Agent Zero

by Jack Mars

  These were Kent Steele’s words. Kent’s tactics. Kent’s by-any-means-necessary mentality.

  The terrorist’s nostrils flared as his lips curled into a snarl. “Do your worst,” he sneered. “I am Amun. We are trained. Prepared for anything.”

  “Anything,” Reid repeated softly. “No. Not for me.” He grabbed the man’s bound wrists and pulled them straight, forcing his forearms across the edge of the tub. He pressed the tip of the corkscrew to the man’s left forearm. The man tried to pull back, but he was weakened and Reid held him fast. “What is it you’re doing here?”

  “To hell with you,” the man spat again.

  Reid sighed disappointedly. He twisted the corkscrew as he pressed. The tip of it pierced the skin. Blood pooled around it and ran down the side of the yellow tub. The man hissed through his teeth, spraying spittle across the cracked tile floor.

  “Amun prepares you for things. For people like me. The other agents. Our black sites. What we might do to you.” Kent had taken over, and this time the Reid Lawson side of him did not protest. It was necessary, Reid knew. As much as the idea of tormenting another human being might ordinarily turn his stomach, this was his only lead. It was this, or people would die. “But you see, all those preparations just force me to get more creative.”

  He twisted again, applying downward pressure as the corkscrew penetrated muscle. The man gritted his teeth again, hissing quick breaths, his eyes squeezed shut.

  “Please, just tell me what I want to know.” He twisted again. The man yelped. “I’ve got nothing but time. Nowhere else to go from here.”

  “Then…” the man panted. “Then that makes you… my prisoner.” The corners of his blistering mouth curled into a grin, lips twitching with the pain.

  Reid shook his head. “That’s where you’re wrong, friend. Because I’m going to get to the bone soon.” He twisted again. The man made a choking sound, trying desperately not to cry out. “It takes a lot of pressure to penetrate bone—trust me, I know. Bones are strong; one of the strongest substances found in nature.”

  He wrenched down on the corkscrew again. This time the man screamed.

  “But it’s just a matter of physics. Pressure and leverage. This will penetrate bone. That’s going to hurt a lot more. When it gets to the marrow, this pain is going to be ten times worse. If it gets all the way through, it’ll split the bone in the center. Even if you somehow regain use of this arm, it’ll never be the same again.”

  The tip of the corkscrew scraped against the radius in his forearm. The man howled in agony.

  Reid was bluffing; a corkscrew and downward pressure was not strong enough to penetrate bone, but he knew that the combination of pain and fear with the right threat could be more powerful than force.

  “To hell…” the man grunted. Reid twisted a little further and the words caught in his throat, escaping as a pained whimper.

  “You’ve got two arms,” Reid said. “Two legs. And a whole lot of vertebrae… you know that word, ‘vertebrae’? Your spine. There are thirty-one pairs of spinal nerves. You think this is bad? It gets so much worse.”

  “I heard… stories,” the man wheezed. “But I did not… think them true.”

  “Stories? Of what?”

  “You.” The man’s eyes met Reid’s. His pupils were almost fully dilated. He was afraid. “You are the devil.”

  “No,” Reid said quietly. “I’m not the devil. I’m just a man in a corner. And your people put me there. Now… let’s begin.” He stood and put one foot against the tub, as if preparing himself for the necessary leverage to push the corkscrew into bone. He sucked in a deep breath—

  “Trucks!” the man grunted. “Trucks!”

  Reid paused. “What about trucks?”

  “Trucks come.” His voice wavered, his breaths coming fast and uneven. Blood ran liberally over the edge of the tub. “They come. We unload the cargo. Put it on another truck.”

  “That’s it? You unload one truck and load another?” Reid shook his head. “What’s on the trucks?”

  “I don’t know,” the man hissed.

  Reid shook his head. He put his foot up again, preparing to wrench down.

  “I don’t know!” the man screamed. “I don’t know! I don’t know!”

