Agent Zero

by Jack Mars

  “What does he say?” Reid asked.

  “Most times we can’t even understand him,” Flagg admitted. “But there were a few times, early on when he was more coherent, I heard him good and clear. He’d say the same thing, over and over. I can’t remember it all, but it sounded like some kind of prayer. Not like any prayer I ever heard before, but that’s how it seemed.”

  “Do you recall any of it?” Kent asked.

  “Just one part,” Flagg admitted. “It went, ‘For his anger, in the moment there are no remains,’ or something like that. Does that make any sense to you?”

  Reid shook his head. “No, sorry.” He had never heard any prayer like that either, not in the Christian or Muslim ideologies. “Will you give us a few minutes with him?”

  “Sure thing.” Flagg gestured toward the AR-15 in Reid’s hands. “You want to hang onto that? You look like you’d know what to do with it.”

  He’d almost forgotten he was holding it. The rifle felt so familiar in his hands. When he looked down he noticed he was holding the butt end up, barrel pointed down at a forty-five degree angle, his index finger flat against the trigger guard.

  “Uh, no thanks. We’ll be fine.” He handed it back to Flagg. He didn’t think Mustafar would give them any trouble. The sheikh couldn’t have been more than ninety pounds soaking wet.

  “All right then. I’ll be right outside if y’all need me.”

  As soon as Flagg exited, Reid knelt beside the sheikh. Mustafar was on his hands and knees in the dirt, a thousand-yard stare in his eyes.

  “Sheikh Mustafar,” he said loudly. “Do you know me?”

  “A bullet…” The sheikh’s voice was hoarse and rasping. He coughed violently and then took a few recovering breaths. “A bullet sounds the same in every language.”

  “Yes. I said that. You remember me then?”

  Slowly, very slowly, the sheikh’s glazed glance turned upward until it met Reid’s. “Agent Zero,” he said quietly.

  “That’s right. I’m here to ask you some questions.”

  “You asked questions before,” said the sheikh in his gravelly voice. He settled back on his haunches. Then he raised his left hand, palm out. “You asked questions, and you took.” Slowly he turned the hand so that its back was facing Reid and Maria.

  There were no fingernails on his hand. Just dry, cracked skin.

  “You asked questions I did not have answers to. Then you took. What have you come to take this time, Agent?” Mustafar grinned wide. He was missing more than half his teeth.

  Reid glanced away. If he had done that as well, he had no memory of it.

  Whatever it takes. Remember?

  He forced himself to look back at the sheikh and his jack-o’-lantern smile. “You still have a lot I can take. Trust me when I say you’re going to want to be honest.” Reid stood and paced around the sheikh. “Recently I interrogated a man who suggested that you might know something. He didn’t get the chance to tell me what you might know, on account of his death. He called himself Amun.”

  Reid watched carefully for some reaction, some glimmer of recognition from Mustafar. But there was none.

  “What did he think you know?”

  The sheikh said nothing.

  Reid recounted the conversation in his mind. He knows. That’s what the Amun man in Slovenia had said. He knows. Then before he lost consciousness he had muttered two more vague phrases: The sheikh… he’s not…

  “I’ll ask you again,” Reid said. “What did he think you know?”

  Maria shook her head. “How do we know the guy in Slovenia wasn’t just trying to throw us off the trail by wasting time?”

  “We don’t know,” Reid replied. “But we’re here, and I’m going to find out.”

  Still the sheikh said nothing. He stared into the dirt and muttered something under his breath.

  “What is that? What are you saying?” Reid demanded. “Speak up.”

  The sheikh grinned up at him again, but he fell silent.

  “Pliers?” Maria suggested.

  Reid nodded without taking his eyes off Mustafar. “Pliers. And something sharp.”

  As Maria headed toward the door to fetch implements, Reid ran the scene through his head once more, his interrogation of the Amun member in the warehouse. He knows, the man had said.

  He knows.

  The sheikh…

  He’s not…

  The sheikh…

  He’s not…

  “Son of a bitch,” Reid said breathlessly. “Maria, wait.” She paused at the door. “I have a hunch.” He reached out for a handful of the sheikh’s beard.

