Agent Zero

by Jack Mars

  Bolton stopped chewing and simply stared.

  The plot had failed. Zero must have figured it out. Only a single bomb had detonated.

  He felt a tight knot of panic in his chest. The half-eaten cheesesteak threatened to come back up.

  He knew all too well what Amun did to people who failed them.

  They wouldn’t dare, he thought. He was a CIA official. They needed him. Besides, wasn’t he the one who had given them Alan Reidigger?

  Alan had made a grave error. Several months ago, he had used the CIA database to check up on someone named Reid Lawson. Bolton tracked the activities of all his field agents; to an outside observer, it would look like he was just being a thorough boss, but his propensity for following up on his agents was a byproduct of his own paranoia. At the time, however, he had thought little of it. Reidigger was on a human trafficking op. It had nothing to do with Amun.

  But then Alan checked up again on the same name just a few months earlier. Bolton grew suspicious; Reidigger left the name out of his report, despite having checked up on this person twice now. What was stranger still was that the database contained no information on the man—no background, no address, no phone number, nothing. Merely a name.

  It was odd that the CIA would have an empty data file on someone, but it was more so that Alan would continuously look it up with no note in his briefing. And when Reidigger searched the database for a third time only a few weeks ago, Bolton decided to look into it himself. An Internet search for Reid Lawson came up with dozens of results; there was no way to tell for sure which one was Reidigger’s Lawson.

  Then Bolton realized: that was exactly the point. Reidigger wasn’t checking the database to find Reid Lawson. He was checking it to make sure there was no information available. Someone had altered the file, obfuscated the data, and Bolton was fairly certain it was Reidigger himself. A deletion from CIA records would certainly raise some eyebrows, but files were altered or amended on a daily basis.

  Bolton hated the idea that any of his agents might be keeping secrets from him—ironic, since his own secrets could get himself and others killed—so he dug deeper, checking into the CIA archives for any mention of a Reid Lawson.

  And he found one.

  Deputy Director Steve Bolton was shocked to discover that Reid Lawson was the birth name of one Agent Zero. Not only was Kent Steele alive, but he had eluded the CIA under the one alias that no one ever thought he would actually use… his real name. And Reidigger knew it.

  Bolton had given Reidigger, his own agent, to Amun. They had tortured him for the whereabouts of Kent Steele, and then they killed him.

  The deputy director had done everything they had asked. They wouldn’t dare touch him.

  Even so, he took a pen from his jacket pocket as he slid his iced tea off the coaster, flipped it over, and jotted out a quick note. Cartwright had let it slip that the NSA was monitoring all members of the CIA in supervisory roles, so he had to be careful with his correspondence.

  I didn’t know, he wrote. They went dark.

  It was a poor excuse, but it was an excuse nonetheless. It’s the only thing that made sense to him; Cartwright and Zero must have gone dark. As the head of Special Operations Group, he should have been privy to the knowledge of a strike on Davos, but he had heard nothing beyond the potential attack on the Winter Olympics.

  Somewhere in the sports bar with him was a member of Amun. Bolton had no idea who it might be or if there was more than one, but he knew they were watching him, following him, and picking up his correspondence as he left them. They would intercept the coaster and see his note. And then… Well, he had no idea what might happen from there.

  But he did know that he had left his sidearm in his desk drawer when he left for lunch.

  His phone rang, but he ignored it. Instead he dropped a twenty on the bar, rose from his stool, and pulled on a coat. He strode quickly to the door, and as he pushed it open, he saw movement in his periphery. He didn’t turn. He knew.

  Someone was following him. They ignored his message, the coaster, and followed him out into daylight. They didn’t bother trying to hide the fact that they were tailing him.

  His throat ran dry. They wouldn’t dare, he told himself.

  Steve Bolton stepped out into the afternoon daylight, and the man from Amun followed.

  CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

  “Agent Steele? Did you hear what I said?”

