Zero Zero

by Jack Mars

  Krauss sidestepped quickly to avoid the thin jet of blood that erupted from the guard’s carotid. Stefan Krauss was not all that particular about material possessions, but this was an eleven-hundred-dollar jacket, and had been tailored to his frame. It would be a shame if it was ruined.

  The guard was unconscious in eleven seconds and would be dead in under a minute. Krauss located the weapon holstered at the man’s armpit—a Sig Sauer P226. The same firearm that was standard issue for Secret Service agents. The magazine held twenty 9x19mm Parabellum rounds.

  He hoped it would be enough.

  The pair of elevators had no up button to press, but rather a thin slot on the panel between them. He located a keycard in the guard’s breast pocket and inserted it. For a few seconds he wondered if there was a missing step to the task, but then he heard a soft ding and the door on the left slid open.

  Krauss entered. The numbers on the panel ranged from twenty-six up to forty-eight. He pressed the topmost one. He had Bright pegged; men like him needed to be at the top, in more than just the metaphorical sense. Besides, even if he was wrong he would rather work his way down than up.

  He had no idea what to expect when he reached the top. A dozen armed guards ready to lay down their lives to protect their employer? Or perhaps only a nebbish man behind a desk, assuming his identity was safe?

  Whatever his mind could conjure, it was nothing like what was waiting for him on the forty-eighth floor.

  The elevator doors slid open, and Krauss stepped out to the scent of sawdust. There were no electric lights on; only daylight lit the topmost floor of the Buchanan Building. The floor was bare concrete, and plastic sheets hung from the ceiling. Sawhorses, makeshift workbenches, and an array of tools littered the area.

  The top floor, it seemed, was under construction. Yet there was not a sound. There was no one here, despite it being eleven o’clock in the morning on a weekday.

  Krauss raised the Sig Sauer and stalked forward. He carefully pushed aside a plastic sheet. In the silence, the crinkling sheet was as intrusive as an air horn. He stepped between the unfinished skeleton of two-by-fours framing a wall.

  There was nothing here. He needed to find stairs; taking the elevator again could prove risky. He needed to…

  Krauss heard soft footfalls and quickly crouched behind the nearest workbench. The footsteps were approaching his position, carefully and slowly. He slid the Sig Sauer into the back of his slacks and reached up, lifting a claw hammer from the top of the bench.

  A gun came first, the black barrel tracking center mass from around a plastic sheet. Then a hand, and then the sleeve of a suit jacket. Krauss sprang, smacking the man in the kneecap with the hammer. He yelped, but it was short-lived as the assassin swung the hammer up into the bottom of his jaw. The guard’s teeth clacked together. His head snapped backward, and his body followed.

  Rapid steps, behind him. Krauss turned and flung the hammer. It sailed end over end and struck the second assailant in the forehead.

  He didn’t wait around to see if the man was unconscious. They knew he was here; staying on the top floor was a death trap. He dashed across the floor in search of stairs and found them—and heard the thumping of boots coming his way. More than one pair.

  “Scheisse.” He spun and rushed back to the elevators, only to curse again, louder, when he realized he had not taken the downstairs guard’s keycard with him.

  It seemed, however, that wouldn’t be a concern. One of the cars dinged, and the door on his left slid open.

  Krauss yanked the Sig Sauer free and open-fired into the doorway, caring little for who was on the other side. He fired in tight pairs, pop-pop! Pop-pop!

  The first two men fell instantly without so much as a shout. Behind them three others tried to take cover near the panel as Krauss fired six shots, then eight.

  Hands wrapped around him from behind and squeezed into a bear hug. Krauss whipped his head back, his skull connecting with the bridge of his captor’s nose and collapsing. The arms loosened but held their grip.

  A man whirled out of the elevator with a pistol in his hands and bleeding from the shoulder. He aimed at Krauss, but did not shoot.

  From the stairs on the southern-facing side of the building came three more, these men in dark uniforms and tac vests. They drew nightsticks as their boots pounded the bare concrete.

