Agent Zero

by Jack Mars

  “I’ll set up a fake account,” Maya had told him yesterday, “under another name. You’ll know it.”

  He set up his own fake account, using the new email address and the name Alan Moon. It was the first name that popped into his head—the name on the side of the board game he had last played with his daughters before being taken hostage. Then he searched.

  “You’ll know it,” he muttered to himself, stroking his chin stubble. “Let’s try…” He searched for the name Kate Lawson. It seemed like the most likely choice in fake names for Maya to use. Several Kate Lawsons came up, but he was certain that Maya would include some identifying detail that would tell him it was her. “Too obvious,” he scolded himself. “She’s smarter than that.” He tried Kate’s maiden name, Schoeninger. Still nothing. He tried Katherine Lawson and Katherine Schoeninger, to no avail.

  Then he almost smacked himself in the forehead. It should have been apparent right away. Kate’s middle name was Joanne—and so was Maya’s. He typed in “Katherine Joanne,” and then almost laughed out loud. One of the results had the avatar of a tiny red plastic man, holding a rifle. It was a game piece, a soldier from Risk.

  He clicked on the profile to send a message, but the words didn’t come easily.

  Am I being paranoid?

  He closed his eyes.

  No. You’re being safe. Let’s think this through.

  If I’m right, and the CIA did this to me, then they know about my girls. And if Otets wasn’t lying, and there are moles in the agency, it wouldn’t be that hard for them to find a hotel reservation under the name Lawson.

  He typed a message: I need you to leave there. No questions asked. Don’t tell me where you’re going. Don’t tell Aunt Linda. Don’t tell anyone. Don’t use your real names.

  Reid swallowed the lump in his throat as he fully realized what he was asking of Maya. He was asking his sixteen-year-old daughter to take her younger sister and simply leave, to go somewhere without telling anyone at all. But they needed to be safe. If something happened to them, he would never forgive himself.

  Remember, he typed, no phones. No police. Get on a bus and go somewhere you’ve never been before. If they had done as he had asked and taken the cash advances on his credit cards, they should have enough money to last a little while. Check in here with a message at least every twelve hours so I know you’re okay. I’ll check it as often as I’m able.

  He wanted to say more. He wanted to tell Maya that he was fine, and that he would be home soon. But he couldn’t bring himself to type the words, knowing that they weren’t at all true. He was far from fine. He had no idea if he would ever see them again.

  I love you both.

  Reid didn’t wait for a reply. Maya told him she would check the account occasionally from the hotel computers, and he didn’t expect her to be sitting in front of one, waiting for him to reach out (at least he certainly hoped she wasn’t). He logged out and then cleared the computer’s browsing history.

  The young man came out of the back room, frowning and pinching the SIM card between two fingers as if it were an offensive insect. “I am sorry,” he told Reid, “but there seems to be a problem.”

  Reid’s heart sank. “You couldn’t get anything off of it?”

  The clerk shook his head. “Almost nothing. No contact, no photos… just a single text message. It could be that the card was damaged—”

  “The text message,” Reid interrupted. “What did it say?”

  “It is an address,” the man said. “But that is all.”

  “That’s fine,” Reid said quickly. “Can you write it down?” It was possible that the SIM card was damaged in the river, but he thought it was more likely that Otets was clever enough not to store contacts and sensitive information in a phone. He probably had an address book somewhere under lock and key (though now it was certainly incinerated). Reid felt a crushing pang of disappointment in his gut. The amount of hard evidence he had destroyed in that explosion might have put a lid on this whole thing, or at the very least given him a better lead than a single address sent by text message. “I don’t suppose you got the phone number that sent it?” he asked.

  The clerk shook his head. “It was blocked.” He scribbled the address onto the back of a receipt, folded it, and handed it to Reid, who in turn slid a fifty-euro bill across the counter.

  “You never saw me,” he said. “And you certainly didn’t write down an address.”

  The clerk nodded solemnly and pocketed the note. “I’ve already forgotten it.”

