Decoy Zero

by Jack Mars

  “All of you. Any of you. I want to spend it with all three of the women in my life.”

  “Uh… sure. Okay.” Maya nodded.

  “Sounds great,” said Maria.

  “Like I said,” Sara muttered. “Weird.”

  And then they were gone, the front door and bathroom door closing behind them at almost the same time.

  Zero sighed at his frittata. “Guess it’s just you and me, pal.” He grabbed the plate and took a seat at the small counter bar.

  Outwardly, everything seemed great in his life. He and Maria were officially dating again, and the last couple of months had been like starting their relationship anew. He’d kept the apartment in Bethesda, and she’d kept the small bungalow they’d once co-inhabited, but who knew? Maybe soon they’d live together again. He had both his girls with him, which had been nice. He’d been actively trying to give them space and let them make their own decisions—after all, one was now an adult and the other was technically emancipated. And no matter how weird they claimed him to be, they’d certainly noticed the positive change in his demeanor.

  And change he had. Zero had been making genuine efforts to better himself, starting with expanding his culinary skills, spending more time with the girls, coming up with fun things for them to do as a family, and including Maria in as much as possible. He wanted to live life to the fullest… because he had no idea how much life he had left.

  Guyer had no idea. Neither did Bixby. And if the two most brilliant minds he’d ever encountered couldn’t give him answers, he doubted anyone on the planet could. He would keep losing memories. New ones would still occasionally resurface, like the remnants of assassinations carried out in his younger days as a dark agent with the CIA. But he had determined that he needed to look forward, not backward. His past was his past, and his future was in question.

  He knew what he needed to do: he had to find the agent that Bixby had told him about, this man named Connor, the one who had undergone the memory suppressor. The chances of the guy still being alive were slim, and if he was, the chances of Zero finding him were far slimmer.

  Still, he had to try. And at the same time he had to continue trying to make the most of the time he had left, to be a positive influence in the lives of those he loved. He had to know that after he was gone, these were the times they would remember. This was the version of him they would think fondly back on.

  Because eventually his brain would kill him—if the pain of keeping so many secrets after promising honesty didn’t kill him first.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Maria Johansson swiped her keycard through a vertical slot in the wall of a white, cinder-blocked corridor in a sublevel of the CIA’s Langley headquarters. There was a loud buzz, the sliding of a heavy electronic bolt, and the steel door unlatched with a heavy chunk.

  This was just one of four sublevels beneath the George Bush Center for Intelligence—four that she knew of, and probably others that she didn’t. Even as a former deputy director, she was not privy to all of the agency’s secrets and was not nearly foolhardy enough to believe she ever would be.

  Still, it was a small wonder that her keycard still worked. Back in November, after stopping the Chinese insurgent group and their ultrasonic cannon, she had stepped down from her post and resumed life as a special agent. Yet they had not yet revoked the clearances that came with the position.

  And she was pretty sure she knew why.

  Maria pushed the door closed behind her and nodded to the single gray-suited security guard who sat behind a beige desk, reading a copy of Sports Illustrated. “Morning, Ben.”

  “Ms. Johansson.” The retired agent made no attempt to move, let alone check her ID and scan her keycard.

  “Should I sign in…?” she asked after a moment of awkward silence.

  Ben grinned. “I think I remember what you look like since Thursday.” He bobbed his head down the corridor. “Just go on back.”

  “Thanks.”

  The heels of her boots clacked against the tiled floor and echoed from empty cells as she headed toward the final one on the left side of the hall. There were no other prisoners on this sublevel; this was intended as a temporary holding station, usually reserved for domestic terrorists, war criminals, rogue military, and the occasional traitorous agent. It was a way station en route to far worse places, like Hell Six in Morocco—or a simple hole in the dirt.

  She hated lying to Zero. That’s how she was referring to him these days, as Zero. He’d asked her to stop calling him Kent last month. No one referred to him by his former CIA alias anyway; he wasn’t really Kent Steele anymore. And barely anyone he associated with regularly called him by his real name, Reid Lawson. He was simply Agent Zero. Hell, even the president called him Zero. So Maria did too.

