by Ed Marohn
Woodruff looked at Zang and then me. “John, you will have no other American over there to deal with except me by cell or messages. You know what Ramsey looks like. Also, you understand his psyche.” Reaching into his briefcase on the floor, he pulled out photographs. He passed sets of four different three-by-five, black-and-white mug shots out to each of us. I examined them: Ramsey’s CIA employee file photo, dated 1967; Ramsey’s CIA photo in Vietnam, 1970; Ramsey’s CIA photo in Germany and Holland, 1978; and a CIA surveillance photo of him, 1990.
I easily recognized his face. He looked like a man pretending to be a soldier, with an arrogant, Napoleonic smirk; power-hungry eyes, almost feral; and short dark hair in a buzz cut. But his face didn’t show the fear that I had noticed on that helicopter so many years ago. I had dealt with many psychopaths in my therapy sessions. They had no reservations about committing evil acts, and instead justified them with sane arguments, believing their own rubbish. Yet Ramsey’s fear that day still haunted me. Why did he show such dread? Looking at the other photos, I saw that no matter how he aged, I would be able to pick him out of a crowd. His early photos had evilness. Yet his later pictures showed a distraught face full of emotional pain. He had PTSD! Was his deteriorated mental health due to the trauma caused by the killings in the war?
I looked up from the photos and noticed Woodruff staring at me. I knew now he was also a profiler: We both recognized Ramsey as damaged, and I understood now how I could be suited for this assignment.
James Woodruff smiled and said, “You now see why we need you. You know Ramsey better than anyone we have, and since the CIA can’t operate in Vietnam, you’ll be invaluable to helping the Vietnamese locate him and arrest him—and help him disappear.” Woodruff’s probing eyes showed no levity.
“Christ, you guys want me to interrogate Hung, you want me to help convict Loan during a trial, and now you want me to assist in capturing and causing Ramsey to disappear,” I said, waving my arms. “How crazy is this? And for god’s sake, Ramsey is an American citizen. You can’t just kill him.”
Woodruff leaned away and picked up his open briefcase, slamming it shut. He stood. “We have to.”
That shocked me. Remorse came over me even though I disliked Reed, Ramsey, and Loan for killing the Vietnamese villagers.
I remembered the copies of Reed’s journal that Sally had emailed me. I retrieved them from my suit pocket. Zang and Woodruff could provide some insight. I gave the sheets to Zang, explaining the source.
Zang studied the two pages with the columns of words describing places, events, or things. “Certainly these are clues to the gold, and no doubt Loan will head directly from Cambodia to try and avoid us. Ramsey must rendezvous with Loan, and then we can capture him too.” He smiled at Woodruff, who stood looking over Zang’s shoulder reading the same pages.
I sighed. My strained eyes returned to Woodruff. “OK, give me the twenty-four hours to decide on my answer.”
“OK. FYI, we believe Ramsey and Loan will try to enter Vietnam before the Tet holiday, the Vietnamese Lunar New Year, which for the upcoming year goes from February 1 to the third. The days and weeks before and after Tet will be congested with Vietnamese relatives coming from all over the countryside and other countries, jamming the roads, the railways, and the airports, heading to their villages and ancestral homes. Ramsey will use that chaos to blend in with the mass of people traveling into Vietnam.” Woodruff stopped.
Zang added, “This is a very important holiday for the Vietnamese, and the influx of people will make it difficult for us to locate Loan or Ramsey. We will need you there weeks before to ensure we have time to act on information about Loan and Ramsey from Hung.”
It sounded like I would be busy if I went.
“Based on your findings from Hung and your recommendations, we will also issue alerts at the airports and seaports with instructions on how to identify Ramsey and hopefully to arrest him.” Zang looked to Woodruff and received a headshake that confirmed their agreement over Ramsey.
I stood up. I looked at the rest of them, then stared out the window, watching the Sunday night’s darkness outside.
Woodruff suddenly acted defeated and said, “We hope to have you on board after Christmas. As indicated earlier, Colonel Zang will prepare your visa for Vietnam, just in case you accept the mission.”
