Trapping Zero

by Jack Mars

  “Yes, thank you.” Reid glanced quickly at his watch. It had become a habit recently, almost an idiosyncratic tic to check the digital display for updates. “Uh, though it’s not celebrated quite as widely as it once was, November fifth marks the day of a failed assassination plot. You’ve all heard the name Guy Fawkes, I’m sure.”

  Heads nodded and murmurs of assent rose from the classroom.

  “Good. So in 1605, Fawkes and twelve other co-conspirators devised a plan to blow up the House of Lords, the upper house of Parliament, during an assembly. But the members of the House of Lords were not their real target; their goal was to assassinate King James I, who was Protestant. Fawkes and his pals wanted to restore a Catholic monarch to the throne.”

  He glanced at his watch again. He didn’t even mean to; it was reflexive.

  “Um…” Reid cleared his throat. “Their plan was quite simple. Over the course of some months, they stowed thirty-six barrels of gunpowder in an undercroft—that’s basically a wine cellar—directly under Parliament. Fawkes was the trigger man; he was to light a long fuse and then run like hell to the Thames.”

  “Like a Wile E. Coyote cartoon,” said the comedian in the front.

  “Pretty much,” Reid agreed. “Which is also why their assassination attempt is known as the Gunpowder Plot today. But they never did get to light the fuse. Someone tipped off a member of the House of Lords anonymously, and the undercrofts were searched. The gunpowder and Fawkes were discovered…”

  He glanced at his watch. It showed nothing but the time.

  “And, uh…” Reid chuckled softly at himself. “Sorry, folks, I’m just a little distracted today. Fawkes was discovered, but he refused to give up his co-conspirators—at first. He was sent to the Tower of London, and for three days he was tortured…”

  A vision flashed suddenly through his mind; not a vision so much as a memory, intrusively elbowing and shoving its way into his head at the mention of torture.

  A CIA black site in Morocco. Code name H-6. Known to most by its alias—Hell-Six.

  A captive Iranian is bound to a table on a slight incline. He has a hood over his head. You press a towel over his face.

  Reid shuddered as a chill ran down his spine. The memory was one he’d had before. In his other life as CIA Agent Kent Steele, he had performed “interrogation techniques” on captured terrorists for information. That’s what the agency called them—techniques. Things like waterboarding and thumbscrews and tugging off fingernails.

  But they weren’t techniques. It was torture, plain and simple. Not unlike Guy Fawkes in the Tower of London.

  You don’t do that anymore, he reminded himself. That’s not who you are.

  He cleared his throat again. “For three days he was, uh, interrogated. Eventually he gave up the names of six others and all of them were sentenced to death. The plot to blow up Parliament and King James I from underground was thwarted, and the fifth of November became a day to celebrate the failed assassination attempt…”

  A hood over his head. A towel over his face.

  Water, pouring. Not stopping. The captive thrashes so hard he breaks his own arm.

  “Tell me the truth!”

  “Professor Lawson?” It was the brown-haired kid in the front row. He was staring at Reid—they all were. Did I just say that out loud? He didn’t think he had, but the memory had forced its way into his brain and possibly all the way to his mouth. All eyes were on him, some students murmuring to each other as he stood there awkwardly and his face reddened.

  He glanced at his watch for the fourth time in less than as many minutes.

  “Uh, sorry,” he chuckled nervously. “Looks like that’s about all the time we have today. I want you all to read up on Fawkes and the motivations behind the Gunpowder Plot, and on Monday we’ll pick up with the rest of the Protestant Reformation and start in on the Thirty Years’ War.”

  The lecture hall filled with the sounds of shuffling and rustling as students gathered their books and bags and began filing out of the classroom. Reid rubbed his forehead; he felt a headache coming on, which was growing more and more frequent these days.

