by Jack Mars
“Krauss! Don’t do this! We’ll be flying blind!”
Zero wrenched the stick. Krauss pulled back. With both of his hands on it, it leaned in his direction. The helicopter wobbled and leaned. Zero held on with the shoulder harness as best he could, despite it cutting off circulation to his wrist.
They soared into the black cloud. Their visibility went from clear to gray to nonexistent in the span of a few seconds.
Krauss pushed on the stick. Zero pulled, trying to maintain their altitude, but still he felt the helicopter dip.
“I killed someone, didn’t I? Someone close to you?”
Zero ignored him, struggling to maneuver the cyclic.
“Was it the woman on the beach?”
Zero strained, gritting his teeth, trying to fight against Krauss’s control of the helicopter. He couldn’t see a thing, but he felt their altitude drop again.
“Was she yours?”
He let go.
He didn’t want to help this man. Krauss was a killer, and he always would be. He knew nothing else. Zero saw Maria in his mind, saw her in those final moments before her death, walking alongside him on the beach at night. Everything had been perfect then. And a minute later, nothing had been.
He didn’t want to help this man. He wanted to see him dead.
He just didn’t want to die in the process.
With one hand free, Zero reared back and delivered a cracking blow across Krauss’s jaw. He reached for the stick and pulled up.
It was too late. Just ahead, a hazy shape came into view. There was no mistaking it; it was the golden dome of the Central Hall. The highest point of the Heliopolis Palace.
There was no time to pull up. Zero let go of the stick. He let go of the shoulder harness, and in spite of every instinct in his body, he pushed off with both feet against the skid.
He fell backward through thick black smoke. For a moment it felt as if he was floating. Above him, the helicopter struck the golden dome, and despite the low visibility, the orange fireball flashed brilliantly as the helicopter exploded.
Then he hit something, hard, and the air was forced from his lungs. He couldn’t move. Nothing hurt. The golden dome burned, and debris rained down on the rooftop around him. He coughed, choking on the acrid air.
But this isn’t how you die.
CHAPTER THIRTY NINE
Todd Strickland swiped his keycard through a vertical slot in the wall of a white, cinder-blocked corridor in a sublevel of the CIA’s Langley headquarters. There was a loud buzz, the sliding of a heavy electronic bolt, and the steel door unlatched with a heavy chunk.
This was just one of four sublevels beneath the George Bush Center for Intelligence—four that he knew of, anyway.
He pushed the door closed behind him and nodded to the single gray-suited security guard who sat behind a beige desk, reading The Washington Post. “Morning, Ben.”
“Agent Strickland.” The retired agent made no attempt to move; there was no need to check Todd’s ID or scan his keycard. He was here off the record. “Go ahead back.”
“Thanks.”
He headed through another set of doors and past three empty cells on each side of the corridor, heading toward the last one on the left. There were no other prisoners on this sublevel; this place had originally been intended as a temporary holding station, usually reserved for domestic terrorists, war criminals, rogue military, and the occasional traitorous agent. It was a way station en route to far worse places, like Hell Six in Morocco—or a simple hole in the dirt. But these days, they hardly used it.
The cell was twelve foot by twelve foot, with a floor and ceiling of concrete and walls made not of bars but two-inch reinforced glass. A grid of half-inch holes in the side facing the corridor made communication possible with the prisoner inside. There were no windows, but far worse was the fact that there was no discernible door. The cell was accessible via a hidden panel in one of the glass facades. It was a psychological maneuver intended to demonstrate to the prisoner that there was absolutely no way out.
Inside was a small cot with blanket and pillow, a tiny bathroom area that consisted of a sink, toilet, and shower head—all open, all exposed—and a single steel chair, bolted to the floor.
The prisoner sat in that chair. He wore simple blue polyester/cotton scrubs, like a nurse in an ER, which lacked pockets or zippers or anything metal. His feet were bare. His trademark trucker’s cap was missing; his hair and beard were clean but still unruly.
There was a single metal chair at the end of the corridor. Todd positioned it in front of the glass wall of the cell and sat. “Hello, Alan.”
“Todd.” Alan Reidigger looked up at him. He looked like he’d aged several years in the three days since they’d been back stateside. “How’s the hand?”
Strickland held up his bandaged left hand. “Itchy. But it’s healing. You holding up okay?”
Reidigger glanced around at his glass walls and chuckled. “They keep it warm in here. Three squares a day, and I’ve got my health. So, better than most, I suppose.” His smile vanished. “How’s Penny?”
Todd looked at the floor. “Better. She’s eating solid food, at least. But they’re going to keep her on at the hospital for a while. Probably a couple of weeks.”
“Give her my best.”
“Wish I could. She… doesn’t want to see me anymore.”
“Oh?” Alan leaned forward. “What happened?”
He shrugged. “Depends on who you ask. If you ask me, she lied and betrayed national security. If you ask her, I didn’t heed Zero’s advice when I could have. Either way… doesn’t matter. She’s done here. CIA fired her.”
Reidigger stroked his beard and sighed. “Sorry to hear that.”