  Reid took a seat at a table in the far corner to finish his coffee, though it mostly sat there growing cold as he weighed his options. He could barely process everything that had happened in the last ten hours.

  Try to chunk it, his academic brain told him. Take these individual pieces and make them into a coherent concept. Then come to the logical conclusion.

  First and foremost, he decided, was that if everything he thought he knew was correct, then his girls were not safe. Hopefully he had taken care of that with his message, but that also meant that he could no longer simply give up and go home.

  With Otets dead, he had no one to turn over to the authorities. He had no solid evidence; only the locations of bodies, burnt or shot or stabbed, and all at his hand. How would that look? And then, of course, was the bigger problem that he wasn’t sure he could even trust the authorities.

  Finally, there was himself—not the him that he knew, but this new aspect that was slowly spilling into his consciousness like a capsized oil tanker. His sense of urgency, of obligation, was growing stronger. The Kent Steele side of his brain was pushing him to keep going.

  And at this point, he didn’t see any other choice.

  Reid unfolded the receipt paper the clerk had given him and checked the address, hoping it was close by. He deflated with a deep sigh when he saw it was in Zurich.

  How the hell am I supposed to get to Switzerland?

  A flight would take barely an hour, but he didn’t have a passport or any identification at all; even if he could pay the airfare in cash, they wouldn’t let him on a plane. The same would apply with a train. He didn’t have a car—though a sudden flashing memory zipped through his brain to tell him that he knew how to disable an alarm and hotwire a vehicle. Even so, not every border would be as lax as France/Belgium was, and if the car was reported stolen, he’d have bigger problems on his hands.

  He left the café and paced down the block, pausing to buy a scone so he would have something in his stomach. He took a seat on a bench and ate slowly, thinking. A truck rumbled past him, emblazoned with a yellow delivery company logo… and it gave him an idea.

  He stepped back into the bakery and asked where the closest supermarket was. The woman behind the counter told him there was a Carrefour Market about a twelve-minute walk from there. He thanked her and headed southeast on Rue Grétry. He found the market easily—it took up nearly half a city block—but instead of going inside, he went around to the rear, to the loading bays.

  It took about forty-five minutes of milling about, but a truck finally pulled into the loading bay and slowly backed its trailer up to the rolling steel door at the back of the market. A portly driver in a derby cap climbed out and went inside for a few minutes, and then came out with his paperwork and lit a cigarette while the employees inside unloaded his cargo.

  Reid approached and smiled. “Deutsche?” he asked.

  “Ja,” said the man, somewhat suspiciously.

  “I’m looking for a ride,” Reid said in German. He flashed a few bills. “Heading south.”

  The truck driver took a long drag on his cigarette. “You are American?”

  “Yes. I lost my passport, and I have no other way back.”

  The man smirked. “Drink a bit too much, eh? Ended up in Brussels?”

  What is wrong with Americans that everyone assumes that? Reid thought. Still, it was a decent enough alibi. “Yes,” he said, trying to look sheepish. “My family is waiti
ng for me in Zurich.”

  The driver blew a plume of smoke through his nostrils. “I could lose my job for that.”

  “And I could be stuck in Belgium for weeks waiting for the embassy to help me,” Reid countered. “Please.”

  The driver grunted and kicked at a small stone, sending it skittering across the lot. “I’m heading south,” he said, “but not far enough for where you want to go. There’s a truck depot on the way. We can stop in and I’ll help get you another ride.”

  “Thank you.” Reid handed him the bills.

  The man pointed down the block. “Behind that building is a parking lot. Wait for me there.”

  Reid did as he was asked, hurrying down to the smaller lot adjacent to a business complex and waiting for the driver to pick him up. The truck rumbled into the lot about ten minutes later. The driver lifted the rear trailer gate just enough for Reid to scoot inside.

