Chapter 48

  Shawn needed to look at something that he had long forgotten about. When he reached the garage, he walked over to the corner where he parked the 56 Chevy years ago and removed the cover from the vintage automobile. Shawn smiled when he saw the two-tone turquoise and white car he had driven in high school. He had worked hard to earn the money to buy it. The three hundred and fifty dollar price tag wasn’t much now, but it seemed like a small fortune at the time. After he had the car shipped to Phuket, he thought about having it restored, but that would have spoiled the whole reason for having it. He wanted to remember his origins and how far he had come from the hills of Kentucky. Shawn opened the driver’s door, sat on the bench seat behind the gigantic steering wheel, and looked out through the cracked windshield. It had been years since he had sat in the old car. The interior smelled old and a bit musty; however, to Shawn, it was a good smell. The fabric on the bench seat was worn and faded, yet in relatively good condition. Fond memories came flooding back to his mind of cruising the back country roads with his high school friends while they drank beer and chased girls during the long summer nights. He was considered a rich man now, but the sight of the Chevy brought him back to his roots and the poverty he once lived in. For the longest time, he just sat there reflecting on how things had changed from that sleepy little town in Kentucky to the life he lived now halfway around the world.

  *****

  Shawn eventually climbed out and walked around to the back of the car. He inserted the trunk key and opened it up. He had only looked in the trunk once since it was shipped to Phuket, and that had been many years ago. There, he found a bold, spare tire, a bumper jack, a tire iron, a pair of rusted hockey states, a baseball glove, one baseball and two bats, football shoulder pads, a rusted nine iron, three golf balls, and an army duffle bag. The smell wasn’t pleasant. It was a cross between a boy’s locker room and grandma’s attic. Shawn pulled out the duffle bag, closed the trunk, and headed upstairs to the kitchen.

  Picking through the bag, he couldn’t believe how disorganized he was back then. His uniforms were virtually thrown in dirty. Shirts, pants, socks, and underwear with stains he didn’t want to imagine or guess about. He finally found what he was looking for. He wasn’t even sure that it was in there. But there it was, pressed to the side of the bag. He pulled the envelope out and set it on the countertop. Then Shawn found something that he had long forgotten about. Something hard wrapped in a towel. He reached in and pulled it out. Kasem had just entered the kitchen, and he could smell the dirty clothes.

  "What the hell are you doing with all those dirty, smelly clothes on my clean countertop?"

  "Just going through my old army duffle bag…no need to get your shorts in a bind, old man."

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  "Well, put them back in the bag, and I'll wash the whole lot for you if you want," Kasem said, a little less perturbed now.

  *****

  Kasem had been with him for years, and the elderly man was like a father to him. He could scold Shawn all day long, and he would take it. But if anyone else talked to him that way, he would be picking himself off the floor.

  Placing all the dirty clothing back into the duffle bag, Shawn politely asked Kasem to wash the uniforms but to throw the underwear in the trash. When Kasem left the room, he turned his attention back to the towel. Shawn had no idea what was inside, but out of nowhere, a flood of memories returned to him like a demon in the night. Then he remembered what was inside. Shawn recalled Hung saying something about ancient Kung Fu daggers. He unfolded the towel and looked at the pair of knives. The scarlet silk ribbons were still tied to the rings on the end of the handles, and the color seemed unchanged over time. Shawn was overcome with emotion at seeing the daggers again, and he wondered if Jesse was still alive. He couldn’t believe how painful it was to see what was now in his hands. Now, he wished that he had thrown them away.

  Setting the knives aside, Shawn grabbed the envelope and stepped onto the balcony to get some fresh air. He sat on the soft cushion on the rattan sofa, removed the encrypted letter from the envelope, and looked at it again with renewed curiosity. He wondered how anyone could decipher this and have it make any sense. Getting up, he returned to the kitchen, where he found his Toshiba Laptop. He flipped it open and powered it up. After a short wait, he logged on and was soon searching the internet on Google Chrome. He entered “book cipher” and hit enter at the search line. He was surprised to see that he got 5,450,000 results, and the first entry was for the Wikipedia website. He clicked on the website.

  Book cipher - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

  Reading quickly, it took only a short time to read the entire contents. At the bottom of the page, he found the heading "Examples." He clicked on the famous use of a book cipher and decided to look further into the Beale ciphers. When it came up, he spent the next hour and several websites later reading about the man behind "The Beale Papers," a twenty-three-page pamphlet published in 1885 by an anonymous author. The story revolved around an intriguing character named Thomas J. Beale and his three pages of ciphered documents that have intrigued cryptography experts and treasure hunters alike to this day.

  An hour later, he finally closed his laptop, poured himself a cup of coffee, and walked out onto the balcony. He was fascinated by the Beale Papers and wondered if what he now held in his hands could also be something no one could find the answers to. But one thing intrigued him, and he pondered the possibilities. With renewed interest, he looked again at the torn-off note that was stapled to the envelope. He was obviously writing the letter to someone, but to whom? He recalled talking to Jeffery after finding the envelope, and he remembered that Jeffery thought the only people the man wrote to where his parents. Now he had something to work with, although as much as he tried, he couldn’t recall the spook’s name.

  Then he pondered another probable scenario. If his parents were the intended receivers, would they still be alive today? And if so, would they still have the key after all these years?