Agent Zero

by Jack Mars

  “Well, this whole thing is just tits-up.” Mullen sighed. “So why don’t you run through it with me quick? Because this need-to-know just became very need-to-know.” At the time, Mullen hadn’t wanted any details. He just wanted it done. And the thought of recounting the ordeal turned Cartwright’s stomach.

  “All right. I put Morris and, uh…” He sighed. “I put Morris and Reidigger on it…”

  Mullen scoffed in disbelief. “His own guys? Christ, Cartwright.”

  “They volunteered!” he said defensively. “They knew how he was getting. They both came to me, separately, with their concerns. He was going to get himself shot or killed or both, and his recklessness could have compromised them, too. And then, after… well, you know what happened… and Zero got worse, they came back to me. They knew we were going to do it anyway, so the two of them offered to be the ones to carry it out. They were his friends. They wanted it done quick and clean.”

  “And they did it,” Mullen said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And now one of them is dead.”

  “…Yes, sir.”

  “And we have pretty good reason to believe that Zero was there.”

  Cartwright gulped. “It would appear so, sir.”

  “Your agents, did they have proof that they eliminated him?” Mullen asked prudently.

  The deputy director looked up sharply. “Proof, sir?” Good lord, what was the director suggesting—that he should have asked his agents to bring him an ear? “Since when does Special Ops get proof? No, they buried it, and they sent him to the bottom of the river.”

  “At least that’s what they told you,” Mullen said.

  “I trusted my guys.” Director or not, Cartwright was starting to get irritated.

  “The other one, Morris. He still works under you, yes? Where is he now?”

  Cartwright thought for a moment. “Um… Morris is UC somewhere near Barcelona. He should be checking in sometime in the next six hours. What do you want me to do? Call him in?”

  “No.” Mullen stroked his chin. “But pull him off his op. I want him ready to fly on a moment’s notice. Someone has murdered an agent, and as soon as this guy crops up again—whether it’s Zero or not—you get Morris there. Clear?”

  “Clear, sir.”

  “Take care of it this time. I’m not putting Bolton on this, or anyone else. This is up to you. We can’t have this getting out. We can’t have Internal Affairs sniffing around here. And we certainly can’t risk a story leaking to the general public.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  “Good. Go.”

  Cartwright stood and buttoned his suit jacket. His legs felt weak. If Steele was still alive… well, he didn’t want to think about what could happen.

  With his hand on the doorknob, Mullen called out once more. “And Cartwright? It’s shoot to kill. You understand? I won’t have him rampaging across Europe again. That would be very bad for me… and for you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Cartwright hurried back to his office, nodding to colleagues as he passed and forcing a smile. As soon as he was inside with the door closed and locked, he heaved a sigh and made a call to Morris on the secure line.

  He didn’t bother with greetings or small talk. “We have reason to believe that Agent Zero might still be alive,” he said sternly. “I need you to make it not so.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Reid noticed that the businesswoman across the aisle from him on the train had a tote bag with the corner of a laptop computer sticking out. “Excuse me,” he leaned over and said quietly, “do you speak English?”

  She raised an eyebrow suspiciously, but nodded once. “Yes.”

  “I know this may be forward, but may I borrow your computer for a moment? I just want to check in on my children.”

  At the mention of children, the woman softened visibly. “By all means.” She pulled the computer from her bag and handed it to him.

  “Thank you. I’ll just be a few minutes.”

  The train ride from Zurich to Rome took nearly ten hours. A flight would have only taken about an hour and a half, and now that Reid had a passport, he could have hopped on a plane—but that would have meant dumping both the Glock and the Walther, and he wasn’t in favor of the idea of going forward unarmed. So instead he had gotten on a train at Zurich Hauptbahnhof and took the overnight trip to Italy.

