Agent Zero

by Jack Mars

  “Quickly!” she said urgently. “Into the car! Come along, get in.” Her French-speaking accent registered something inside him—not the Kent Steele side, but the Reid Lawson side. She was Flemish, and her first attempt to talk to him must have been Dutch.

  She opened the back door and helped him lay Otets across the seat. Warm air rushed out at Reid like a welcome breeze. The woman retrieved a thin blanket from the trunk. Instead of laying it over the Russian, Reid balled it up and used it to prop Otets’s feet, to help the blood circulate to his heart and avoid shock. Then he climbed into the front seat and held his hands to the air vents.

  The Flemish woman got back into the car and reached to turn the heater up. “Wait,” Reid said in French. “Slow is better.” He knew that if they tried to warm up too quickly after even the slightest onset of hypothermia, they could both go into shock—especially Otets, if he hadn’t already.

  “I should take you to the hospital,” the woman said as she buckled her seatbelt. “It is not far—”

  “No hospitals, please.” He had a feeling that Otets’s men might check the hospitals. Besides, he didn’t want to be questioned—in fact, he planned to do the questioning, as soon as he was in a position to do so.

  “But what about your friend?” she protested. “He could die!”

  “No hospitals,” Reid said firmly.

  She glanced at him and her gaze met his. He could see the uncertainty flickering behind her green eyes, a conflict between wanting to do the right thing and potentially putting herself in some kind of danger.

  He quickly looked her over; she was around forty, plain-featured, with calluses on her fingers and light etches crisscrossing the backs of her hands. A farmer. Mostly likely barley, considering the area.

  The rest of their conversation was in French. It felt strange for Reid to speak it, to suddenly know the words as they came to his mind in English, but it was stranger still to hear a foreign language and instantly understand it as it was spoken.

  “We were drinking,” he explained. “We weren’t watching where we were going, and we ran our car into the river…”

  “Your car is in the river?!” she exclaimed. “You’re lucky to be alive!”

  Reid rubbed his chest. His limbs were warming already, though his clothes were still stiff from the freezing night air. As he shrugged out of his wet jacket, he said, “Yes, but we’re not hurt. Not badly, anyway. If we go to the hospital, they will ask questions. And if they find the truth, they will have to call the police.”

  She shook her head. “That was extremely stupid of you.”

  “I know. But please, no hospitals. Is there any place we can stay the night? An inn or a hostel, perhaps.”

  “But your friend,” she said again, “he looks like he needs help…”

  “He’ll be okay. He’s just very drunk.” Reid hoped she hadn’t noticed the gash across Otets’s leg where the bullet had grazed him.

  The woman sighed and shook her head. She murmured something in Dutch, and then in French she said, “I have a farm not far from here. There is a cabin. You can stay the night there.” Her hesitant gaze met his again as she added, “It would be very good if I did not later regret this.”

  “You won’t. I promise. Thank you.”

  They drove in silence for several minutes. Otets occasionally let out a soft moan, and at one point he vomited a small amount of river water onto the floor of the car.

  At length, the woman asked him, “You are American?”

  “Yes.”

  “And your friend?”

  “Also American.” Reid didn’t want the woman to be in anyone’s line of fire if the men from Otets’s facility went canvassing the area for an American with a Russian man.

  The digital clock on her car radio told him it was nearly one in the morning. “May I ask what you were doing out this late at night?” he ventured.

  “My mother is ill in Brussels,” she told him. “I was just returning from a visit.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Doctors say she’ll live.”

  The rest of their drive was quiet. Reid had the distinct impression that the woman knew he was lying but didn’t want to ask. That was a good idea on her part—plausible deniability—and besides, he wasn’t going to share the truth, regardless of how hospitable she was being.

  After about fifteen minutes they came to a dirt road that wound through a field of short-stalked winter barley. At the end of the narrow road was a small cabin, a single story made of stone and wood with a high peaked roof. She parked the car in front of it.

