Zero Zero

by Jack Mars

  Ms. Biggs had asked her about things at home. Of course the school knew that Maria had died. An American tourist being murdered on foreign soil was a big deal; even the CIA had some trouble with the cover story. Ultimately what came out to the press was that the murderer was a crazed homeless man that the police had apprehended two days later.

  Ms. Biggs had asked her about that too. If she wanted to talk about it. The guidance counselor asked if she fought with the boy because she was lashing out.

  She asked Mischa about her feelings no fewer than eight times in their meeting.

  How does that make you feel?

  To which Mischa had finally asked, Why is that important to you?

  She wasn’t a danger to herself or others unless others were a danger to her first.

  Mischa reached the administrative office and immediately saw why she had been called.

  “Hey, kiddo,” said Alan Reidigger. He wore his sweat-stained trucker’s cap and overalls and brown boots, looking remarkably out of place in the white office with fluorescent lights. “I’m here to pick you up for your dentist appointment.”

  Mischa had no dentist appointment, but she nodded anyway. “I almost forgot.”

  “Your uncle has already signed you out,” said the woman behind the administrative desk. “We’ll see you tomorrow, Mischa.”

  Perhaps they wouldn’t. When Maria had registered her for school, she had put down “Uncle Mitch” as a family member in the event that Alan had to pull her out for any reason. His presence there could mean only one thing.

  Something was wrong.

  But neither of them showed it. Alan held out a hand, and she took it, and they walked out of the office and down the hall.

  “What is it?” she asked, keeping her voice low.

  “Not sure yet.”

  “It must be something if—”

  “Just wait ’til we get to the truck,” he told her.

  They walked in silence out of the school, down the concrete steps, across the parking lot to Alan’s rusting pickup. It was at least twice Mischa’s age and looked as if it might fall apart at the seams at any moment, though she knew that it topped out at a hundred and forty miles an hour and could outmaneuver most sports cars.

  She climbed into the passenger seat and waited for him to explain, but Alan said nothing as he turned over the engine, backed out of the parking space, and left school grounds.

  “Well?” she said impatiently.

  “Well.” Alan scratched at his beard. “I don’t have details. Zero called, said we should hunker down. So I’m getting you and Sara, and we’re going to hunker down.”

  Mischa thought for a moment. “He found something in Zurich.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “It is obvious,” she reasoned. “He no longer has CIA affiliation so it is unlikely intelligence was given to him. Yet going into hiding means there must be some perception of imminent threat. He could not have landed in Zurich more than… ninety minutes ago. Therefore—he must have arrived and found something. Or something found him.”

  “Nothing gets by you, does it,” he muttered. “All right, look. The doc he was supposed to see? Zero found him dead.”

  “Murdered?”

  “I assume.”

  “Krauss,” she said immediately.

  “Now, we don’t know that—”

  “It is obvious,” she said again.

  “Not exactly his style,” Alan pointed out. “Last time he had the chance to kill Zero he didn’t, because…” He trailed off, but Mischa knew exactly what he meant.

  Krauss had accidentally killed Maria instead, and had let Zero live with the intention of hunting him another day. If Krauss knew that Zero would be visiting the doctor, he would strike at Zero, not those close to him…

  “Unless it is retaliation,” Mischa pointed out. “I attacked him. Maya and I fought him off. Perhaps killing the doctor is sending a message.”

  “If that’s the case,” Alan countered, “then the message is ‘hunker down, stay safe.’ That’s what we’re going to do.”

  “But,” Mischa argued, “Krauss is smart enough to know that Zero would assume the same, that those close to him might be in jeopardy and that he would return home immediately. Which stands to reason that Krauss would then come here. Which means that we should not, as you say, ‘hunker down,’ but set a trap. Be where he expects us to be, and spring on him.”

  Alan scoffed as he rolled to a red light. “And how well did that end up for you last time? Springing on him? You’re gonna sit there before those shiners he gave you are even healed and tell me you’re keen for round two?”