  The memory of the tortured dissident lingered like a heavy fog. That too had been happening more often lately; few new memories had returned to him, but those that had been restored previously came back stronger, more visceral. Like déjà vu, except he knew that he had been there. It wasn’t just a feeling; he had done all of those things and then some.

  “Professor Lawson.” Reid looked up sharply, jarred from his thoughts as a young blonde woman approached him, slinging a bag over her shoulder. “You got a date tonight or something?”

  “Sorry?” Reid frowned, thrown by the question.

  The young woman smiled. “I noticed you were looking at your watch like every thirty seconds. Figured you must have a hot date tonight.”

  Reid forced a smile. “No, nothing like that. Just, uh, looking forward to the weekend.”

  She nodded appreciably. “Me too. Have a good one, Professor.” She turned to head out of the classroom but paused, threw a glance over her shoulder and asked, “Would you like to sometime?”

  “Sorry?” he asked dimly.

  “Have a date. With me.”

  Reid blinked, stunned into silence. “I, uh…”

  “Think about it.” She smiled again and walked off.

  He stood there for a long moment, trying to process what had just happened. Any memories of torture or black sites that might have been lingering were shoved away by the unexpected request. He knew the student fairly well; she had met with him a few times during his office hours to review coursework. Her name was Karen; she was twenty-three and one of the brightest in his class. She’d taken a couple years off after high school before going to college and traveled, mostly around Europe.

  He nearly smacked himself in the forehead with the sudden realization that he knew more than he should about the young woman. Those office visits hadn’t been for assignment help; she had a crush on the professor. And she was undeniably beautiful, if Reid allowed himself for even a moment to think like that—which usually he did not, having long since grown adept at compartmentalizing the physical and mental attributes of his students and focusing on education.

  But the girl, Karen, was very attractive, blonde-haired and green-eyed, slender but athletic, and…

  “Oh,” he said aloud to the empty classroom.

  She reminded him of Maria.

  It had been four weeks since Reid and his girls had returned from Eastern Europe. Two days later Maria had been sent off on another op, and despite his texts and calls to her personal cell, he hadn’t heard from her since. He wondered where she was, if she was okay… and if she still felt the same way about him. Their relationship had grown so complex that it was hard to say where they stood. A friendship that had very nearly turned romantic became temporarily soured by distrust and, eventually, to alienated allies on the wrong side of a government cover-up.

  But now wasn’t the time to dwell on how Maria felt about him. He had vowed to return to the conspiracy, to try to discover more of what he knew back then, but with returning to teaching, his new position in the agency, and taking care of his girls he hardly had the time to think about it.

  Reid sighed and checked his watch again. Recently he had splurged and purchased a smart-watch that linked to his cell phone via Bluetooth. Even when his phone was in his desk or in another room he would still be alerted to text messages or calls. And looking at it frequently had become as instinctive as blinking. As compulsive as scratching an itch.

  He had sent Maya a text right before the lecture started. Usually his texts were seemingly innocuous questions, like “What do you want for dinner?” or “Do you need me to pick anything up on the way home?” But Maya wasn’t dumb; she knew that he was checking in on them, no matter how he tried to present it. Especially since he tended to send a message or make a call every hour or so.

  He was smart enough to rec
ognize what this was. The neurosis about his girls’ safety, his compulsion to check in and the subsequent anxiety waiting for a response; even the strength and impact of the flashbacks he endured. Whether he was willing to admit it or not, all signs pointed toward some degree of post-traumatic stress disorder from the ordeals he had gone through.

  Still, his challenge to overcome the trauma, his road to return to a life that resembled normalcy and trying to conquer the angst and consternation of what had happened was nothing compared to what his two teenage daughters were going through.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Reid unlocked the door to their home in the suburbs of Alexandria, Virginia, balancing a pizza box on the flat of his palm, and punched the six-digit alarm code into the panel near the front door. He had upgraded the system just a few weeks earlier. This new one would send an emergency alert to both 911 and the CIA if the code wasn’t properly entered within thirty seconds of any point of egress opening.

