Zero Zero

by Jack Mars

  “What’s wrong with you? Get up!” Zero shouted. He wanted to kill Stefan Krauss, but he didn’t want it to be easy. He wanted it to be deserved. He’d dreamed about this a dozen times, delighting in ending this man’s life. Yet everything about this felt wrong.

  Krauss rolled backward. As he did he loosed a knife from his boot. Silver flashed as he jumped to his feet and swung the blade at Zero’s abdomen.

  A sloppy swipe. Zero stopped the arm and twisted the wrist. Krauss yelped as the knife fell out of his hand. Zero kicked him back to the ground and grabbed up the knife.

  He dropped to one knee and drew the blade back. No more games or tricks. No more questions. He was going to look Maria’s killer in the eye, and end his life. Now…

  Zero held the knife backhanded, raised just behind his own right ear, but it stayed there.

  He stared down at his own would-be murderer, who stared back as passively as if he were waiting for Zero to deliver his morning coffee, not his very timely death.

  But he wasn’t staring in Krauss’s eyes. Instead his gaze was drawn to a place at Krauss’s neck. Just behind and a little below the ear was a thin line, red, slightly swollen, and crossed with tiny stitches.

  A scar, still healing and professionally sutured, the placement of which was extremely, intimately familiar to Zero—because he had one there too, long since healed.

  It can’t be.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “How did you get that scar?” Zero demanded.

  Krauss only stared back.

  He grabbed a fistful of the assassin’s collar and shook him, the knife still poised to plunge. “That scar, on your neck! How did you get it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  This was impossible. Another trick. It must have been.

  Just do it. Kill him.

  The knife stayed in the air, his fist trembling slightly around it. “You said you don’t know me.”

  Krauss shook his head slightly. “I don’t.”

  “Who are you? Your name, tell me your name.”

  “They call me S,” Krauss told him.

  “Who does?!”

  “The voice, when it calls.”

  “Who is the voice?”

  “I don’t know. But if I do as it asks, I’ll remember who I am.”

  Zero shoved himself to a standing position. This was too much. It could have been a ruse, a fake scar to throw him off, to keep him from killing Krauss…

  “Stay down,” he warned. Krauss didn’t move. “You killed a woman on a beach barely more than two weeks ago. What was her name?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Zero’s face flushed with heat. He wanted to scream, to finish what he’d started, to kill this man that had killed her.

  “Maria Johansson,” he said forcefully. “That was her name. And you are Stefan Krauss.”

  He got nothing in return. When Krauss had accidentally killed Maria instead of Zero on their honeymoon, he’d showed genuine remorse. He’d even spared Zero that night for his transgression. But here, now, there was nothing, not even a glimmer of recognition in his eyes.

  Not even Krauss could fake that.

  And then he knew. It was real. Someone had implanted a memory suppressor at the base of Krauss’s head, where his spinal cord met his brain stem. Just like Zero had done to forget the grief of losing Kate. Just like Seth Connors had volunteered for, to avoid the grief of losing his young daughter. Guyer had implanted the device in his head; Bliss had implanted it in Connors’.

  He had no doubt that whoever had implanted it in Krauss was dead somewhere as well.

  He had been right and wrong at the same time. Krauss was involved. But this wasn’t Krauss. This wasn’t retaliation, because the assassin had no memory of the offense. Krauss was someone’s weapon, their pawn, using him to eliminate anyone who knew about the program.

  And as much as he wanted to kill the man who murdered his wife, this was not that man anymore. Instead, Krauss was the only one who might be able to give him a lead.

  “You know me,” Krauss said. It wasn’t a question.

  “I do,” Zero murmured. “You’re a monster. A murderer. An assassin. You’ve killed innocent people. Men and women alike. You did it for money. For personal gain.”

  Krauss sat up slowly but didn’t try to stand. He stared at the floor as he took a long, measured sigh. “I had a suspicion… that I was not a very good person.”

  Zero scoffed. He looked down at the knife in his hand. It was likely that Krauss had no answers for him. He’d been a predator before, and he was still one now—the only difference was that he was doing it for someone else. He’d keep doing it.

  End it.

  Memory or not, he still deserved to die. Besides, some might even have considered it a mercy killing.

  Krauss stared up at him, his face an unnervingly placid mask. “If I am going to die,” he said, as if reading Zero’s mind, or at least his expression, “I’d prefer to do it on my feet.”

  Zero said nothing, but took a small step back, still gripping the blade tightly.

  The assassin slowly climbed to his feet.

  Do it.

  Sirens wailed suddenly, not far. Zero turned instinctively toward the source of the sound, just for an instant, but in that instant he realized his mistake.

  As he spun back, a fist connected solidly with his jaw. Pain exploded in his face as stars swam in his vision. He heard feet pounding the concrete floor as Krauss ran, fleeing from him. He heard the crash of broken glass as the assassin leapt through a window at the rear of the building.

  Zero rose to give chase but his head swam and he staggered on his feet. He fell to one knee again, and only dully realized that he had dropped the knife when he was sucker-punched.