  “Yes,” she said forcefully. And then she added in Russian for good measure, “Stupid fat man.”

  “I speak Russian, kid.”

  “I know.”

  Alan sighed. “Just… humor me here, okay? Zero’s probably at Zurich Airport right now hopping a flight home. Once he’s back, we’ll convene, and we’ll plan. Together. Isn’t that how you were supposed to do this?”

  He wasn’t wrong. But she wouldn’t admit that. It had been more than two weeks since Maria’s murder, and they had done nothing. Gotten no further on Krauss’s trail. And now, having him reappear like this, having the possibility of a legitimate lead and… hunkering down? It was unconscionable.

  The light turned green and Alan eased off the brake.

  Mischa made her decision.

  As the truck picked up speed, she shoved open the passenger-side door and threw herself out. She rolled into it, landing on the pavement with her right shoulder, onto her back, and coming up on both feet.

  Then she ran.

  “Ah, dammit!” she heard Alan Reidigger shout behind her. Brakes screeched. When she looked back, the truck was parked right in the intersection and Alan was giving chase.

  She had to give him credit; he was faster than she’d imagined he would be, light on his feet for a larger man.

  “Mischa, stop!” he shouted after her. Car horns honked at the vacant truck. Passersby gawked at the large man in overalls chasing a teen girl down the street.

  Up ahead was an apartment complex. She could vault the fence, lose him in there.

  “Mischa!” he yelled behind her.

  He wasn’t yet winded. She put on a burst of speed. Her legs were shorter than his, her strides double-time.

  “Mischa,” she heard him shout behind her. “Is this what Maria would want?”

  She reached the chain-link fence at full speed, but instead of leaping it, she crashed against it, grasping with both hands, stopping herself suddenly as anger washed over her.

  Alan slowed to a trot behind her, panting hard.

  Her cheeks burned. She spun on him. “No more!”

  “What?”

  “That is not an excuse anymore!” She pointed at him. “I am exhausted of people telling me what Maria would have wanted. We don’t know what she would have wanted! She’s dead!”

  “I know, kid. I know. I’m sorry.” He put his hands on his knees and stared at the ground. “Just wanted you to stop.”

  Mischa wiped her eyes. “I want to kill him.”

  “We all do. But… I need your help.” Alan straightened with a grunt. “Maya’s at work. I don’t know when Zero will get back. And we both know Sara can be a handful. She listens to you. Help me out? Please?”

  Mischa shook her head. He was right, again, annoyingly. Sara was, it seemed, at odds with the whole family in one way or another. Except for her.

  “Fine,” she relented. “Just until Zero is back.”

  “Just until he’s back.”

  Mischa walked past him wordlessly, back toward the truck still parked in the intersection. She would be true to her word and go with him to retrieve Sara. She would, as he put it, “hunker down” until Zero returned from Zurich.

  Maria was dead. But still, it’s what she would have wanted her to do.

  But if she caught even the slightest scent of Stefan Krauss,
no force on this earth would stop her from pursuing him.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Most days, President of the United States Jonathan Rutledge enjoyed his position. He hadn’t, at first, having been the Speaker of the House when the previous administration had been impeached and suddenly finding the Oval Office foisted upon him. He’d had no long-term delusions of presiding over the country, especially because he was fairly certain that anyone who pursued the office must be delusional.

  And yet here he was. And most days, Jon Rutledge enjoyed his position. But sometimes, he found the pageantry of it a bit ridiculous.

  Case in point: the executive order currently before him. Executive orders from the president were (generally) absolute, could only be turned over by Congress after the fact, and yet he could not simply wave a hand say, “I decree…” like some medieval monarch. There were procedures, the first of which involved meeting after meeting with key personnel involved in said order. Then the White House legal team drafted a formal document for the order—in this case, two small paragraphs on a single sheet of white paper. That sheet of paper was then mounted on the right-hand side of an honest-to-goodness black leather portfolio emblazoned on the cover with the seal of the President of the United States. Finally, the executive order (which had been Rutledge’s idea in the first place) was then delivered to him as he sat behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office so that he could put pen to paper, deliver unto it his John Hancock before an audience, and make it official.