  The trailer was refrigerated to protect the load of foodstuffs it was hauling, but Reid didn’t mind. He still had the wool blanket, and he draped it over himself and hugged his knees to his chest. He’d dealt with worse cold mere hours ago. Besides—it was much better than being stopped at a border with no passport or identification.

  As the truck rumbled southbound down E411, he pulled the blanket over his head to create a pocket of heat. He realized how exhausted he was and tried to doze off, but every time the truck hit a rut in the road he jolted alert. He wasn’t yet accustomed to these new instincts; his muscles went taut as steel cables and his eyes scanned for threats. He had to constantly remind himself that he was in the back of a truck, alone, heading down a highway.

  He thought about what he might find at the address in Zurich. If everything he had been through so far was any indication, he was certain it would be nothing good. In fact, he couldn’t shake the feeling that there might have been a reason that it was the only piece of data in Otets’s phone.

  He couldn’t help but feel that he might be walking into another trap.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Reid took no time to appreciate the beauty of the wondrous city. Funny, he thought, that it used to be the tax-collecting hub of Roman provinces nearly two thousand years earlier, and now one of the world’s financial capitals. If we live through today, maybe we can come back and see it again sometime. Kent’s voice—it was his own inner voice, but the Kent side—teasing him.

  The drive to Zurich had taken about seven hours, with only one short break at a rest stop in Luxembourg where the truck driver, as promised, organized a ride for Reid into Switzerland. The second truck was (thankfully) not refrigerated, but the trailer was still chilly with the winter weather. He left his wool blanket behind in the trailer when they arrived in the city.

  He checked the address again, and paused to ask for directions to the street. It was a twenty-minute walk from where the truck had dropped him off. The weather was brisk, so he stuffed his hands in the pockets of his bomber jacket, his right fist wrapped around the Glock, as he tried to formulate a plan. He had no idea what he would find there, but he assumed the worst. Another violent faction hiding in plain sight, like the Iranians in Paris? Perhaps a bomb-making depot like Otets’s facility? He couldn’t very well just burst in with a gun drawn. Pretending to be a member hadn’t worked out very well for him last time. No, he would have to scope it out first. He couldn’t go in blind.

  The address was an apartment on the southern end of the city, overlooking the Limmat, on the third floor of a white building that looked like it might have been an inn at one point. The year etched into a cornerstone told him that it was about three hundred and fifty years old, but the steel stairs winding up the northern side of the structure were certainly newer. From the street level he could see the entrance to the apartment on the third-story landing, the white paint on the door faded with age.

  Reid meandered toward the riverbank and sat on a bench. In his periphery he could see the building and the apartment. From there he would be able to take note if anyone came or went. He admired the view of the river. Across the way was a tall stone cathedral with a sharp, rust-colored spire jabbing heavenward. A handful of geese landed on the water. All the while he kept the apartment in his field of vision, but there was no movement. No one came or went. The door never opened.

  After twenty minutes he turned up the fleece collar of his jacket. It was cold; the temperature was in the twenties, maybe less. The few people he saw out and about hurried along toward their destination. A light snow began to fall.

  An hour passed before he couldn’t stand it any longer. The waiting and the frigid air were both getting to him and there had been no signs of life.

  Reid took the steel stairs up to the third floor with one hand around the gun in his pocket. I’ll have the element of surprise, he told himself. Not like at Otets’s facility. And even then, they thought they had the drop on him and he’d escaped, hadn’t he?

  Despite the chill in the air, he felt tiny beads of sweat prickle on his brow, and…

  And he realized something. He wasn’t scared. He was nervous, and anxious, and even a little excited, but he wasn’t afraid of what he might find. It was a very strange epiphany—because while that notion scared him, the concept of entering the apartment with unknown factors inside didn’t.

  The thought of not being scared was frightening.

  He paused outside the door and put his ear to it. He couldn’t hear anything coming from inside. The nearest window was a few feet from the entrance, but too far to reach from the landing. There were only two ways to go from there: inside, or back down the stairs.

  He stood outside the door for what felt like several moments too long.

