Thomas Wictor

Living for fifty-three years has been incredibly hard. In a lot of ways I never had a life, since my formative experiences robbed me of the ability to have relationships. Last night I had a dream in which God gave me a photo album of the life I should’ve had. I saw photos of myself as a happy child, a happy teenager, a happy adult who got married and had kids, and a happy middle-aged and then elderly university professor. The final photos were of my funeral, attended by hundreds. I’ve had a much different life, but there’s evidence that I made the right decisions.

I began studying the Israeli Defense Forces when I was about seven. By June of 2014, I was an expert on Israeli weapons, munitions, tactics, and strategies. This allowed me to debunk lies told about the IDF. When contacting various military figures for this or that reason, many have said, “I’m familiar with your work.” So the posts made a difference.

Defending Israel has been difficult. I got death threats from the Islamic State, and my Website is under constant attack. We’ve had to create incredibly complex security systems to keep the Website up. It’s the most-hacked Website in the history of the Internet. At the height of the cyber assault, there were as many as ten hackers each attacking up to twenty times a day. My Webmaster said that there were over 250 attempts in one 24-hour period. The site is monitored, so I get hacked during the few seconds that a vulnerability opens during a plugin update.

It isn’t just terrorists who try to bring me down.

People like to taunt me for having PTSD and Meniere’s disease. I don’t comprehend the mindset. The swindler who Dick Scott is talking about is a dangerous sociopath. He phoned me and read my blog to determine when to best strike as I was trying to save my parents’ lives. In the end my writing career was destroyed, and my parents died screaming. That’s funny?

Seriously, what sort of creature would taunt someone about that? The taunting isn’t painful, because it tells me all I need to know about the person. Anyone who’d do that is already in hell. But it is distasteful to be in contact with the damned. The swindler’s fate was quite horrible but deserved. His luck ran out when he swindled the wrong man. Swindlers are touchingly innocent. They have no idea what sorts of secrets their victims might have.

Dick Scott is also not up to speed on my record of failure. I was swindled out of far more money by an Israeli who I hired to make a documentary about Hamas war crimes. That adventure ensured that the Bakr boys will never get justice, and it ruined my chances of ever being seen as a credible source for anything.

And yet I’m not bitter. I believe that when you’re robbed of opportunities, other opportunities are presented. It’s up to you to take advantage of them. Recently I began writing about the French police special forces, who I’ve been studying since 1982.

Well, I just realized today the true significance of a chance meeting I had almost three decades ago. I posted about it last year.

Patterns. They’re everywhere, if you allow yourself to see them.

I met the real Jason Bourne

On May 3, 1986, I met the real Jason Bourne. To clarify, I mean this aspect of Bourne, not the “WHO AM I?” schlock.

It was on a ferry between Korea and Japan.

I’d gone to Korea to extend my tourist visa so I could work another three months before having to find a work sponsor. Korea was a nightmare of inexplicable, shudder-inducing strangeness. It was the only nation I’ve visited that made me miss Japan. I was never afraid in Japan; the Koreans seemed to be always on the verge of losing control.

The Army of the Republic of Korea loves massive firepower. Everything I’ve read says that a war with North Korea would be over in about three weeks.

During the Vietnam War, the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army would flee entire sectors without a fight when the South Korean Marines were sent in. Koreans really are that scary. They make the best horror movies too.

May 3, 1986, I made my way by ferry back to Japan. A bunch of loud, dumb, obnoxious Canadian passengers latched onto me because I’m white. After enduring fifteen minutes of their idiotic blather—each sounded like a different barnyard animal—I started playing hide and seek with them.

The ferry trip took seventeen hours, even though most of that time was spent docked offshore. I began panicking, thinking that maybe I’d died and would be trapped for eternity on a Japanese ferry, dodging ugly Canadian chickens, cows, goats, and pigs.

May 4 through 6, 1986, was the Twelfth G7 Summit, held in Tokyo. Although security in Japan and Korea had been noticeably tightened, nobody searched us or our bags when we got on the ferry. In the dining hall, I found a seat at a table for two and ordered lunch. As soon as my tray was brought, a man sat down across from me.

He looked almost exactly like Jason Statham.

“Do you mind if I join you?” he asked in English, smiling. He spoke with a noticeable French accent, and his eyes were stunning—light blue and penetrating. There was something about him that made me instantly like him.

“Please,” I said.

“You’re an American?”

“Yes. My name’s Tom.” I held out my hand.

He reached across the table and shook it; his hand was as hard as stone. “I’m Geoffroi,” he said, pronouncing it Zhuh-FWAH. “Call me Jeff.”