  The seats were comfortable enough to sleep, but all he could manage was catnapping for twenty or thirty minutes at a time. He was having trouble quieting his mind. Would there be anything to find at the fountain? He would have to check the apartment, the former safe house for his team, but he doubted it was even still in use. He was very much aware that it could be another dead end—and then what would he do? Give up? Turn himself in to the CIA?

  Absolutely not. Not while they think you’re supposed to be dead. Not while they suspect you might have killed Reidigger. The last thing you want is to end up in a black site prison cell, like the sheikh. Death would be preferable.

  He had to believe that there would be something at the fountain. He had to keep telling himself that Reidigger was a friend, and that there was a reason he had kept the photograph.

  Reid powered the computer on and logged into Skype’s website. He had a message waiting from Katherine Joanne’s account.

  It was just four simple words: Are we in danger??

  His heart nearly broke, thinking of his girls holed up in a hotel with barely a clue of why they were there or what was happening, just the vague instructions that they should leave there, go somewhere they’ve never been before, avoid use of their phones, and not tell anyone where they were going. Even worse was that he couldn’t answer Maya’s question because he had no idea if the girls were in any real danger or not. The only thing he could do was assume that the same people who knew about him also knew about them—and that was enough for him to question their safety.

  He decided that honesty was the best policy. Maya may have only been sixteen, but she was smart and capable, and he was asking a lot of her. Too much. She deserved something more to go on.

  He typed: It’s possible. I don’t know for sure. I’m sorry that I can’t tell you more. I just want you both to be safe. Please, take care of your sister. I love you both.

  As he moved the cursor to log out, an icon appeared to show Katherine Joanne as online. A new message appeared: You keep saying that. Like you’re not coming back.

  He waited a moment for more, his throat tight, but nothing else came. He typed back, I will. I promise. And then he quickly logged out before the urge to tell her more grew too strong. He certainly wanted to—they were both so smart, and maybe even old enough to handle the truth, especially Maya—yet he simply couldn’t risk endangering them any further. He wondered if Amun knew about the girls at all, or if they had simply decided to leave the children out of it. If it was the latter, how long would that last until they tried to use the girls against him? He hoped the kids had found somewhere safe, outside the city, like he’d asked. He hoped their Aunt Linda was resisting the urge to get the police involved. He hoped the girls were staying off their phones. Most of all, he hoped that Reidigger hadn’t said anything about them, despite the obvious torture he had been through.

  Reid stared blankly at the log-out screen as unthinkably horrible thoughts swam in his imagination—the very notion of the same kind of men that had come for him getting to his girls made him shiver.

  I would kill every single one of them if they touched a hair on their heads.

  He couldn’t tell if that was Kent’s thought or Reid’s thought—the willingness to kill, to do unspeakable things to defend his family. It didn’t matter, he realized; they were both a father. Besides, they were both the same person. Kent’s thoughts, Reid’s thoughts… they were both a part of him. The further he got, the more he grew to know Kent, and the less distinguishable the two personalities became. They were him, plain and simple. He knew that much now. One was just mo
re vague and fuzzy than the other.

  There was something else, some small nagging notion gently tugging at the edge of his subconscious like a child pulling on their mother’s skirt. He’d felt this before; it almost felt like déjà vu, but he wasn’t getting the feeling he’d been on a train from Zurich to Rome before. It was as if his mind wanted him to relive some memory that it knew was there, even if he didn’t.

  He saw Kate. He saw her in her white wedding dress on the day they said their vows. He saw her on a beach in Mexico on their honeymoon. He saw her smiling as she leaned over Maya’s crib.

  He saw her petrified, too far for him to reach in time, her mouth opened in the silent yawn of a scream…

  And then the mental image of Kate blurred, turning amorphous and indistinguishable. His forehead throbbed as a headache came on, swiftly and painfully. He held his temples and took even breaths.

  The woman across the aisle leaned over. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” he murmured. “Migraines.”

  The headache slowly receded over the course of a minute. Strange, he thought. He shook it off.