Four days earlier, Strickland had raced back to the Cairo International Convention Centre to find the guard dead and Penny badly beaten. She had refused to tell Krauss where the vice president was—at least she had refused at first, and held out for as long as she could.
Krauss had left her alive. But it would take more than the hospital could offer for her to get over the damage he’d inflicted.
An ambulance had come for her. Strickland wanted to ride with it, to go with her, but as they loaded her onto a gurney, a white Kia SUV had pulled up to the convention center, driven by Vice President Joanna Barkley, who claimed she’d been rescued by a young blonde girl who had shown her to the car and then run off.
Foreign leaders were secure and back in their home nations. Rutledge and Barkley returned to the United States. Egypt condemned the terror attack, of course, but so far the culprits were publicly unknown. The nine would-be member nations of the Cairo Accord agreed, remotely, that they would honor the agreement. They didn’t need to sign a piece of paper to hold true to their word.
But the world was still shaken. Forty-seven people had been killed in the bombing of the Heliopolis Palace and more than a hundred injured. The message had been clear.
Before leaving Cairo, Strickland had been contacted by an Interpol director by the name of Baraf, who had Alan Reidigger in custody. They negotiated an exchange, and Reidigger had flown back to the US as a prisoner of EOT.
“And Zero?” Alan asked. “Any sign of him?”
Strickland shook his head. “They’re still sifting through the wreckage of the palace. They found the helicopter, but only one body.”
He could only guess that the charred remains found in the cockpit of the helicopter were Stefan Krauss. There was no sign of Zero, and only Todd, Penny, and McMahon even knew that he’d been in Cairo.
“The girls?” Alan asked.
“Nothing. Vanished, all three of them.” Todd looked Alan in the eye. “You think they’re alive?”
Alan nodded. “I do.” Todd could tell he meant it.
“I think that’s enough small talk.” Strickland cleared his throat. “Are you ready to tell me about Bright?”
Alan shook his head. “No.”
“Come on, Alan. I can’t hel
p you, or him, or stop this, if you don’t tell me what you know.”
“Telling you anything would only put you on the hit-list,” Alan said simply. “Aren’t enough people dead?”
“I have resources,” Todd argued. “A team. The president’s ear—”
“Which is exactly why I won’t tell you. Because you’ll do the right thing, try to escalate it, tell your bosses. If they’re in on it, that makes you dead. If they’re not, it might make them dead.” Reidigger shook his head. “As it is, I’m already dead.”
“No. No one knows you’re here but me and Ben, and he doesn’t even know who you are. Everyone believes you’re in a hole at H-6.”
“And if they find out,” Alan argued, “it’ll be easy picking.”
Todd sighed in frustration. Alan had so far refused to tell him anything about the character Mr. Bright, who he might be, where he might be. And Todd hadn’t said a word to anyone—mostly because he didn’t have enough information to go off of. He couldn’t enlist Penny’s help, not anymore, and his own research had yielded nothing.
“You want to help?” Alan asked. “Then step aside and let him do it. You’re doing a job. You’re bound by laws. He won’t be. Not anymore.”
“You’re assuming he’s alive,” Todd remarked.
Alan smiled. “I am, yeah.”
Strickland didn’t want to say it aloud, but he did too.
“All right, Alan. I’ve got work to do. I’ll come see you tomorrow. And I hope you’ll be in a more talkative mood.” Strickland rose from the metal chair and started down the hall.
“Todd—wait.”
He paused. “Yeah?”
“There is one thing I want to say.” Alan hung his head, his beard touching his chest. “Kate… Zero’s wife. She knew.”
He frowned. “Knew what?”
“She knew what he was. She knew the things that he had done.”
Todd didn’t understand. “How did she know?”
“Because… she was working for the NSA.”
Strickland blinked. “That can’t be right.”
Alan nodded. “I didn’t find out about it until after her death. But it seemed she was on the verge of uncovering something, and I think that something was about Bright. I think she supplied the information she found to the CIA. And I think that’s why she was killed. I don’t know for sure. But…”
“But all this time,” Todd said quietly, “Zero thought her death was his fault.”
Alan nodded. “I kept it from him.”
“Why?”
“Because,” Alan sighed, “he had already created the narrative in his head. And I guess… I guess it was easier to let him think he had done the betraying than to think that she had.”
Todd shook his head. “A secret isn’t necessarily a betrayal.”
Alan smiled sadly at him. “Isn’t it?”
He thought of his own life, and Penny, and the secrets he’d kept and the ones that had been kept from him, and he didn’t want to admit it, but he couldn’t think of a single one that didn’t qualify.
“Why are you telling me this?” Todd asked.
“Honestly? Because Zero had a flashback of some sort. I don’t think it was real, and he doesn’t either. But it could lead to him asking more questions, digging deeper. And… well, I don’t think I’m going to make it out of here alive. I doubt I’m going to see Zero again. Someone else needed to know the truth. You know. Just in case.”
Todd nodded. “I get it.” He stood there for a long moment. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Alan.”
“Yeah. See you tomorrow.”
