disappear, just like a cheap mobster, with your feet in concrete. Savannah, you'll pay with your worthless life. Your hatred pushed you to kill, but who the hell do you think you are? You made a big mistake playing the maverick." And the Colonel slammed his fist on his desk angrily.
39
When he was not working, Samuel Q. Jenkins played the sax three times a week at Twilight Jazz Club on Colorado Avenue in Washington DC.
He loved jazz and improvisation and, after most of the customers had gone and only the aficionados were left, he stayed on with a few other diehard musicians and played until dawn.
The carnage at the Fessenheim plant had prostrated him both physically and morally; in addition to the stress, he had killed two men for the first time and the appalled look in their eyes as they faced death was on his mind constantly, despite the knowledge that they were terrorists.
It was three o'clock in the morning when he went to the toilet of the Twilight for the third time. He prepared a line of cocaine and snorted it quickly; he wanted to play until he ran out of gas, purifying himself of the images that he had witnessed in Alsace, the stinging silence of mute and intelligent bullets, the dead and their attempt to poison Europe…and those men who, like shadows, had cleared the scene in less than half an hour.
"Well, well, Jenkins...I see you have a bad habit there..." said Walton I. Reed, going into the bathroom and retrieving a micro-camera next to a mirror while watching as Jenkins washed his hands. “They also tell me that when you’re wasted, you like to play at the crap tables at the club near here...I wonder why the CIA ever recruited a loser like you?"
"What the fuck do you want from me?" asked Jenkins.
"Maybe you're also deep in debt...what would you need to pay off your debt?"
"Who are you? What the fuck do you know about anything?"
Walton I. Reed squeezed his balls with one hand and simultaneously hit him in the face with a punch that split Jenkins’ lower lip and caused him to drop to his knees.
"They tell me you are a compulsive gambler..." Reed went on fearless.
"Who are you and what the hell do you want from me?" Jenkins was unarmed and completely stunned by the coke.
"Let's say I’m blackmailing you, but at the same time I am willing to pay your debt and save your ass. First from the loan-shark and then the CIA…no one needs to know anything about this matter.
“Who am I? Colonel Reed, Wood's right arm. If you don’t cooperate, I will leave you at the mercy of your Turkish enemies; and frankly, I would prefer the CIA to being fucked to death by a Turkish loan-shark."
40
It took just two hours for Reed to deliver Jenkins to Detective Scott Martin as a witness ready to incriminate Savannah, and forced his director Wood to contact the British secret intelligence service.
Jenkins testified that Savannah and Reed knew each other and that at one point they had had a sudden altercation in the cafeteria: Savannah accused Reed of encouraging several drug dealers and letting them work undisturbed; and Reed accused Savannah, saying that he had seen Savannah at the Pakistani border negotiating with the guards to let a heavy vehicle through.
Jenkins was then asked to leave, so that Reed and Martin could carry on the discussion undisturbed.
Walton I. Reed knew that the situation was delicate given the diplomatic relations between the two countries and the close cooperation of the two organizations on the anti-terrorist front.
Therefore, the only reasonable thing that Martin would be able to do was warn the British secret intelligence service that Savannah was under investigation and the evidence they had against him; and that the CIA would take care of the case directly, not only because of the murder in question, but also to ensure that there was no treason or double dealing involved. This would leave Reed free to start his manhunt without any interference.
41
It
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