  Krauss could have killed him. He could have gotten the drop, grabbed up the knife, and ended it… but he hadn’t.

  Because he doesn’t know who he is. And I do.

  Zero rubbed his chin as he came back to his senses. Krauss was involved, however involuntarily—but he wasn’t the endgame. He knew that now. Someone had gotten to him and stripped him of everything that had made him Stefan Krauss. Not just his memories, but his experience, his style, even his accent. They’d made him into someone else, someone they could mold and warp to do what they wanted him to do.

  There was only one possible answer. The agency had never ended the program; they’d merely hidden it. And now they had a successful implant, far more successful than Seth Connors had been. Which meant that the people who could identify what this was had to be removed. Guyer, Bliss, Zero…

  His family.

  His friends.

  He couldn’t fight the CIA. Not alone and not without resources.

  But why Krauss?

  Why not a loyal agent? A volunteer, like Connors? Why not someone who was already on their side?

  Why the theatrics, the planted bombs? That didn’t at all feel like the agency he knew.

  He couldn’t figure that one either. He was still missing a piece of this puzzle. And, he realized grimly, he couldn’t call anyone to warn them. He’d left his phone plugged into the USB cable in Mrs. Gorman’s car, on the floor of the driver’s side when he fled.

  The police would find it. Even if the old busybody said nothing, they’d be able to link him to her stolen car, and by extension, to the explosion at his former home. Maybe even to the murder of Dr. and Mrs. Bliss.

  But why Krauss?

  That question would have to be answered later. Right now, he had nothing, not even a lifeline, while everyone he held dear was in danger. He had to get back to Virginia—which would mean evading more authorities, stealing another car.

  The irony of moral ambiguity was not lost on him.

  Zero limped out of the old warehouse, the pain in his left leg worse than before, in search of a vehicle to carry him south.

  *

  S tugged a thin shard of glass from his forearm and wiped it with a piece of gauze.

&
nbsp; He was confused. The sensation was not new, but the motivation behind it was indeed strange. That man, the one he had been sent to kill, seemed to know him.

  Not just know him—that man seemed to hate him. S saw it in his eyes, how badly he wanted to end his life, to plunge the knife into his chest.

  He had called him “Krauss.” He claimed he had killed a woman.

  Trust no one, the Voice had told him. People will take advantage, try to convince you that you are something you’re not.

  But still. That man’s pain, it seemed so… visceral.

  Perhaps that was why S had not killed him. Perhaps it was because he believed the man in the warehouse. He could have grabbed up the knife and ended it right there. But he was weakened, hurt; the man was better than him, could have killed him.

  But he didn’t. For some reason, despite the pain in his eyes and the obvious desire to kill S, the man had restrained himself, and so S had as well.

  He ran. He’d grabbed up the go bag that he’d left in the alley and fled the scene. As night fell he entered a fast-food restaurant and went to the grimy bathroom and locked the door behind him. He opened his bag and found the first aid kit and set about cleaning himself up, pulling the small shards of glass in his arms from jumping through the window.

  He dropped the sliver of glass, pink with blood, in the sink. He turned his head slightly to examine the scar on his neck. It was fresh, not more than a week old. Stitched perfectly. Where had it come from? He had no idea.

  The last thing he remembered was being on the car lot. Being handed the keys to the black sports car by a short man in stained coveralls. There was a bag in the back seat with essentials, the man had told him. A gun in the trunk—an AR-15. Did he remember how to use that?

  S had thought for a moment and nodded. Yes, he remembered that.

  Good. There was an address. S would go there but keep his distance. A bomb would go off. There was a target, and if that target escaped the blast, S would follow him and kill him.

  And then the Voice would call him.

  “And I will remember who I am?” S had asked.

  “Of course, pal. Just do this one thing first.”

  In the grimy bathroom of the fast-food restaurant, S pressed a bandage over a cut on his arm and replaced the first-aid kit in the backpack. He slung it over one shoulder.

  He had failed to kill the man, but he was not dead either.

  What would the Voice say now?

  As if his mind was being read, the cell phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out, already knowing what the screen would say: Unknown Caller. He had almost come to think of it as a name.

  “S,” he answered flatly.

  “Target?” The Voice was male, smooth, unconcerned. Blasé, even.

  “The target survived,” S told him. There was no use lying or even trying to avoid the truth. “I failed.”

  “Hmm. So he saw you?”

  “He did.”

  “Tried to kill you too, I imagine.” The Voice sounded almost amused.

  “He also failed,” S reported, though that was obvious.

  “I’m guessing he said some things.”

  “Yes,” S confirmed. “He seemed to know me.”

  “Perfect,” said the Voice.

  S frowned. “Sorry?”

  “You didn’t fail, S. This was all part of the plan. If you had killed him, that would have been fine, but I didn’t think you would. He knows you’re in the game, might have even put together part of what’s going on here, which means he’ll be looking for you. He’ll think you’re the key to all this. And while he’s looking one way, we’ll be moving on to the next target.”

  The next target. S had failed; he would have to make up for it.

  “And then I’ll remember who I am?” S asked.

  “Of course.”

  “He called me Krauss. I had the feeling I did things to him.”

