Zero Zero

by Jack Mars

  She was three blocks away before she even realized that her legs had carried her away from the scene. That tight fear in her gut had taken control, urged her to get away from that place before it happened again. Her brain finally took over. She’d abandoned them. She’d left Alan and Mischa behind. She had to go back.

  Were they even alive?

  They had to be alive.

  Of course they were alive.

  She had to go back…

  Sirens screamed toward the scene. It was easy to spot, black smoke billowing high into the sky above what used to be Third Street Garage. If she went back now, she’d be facing the police and all their questions.

  She still had the gun in her hand. She was standing on a street with people around and she still had the gun in her hand. Fortunately anyone around was far too concerned with the nearby explosion to look her way. She quickly tucked it in her pants.

  She still had the gun. And she still had her phone. She pulled it out and tried to call Alan. It went directly to voicemail. She tried to call Mischa. No answer there either.

  Sara joined the gathering crowd of rubberneckers at the corner as a fire truck blared past them. Then another one. A police cruiser. An ambulance. She couldn’t go back. They’d find bodies.

  How many would they find?

  Alan had told her about a safe house. But he didn’t tell her where it was. She could never find it on her own. Who else would know? Her dad, maybe.

  She tried his cell. It went straight to voicemail. She didn’t leave a message.

  “Okay,” she told herself. “Okay. Okay.”

  She was walking again before she knew it. Who else could she call?

  Maya. Call Maya.

  She tried her cell. It went straight to voicemail. She didn’t leave a message.

  Sara still had the gun. She still had her phone. The phone—whoever was after her could probably track her that way.

  But her family might try to contact her.

  She turned it off.

  Where am I going? she asked her feet.

  Home. We’re going home.

  There was nowhere else to go.

  *

  Sara didn’t know how long it took her to walk home. She didn’t know what time it was, only that it was still day. And she was tired.

  At last she reached her street. The black van was gone. She approached the front door carefully. At a glance it looked perfectly normal. Upon closer inspection she could see the cracked jamb where it had been kicked in. She gave it a push and it swung open easily, the locks broken.

  In the foyer, the panel of the alarm system had been torn off. Colorful wires hung out, cut. Whoever did this knew about the alarm and had quickly disarmed it. She doubted the emergency signal had gotten out. The police would be here if it had. Or there’d be some evidence that someone was here, other than the broken door and the vandalized panel.

  She kicked off her sneakers and padded softly to the kitchen. Nothing was tossed; the men who had come here had been looking for people, not things.

  It was quiet.

  She wondered if the same men who had come to the garage were the ones who came here first. It seemed likely.

  Who were they?

  They were dead now. She might never know.

  Sara pushed open the door to the basement and went downstairs. She liked it down there in her cave-like room. The natural light all but snuffed. It could be nighttime down there. It could be anytime down there.

  She heard a sound over her head. Water running through pipes. She knew that sound; she heard it every time someone flushed the toilet upstairs.

  Someone was here.

  Sara slid the gun from the back of her pajama pants. She went to the base of the stairs. She knew she should stay put, stay silent. Whoever was here probably already checked the basement.

  But her shoes were in the foyer. If they saw them…

  She took one stair up. Then another. At the top of the stairs she heard another familiar sound; the bathroom faucet running. She turned the corner from the kitchen to the short hallway that led to the bathroom and, at its end, Mischa’s bedroom.

  A man came out of the bathroom. He was dressed all in black but she couldn’t see his face because he was rubbing a towel against it.

  She raised the gun.

  He lowered the towel.

  The man’s eyes went wide. He had bushy eyebrows and a black beard.

  “Now, hang on—”

  She shot him twice. His body jerked and he fell to the floor on his back just outside the bathroom.

  “This is our home,” she told him.

  She was just so tired. She took the gun with her and trudged back down the stairs, closing the basement door behind her. She set the gun on the nightstand, along with her inert phone.

  You’re in shock, her brain told her. But it was such a small voice, like someone whispering from behind a wall. Easy to ignore.

  And her bed, it looked so inviting. She climbed into it, pulling the comforter over her head.

  Comforter. What an apt name.

  Someone would come find her. Eventually.

  Or maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe anyone that would try would be dead. Maybe she could sleep for a hundred years, like the man in that fairy tale, and she would wake to a world where no one knew who she was or what she had done.

  She could be anyone, in a world like that.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Zero was grateful he didn’t have any luggage other than his small carry-on. He was off the plane and in the backseat of an Uber in less than fifteen minutes. He had the address he needed, a brownstone in the Flatiron District of New York, near Gramercy Park on the Upper East Side.

  It wasn’t until they were on the way that he powered his phone back on. He had no new voicemails, but he did have a single text, and from a surprising source, no less.

  Call me ASAP was all that Penny had said.

  First he tried to call Alan, and then Sara, and then Mischa. All three went to voicemail and he didn’t bother leaving a message. He had to assume that no answer was good, that it meant they were in hiding, together, and that they’d shut off their phones to avoid being traced.

  He called Penny.