“Yes. We will endorse it for at least one year, and as a special guest of our government.”
“Also, since you had a top-secret CRYPTO clearance from your nuclear surety duties, we’ll be able to quickly reinstate you for access to our NSA codes and telecommunication equipment,” Woodruff said, a slight pleading look on his face.
Zang stood, shook my hand, bowed, and then exited the front door. He took the copy of Reed’s notes without asking. My copies of the scans were still in my briefcase. Woodruff tagged along behind Zang.
“See you both tomorrow at the party,” Woodruff said. The door closed behind him.
“We’re having a party?”
Jim glanced at me and nodded his head. “John, they were invited to the party weeks ago. Remember, my business depends on contacts like these two.”
“Well, just so you know—I’m not going to Vietnam.”
Kim walked through the front door and hugged me, planting a tender kiss on my left cheek. “You look tired, John,” she said. “And Jim, talk about your rude visitors who I passed coming in.”
“Well. They were frustrated. But I agree with John. Why should he take on this mission? Anyway, it’s time for a late afternoon cocktail. I think we both need one after this intense meeting,” Jim said and headed for his bar to mix drinks. “Grey Goose martinis or eighteen-year-old Bowmore Scotch . . . or both?” His eyes twinkled.
Alexandria, December 24, 2002
It was Tuesday evening at Jim’s house, and dinner had evolved into a party. Jim went all out to be the perfect host and to network for his company. Kim cooked a delicious Vietnamese dinner especially for Colonel Zang and his wife and three children, who now surrounded me, eyeing me as the guy who saved Zang’s life. My cheeks were flushed, partially from embarrassment, partially from the third or fourth glass of wine, and partially from frustration of not being able to speak Vietnamese, with my back to the living room wall, unable to escape. I wanted to call Sally, but it had gotten late; I leaned against the wall annoyed with myself for letting the time slip away. Sally was too important to forget; I needed to refocus on her, or I would revert to my former self—not what I wanted. Hopefully she would be glad to hear my plan to leave Jim’s tomorrow morning, on Christmas Day, and then drive to the Outer Banks.
As Zang’s family finally left me to mix with the others, I observed Kim performing her duties. She had long ago graciously accepted Zang despite the memories of war that affected them both from being on different sides. Her stoicism matched what I had observed of both the North and South Vietnamese when I served in Nam. Kim and Zang accepted the war deaths, painfully, but strived to continue living honorably, for the future and in honor of their ancestors.
With Kim handling her role to perfection, Jim started to loosen up. Still, Jim and I had one main hang-up: seeing all this as black and white—the enemy versus us. Time healed much, but we still had emotional fragments embedded from the war, like pieces of artillery shells. I admired the religious philosophies that Vietnam had adopted over the centuries, and I knew we should forgive and get on with life. In a way, I had. But our dead soldiers still lingered in the darkness of our minds, and thus our defenses against our former enemies weren’t completely down. Jim walked around, enjoying his drinks, becoming less reserved with the guests. When he got to Kim, his boys, or me, then it was all love and bluster, heavily boozed.
Just as Jim finished telling me a dirty joke, Zang pulled me aside and gave me my passport with the Vietnamese visa. It weighed heavily in my suit coat pocket, where I placed it. Meeting Zang’s family made it
difficult to refuse to take on the operation, but I held firm to my convictions. The ethics of the operation bothered me, in that eliminating Ramsey by the hands of the Vietnamese would be payback for the CIA manipulating the delivery of Loan to them.
I glanced at my watch, smiling at the young Vietnamese man who returned to me. He was one of Zang’s sons. Facing me, he explained the Vietnamese Tet celebration in perfect English, filling in some information that I had forgotten from when I served there. As midnight approached, my fuzziness grew.
James Woodruff came over, just as the Zang’s son went to look for his mother. He held two glasses of wine. He nodded to the empty glass beside me. I accepted the fresh one. “How are you doing?” he asked.
“Oh, I guess OK,” I said.
“Are you ready to commit?” he asked.
