by Jack Mars
*
Rais had been born and raised in a suburb outside Albany, New York, to a complacent, timid mother and an alcoholic, hardly employed father. His childhood had not been a pleasant one. His father was a bitter man convinced that this world was united solely against him, especially in those instances when his addiction caused him the loss of yet another job, which occurred every few months. The cycle was vicious: employment; fleeting, faux happiness; decline; dismissal; all spiraling into binging, violence, and blackouts. In those latter weeks-long bleak times, his father would lash out at his wife and young son with belt, switch, hands, whatever he had available. Once it had been a leather shaving strop.
At eighteen, Rais had enlisted in the US Army. He spent the next two years mostly at Fort Drum near Watertown, New York, a mere stone’s throw from the Canadian border. Ironically, it had been an extremely liberating experience; while most young men had some trouble acclimating to the strict, regimented lifestyle of an army grunt, Rais reveled in it. Compared to his home life, the army was a cakewalk. He learned to fight, to shoot, and to run; as a forward observer, he learned about ordnance and rapid intervention and radio calls. He did not need to learn to follow orders. That had been ingrained in him since birth.
He spent brief stints in Japan, Germany, and South Korea, and then it happened. Two years into his six-year contract, the events of September 11, 2001, unfolded three hundred miles south of his base. A few months after, his unit was deployed to Afghanistan. Rais’s three-man team scouted a section of Kandahar considered to be the last-known whereabouts of a prominent Al Qaeda bomb-maker. Rais was ordered to call in a strike on a building believed to be their headquarters. He could clearly see that it was full of women, children, and families that had nothing to do with the conflict.
Rais refused.
The bombs fell anyway.
One hundred and twelve people died that day. The Afghani bomb-maker was not among them. As far as Rais knew, none of those that perished in the conflagration had any ties to terrorism.
He fled. At twenty-one years old, he deserted the army and stowed away on an oil vessel that traveled through the Persian Gulf and into the Red Sea, docking in Egypt. He hid out, lived on the streets for months, surviving on scraps and the infrequent charity of others. After a little more than a year he fell in with a group of youths that called themselves activists, though political dissidents was a more appropriate term. He learned to pick pockets, to go unnoticed in a crowd, how to mix homemade incendiaries, and to evade authorities.
Eight months later, in a Cairo dive bar, he met a man who called himself Amun. It was a serendipitous encounter; the man was looking for someone willing to steal dynamite from a nearby tantalite mine. Rais was looking for purpose.
They talked at length; rather, Rais talked, and the man called Amun asked questions and listened. Rais spoke of his experiences, his opinions about the United States, his motivations for deserting. He found himself being more honest with the man that he had ever been before, with anyone. Amun spoke very little of his own experiences. He seemed fascinated with Rais’s story.
Rais saw the man again the next week, and the week after that. Each time they met, this man that called himself Amun spoke a little more. He gave Rais books to read. He asked him opinions on world powers, politics, and the so-called “war on terror.” Then, finally, after two months of intermittent visits, he asked Rais to come with him. He drove him to a compound in the desert. He introduced him to others.
Rais noticed immediately that they all had a scar on their necks—some sort of strange symbol. A glyph.
After speaking at length with several higher-ups in the organization, Rais was invited to live at the compound. He underwent severe trials to prove himself. They trained him, indoctrinated him, taught him… but they never ordered him. He always had a choice. At least that’s what they told him, that he could leave anytime he wished. To this day he doubted that was true, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t want to leave.
By then he had already denounced his former homeland, at least mentally, but when it came time to do so officially and be welcomed into the sanctum of Amun, he chose a new name for himself—Rais, after the infamous Murat Rais. The name had a long and storied history shared by several men, though most prominent to him was the eighteenth-century Scotsman Peter Lisle, who converted to Islam and became an Ottoman corsair, adopting the name Murat Rais from another. Lisle eventually gained the position of Grand Admiral of Tripoli’s navy.
Rais earned his mark, though his position within Amun required that it be hidden whenever possible. His years of stealing on the streets of Egypt and the marksmanship training from the US Army served him equally well as an assassin, and he quickly gained prominence among his brothers. Those few that knew his name knew that he carried out his duties with the utmost solemnity—his duties to eliminate, to cleanse for Amun’s new world.
And now, it seemed, it was his turn to be cleansed.
*
Rais waited in the bedroom of the suite for the meeting to finish and his fate to be decided. He did not try to eavesdrop but could still hear pieces of the hushed conversation taking place between the German doctor, the sheikh, and Amun.
“The serpents have already begun to arrive,” he heard Amun say. The serpents, Rais knew, was a codename for heads of state and other undesirables to their cause.
The sheikh said something inaudible, and the German doctor responded.
“Nearly everything is in place. There is only one final piece.” He switched to German, likely for the sake of his assistant, and said, “Go now. You know your duty.”
“We do not wait. We do not waver,” said Mustafar. “As Amun, we endure.”