  “Zero!” she answered. It was almost a shout. “Where are you? Where are your girls?”

  “I’m in New York,” he told her. “The girls are… with Alan. Why?”

  “Are you sure?”

  His blood ran cold.

  “Penny, why?”

  “There was an explosion,” she told him somberly. “At Third Street Garage.”

  No…

  “Penny, what are you telling me?” he asked hoarsely.

  “It’s not what you think,” she said quickly. “Bodies were recovered, all male, four of them. They were shot before the bomb went off. The device was in a van parked just outside.”

  Zero frowned as he put it together. Four men had assaulted the garage in a van. They’d all been killed—at Alan’s hand, most likely. Mischa might have helped. But then a bomb had gone off?

  In case they failed, he realized. That was how badly someone wanted them dead.

  Why?

  “You’re sure no one else was found?”

  “I’m sure,” Penny confirmed. “But I haven’t been able to reach Alan.”

  “Me neither. Which hopefully means the girls are with him and safe.” Their phones weren’t active. But… Zero had told Reidigger he’d call from New York. Maybe Alan was just playing it safe. He was, at times, known to be a bit paranoid.

  “The tracking device!” he said suddenly. He recalled that Maya had found Mischa and saved her from Stefan Krauss because Maria and Penny had installed a tracker in Mischa’s arm, under the guise of a flu shot. “Can you use it?”

  Penny sighed. “To be honest, I tried. I made a promise I wouldn’t, but then I saw the explosion, and…”

  “And what, Penny?”

  “Inactive. She must have dug it out recently.”


  “Okay.” Zero rubbed his face. He hadn’t slept on the flight to Zurich, or from Zurich, and the exhaustion was wearing on him. “Until we hear something to the contrary we have to assume they’re okay.”

  “Should I send someone to your house?” Penny asked. “Call in an anonymous tip to the police at least?”

  Zero was tempted to say yes, but if the garage was compromised, home definitely was as well. That would be the last place Alan and the girls would be.

  “Thanks, but no,” Zero said. “If anyone had tried to get into the house, the alarm company would have notified the authorities and me.” He didn’t say it aloud, but he also didn’t want the police poking around his place with no one there. He had several guns stashed around the house, only two of which were registered, not to mention some other “keepsakes” from his time as an agent, and he would much prefer to not have to explain them. “Just keep an ear to the ground as best you can. Alan will check in when he’s able. I’ve got something I have to do here and then I’ll be heading straight back.”

  “Will do.”

  “And what about Maya?”

  “One sec and I’ll tell you.” He heard fingers clacking against a keyboard, and a moment later Penny told him, “She’s en route to Paris. Some low-level op investigating NSA chatter, possible insurgent cell.”

  “Paris? Who knows about that?”

  “By the looks of it? Her, her partner, Walsh. Me. And now you.”

  “Good. Let’s keep it that way.” At least one daughter was out of the line of fire. “Keep me posted and I’ll let you know when I’m back in town.”

  “You got it.”

  “Thanks, Penny.” He ended the call and rubbed his eyes again. When he opened them he noticed that his Uber driver was arching an eyebrow in the rearview mirror.

  “Everything okay, pal?” he asked.

  “Just another day in the life,” he murmured. He opened his wallet, pulled out a fifty-dollar bill, and passed it over the seat. “Say, how much faster do you think we can get there?”

  *

  Zero had never met Dr. Howard Bliss. It had been Maya who had discovered him, tracked him to New York, and confronted him. It was Maya who found out that Bliss had been hired by the CIA to install an experimental device, a memory suppressor, into the now-deceased Seth Connors, the first CIA agent who had volunteered to test it after the tragic death of his daughter.

  Maya had told him everything, including where to find Bliss. Zero stood on the front stoop of the handsome three-story brownstone on the Upper East Side. He examined the place before knocking; it was daylight but he saw no lights on inside, no movement or evidence of anyone home. He glanced upward—the small black dome of a security camera stared down on him. A small white panel to his left indicated a doorbell and intercom.

  He pressed it and waited.

  After ten seconds he pressed it again.

  Then he tried the door. It was unlocked. Not a good sign, even in a nice neighborhood like this one.

  Wish I had a gun.

  He glanced around quickly but didn’t see anyone watching him. He almost laughed at himself; this was New York. There was undoubtedly someone watching him. But he stepped through the doorway anyway and gently closed the door behind him.

  The house was quiet. He heard the hum of a refrigerator and nothing else. He stood in a high-ceilinged foyer, a chandelier high over his head and a hardwood staircase leading up to the second level. To his right was a home office with a dual-monitor setup. On his left was a pair of French doors, through the glass of which he could see some sort of parlor or sitting room.

  Both were empty.

  Zero resisted the urge to call out, to warn of his presence. He’d had a hunch back in Zurich, a last-minute decision just before booking his plane ticket. Guyer and his wife had been killed and the files on Zero had been taken—which could align with his kneejerk assumption that it was personal.

  Or it could mean something else.

