by Jack Mars
“No, ma’am, I do not.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to, young lady.” The man in the suit smiled. She didn’t like his smile; it looked forced and insincere. “My name is David Barren. I’m the Director of National Intelligence.” He held out a hand.
Maya shook his hand, though a nervous tingle ran up and down her spine. She was keenly aware that this was not at all about Greg. In fact, there was only one person this could possibly be about. What has he done?
“Ms. Lawson,” said Dean Hunt, “there’s no denying you are an asset to this academy. Judging by your success here so far, I am certain you’ll go on to do great things. And you should know that very few people here know who you really are. Rather, who certain family members might be.” Hunt paused for effect, but Maya simply sat there and did not allow herself to react.
But internally she was thinking, They knew? All this time?
“Of course I know about it,” said Hunt, “as does Director Barren here.”
Maya’s stomach tightened. She didn’t want the dean to keep talking; she didn’t want to discover that she’d been admitted on the merit of being Agent Zero’s daughter, like part of some twisted covert legacy. She wanted to keep believing she’d done it all on her own.
“We just want to ask you a few questions,” said DNI Barren. “We understand you visited home this past weekend.”
Maya nodded. “I did, sir. Though it was a very brief visit.”
“During this visit,” said the DNI, “did anything seem particularly amiss? Did your father mention any upcoming… trips? Anything he might have had planned?”
What are they fishing for? Maya wondered. They were being irritatingly pleasant, almost sycophantic. As if they were speaking to a child.
“No sir,” she said honestly. “He didn’t. In fact, he barely said anything. To be frank, our relationship has been strained for some time. The visit over the weekend was a halfhearted attempt at reconciliation. It was, in hindsight, a bad idea. I haven’t seen or spoken to him since, and I have no desire to anytime soon. Sir.”
Barren’s smile faltered. “I see. May I ask the nature of this falling out?”
“No, sir, you may not.” The words spilled from her mouth like a leaky faucet. Her heart skipped a beat; she was dangerously close to mouthing off to a very high-ranking government official in front of the dean. “With all due respect,” she added quickly, “it’s quite personal.”
Dean Hunt and the DNI exchanged a glance. Some kind of an understanding seemed to pass between them, though Maya couldn’t tell just what it was.
“You’re obviously a very intelligent young woman,” said Barren. “So I think we should just drop the pretense and get right down to brass tacks.”
“Agreed, sir.”
Barren sat on the edge of Hunt’s desk and looked Maya right in the eye. “Earlier this evening, at approximately twenty-two hundred hours, a former CIA operative—your father—stormed a government property, injured several people, including the Russian president, and absconded with an interpreter who was extorting both the US and Russian leaders. Both she and your father are currently missing. The interpreter is a Ukrainian-born woman who may have extremely sensitive information.”
Maya couldn’t hide her reaction this time. Her eyes widened in surprise and her lips parted slightly as she gaped at the DNI. What? Why would he do that? She had just seen her father a couple of days ago, and he seemed—well, he had seemed so subdued. Defeated, even.
To her surprise, she found herself worrying for him, hoping that he was all right. It was a perfectly natural reaction, she reasoned. Still, it made her think twice about the way they had left things.
But then an even more alarming thought struck her. The dean hadn’t just called her in here to tell her about this. They had woken her, dragged her out of bed, and brought her there because they thought she might have information on her father’s whereabouts.
And just a moment later, David Barren confirmed it. “Naturally, Ms. Lawson, you have to imagine that your recent visit there, and being his next of kin, has led us to believe you might know something about all this.”
“To be clear, cadet,” Dean Hunt cut in, “you’re not in any sort of trouble. Yet. You have an opportunity, here and now, to be on the right side of things. To tell us anything you might know, or anything he might have mentioned. We need you to really think.”
“Because if we discover later that you knew something, and you withheld it,” Barren said sternly, “there would be a steep price to pay, and it would come out of your future.”
Son of a bitch. She had tried, tried so hard to extricate herself from her father’s image, his influence, his deceit. Yet here he was again, threatening her goals without even being present in the room. It was astounding how difficult it was to separate herself from Agent Zero.
And still, she found herself hoping that he was okay.
“Sir. Ma’am,” Maya said carefully. “I am telling you with complete honesty and candor that I don’t have any information for you. I don’t know why he’s done this. I don’t know where he would have gone. If he has a plan, I don’t know what it is. I understand that my visit to him so recently might look suspicious, but I have witnesses that will tell you that the visit ended with me telling him that I never wanted to see him again and storming out of his home.”
She looked directly at the Director of National Intelligence as she said, “You want to know what caused the rift between me and my father, sir? Lies and deception are more than just his livelihood. They’re his addiction. And like any good addict, he would deny it to be the case, but I don’t think he knows who he is without it. I’ve come to believe that his life as a professor and a husband and a father was, to him, just a cover. His identity as a CIA agent was his truth. His reality. I can’t tell you what you want to know because I don’t understand him. I don’t believe I actually know him anymore… if I ever really did.”