Rais did not know the full extent of the plot; he knew only pieces, though admittedly more than most other Amun members. He knew the plan involved striking once in a centralized location where not only dozens of heads of state would be present, but people from nearly every developed nation on the planet. He knew the second phase involved sowing dissension in the ranks of prominent government organizations, via well-placed agents of Amun.
The American CIA was one such entity.
There were other phases, he was aware, but he did not know their details. The plan had been meticulously crafted over the course of years. Finally it would be enacted—though Rais would not be alive to see it.
At long last the meeting adjourned. Through the door Rais heard Amun bid farewell to his guests with the parting phrase, “As Amun, we endure.”
While he waited, he sank to his knees and murmured a prayer, one he had learned on his first day at the compound in the Western Desert of Egypt.
“Amun, who hears the prayer, who answers the cry of the poor and distressed… Repeat him to son and to daughter, to great and to small.”
Rais closed his eyes. “Relate him to generations of generations who have not yet come into being; relate him to him who does not know him and to him who knows him.”
He heard the door to the bedroom open, but still he kept his eyes closed as he murmured, “Though it may be that the servant is justified in doing wrong, yet Amun is justified in being merciful. As for his anger—in the completion of a moment there is no remnant. As Amun we endure.”
Silence reigned. The door had opened, but Rais did not know if he was alone or not. He expected the bullet to tear into his forehead at any moment. He wondered if he would even hear it, or if the world would simply fall away.
“Rise,” said Amun gently.
Rais opened his eyes. The Egyptian was standing before him, arms slack at his sides—and surprisingly, neither hand held a pistol.
“I have failed,” Rais said. He looked up and met Amun’s gaze. “I know better than most the penalty for failure. I am prepared.”
Amun sighed. He reached out and wiped blood from the corner of Rais’s mouth with the pad of his thumb. “Your life is not mine to take,” he said. “It belongs to Amun.”
Rais frowned in confu
sion.
“Yes, you failed,” said Amun. “Agent Zero still draws breath—but so do you. Amun has chosen your destiny. What is seen as failure today may become little more than an impediment on a longer road. You have but one task, Rais, and that is to eliminate Zero from this world.” Amun leaned close, close enough for Rais to smell the tea on his breath. “Only then are you permitted to die.”
Rais nodded slowly. He had prepared himself mentally for the darkness that would assuredly follow the end of his life, but now he saw only light and possibility.
“The world will change in two days’ time,” Amun continued. “Zero cannot be allowed to interfere. A CIA task force has being sent to collect him and bring him here, to Switzerland.”
“How do you—” Rais stopped himself. He wanted desperately to know how Amun could have that information, but he already knew he would not be permitted to know. He realized, however, that there was only one possible answer: Agent One had not been their only mole inside the American CIA.
“I will find him,” Rais promised as he rose to his feet. “I will kill him.”
Amun opened a drawer in the bureau, took out a burner phone, and gave it to Rais. “We will update you as we gain information. Now go.”
Rais took the phone and left the bedroom without another word. He exited the suite, took the elevator to the ground floor, and hurried out of the Hotel Palais. He had been given a second chance, new life—and this time nothing would keep him from killing Kent Steele.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
“Maria.”
She stood only a few arms’ lengths from him on the dark street in Maribor as sirens grew louder a few blocks away, roaring toward the burning warehouse. Her features became evident as his eyes adjusted to the darkness—blonde hair, porcelain skin, her scent on the slight breeze.
Kent kept the revolver trained on her.
He wanted to ask her how she had found him, but he already knew.
“You knew the address,” he said. “You had it memorized. You only gave me your phone so they could track me.”
“No,” she said. “I gave you the phone in case I needed to track you.”
“I ditched it.”
“I thought you might.” She smirked and gestured toward the MP-412 REX in his hand. “That is a very large gun. Can you lower it, please?”
“I don’t think so.” He kept his aim on her. “You took my gun—”
“You were supposed to be dead. I wasn’t sure I could trust you—”
“I’m still not sure I can trust you,” he countered. “You lied to me. You’re with them.”
“It’s more complicated than that,” she said.
“Then explain it to me.”
She sighed. “I told you the truth—most of it. I really was on Amun’s trail, and they caught wind of it. They did put a hit out on me. Three times I dealt with their assassins. They always seemed to know where I was, or where I was going to be. But… I was never disavowed. I suspected moles in the agency. So I went dark and hid out at the safe house. Cartwright organized it. He spread the intel that I was disavowed. I didn’t know they stopped looking for me. Every day I expected someone to come—one of theirs.” She paused for a long moment. “But they didn’t. You came.”
“It was Morris,” said Reid. “He was working with them.”
“Cartwright said the same.” Maria shook her head. “I don’t want to believe that.”
“It’s true. In Rome, after I got away, there was an assassin. They knew each other, he and Morris.”
“This assassin, did he…? Or did you…?”
“He did,” Reid confirmed. “He killed Morris. Not me.”
Her gaze fell to the street. “And what about Alan?”
Reid blew a soft sigh. Of course she would know about that. It didn’t look good for him that he’d kept it from her. “That wasn’t me. I found him dead in Zurich. I think Amun tortured and killed him to get to me.”
