Decoy Zero

by Jack Mars

  “They didn’t,” Zero insisted calmly, both hands still hovering near his ears. “I swear they didn’t. No one sent me. I’m here on my own and alone.”

  Bixby took one step forward, being sure to stay out of arm’s reach but close enough that Zero could see him better, just in the edge of the LED’s corona. Last time he had seen the eccentric CIA engineer and inventor, Bixby had been wearing a soft purple silk shirt under a black three-button waistcoat. He still had his signature horn-rimmed glasses, but now he wore a simple flannel shirt and blue jeans. He hadn’t shaved in several days, the early growth of a gray beard matching the salt-and-pepper of his hair, which appeared to have been hastily combed out of habit and hygiene but not care.

  There were bags beneath his eyes, and his skin had something of a sallow quality. Zero imagined that Bixby hadn’t gotten much sleep in the two months he’d been on the run from the CIA.

  “How do I know you’re telling the truth?” Bixby asked carefully.

  “You said you scanned me, right? I brought a gun as a precaution.” He realized how lame the excuse sounded when he said it aloud and to a man who believed Zero was there to kill him. “I have no phone. No radio. No tracking devices. You would have seen that.”

  Bixby shrugged slightly with one shoulder. “Do better.”

  “We’re friends.”

  “We were—”

  “We are,” Zero said adamantly. He could see in the older man’s eyes that he wanted very much to believe it. How many times had Bixby prepped him for an op? How many bad jokes had they exchanged? To think that Zero was there for an assassination was laughable—at least to him. But Bixby couldn’t be too cautious. Not after what he’d done.

  Two months earlier, Zero and his team had stopped a band of Chinese mercenaries and their Russian leader from melting down a nuclear reactor at a facility in Calvert Cliffs. Bixby had helped by making modifications to a machine called OMNI, a CIA supercomputer capable of spying on any cell phone, tablet, computer, radio, or smart device in the continental United States. Its very existence was intended only for the highest clearances; it was extremely immoral, highly illegal, and insanely expensive.

  Bixby’s modifications to OMNI also caused irreparable damage to the supercomputer. As not only the one who had done the damage but the only man who could fix it, Bixby fled and went dark. There were no doubts between the two men in that tiny cabin that if the CIA ever found him, there would be no arrests, no trial, no prison sentence. There would be only a bullet and a shallow grave, which was why Zero had taken every precaution to get here.

  “How did you find me?” Bixby asked.

  “Do you think maybe you can disarm whatever I’m standing on first?” Zero asked, gesturing to the depressed pressure plate beneath his foot. “What is it, anyway? A mine?”

  “Of course not,” Bixby replied. “Bombs are messy. You know me better than that.”

  “Ah.” A sonic weapon, most likely. If Zero had to guess, taking his foot off the plate would activate a carefully directed sonic blast that would cause instant dizziness and nausea, and give him one hell of a headache, if not actually rupture his internal organs.

  “Take off your jacket,” Bixby ordered. “Slowly. And toss it to me.”

  Zero did as he was told, first tugging off each thick glove, slowly, and then unzipping the fleece-lined coat and shrugging out of it. He tossed it away and Bixby caught it by the collar. Only then did the engineer reach into his own back pocket and produce a small black remote. He flicked a single button and nodded once.

  Even so, Zero held his breath as he lifted his foot, only breathing again when nothing happened. “Thanks.”

  “Sit over there,” Bixby said flatly. Zero had been so concerned about whatever he was standing on that he hadn’t really gotten his bearings; they were in a single room that operated as living room, dining room, and kitchen. The room in the rear must be a tiny bedroom, and he assumed there was a bathroom somewhere and not much else.

  Zero did as he was told and took a seat in a small wooden chair.

  “How did you find me?” Bixby asked again.

