The Zero Game

by Brad Meltzer

  I shake my head. Not yet.

  “Does Pasternak still keep his files in his office?” I shout to Barry over the noise.

  “Yeah . . . why?”

  That’s all I need. “Let’s go,” I call to Viv, motioning her out into the hallway.

  “Wait . . . !” Barry says, shooting out of his seat and following right behind us.

  “Keep going,” I say to Viv, who’s a few steps in front of me. If Barry’s not involved, the last thing I want to do is suck him in.

  As Barry steps into the hallway, I look back to make sure he’s okay. The short man in the pinstriped suit comes by to help him make his way outside. Barry brushes him off, rushing after us. “Harris, wait!”

  He’s faster than I thought.

  “Oh, crap,” Viv calls out as we turn the corner. Forcing our way out to the bank of elevators, we see this isn’t just a drill.

  All three elevator doors are closed, but now there’s a chorus of three elevator alarms competing with the main fire alarm. A middle-aged man shoves open the metal emergency door to the stairs, and a wisp of dark gray smoke swims into the hall. The smell tells us the rest. Something’s definitely burning.

  Viv looks at me over her shoulder. “You don’t think Janos—”

  “C’mon,” I insist, rushing past her.

  I dart for the open door of the stairs—but instead of heading down, I go straight up, toward the source of the smoke.

  “What’re you doing?” Viv calls out.

  She knows the answer. I’m not leaving without Pasternak’s records.

  “Harris, I’m not doing this anymore . . .”

  An older woman with jet black dyed hair and reading glasses around her neck comes down the stairs from the fourth floor. She’s not running. Whatever’s burning up there is more smoke than threat.

  I feel a sharp tug on the back of my shirt.

  “How do you know it’s not a trap?” Viv asks.

  Again I stay silent, pulling away from Viv and continuing up the stairs. The thought of Pasternak working against us . . . Is that why they killed him? He was already involved? Whatever the answer, I need to know.

  Leaping up the stairs two at a time, I quickly reach the top, where I squeeze between two more lobbyists just as they enter the stairwell.

  “Hey there, Harris,” one calls out with a friendly laugh. “Wanna grab some breakfast?”

  Unreal. Even in a fire, lobbyists can’t help but politic.

  Twisting and turning through the hallway, I head toward Pasternak’s office and follow the smoke, which is now a thick dark cloud that fills the narrow hallway. I’m blinking as fast as I can, but it’s burning my eyes. Still, I’ve been coming this way for years. I could make it here in pitch dark.

  As I make a sharp right around the last corner, there’s a crackle in the air. A wave of heat punches me hard in the face—but not nearly as hard as the hand that reaches out and clutches my arm. I can barely see him through the smoke.

  “Wrong way,” a deep voice insists.

  I jerk my arm to the side, quickly freeing myself. My fist is clenched, ready to take the first swing.

  “Sir, this area’s closed. I need you to make your way to the stairs,” he says over the screaming alarm. On his chest is a gold-and-blue Security badge. He’s just a guard.

  “Sir, did you hear what I said?”

  I nod, barely paying attention. I’m too busy staring over his shoulder at the source of the fire. Up the hallway . . . through the thick oak door . . . I knew it . . . I knew it the moment the alarm went off. A tiny burst of flame belches through the air, licking the ceiling tiles in Pasternak’s office. His desk . . . the leather chair . . . the presidential photos on the wall—they’re all on fire. I don’t stop. If the file cabinet’s fireproof, I can still . . .

  “Sir, I need you to exit the building,” the guard insists.

  “I need to get in there!” I call out, trying to rush past him.

  “Sir!” the man shouts. He extends his arm, blocking my way and ramming me in the chest. He’s got four inches and over a hundred pounds on me. I don’t let up. And neither does he. As I shove him aside, he pinches the skin on the side of my neck and gives it a ruthless twist. The pain’s so intense, I almost fall to my knees.

  “Sir, are you listening to me?!”

  “Th-The files . . .”