The dean’s office was silent for a long moment after, though Maya held the DNI’s gaze so that he understood she was being genuine. He blinked and glanced over at Dean Hunt, who nodded slightly.
“Thank you, cadet,” she said. “You may return to the barracks. I hope you understand that you’ll be monitored until this situation is resolved.”
Maya nodded. “I have nothing to hide, ma’am.”
“And if he attempts to contact you in any way,” said DNI Barren, “you’ll do the right thing.”
It didn’t sound like a question as much as it did a demand. Still, Maya nodded again. “Yes, sir.”
“Thank you for your time, Ms. Lawson.” Barren shook her hand once more, and again he flashed his forced, insincere smile.
Maya pushed the door open and stepped into the corridor. The waiting MP, as if on cue, turned on a heel and began leading the way back to the dorm. Maya followed dutifully, though her mind was racing a mile a minute. She knew she’d get little sleep that night.
Why would he do that? she wondered again. Her father was a lot of things, but stupid wasn’t among them. He had to have a reason. But he wasn’t CIA anymore—which meant this wasn’t part of an assignment. Had he done this on his own? Did he discover something himself? How, when he spent his days alone in that small house?
More importantly, did he not stop long enough to realize how this might reflect on her? That he could, once again, be screwing up her life, her future, and her plans?
In all her confusion and indignation she hadn’t realized what was potentially the biggest problem of all—and when it dawned on her, she nearly stopped in her tracks.
She had lied, not only to Dean Hunt but also to the Director of National Intelligence. She had outright lied when she said, “I don’t know where he would have gone.”
She knew that in a time of crisis like this one, her father would turn to the only man he could trust: his best friend and fellow former agent, Alan Reidigger. Maya knew that, and she had said nothing. A small part of her actually thought about
turning around and marching right back into the office, but she kept going, following the MP.
Alan had saved her life. Sara’s too. Maya knew he’d been living almost four years incognito under the guise of a mechanic named Mitch. She was one of only a handful of people in the entire world who knew the truth, and she couldn’t turn on him like that. Whatever reasons he had for keeping up the charade were his own; it was not her place to out him.
She could only hope that Alan would do the right thing, and turn her father in.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The plane jostled with turbulence and Karina gasped in the darkness of their cramped quarters.
“Tell me,” she said wryly, “do all CIA agents travel in such luxury?”
The two of them were sitting with their backs against opposite walls of a five-foot-by-five-foot crate of sturdy, industrial plastic. The narrow door to Zero’s left was locked from the outside, and the crate was situated atop a wooden pallet which was in the cargo hold of a small plane which was flying over the Atlantic Ocean en route to Europe.
“I’m not a CIA agent anymore,” he reminded her. He imagined that she only knew that because of her sister, if they were really sisters, Emilia Sanders or Veronika or whatever her real name was. “How much did she tell you about me?”
“Not much,” Karina admitted. “Only that you worked with her when FIS discovered the Russian plot to seize the Ukrainian assets in the Baltic. You saved the president’s life. And you jumped off a bridge or something foolish like that—which, after what I’ve seen of your work so far, I fully believe.”
He grinned in the darkness, though Karina couldn’t see it. In their cramped space, her left leg was pressed against his, their feet nearly reaching the crate’s opposite wall. Aside from a thin blanket on the floor for padding, they had a few bottles of water and a wad of cash and nothing else.
They’d met with Reidigger at the appointed spot, and he’d taken them straight to a small airstrip in southern Maryland. He knew a pilot there that specialized in transporting live animals overseas, to zoos and nature preserves and occasionally to be reintroduced into the wild. With a greased palm and a debt called even, the pilot was more than happy to transport a crate to his destination, which was Dusseldorf, Germany. It was still quite a distance from Kiev, but it was the closest that Alan could get them on such impossibly short notice. Zero knew he couldn’t ask for more; it was a small miracle that they were able to even get that.
Alan’s instructions to the pilot were simple: do not look inside the crate, unload it at the freight depot in Germany, and unlock the door before he left.
From there, Karina and Zero would have to stay under the radar while they met with another of Alan’s contacts, a forger from Cologne who already had their photos and would have American identifications and passports ready for them. They were to meet him at the train station adjacent to the airport. And then they would be able to travel freely to Kiev, where they would liaise with Veronika and her FIS team.
Zero couldn’t help but wonder just what in the world Alan had done in the two years he’d been MIA to have garnered all of these contacts and owed favors. But he wasn’t sure he really wanted to know.
“I’m starving,” Karina grumbled. “I can’t remember the last time I’ve eaten.”
Neither could he. He hadn’t been thinking about it until she’d said something, but his stomach roiled with hunger. “We’ll get something as soon as we’re able. Just another…” He sighed. “Five hours or so, I guess.”
“I would try to get some sleep, but our situation is far from comfortable.”
“Oh. Well, let’s try to resituate here.” He shifted to the side, noting the cramping in his back, the protest of pain in his shoulders and spine. What I wouldn’t do for a couple of aspirin. He’d taken off his jacket since it was warm inside their crate; he rolled it in his hands and held it out. “Here, use this as a pillow.”
