Trapping Zero

by Jack Mars

  “Thank you,” said Yosef. “My friend Avi was not so fortunate.”

  “I’m sorry,” said the American agent. “Your government has been notified of your presence here, as has your family. We’re going to arrange transportation for you to get home as soon as possible, but first we’d like to talk about what happened to you.” He pointed upwards where the wall met the ceiling. A black camera was directed downwards, towards Yosef. “Our exchange is being recorded, and the audio of our conversation is being fed live to Washington, D.C. It is your right to refuse being recorded. You may have an ambassador or other representative from your country present if you wish—”

  Yosef waved a tired hand. “That’s not necessary. I want to speak.”

  “Whenever you’re ready then, Mr. Bachar.”

  So he did. Yosef detailed the three-day ordeal, starting with the trek towards Albaghdadi and their car being stopped on a desert road. The three of them, he and Avi and Idan, had been forced into the back of a truck with bags over their heads. The bags were not removed until they were in the basement of the compound, where they spent three days in darkness. He told them what had happened to Avi, his voice quavering slightly. He told them of Idan, still there in the compound and at the mercy of those reprobates.

  “They claimed to have released me to deliver a message,” Yosef concluded. “They wanted you to know who was responsible for this. They wanted you to know the name of their organization, the Brotherhood, and that of their leader, Awad bin Saddam.” Yosef sighed. “That is all I know.”

  Agent Cayhill nodded deeply. “Thank you, Mr. Bachar. Your cooperation is greatly appreciated. Before we see about getting you home, I have one follow-up question. Why would they send you to us? Why not your own government, your people?”

  Yosef shook his head. He had been asking himself that ever since he had entered the embassy. “I do not know. All they said was that they wanted you, the Americans, to know who was responsible.”

  Cayhill’s brow furrowed deeply. There was a knock at the door to the small office, and then a young woman peered in. “Sorry sir,” she said quietly, “but the delegation is here. They’re waiting in conference room C.”

  “Just one minute, thank you,” said Cayhill.

  In the same instant that the door closed again, the floor beneath them exploded. Yosef Bachar and Agent Cayhill, along with sixty-three other souls, were incinerated instantly.

  *

  Just short of two blocks due south, a truck with a dome of canvas stretched over the bed was parked at the curb, a direct line of sight to the American embassy through its windshield.

  Awad watched, not blinking, as the windows of the embassy exploded, sending fireballs into the sky. The truck beneath him shuddered with the blast, even from this distance. Black smoke roiled into the air as the walls buckled and caved, and the American embassy collapsed in on itself.

  Procuring nearly his own weight in plastic explosives had been the easy part, now that he had unquestioned access to Hassan’s fortune. Even kidnapping the journalists had been simple enough. No, the difficulty had been obtaining falsified credentials that were realistic enough for he and three others to pose as maintenance workers. It had required hiring a Tunisian skilled enough to create fake background checks and to hack into the database to enter them as approved contractors allowed access to the embassy.

  Only then could Awad and the Brotherhood stow the explosives in a maintenance corridor underneath the Americans’ feet, as they had done two days prior, posing as plumbers repairing a burst pipe.

  That part had not been simple or inexpensive, but all well worth it to meet Awad’s ends. No, the easy part had been slipping the high-tech detonation chip into the journalist’s wallet and sending him on his way towards what the foolish man thought was freedom. The bomb would not have detonated without the chip in range.

  The Israeli had, essentially, blown up the embassy for them.

  “Let’s go,” he told Usama, who directed the truck back onto the road. They skirted around parked vehicles, the drivers stopping right in the middle of the street in awe of the explosion. Pedestrians ran screaming from the blast site as parts of the building’s outer walls continued to collapse.

  “I don’t understand,” Usama grumbled as he attempted to navigate the choked streets full of panicking people. “Hassan told me how much was spent on this endeavor. All for what? To kill a journalist and a handful of Americans?”

  “Yes,” Awad said pensively. “A select handful of Americans. It came to my attention recently that a congressional delegation from the United States was visiting Baghdad as part of a goodwill mission.”

  “What sort of delegation?” Usama asked.

  Awad smirked; his simpleminded brother did not, or simply could not, understand—which was why Awad had not yet shared the full extent of his plan with the rest of the Brotherhood. “A congressional delegation,” he repeated. “A group of American political leaders; more specifically, leaders from New York.”