  Though “paperwork” isn’t technically a lie, she reminded herself. That was their code for “it’s a secret and I’d rather you not ask about it.” In fact, just last week, when he told the girls that he was going to California, he’d told her that he had to take care of some “paperwork.”

  So she didn’t ask. Well, she did playfully mess with him that morning, but it wasn’t in earnest. Besides, what was she supposed to tell him? I’ve been visiting a CIA prisoner and murderer for the last couple of months and I’m embarrassed to admit it.

  Of course not. That sounded terrible.

  The cell was twelve feet by twelve feet, with a floor and ceiling of concrete and walls made not of bars but two-inch reinforced glass. A grid of half-inch holes in the side facing the corridor made communication possible with the prisoner inside. There were no windows, but far worse was the fact that there was no discernible door. Maria was not even sure how the cell was accessible; a hidden panel in one of the glass facades, most likely, but not even slightly apparent. It was a psychological maneuver intended to demonstrate to the prisoner that there was absolutely no way out.

  Maria’s heart broke a little every time she saw that glass. Even though there was no one else here, possibly on this entire sublevel other than Ben the guard, it afforded no privacy. Inside was a small cot with blanket and pillow, a tiny bathroom area that consisted of a sink, toilet, and shower head—all open, all exposed—and a single steel chair, bolted to the floor.

  But today the denizen of the cell was seated cross-legged on the cool cement floor squarely in the center of the cell, the most open part of their tiny habitat. Likely, Maria assumed, to give themselves the illusion of having some space.

  “Good morning,” Maria said. She had to speak a bit louder than she normally would so that the girl could hear her, even through the drilled holes in the glass.

  “Hello.” Mischa did not turn to look at her, not at first. But that was the way she was, the way she had been since Maria had started to visit her. She would play aloof for at least a short while—perhaps not playing, but acclimating.

  The girl was twelve, blonde-haired, green-eyed. Maria would even call her pretty, though the expressionless façade she usually had on flattened her features. She wore simple blue polyester/cotton scrubs, like a nurse in an ER, which lacked pockets or zippers or anything metal. Her feet were bare. She was typically sullen, spoke little, and could kill a man three times her size with little effort. The last time Maria had seen her without two inches of glass between them she had indeed tried to kill her and Zero.

  “I brought you something,” Maria said in Russian. She was unsure exactly what nationality the girl was, but her English was perfect and unaccented. Over many visits Maria had discovered she was equally gifted in Russian, Ukrainian, and Chinese.

  At Maria’s elbow was a small rectangular hatch in the glass with a looped handle. She tugged it open and deposited the croissant she’d grabbed earlier from Zero’s apartment. The door on the other side, on Mischa’s side, was rigged so that it could not be opened at the same time—not that it mattered. The girl never took any of the food she brought until after Maria was gone.

  “Should still be warm,” she added
.

  “Spasiba,” Mischa said, almost too quietly to hear. Thank you.

  “Are they feeding you enough?”

  The girl merely rolled one shoulder in a shrug.

  Maria closed her eyes for a moment to stymie the threat of tears that suddenly came over her. She didn’t know why she got so emotional when she came to visit, but at least once per visit a wave of sorrow hit her powerfully to see such a young girl alone in an underground cell.

  Mischa had been among the Chinese group with the ultrasonic weapon. Her handler was a redheaded Russian, a former sparrow and spy named Samara who had defected and joined the Chinese in a terrorist plot on US soil designed to look like an attack by Russians. Samara and her cohorts were now dead. Mischa alone survived. Yet no country spoke for her or claimed her; she was disavowed the world over.

  The primary reason she remained here in the Langley sublevel was certainly not because the CIA was above sending her to the Moroccan black site. No, it was because the agency could not actually prove that she had committed any crimes. No one on the team—not Zero, not Strickland, and certainly not Maria—had made any statement against her or detailing her actions.

