Zero Zero

by Jack Mars

  Had it been open at the time? Had she been able to cry out with a hole in her throat and blood running down the front of her?

  Zero stepped back into the office. He studied the spray of Dr. Guyer’s blood on the wall, streaking down the glass-framed diplomas and photos of fishing trips, hikes, climbs, getaways. The door had been open, most likely. Guyer had heard his wife, or seen her, or both, and came running. She fell in view of the open door. He ran to her. And the assailant merely stepped over her, and one clean slash to the doctor’s throat was all it took. Guyer must have turned then, partially, spraying the wall. The killer waited until he was dead, until they were both dead, and then he dragged Guyer’s body to the desk and sat him in the chair.

  Zero shuddered. Behind his desk, Guyer looked like he could have been napping after a long day. His prematurely white hair was still impeccably parted, barely disturbed. He might have dozed off during paperwork. If it wasn’t for all the blood, he might have just been resting his eyes for a few minutes, waiting for Zero’s arrival.

  Whoever had done this was not afraid of a mess, but they’d made it quick. Clean kills, at least in the sense of effort. They’d used a blade instead of a gun. No excess. No need for pain or explanation or prolonging the inevitable. They had come here with an express goal, carried it out, and got out. The broken machinery was to throw off investigators. Make it seem like a jilted patient, perhaps.

  This had Stefan Krauss written all over it. He might as well have signed his name in Guyer’s blood.

  Zero shook with anger, but he felt the chill of something else—fear. If Krauss knew about Guyer, he might know about Eugene Dillard. He certainly knew about the girls, and might know about Alan Reidigger.

  He had to make calls, and now. But even as he reached into his pocket he noticed something—a single drawer of the wooden filing cabinet in the corner of Guyer’s office was open, just a couple of inches. All of the other drawers were closed firmly, except for that one. He crossed the room quickly and yanked it open, using all of his fingers to rifle through the manila tabs. The one he was looking for, the one he already knew with a sinking feeling would be there, was the last in the row, all the way at the back of the drawer. Its tab had only one character written on it, in black felt-tip pen: a circle with a slash through it. A zero.

  He pulled it out, opened it, already knowing just as he knew it would be there that it would be empty.

  Of course Guyer was the sort who would keep hard copies of Zero’s records. And he would have been equally keen to keep Zero’s name, real or otherwise, out of the records. But if whoever now had them already knew who he was—as Stefan Krauss did—then they’d be as valuable as they’d be damaging.

  Killing Guyer and his wife wasn’t the goal here. Killing them was a necessity to get to the files on Agent Zero. Not personal, but an obligation. And now they would know about the memory suppressor, about its removal, about the deterioration in his brain, about the slow death that Guyer was trying to stymie or stop and now never would.

  And that truth hit him just as hard. He’d come here hoping for a solution, or at least the hope of one, and would be leaving with less than he came with.

  Zero shoved the folder back into the filing cabinet and slammed the drawer shut. As he reached again for his phone he heard three thunderous booms from somewhere close by. He froze, confused for a half a second about what he’d heard.

  Then he ran back to the small lobby. The booms came again—a fist, pounding on the locked door. Angry voices from the other side, loud but muffled, foreign words. Zero’s throat ran dry. And then they kicked in the door.

  “Einfrieren!”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  There were three of them, in the dark uniforms of the Kantonspolizei Zürich, the city’s municipal police force. The jamb of the locked door splintered and two came in almost at the same time, pistols out, up, aimed. The third behind them, a bald officer, was the one who shouted. And even though Zero’s German was more conversational than fluent, Swiss German as a dialect was close enough that he understood the command.

  “Einfrieren!”

  Freeze!

  He threw both hands up over his head. “Bitte,” he stammered, “uh, warte—”

  Please. Wait a moment. That’s what he wanted to say, was trying to say, but there was a pistol in his face and behind it, a scowl, and he fell silent.