  He was about to close the computer and give it back to the woman when he got another idea. He opened a new browser tab and did an Internet search for “Amun.” Not surprisingly, the first several pages of results all had to do with the same subject, the ancient Egyptian god.

  Reid had no idea what correlation, if any, there might be between the Egyptian god and the terrorist organization. But still he perused pages and read everything he could about Amun’s rise and eventual decline. He already knew most of it. He tried to narrow his search to the sixth century’s “cult of Amun,” the last surviving group that worshiped the ancient god before Christianity stifled and extinguished the old deity’s following. Yet he found little information about them, and even less that was new to him. He scanned several websites, looking for some detail, some sort of connection or possible explanation.

  Then he saw it, and his blood ran cold.

  On a website dedicated to Egyptian heritage and culture, he saw a symbol—a hieroglyph, somewhat crude but based on those found in archaeological digs. It appeared to be a feather, and next to it a rectangle, and below that a zigzagging line, the way a child would draw mountains.

  He had seen that glyph before, a few times now, seared into the necks of three of the men he had killed. It was the hieroglyph of Amun.

  What does it mean? Fanatics? Remnants of the cult? But why?

  He rubbed his face. He was too tired to think straight without jumping to wild conjecture. Besides, he needed real leads, not stories about ancient gods and long-dead pharaohs. He closed the computer and gave it back to the woman, settled into his seat, and napped intermittently for the rest of the train trip.

  They arrived in Rome as the sun was coming up once again. Reid was far from well rested, but at least he had managed to get some sleep. He bought an espresso at the train station, and while he waited, he struggled to remember what day it was, how long it had been since he was kidnapped from his home. Had it only been two days? It felt like a lot longer, as if it could have been weeks ago.

  Much like in Paris, Kent’s memories guided him along the streets of Rome. He knew it well, it seemed; street signs and sights ignited his limbic system like a lively pinball machine. He didn’t even have to break his brisk stride to find the Piazza Mattei, and with it, the Fontana delle Tartarughe.

  The fountain was not particularly large, or even all that grand in comparison to many others that Rome had to offer, but it was quite beautiful. In it, four bronze men held up a vasque, each with a hand upraised as if reaching for the very realistic turtles around the edge of the marble basin.

  He stood there for a long moment, admiring it, fighting the urge to chuckle sardonically. How many times had Reid Lawson told himself that he would make this same trip? How often had he promised that one day he and the girls would visit Italy, Spain, France, Greece? And now here he stood, not for leisure but out of necessity, because his life quite literally depended on it.

  A vision flashed—in his mind he saw four people, standing around the fountain, admiring it as if they were tourists. He was among them. Reidigger was there. A younger man, with dark hair and a cocky smile. Morris. And the blonde woman from his memories, the one with the slate-gray eyes. Johansson.

  The four of us planned an op here, in the hotel across from the piazza. We reconned the area and established our safe house here. We stood in front of this fountain and asked an Asian tourist to take our picture. It was Reidigger’s idea. Morris pretended not to like it. We knew we shouldn’t. But we did it anyway.

  He looked past the fountain, at the tall, white-bricked building behind it. It was the former manor house of the Mattei family, long since renovated into luxury apartments. He knew right away that the safe house was through the stone archway, into the courtyard, and up the stairs, the smallest unit on the second floor at the end of the hall. It had a window facing the fountain.

  Reid glanced upward at the window. He couldn’t see anything in the morning sunlight other than white curtains tied back with sashes from the inside.

  He thought about whether or not he should go up. Would he find anything there? Was it even a safe house anymore, or would he be breaking in to find a family eating breakfast?

  Why did I even come here? This was stupid of me, following an old photo for no good reason. I should have thought this through. I should have…

  He felt a familiar yet distinct sensation, just like he had in the dive bar in Paris—he was being watched. He was certain of it; Kent’s instincts were screaming at him. He acted casual, pretending to admire the fountain while circling around it and checking his periphery. As far as he could tell, he was alone in the piazza, but he was also surrounded on every side by several stories of windows.