  Reid snapped out of his thoughts and glanced over at the young agent sitting at his bedside. She was one of Cartwright’s, one of the agents he had sent by helicopter to assist with Davos. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-five. Davos had likely been her first major op.

  She had also told him her name twice and he still hadn’t retained it. Not from lack of regard. He just had a lot weighing on him.

  “Um, sorry. I was… distracted. Can you repeat that?”

  “I said that Agent Johansson is improving,” the agent replied. “She received a blood transfusion and her vitals are steady.”

  “Great. When can I see her?”

  “Soon,” the agent promised. “She’s not yet awake.”

  Reid nodded his thanks. In the wake of the explosion at the World Economic Forum in Davos, he and Maria had been taken immediately by chopper to a hospital in Zurich, where she landed in the ICU and he in general admission. He’d been right about his leg—a partially torn meniscus. It would be at least a few weeks of getting around slowly.

  But that wasn’t why he was lost in his thoughts. That wasn’t why he hadn’t been able to sleep through the night, even with the pain meds they gave him. It was the other news, the report that he had insisted on staying abreast of, despite being in another city and away from the site.

  The single explosion at the alpine resort had claimed the lives of nine people and injured seventeen more. Among the deceased were delegates from Brazil, Japan, and Mexico; an executive of a clean emissions initiative; and three members of the media.

  After his and Maria’s hasty departure, Baraf and Interpol took over the investigation, with aid from the agents sent by Cartwright. With the bomber’s receiver disabled, the rest of the explosives were located quickly and fully disarmed—twenty-three in all.

  By most accounts, Amun’s attack was a failure. They had only managed to detonate a single bomb. But to Reid, they had still managed to detonate a single bomb.

  A phone call from Cartwright earlier that morning had informed him that the ensuing media frenzy had begun before the dust even settled, before security personnel finished a complete evacuation of the resort. Within minutes of the explosion, the world was aware. The pending attack on the Winter Olympics was a distraction from the real target, an economic forum in the Swiss Alps that hosted dozens of world leaders and industry titans.

  “And the bomber?” Reid asked the young agent.

  “He’s alive,” she told him, “and talking.”

  Reid struggled to sit up in his hospital bed. “Saying what?”

  She looked away. “The deputy director said you would ask. He also said you should rest…”

  “Please,” he insisted. “It’s important to me.”

  She nodded slowly. “All right. His interrogation led to the location of three men posing as doctors in a Swiss hotel. Federal law enforcement arrived this morning as they were trying to flee. Two of them were apprehended—one a German surgeon whose medical license had been stripped due to criminal allegations, and the other identified as Sheikh Mustafar of Tehran.”

  Reid breathed a small, satisfied sigh. The sheikh—the real sheikh—would undoubtedly spend the rest of his days in a similar hole as his deranged doppelganger at Hell Six.

  “And the third?” he asked.

  “The third man managed to evade authorities long enough to reach the roof,” the agent told him. “He… jumped.”

  “He jumped?” Reid stared blankly. “Jesus. Is he dead?”

  She nodded. “It gets worse. A police body cam captured
the whole thing, as well as his final words. He said, ‘As Amun, we endure.’ Then he jumped. That footage has already been leaked to the press.”

  “So the world knows about Amun,” he said slowly. “And if they don’t, they will soon.”

  “Yes. And you know how mainstream media is. It’s the top story everywhere. So… the agency has decided to roll with it. The glyph of Amun is being disseminated to law enforcement agencies around the world, with the warning to be watchful for anyone with the mark branded on their skin.”

  Reid knew he should have been at least mildly content with the results. Soon everyone would know about the terrorist organization, and its members would have nowhere to run. But even so, Amun’s goal of inciting fear in the world had worked, in some way, even if their larger plan had failed.

  The agent rose from her seat. “I’ll have the nurses let you know when you can visit Agent Johansson.”