  The Voice chuckled. “Boy, did you ever. How’d he beat you, anyway? You had a machine gun.”

  “He was just better,” S admitted.

  “Better how? Faster? Stronger?”

  “Just… better. He seemed to know what I would do before I did it.”

  “I see. Maybe we took too much… say, Weisman,” the Voice called to someone else. “Check motor function? Okay. Seems we’re having a bit of an improvisation problem. Maybe we can dial that up without giving him too much? Great. S, you still with me?”

  “I am.”

  “Anything else to report before we do this?” the Voice asked.

  S looked in the streaked mirror of the restroom. He looked at the scar that he couldn’t remember getting, at the face he barely knew as his own. “Did I kill a woman?”

  “You did. But look, no use beating yourself up about that right now. In a few seconds, it’s not going to matter. Now I need you to hold real still for a moment, got it?”

  S did as he was told.

  He felt a tingling in his neck. The foreign scar prickled, and then felt as if it was buzzing, and for the briefest of moments an electric shock seared through it, down his spine, up into his skull. His teeth gritted; the muscles in his neck went taut.

  And then they relaxed.

  “S? You still there?”

  He looked around. He was standing in a public restroom, an unclean one, with the scent of grease and fried food in his nostrils. He was holding the phone. The Voice was in his ear.

  “You with me, S?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I’m here. But… I don’t know where I am. Or how I got here.”

  “What’s the last thing you remember?” the Voice asked.

  S thought hard for a moment. “Manhattan. I woke in an empty room. There were clothes, and a phone. You called. You told me I was S, and that I had lost my memory, but you would help me recover it.”

  “Good. That’s right. And I will help you. But I need something from you in return, S. There’s a person we need eliminated. Just one person. A very bad person who deserves it. And once that’s done, I’ll help you. I promise. Will you help me first, S?”

  “Yes,” he murmured. He looked in the streaked mirror of the restroom. There was a scar on his neck, red and slightly swollen, perfectly stitched, though he had never seen it before. “I will.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Wait. Watch. Listen.

  “It’s beautiful here,” Maya noted. Through the window it was a stunning afternoon in Paris.

  Wait.

  “Too bad this is going to be the only view we’re going to get,” Trent replied sourly.

  Watch.

  “Nature of the job, I guess,” she said with a sigh.

  Listen.

  There were twenty arrondissements, or administrative subdivisions, of France’s capital city. They were in the 11th arrondissement, a diverse district that brought young locals and tourists to hip bars, just a stone’s throw from Notre Dame, the Seine, the Louvre.

  They, of course, would see none of that.

  The two of them were holed up in a vacant apartment on the fourth floor of a building across the street from their target. The view through the wide picture window, if it could even be called a view, was entirely comprised of the apartment building across the street, including two of their target’s windows. The curtains were closed over one of them.

  So far they had seen him only twice, passing by the one visible window, seemingly minding his own business. On the flight over, Maya had read and reread the NSA report that had prompted their presence—and frankly, it looked like gibberish to her.

  Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it’s nothing. That’s what Walsh had said, and now more than ever she was inclined to believe that this “op,” if it could be called that, was just an excuse to get Maya out of his way.

  Still—this was the job. Wait, watch, and listen. So they did. She and Trent set up shop in front of the window, keeping low and as hidden as they could, with binoculars and a sonic ear and a camera on a tripod.

  The
y waited, but nothing was happening. They watched and saw nothing. They listened and heard almost nothing; the only sounds they’d been able to pick up at this distance were the vague, rapid-fire dialogue of a French comedy series, and they couldn’t even be certain it was coming from his apartment.

  This man wasn’t a sleeper cell. This man had no idea that the CIA was watching him. He was, it appeared, utterly ordinary.

  Still, this was the job. Wait and watch and listen, because one time out of a hundred a seemingly ordinary man could be something more.

  “Keep watch,” she told Trent as she stood, stretched, and paced a few times across the empty apartment. Every now and then she had to move about a bit. Not just so her limbs didn’t cramp up, but equally so as an outlet for her nervous energy.

  She wished desperately that she knew what was happening back home. She hadn’t forgotten about Alan’s call. It could have been something, could have been nothing. But she had no way to contact anyone; agents didn’t bring their personal cell phones on operations. Hers was powered off and stowed in a locker back at Langley. Her only lifeline to the outside world was a satellite phone that had been programmed with a single number that would connect to a technician (who was not, unfortunately, Penelope León) in the event they had a status update or needed resources.

  She wished she knew what was happening back home. But as Alan had said, being on the job was probably the safest place she could be if something was up.

  “How long do we have to do this?” Trent moaned as he lowered the binoculars and rubbed his eyes.

  “Long as it takes to either confirm the NSA’s suspicions or disprove them.”

  He blinked. “So, we’ll have to sleep here?”

  “Had that thought not crossed your mind before this moment?” It certainly had crossed hers. The idea of shacking up in a Parisian apartment with Trent Coleman for even one night, let alone more than one, was… well, it wasn’t exactly an unwelcome thought, but it was still one that frightened her more than a little.