  Krauss threw out both elbows, forcing the arms around him up, and spun out of the grip. He jammed the Sig Sauer in his assailant’s ribs—it was the man he’d thrown the hammer at—and fired twice into his abdomen.

  Arms grabbed at his gun hand and forced it upward.

  There were two men on him, struggling against him. Then three.

  A nightstick slammed into his midsection.

  The breath rushed out of his lungs as Krauss doubled over.

  The gun was wrestled from his hand.

  The nightstick came down on his back, and Stefan Krauss collapsed to the floor, breathing hard.

  “No. I do not die here,” he tried to say, but it came out hoarse and unintelligible.

  He waited for the nightstick to come again. To break his spine or crush his skull.

  He waited for the man with the pistol and the shot shoulder to put a bullet in him.

  He thought of the life he’d lived. No one would know the things he’d done. No one would know how he died.

  He looked up, or tried to, and saw that the black boots and wingtips surrounding him were standing still.

  He heard a single pair of footsteps and saw a pair of soft brown loafers approaching. Leather Giuseppe Zanotti loafers, ironically.

  “Nice shoes.” He spat on them.

  The man sighed. “Come on. Get to your feet.”

  With some difficulty, Krauss pushed himself up to one knee, and then grunted as he stood. The pain in his midsection was intense, but not nearly as intense as it could have been. They had not shot at him. They had pulled their strikes. Why?

  For this moment, he realized. They knew he was coming. He had been surprised at how lax security in the building was. Now he knew why—they had let him come.

  It was strange. The man before him was not at all how he would have imagined Mr. Bright, yet he had no doubt that the man before him was Mr. Bright. He was younger than Krauss would have assumed, mid-forties at best. He wore large aviator-style eyeglasses and there was a slight hook to his nose. He wore his hair long, pushed back off of his forehead and past his ears, and had a day’s worth of sandy-colored stubble on his chin.

  “Stefan Krauss.” Bright leaned against the workbench and folded his arms. He wore no jacket, just a starched white shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbow and a red tie loose around his neck. “It is a pleasure to finally meet you face to face.”

  “How?” Krauss demanded.

  Mr. Bright shrugged one shoulder. “I know all your aliases, Krauss. Even Simon Woulters. Even the ones you don’t think anyone knows about. I have to admit—I have a lot of assets out there, but you’re my favorite. I bet I know things about you that you’ve never told anyone in your whole life.”

  Krauss shook his head. “I am not impressed or intimidated by your hubris.”

  “Oh, it’s not hubris, Krauss. It’s the truth. My problem is, I don’t know how to separate business and pleasure. I like what I do. I’ve become quite good at it. Just like you. One might even say we’re kindred spirits, in a way—”

  “You are a warmonger who hides in an office building,” Krauss spat. “We are nothing alike.”

  “War.” Bright sighed. “War is two or more sides fighting each other. War is… well, it’s pedestrian. Yes, I deal in war. But more importantly, I deal in terror, Krauss. It’s not enough to create a conflict that has a clear beginning and an eventual end. People need to believe that something is always behind them. That the boogeyman is under their bed. That something awful is lurking just around the corner. Always. That’s my business.”

  Krauss rubbed at his sore abdomen with his left
hand. He had met Mr. Bright, and he was already tired of this man’s conceit. He shook his right hand, just slightly, just enough for the silver letter opener to slide into his palm.

  “Business has been booming,” Bright continued. “No thanks to our current administration. Partially thanks to you. No thanks to Agent Zero, who is still alive, no thanks to you.” Bright arched an eyebrow. “I assume Dutchman is dead?”

  “He is,” Krauss confirmed. As you will be, in a moment.

  “Shame.” Bright took off his eyeglasses and wiped them on his tie. “I liked him. He told good jokes. And that accent was just a bonus.” He pushed the glasses back onto his nose.

  Krauss lunged. His right hand shot out, the letter opener aimed at Bright’s larynx.

  Bright shifted slightly, twisting at the shoulders. He was fast, faster than Krauss would have imagined. The letter opener grazed the skin of his neck, not even enough to draw blood.

