Black Hawk Day Rewind: An action packed spy thriller (Mark Savannah Espionage Series Book 1) (9 page)

34

“What’s the chance that someone could get his hands on the video where you’re firing an anti-tank rocket against one of our own military vehicles?” Colonel Reed asked his son in a bar in downtown Washington at six in the evening after the news about Bouda’s death.

“Uday told me that he had destroyed the tape and that it was the only copy.”

“And do you trust him?”

“He always kept his word, but I cannot be sure that there are no other hidden copies, and now Uday is a dead duck.”

“What do you mean?”

“Bouda told me that he was leaving for France, if he had stayed in Afghanistan I would have known about it. He told me many things, I don’t think he died in Kabul and in such trivial circumstances. It’s not like him.”

“I think you're right, but now we need to understand the extent to which our services and the British have found out about him, and in particular if there is a link of any kind that can be traced back to you and me.”

“A few days ago in the cafeteria I met a certain Jenkins and a certain Savannah, two of the anti-terrorism division operating in Europe. We were at the same table...by any chance do you know them or do you have contact with anyone in their division? It seems strange that they were about to leave for Europe and a couple of days later Bouda, who was supposed to be in France, apparently dies in Afghanistan.”

“Yes, that's true. It's a very strange coincidence. What was Bouda doing in France?”

“I don’t know, he didn’t want to tell me about it.”

Walton I. Reed picked up his smartphone and dialed a CIA telephone number.

“Roger? Hi, it’s Walton here. I have a question for you: is there a certain Savannah and a certain Jenkins operating in Europe on your team?”

“No,” answered his contact. “The agents stationed abroad have other names and are only in Langley for a couple of weeks.”

“Thank you Roger, I owe you one. Goodbye.”

“See you on Saturday for a beer?”

“You can count on it,” replied Walton before ending the conversation and turning with a worried expression to stare at his son.

“But I cannot avoid going back to Afghanistan in five days,” said Richard. “Actually I have a meeting at the UNODC office, if I change my lifestyle now just after Uday’s death, it could arouse suspicion.”

“These two guys took the piss out of you and you fell for it. The whole thing stinks. Of course, you have to go back to Afghanistan, just to erase any traces that you may have left behind you over the years, especially men. You have to sell the laboratory to the Taliban that will not cooperate with foreigners and give them all the men you've had as subordinates.

“In the meantime, I’ll use my contacts too, so that you can come back to the U.S. and work in my division. You're a chemist, my deputy has known you since you were a teenager and Wood, the Director, depends on the info I can give him about a very hot matter that he is involved in and that I know all about,” Walton replied, grinning.

“Yes, I will do as you say. See you around, dad, this time I’ll let you buy the drinks. I'll call to say goodbye before I leave.”

The two agents stood up and hugged each other, then went home.

35

Mark landed in New York and passed through the customs under the name Savannah. He had the documents of his new alias for this trip, and a large amount of cash so he could avoid being traced through his using credit cards for expenses and transportation services. There would be no tickets in his name, except for the return flight under the name Savannah.

He had also shielded his smartphone with software developed by Pavel that blocked attempts to detect his position by satellite.

He was ready and determined; his demon did not give him a moment's respite, tormenting him like a disease.

He intended to go into action late the next day when Richard Reed was returning to Washington from CIA headquarters, with a swift, simple, yet discreet move.

Mark took a room in a hotel near Central Park, he paid in advance with cash under the name of William Smith. He went to his room and did not move from there until the next morning, when he left the hotel to go to Penn Station beneath Madison Square Garden, where trains departed for Washington DC.

At 6:30 am, far from the gaze of security cameras, Mark Savannah, code named Lisunov Li-2, was waiting for his father’s murderer around the corner of a building that looked out onto a dark and narrow street that he had cased a few hours beforehand and that Reed would be forced to cross.

When Savannah saw him coming, he acted quickly, cutting Reed’s throat with a knife so quickly that he did not even utter a sound; then Savannah made it look like a mugging and threw the murder weapon in a manhole five blocks away from the murder scene.

The lifeless body of Richard Reed was found by a madly barking dog that pulled his master to the spot. At 8:00 am Colonel Walton I. Reed was informed of the murder of his son at CIA headquarters.

Savannah immediately left Washington for New York; he felt that the fact he had terminated Reed had simply been his duty, but he was left unsatisfied and his demon, though it had calmed down, remained burning quietly but intently within. It wasn’t over, not yet.

It was already late when he arrived in New York. He stopped to sleep in the first hotel with a room available near Madison Square Garden, again paying in advance in cash for another two nights under the alias Smith. He could not immediately return to London because he might arouse suspicion, but he would still be departing one day early at the last minute from the airport to make his exit from the country even harder to predict.

Mark knew that they would discover the body quickly, and that Colonel Reed would immediately activate his network to find his son’s killer.