  “Do you need help carrying him inside?” she asked.

  “No, no. I’ll get him. You’ve done more than enough.” Reid did not want to leave the warmth of the car, but he forced his legs to move again. Nerve pain prickled up his thighs like needles, but he managed to sling Otets over his shoulders once more and carry him into the cabin.

  The Flemish woman led the way, opening the door for them. She flicked on a switch and a single bare bulb glowed overhead. Reid set Otets down on a small green sofa that might have been older than he was. The cabin smelled musty and looked like it hadn’t been used in some time; there was a fine coat of dust on every surface, and when she turned on the electric stove in the corner it was accompanied by a mild burning scent.

  “That odor will fade,” she told him. “There is a bed in the back room, some towels in the bathroom. There may be some food in the cupboards—help yourselves to whatever you’d like.” She bit her lip, as if considering whether or not to ask. “Are you certain you’ll be all right? It’s not every day one finds two frozen men on the side of the road…”

  “We’ll be fine,” he assured her. “I can’t thank you enough.” I could at least try, he thought. He still had the bundle of euros in his pocket. They were soggy and wet, but he peeled off two bills, a hundred each, and held them out to her. “For your trouble.”

  She shook her head. “No trouble. I’m happy to help those in need.”

  “You didn’t have to.” He pushed the bills into her hand. “Please.”

  She took them and nodded graciously. Then she gestured toward the window. “See that light across the field? That is my house.” She quickly added, “I’m not alone there.”

  “We won’t be trouble. I gave you my word. We’ll be gone in the morning.”

  The woman nodded once and then hurried out of the cabin. A moment later Reid heard her car’s engine as it pulled away down the dirt road.

  As soon as she was gone he pulled the curtains shut and stripped out of his wet shoes and clothes. It was not easy, stiff with frost and clinging to his skin as they were. He realized how exhausted his muscles felt—how generally exhausted he was. When was the last time he slept that he wasn’t drugged or knocked unconscious? He could barely remember.

  He draped his clothes on the mantel over the electric stove and then stood in front of it for several minutes, wearing just his boxer shorts and slowly warming his body and working his limbs to get the blood flowing fully again.

  Then he turned his attention to Otets.

  First he got the Russian out of his charcoal-gray suit. He pulled off his wingtip shoes, his cold wet socks, his jacket, trousers, and finally his white shirt. When he rolled Otets over to pull the shirt out from under him, Reid noticed that his back was covered in pale pink vertical scars, each about four to six inches long. They were either shallow swipes from a knife, or lashes from a whip; he couldn’t tell which, but they looked like they were decades old, acquired in youth.

  Otets occasionally mumbled unintelligibly under his breath. Reid couldn’t understand if he was speaking Russian or English, but judging by the snarl of his lip, whatever he was saying wasn’t pleasant. He unceremoniously dumped the soggy clothes into a pile, and then rolled Otets off the sofa and dragged him over to the electric stove, laying him on the threadbare carpet in front of it.

  The kitchen of the cabin was little more than a short corrid
or with a steel sink, a hot plate, a cutting block, and two drawers. Reid filled a glass with water from the tap. When he brought it back, Otets had managed to pull himself up slightly, propped on his elbows.

  “You,” he said weakly in English. “You are madman. You know this?”

  “I’m starting to figure that out,” Reid said. “Drink.”

  Otets did not argue; he drank the entire glass, and when he was finished he took several small gasping breaths. He glanced down at himself as if only just now noticing that he was stripped to his briefs. “What is this you are doing?” he asked.

  “I need you coherent.” Back in Otets’s facility, Reid’s plan had been to get the Russian out of there and turn him over to the authorities. But he needed to know what was happening—to him, and possibly to many others, if his cogent hunch about a threat was right. He’d heard mention more than once now about a plan of some sort. And he was, after all, Kent Steele, CIA agent. He had figured this out before, or at least some of it. He would find out what he could, and then turn Otets over to the powers-that-be and get his life back.