She reached out in the darkness, her fingers brushing his and, if he wasn’t mistaken, lingering a moment too long. He was probably mistaken. She took it and shifted herself to one side, her back against his legs now and her feet curled up beneath her own legs.
“Thank you.”
“No problem.”
“I mean…” She hesitated. “For helping me. For doing all of this. I would be dead now otherwise.”
“It’s sort of what I do,” he said casually. “Or what I used to do.” He thought for a moment before saying, “But there is a way you could at least start to repay me. I want to know what you know. Why they’re so bent on getting to you. What was said in that meeting.”
Silence reigned in the crate, the only sound the loud humming of the plane’s engines that had become little more than background noise after the hours they’d already spent in there.
“No,” she said quietly.
“No?” Zero blinked. “It might have sounded like a question, but I wasn’t exactly asking. I’ve risked my life to save yours, and now I’m risking it to help you. I think I deserve to know.”
“Telling you would endanger you further,” she said, her soft voice implying that she was facing the side of the crate with her head on his jacket, even though he could barely see her.
“It’s a little late for that, you realize,” he said flatly.
“If you knew what I know, they would want to capture you as well—”
“Right, instead of just killing me outright, which they’re willing to do now—”
“So they could torture you for what you knew, all because I told you—”
“You think they’d be the first to torture me for information?” He scoffed, his voice getting heated. This woman was getting pretty presumptuous about who he was and what he should or shouldn’t know. “Worst people have tried.”
“Mr. Zero,” she said harshly, “this is not a competition about who is most adept at torture. If my being unwilling to tell you what I know bruises your fragile secret-agent ego, perhaps you should keep in mind you are far from the only person to risk life and limb in the interest of their country and its people.”
Despite himself, Zero snorted and let out a small laugh. “Did you just call me ‘Mr. Zero’?”
“Well… yes. You’ve made it clear that you’re not an agent anymore.”
He chuckled again. Mr. Zero. He almost wished Alan was there to hear it. “It’s just Zero.” The amusement of the moment faded quickly, and he found himself once again thinking about her refusal to tell him how the secret meeting shook out. “It’s self-preservation, isn’t it?”
“I’m sorry?”
“The reason you won’t tell me. The people after you want to know what you know. If you told someone else, like me, then you’d be less valuable. They might kill you and take your confidant instead. Keeping the information to yourself is how you think you’ll stay alive.”
He didn’t intend for it to come out as harsh or demeaning, though once he’d said it he understood how it could be taken that way. But he didn’t apologize for it, and Karina fell silent for a long moment.
At last she said, “If that was the case, would you still help me?”
“Yeah. I would.”
Silence stretched between them, the plane’s engine thrumming beneath their crate. At last Karina said, “President Harris is in the Russians’ pocket. I don’t know what he did to get there, but I have reason to believe they helped him attain the presidency. In the meeting, Kozlovsky asked two things of Harris, both of which threaten not only my country, Ukraine, but potentially the world at large.” She lowered her voice and added, “That is all I’m willing to say right now.”
Zero nodded, though she couldn’t see him in the darkness. She kept her word and said nothing further, and soon he felt her breathing grow deeper and rhythmic, her back shifting slightly against his calf. She’d fallen asleep.
He leaned his head back against the hard plastic wall of the crate. It wasn’t comfortable, but he was exhausted. As he closed his eyes he wo
ndered what his daughters would believe if he was killed while helping Karina. No matter what might be said publicly, would they know in their hearts that he had tried to do the right thing? Or would they think it was just one more fool’s errand in a long and storied history, the swan song of a has-been attempting to relive some past glory?
The thought was hardly a comforting one, but it was the only one he had as the plane’s steady engines lulled him to sleep.
*
Zero was trapped, confined to a tiny space. He couldn’t stand, he could hardly move—but the walls were no longer thick plastic. They were made of packed dirt. The air smelled of earth and moisture and rank body odor. An iron grate was over his head, the only exit, locked tight with a padlock the size of a fist.
He’d seen holes like this one before, though he’d never been in one. It was where people were put when the world wanted to forget about them, people who weren’t worth the effort to kill, people who deserved the worst sort of slow death that this vicious oubliette could offer.
There was a sound above him, a clang, and then boots on the iron grate. The padlock was removed, the grate raised, and then hands were reaching for him, pulling him from the hole. He tried to resist, but his limbs were weak. His voice did not seem to work.
His captor pulled him up out of the hole as if he weighed nothing, and then tossed him to the ground. He was in a small dome-like structure, practically a tent, with the iron grate set in the ground in the center and a single bare bulb overhead.
Zero’s fears were confirmed. This was H-6, the Moroccan black site where the CIA and other government agencies left the worst of the worst to die. The place they jokingly called Hell-Six.
His captor brushed the hair from her forehead as she reached for her back pocket.
Zero could not believe his eyes. He wanted to shout to her, but again his vocal cords failed him.
Maya!
She pulled something from her pocket, something shiny, metallic, small—a pair of pliers.
No…