  Usama nodded as if he understood, but his furrowed brow said that he still was far from comprehension. “And that was your plan? To kill them?”

  “Yes,” said Awad. “And to make the Americans aware of us.” As well as aware of me. “Now we must get back to the compound and prepare for the next part of the plan. We have to hurry. They will be coming for us.”

  “Who will?” Usama asked.

  Awad smirked as he glanced through the windshield at the burning wreckage of the embassy. “Everyone.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Alright,” said Reid. “Ask me whatever you’d like, and I’ll be honest. Take as long as you need.”

  He sat across from his daughters in a corner booth of a fondue restaurant in one of Engelberg-Titlis’ higher-end hotels. After Sara had told him in the lodge that she wanted to know the truth, Reid had suggested they go elsewhere, away from the common room of the ski lodge. Their own room felt like too quiet a place for such intense subject matter, so he took them to dinner in the hopes of providing something of a casual atmosphere while they talked. He had chosen this place specifically because each booth was separated by glass partitions, giving them some modicum of privacy.

  Even so, he kept his voice low.

  Sara stared at the table for a long while, thinking. “I don’t want to talk about what happened,” she said at last.

  “We don’t have to,” Reid agreed. “We’ll only talk about what you want, and I promise the truth, just like with your sister.”

  Sara glanced over at Maya. “You… know things?”

  “Some,” she admitted. “Sorry, Squeak. I didn’t think you were ready to hear it.”

  If Sara was angry or upset at all by this news, she didn’t show it. Instead she chewed her bottom lip for a moment, forming a question in her head, and then asked. “You’re not just a teacher, are you?”

  “No.” Reid had assumed that clarifying what he was and what he did would be among her top concerns. “I’m not. I am—rather, I was—an agent with the CIA. Do you know what that means?”

  “Like… a spy?”

  He shrugged. “Sort of. There was some spying involved. But it’s more about stopping bad people from doing worse things.”

  “What do you mean, ‘was’?” she asked.

  “Well, I’m not doing that anymore. I did for a while, and then when…” He cleared his throat. “When Mom died, I stopped. For two years I wasn’t with them. Then, back in February, I was asked to come back.” That’s a mild way of putting it, he chided himself. “That thing on the news, with the Winter Olympics and the bombing at the economic forum? I was there. I helped stop it.”

  “So you’re a good guy?”

  Reid blinked in surprise at the question. “Of course I am. Did you think I wasn’t?”

  This time Sara shrugged, not meeting his gaze. “Don’t know,” she said quietly. “Hearing all this, it’s like… like…”

  “Like getting to know a stranger,” Maya murmure
d. “A stranger that looks like you.” Sara nodded her agreement.

  Reid sighed. “I’m not a stranger,” he insisted. “I’m still your dad. I’m the same person I’ve always been. Everything you know about me, everything we’ve done together, that was all real. This… all of this stuff, it was a job. Now it’s not anymore.”

  Was that the truth? he wondered. He wanted to believe it was—that Kent Steele was nothing but an alias and not a personality.

  “So,” Sara started, “those two men that chased us on the boardwalk…?”

  He hesitated, unsure if this was too much for her to hear. But he had promised honesty. “They were terrorists,” he told her. “They were men that were trying to get to you to hurt me. Just like…” He caught himself before saying anything about Rais or the Slovakian traffickers.

  “Look,” he started again, “for a long time I thought that I was the only one who could get hurt by doing this. But now I see how wrong I was. So I’m done. I still work for them, but I do administrative stuff. No more fieldwork.”

  “So we’re safe?”

  Reid’s heart broke anew at not only the question, but the hope in his youngest daughter’s eyes. The truth, he reminded himself. “No,” he told her. “The truth is that no one ever really is. As wonderful and beautiful as this world can be, there will always be wicked people that want to do harm to others. Now I know firsthand that there are a lot of good people out there that are making sure there are fewer wicked people every day. But no matter what they do, or what I do, I can’t ever guarantee that you’ll be safe from everything.”

  He didn’t know where these words were coming from, but it felt like they were just as much for his own benefit as for his girls. It was a lesson that he very much needed to learn. “That doesn’t mean I won’t try,” he added. “I will never stop trying to keep you two safe. Just like you should always try to keep yourselves safe too.”

  “How?” Sara asked. The faraway look was back in her eye. Reid knew exactly what she was thinking: how could she, a fourteen-year-old weighing eighty pounds soaking wet, keep something like the incident from happening again?