Through his tight sweater, I could see that he was phenomenally fit. His shoulders were about four feet wide.

“You’ve been avoiding those Canadians, haven’t you, Tom?” he asked.

“Yes! They’re revolting! I can’t stand them!”

As friendly and relaxed as he was, he had an odd intensity, as though concentrating on something. He kept glancing past me, over my right shoulder, so I finally turned and saw about ten young Middle Eastern or Pakistani men sitting on the floor by one of the windows. Each had a small flight bag in his lap. They seemed off, nervous and self-conscious.

I looked back at Jeff and saw that he had a small flight bag on his lap. He smiled. “Let’s keep talking, Tom. You’re a teacher in Tokyo, I’m guessing?”

As I blathered on, I took another peek at the Middle Eastern men. Suddenly I remembered the G7 Summit. The Middle Eastern men were cartoonishly suspicious. They craned their necks all around them, holding their little bags, and some of them were sweating.

This can’t be happening, I thought. The IRA almost killed me on July 20, 1982, and now I’m going to be killed by Arab or Pakistani terrorists?

“Hey, Tom,” Jeff said. “Look at me.”

I did.

“Talk to me. Tell me about life in Tokyo.”

High-pitched whimpering poured from me while Jeff smiled. I looked over my shoulder again and saw that the Middle Eastern men were all slowly unzipping their flight bags. Jeff glanced around the dining room; I followed his gaze and saw three more Caucasian men sitting unobtrusively in various places. Each was as fit as Jeff, and each had a flight bag on his lap.

Jeff quickly looked at them, one after another. They unzipped their flight bags and put in their hands. I turned to Jeff and saw that now his hand was in his flight bag. He still smiled, but he peered at the Middle Eastern men with a calm, scientific appraisal. I tried to be brave while my heart pounded so violently that I felt my pulse in my neck, wrists, and fingertips. I was only twenty-four years old.

Then I dissociated from the PTSD partially induced by the IRA nail bomb in Regent’s Park. In a dreamy, emotionless state, I swiveled my head to see what the Middle Eastern men were doing. Even a second’s warning would allow me to hit the floor. The Middle Eastern men made eye contact with each other and on an unspoken signal pulled from their flight bags…bottles of liquor. Gin, scotch, and vodka. They unscrewed the caps, took out glasses, and poured themselves drinks.

I heard Jeff exhale softly. Facing him again, I watched him withdraw his hand from his flight bag; he seemed to be carefully disengaging his fingers from something with a complicated shape. When I looked at the three other men, they’d all pulled their hands from their flight bags.

“Could you excuse me for a minute?” Jeff asked.

“Sure.”

He got up and left the dining room. One by one, the three other Caucasian men left. Jeff returned in a few minutes without his flight bag. He sat down.

“You know,” he said, “when you were talking about teaching English, it reminded me of how hard it was for me to learn. Then I met Americans from the South, and I realized that I spoke English, not American.”

“Have you spent time in the US?” I asked.

“Oh yeah. Lots. I love the US. Especially the South. The people and the food are great.”

And the American South is where they have the world’s best military special-operations schools.

“So what do you do, Jeff?” I asked.

“Oh, this and that.” He gave me a friendly smile that clearly said, You’re a smart guy, Tom. You know what I do.

I was flattered out of my mind that he still wanted to talk to me. We hung out for nearly seventeen hours, and we discussed absolutely everything. It’d be easier to list the things we didn’t talk about than the things we did. Here are some of the topics I remember: medieval European cuisine, super reactors, music, economic theory, art, marine life, volcanology, UFOs, fruit cultivation, linguistic morphology, and world-changing inventions.

It was one of the best conversations I ever had. At one point—the only time it came up—he casually explained.

“Those Middle Eastern guys in the dining room? They were so nervous because they’re Muslims. They’re not supposed to drink. Even so far from home, they’re afraid of getting caught.”

When we docked in Japan, Jeff rode the train with me for an hour before he got off.

As he stood, he took out a notebook, scribbled in it, tore out a page, and handed it to me. It was his name, an address, and a phone number in Paris.

“You ever come to Paris, give me a call,” he said. “It was great meeting you.” He shook my hand and left. As the train pulled away from the platform, I saw him join the three other men who’d been in the dining room. They handed him a backpack.

I don’t know if the name, address, and phone number he gave me were real. My impression was that he was only being polite. I never tried to contact him because it didn’t seem appropriate.

But he obviously enjoyed my company. That’s nice to know. I have days in which I think that my entire life has been nothing but a ludicrous failure and a waste, but then I remember that despite my shortcomings, people like Geoffroi have seen fit to engage me.

I’m grateful.