  I need to move.

  He stuck his hand in his jacket pocket and wrapped it around the Glock. There was only one way for him to go; he wasn’t about to leave, to give up after traveling so far. So he crossed the piazza and walked under the domed stone archway of the apartment building and into the courtyard, eager to get out from the view of all those windows.

  The courtyard’s gardens were well cared for—a new memory flashed of springtime in Rome, vibrant flowers growing in impeccable rows—though it was too cold for that now.

  He followed the paved walkway to a set of stone stairs that led up and into the building. Just inside the foyer, to his left, was another set of stairs, which emptied into a corridor with two doors on each side. Reid ran his left hand along the wall as he quietly made his way down the hall. The plaster felt rough and old and uneven, yet there was a rich history in these walls. He had once been a small, almost negligible part of it, whether he remembered it or not.

  He paused at the last door on the left. Behind it would be the safe house, the apartment that his team had established as a meeting place.

  Reid adjusted the bug-out bag on his shoulder and clicked the safety off the Glock 27. He didn’t take the pistol out, but leveled the barrel toward any potential threat he might find on the other side of the door.

  He wanted to trust that Reidigger had sent him there for a reason. He wanted to believe that Alan had been on his side. He wanted to assume that the photograph was a clue that would point him to a safe place, another lead, the next step on this bizarre journey.

  He tried the knob, gripping it with only two fingers and turning it slowly, very slowly.

  It turned in his grasp.

  He pushed the door open a few inches and carefully glanced into the apartment.

  He was looking into a small living room. Almost everything about it looked old, right down to the plumbing and the worn exposed beams overhead. Someone had spruced the place up a bit from the image he had in his mind; there were fresh flowers on the coffee table and a few colorful throw pillows on the sofa, but otherwise every wall and piece of furniture was white or gray. It was a bizarre dichotomy, as if some v
ivid life form was trying to break through a neutral, bland existence.

  Reid chanced pushing the door a bit further. He took a cautious step across the threshold, turning his body sideways and slipping inside. It didn’t appear anyone was there.

  Then—the telltale clink of a glass cup. A sink running. Someone yawned.

  Reid froze. He could see only the edge of the kitchen, around the corner from the living room. But someone was there, moving around. He held his breath and took another step, moving his body entirely into the apartment. He slowly, slowly pushed the door closed behind him.

  The hinges squealed.

  “Hello?” A woman’s voice. She came around the corner.

  She had light, creamy skin and blonde, tousled hair pulled back into a loose ponytail. It was still early; she was in pajama pants and a tank top, as if she had just woken up.

  But her face told a different story. Her slate-gray eyes were wide in shock and her mouth agape as she stared directly at Reid.

  A teacup slipped from her grasp and shattered on the floor.

  It was her. The woman from his memories.

  Johansson.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Kent Steele is alive.”

  The words ran through his head like a mantra, over and over. Kent Steele is alive. Kent Steele is alive. How strange it was that four seemingly simple words could raise such incredible ire, could make his blood boil and his lips curl involuntarily into a furious snarl.

  Rais stood in front of the mirror in the dingy bathroom, his shirt off and draped over the shower rod. Two of the four light bulbs were burnt out in the vanity over the sink as he mixed bleach powder and peroxide in a small stainless steel bowl with a plastic spoon.

  Amun had put the defector agent in direct contact with him. Rais did not know the agent’s name; within Amun they referred to him only as Agent One, a flippant codename based on his former teammate, the infamous Agent Zero. Rais refused to refer to Kent Steele by anything but his real name. Agent Zero was a boogeyman, a monstrous bugbear that could become shadow and be anywhere. The name was whispered in fear and trepidation, even among members of Amun. But Rais knew all too well that Kent Steele was just a man, of flesh and blood.