  Sometimes he wished he could just wave a hand and say, “I decree…” like some medieval monarch.

  His audience today was only two people. Vice President Joanna Barkley sat in an armchair on one side of a round area rug, while the Director of National Intelligence David Barren sat on a loveseat opposite her with his left leg crossed over his right.

  Rutledge had never seen that loveseat before. They’d gone and replaced the furniture, rearranged the office once again, a process that seemed to happen at least once a month and that he had little doubt his wife, Deirdre, had a hand in. She’d always wanted to be an interior decorator.

  He wished he knew what either of them was thinking. Barkley, he was certain, was always thinking something; her mind seemed to work like a clock, one cog turning another turning another and turning another, an efficient machine. Despite her relative youth—thirty-seven and in the office of vice president—there didn’t seem to be a problem she couldn’t solve.

  And then there was Barren. The reason for their meeting today was a poignant one given his presence. His only child, a daughter who had worked in the service of Rutledge himself, had been murdered not two weeks prior, and yet here he was, to bear witness to the signing of the executive order.

  There was a knock at the door, and Chief of Staff Tabitha Halpern stuck her brunette head between the doors. “Sir? He’s here.”

  “Send him in, Tabby, thank you.”

  Depending on the nature of the order, there might be cameras. There might be more bodies in the room. The text of the order might be published to a government website. None of those would happen today.

  A moment later the door opened again, and a young man in a suit entered. He looked immediately uncomfortable, likely due to the clothes as much as the pageantry. His eyes darted left to right—to Barkley, to Rutledge, to Barren, and back to Rutledge. Had there been another exit in the room the young man’s gaze might have swept over that too.

  Then he saluted the president.

  “Agent Strickland.” Rutledge chuckled as he rose from his chair. “Put that hand down and come in. No need for formalities, we’re all friends here.”

  Todd Strickland nodded. “Thank you, Mr. President.” He stepped forward, nodding to Barkley. “Ms. Vice President.” And in turn to the DNI. “Director Barren.”

  Strickland was thirty-one, a former Army Ranger turned CIA agent, as clean-cut as they came. He kept his hair short, his face smooth, his nails trimmed. The collar of his white dress shirt was starched and impeccable; the top button was hidden beneath a blue tie but undoubtedly straining over his thick neck. Strickland was loyal; he’d been a member of Rutledge’s Executive Operations Team since its inception, serving alongside Maria Johansson, Alan Reidigger, and Agent Zero.

  Now Maria was dead. Zero had retired. Reidigger had quit as well. EOT needed rebuilding, and Todd Strickland was lead agent.

  “You know why we’re here,” said Rutledge warmly, still standing.

  “I do, sir.”

  “Actually,” the president corrected himself, “you know half of why you’re here. So let’s get that part out of the way, sound good?”

  “Yes sir.”

  Rutledge put his pen to paper, and he signed the order. There were no cameras, no photo ops, no quotes for the press. No pomp and/or circumstance. Just the scratch of a pen. “There. Done. He’s all yours.”

  The first paragraph of the order, the two-paragraph single sheet of white paper in a black leather portfolio, effectively released one Preston McMahon from the remainder of his duty with the United States Army, specifically the elite 75th Ranger Regiment headquartered at Fort Benning, Georgia.

  The second paragraph, equally immediate, made McMahon a member of the Executive Operations Team, a small and unilateral division of the CIA that answered only to the three people in the room: the president, the vice president, or in the event of their absence, the Director of National Intelligence.

  DNI David Barren was there in a professional capacity. But he was also there to witness his deceased daughter’s replacement.

  “So that makes four,” said Rutledge.

  “It does, sir.”