  Reid believed him. He knew all too well by now that Amun’s MO was keeping people in the dark as often as possible. “Some of those men out there spoke Russian. Have you ever heard the name Otets before?”

  The man nodded weakly. “Yes.”

  “The drivers of these trucks, who were they?”

  The man shook his head. His chin drooped. “I don’t know… Middle Eastern…”

  The bombs, Reid thought as he pieced it together in his mind. Otets made bombs. Gave them to the Iranians. They drove them here. Changed trucks. Why? To avoid being followed or tracked? No… that would be too simple. Maria had told him that Amun’s trail was thorough, and they worked hard to keep their members from knowing too much. They change trucks so that no single person knows where they came from and where they’re going. He wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that there were multiple depots like this one on whatever route they took.

  “That’s all I know,” the man said breathlessly. “I swear it.”

  “No,” Reid countered. “You’re Amun. You must know something more. Where are the others in your organization? Where are they headquartered?”

  The man said nothing. He stared at the floor and shook his head feebly.

  Reid knew there was only so far he could get with threats. He turned the man’s arm slightly and twisted the corkscrew again. It bit further into the muscle as it slipped between the radius and ulna of his forearm.

  The man threw back his head and howled in agony.

  “Where?”

  “There is… no… one place…” he said raggedly. “We are… everywhere…”

  “Give me something,” Reid threatened. “We’ve got hours to do this.” That wasn’t true either; the three men in the other room were only bound with duct tape. They would work their way out of it eventually.

  He twisted again. The man tried to scream but it came out as a hoarse hiss of air.

  “You must know something,” Reid said.

  “The… the… the…” the man stammered.

  “The what?”

  “The… sheikh…”

  “Sheikh?” Reid frowned. “Mustafar? What about him?”

  “He knows… he knows…” The man was panting again. Half of his face was shiny-red from the explosion; the other had completely drained of color. “He knows.”

  You know, Sheikh… a bullet sounds the same in every language.

  “No, we have the sheikh. We’ve already interrogated him,” said Reid. “He doesn’t know anything. He was a patsy. A scapegoat.”

  “The sheikh,” the man said again. His voice was barely above a whisper. “He’s not… he’s not…” His eyes rolled up and he slumped forward. His forehead bounced lightly against the rim of the tub before Reid could catch it. Unconscious from either shock or blood loss, Reid assumed.

  He groaned in frustration. The sheikh’s not what? Not telling the truth? The sheikh didn’t know anything; he had learned that already from a triggered memory. He was a false lead, a trail gone cold. This man was a member of Amun—it made sense for him to try to throw Reid off, feed him bad intel.

  But what if that’s not what this was? he thought. What if he was trying to tell me something about Mustafar? The man had been under significant duress. Even so, the sheikh was being held at a CIA black site in Morocco. There was no chance that Reid could get to him, not without being discovered.

  He rose slowly and washed the blood from his hands in the dirty sink. He left the corkscrew in the man’s arm as he searched his pockets. There was a cell phone, and much like Otets’s previously, there was no information saved, no call history, no contacts.

  Reid dialed 112 on the phone—the number for emergency services, the 911 of the Euro
pean Union. A woman answered flatly in Slovenian.

  “English?” Reid asked.

  “Yes, what is your emergency?” she said.

  “There’s a fire.” He gave her the address to the warehouse. Then he ended the call abruptly and tossed the phone into the tub. He retrieved the revolver from atop the toilet and slung his bag over one shoulder.

  Out in the living room, one of the men had worked his way out of the bonds around his wrists and was frantically tugging at the duct tape around his ankles. When he saw Reid emerge, he rolled over and reached for his gun. Reid already had his in hand. He fired once. The kick of the .357 was significant, almost exhilarating. The shot struck the man in the forehead and left an impressive hole.

  He tucked the revolver into the back of his pants. Then, with a grunt of effort, he pulled the stove away from the wall, reached behind it, and yanked out the gas line.