  The killer had called the police. He had probably reported the murders. Had he watched Zero go into the office? Was he still nearby, even now?

  The two armed officers kept their guns on him as the third hurried down the hall.

  “Lieber Gott,” he heard.

  Dear God.

  “Englisch,” Zero pleaded. “English?”

  In response, one of the two officers put a heavy hand on Zero’s shoulder and forced him to his knees.

  The third officer returned, shaking his head. “Two dead,” he said in accented English, more to Zero than the others, his tongue clicking with the forcible pronunciation.

  He was all too aware of how bad this looked. Two freshly murdered corpses, and Zero behind a locked door. If the building had cameras, and he suspected it might, they would show him entering several minutes earlier but hadn’t called the authorities.

  The two guns remained on him as the third officer pulled a pair of handcuffs from a pouch on his belt.

  He couldn’t fight his way out of this. If he was still with the CIA, and on an operation—if his actions were in service of country or the world, if there were lives at stake—then perhaps he could get away with fighting police officers. But he wasn’t an agent anymore. He wasn’t on an operation. He was here for a doctor’s appointment that no one outside of his immediate influence knew about. Even his pal, US President Jonathan Rutledge, wouldn’t be able to get him out of an international incident involving a dead neurosurgeon and an altercation with Swiss police.

  Switzerland didn’t have a Miranda warning, but they did have an equivalent, the reading of rights upon arrest that dictated the right to remain silent and the right to legal counsel. Zero got no such warning as the metal cuff ratcheted closed around his left wrist.

  That was his first sign.

  These cops hadn’t radioed anything in. They hadn’t called for backup, or to report a double homicide, or to call for emergency services of any sort.

  That was his second sign.

  And the third— Einfrieren. That’s what the cop had shouted at him when they kicked the door in. At the moment Zero had been blindsided, hadn’t thought twice about it. But einfrieren meant “freeze.” And in German it was literal. No German-speaking cop would say “freeze.”

  “Halt,” Zero said.

  The cop behind him paused. “What did you say?” he hissed.

  A German-speaking officer would have told him to halt. Same in German and Swiss German as in English.

  “You’re not the police,” Zero said quickly. He jerked his wrists to keep the second cuff from closing around it. “You’re not even Swiss, let alone German. Mercenaries, I’m guessing? Maybe friends of Krauss. What, he couldn’t face me himself?”

  “Keep still or I’ll have them shoot you!” the fake cop behind him barked.

  “No you won’t.” Zero’s heart pounded as he called their bluff. He had no other choice; he was on his knees with his wrists behind him, already in execution position. “If you wanted to shoot me you would have done it by now. You were supposed to burst in here, pretending to be cops, arrest me, and take me somewhere. Is that right?”

  The shadow of a glance, an uneasy one, passed between the two in front of him.

  “Shots fired would be loud,” Zero rattled on. “They’d attract attention. Maybe even the real cops. Besides. I don’t think you’re supposed to kill me.”

  “Shut up!” The one behind him grabbed a fistful of Zero’s hair and yanked his head back. He winced as the cop hissed in his ear. “Smart, huh? You have it figured out, yes? But you are wrong about something. We are
not supposed to kill you… but if you give us trouble, we will just say you gave us no other choice.”

  The two mercs in front of him reached for their belts. Each pulled a silver tube, about six inches long, and set about screwing them to the ends of the barrels. Silencers.

  The one behind him let go of Zero’s hair with a short, braying laugh.

  The barrels were off of him, but they would be for only a precious few seconds.

  He had to act now.

  Zero threw himself forward from his kneeling position and shoulder-rolled between the two men. They shouted at each in alarm as he leapt to his feet and reached for the only available weapon at his disposal.

  It was almost painful to do so. His late (first) wife had been a restorations expert and a lover of all things art. He wouldn’t have even recognized the lanky sculpture as an Alberto Giacometti if it hadn’t been for Kate, and wherever she was now she would be sorely disappointed as he grabbed the figure by its shoulders and hefted it upward.