  They simply didn’t know what to do with a possibly dangerous, possibly brainwashed, highly trained, definitely lethal child. And so she remained.

  But Maria didn’t see any of that. She simply saw a girl who, over the course of a couple of months, had shown her glimpses of vulnerability that proved she was still human.

  “What is it?” Mischa asked.

  Maria realized her eyes were still closed. She opened them and smiled when she saw the girl looking at her quizzically. “Um… to be honest, I’m sad.”

  “Why.” She asked it like a flat statement rather than a lilting question.

  “I’m sad for you,” Maria explained. “That you have to be here.”

  “I’ve been in worse places,” the girl said simply.

  “That’s no excuse,” Maria told her firmly. “You deserve better. You’re not an animal. Maybe…” She stopped herself. Maybe I could negotiate to get you a cell with a window, was what she had planned to say.

  But it would still be a cell.

  Maria had first visited the girl only a few days after her initial incarceration, and had been coming twice a week since then. For the first several visits Mischa did not even look at her, let alone say a single word. The next several visits after that were spent convincing the girl that she was not there to hurt or torture her. Maria did not want information. In fact, she didn’t want the girl to say anything at all about her past life, and that was the absolute truth; the cell was being monitored by both video and audio, and any discussion of Mischa’s past might uncover indiscretions that could get her a one-way ticket to a far worse place.

  It had taken seven weeks for Maria to learn that the girl’s favorite color was purple and that she liked Tootsie Rolls—though there was a strong indication that Mischa had never had any other type of candy. So Maria brought her some. After that it became a ritual for her to bring some morsel of food and, with the permission of Ben the guard, slip them through the small rectangular door in the cell.

  Maria knew she was being watched, but she didn’t care. In fact, she was pretty certain the reason she still had her deputy director clearances was because she was visiting the girl. As long as she was doing it on her own time, no one else had to do anything but watch, listen, and hope that some information came of it.

  Maria lowered herself to the floor and sat cross-legged just beyond the glass, her knees almost touching the surface. “Would you like to play a game?”

  Mischa looked at her from the corner of her eye for a long moment. “What sort of a game?”

  “It’s called ‘Never Have I Ever.’ Have you heard of it?”

  The girl shook her head slightly.

  “It’s very easy. Hold up three fingers, like this.” Maria knew that the girl was not going to talk openly, but she hoped that disguising some questions as a game might get her to open up more. “I’ll start by saying something I’ve never done, but I’d like to do. If you’ve done that, you put one finger down. Then you say something that you’ve never done. If all of your fingers are down, you lose.”

  Mischa stared at the floor for several seconds, long enough for Maria to think that her ploy was not as clever as she’d originally thought.

  Then the girl slowly lifted one arm and held up three fingers.

  “Good. I’ll start. Um… never have I ever been to the Bahamas.”

  The girl’s three fingers stayed up.

  “Okay,” Maria said, “now you pick something.”

  “I have never…” the girl murmured. “Played soccer.”

  Maria slowly folded one finger down. “But you’d like to?”

  Mischa nodded once.

  “Did you see other kids playing it? Or on TV?”

  “On a television. It looked…” She trailed off for a moment, as if searching her memory for the right word. “Fun.”

  Maria held back her smile. That was the biggest admission she’d gotten out of Mischa yet. “That’s good. My turn. Never have I ever eaten candy until I was sick.”

  The girl’s brow furrowed. “Why would you want to do that?”

  “Well, you wouldn’t want to, I guess. But sometimes people tend to overdo it.”

  Mischa’s three fingers stayed in the air. “I have never had a friend.”

  Maria quickly bit her lip to stifle the sharp gasp that nearly escaped. She hadn’t expected that sort of candor and it took her off guard, gripping her heart suddenly like a vise.

  “I’m sorry,” she said softly as she lowered her second finger. “Maybe we should stop.”

  “But I am winning.”