“Why?”
“Because he…” Reid trailed off. He was fairly certain that Reidigger had helped him put the implant in his head, but he wasn’t going to tip his hand to her again; not until he was certain he could trust her. He lowered his pistol to hip level, but he didn’t take his finger off the trigger. That distinct feeling, the hairs on the back of his neck, hadn’t gone away. “You didn’t come alone.”
“There are two others with me,” she said plainly. “Watson and Carver. You know them. Or you did.”
“And they’re here for what? Waiting in the shadows for their chance to strike?”
“No,” said Maria. “I took their guns.” Very slowly, she reached behind her and pulled out two pistols—each a standard-issue Glock 27. She held them up for Reid to see, and then cautiously put them down on the pavement. “They’re watching to make sure you don’t hurt me.” Then louder she said, “And they would be very stupid to try anything. They know you. They know what you’re capable of.”
Reid noticed the shadows shift in his periphery. He turned slightly to see a tall African-American man in a long coat reveal himself from the mouth of an alley. Watson, he knew. Across the street, in the dark doorway of an apartment building, was a second man in a baseball cap—Carver, presumably. Both showed themselves, but neither moved further.
“The lead,” said Maria. “What did you find?”
“Nothing,” Reid lied. “Dead end.”
She raised an eyebrow suspiciously. “So you blew it up?”
“They did. There was a bomb. I barely got out in time.”
“Hmm.” Clearly she didn’t believe him, but she didn’t prod further.
“Is that really what you’re doing here, Maria? Following a lead?” he asked. “Or did you come here for me?”
“I came here to help you,” she said vaguely.
“Help me.” He scoffed. “Help me how? Are we going to be a team again? You and me and these two?”
“No, Kent. I want to help you… and as strange as this might sound, I think the best way for me to do that is if you come with me. Come in from the cold.”
He almost laughed. “You think that the best way for me to stay out of the hands of people I don’t trust is to walk right into the den of people I can’t trust?”
“Yes, I do.” She took a small step toward him. “Because right now I know you better than you know yourself. I know that you may never trust them again, not fully.” She took another step closer. His grip tightened around the revolver. “But we have resources. You can be reinstated. We can help you.” She took one more step, until she was close enough that he could reach out and touch her.
From this close, he could see the intensity in her slate-gray eyes. She seemed sincere; he had to remind himself again that she was very well trained. Deceit was second nature.
But he had to be able to get to the sheikh if he was going to follow the potential lead that the Amun member had given him. It was possible, maybe even likely, to be a dead end, but he had nothing else to follow, nowhere else to go from there. And since Mustafar was being held in a CIA black site, he wouldn’t get within a half mile of the sheikh before being gunned down.
But he didn’t tell her any of that. Instead he said, “I need more than that. You’re right that I can’t trust them. I need you to give me one good reason to trust you.”
She thought for a long moment. “You don’t remember me. But I remember you. I care about you, Kent… more than you might think. I don’t want to see you hurt.”
He shook his head. “Without the memories, those are just words to me.”
“Okay then.” She spoke quietly so that Watson, standing about twelve feet from Reid’s right, couldn’t hear. “How about this: you have two girls back home. I know you’re smart enough to have sent them somewhere, but that can’t last forever. The agency knows about them, which means that Amun might know as well. We can put a security detail on them. I don’t know who might be bad, but I know a few that are definitely good. People I know we can trust.”
In almost a whisper she told him, “I don’t think Morris was the only one. I never had reason to suspect him; neither did Cartwright. And Morris wouldn’t have known where I was before the safe house. He didn’t have access to that information. But somehow Amun did. There’s someone else—maybe more than one, and higher up. Come in, and help me find them. We can’t do that from the outside.”
“If you’re right, and it’s someone higher up in the agency, they may have been the ones that tried to have me killed before,” Reid reasoned. “What’s to stop them from trying again?”
“We go on official record,” she said. “We can go over Cartwright’s head. I have a contact, someone I can call. You tell your story—the attempted murder, the memory implant, Paris, Belgium, Rome… and we send it up the chain, past even Director Mullen. Make sure everyone knows that Kent Steele is not just alive, but back from the dead. Get the National Security Council involved. Hell, if they try anything stupid, we send it to the press. Make it public. We protect your girls. We take down Amun. We find the moles.”
Reid thought for a long moment. Coming in from the cold seemed like a monumentally foolish idea at face value, but Maria’s arguments were valid. It could help to flush out moles in the agency. His girls could be protected.
And most importantly, he could get to the sheikh. Otherwise, what would he do? It would either be a wild goose chase or he would have to make his whereabouts known to try to coax Amun out of hiding. Even so…
“It’s risky,” he said.
“You can handle it.” Maria grinned. “You’ve handled worse things than bureaucracy.”
Reid glanced over his shoulder. Agent Watson hadn’t moved. Neither had Carver. If the agency truly wanted him dead, they would have supplied these two with a better method than just a pair of service pistols. He was out in the open on a dark street in the slums of Slovenia; they would have tried something by now.