He left then, past the empty cells and through the door and past Ben the guard. Alan was right about one thing; he wouldn’t be seeing Zero again. But if he was still alive somewhere, Todd would find him. That was his goal now.
EPILOGUE
Joanna Barkley sat on a cushion in front of a picture window overlooking the wide front lawn of Number One Observatory Circle, the official residence of the vice president. She had no spouse and no children; it was a lot of house for one person. Yet she enjoyed her privacy. She liked being alone.
But then again, she was never really alone. She had security. Guards. She’d had security and guards in Cairo, too.
These rare moments of being alone gave her time to think, and she had quite a bit to think about. Namely, the strange young girl who had helped her escape, had led her to a vehicle, put her in it, and told her to return to the convention center where she would find Agent Strickland.
The girl had refused to come with her. She had claimed to be Zero’s daughter, and she needed to find him.
But that wasn’t all she had said.
The girl had taken her by the hand and led her quickly away from the administrative building, around the main hospital, back toward the road with its clogged traffic, and she’d said some things, some that were lost on Barkley because she had been in a mild state of shock, but some that she remembered vividly.
“Don’t talk; just listen. There is a man who calls himself Mr. Bright…”
“…works in cooperation with the CIA, or at the very least, its director…”
“…very dangerous. But none are in quite as much danger as you. You represent a direct threat to his endeavors.”
“…tell no one. Absolutely no one. I am only telling you this because of what it might mean for you. Because you will be a target again, I am certain.”
Barkley shivered, though she wasn’t cold.
If the girl was to be believed, Zero had uncovered some sort of conspiracy that involved the funding of terrorism and the unraveling of all of her efforts.
She didn’t want to believe it. It sounded insane. She didn’t believe in far-reaching conspiracies or shadowy cabals.
But… she’d heard and seen too much to not believe it.
For now, she would heed the girl’s advice. She would tell no one, not even Jon. But she would look into it herself. She had to do her due diligence. If it was true, it would paint a much bigger target on her back.
If it was true, it meant there were forces working from the inside to undo all they had done and would do.
She couldn’t think of anything more frightening than not being able to trust anyone around her.
If it was true, she’d need help.
She could only hope he was still alive, wherever he was.
*
Maya paced the floor of the tiny living room. It was 1:58 p.m. It felt like it had been 1:58 p.m. for an hour now.
The cabin’s living room was so small that she could only make two strides before she had to turn around again. Two strides, turn, two strides, turn.
“You’re making me anxious,” Trent noted from the two-cushion sofa. He was in his boxers and a T-shirt, squinting in concentration as he sewed a patch onto the knee of the only pair of jeans he had.
“Sorry.” She couldn’t help it; she had energy and she needed to burn it.
The minute hand of the clock on the wall ticked. 1:59 p.m.
Sara burst into the living room from the cabin’s single rear bedroom. “Is it time?”
“Almost,” Maya told her.
“Ew, Trent, put your damn pants on,” Sara scolded.
“I’m mending them.”
“Mending? What are we, Amish?”
Maya smirked. She was glad to see her sister’s sense of humor had returned somewhat. The last few days had been… trying, to say the least.
Four days ago they’d rescued Sara from the community center. “Rescued” might have been an overstatement; Sara had killed five men to get out of there alive.
From there they drove to Missouri. They changed cars twice and stopped only for gas. They kept to the speed limit and avoided police.
Trent’s family owned a stretch of property, thirty-something acres of almost entirely untouched woods in the Missouri wilderness. It had been purchased decades ago by his great-grandfather, who hoped the land would someday become valuable and some developer
would offer several times its purchase price to knock down the trees and build a town.
That never happened. So the property stayed in the family. Most of them had forgotten all about it. The only reason Trent knew about it was because his uncle had taken him hunting there when he was a kid. He knew there was a small cabin, with running water and a generator, surrounded by acres of woods and deer and nothing else. The uncle who had taken him hunting was dead now, and the property was neglected and forgotten by everyone but Trent.
The cabin smelled like mildew. There was only one bedroom and a twin-sized bed. The showers were frigid and they had to conserve use of the generator. They had only the clothes on their back and a meager amount of cash that had to last.
But they were together, and they were safe.
Sara had stolen a pay-as-you-go phone from a gas station on their way through Kentucky. They used it as sparingly as possible, turning it on only in the morning and at night so that Maya could check her messages.
Her family had several plans in the event of various emergencies. One of them was the event that they would be separated, cut off from help or resources, and needed to find each other. Maya had found a relatively unknown Chinese messaging app that allowed its users almost complete anonymity. She had created an account, using none of her real information, and shared the user name with her dad, Sara, Mischa, Maria, and Alan.
She had turned the phone on each morning and each night and checked the app. Morning and night, there was nothing. But this morning, she had turned the phone on and opened the app, and there was something.
It was a foreign telephone number, beginning with the country dialing code 2-0. For Egypt. And then a time: 3:00 p.m. EST.
Finally the clock struck 2 p.m. They were in Missouri; it was three o’clock on the East Coast, and ten at night in Egypt.
Maya powered the phone on. She called the number. She put it on speaker as Sara crowded at her shoulder and Trent leaned forward to hear.