  Arms were on him in an instant. Two men dragged Krauss backward. A third pried the letter opener from his hand. Krauss struggled but could not free himself.

  One of the uniformed guards drove the tip of his nightstick into Krauss’s stomach again. He coughed and groaned with the impact.

  “Hey!” Bright scolded sharply. “Enough of that.” He touched the spot on his neck and looked at his hand to make sure he wasn’t bleeding. Then he smiled. “You almost got me, Krauss. Almost.”

  The German-born assassin breathed hard. He’d tried, and he’d failed. He’d always known, or at least suspected, that his life would not end at a ripe old age. He would not retire, or die peacefully in a bed surrounded by loved ones. He’d always suspected that one day he would fail, and he would die for it, he had long since accepted that.

  There were worse things than death.

  “I am not afraid to die,” he told Bright.

  “I know.” Bright chuckled. “Did you really think I let you get all the way up here if I was just going to kill you? No, no. I would have had my door man shoot you in the lobby.”

  “I will not work for you.”

  Bright held up both hands. “You already have been for the last few years. You just didn’t know it.” He chuckled again. “I’m not going to kill you, Krauss. I enjoy you too much. I’m just going to kill a little part of you.” He patted Krauss on the cheek twice. “And you will work for me.” To the men holding him he said, “Take him to forty-four.”

  Krauss struggled and thrashed against their grip as they dragged him toward the elevator. The door on the left was still open, the bodies he had shot blocking it from closing. One of Bright’s thugs swiped a keycard in the slot, and the elevator on the right opened. It took three of them to get Krauss inside. When the door slid shut again, he felt a sharp pinch in his neck—a needle.

  He tried once more to fight his way out of their grip, but he grew weaker by the second. His vision turned fuzzy, dark at the edges. His chin lolled to his chest.

  Who is Mr. Bright to you? Krauss had been wrong about Bright in almost every way except one. Bright was a puppeteer, and he’d made Krauss a puppet.

  No one controls me, he reminded himself. That was the last thought that Stefan Krauss ever had.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Zero leaned against the closet door in the bedroom of his home, a one-story bungalow in the unincorporated suburb of Langley, Virginia.

  His bedroom. His home. It had been Maria’s house, as far as law and taxes were concerned. But it had been their bedroom, their home. Their home, and their three daughters—his daughters now, even Mischa, the adopted thirteen-year-old former assassin and sparrow that Maria had taken in with boundless patience and empathy.

  He had lost her. But he hadn’t been the only one who lost her. They’d all lost her…

  No. Not lost, he reminded himself. She’d been taken from them, and he couldn’t lose sight of that. Maria had been murdered, and her murderer was still out there. Maya and Mischa had found him, confronted him, and had come so close, so close to killing Stefan Krauss.

  They hadn’t—but they would. Together. That was the promise.

  Zero stuffed a few pairs of jeans into the open suitcase on the bed. He’d never been one to care much for fashion, at least not since his days as a professor of European history, and even then he’d thought tweed with leather elbow patches was a good look for him. After the jeans came some shirts, socks, the necessities. A toothbrush, unceremoniously tossed in. It wouldn’t be a long trip, but it was one that Zero couldn’t put off any longer.

  Funny, that he still thought of himself as Zero even if he wasn’t Zero. And he wasn’t Zero, not really, not anymore. He was no longer employed in the Special Activities Division or the Executive Operations Team or in any capacity of the CIA. The file was closed on Agent Zero, and he planned to keep it that way.

  He couldn’t go back. Not after what had happened. Not after everything that had happened.

  Then who am I now?

  He packed his phone charger. He packed deodorant. He tossed in a Robert Ludlum novel that he’d been about halfway through, and then thought the better of it and took the book out of the suitcase. There was a trash can in the bathroom. He dropped it in.

  It was a fine book. The problem was that he’d been reading it the day it happened. On the beach that day, not more than two weeks ago, with her, under an umbrella with the steady sound of crashing surf a tranquil soundtrack.

  Who am I now?