  “You can’t go in there, sir. Can’t you see what’s happening?”

  There’s a loud crash. Up the hallway, the oak door to Pasternak’s office collapses off its hinges, revealing the file cabinets that run along the wall just behind it. There are three tall cabinets side by side. From the looks of it, all of them are fireproof. The problem is, all of them have their drawers pulled wide open.

  The papers inside crackle and burn, charred beyond recognition. Every few seconds, a sharp pop kicks a few singed black scraps somersaulting through the air. I can barely breathe through all the smoke. The world blurs through the flames. All that’s left are the ashes.

  “They’re gone, sir,” the guard says. “Now, please . . . head down the stairs.”

  I still don’t move. In the distance, I can hear the orchestra of approaching sirens. Ambulances and fire engines are on their way. Police won’t be far behind.

  The guard reaches out to turn me around. That’s when I feel the soft hand on the small of my back.

  “Ma’am . . .” the guard starts.

  Behind me, Viv studies the burning file cabinets in Pasternak’s office. The sirens slowly grow louder.

  “C’mon,” she tells me. My body’s still in shock, and as I turn to face her, she reads it in an instant. Pasternak was my mentor; I’ve known him since my first days on the Hill.

  “Maybe it’s not what you think,” she says, tugging me back up the hallway and toward the stairs.

  The tears run down my face, and I tell myself it’s from the smoke. Sirens continue to howl in the distance. From the sound of it, they’re right outside the building. With a sharp tug, Viv drags me into the dark gray fog. I try to run, but it’s already too hard. I can’t see. My legs feel like they’re filled with Jell-O. I can’t do it anymore. My run slows to a lumbering walk.

  “What’re you doing?” Viv asks.

  I can barely look her in the eye. “I’m sorry, Viv . . .”

  “What? Now you’re just giving up?”

  “I said, I’m sorry.”

  “That’s not good enough! You think that takes the guilt off your plate? You got me into this, Harris—you and your dumb frat-boy, I-own-the-world-so-let’s-play-with-it egoism! You’re the reason I’m running for my life, and wearing the same underwear for three days, and crying myself to sleep every night wondering if this psychopath is gonna be standing over me when I open my eyes in the morning! I’m sorry your mentor tricked you, and that your Capitol Hill existence is all you have, but I’ve got an entire life in front of me, and I want it back! Now! So get your rear end moving, and let’s get out of here. We need to figure out what the hell we saw in that underground lab, and right now we’ve got an appointment with a scientist that you’re making me late for!”

  Stunned by the outburst, I can barely move.

  “You’ve really been crying yourself to sleep?” I finally ask.

  Viv pummels me with a dark stare that gives me the answer. Her brown eyes glow through the smoke. “No.”

  “Viv, you know I’d never—”

  “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “But I—”

  “You did it, Harris. You did it, and it’s done. Now, you gonna make it right or not?”

  Outside the building, someone barks safety instructions through a bullhorn. The police are here. If I want to give up, this is the place to do it.

  Viv heads up the hallway. I stay put.

  “Good-bye, Harris,” she calls out. The words sting as she says them. When I first asked her for help, I promised her she wouldn’t get hurt. Just like I promised Matthew that the game was harmless fun. And p
romised Pasternak, when I first met him, that I’d be the most honest person he’d ever hire. All those words . . . when I originally said them . . . I meant every syllable—but no question, those words were always for me. Myself. I, I, I. It’s the easiest place to get lost on Capitol Hill—right inside your own self-worth. But as I watch Viv disappear in the smoke, it’s time to look away from the mirror and finally refocus.

  “Hold on,” I call out, chasing after her and diving into the smoke. “That’s not the best way.”

  Stopping midstep, she doesn’t smile or make it easy. And she shouldn’t.

  It takes a seventeen-year-old girl to treat me like an adult.

  63

  HOW’S IT LOOK?” Lowell asked as his assistant stepped into his fourth-floor office in the main Justice building on Pennsylvania Avenue.

