The Zero

by Jess Walter

  “No.” But it wasn’t entirely true. Remy did remember something from that day. Paper. He remembered smoke and he remembered standing alone while a billion sheets of paper fluttered to the ground. Like notes without bottles on the ocean, a billion pleas and wishes sent out on the wind. He remembered walking beneath the long shadows and watching the paper fall as a grumble rose beneath his feet and—

  Guterak was staring at him. “The last time I saw you that morning, you were going in. Do you remember that at least?”

  “No.”

  “We couldn’t get anyone on the fuggin’ radio and it seemed like the evacuation was slowing down. It was just smoke up there, and people falling, jumping…and you said you were gonna go in and get a visual, see where they stood with the evacuation. You were gone fifteen minutes or so…when everything went to shit. I thought for sure we’d lost you, until I saw you that night.”

  Remy searched his memory, but there was nothing.

  “Sometimes I wish I’d gone in,” Guterak said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “When it all started coming down, there was that fire probie…stupid kid ran toward the thing. I passed him—he’s running in while I’m running away.” Guterak’s eyes glistened. “Sometimes I hear people use that word—hero—and I feel…sick.”

  “Go home,” Remy said. “Go see Stacy. And your kids.” Then he stood and patted the roof of the car. “And don’t follow me anymore.”

  Paul rolled up his window. Remy watched Guterak drive down the block and then he began walking, his shadow growing in the streetlight before him. He moved steadily down the dark sidewalk, careful to stay in the shadows. Above him, the fading rind of moon tailed him down the narrow street. Remy walked south and then east through neighborhoods he’d never seen on foot before, quiet, precise neighborhoods bordered by rows of businesses—copy companies and juice bars and cell phone sales, their façades covered with cages and bars and garage doors. He caught a glimpse of an avenue and the storefronts on it seemed to stretch forever. These had been cobblers and butchers at one time, and printers and razor salesmen and soul food restaurants and record stores and pawnshops, and one day they would be genetic splicers and pet cloners and jet pack distributors. This city. Yes, everyone believes they’ve invented the place, that their time is the only time, and yet the truth was—

  THE GROUND is where history lay. They didn’t put the Gettysburg memorial somewhere else. They put it at Gettysburg, or some version of that place, of that ground. They were the same: ground and place—plowed and scraped and rearranged, sure, but still you knew that in this place the soil was tamped with bone and gristle and bravery. That was important. The ground was important, imprinted with every footfall of our lives, the DNA of the profound and the banal, every fight, chase, panhandle, kiss, fall, dog shit, con game, stickball hit, car wreck, bike race, sunset stroll, fish sale, mugging—the full measure and memento of every unremarkable event, and every inconceivable moment. Remy turned from side to side, taking the whole thing in, feeling incomplete, cheated in some way, as if they’d taken away his memory along with the dirt and debris. Maybe his mind was a hole like this—the evidence and reason scraped away. If you can’t trust the ground beneath your feet, what can you trust? If you take away the very ground, what could possibly be left?

  And yet that’s what they had done. He stepped back from the fence line and stared out over the place. They took it away. Nothing left here but a hole, a yawning emptiness fifty feet deep, football fields across, transit tracks cutting through the hole like hamster ramps, roads climbing the walls, excavation trails scratched across it, earthmovers and dump trucks, spotlights shining into the emptiness. God, they scraped it all away. No wonder they couldn’t remember what it meant anymore. No wonder they’d gotten it all wrong. How can you remember what isn’t there anymore? Remy leaned over the railing. He looked down the fence line, at rows of dying flowers, at notes of encouragement and defiance left by visitors. It looked like any other place now, like the site of a future business park, or a mall parking lot.

  He imagined for a moment that he was in the wrong place. Was this really it? Christ, it seemed so small. Before, it had been vast enough to contain every horror (falling and burning and collapsing)…but that was all gone now. Everything was gone: the silhouetted steel shapes, half-buried I beams, berms of window blinds and powdered concrete, mounds of rubble and jagged window frames, gray undefined rubble, hills and pits of gypsum and cloth and…and steel! Steel forming itself into cathedral walls and sheaths and arches and caverns and trunkless legs of stone, like perfect ruined sculptures.