  “I will not tell you anything.” Otets’s head lolled slightly. His eyes were half-closed and bleary. He was in no position to fight back, let alone escape.

  “We’ll see.” Reid retrieved the Glock from his jacket pocket. The Beretta was gone; he had lost it in the river, most likely. He returned to the kitchenette, set the glass in the sink, and disassembled the pistol. He knew it would still fire just fine despite the plunge in the river, but water in the chamber could corrode the barrel. He set the pieces on a dish towel and then opened each of the two drawers.

  All right, he asked himself, what can we use?

  The contents of the drawers were sparse, but among them he found a serrated steak knife—old, yet sturdy and sharp. He held it aloft and looked at his reflection in the blade. His stomach turned at the very thought of using it on a person.

  He decided it was time to amend his acronym. With his girls, he used to ask himself, “What would Kate do?” The letters were the same—WWKD?—but the name was different.

  What would Kent do?

  The reply came instantly: You already know the answer.

  He shuddered a little. It was strange having another voice in his head—no, not another voice, since Kent’s voice was his own. It was another personality in his head, one that was so vastly different from the Reid Lawson that he thought he was that it was nearly nauseating.

  Kent killed people.

  In self-defense.

  Kent went undercover in known terrorist cells.

  Necessary for the security of our nation.

  Kent drove cars over cliffs.

  Out of necessity. Also, it was fun.

  Reid leaned over the steel sink with both hands until the mild feeling of nausea passed. It was from swallowing river water and nothing else—definitely not insanity slowing creeping in, he told himself.

  He desperately wanted the information that Otets knew, or even the information that Kent knew, but he couldn’t shake the awful feeling that maybe he had done this to himself. It didn’t seem to make sense, not based on what he currently knew, but still he couldn’t get the thought out of his head. What if he had stumbled upon something so dangerous and potentially damaging that he needed to forget it? What if he, as Kent Steele, had the memory suppressor implanted for his own safety—or for the safety of his family?

  “Why?” he asked himself quietly. “Why did this happen?” No memories sparked. No visions flashed.

  He sighed, and then he gathered his supplies. From the drawers he took the steak knife and an old brown two-pronged extension cord. He found a tea kettle in the cupboard and filled it with water, and then retrieved a towel from the tiny bathroom in the rear of the cabin. Then he brought them all back to Otets.

  The Russian looked like he was regaining some of his strength, or at the very least, some of his sense. He stared at Reid evenly as he set out all four objects on the floor between them.

  “You intend to torture me,” he said in English. It wasn’t a question.

  “I intend to get answers.”

  Otets shrugged with one shoulder. “Do what you will.”

  Reid was quiet for a long moment. Was getting information really worth what he was thinking about doing?

  If it means keeping people alive—especially my girls—then yes.

  “I’m going to be honest with you,” said Reid. Otets glanced up in surprise, but his eyes remained narrow and suspicious. “You know who I am. Kent Steele, Agent Zero of the CIA, right? The problem is… I don’t know that. I don’t know what it means. Or at least I didn’t, until very recently.” He gestured to the butterfly bandage on his neck, where the Iranian interrogator had cut out the memory suppressor. “It seems I had my memory altered. I don’t know why. I know some things—they come back in flashes—but not enough.”

  Why am I telling him all this?

  You know why. Because he can’t leave this room alive.

  I won’t kill an injured, unarmed man.

  You’ll have to.

  “I don’t believe you,” said Otets firmly. “This is a… um, how do you say… ploy. This is a trick.”

  “It’s not,” Reid said simply. “And I don’t need you to believe me. I need to work this out for myself, really. I was on to something—rather, Kent was on to something. The men we apprehended at Zagreb, Tehran, Madrid… I’ve had this feeling that they were connected, and now I have the distinct impression that they were connected to you. The sheikh, Mustafar, he knew things. He gave us those things, but he didn’t know enough. I was building a case against some plan, an attack maybe, but I don’t know enough to know what it is.”