  It was one of several precautions that Reid had taken ever since the incident. There were cameras now, three of them in all; one mounted over the garage and directed towards the driveway and front door, another hidden in the floodlight over the back door, and a third outside the panic room door in the basement, all of which were on a twenty-four hour recording loop. He had changed every single lock in the house as well; their former neighbor, the now-deceased Mr. Thompson, had a key to their front and back doors and his keys were taken when the assassin Rais stole his truck.

  Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, was the tracking device implanted in each of his daughters. Neither of them was aware of it, but both had been given an injection under the guise of a flu shot that implanted a subcutaneous GPS tracker, small than a grain of rice, in their upper arms. No matter where they were in the world, a satellite would know it. It had been Agent Strickland’s idea, and Reid agreed without question. Most bizarre was that despite the high cost of outfitting two civilians with CIA tech, Deputy Director Cartwright signed off on it seemingly without a second thought.

  Reid entered the kitchen and found Maya lying in the adjacent living room, watching a movie on TV. She lounged on her side on the sofa, still in her pajamas, with both legs hanging off the far end.

  “Hey.” Reid set the pizza box on the counter and shrugged out of his tweed jacket. “I texted you. You didn’t answer.”

  “Phone’s upstairs charging,” Maya said lazily.

  “It can’t be charging down here?” he asked pointedly.

  She merely shrugged in return.

  “Where’s your sister?”

  “Upstairs,” she yawned. “I think.”

  Reid sighed. “Maya—”

  “She’s upstairs, Dad. Jeez.”

  As much as he wanted to scold her for her petulant attitude of late, Reid held his tongue. He still didn’t know the full extent of what either of them had gone through during the incident. That was how he referred to it in his mind—as “the incident.” It was a suggestion from Sara’s psychologist that he give it a name, a way for them to reference the events in conversation, although he’d never actually said it aloud.

  The truth was that they barely talked about it.

  He knew from the hospital reports, both in Poland and a secondary assessment stateside, that while both of his daughters had sustained minor injuries neither of them had been raped. Yet he had seen firsthand what had happened to some of the other trafficked victims. He wasn’t sure he was ready to know the details of the horrific ordeal they had experienced because of him.

  Reid headed upstairs and paused for a moment outside of Sara’s bedroom. The door was ajar a few inches; he peered in and saw her lying on top of her blankets, facing the wall. Her right arm rested on her thigh, still wrapped in a beige cast from the elbow down. Tomorrow she had an appointment with the doctor to see if the cast was ready to come off.

  Reid pushed the door open gently, but still it squeaked on its hinges. Sara, however, did not stir.

  “You asleep?” he asked softly.

  “No,” she murmured.

  “I, um… I brought a pizza home.”

  “Not hungry,” she said flatly.

  She hadn’t been eating much since the incident; in fact, Reid had to constantly remind her to drink water, or else she would hardly consume anything. He understood the difficulties of surviving trauma better than most, but this felt different. More severe.

  The psychologist Sara had been seeing, Dr. Branson, was a patient and compassionate woman who came highly recommended and CIA-certified. Yet according to her reports, Sara spoke little during their therapy sessions and answered questions with as few words as possible.

  He sat on the edge of her bed and brushed the hair away from her forehead. She flinched slightly at his touch.

  “Is there anything I can do?” he asked quietly.

  “I just want to be alone,” she murmured.

  He sighed and rose from the bed. “I understand,” he said empathetically. “Even so, I’d really like it if you came down and sat with us, as a family. Maybe try to eat a few bites.”

  She didn’t say anything in response.

  Reid sighed again as he headed back downstairs. Sara was clearly traumatized; she was much harder to get through to than even before, back in February when the girls had had a run-in with two members of the terrorist organization Amun on a New Jersey boardwalk. He’d thought it was bad then, but now his youngest daughter was downright joyless, often sleeping or lying in bed and staring at nothing in particular. Even when she was there physically it felt like she was hardly really there.