  Suddenly Mustafar moved, and far quicker than either of them would have assumed he was able, in his state. He jerked his head back, out of Reid’s grasp, and his mostly toothless mouth curved into a snarl.

  “Johansson,” said Reid, “hold him.”

  Maria stepped forward to grab him. The sheikh flailed, as if to strike her, but she caught his arm easily and twisted it behind his back. He yelped in pain. She trapped his other arm and held him firmly.

  Reid grabbed a fistful of his gray, filthy beard and yanked it upward, forcing Mustafar to look toward the ceiling. “Where is it?” Reid growled. He pulled left and right, the sheikh’s head lolling on his thin neck.

  “What are you doing?” Maria asked.

  Reid didn’t answer. He’s not… the sheikh. That’s what the Amun member had been trying to tell him as he went into shock.

  Reid used both thumbs to separate the thick, wiry gray hair—and then he saw it. Just beneath the man’s chin, where it met the jaw, was a brand, well concealed by his thick beard. It was the glyph of Amun.

  He’s not the sheikh.

  They had shaved the sheikh’s head, but they had not touched his beard. Many Muslim men believed it a religious obligation to maintain their beards, and despite his being a prisoner, the black-site jailers respected that. Even in Guantanamo Bay, Islamic detainees were given prayer mats and directed toward Mecca.

  Amun knew it. And they had used it to their advantage to conceal the brand.

  Reid took a step back. “Let him go.” Maria released him, and the man fell to a heap in the dirt. “You’re not him. You’re not Mustafar.”

  Maria’s mouth fell open slightly. “What are you talking about? We got him ourselves. We were the ones that came for him, brought him here…”

  “And they were a step ahead of us.” Reid sighed in frustration. “The mole in the agency must have caught wind that we were going after the sheikh. They tipped off Amun, who replaced the sheikh with a doppelganger. This man is not Mustafar. He’s Amun.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Maria murmured.

  “Think about it. The real Mustafar was wealthy and powerful, but he wasn’t Amun. If we had brought him here he would have cracked under the pressure immediately. He had everything to lose. Besides, he was their bankroll; the sheikh is funding Amun’s plot. They couldn’t risk him being captured, knowing what he must know. And they couldn’t stand to lose their piggy bank.”

  “Christ.” Maria paced the short concrete room twice. “But we still have this guy. He’s Amun. He must know something.”

  Reid shook his head. “Not likely. Knowing what I know about them, they wouldn’t have told this guy anything worth knowing. They would know we were going to torture him for intel.” Otets was right; the “sheikh” was just a scapegoat. He didn’t know anything. Just not in the way that Reid had expected.

  He knelt so that he was nearly face-to-face with the ersatz sheikh. “Isn’t that right?”

  In reply, the man grinned his leering, gaping grin. He chuckled softly.

  “Something funny?” Maria snapped. “You’re still going to spend the rest of your short, miserable life in that hole.”

  His chuckle became a laugh, which grew to a wild cackle. He rolled onto his back, laughing like a lunatic.

  He began to shout. “Though it may be that the servant is justified in doing wrong
, yet Amun is justified in being merciful!” He paused to laugh wildly again. “As for his anger—in the completion of a moment there is no remnant! As Amun we endure!”

  Maria delivered a swift kick to his ribs. The man grunted and rolled over, clutching his midsection.

  “Kent, this was a dead end,” she muttered. “We need to go elsewhere, find a new lead.”

  He was beyond discouraged. He was crestfallen. He felt defeated. They had come all this way only to learn that they had made a grievous mistake well over a year ago.

  “You’re right. Let’s go.” Reid headed toward the door, about to call for Flagg, when the Amun prisoner on the ground called out to him in his croaking voice.

  “Agent Zero,” he said roughly. “Wait one moment.”

  Reid paused, turning slowly.

  “That man you spoke with. He wasn’t lying. I do know something that I haven’t told you.”