  “Thank you,” he told her as she left his room.

  “Oh, there’s one more thing.” She paused at the door. “It sort of got lost in the shuffle of everything that’s happened, but still, you should know. That man, the one in Sion, was found alive.”

  “The man in Sion?” It took Reid a moment to register what she was telling him. Sion already felt like ages ago. “What man in…” He trailed off as it him in. “The assassin? The blond one?”

  She shrugged. “If that’s the guy, then yes. He’s not in good shape, but he’s alive. Don’t worry about him, though. He’s under heavy guard, and he’ll be taken into custody as soon as he’s well enough.”

  Reid couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He was certain he had pierced the assassin’s heart—yet Rais had survived that somehow.

  “Agent?” he said. “Please do me a favor and get a message over there. That man is not to be underestimated, no matter what. He is extremely dangerous.”

  She smiled. “I’ll tell them, Agent Steele. But trust me. He’s not going anywhere anytime soon.”

  *

  Rais could not move.

  He could not speak. He could not even breathe on his own. He was useless, defeated, and utterly alone.

  The assassin lay in a hospital bed in Sion, Switzerland. There was a breathing tube down his throat, a feeding tube in his stomach, and a catheter in his urethra. Even the most basic of bodily functions were impossible for him in his state. The doctors dosed him with so much pain medication that he slept twenty hours that first day.

  But there was still life in him. There was still fury in him.

  Kent Steele had now eluded him three times. The first time, when Steele had opened his gut and left him to die, the German surgeon repaired Rais’s fractured ribs with screws and a small steel plate.

  That small plate, just a little less than two inches wide, had ultimately saved his life. Where Steele had evaded his attempts in the first two instances by a stroke of fortune, this time it had been Rais who had serendipity on his side. When Steele had slipped the small knife between his ribs, aiming for his heart, that narrow metal plate redirected the blade just slightly away. A mere quarter inch to one direction, and the blade would have pierced his left atrium.

  Back in the Olympic Park, in the darkness of the skating rink stadium, Rais had regained consciousness to find Steele gone and the small red knife jutting from his chest. He did not believe he would survive, but he was not about to give up on his destiny, either.

  He knew what he had to do if there was to be any chance of survival and escape. With his very last ounce of strength, he tugged the knife loose and used it to cut the glyph of Amun from his arm. He pressed his arm against his body to pinch the puckered, raised skin of the brand and, in three strokes, sliced it off.

  Mere minutes later, he heard voices. Two security officers entered the stadium on the CIA tip that there was a body inside. Rais called out to them weakly, more moans than words, but in the empty, echoing chamber they heard him.

  “Good lord,” one of them had exclaimed. “Is he alive?”

  Then Rais lost consciousness again.

  When he woke, he was in a hospital, hooked up to machines. Tubes in his body cavities. His head swimming with drugs. His right arm was handcuffed to the bed’s steel railing.

  Coherent thoughts came slowly, as if floating on a breeze: he was alive. Swiss police were posted outside his door in pairs. Every time he woke, there were different faces, new shifts.

  He knew that once he was well enough to speak, the police would want to interrogate him—or worse, hand him over to the CIA. He could not allow that to happen. As soon as he had even a modicum of strength back, he would have to try to escape this place.

  News came over the course of two days, pieced together from conversations in the hall or from the medical staff. With each new piece of information, his wrath and indignation grew.

  Amun’s plot had failed.

  The bomber was in custody.

  The Egyptian, his point of contact with Amun, was dead.

  The sheikh and the German doctor were arrested.

  Everything Rais had worked for in the past several years was gone. Everything except one crucial factor—Kent Steele was still alive.

  And so was he.

  On the third day of his hospitalization, his doctor, a short white man with spectacles and a shiny bald patch, entered the room to check his wounds. He methodically peeled back the dressings and gently prodded at the raw, painful sutures.