  An involuntary smile broke on Maria’s lips at that. “You’re right. You are. Okay. Uh… never have I ever raised a garden.”

  Her three small fingers remained up, and Maria held her breath at whatever she might say next.

  “I have never met my mother.”

  Maria let her breath out slowly. It was an awful statement, but not one that was all that surprising. She imagined that Mischa was likely abandoned, or orphaned, or possibly even taken by the Chinese or Samara or whatever group had trained her. She lowered her last finger and put her hands in her lap.

  “You win,” she said. The game had backfired on her completely. Outside of wanting to play soccer, the only thing Maria learned was that the girl’s life had been just as terrible as she’d previously assumed. If only…

  “Mischa,” she said suddenly. “I can’t promise that you ever will. Meet your mother, that is. But I can promise other things. I can promise that you won’t be in here forever.” She spoke quickly, as if she was afraid the words might stop flowing if she paused. “You’ll get to play soccer, and you’ll have friends, and… and you can eat candy until you’re sick if you want to. You can have all those things.” Maria blinked back tears, surprised at the flood of promises and instantly regretting them. She could try, but she couldn’t actually promise anything. “You should have all those things.”

  “How can I believe you?” the girl asked.

  Maria shook her head, knowing she was only digging a deeper hole for herself if she failed. “We start small, I guess. Let me bring you something. Not just food. Tell me something you would like. Something to do? A… a toy, or a ball, or…?” She had no idea what the girl might be interested in.

  Mischa thought for a moment. “A book.”

  “A book?”

  “Dostoyevsky.”

  Maria laughed a little in surprise. “You want me to bring you Dostoyevsky—?”

  “Notes from the Underground.”

  “Wow. Um… okay. Yes. I will. I promise.” Maria rose to her feet. “I’ll come back in a couple of days, and I will bring you the book.”

  “Thank you, Maria.” It was the first time the girl had ever referred to her by name. It felt nice, hearing her say it, but somehow foreign at th
e same time.

  “And Mischa? You were wrong about one thing. You do have a friend.”

  Maria started back down the hall, boots clacking and echoing on the concrete. She did not turn back to see, but she heard the telltale click of the small steel hatch, where the croissant lay, and she smiled.

  She didn’t know how she was going to convince anyone to release Mischa, or to even allow her some measures of privacy and space, but she was going to try like hell. The girl had given her the first clear indication that she wasn’t entirely indoctrinated, that she was still just a child after all, one who wanted friends and to play sports and to have a family.

  Maria would make that happen for her. There was no taking back the promises she’d made so hastily, and there was no other choice but to keep them.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Zero wore sunglasses and a black skull cap, his jacket collar riding high as he pulled open the door to the office of Third Street Garage in Alexandria, Virginia. His outfit was probably overkill, but ever since he’d successfully found Bixby he’d been trying to stay as incognito as possible when seeking information. The agency had tracked his whereabouts before when he hadn’t been expecting it; it was entirely possible that they still were.

  The small office was empty, except for a steel desk with an old computer and two guest chairs. He heard muffled music coming from the garage and headed that way, pulling open the second door to find himself auditorily assaulted by CCR’s “Bad Moon Rising” blaring from a stereo that looked old enough to have been made the same year as the song.

  He pressed the stop button—is that a cassette tape?—but Alan continued belting out the next few bars, very off-key, from beneath a cherry 1972 Buick Skylark.

  “That’s the best part of the song,” he grumbled as he rolled out from beneath the Buick on a squeaky creeper. “Give me a lift, would you?”

  Zero grabbed Alan’s meaty hand and grunted as he hefted the larger man to his feet. Alan groaned too, though Zero knew it was an act. Alan was broad-shouldered and carried some extra weight around the midsection, but beneath it were layers of tuned muscle from a career spent as a CIA operative. His thick beard, now flecked with gray, and trucker’s cap obscured his features and further perpetuated the identity of a simple mechanic, but Alan Reidigger was much, much more than that—not the least of which was Zero’s best friend for as long as he could remember.