  In Croatia, and Slovakia, and Poland, all he’d wanted was to have his girls back. Now that he had safely returned them home, all he wanted was to have his girls back—though in a much different capacity. He wanted things to be the way they were before all of this.

  In the dining room, Maya was setting out three paper plates and cups around the table. He watched as she poured herself some soda, took a slice of pepperoni from the box, and bit off the tip.

  As she chewed he asked, “So. Have you given any more thought to going back to school?”

  Her jaw worked in circles as she regarded him evenly. “I just don’t think I’m ready yet,” she said after a while.

  Reid nodded as if he agreed, though he thought that four weeks off was plenty of time and that a return to habit would be good for them. Neither of them had gone back to school in the wake of the incident; Sara clearly wasn’t ready, but Maya seemed fit to resume her studies. She was smart, almost dangerously so; even as a high school junior, she had been taking a few courses a week at Georgetown. They would look good on a college application and would give her a jumpstart on a degree—but only if she finished them.

  She had been going to the library a few times a week for study sessions, which was at least a start. It was her intention to try and pass the final so that she didn’t flunk out. But even as smart as she was, Reid had his doubts that it would be enough.

  He chose his words carefully as he said, “There’s less than two months of classes left, but I think you’re smart enough to catch up if you went back.”

  “You’re right,” she said as she tore off another mouthful of pizza. “I am smart enough.”

  He gave her a sidelong glance. “That’s not what I meant, Maya—”

  “Oh, hey Squeak,” she said suddenly.

  Reid looked up in surprise as Sara entered the dining room. Her gaze swept the floor as she inched her way to a chair like a timid squirrel. He wanted to say something, to offer some words of encouragement or to simply tell her that he was glad she decided to join them, but he held back. It was the first time in at least two weeks, maybe more, that she had come down for dinner.

  Maya scooped a slice of pizza onto a plate and handed it to her sister. Sara took a tiny, almost imperceptible bite of the tip, not looking up at either of them.

  Reid’s mind raced, seeking something to say, something that might make this seem like any usu
al family dinner and not the tense, silent, painfully uncomfortable situation that it was.

  “Anything interesting happen today?” he said at last, immediately scolding himself for the lame attempt.

  Sara shook her head a little, staring at the tablecloth.

  “I watched a documentary about penguins,” Maya offered.

  “Learn anything cool?” he asked.

  “Not really.”

  And so it went, returning to silence and tension.

  Say something meaningful, his mind shouted at him. Offer them support. Let them know they can open up to you about what happened. You all survived a trauma. Survive it together.

  “Listen,” he said. “I know that it hasn’t been easy lately. But I want you both to know that it’s okay to talk to me about what happened. You can ask me questions. I’ll be honest.”

  “Dad…” Maya started, but he put up a hand.

  “Please, this is important to me,” he said. “I’m here for you, and I always will be. We survived this together, the three of us, and that proves there’s nothing that can keep us apart…”

  He trailed off, his heart breaking anew when he saw tears spilling down Sara’s cheeks. She continued to stare downward at the table as she cried, saying nothing, with a faraway gaze that suggested she was somewhere other than mentally present with her sister and father.

  “Honey, I’m sorry.” Reid rose to hug her, but Maya got there first. She wrapped her arms around her younger sister as Sara sobbed into her shoulder. There was little Reid could do but stand there awkwardly and watch. No words of sympathy came; any expression of endearment he might offer would be little more than putting a band-aid on a bullet hole.

  Maya grabbed a napkin from the table and dabbed gently at her sister’s cheeks, smoothed her blonde hair from off her forehead. “Hey,” she said in a whisper. “Why don’t you go upstairs and lie down for a bit, huh? I’ll come and check on you soon.”

  Sara nodded and sniffled. She rose wordlessly from the table and shuffled out of the dining room towards the stairs.