  The other two men were conscious on the floor, duct tape still over their mouths, watching him with wide eyes.

  He knew he couldn’t let them live—especially not the Amun member. They would report it immediately. They would know the trail that Agent Zero was following.

  Reid stood in the doorway as he took the second aerosol can, with the road flare duct-taped to it, out of his bag. He popped the flare, tossed it across the floor, and then leapt down the stairs.

  Three seconds later the first explosion, the blast of the aerosol can, came barely an instant before the second, much larger blast. The entire apartment was incinerated in the blink of an eye. Windows exploded outward; walls caved. A fireball whooshed out through the open door and filled the stairwell, but by that time Reid was already on the ground floor, pushing his way through the steel security door and hurrying out into the cold night.

  He strode briskly down the block, keeping alert of his periphery for anyone who might have seen him leave the building. There didn’t seem to be anyone around. When he arrived at the dumpster he was not at all astonished to find the motorbike missing. He scoffed. Likely some unseen pair of eyes from a surrounding building had watched him hide it, and had stolen it the moment he went into the warehouse.

  Reid doubled back and slipped down the narrow alley as the apartment burned. A flaming playing card fluttered down and landed nearby. Sirens wailed in the distance as emergency vehicles raced to the blaze before it spread to the building’s ramshackle neighbors.

  At the mouth of the alley, Reid turned left. He slowed his pace and stuck his hands in the pockets of his bomber jacket to appear casual. Just out for an evening stroll—no, Officers, I didn’t hear any gunshot or explosion.

  The hairs on the back of his neck stood up.

  He was being watched.

  There were no streetlamps in this part of the city. The boulevard was dark; he would be little more than a silhouette to an assailant. He slowly reached for the gun at his back as he heard footfalls getting closer behind him.

  His first thought was of the Amun assassin from the subway—that somehow the man had tracked him here, or assumed he would come. Reid drew the revolver as he spun, leveling it at shoulder height, ready to fire the veritable cannon into whatever threat was in his path…

  “Kent!” She froze when she saw the size of the gun in his hand.

  “Maria.” He blinked in surprise—not in surprise that she was there, but by his own reaction to seeing her alive. It was a sensation of relief, of solace.

  Still, he didn’t lower his gun. He had the distinct feeling that she hadn’t come alone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  Rais was furious.

  He had him. He had Kent Steele on the business end of his Sig Sauer, and again he had managed to slip from his grasp.

  Damn that fat Italian for barging in at the most inopportune moment.

  Damn that Agent One—Agent Morris, as it turned out—for getting in the way.

  It was no small relief that at least this time it hadn’t ended with Rais’s sternum open, but the mere fact that Agent Zero still drew breath caused him such fury that it manifested as a swirling tempest of a tension migraine, making it difficult for him to think straight.

  If that insipid Agent Morris hadn’t gotten in the way… if the police hadn’t shown up… if that train hadn’t been there at that precise moment… if only.

  Worst of all—worse than Steele getting away, worse than Amun losing their CIA asset—was the fact that Steele had not even seemed to recognize him. Despite dyeing his hair blond and wearing blue contacts, Rais was up close, face to face. Given their history, there was no reason that Steele should not have fully realized who he was. But he simply didn’t.

  It was not an act. Rais could tell that there was not a glimmer of recognition behind Steele’s eyes.

  He had never felt more insignificant.

  After eluding the police in the subway station, Rais had ducked into a department store and quickly purchased a green jacket and a baseball cap to hide his blond hair. He took out the blue contacts and tossed them in a trash can, along with his brown coat. Then he scoured the city for Kent Steele, checking every metro station he could find on the route. He knew it was no use; Steele was a professional. He was long gone, possibly even already out of Rome by then.

  Rais knew he had no other recourse. He had no way to track the agent until Steele acted again. In the meantime, he would have to report to Amun and tell them that they had lost Agent One. Being Amun meant that he had taken an oath to never lie to or deceive his brothers. He would have to tell them that it was by his own hand, and he would have to accept the consequences.