  The sculpture was bronze, waist high on Zero, and substantial in weight. Still he swung it, two-handed, like a golf club. The wide base caught the closest of the trio where his jaw met his neck before he could reposition his aim.

  The impact sent shockwaves up both his arms. The smack of it was as satisfying as the crack of a whip; the man’s head twisted at an odd angle and his body followed limply.

  The statue completed its arc back to the ground and Zero went with it, letting its weight pull him down as the other Glock chirped twice.

  Thwip! Thwip! Two suppressed shots cracked the wall where Zero’s head was a half-breath ago.

  He grunted as he lifted the statue again, as if to swing it, but this time released it and sent it sailing into the arms of the second armed man. He caught it awkwardly but didn’t expect the weight to be what it was, sending him collapsing backward.

  Zero sprang up, noting the ache in his legs—he hadn’t even stretched that morning, much less expected a fight—and kicked out with the heel of a sneaker. The bald cop who’d tried to cuff him was ready for it and caught his foot.

  Suddenly Zero doubted these guys were affiliated with Krauss. They were amateurs.

  While both the cop’s hands were busy with the captured foot, Zero leaned forward and grabbed his lapels with both hands. Then he leaned back, letting himself fall, and the cop fell with him. With his foot still planted against the bald cop’s abdomen, Zero rolled back, pushed off with the planted leg, and threw the man upside-down into the wall in a stupendous crash.

  Someone will have heard that, he noted.

  The man he’d hit with the statue lay motionless, his eyes open and vacant, neck at an odd angle and his gun within reach. Zero grabbed it, rose to one knee, and fired two shots at a downward angle. Then another two shots. Chest, head, chest, head.

  And then there were none.

  He sat on the floor and breathed for a moment before he realized he needed to move. The crash against the wall might send someone investigating. Even silenced shots were not completely silent.

  He scrambled over to the bald cop and located the key to the handcuffs. He wiped the cuffs and key on his shirt and left them both on the reception room carpet. The gun he tucked in the back of his pants; he could ditch it in an airport bathroom if need be.

  Then he grabbed up his suitcase and scooted out the broken door.

  He kept alert as he reached Löwenstrasse, checking and rechecking his periphery to see if anyone might be following him. When he was fairly sure he was in the clear, he stopped a passerby, a Swiss man in his fifties with silver eyeglasses, and asked, “English?”

  “Yes?”

  “Please call the police,” Zero told him. “There was a shooting in that building.” He pointed. “Five dead.”

  The man frowned deeply. “Pardon me?”

  But Zero didn’t wait around. He strode on quickly, suitcase in one hand as he pulled out his phone with the other. He wasn’t sure what the real Kantonspolizei Zürich would think of the crime scene. He hoped they wouldn’t assume that the dead fake cops had anything to do with Guyer’s and Alina’s deaths. He knew those three weren’t the culprits; they were sloppy, favored guns. They were probably former military, or militia types, not professional assassins.

  Not like Krauss.

  And if the wrong conclusions were made, then the only one looking for Guyer’s killer would be Zero.

  He made the first call. Alan answered on the second ring.

  “Alan? I’m in Zurich. Guyer’s dead. I’ll be on the first plane back, but…”

  “I’m on it,” Alan said quickly and ended the call.

  Zero said a silent prayer for good friends. They hadn’t spoken more than a few sentences to each other since Maria died, but in the event of an emergency nothing would stop Alan from coming to his family’s aid. He would make sure the girls were safe.

  Maybe it was unnecessary. If Krauss was behind this, he’d be a thousand miles from their home. But the assassin’s network was vast, and if German mercenaries could come for Zero then they could come for them.

  His second call was to the doctor.

  “Dr. Dillard’s office,” said a pleasant-sounding receptionist whom Zero knew as Tricia.

  “Put Dillard on please,” he said urgently.

