Agent Zero

by Jack Mars

  Panic rose in his chest. Had something happened to them? If it had, how would he ever know? How could he find them?

  Calm down. It’s early yet over there.

  They could just be sleeping.

  He typed out a quick message—It’s been more than 12 hours. Check in, please. He waited for ten minutes. Then twenty. The clerk at the wireless store finished pulling the contacts from Maria’s phone and printed them for him, but still there was no reply from Maya. Reid was desperate, but he knew he couldn’t stay there. Not while the blond Amun assassin was still at large. He had to get out of Rome as soon as possible.

  Though it broke his heart to think that any harm might have befallen his girls, he forced himself to leave the café and wandered into a travel agency a few blocks over, where he paid a hundred and fifty euros for a ticket on a tourist bus line that was heading to Ljubljana, Slovenia’s capital, with a transfer in Venice.

  The other passengers were a blend of American, Canadian, English, a few French, and a middle-aged couple from Australia. They chatted excitedly to each other about their travels through Europe, what they had seen and had yet to see, and how their countries were faring in the winter games.

  Reid kept to himself—aside from the lanky kid across the aisle who updated him on snowboarding—as he pored over the printed contacts he had gotten from Maria’s phone. He did not recognize any of the names. None of them incited any visions or memories. He knew she was smart; it was possible they were all fake, or mostly fake, to throw anyone off the trail who might have gotten their hands on the phone. There was not a single address in the phone listed under Slovenia, but on his second pass over the documents he finally found it—a street and a block number followed by the letters “MBX.”

  The airport code for Maribor, a city in eastern Slovenia.

  The contact name attributed to the address was Elene Stekt. What sort of name is that? he wondered. Hungarian? Dutch? Something seemed simultaneously strange and familiar about the name. He stared at it for several minutes before he realized.

  It was an anagram of his own name—rather, one of his names. It couldn’t be a coincidence that Elene Stekt also spelled Kent Steele.

  But Maria thought I was dead. Why would she hide my name on this particular contact?

  He came to two possible conclusions. Either she had lied to him about that as well, and knew that he was still alive before he’d ever shown up… or she had done it after he arrived in Rome, which meant that she had intended to give him the phone well before Morris ever came for him.

  His thoughts were interrupted by a loud woman two rows behind him on the bus, wishing other passengers a happy Valentine’s Day. Reid hadn’t been keeping track of the days. His thoughts went again to his girls, especially Maya—she had a date in the city with some boy today. That seemed like ages ago, that night she cooked dinner and admitted she needed to buy a dress. His heart broke anew for his girls, but he forced himself to think of something else.

  His mind drifted back to the Amun assassin in the subway bathroom in Rome. The experience had rattled him; the blond stranger was fast, well trained, and unafraid. But what bothered Reid most was that he had the odd feeling that he wasn’t a stranger at all. His face had seemed just on the edge of familiarity.

  “You know me,” the assassin had sneered.

  Reid closed his eyes and tried to conjure the image of the assassin’s face. He pictured blond hair, blue eyes, sharp features, shorn cheeks. Blood eking from his nose where Reid had hit him with a stall door. The snarl on his lips as he tried to kill him. It had all seemed so personal, like this man had a vendetta. But the image did not trigger any memories. Instead, it blurred and faded, and spurred a fresh headache that pounded at his temples.

  Reid groaned in frustration and rubbed his forehead. If Maria was right and these headaches and faded memories were side effects of the implant being torn out, did he have to worry about long-term damage? How useful would he be to himself, or anyone, if he couldn’t remember details that might prove crucial?

  Try as he might to stay focused on the task at hand, he found himself vacillating between thoughts of his girls, of the sneering assassin, of Morris, and of Maria.

  The bus arrived in Ljubljana by dusk, pulling into a station adjacent to the Jože Pučnik Airport. A time and temperature display just outside the bus station told him that it was only nine degrees outside. Reid ducked into a restroom and put on the thermal sweater from Reidigger’s bug-out bag under his jacket. Then he walked over to the airport, to a rental agency, and signed out a motorbike using his alias, Benjamin Cosgrove. The clerk there spoke decent English and insisted that Reid needed a valid credit card to rent a vehicle—until he slid a fifty-euro note across the counter. He signed Ben’s name to a contract stating that he wouldn’t leave the city limits with it.