36

“This was not the work of a mugger, Roger,” Walton I. Reed said to his best friend while he was drinking his third bourbon in a bar at Langley. “Trust me, this was a professional job; the pathologist found an extremely violent and precise stab wound that only a trained military man could have made. Richard didn’t have time to breathe, he was killed instantly, suffocated by his own blood and never felt a thing.”

“Do you have any suspects?”

“In our business we always have suspects. Do you remember Jenkins and Savannah? The two agents who spoke with Richard in the cafeteria and lied.”

“Could you repeat that second name, please?”

“Savannah...”

“Walton, do you know that Savannah is considered one of the best new British agents?”

“Really? Please, tell me about him.”

“They say he caught Uday Bouda, and that he has been following in his father's footsteps.”

“Go on. What else do you know?”

“There are rumors that he is the son of a former American agent and that he has friends in high places. But you know, some of our guys were assigned to help the British and as a result there was a lot of gossip and loose talk about the place…that shouldn’t happen in our organization. The rumors turned out to be a bunch of crap, so I’d take them with a grain of salt. Why should Savannah be involved with Richard? Just because they were in Afghanistan at the same time?”

“Well, in fact, there is no evidence. “

“UNODC has publicly mentioned Richard's help in the fight against drug trafficking, and they did it during the international meeting. You should be proud of your boy. Most likely he stepped on too many toes over there, most of the drug traffickers are former mujahideen trained in guerrilla warfare and, among other things, need I remind you that we trained them?”

“But why kill him in the U.S. and not wait for him to return to Afghanistan?” Col. Reed wondered aloud.

“Richard was well known and had bodyguards that he paid personally; they would have arranged a large-scale ambush that would never have gone unnoticed. Everyone knows everything about everyone over there, and it takes nothing to bribe a person and to screw up a secret that has been protected for years. Here, on the other hand, it is a breeze to slaughter someone at night on a dark and deserted corner.”

“That's true, I guess. A Detective Scott Martin took over the investigation. Do you know him?”

“Scott is an extraordinary detective. He will catch Richard’s killer, you can bet on it, Walton.”

“Can you give me a ride home? I've drunk far too much. I’ll pay for this.”

37

At 9:00 in the morning Colonel Reed had the video of the meeting between Richard Jenkins and Savannah, and he had already received a reply about which of the two men was Savannah; in fact, he had Savannah’s entire dossier from the British Secret Intelligence Service.

Jenkins was part of the Counterintelligence Division of US Intelligence and had been active for about a year, and now Reed also knew about the infectious diseases he had contracted as a child.

Reed did not believe in coincidences, and if Bouda had been connected to Richard for more than fifteen years and Savannah had actually eliminated Bouda, he would find clues, if not actual evidence, about their partnership. For this reason, he would continue searching for information on Savannah.

“Jago? Good morning. Better, thanks. Yes, I will be back at Biosketch Technologies tomorrow, but I need your help; I’m sending you a picture of Mark Savannah, a British agent. Try to find out about his last mission and who his father was. See you tomorrow.”

Reed was always a man of few words, accustomed to command, he never left room for debate. He immediately sent the data to Jago C. Green. He had caught Jago C. Green fifteen years earlier during an operation concerning industrial espionage and a government-owned biotech company; he was considered the best western hacker at the time and so Reed did not prosecute him but hired him to work on the "Transtem 1.1" and "Brainexe" projects for the CIA. He had shown great foresight given the results up to that time. Since then, Green had become his lieutenant.

It was no problem for him to browse the archives of the CIA without being detected or leaving any clues that he had been there. It was not necessary at this stage to go snooping around British archives: the operation had been managed jointly by the two intelligence services and there would definitely be a dossier on the operation in Afghanistan at Langley.

Then the Colonel gave two of his agents orders to go to JFK airport because the name Savannah was included on the passenger lists of British Airways flights departing for London. They were told to stop him and take him into custody.

Reed knew that Savannah had entered the U.S. a day before his son’s murder and that officially he was in the U.S. on a one-week vacation, which is why he was using his own name and not an alias.

Finally, he asked Green to monitor the photos taken by the cameras at airports with flights from New York to London in case Savannah did not show up on the scheduled day, and tried instead to return to UK in the next few days.

38

At 6:45 pm that same day, Jago C. Green sent the report about Savannah; it was encrypted and included in the daily report concerning Biosketch Technologies Inc.’s "Transtem 1.1" project.

Savannah was still wet behind the ears as an agent, but he had conducted and successfully completed the joint operation "Uday, who runs fast" in collaboration with U.S. intelligence, killing the world’s most wanted terrorist and redeeming the tarnished images of both the British Secret Intelligence Service and the CIA.

Green did not find anything else; there was no alias or real name listed. Research through all the archives of Langley, including the analysis of single operations or events, had produced no results. It was impossible to match his name to any previous agents. Jago C. Green still had no clue as to the identity of Savannah’s father.

At the bottom of the report, he noted that Savannah had not boarded the flight from New York to London.

‘You know everything, you bastard,’ the Colonel thought to himself as he read the document that Green had sent him. "That's why you killed Richard...but before you can get to me, you’re going to 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."