  Reid took a cautious step toward him. This was a trick, he was certain. There was no way any Amun member would willingly give up knowledge. “What do you know?”

  The false sheikh rolled over and, with a groan, hefted himself to his knees. “They told me that one day you might come back. I didn’t believe them…”

  “What do you know?” Reid demanded.

  “They said that if you did, I should tell you what I know…”

  Reid grabbed him by the collar of his filthy tunic and hauled him upright. “Tell me!” he shouted in the man’s filthy face.

  The Amun man grinned wide, displaying the empty sockets in his mouth.

  “I know, Agent Zero, that you have two daughters. And we know how to find them.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

  Reid saw red. He lost control.

  Later, when asked to recount the event, he wouldn’t remember what happened next. It wasn’t that Kent took over. It was blind fury blacking out his memory. It was Kent’s strength and skill, Reid’s protective nature, and both their love and devotion to their children that galvanized into a burning, unadulterated hatred for the leering, cackling, emaciated prisoner.

  At the mention of his daughters, Reid threw a hard right cross that landed solidly across the fake sheikh’s jaw. Even as he laughed, teeth skittered into the dirt. Reid brought his right knee up, into the man’s concave torso. Ribs gave way beneath the crushing blow.

  The man tried to fall but Reid grabbed him around the throat, held him up easily, and delivered a vicious head-butt with the top of his cranium. The Amun member’s broad nose exploded in a cascade of blood. Reid released him, brought his elbow up, and then slammed it down into his suprasternal notch, snapping both collarbones.

  Hands wrapped around him. He was vaguely aware of shouting, of a familiar scent, but his mind was blurry. He lashed out at whoever was trying to pull him off.

  Maria caught his arm and pulled it with her, using his momentum to throw Reid to the ground. He landed hard on his back in the dirt, panting.

  She stood over him, her expression both stern and anxious at the same time.

  “Stop,” she told him firmly. “That won’t help them.”

  Reid closed his eyes and struggled to calm himself. We know where they are. He wanted to leap to his feet and kill the man before him.

  “Don’t,” Maria said, as if she could see it in his eyes. “Killing him will do nothing for the girls. We have to go now.”

  She’s right. Get up. Find them.

  Maria helped him to his feet. The non-sheikh lay in the dirt, struggling to breathe through his broken nose and the blood in his mouth. Reid had to tear his gaze away before the urge to stomp his head flat grew too strong.

  He pulled open the door to the steel domed structure to find Flagg just outside.

  “Your prisoner needs medical attention,” Reid muttered.

  “Thank you, Sergeant,” Maria said quickly. “We need to go immediately.”

  As the two agents hurried toward their waiting jet, Flagg peered into the dim room, wondering just what the hell had happened.

  On their approach back to the Gulfstream, Maria called Cartwright and put him on speaker. She spoke rapidly. “It’s not the sheikh. The prisoner we have is not Mustafar. They knew we were coming for him and they swapped him out with someone from Amun, someone willing to take the fall for their cause. He said they know where Kent’s girls are…”

  “Whoa, whoa, hang on,” said Cartwright. “He’s not the sheikh?”

  “Try to keep up!” Maria snapped. “Amun told him that if Kent ever came back, he should tell him they know where his girls are. They’re not safe, Cartwright.”

  They climbed the short stairs and entered the plane. The pilot was waiting for them in the cockpit, the door closed and secured. Reid paced the short span of the jet and breathed into his hands. All he could think about was Sara and Maya. If anything happened to them, anything at all, he would never forgive himself. If only he could warn them. He could send a message, but it would be about four in the morning on the US East Coast. Besides, he didn’t know if they were safer where they were or on the move. Was Amun watching them right that moment? Had they been keeping tabs on them the whole time? His blood ran cold with the prospect.

  “This guy’s been in a hole in the ground for twenty months,” said Cartwright. “How the hell would he know where the kids are? He’s bluffing.”

  “No,” said Reid suddenly, “I don’t think he is. And even if he was, I’m not willing to take that chance.” They had known about his girls all along. But they didn’t take them when they came for him—they only wanted Kent Steele. He was supposed to die in that basement in Paris.