“I think you know I won’t be going,” I responded.
He shook his head. “We’ll try to make it happen without you. But you do know Colonel Tin’s promise to help us with Ramsey may go nowhere without you there.” His cell phone buzzed. “Excuse me,” he said and headed to a quiet part of the house.
I set my full wine glass down and retreated to the upstairs guest bedroom, saying goodnight to Jim and Kim. I’d had my fill. In my room, I tried calling Sally but got her voice mail. I left her a message saying that I would drive from DC tomorrow and hoped to be at the Outer Banks by late afternoon, depending on highway traffic. Earlier I had extended my car rental agreement for the drive down.
Outer Banks, North Carolina, December 25, 2002
I left DC later than I wanted on Wednesday, fighting traffic as I exited the metro area at four o’clock. Woodruff and Colonel Zang were disappointed that I had said no to the project, as they called it. Expecting a change of heart, Woodruff insisted that I call him tomorrow. An optimist, he held hope that I would agree in the end. Rather than argue, I acquiesced to calling him after Christmas Day. It would be easier than another face-to-face confrontation. I tired of the whole discussion and didn’t understand what part of “no” they couldn’t comprehend.
The morning started with Zang and Woodruff on the phone, once again telling me how I could help the Vietnamese get Loan. However, Woodruff’s desire for Ramsey’s capture by the Vietnamese convinced me that he had not told me everything. And I didn’t want to lure an American to Vietnam and captivity at best, extermination at worst.
I had placed a call to Sally early in the morning and she understood my delay; I explained the whole meeting with Woodruff and Zang. Her words were warm and accepting and encouraged me to hurry and get to the Outer Banks. She said she missed me, and I sensed I was becoming a new man through her. “Please drive carefully, but hurry,” Sally said as we clicked off from that phone call.
It felt good, exciting, as I impatiently drove my Volvo rental, glad to finally not be involved with the CIA, knowing that I would do everything possible to make it work for us.
Once I cleared the DC beltway, I decided I would make better time by taking Interstate 95 and then hopping on to 64 toward Norfolk, then dropping down into the Outer Banks. On a whim, I tried to call Sally again as I drove out of DC but had no luck and left a message on her cell phone: “Hey Sally, just getting out of DC now, and I will be there.”
It had to be a hectic day for her with little time to check her messages. I figured that with traffic and night driving conditions, I would arrive in less than six hours, around ten o’clock, much later than I had planned.
A little after ten, I drove into the Outer Banks area, following my Google Maps direction printout to the beach house. I became concerned, since Sally had not returned any of my voice messages. I hoped she wasn’t mad at me for digging into Reed’s suicide. Finding the house off the main road just north of the Village of Duck, I pulled into the driveway. The house looked dark except for the shining porch lights and the solar-powered perimeter lights along the crushed seashell driveway. I got out of my car, crunching the shells as I walked toward the steps to the front door. The ocean sounds, waves rushing onto the beach, propelled a calm feeling through the night, although from where I parked, I couldn’t see the ocean nor beach on the other side of the house. I anticipated the days ahead lounging on the veranda, facing the beach. Reaching the door by climbing the dozen or so steps, I rang the doorbell. The night was clear but windy, and I continued listening to the waves on the other side, rolling, whispering through the sand and seashells. No one was home.
Just then, as if planned, a police cruiser drove into the driveway, its sides marked with the North Carolina Highway Patrol logo. The trooper stopped the car and got out, a flashlight in his left hand while his right rested over his holstered pistol. “Good evening, are you John Moore?” he asked.
“Yes, I’m Moore. Is anything wrong?” I became concerned.
“I’m afraid there is.” He dropped his right hand from his holster and walked up the steps to me. “May I see some ID?”
I pulled out my wallet and handed him my driver’s license. “What’s going on?” I asked.
His flashlight reflected off my license as he scanned my identity. “Mr. DuPee Catton is in the hospital. Sally Catton was too overwhelmed to return your messages and asked us to relay the info to you.” He examined my driver’s license once more. “OK, Mr. Moore,” he said as he handed my ID back to me.