  He had expected to feel something. But what can you feel about a place when that place has been scraped away? What was beneath all those piles? Nothing? No one?

  It was just a deep tub now, a concrete-walled construction site, like any of the other sockets in a city that lived by creating such holes, cannibalizing itself block by old block to make way for the new, smoking sockets surrounded by razor-topped construction fences, waiting for buildings to be screwed in—and this the largest socket, a cleaned-up crater ringed by American flags and dead bouquets. Waiting for cranes. Above, the sky was washed out, colors faded like an old movie, everything the dull sallow of new concrete. What’s left of a place when you take the ground away? Is the place even there anymore? If you scratched away the whole island and moved it somewhere else, would the city be where it had been, in the widened channel of opposing estuaries…or would it be in the new place, where you’d moved the ground?

  Remy felt the man next to him even before he spoke.

  “Aptly named,” he said. “Don’t you think?” Remy turned and really wasn’t surprised to find Jaguar. In the first light of dawn, he got the best look at him he’d ever had. The man was in his sixties, intelligent looking, with a thin, craggy face and close-cropped gray beard and hair. He pulled his long wool coat up around his shoulders, and nodded at the epic construction site before them. “The absence of all magnitude or quantity.”

  “What?”

  “Zero. The absence of all magnitude or quantity. A person or thing with no discernible qualities or even existence. The point of departure in a reckoning. Zero hour—that sort of thing. A state or condition of total absence. The point of neutrality between opposites. To zero in: to concentrate firepower on the exact range of something. That’s a good one, too, although it’s a bit literal.”

  Remy felt in his coat pocket and found two things. His handgun. And the thick envelope from The Boss. His hand moved from one to the other.

  The man continued. “But I tell you the best derivation, for my money: zero sum. That’s what we’ve got here, if you ask me. Gains and losses coming out equal. No possible outcome except more of the same. And yet…” The man shrugged. “No. Say what you will. It is a fitting name.”

  Remy looked up and saw the edge of moon again, faint now, about to disappear for the day. For the next fifteen hours the moon would be invisible, though of course it would still be there, driving tides and bipolars and the births of babies. And yet they insisted on saying each night that the moon came out, like superstitious men scratching their fear onto cave walls.

  “It’s an Arab word,” the man continued. “Zero. From the word sifr. Means empty, like cypher. The world had no concept of zero, of nothingness, until we brought it west. Of course, we stole it from the Hindis. But it had never occurred in the West that there could be a number before one.” He scoffed. “Civilization. They couldn’t even get their minds around the concept of emptiness, of infinity, the circle completing itself. If you can’t count nothing, you can’t conceive of everything. Without zero, you can’t comprehend negative numbers. So you can’t see infinity. There’s no sense to the universe. No negative to balance the positive, no axis on which to turn, no evil to balance the good. Without zero, every system eventually breaks down.”

  He nodded, as if convincing himself. “No,” he said again, “it’s the right name.”
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  Remy swallowed. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m doing what we agreed to do, what you told me to do.”

  Remy felt for the gun in his pocket. “I’m not going to let anyone get hurt.”

  Jaguar stared at Remy with those implacable eyes. “I am on your side, remember?”

  “Is that good or bad?”

  The corner of Jaguar’s mouth rose in a smirk. “Point taken.” He cocked his head and seemed to be reading Remy for the first time. “For just a second there you looked like you couldn’t decide whether to pay me or shoot me.”

  It sounded like he was joking, but Remy’s hand remained in his pockets, between the gun and the money The Boss had given him. “Does it matter?” Remy asked.

  “It matters a little to me,” he said darkly, holding out his hand.

  Remy had no idea what to do. “Maybe I should shoot myself,” he said.

  “You tried that,” the man said without looking away, his hand still out.

  Finally, defeated, Remy handed over the money.