  You already know the answer, said the voice in his head. There’s no going back now. There’s nothing to find behind you. Here, there might be something.

  Reid reached out and very carefully tried the knob. It was locked. He reared back, lifted his right foot, and kicked hard, planting his boot heel just above the lock. The jamb splintered and the door flew open. He had the Glock up instantly, trained at center mass and pivoting left and right and left again mechanically.

  He was staring into a small but cozy kitchen, with an iron-grilled stovetop, cherry cabinets, a white single-basin sink, and a body on the floor.

  The smell of death hit him immediately. His stomach turned at both the sight of the body and the fact that he recognized the scent as blood and early decay. It was lying halfway in the kitchen, its lower half over the threshold at an angle in such a way that the torso and upper body were obscured behind the doorway to the next room.

  Reid choked down his impulse to gag and kept the gun aloft. Murderers don’t normally stick around, he told himself, but even so, he ignored the body for now and stepped over it as he cleared the rest of the apartment—which, it turned out, was only one other room. Beyond the kitchen was a decently large parlor, with a small round dining table in one corner and a Murphy bed in the wall. Off to the right was a clean white bathroom with a claw-footed tub.

  The apartment was empty. Well, mostly.

  Reid pocketed the Glock and knelt beside the body. It was a man, face-down in a white collared shirt, black slacks, and black socks. He wasn’t wearing shoes. And he was lying in a wide, liberal pool of dark, sticky blood.

  The smell of death was strong; this wasn’t a recent murder. Reid didn’t want to touch the body, so he got down on his hands and knees, careful to avoid any blood, and peered into the puffy, bloated face. This man had been dead at least twenty-four hours, maybe a little more.

  And then—a memory flashed through his head like a bolt of lightning. He saw the same face, but alive… a boyish smile, neatly combed hair, carrying a bit of extra weight in his chin and neck.

  The Ritz in Madrid. Reidigger covers the hall as you kick in the door and catch the bomber off guard. The man goes for the gun on the bureau, but you’re faster. You snap his wrist… Later Reidigger tells you he heard the sound from out in the corridor. Turned
his stomach. Everyone laughs.

  “Jesus,” Reid whispered. He knew this man—he used to know this man. No, it was even more than that…

  A hotel room in Abu Dhabi. Two a.m. Reidigger looks exhausted as he idly eats a slice of cold pizza. He offers you one. You’re busy cleaning your gun.

  “No thanks.”

  “Kent,” he says, “I know this is hard, but—”

  “No,” you tell him. “You don’t know.”

  “We’re worried about you—”

  “I’m going to find him, Alan. And I’m going to kill him. If you’re not going to help me, then stay out of the way.”

  Reid sniffed once. His emotions were confusing and overwhelming. Tears were stinging in his eyes and he barely knew why. This man had been a friend, but he could hardly recall more than a few memories.

  Your wedding. You stand next to Kate and hold both her hands. She’s never looked more beautiful. You both say “I do.” You head down the aisle, holding hands and smiling. Scanning the crowd as they applaud.

  Near the back, you spot him. He wasn’t supposed to come—could have blown your cover—but he snuck in anyway. He had to see. He gives you a grin and nods subtly before slipping out the back door…

  Reid covered his face with both hands and sighed, trying to get a grip on himself. This man’s name was Alan Reidigger, he knew. He was a friend. And he was an agent of the CIA.

  You need to look around. Check his pockets. Find something. Or else this is a dead end.

  “I don’t want to touch the body.” He was barely aware that he was talking to himself.

  Reidigger hated getting his hands dirty—literally. Check the sink.

  In the kitchen cupboard beneath the single-basin sink, Reid found a pair of yellow rubber gloves. He pulled them on up to his elbows, and then, after a moment of hesitation, he carefully lifted Reidigger’s shoulder.

  “Good god,” he whispered. The front of the agent’s shirt was completely soaked in blood. He had been stabbed—and not just once. There were small puncture wounds up his thighs, his abdomen, in both arms…