government employees. Both groups had problems about how those people had been killed, as it appeared that all of them had been killed with a knife or other sharp instrument after being tortured.

“While denying all responsibility, the camp commander sent out teams to investigate the various attack or ambush sites that we had been informed about to see what they could learn. The Yards were excellent trackers, but there were no trails to follow. Some of the Special Forces men were sent to investigate the more settled locations. They all came back with the same or similar stories. It appeared that all of the victims had been killed with a large sharp knife of some kind, and a number of them had been tortured and / or mutilated before being killed. Additionally, there was blood, lots and lots of blood at every site. It was on the ground, on the walls of buildings and bunkers, and on the ceiling at one site. Those killed included not just local VC or NVA (North Vietnamese Army), but a couple of village chiefs and several people from the governor’s security and operations staff. There were even a couple of LLDB personnel who were killed. The result of all of this was that VC and NVA activity in the surrounding area dropped to nearly nothing for almost six months,” I finished telling them.

“Damned Bob, that sounds almost like what occurred in Bosnia,” George said.

“What happened there?” Ray asked.

“Nick had been in country for several months when it happened. He got along with the locals very well, as he could speak their language like a local. Then some group of assholes blew up a children’s learning center or care center. Nick disappeared without a word to anyone. No one saw him go. He reappeared just over a week later. Like Bob had said, he looked like he had been out for a short stroll. Clean clothes, showered, even a hair cut. There was a huge controversy among the locals though.