  He stepped into a wide, impressive kitchen that would have made any professional chef giddy. A dual-range induction stove, solid-piece granite counter space, an apron sink nearly the size of a bathtub. But no people. No scents of recently cooked meals. The coffee machine was dry as a bone.

  He went upstairs then, treading softly, listening intently. Bliss lived well; Zero passed a bathroom almost as big as his entire bedroom with a claw-foot tub and an eight-foot vanity. The master bedroom had vaulted ceilings, a four-poster bed, and two bodies lying atop a sheet.

  “Dammit,” Zero said softly. He’d been right, but it was the last thing he wanted to be right about now.

  Bliss was in silk pajamas, his hair thoroughly gray, and had been stabbed in the chest and neck several times. His wife had high, shapely cheekbones positioned between wide, unblinking eyes and a slit throat.

  Just like Guyer, it was evident they hadn’t been killed in bed. A window was partially open but there was no broken glass; Bliss must have had it open to enjoy the breeze, and the assailant climbed through it. A glance outside told him it would have been no easy feat. Bliss must have heard them coming and leapt out of bed. The signs of a struggle were apparent. Bliss’s murder had been sloppier than the others; he’d tried to fight off his attacker, but lost. His wife had probably jumped for her phone, or tried to get out of the room before she was set upon.

  Zero’s hunch had been right. Dr. and Mrs. Guyer hadn’t been killed just because of a personal connection to Zero. It wasn’t simple retaliation. Howard Bliss had no connection to Zero. But he did have a connection to the Guyers, though none of them knew it.

  They all knew about the memory suppressor. Whoever did this was eliminating anyone who knew about the CIA program to create a device capable of suppressing memories.

  Suddenly Stefan Krauss seemed increasingly unlikely. He didn’t have motive. He killed for money. He worked for no one but himself, and manipulated others into believing he was working for them. This didn’t fit his MO or his worldview.

  But at the moment, the whodunit of the equation seemed less important than the potential victims. If targets were anyone who knew about the suppressor, then the list included Alan Reidigger. Penelope León. Todd Strickland. All three of his daughters.

  And of course, Zero himself.

  He pulled out his phone to make the call when something caught his eye. A white envelope, on the nightstand beside Mrs. Bliss’s body. But it wasn’t the envelope itself that caught his eye, but rather the mark upon it. A circle with a slash through it.

  A zero. Just like the one on Dr. Guyer’s file folder in Zurich.

  Zero reached for it as if it might be burning hot. The zero was written hastily in black marker, the slash fading to a jagged edge like a knife. Every logical thought in his head screamed a symphony for him to get the hell out of there. Instead, he dared to open it.

  Inside was a single sheet of paper folded in thirds. Upon it were four handwritten lines, in a neat scrawl, perfectly parallel, almost mechanical. It said:

  You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood…

  back home to a young man’s dreams of glory and of fame…

  back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time –

  back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.

  Zero stared at it for far longer than he should have. He knew those words, had heard them before—no, not heard, but read. It was an excerpt from Thomas Wolfe’s novel You Can’t Go Home Again, published posthumously in 1940. Not just any excerpt, but the novel’s denouement, and perhaps the most quoted and well-known excerpt from the book.

  You can’t go home again.

  Home.

  This was a threat.

  He had to get home, now.

  Zero stuffed the sheet and the envelope into his back pocket and raced out of the bedroom, down the hall, barreling down the stairs. At the front door he stopped himself briefly, took a breath, and exited the
brownstone as casually as possible, as if nothing was wrong, as if he had not just found two dead bodies and an obvious warning to go home…

  He was halfway down the block, phone in hand, when he stopped himself.

  You can’t go home again.

  You can’t go back home to your family.

  Back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting.

  Back home to the escapes of time and memory.

  He kept walking, his feet moving automatically in some direction while his brain spin-cycled the words over and over.

  He had just given Penny reason to believe that his home in Virginia was not a concern. Alan would have gotten the girls out and somewhere safe. Someone wanted him to come here, to find the doctor and his wife, to know what sort of game was afoot.

  The note was right; he couldn’t go back home. Because the home where he had tried to escape time and memory was not in Virginia. It was here, in New York.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Thirty-five minutes later Zero found himself standing outside a familiar yet simultaneously foreign house. Whoever owned it now, they’d painted the brick; what used to be brown was now white.

  It was strange, like running into an ex who had dyed their hair.

  What am I doing here?

  He’d called Penny on the way, warned her about his theory, that anyone connected to the suppressor technology was being eliminated. He warned her to warn Strickland. He tried to call Alan again, and Sara, and Mischa, to no avail.

  He would give anything to know where they were, that they were safe.

  What am I doing here?

  Zero was certain he’d deciphered the note correctly. Now he stood outside a white-bricked, two-story craftsman in Riverdale in the northern end of the Bronx. His former home. It was here that he’d lived with Kate when she was still alive. It was here he’d lived when she wasn’t anymore. It was here he’d lived when the memory suppressor was installed in his head, and here he’d lived for two blissful, ignorant years thinking he was nothing more than an adjunct history professor at Columbia University and a widower, and a single father raising two daughters.