  But why now? he thought. If they didn’t harm the girls earlier because they wanted to use them as leverage, why wait until now, when I discovered the prisoner wasn’t Mustafar?

  “This is their ace in the hole,” he said breathlessly. “They never thought I would get this far, but they planned for it in case I did.”

  “Look, Watson and Carver are on their way,” said Cartwright. “In about five hours—”

  “Anything could happen in five hours!” Maria argued.

  “Amun must have people in the US, people nearby,” said Reid.

  “How would they even find them?” Cartwright asked.

  “Maybe they’ve been watching the whole time. Ever since I was taken. They could have been following them ever since then…” Reid trailed off. Given the dedication he had seen from Amun so far, it was entirely possible that they had been staking out his home, had followed the girls to a hotel, and then to wherever they were now. The very thought of it turned his stomach.

  “You said that you’ve been communicating with them through online messages, right?” asked Cartwright. “Here’s what we can do: give me the account information. I’ll have my tech guys trace the IP on their last message. We’ll alert local PD, and I’ll dispatch a squad immediately. We’ll have them safe in the next thirty minutes, all right? Just stay calm.”

  Stay calm. Reid almost scoffed. He was nearly four thousand miles away and had no idea precisely where his girls might be. Hopefully they were asleep somewhere, safe in their beds. His mind involuntarily flashed on dark figures roaming a hotel’s halls while his girls slumbered.

  He shook his head violently, forcing the thought out of his mind.

  “Kent? Did you hear me? I need the account info.”

  “Right. Sorry. We’ve been using Skype.” He gave Cartwright the account and the password. “It’s the only contact I have in there, under the name Katherine Joanne.”

  “Stay near the phone. In the meantime, have the pilot return to Zurich, so we can reassess this situation with the sheikh and determine our next move.” Cartwright hung up.

  Reid covered his face with his hands. He was growing nauseous. He couldn’t think straight.

  Maria instructed the pilot to return to them to Zurich. Then she sat beside Reid, put her hand on his back, and rubbed gently. “They’ll find them,” she said confidently. “I know they will.
We just have to wait a little.”

  “Wait a little,” Reid repeated quietly. He had never felt so powerless.

  The next half hour felt like an eternity. As soon as the jet was in the air again, he rose from his seat and paced its length. He sat, then stood, then sat again. He went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face. Every time he tried to think clearly, his mind went to the darkest of places. He thought of all he had been through in the past few days—the basement torture, the office with Otets’s thugs, the subway bathroom with the Amun assassin, the dingy warehouse in Slovenia. But in every instance he imagined his girls in those places, going through what he went through. Horrifying images swirled in his mind’s eye uncontrollably. Try as he might, he couldn’t jar them loose.

  He tried to log into his Skype account in the desperate hope that somehow Maya was awake, sitting in front of the computer, waiting to hear from him. But the account was locked, likely by the CIA’s tech team as they traced the messages to their source.

  Thirty minutes passed. Then forty-five. Reid tried twice to call Cartwright, but the deputy director didn’t answer.

  Finally, at nearly the one-hour mark, the cell phone rang. Reid snatched it up and answered as quick as he could. “Cartwright? Do you have them?”

  The long, wretched pause said everything.

  “Kent,” he said carefully, “we traced the IP to a Holiday Inn in New Jersey. Local police and firefighters evacuated the building under the pretense of a fire alarm. They checked every guest, searched every room. Kent… they’re not there.”

  Reid’s hands shook. A pit of despair formed in his stomach, threatening to work its way up his throat. He couldn’t form words.

  “Kent?” Maria’s voice sounded distant, hollow. “Kent…”

  “We have to go,” Reid said suddenly. “We have to go back. We have to go, go to New Jersey.” It was the only thing that made sense to him in the moment. Get to the girls. Find them somehow. Keep them safe. He shoved the phone into Maria’s hands and strode quickly to the cockpit door, slapping it with the flat of his palm. “Hey!” he shouted to the pilot. “We need to go back!”