  “Wasn’t easy,” Zero admitted. And that was certainly true; the eight weeks it had taken to locate the remote cabin was far longer than any mission Agent Zero had ever been on. “I went to your apartment after you vanished, and after the CIA did a sweep. Noticed what you took, what you didn’t take. You did a pretty good job covering your tracks, but I saw that all of your cold-weather gear was gone. Not sure the agency even knew you owned it. I also knew you wouldn’t stay in the US, so we narrowed it down to the most likely countries you might run to—”

  “We?” Bixby interrupted curtly.

  “Reidigger helped,” Zero admitted. When it came to finding people, Alan was nearly as adept as he was at making them disappear. “I also remembered that one really rough winter when you complained about the arthritis in your hands,” he continued. “You said that Trexall was the only medication that helped when it was that cold. So putting that together, and with the help of a certain Danish hacker that we both know, we tracked all new prescriptions of Trexall from our list of countries you might have fled to and then cross-referenced them against identities until we found one that wasn’t actually anyone. Thousands of names. Took several weeks. But then we got a hit on a man in Saskatchewan named Jack Burton, who happened to share the same name as the main character in your favorite movie.”

  The corner of Bixby’s mouth curled slightly into something that was almost a smile. “You remember that?”

  “I do. So I came here, visited the pharmacy that gave you the pills. Tried to bribe the pharmacist with a thousand dollars to tell me where I could find you. He told me no. I thought it was a dead end—until I thought of something else. I asked the pharmacist if he’d ever heard the one about Orion’s Belt.”

  At this Bixby did actually grin. “It’s a ‘waist’ of space.”

  Zero knew there were few things that Bixby loved more than an awful pun or a downright cringe-worthy joke, and as one of the only other humans he interacted with in eight weeks, the pharmacist must have heard them all.

  “That convinced him that I knew you, and that I needed to find you,” Zero concluded.

  “Why?” Bixby asked.

  “Because we’re friends.”

  The engineer nodded, though his gaze was far away. “Yeah. I guess we are. But I’m not going back, Zero. I can’t, and we both know it.”

  “Let Alan help you,” Zero pleaded. “He’s very good at making people disappear—and I mean really disappear, not the CIA way. He can get you a new identity, a new life. Not…” Zero gestured at the tiny modular cabin around them. “Not this.”

  Bixby pulled out the second wooden chair, opposite the small table between them, and took a seat with a heavy sigh. “Are you still working for them?”

  “I have to. You know that.” The only reason Zero wasn’t in prison or worse, like the Moroccan black site H-6, was because he’d agreed to return to Special Operations.

  “Friends or not,” Bixby said, “if you’re still with them, then you being here is trouble for me. I can’t let you help me. Or Alan. I made my choices and I’m going to live with them. Besides.” He grinned again. “This isn’t so bad. It’s only the first stop on a long journey. Trust me.”

  Zero blew a long sigh through his nose, knowing that he wasn’t going to win this. But convincing Bixby to accept his help was only half the reason he was here; in fact, it was intended as a bargaining chip for the far more personal part of his visit.

  “There’s more. I need… help.”

  Bixby raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

  Zero sighed, unsure of how much or how little to explain. “The memory suppressor,” he began. “You co-invented it. And lately I’ve been experiencing some… let’s call them ‘side effects.’ Bad ones.”

  “Zero…”

  He ignored Bixby and pressed on. “There must be something in the design that could help me. Or
, I don’t know, a way to undo it. There must be something you know that I don’t—”

  “Zero—”

  “I need help, dammit!” He pounded the table with a fist.

  “Zero,” Bixby said again, forcefully. “Listen to me, please. What happened to you was unprecedented. I mean, they tore the damn thing out of your head with a pair of pliers. No one expected that. No one planned for that. To be honest, I’m surprised you recovered anything at all. Even if I could help…” Bixby gestured to the tiny cabin around them. “I’m sorely lacking in anything I’d call resources.”

  “Yeah,” Zero said quietly. He stared down at the surface of the wooden table. He’d come all this way for nothing. He’d spent weeks seeking out a man who didn’t want to be found for nothing. There were no answers to be had here or anywhere else. His own brain would eventually kill him, and he had to live with that until he wasn’t anymore.