  “Let me put it like this,” William began, brushing his messy brown hair from his chubby, boyish face. “There’s no Santa Claus, no Easter bunny, no cheerleader who liked you in high school, your 401K is toilet paper, you didn’t marry the prom queen, your daughter just got knocked up by a real scumbag, and y’know that beautiful view you’ve got of the Washington Monument?” William asked, pointing over Lowell’s shoulder at the nearby window. “We’re gonna paint it black and replace it with some modern art.”

  “Did you say modern art?”

  “No joke,” William said. “And that’s the good news.”

  “It’s really that bad?” Lowell asked, motioning to the red file folder in his assistant’s hands. Outside Lowell’s office and across the adjacent conference room, two receptionists answered the phones and put together his schedule. William, on the other hand, sat right outside Lowell’s door. By title, he was Lowell’s “confidential assistant,” which meant he had security clearance to deal with the most important professional issues—and, after three years with Lowell, the personal ones as well.

  “On a scale of one to ten, it’s Watergate,” William said.

  Lowell forced a laugh. He was trying to keep it light, but the red folder already told him this was only getting worse. Red meant FBI.

  “The fingerprints belong to Robert Franklin of Hoboken, New Jersey,” William began, reading from the folder.

  Lowell made a face, wondering if the name Janos was fake. “So he’s got a record?” he asked.

  “Nosiree.”

  “Then how’d they have his fingerprints?”

  “They got ’em internally.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Their staffing unit. Personnel,” William explained. “Apparently, this guy applied for a job a few years back.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Nosiree. He applied.”

  “At the FBI?”

  “At the FBI,” William confirmed.

  “So why didn’t they hire him?”

  “They’re not saying. That one’s too high up for me. But when I begged for a hint, my buddy over there said they thought the application was sour.”

  “They thought he was trying to infiltrate? On his own, or as a hired gun?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “We should run him outside the system—see if he—”

  “Whattya think I’ve been doing for the last hour?”

  Lowell forced another grin, gripping the armrests of his leather chair and fighting to keep himself from standing. They’d worked together long enough that William knew what the grip meant. “Just tell me what you found,” Lowell insisted.

  “I ran it through a few of our foreign connections . . . and according to their system, the prints belong to someone named Martin Janos, a.k.a. Janos Szasz, a.k.a. . . .”

  “Robert Franklin,” Lowell said.

  “And Bingo was his name-o. One and the same.”

  “So why’d they have his prints over there?”

  “Oh, boss-man, that’s the cherry on top. He used to work at Five.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “Martin Janos—or whatever his real name is—he used to be MI-5. Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service.”

  Lowell closed his eyes, trying to remember Janos’s voice. If he was British, the accent was long gone. Or well hidden.

  “When he joined, he was barely a kid—just out of college,” William added. “Apparently, he had a sister who was killed in a car bomb. That got him sufficiently riled up. They brought him in as a straight recruit.”

  “So no military background?”

  “If there is, they’re not saying.”

  “He couldn’t have been too high on the totem pole.”

  “Just an analyst in the Forward Planning Directorate. Sounds to me like he was staring at a computer, stapling lots of papers together. Whatever it was, he spent two years there, then was fired.”

  “Any reason why?”

  “Insubordination, surprise surprise. They put him on a job; he refused to do it. When one of his superiors got in his face about it, the argument got a little heated, at which point young Janos picked up a nearby stapler and started beating him with it.”

  “Wound a little tight, isn’t he?”

  “The smartest ones always are,” William said. “Though it sounds to me like he was a powder keg to begin with. Once he leaves, he goes out on his own, finds some work for the highest bidder . . .”

  “Now he’s back in business,” Lowell agrees.

  “Certainly a possibility,” William said as his voice trailed off.

  “What?” Lowell asked.

  “Nothing—it’s just . . . after Her Majesty’s Service, Janos is gone for almost five years, reappears one day over here, applies to the FBI under a new ID, gets rejected for trying to infiltrate, then steps back into the abyss, never to be heard from again—that is, until a few days ago, when he apparently uses all his hard-trained skills to . . . uh . . . to smash the side window on your car.”