  Then he drove the hour and a half to Maribor.

  He had never driven a motorcycle before—at least Reid Lawson hadn’t—but Kent Steele handled the bike expertly. The February wind was cold and biting, but his fleece-lined bomber jacket and the thermal sweater kept him warm enough. A car might have been better for the weather, but the bike would be much easier to conceal and stash somewhere.

  He entered the city from the southwest. Maribor was a simply stunning city; its Old Town section was rustic and charming, comprised of well-lit orange-roofed villas appointed along the Drava River, colorful and bright even at night. It was a major cultural hub, not only of Slovenia but of the whole of Europe. Its downtown contained tall gray spires, centuries-old cathedrals, and a landscape of rich and storied architecture.

  But that’s not where Reid was going.

  Before leaving Maribor proper, he parked the bike at a public park and took a seat on the bench. He was starving; he hadn’t eaten anything all day, so he removed one of the MREs from Reidigger’s GOOD bag and tore it open. A “meal, ready to eat” was a lightweight, self-contained ration used by the US military when a facility wasn’t readily available. In this particular case, it was a pouched meal that claimed to be beef brisket, but turned out to be barely palatable. Still, he needed something in his stomach. He ate quickly with the plastic spoon included in the kit, and then tossed the remnants in the trash.

  While he ate, he planned.

  He was keenly aware that save for the three-inch Swiss Army knife, he was wholly unarmed. He would have to play this very carefully. After considering his options and conferring with Kent’s knowledge of makeshift weapons, he got back on the bike and drove to a retail district, where he stopped into a hardware store and bought two cans of aerosol lubricant spray, a European knockoff brand of WD-40.

  The white-haired hardware store clerk was a native Slovenian, but had taken enough German in school for simple conversation. Reid pretended to be a tourist motorbiking across the country. He showed the clerk the address and asked the easiest way to get there.

  The old man frowned. “Why do you want to go there?” he asked.

  “To see a friend,” Reid replied.

  The clerk shrugged and issued a vague warning. “Keep tight hold on your backpack.” He didn’t know the precise address, but he was able to give Reid directions to the street he was seeking.

  He got back on the bike and traveled east, nearly to the city’s limits. The grandeur of Maribor proper melted away as Reid found himself in an area that anyone would describe as the slums—cracked concrete and crumbling foundations, graffiti-strewn facades and tireless coupes on cinder blocks. It was as if a veil had been lifted; as if the splendor of Maribor’s Old Town was a front to hide the poor neighborhoods, the ghettos, the leaning buildings that looked like they had been haphazardly stacked atop one another. There were few people out at this time of night, and those who were had somber expressions and stared at the ground sullenly. Even so, he felt as if there were eyes on him from somewhere nearby—possibly noticing he was American, marking him as a potential target for theft.

  The address from Maria’s phone le
d him to a flat, wide, two-story industrial building with large, rolling steel garage bay doors lining the street-facing side. The foundation was, unsurprisingly, crumbling and Reid could have sworn the eastern face of the brown-bricked building was visibly sagging. He stowed the bike behind a rusted dumpster a block away and used the cover of darkness to edge his way along the drooping façade of the warehouse, down an alley.

  The adjacent gray building looked like it might have been low-income apartments at some point, but now seemed to be abandoned. He took a chance and entered a broken door at the ground level facing the alley.

  The interior smelled strongly of mold and urine. There were holes in the wooden floor, gaping openings with jagged edges yawning into darkness below. He stepped carefully and made his way to a thoroughly untrustworthy-looking staircase. After testing his weight on the bottommost few stairs, he took a chance and started up.