  “You’re healing nicely,” he told Rais flatly. The doctor knew all too well who his patient was and his association with what had happened. “I’m sure you remember little of the past few days. We’ve removed one of your kidneys, and performed surgery to extract a lacerated portion of your liver.” He spoke dispassionately. “There will be some long-term nerve damage, but nothing that should hinder quality of life.” He paused a moment, considering the implication of what he’d just said. “Though, I imagine that wherever you end up for the rest of your life will be somewhat lacking in ‘quality.’”

  With the tube in his throat, Rais could say nothing in response.

  “Once your respiratory rate improves, we’ll remove the tubes, scale back your medication, and move you out of the ICU,” the doctor continued. “But your recovery will still take some time before you can be discharged. And then…” His gaze flitted toward the two police officers posted outside the door of the room. He didn’t need to say anything further; Rais knew that “and then” meant he’d be detained—or, more likely, he’d be interrogated and tortured for information, and then sent to some hellish hole to wither and die.

  He could not allow that to happen.

  Night fell and Rais struggled to sleep. His limbs felt heavy and his wounds pained him with every slight movement. The doctor had decreased his medication; whether it was to wean him from the painkillers or purposely vindictive, he didn’t know, but the pain was more intense now. He tried to ignore it, but when it didn’t abate, he instead used it to fuel his anger as he tried to devise an escape plan. It would have to be under the cover of night, past visiting hours and when the staff was at a minimum. He was on the fourth floor, so windows were not an option. He would have to take his two guards by surprise without making any noise, as not to alert nearby staff. Then he would need clothes; they had to cut his off of him when they brought him in. He couldn’t very well leave in a police uniform. That would be far too suspicious.

  He had time to plan his escape, even if it meant pulling out the catheter and IV lines himself and fighting his way out. He could only hope that he would regain enough strength to do it. He was not yet sure where he would go or what he could do. Only one thing was clear in his mind: it was no longer solely his destiny to rid the world of Kent Steele.

  It was now a necessity.

  CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

  “Hey.” Maria snapped her fingers twice in front of his face. “Earth to Kent.”

  He blinked up at her. “Sorry. I was, uh, just thinking.”

  “Penny for you
r thoughts?”

  He was silent a long moment. “People still died, Maria. We tried our best, did everything we could, and people still died.”

  The two of them sat across from each other in a conference room in CIA headquarters in Zurich, waiting for Cartwright and debriefing. The first thing that Reid had done upon returning to HQ was to get on the secure line to the safe house and make sure his girls were all right. Despite being several thousand miles away from the economic forum and the explosion, the experience had jarred him. Amun had very nearly won.

  But his daughters were safe, if not a bit afflicted with cabin fever and eager to go home. For the first time since he had disappeared from the house in New York, Reid was able to honestly promise them that he was safe and would be home to them soon.

  Maria had spent the rest of the previous day and the night in the hospital. After her wound was treated and she received a blood transfusion, she was deemed well enough to be released, though her right arm would be in a sling for the next two weeks.

  She reached over the table and took his hand in hers. “You’re right,” she said, “people still died. Not just in Davos, either. We lost friends. Innocent bystanders caught in crossfire. Unfortunately, Kent, that’s the job. As long as there are people like Amun out there, willing to do horrible things to try to impose their will, people will die. As cynical as it may sound, putting a stop to it is an overly idealistic goal. Our job is about controlling it, stifling it, and trying our damnedest to prevent it whenever possible. Sometimes… it’s just not possible.”

  He smirked. “Funny. I took you for a glass-half-full kind of woman.” His smile faded. “This time last week, I never would have imagined I’d be cut out for this sort of work. I’m still not really sure.” He sighed. “I think I have a long road ahead of me. There’s a lot I don’t remember.”

  “Maybe that’s not such a bad thing,” Maria suggested. “Maybe without some of those memories, you can be a new person. Maybe you can be all the best parts of Kent, and all the best parts of Reid.”