  A full minute of silence passed between them before Bixby gently cleared his throat. When Zero looked up again, the engineer was holding out the jacket.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’d invite you to stay the night, but you know I can’t take any chances.”

  Zero understood. Even with all his careful planning, the agency had ways to find him if they thought there was a reason. Satellites, subcutaneous tracking chips, good old-fashioned spy networks… every minute he lingered was another minute he was putting Bixby in danger.

  He took the jacket, stood, and slowly pulled it on. “I’m assuming that if anyone were to return to this place, there’d be nothing here.”

  Bixby smiled sadly. “Assume that.” And then he said again, “I’m sorry.”

  Zero nodded once and headed for the door. “Take care of yourself, Bixby.”

  “…Wait.”

  Zero froze in mid-step, one hand reaching for the knob, his brain immediately assuming there was another forgotten booby trap.

  “Just wait a second.” Bixby took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and pushed them back on. “I… I lied to you. Before. When I told you that you were the first person to ever have the suppressor installed.”

  Zero whirled around. “What? You lied?”

  “Under threat of death? Yes. But all things considered, that ship seems to have sailed.” He chuckled slightly in spite of himself. “The suppressor that was installed in you wasn’t our first. Before that, there was another prototype. And there was a single human trial. About a year before your suppressor disappeared from my lab. A male, early to mid-thirties. Affiliated with the agency.”

  Another person who had a suppressor installed? Suddenly this trip was entirely worth it.

  “An agent?” Zero asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Who was he?”

  “I don’t know that either.”

  “What do you know?” Zero asked in exasperation.

  “Look, he was just ‘Subject A’ to me,” Bixby said defensively. “But there is one thing. After it was installed, as he was coming out of anesthesia, the neurosurgeon called him Connor. I remember that clearly. He said, ‘Do you know who you are, Connor?’”

  “Is Connor a first name or a last name?” Zero asked quickly.

  “I don’t know. That’s all I have,” Bixby told him. “You and I both know how the agency operates; he’s probably long dead. Any record of him is probably wiped. But… maybe it’s worth something. If you tug at that thread hard enough.”

  Zero nodded. It was worth something, he just wasn’t sure what yet. “Thank you.” He held out his hand, and Bixby shook it, possibly for the last time ever. The engineer wasn’t easy to find the first time around, and he wouldn’t make the same mistakes twice. “Please, be safe. Disappear. Go lay on a beach somewhere for the next twenty years.”

  Bixby grinned. “I’m Irish. I burn easy.” The grin faltered. “Godspeed, Zero. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

  “Thanks.”

  But as Zero headed back out into the cold, impossibly dark night of Saskatchewan, he couldn’t help the thought that ran through his head.

  I hope I remember what I’m looking for.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Saudi king’s funeral was, as expected, quite opulent. At least this one was; the one that the world would see on news networks, the publicly held funeral, after the traditional Islamic rites were honored and the more intimate occasion with immediate family. This was the funeral attended by heads of state, Saudi nobility, and leaders of industry, held in the gilded and marble-columned courtyard of the royal palace in Riyadh. Rather, one of the royal palaces, Joanna reminded herself as she stood solemnly among those mourners present, heads bowed reverently and foreheads sprinkled with sweat beneath the bright Saudi sun.

  She was the representative from the United States, though she could not help but feel slightly out of place in a black blazer, black silk shirt with its collar crisply folded, and black pencil skirt. Combined with the fact that it was seventy-eight degrees outside, the affair was stifling even in the shade. She tried her best not to let it show.

  Joanna Barkley was a woman as pragmatic in mind as in her wardrobe. She had no misconceptions about that aspect of herself, though others often seemed to. As a teen, her notion to become a senator in the state of California was seen as a pipe dream by her teachers and peers and even her prosecutor father. But Joanna saw the clear path, the logical trajectory that would get her there. It was simply going to be. And at age thirty-two, she fulfilled the dream—or notion, to her—and was elected to the United States Congress as the youngest female senator in history.