“God, did he have a heart attack?” I asked as I struggled placing my wallet back into my pants pocket.
“No, but just as bad, he was shot while driving with his daughter today. I think he’s in critical condition.”
As the full impact of the officer’s words hit me, my chest tightened, fighting for air. I stood stunned, not understanding why this happened to Sally’s father, a man I had met only a few times but who reflected well in life as a good husband and father. The trooper’s words finally penetrated the dark fog in my head.
“Sir are you OK?” he asked.
I could barely focus on the trooper. I blurted, “I better go see them.” I started down the stairs. Realizing I needed directions, I turned and asked, “Where?”
“You’ll have to go to the Elizabeth City Hospital. Drive across the bridge and go thirty miles. It’s the major hospital in the area.” He stared at me, evaluating me while I walked to the rental.
Regaining some of my sanity, I stopped by my car and yelled, “How did he get shot? I don’t understand all of this.”
“A drive-by shooting.”
He observed my even more confused expression.
“No motive that we know of. We’re doing a manhunt now.”
I nodded, got in the car, and started it. I drove onto the road and observed the trooper talking into the mic attached to his shirt collar. He was rather tall and fit, sharp in his uniform—the perfect poster child for the state police. His image faded as I concentrated on driving. Making my way back to Highway 158 toward Elizabeth City, I sped along analyzing what had happened, dreading the implication that Ramsey had been behind this. Could that bullet have been meant for me? I suppose Ramsey could have found out I was going to be here. Hell, he had to have some access to contacts in the CIA or the NSA. Could they have monitored my cell phone calls? The shooter could have assumed Sally’s father was me since he was my height and build, especially if Sally was with him. I slammed my fist on the steering wheel; this had to be my fault. My delay getting here could have saved my life, but possibly cost Sally’s father his.
Forty minutes later, I screeched to a stop by the ER entrance at the Elizabeth City Hospital. Leaving the car illegally parked, I rushed through the entrance and was directed to the recovery floor lounge where family members waited. Getting out of the elevator, I turned right and hurried to the waiting area, following the directional signs until I spotted a distressed group of people with Sally, who was consoling her mother with arms wrapped around her. Seeing me, Sally raised her hand for me to stop. She said something to her mot
her and the other relatives and then she stormed to me.
“Sally, I . . . ”
Not saying anything, crying, she motioned for me to follow her. We passed the elevator that I had used and ended up at the emergency exit door, another thirty feet down the hall, around a corner and not visible to her relatives. Slamming it open, she stepped through to the landing and turned toward me. “Damn it, how the hell did this happen?” she yelled.
Frustrated, I just stood for seconds before I reached out my arms to her.
She pulled away from me. At a loss, I offered my hankie. Wiping her tears with it, she blurted, “I thought you were done with Reed? And I got involved with you because I cared about you, worried about you—this goddamn thing with Reed could cost my dad his life. You’re a selfish bastard for not stopping when you said you had.”
Stunned, destroyed by her scathing words, I struggled to reply. If this was tied to Ramsey, then I deserved the blame for pursuing answers to Reed’s death while unknowingly endangering Sally’s family. I nervously asked, “Sally, will your dad make it?”
Her voice exhausted from crying, she replied while her eyes avoided me. “The doctors will know soon.” Sally gave my handkerchief back. “But it looks bad. I need to get back to Mom and the rest of the family. Dad’s being shot is on you. You just couldn’t let it go.”
I grasped for words, but her fury froze me.
She started to walk away but stopped and turned. Looking at me again, her beautiful eyes hurt, betrayed by me, she said, “It would be better if you go back to Charlotte and forget the holidays with me. You’re obviously not safe here, and neither is my family. Just go. If my dad dies, I’m quitting the firm. And there is no us—I could never forgive you. What we started—well, that was a mistake.”
I grabbed her as she turned her back to me. Talking to the back of her head, I pleaded, “Sally, I will end this, I promise. And you’ll be safe. But I don’t want to lose you. Please . . .”