  As he counted, Jaguar said, “I’d better not see anyone there.”

  Remy said nothing.

  “I mean it. No one moves until I’m gone. Right?”

  Remy said nothing.

  Jaguar looked up. “Look, if I so much as see a patrol car while I’m making the drop, I’m out of there. Do you understand?”

  “No…Not at all.”

  Jaguar continued: “I sure as hell better not see you there.”

  “See me where?” Remy asked quietly, already sensing the answer.

  “Good,” Jaguar said. “That’s more like it.” He stuffed the money in his wool coat, tipped his finger to his head, and walked away.

  Remy glanced over his shoulder, toward Wall Street, and saw the first tourists edging their way in, mouths open, cameras up. They posed for pictures on either side of a plastic American flag, which had been zip-tied to the railing. Remy watched this for a moment, and then he fell forward, his fingers locked in the wire fence surrounding the hole where the world had been.

  THE WIRE room hummed with activity, translators pitched forward, agents coming in and out with printouts, computer screens registering the levels of voices. Remy edged in, breathless, as if he’d just run over here. The room was long and narrow, like a cheap motel conference room, with one bank of windows looking out over the river, the other long wall lined with bookshelves covered with bound books of transcriptions, and on either end of the room a station equipped with a computer registering the levels of digital recording. Translators sat next to technicians, headphones over their ears. Over a speaker, Remy could hear an Arabic drone in the background—“Bism-allah—al-Wadud. Ar-Rahim”—while two other men argued in whispers.

  “Name of God loving…and merciful,” the translator said.

  “Where have you been?” Markham whispered. “You almost missed it. We got three targets in a hotel room waiting for Jaguar. And then they’re gonna go. We’re listening to Kamal make his suicide videotape. It’s…cool.”

  The agent Dave was standing, his head pitched forward like a vulture, looking over the shoulder of the seated translator, a man in his fifties with a dark tangle of black hair, who was concentrating on the drone in the background. He translated in a consonant-heavy English punctuated by pauses and hums: “…as…uh…commanded by Allah…um…something infidels…those who would enslave and uh…what’s the word…seduce…”

  “Rape,” yelled the other translator from across the room.

  “Right,” said the first translator. “Uh…rape…the Land of the Two Holy Places…the infidel wolf…”

  Above the chanting Arabic was the sound of the other two men, whose whispered English was picked up by the wire.

  “This is crazy,” said one of the men on the wire, above the background drone. “I am not going to do this.” Remy recognized the voice. It was Mahoud, the restaurant owner.

  “Look, just say some crazy shit on the tape,” Bishir whispered back. “You don’t have to do anything after that. Just cover your face, hold the machine gun, and say infidels and wolves and shit like that.”

  “No. I can’t do it.”

  “Do you see that guy?” Bishir whispered. “Does he look like he’s fucking around? He’ll have us both killed if he thinks we’re backing out.”

  In the wire room, Dave was chewing his thumbnail. “Come on, come on. Hold him.”

  “But I never intended…” Mahoud began.

  “Look, it doesn’t matter what you intended,” Bishir said. “We’re here now. Just make your tape, and then you can run. But if you leave now we’re both dead.”

  “That’s right,” said Dave. “Keep him hooked, Bishir. Don’t let anyone out of that room.”

  “He’s good,” Markham said in a low voice. “I wish we could’ve afforded someone like that.”

  Remy felt the ground spinning.

  The translator droned on: “…guide me in the straight path…not the path of those who have incurred the wrath of…”

  “We’ve got to stop this,” Remy said.

  Markham reached out and grabbed Remy’s arm.

  “Is that Remy?” Dave asked. “Look, this is not the time, Remy. We’re trying to work here.”

  “Somebody stop this!” Remy yelled.

  Dave took a drink of the largest iced coffee drink Remy had ever seen, a pail of coffee and whipped cream. “No one does anything until Jaguar gets there with the bomb.”

  “They have a bomb?” Remy asked Markham. He watched as agents and translators moved around the room like ants on ice cream.