  Four years later, and barely more than two months ago, she made history yet again when President Jonathan Rutledge named her as his vice president. At thirty-six years of age, Joanna Barkley became not only the first female vice president in American politics, but tied John C. Breckinridge as the youngest.

  Though inwardly sober and practical, somehow Joanna could not avoid being characterized as a starry-eyed daydreamer. Her policies were met with a similar derision as her childhood aspirations—all of which she had accomplished and more. To her, overhauling the healthcare system was not at all an impossibility, but simply something that needed a thorough and incremental plan to bring to fruition. Pulling out of conflicts in the Middle East, achieving peace, fair trade, even eventually sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office herself… none of it was unfeasible or impractical.

  At least not in her eyes. Her detractors and rivals, of whom there were many, would say differently.

  At long last the procession came to a close, ending with a tall man with a gray beard and a leftward hook to his nose murmuring a prayer, first in Arabic and then in English. He was dressed entirely in white from throat to ankles; a priest, Joanna assumed, or whatever they called themselves. She was not as well-versed in Islamic culture as she knew she should be, especially now that these sorts of visits and diplomatic missions were on her shoulders. But two months had hardly been enough time to prepare, and her term thus far had been a whirlwind of events, not the least of which was unified peace between the United States and Middle Eastern countries.

  King Ghazi of Saudi Arabia had lost his lengthy battle with an undisclosed illness, the nature of which the royal family had not been inclined to share with the world. Joanna assumed it was something that may have been perceived to bring shame or ignominy to his name and she would not begin to guess. As the prayer came to a close, the procession of leaders, diplomats, and tycoons silently retreated into the sanctity (and air-conditioning) of the royal palace, away from the press and lenses of cameras. A curious thing, Joanna thought, considering how private the royal family seemed to be.

  But before she could step inside, a voice called to her.

  “Madame Vice President.”

  She paused. The speaker was none other than Prince Basheer—rather, King Basheer now, the late king’s eldest son of seven. He was tall and broad-
shouldered, perhaps even puffing his chest out slightly, if she didn’t know better. He wore entirely white, much like the priest, save for his head covering—what was it called? she scolded herself—which was a red-and-white checkered pattern that, admittedly, reminded her of a picnic tablecloth. He kept his beard cut short, the end of it pointing downward like an arrow, black but flecked with gray despite his relatively young thirty-nine years.

  “King Basheer.” She nodded to him while congratulating herself on remembering the correct title. “My condolences, your highness.”

  He smiled with his eyes, though his mouth remained a tight line. “I must admit that getting used to the title may prove difficult.” Basheer’s English was excellent but Joanna noticed that he smacked his lips with each hard consonant. “I understand your visit will be short-lived. I hoped that we may have a word in private.”

  It was true; the flight plan was already registered. She’d wanted to be back on the jet within the hour. But diplomacy dictated that she not reject the offer from a grieving son, a newly minted king, and possible ally—especially since the US government had little idea where now–King Basheer’s loyalties may lie.

  Joanna nodded graciously. “Of course.”

  King Basheer gestured for her to follow. “Right this way.”

  She hesitated, catching herself just before blurting out, “Now?” Her gaze flitted back to the still-filing procession. Basheer had just put his father in the ground; surely there were more important matters to attend to than speaking with her.

  A tight knot of apprehension formed as she followed a few strides behind Basheer, into the palace and through a receiving room for dignitaries the size of a modest gymnasium. As servants couriered refreshments to other visitors, Joanna skirted the edge of them and into a small antechamber. She noticed movement in her periphery; the tall priest in white was following her silently.

  More than a priest, she thought. An advisor, perhaps? Though in their culture they may be one and the same. She fought to recall the term for this sort of person—Imam, was it?