  “I’m so sorry, Dr. Dillard is with a patient at the moment. If you’d like to leave your name and number—”

  “Tell him it’s Zero. He’ll want to take this call.”

  “I’m… so sorry,” the woman said again, “but as I said, he’s with a—”

  “This is a matter of life and death, Tricia. Put Dillard on. Now. Please.”

  She was silent for three irritating seconds. “One moment,” she said tightly.

  Zero continued his brisk pace, heading back toward the Swiss National Museum. As soon as he was off the phone he’d call an Uber to take him back to the airport and hop the first flight back to Dulles.

  “This is Dr. Dillard.”

  “It’s Zero. I’m sorry, there’s no time to soften this blow. Dr. Guyer and his wife are dead. My files were stolen from his office—”

  “Good lord,” said Dillard. And then, “Are you certain?”

  It was a ridiculous question, but one borne of bewilderment.

  “Very,” Zero confirmed. “Pretend everything is all right but you’re not feeling well. Close your office. Get your family and go somewhere safe. Tell no one where you’re going. Lay low for a bit. Stay off the phones. Got all that?”

  “I…”

  “Dillard,” he said sternly. “Guyer is dead. My files are gone. You and your family may be in danger. Do you understand?”

  “I… yes. Yes, I understand.”

  “Good. I’ll be in touch.” Zero ended the call, and hoped against hope that this was all paranoia, and that everyone else he knew, everyone he loved, would be perfectly safe.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Maya paused for a moment on the marble floor of the expansive lobby at Langley. Under her sensible flats was the seal of the CIA, the eagle and shield, the arcing words across the top and bottom that read Central Intelligence Agency. United States of America.

  She’d made it. Her goal had been to become the youngest field agent in the history of the agency, and here she was, just shy of twenty years old—an impossibility, most would say, but they didn’t have her background and experience. Her age alone was enough to raise questions about how she’d gotten so far, about her deservedness of a seat at the table. But she’d done the work. Tested out of high school early. Got into West Point on a recommendation from none other than the current President of the United States. Gained favor with the dean, Brigadier General Joanne Hunt, and was granted early graduation from the academy (a first, to her knowledge) by virtue of being accepted into an experimental CIA training program. She’d done her dues as a dark agent—and by “dues” she meant that she’d refused to kill someone without evidence of their crimes—and had been recommended as a field
agent.

  And finally, accepted as a field agent.

  If there was a bitter taste on the back of her tongue it was because she knew, no matter how hard she tried not to acknowledge it, that her current status was partly due to one Agent John Watson, the man who had murdered her mother. A man whom Maya had assumed had fled the country in favor of anonymity only to reappear as a dark agent with the CIA, the division that handled “specialized removals.”

  Calculated assassination was what they were. Murder, if she was calling a spade a spade.

  She’d prided herself on getting as far as she had on her own merit, without her father’s help. In fact, just the opposite—her dad had been very vocal quite often regarding his feelings about her joining the CIA. She doubted he would have helped even if she’d asked.

  So the knowledge that it was Watson who ultimately had a hand in making her dream a reality, a man she was inclined to loathe out of necessity, a man she wanted very much to die by her own hand and ideally soon, was an indelible stain on her otherwise impeccable record.

  But—she was here. She had done it. And if she had any hope of finding Watson again, to make her new dream a reality, she was in the right place to do so.

  “Don’t tell me; I know what you’re thinking.”

  The male voice behind her was chipper, jocular, and Maya bit her lip at the sound of it in an attempt to keep herself from smiling. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.

  She turned. “Good morning, Agent Coleman.”

  “Right back at ya, Agent Lawson.” Trent Coleman had been her partner on their sole dark agent op, another inductee of the CIA’s program and the only one besides her to pass it. He was twenty-two, tall, handsome, with movie-star genes and equally award-worthy cheekbones. He was as smart as he was affable. It seemed that everyone loved Trent Coleman; there was hardly anything at all to dislike about him, which was why Maya had entirely detested him when they’d been forced to partner.