  On the second floor he found a position near a broken window and watched the warehouse across the narrow alley. His vantage point was little more than ten feet away; he could clearly see a single lit window, the only light on in the whole building, it seemed. There was no window covering. Reid moved to a closer window and adjusted his position to account for parallax. Inside the opposite building he could see a trio of men playing cards—poker, by the looks of it—and a fourth man watching over their shoulder. They were in a former office that had apparently been haphazardly arranged into some sort of living quarters; behind them was a kitchenette, and he could see the edge of a ratty sofa from his view.

  Three of the men were white, two were bearded, one was bald, and the fourth was Arabic. There must not have been much heat in the building; all four wore jackets, no doubt hiding guns beneath them. Reid couldn’t tell which, if any, or if all, were Amun. Even if he had binoculars to sight in on their necks, the high collars of their coats would have obscured the brand.

  They seemed to be at ease. He would at least have the element of surprise on his side.

  Reid unzipped the bug-out bag and took out the roll of duct tape and the two road flares that Reidigger had packed, and then the two cans of aerosol oil he’d purchased in Ljubljana. He uncapped the cans and duct-taped a flare to the side of each. Then he put them back in the bag and carefully headed down the stairs again to the ground level. From there, he stole quickly down the alley and around to a steel security door on the western side.

  He paused with his fingers on the handle and took a breath. No matter what happened, he promised himself, he would have to do whatever was necessary to get information. Like Maria had said back in Rome—he was one person with no one at his back and no one he could trust, not even the agency.

  By whatever means necessary.

  I will. I have to.

  He pulled the door open. It squealed shrilly on its hinges.

  Just inside was a small landing, a steel staircase leading up, and a single man sitting in a folding lawn chair and reading a newspaper. As soon as Reid took a single step inside, the thug tossed the paper aside and leapt up, scowling deeply. He was large, more fat than muscle, with long, dark hair pulled into a tight ponytail.

  “Who are you?” he barked in Russian as his hand moved to the revolver holstered at his hip.

  Reid did not answer—at least, not with words. As soon as he yanked the door open, he took two brisk strides and jabbed quickly with his right fist. He caught the man just behind the chin, on the part of the jaw commonly referred to by fighters as “the knockout button” or “the off-switch.” The leverage behind the strike rattled the thug’s head hard enough to jar his brain. His large body went limp and he collapsed to the floor.

  Reid first relieved him of his revolver—a break-action MP-412 REX, Russian model, .357 Magnum. The gun felt heavy and unwieldy in his hand, but he was in a pinch. It would have to do. He snapped open the chamber. It was fully loaded.

  Reid bent again to check the thug’s neck when he moaned and stirred. His eyes opened and he rolled over onto his forearms, attempting to rise. Reid quickly snaked his arm around the Russian’s neck and squeezed him into a sleeper hold. The thug struggled. He was regaining his strength—and he was strong.

  Reid shifted his arm slightly, just enough to see the man’s neck. There was no brand there. But while his gaze was averted, the thug loosed a lockback knife from his pocket and whipped it open.

  Reid twisted both arms in opposite directions and snapped the thug’s neck. The large man slumped back to the floor, his eyes wide, mouth frozen in a wide grimace.

  It takes only seven pounds of pressure to break the hyoid bone.

  Reid took a calming breath.

  Whatever it takes, he reminded himself.

  He headed up the stairs.

  On the landing outside their door, he opened the bug-out bag as quietly as possible and took out one of his makeshift flash-bangs, the aerosol lubricant with a flare taped to the side. He put his ear to the door; he could hear the voices inside, chatting with each other in both Russian and what he assumed was Slovenian (he didn’t recognize it). There was the occasional shout of a curse and laughter from the others as someone won or lost a poker hand.

  They were at ease. They heard nothing. They suspected nothing.

  He made sure the Swiss Army knife was in his jacket pocket, blade open and at the ready.

  Then he kicked in the door.

  At the same time he splintered the jamb, he popped the flare. The four men at the table leapt up, shouting in Slovenian and Russian, overlapping one another. Reid threw his small bomb through the doorway. It arced in the air. The men squinted in the sudden, blasting light of the phosphorous tip of the flare as it ignited in sheer, blinding white. Reid ducked around the corner, his hands over both ears and eyes squeezed shut.