  Zero was a widower now. He was a father. That’s who he needed to be. Money wasn’t an issue; despite the scores of laws he’d broken in the service of his country and the world, the CIA could not simply disavow or sever ties with Agent Zero. They couldn’t pretend he’d never existed. They couldn’t pretend he wasn’t living less than a twenty-minute drive from the George Bush Center for Intelligence.

  Instead they’d offered a not-insignificant pension. And when Maria’s life insurance paid out, a tidy sum to say the least, it would ensure that he and his daughters could live comfortably. He could buy a new house, perhaps a bigger place, so that Sara didn’t have to room in the basement, as much as she seemed to prefer it.

  He planned to do that as soon as possible. Sell this house, get out of Langley. There were too many memories here. Too many reminders of her. Yet there were lots of things he planned to do as soon as possible but hadn’t yet done. He hadn’t yet taken her clothes out of the closet. Her jewelry and makeup still littered the top of the bureau with the mirror. The sheets… he hadn’t even changed the sheets yet, because the pillow still smelled like her.

  “Penny for your thoughts?”

  Zero spun, startled, as his eldest leaned against the frame of the open bedroom door. It shouldn’t have been that easy to sneak up on him, but he hadn’t realized how long he’d been standing there, staring at the pillow that still had a small indent in the center from the last time she’d laid her head there.

  He forced a smile. “Just… thinking about how annoyingly long this flight is going to be.”

  Maya nodded slowly in a way that suggested she didn’t believe him for a second but wasn’t going to push it. She was nineteen now, legally an adult even if she’d been mature far beyond her years for longer than either of them would care to admit. Every day she looked more like him; she had his brown hair, his keen eyes, his half-cocked smile and snarky sense of humor that fell just short of caustic. It was Sara whose words had teeth. It was Sara he worried about.

  “Are you sure you’ll be okay with those two?” he asked, even though he knew she would be. “I could put it off a bit longer—”

  “Absolutely not,” Maya insisted. “You’ve put it off long enough. You are getting on a plane tonight and going to Zurich.” Maya may not have inherited many of her mother’s physical characteristics, but Kate Lawson lived on in other ways—in Maya’s authoritarian tone, her increasingly commanding yet reassuring presence.

  “Yes ma’am.” She was right; he’d delayed the trip another week and a half out of what he claime
d was necessity and none had argued, with Maria’s death being so recent. But now he was just spinning his wheels. He had made a promise to Dr. Guyer, the Swiss neurosurgeon who had been working to reverse the deterioration of his brain—and, ironically, the man who had installed the memory suppressor that caused it. Guyer believed he had promising news, a possible treatment that he had developed in cooperation with Dr. Eugene Dillard, head of the Department of Neurology at the George Washington University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C.

  “You have your passport?” Maya asked.

  “I do.”

  “Toothbrush?”

  “Yes.”

  “Phone charger?”

  “Check.”

  “You’ll call me when you land?”

  This time his smile was genuine. “While I appreciate your concern, I’m not sure how much I care for the role-reversal. I’m supposed to worry about you, remember?”

  “Last I checked, we worried about each other.” Maya took a couple steps into the room. Hesitant steps, as if crossing sacred ground. “Listen. Before you go. I was thinking of, uh, doing a little housekeeping while you’re gone. Might be the best time to do it, you know?”

  “You shouldn’t have to do that. I should be the one…”

  “Can you, though?”

  It was a valid question. So far? No. Not at all. He couldn’t even bring himself to pour out the almond milk in the fridge, even though she had been the only one who drank it.

  “Eventually.” He zipped up his suitcase, just a single small carry-on. He’d only be gone two days. “Did you feed the animals?”

  Maya chuckled softly. “Yeah. Well… one of them.”

  Zero frowned at that. He carried the suitcase out of the bedroom, Maya on his heels, and set it down in the kitchen, where Mischa sat on a stool at the counter with a bowl of pasta in front of her. She was so engrossed in whatever was displayed on the tablet screen she was reading that she nearly missed her mouth with a forkful of ziti. As it was, there were already two sauce stains on her Hello Kitty tee.

  “It seems that Krauss has fully abandoned his Patrick McIlhenney alias,” she reported.