  Letting the silence take hold, William stared hard at his boss. Lowell stared right back. The phone on his desk started to ring. Lowell didn’t pick it up. And the longer he studied his assistant, the more he realized this wasn’t an argument. It was an offer.

  “Sir, if there’s anything you need me to—”

  “I appreciate it, William. I truly do. But before I get you knee-deep in this, let’s just see what else we can find.”

  “But I can—”

  “Believe me, you’re invaluable to the case, William—I won’t forget it. Now let’s just keep hunting.”

  “Absolutely, sir,” William said with a grin. “That’s what I’m working on right now.”

  “Any leads worth talking about?”

  “Just one,” William said, pointing down to the folder, where a fax from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network poked out from the top. “I ran all of Janos’s identities through the guys at FinCEN. They came up with an offshore account that bounces back through Antigua.”

  “I thought we couldn’t get to those . . .”

  “Yeah, well, since 9-11, some countries have been a little more cooperative than others—especially when you say you’re calling from the Attorney General’s office.”

  Now Lowell was the one who was grinning.

  “According to them, the account has four million dollars’ worth of transfers from something called the Wendell Group. So far, all we know is, it’s a shelf company with a fake board of directors.”

  “Think you can trace ownership?”

  “That’s the goal,” William said. “It’ll take some peeking in the right places, but I’ve seen these guys work before . . . If I gave them your last name, they’d find the twelve-dollar savings account your mom opened for you when you were six.”

  “Then we’re in good hands?”

  “Let me put it like this, sir—you can go get coffee and some McDonaldland Cookies. By the time you come back, we’ll have Wendell—or whoever they are—sitting in your lap.”

  “I still appreciate what you’re doing,” Lowell said, holding his glance tight on his assi
stant. “I owe you for this.”

  “You don’t owe me a Canadian penny,” William said. “It all goes back to what you taught me on day one: Don’t fuck with the Justice Department.”

  64

  THIS IS IT?” Viv asks, craning her neck skyward and stepping out of the cab in downtown Arlington, Virginia. “I was expecting a huge science compound.”

  Dead ahead, a twelve-story modern office building towers over us as hundreds of commuters pour out of the nearby Ballston Metro Station and scurry past the surrounding coffee shops and trendy eateries that are about as edgy as suburbia gets. The building is no bigger than the others around it, but the three words carved into the salmon-colored stone facade immediately make it stand out from everything else: National Science Foundation.

  Approaching the front entrance, I pull open one of the heavy glass doors and check the street one last time. If Janos were here, he wouldn’t let us get inside—but that doesn’t mean he’s not close.

  “Morning, dear—how can I help you today?” a woman wearing a lime green sweater set asks from behind a round reception desk. On our right, there’s a squatty black security guard whose eyes linger on us a few seconds too long.

  “Yeah . . . we’re here to see Doctor Minsky,” I say, trying to stay focused on the receptionist. “We have an appointment. Congressman Cordell . . .” I add, using the name of Matthew’s boss.

  “Good,” the woman says as if she’s actually happy for us. “Photo IDs, please?”

  Viv shoots me a look. We’ve been trying to avoid using our real names.

  “No worries, Teri, they’re with me,” a peppy female voice interrupts.

  Back by the elevators, a tall woman in a designer suit waves at us like we’re old friends.

  “Marilyn Freitas—from the director’s office,” she announces, pumping my hand and smiling with a game show grin. The ID badge around her neck tells me why: Director of Legislative and Public Affairs. This isn’t a secretary. They’re already pulling out the big guns—and while I’ve never seen this woman in my life, I know this tap dance. The National Science Foundation gets over five billion dollars annually from the Appropriations Committee. If I’m bringing one of their appropriators here, they’re gonna roll out the brightest red carpet they can find. That’s why I used Matthew’s boss’s name instead of my own.