  The aerosol can bounced once on the table and exploded.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  The blast was instant and impressive, louder than the chug of a shotgun. The orange fireball lasted only a half second but sent a wave of scorching heat throughout the office-turned-living space. The four men either leapt to the floor or were forced to it, sent reeling by the improvised flash-bang.

  Reid rounded the corner and entered the makeshift apartment. A haze of smoke filled the room. The explosion had cracked the thin card table in half. There were several small fires burning, scattered playing cards smoldering into ash. One of the men stood, wobbling on his legs—the bald man he had seen through the window. A thin trail of blood fell from each ear. He barely even seemed to notice that anyone had entered the apartment before Reid drove an elbow into his solar plexus, doubling him over. A swift knee to the forehead rendered him unconscious.

  Reid spun with the stolen revolver raised and scanned the room. The Arabic man was on the floor, unmoving. A third man was making a feeble attempt to draw a gun from a shoulder holster, but he was disoriented. His eyes were bloodshot. His face was a shiny red and his eyebrows were gone. The rapid fireball must have gotten him right in the face.

  He pulled out the pistol, but it clattered to the floor in his shaky hand. He staggered. Reid kicked at his hip and the man fell, spinning to the floor. He checked the man’s neck. No brand. He inspected the two unconscious men. No brands there, either.

  There were four. He had definitely seen four men through the window. He hurried toward the rear of the apartment, leading with the pistol as he entered a dingy space with walls of bare drywall. There were two mattresses on the floor and a lamp without a shade, but no person. He heard a clatter from behind a closed door to his left. He kicked it open. It was a bathroom, filthy and smelling strongly of mildew and burnt hair.

  The fourth man had forced a window open and was trying to wriggle out of it, but the opening was barely more than a foot wide. He was about a third of the way out, his head and arms through but his midsection hanging over the tub and his legs kicking at the air.

  Reid grabbed him by the back of his belt and yanked him back into the bathroom. The man fell into the yellow-ringed tub
in a heap. He had an impressive burn down the left side of his face, and most of his beard was scorched off.

  The man glared up at Reid with a mask of hatred. In that moment, he could clearly see the brand, the glyph of Amun, standing in sharp relief against the bright red skin of the man’s neck.

  “Amun,” Reid said.

  For a moment, a glimmer of fear registered in the man’s eyes. This stranger knew who he was. “Zero,” the man murmured.

  Then Reid flipped the pistol around in his hand and smacked the man sharply on the temple. He slumped into the tub, unconscious.

  Reid hurried out to the living room. The single still-conscious man was crawling on his hands and knees toward the door. Reid grabbed him by an ankle and dragged him back in as he yelped and protested in Russian. He took the duct tape out of the bug-out bag and bound the man by his wrists and ankles, and then tore off a short strip and covered the man’s mouth.

  He quickly did the same with the two unconscious men. They would likely be awake soon, and they wouldn’t stay disoriented forever.

  Back in the bathroom, he twisted a long strip of duct tape around the Amun man’s wrists. He hauled him upright and slapped his cheek a few times. The man grunted and groaned as he came to.

  “English?” Reid asked. “Hmm?”

  “To hell with you,” the man muttered. His accent was difficult to place; Romanian, it seemed, or possibly Bulgarian. “I tell you nothing. You may as well shoot me.” His voice was weak and his words slurred slightly.

  Reid shook his head and set the REX revolver down on the back of the toilet. “I’m not going to shoot you,” he said. He took the Swiss Army knife out of his pocket. “See this? You know what this is? It’s a handy little tool. I was a Boy Scout, decades ago—had one just like it. Let’s see… it’s got a screwdriver. A can opener. A knife, of course.” He opened each implement, showed it off, and then snapped it shut again. “Tweezers. Little saw blade here… actually, I think that’s for scaling fish.” Reid opened the corkscrew and scoffed lightly. “Corkscrew. Isn’t that funny? Like anyone is using a Swiss Army knife to open a bottle of cabernet.”