  He took out a phone and called an Amun contact who could quickly organize flight plans. The nameless man on the other end—he was just a number to Rais—directed him to a private airstrip just north of Rome. Less than an hour later, he was the only passenger on a four-seat Cessna 210, flying from Rome to Bern, the capital of Switzerland.

  Upon arriving, Rais took a taxi to the Hotel Palais. It was so called because it was a literal palatial estate, overlooking meticulously appointed gardens and a forest beyond. Palais was a Swiss institution, a venue for diplomats and politicians, the self-proclaimed “guest house” of the Swiss government.

  Fools, Rais thought as he entered the hotel and crossed the marble-floored lobby. You have no idea who is among you. Overhead the vaulted ceiling was entirely glass, affording a view of the clear blue sky. The whole thing made Rais sick. The opulence of it. The haughtiness. The wastefulness. But that was Amun’s way—hiding in plain sight, blending in with the elite and the libertines and the disenfranchised alike.

  He took the elevator to the third floor and followed the rich scarlet carpet to a corner suite, where he knew several of Amun were posing as a branch of a nonprofit group of traveling pediatricians. He knocked sharply on the door twice, waited three full seconds, and then knocked three more times in quick succession. That was his personal code, his identifier to his brothers. A moment later the door opened slightly, and a sharp-featured German man who slightly resembled a rat answered.

  He let Rais in wordlessly. The hotel suite opened on a wide parlor with huge windows and white furniture. Gaudy, Rais thought distastefully. Ostentatious.

  Three men sat on the white furniture, two on a sofa and one in an armchair so that they formed a triangle around a glass coffee table laden with a sweet-smelling tea. They wore suits, each with a high collar to hide the brand of Amun on their necks. The suite, the suits, even the tea was all a ruse, of course, in case they were interrupted by housekeeping or hotel management or the police. Each of the three could provide full documentation of their medical credentials. They could provide phone numbers to references that could substantiate their claims. They could even answer complex medical questions, if need be.

  One of the three was, in fact, a surgeon and had been one of the team that had saved Rais’s life after Steele opened his belly. Rais did not know his name; only that he was German, and so in his mind he referred to him simply as the German doctor. The
rat-faced sycophant that had opened the door was his attendant. The second man in the room was Rais’s immediate superior, the man that he called Amun. Rais knew that he was not the Amun, but he did not know his real name.

  The third man in the room was instantly recognizable, despite the western suit and tie. Rais had only ever seen the sheikh in Muslim garb before; it was somewhat odd to see him wearing lapels and spectacles, but appearances needed to be maintained.

  Rais nodded to each in turn. “Doctor. Amun. Sheikh Mustafar.”

  None of them said anything to him. The only one to even look his way was Amun, who rose slowly from the armchair. He was Egyptian; his skin was light brown and his beard black but thin. He couldn’t have been more than a year or two older than Rais.

  “Zero?” he asked simply.

  Rais’ gaze fell to the lush carpet. He shook his head slightly.

  Amun backhanded him swiftly. The garnet in his pinky ring cut deeply into Rais’s lip as his head jerked to the side.

  Rais did nothing in return.

  “Do you have any idea what it cost us to put you back together?” Amun’s voice was barely a whisper. “Remind me why we wasted our efforts.”

  Rais had no valid answer. Instead he said, “Agent One is dead.”

  “Disappointment!” Amun hissed. “ Failure. American.” He spat out the last word as if it was a horrible curse. “Go. Wait for me. I will decide what to do with you.”

  Rais swallowed blood as he retreated to the rear bedroom of the suite and shut the door behind him. He felt deeply shamed. He had failed—twice now. And he knew the way of Amun all too well, having carried it out himself many times. He was certain this meeting would end with a bullet in his skull.

  He was American, once. But no longer; he had killed that part of him. He was Amun now. He held no emotional connection to his heritage. He had nothing to look back fondly on in the first twenty years of his sordid life.