  “Are you comfortable with four, Strickland?”

  “I am, sir.”

  Strickland had personally vouched for and vetted the other two new members of EOT. First had been O’Neill, a former Blackhawk pilot with three tours under her belt who had garnered national attention two years prior when she rescued an eight-man special ops team from an Afghan hot zone. Second had been Hauser, a Secret Service agent who Strickland hadn’t served with but knew personally. His actions at the bombing of the Queensboro Bridge had saved dozens of lives.

  They were young guns, all of them. In fact, Strickland was now the eldest member of EOT. But they were loyal, they were patriots, they were fighters.

  Still—Rutledge wondered what Zero was doing right now.

  “Sir?” said Strickland.

  “Speak your mind, Todd.”

  “Shouldn’t McMahon be here for this?”

  Rutledge chuckled. “It’s his last night with his pals. He doesn’t need to see me sign my name. He’ll be on a red-eye to DC tonight, and by morning you’ll have a full team again.”

  He winced internally when he said “again.” Strickland had lost friends. Barren had lost a daughter.

  Rutledge lowered himself to his chair again. “Now then, on to the second item of business, and I’ll turn it over to Vice President Barkley for that. But first, have a seat, Todd.”

  Strickland nodded, and then sat beside Barren on the loveseat, his back straight.

  Joanna Barkley cleared her throat and leaned forward. “As you’re well aware, Agent Strickland, our administration has been working fervently toward strategic alliances with no ulterior motive other than peace with nations that have been historically… tumultuous.”

  Strickland nodded. “Peace with the Middle East.”

  “Moreover,” Barkley corrected, “peace in the Middle East. While many of the pieces, as they say, have been falling into place, it’s that one little word—‘in’—that has managed to elude us so far. It’s not enough for the United States to ally with them. One might even argue it is more important that they ally with each other as well as us. And the fact is, only Israel and Palestine have made that successful union as of yet. A significant accomplishment, to be sure, but not enough.”

  “We’re making a push,” Rutledge chimed in. “A big one. There’s going to be a summit.�
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  “A peace summit?” Strickland asked, but he nodded even as he did, answering his own question.

  “Egypt will host,” Barkley told him. “In just two days’ time. And if all goes according to plan, leaders from all of the Middle Eastern nations allied with us will sign the Cairo Accord, guaranteeing peace, free trade, and shared resources between them.”

  “The accord,” said Barren, speaking for the first time since greeting Rutledge, “will also expand the joint task force that was established between the US, Israel, and Palestine to create a new international organization to facilitate cooperation and maintain the peace.”

  “Like Interpol,” Rutledge added, “with a bit more specificity.” He stood, came around the desk, and sat upon the edge of it in a manner he hoped was more genial. “This is the big show. Everything we’ve been doing, everything we’ve been working towards, has led to this.”

  “Which is why,” said Barkley, “the summit is and must remain top-secret. It’s why we couldn’t tell you, or anyone else, sooner. Based on recent events, there are too many out there who might want to attempt a… disruption, of some sort.”

  Strickland nodded. No one had to expand on the type of possible disruption Barkley was referring to; the young agent had been there when Rutledge had been kidnapped by a Palestinian terror group during the signing of a treaty in Jerusalem.

  “You want EOT there as security,” Strickland said in a way that was almost a question.

  “More than that,” said Rutledge, “I want you and EOT in charge of security. I want you to vet every single person who will be in attendance. I want you to ensure that everyone there belongs there and no one’s there that doesn’t.”

  Strickland nodded, though he glanced away, toward a lamp, and frowned slightly as if he was working out an equation in his mind.

  “There’s not a lot of time. We’d need help,” he said at last. “Dr. León. If the CIA is willing to loan her.”

  Rutledge suppressed a smile, recalling the time Dr. Penelope León had cut the power to the entire White House and appeared in his bedroom to deliver a personal message from Zero. “Director Barren can see to that.”