  Otets smirked with half his mouth. “The sheikh knew nothing.”

  “The sheikh gave us things,” Reid replied. He had seen it in his flashback. “Names, dates, locations…”

  The smirk blossomed into a vicious grin. “The sheikh knew only enough to keep him involved. That is the beauty of our operation. Each of us is merely a piece in the puzzle, none more important than the next. Torture me if you wish, Agent, but I cannot tell you what I do not know—and I know only enough to keep myself involved as well.”

  “The Iranians who captured me,” said Reid. “And Yuri, the Serbian, and the American he mentioned, and the Middle Eastern men in your facility… you’re all working together. What’s the connection?”

  Otets said nothing. He merely stared in defiance, his mouth a straight line.

  Reid casually picked up the extension cord and measured it out in spans, an arm’s width each. “Do you know what these things are for?” He picked up the steak knife and cut the extension cord into two pieces.

  “Gulag,” said Otets. “You know this word, ‘gulag’?”

  “Russian prison camp,” said Reid.

  “Yes. Your government believes gulags were all closed when the Soviet Union dissolved. But no.” Otets jerked a thumb over his shoulder, gesturing toward the crosshatched scars on his back. “There is nothing you can do to me worse than what has already been done.”

  “We’ll see.” Reid’s arm shot out and grabbed Otets’s wrist. The Russian tried to pull away, to struggle against him, but he was still too weak. Reid stuck out his opposite elbow and swiftly jabbed at Otets’s forehead. The blow stunned him just enough for Reid to bind both wrists together tightly with the severed extension cord. The other piece he tied around both ankles.

  He forced Otets to lie on his back, and then Reid straddled him across his chest, sitting atop him with his full weight pinning down his upper arms.

  Imagine if that woman walked in here right now, said the Kent side of him. What would she think was going on?

  Shut up. I don’t want to do this. Even as he thought it, his hands were reaching for the towel.

  It’s the only way. Other than the knife. Or the gun. Would you prefer one of those?

  Nausea rose up in his gut again, but he took a deep breath throu
gh his nose and forced it back down.

  Otets stared up at him passively. He knew he didn’t have the strength to fight. “Do what you will,” he said. “I will tell you nothing.”

  Reid wrapped the towel around Otets’s face, bunching up the ends behind his head and pulling it taut. He gripped it tightly in one fist under the Russian’s head.

  “Last chance,” he said. “What is the plot? What’s the connection between you, the Iranians, and the sheikh?”

  Otets said nothing. His breaths came fast and anxious.

  “Fine.” Reid grabbed the tea kettle and poured water over the towel.

  Some would call waterboarding an interrogation technique. Most would simply call it torture. It came to public prominence in 2004 when leaked CIA reports detailed its use on suspected terrorist cells. Reid knew all of this, but he knew more, and it came flooding back to him as he liberally poured water over Otets’s face.

  Waterboarding simulates the effects of drowning. The porous surface—in this case, a towel—becomes saturated and impermeable. The captive cannot breathe; water fills their passageways.

  The average adult male can hold their breath for less than a minute.

  After a few minutes, hypoxia will set in—lack of oxygen to the brain—and the captive will pass out. Of course, you want to try to stay within that threshold.

  Potential side effects are damage to lungs. Brain damage. Extreme pain. Long-term psychological consequences. And, sometimes, death.

  The muscles in Otets’s neck went taut, standing stark against his white skin. He tried to jerk his head, but Reid held him fast. There was nowhere for him to go anyway, nowhere to escape the water. He grunted and choked beneath the towel. His bound limbs writhed beneath Reid.

  He counted to sixty, and then pulled the towel off.

  Otets sucked in a ragged gasp. His sclerae were bulging and red—he’d popped a few small blood vessels in his eyes. His shoulders heaved.