  “It’s not much of a bomb threat if they don’t have a bomb,” Markham said under his breath.

  “We gave them a bomb?”

  “The detonator isn’t real,” Markham said.

  “This is crazy,” Remy said. He yelled again, “Look! You’ve got to stop this! Right now!”

  “All right! That’s it. Get him out of here!” Dave yelled, pointing at Remy without looking back. “You had your chance, Remy. Now leave us alone and let us do our jobs.”

  “This is insane!” Remy yelled.

  Markham began pulling him by the arm out the door.

  “And the seas shall boil,” the translator was saying, “and…uh…every soul shall know what it has done.”

  “Wrought,” said another translator.

  “Right, wrought,” said the first translator as the door closed behind them.

  In the hallway, Markham held Remy by the arm. “What’s wrong with you?”

  Remy felt sick. “They’re all our guys.”

  “Technically,” Markham said.

  “No. They’re all moles. Every one of them.”

  “Ye-e-eah,” Markham said, as if Remy had just mentioned that the sun had come up.

  “They all work for us.”

  “That’s what makes it so perfect. What can go wrong?”

  Remy pushed away from Markham and began running down the hallway.

  “Brian!” Markham called. “Come back.”

  Remy turned the corner and still he heard Markham’s voice. “You’re gonna miss the raid!”

  Remy ran out the door, into a long, empty hallway. The door behind him had a name that Remy assumed must be for a phony business—All Field Transit. There was a stairwell on his right. He crashed through it. An alarm went off somewhere, but he kept running down the dark stairs, taking two at a time, down three flights to the first floor. He burst out into a lobby, past a napping security guard, through the revolving door and out onto the street. He stood on the curb mid-block, eyes darting from building to building. Listening posts were often set up nearby; the cell could be meeting in one of these buildings.

  It was a rainy morning, cabs jostling for lanes with delivery trucks and limos. He ran down the street. At the corner he stopped and looked both ways, glancing up at windows as if he might see a familiar face in one of them. Then, right in front of him, he saw the silver gypsy cab. The passeng
er door opened and Buff got out, a cord dangling from his ear, his middle finger on an earpiece.

  “Jesus, Remy, should you be on the street? We’re expecting Iceman any minute. You listening to this shit?” he asked, like a teenager who’s found a peephole into a girls’ locker room. “We got three bogies in this hotel room saying prayers and talking crazy. Just like on TV.”

  “You need to stop it!”

  “Stop it? We got our CI in there and we got people all over the building.” He waved at the buildings. “We got enough snipers for fifty guys. Soon as the last guy shows up, we move.”

  “No, no. What if something goes wrong? What if the bomb goes off?”

  “No worries. They got a phony detonator.”

  “Other way around!” called the other agent from the car.

  “Oh, right,” said Buff. “The detonator’s phony. Bomb’s real.”

  “No. It’s the other way,” said the other agent from the car again.

  Buff ducked his head so he could see inside the car. “Real bomb, phony detonator?”

  “No,” the voice said from the car. “You keep saying it the same way. It’s the other way around.”

  Buff shrugged. “Anyway, don’t sweat it. We got it under control. Soon as Ice Guy gets here, we move. Fuckers at the agency are gonna shit their pants when we raid their deal.” He hit Remy in the shoulder. “Thanks again, man.”

  Remy rubbed his brow.

  Just then, the agent in the car leaned across the seat and hissed, “Ice on the pond!”

  Remy’s eyes drifted across the street, to where an older Middle Eastern man, face and head clean-shaven, wearing new rectangular glasses, was walking toward the brownstone. He carried an athletic bag over one shoulder and had his wool coat under the other arm. The sidewalk traffic parted and Jaguar reached for the door of the building, his eyes darting about.

  “Look natural,” Buff said, and he grabbed Remy in the most unnatural hug Remy had ever felt.

  As Jaguar entered the building his head turned a few degrees, his gaze narrowed, and Remy wasn’t sure, but he thought, for just the briefest moment, that Jaguar might’ve seen him.