  “Well,” said Reid, “apparently your sister’s been sneaking off to a self-defense class.”

  Sara looked sharply over at her sister. “Really?”

  Maya rolled her eyes. “Thanks for selling me out, Dad.”

  Sara glanced back over at him. “I want to learn to shoot a gun.”

  “Whoa.” Reid held up a hand. “Pump the brakes, kiddo. That’s a pretty serious request…”

  “Why not?” Maya chimed in. “Don’t you think we’re responsible enough?”

  “Of course, I do,” he replied flatly, “I just—”

  “You said we should keep ourselves safe too,” Sara added.

  “I did say that, but there are other ways to—”

  “My friend Brent has been going hunting with his dad since he was twelve,” Maya cut in. “He knows how to shoot a gun. Why shouldn’t we?”

  “Because that’s different,” Reid said forcefully. “And no ganging up on me. That’s unfair.” Up until then, he had thought this was going quite well, but now they were using his own words against him. He pointed at Sara. “You want to learn to shoot? You can. But only with me. And first, I want you caught up with school and I want positive reports from Dr. Branson. And you.” He pointed at Maya. “No more secret self-defense classes, okay? I don’t know what that guy is teaching you. You want to learn to fight, to defend yourself, you ask me.”

  “Really? You’ll teach me?” Maya seemed buoyant at the prospect.

  “Yes, I will.” He picked up his menu and opened it. “If you have more questions, I’ll answer them. But I think that’s about good for one evening, yeah?”

  He considered himself lucky that Sara hadn’t asked him anything that he couldn’t answer. He didn’t want to have to explain the memory suppressor—that might complicate matters and reinforce their doubt about who he was—but he also didn’t want to have to answer that he didn’t know something. They would immediately suspect he was keeping it from them.

  That clinches it, he thought. He had to get it done, and soon. No more waiting or excuses.

  “Hey,” he said over his menu, “what do you say we check out Zurich tomorrow? It’s a beautiful city. Tons of history and shopping and culture.”

  “Sure,” Maya agreed. But Sara said nothing. When Reid looked over his menu again, her face was scrunched into a pensive frown. “Sara?” he asked.

  She looked up at him. “Did Mom know?”

  The question had been a curveball once before when Maya had asked, not much more than a month earlier, and it took him by surprise again hearing it from Sara.

  He shook his head. “No. She didn’t.”

  “Isn’t that…” She hesitated, but then took a breath and asked, “Isn’t that kind of like lying?”

  Reid folded his menu and set it down on the table. Suddenly he wasn’t very hungry anymore. “Yeah, sweetheart. It’s exactly like lying.”

  *

  The next morning Reid and the girls took the train north from Engelberg to Zurich. They didn’t talk any further about his past, or about the incident; if Sara had any more questions, she held them back, at least for now.

  Instead they enjoyed the scenic views of the Swiss Alps on the two-hour train ride, snapping photos through the window. They spent the late morning enjoying the breathtaking medieval architecture of Old Town and walked the shores of the Limmat River. Despite not claiming to enjoy history as much as he did, both girls were stunned by the beauty of the twelfth-century Grossmünster cathedral (though they groaned when Reid began to lecture them about Huldrych Zwingli and his sixteenth-century religious reforms that took place there).

  Though Reid was having a great time with his daughters, his smile was at least partially forced. He was anxious about what was coming.

  “What’s next?” Maya asked after a lunch at a small café with views of the river.

  “You know what would be really great after a meal like that?” Reid said. “A movie.”

  “A movie,” his eldest repeated flatly. “Yeah, we definitely should have come all the way to Switzerland to do something we can do at home.”

  Reid grinned. “Not just any movie. The Swiss National Museum isn’t far, and they’re showing a documentary on the history of Zurich from the Middle Ages to the present. Doesn’t that sound neat?”

  “No,” said Maya.

  “Not really,” Sara agreed.

  “Huh. Well, I’m the dad, and I say we go see it. Then we can do whatever you two want to do and I won’t complain. I promise.”

  Maya sighed. “Fair is fair. Lead the way.”

  Less than ten minutes later they arrived at the Swiss National Museum, which really was showing a documentary about the history of Zurich. And Reid genuinely was interested in seeing it. And even though he bought three tickets, he only intended on using two of them.

  “Sara, do you need to use the restroom before we go in?” he asked.

  “Good idea.” She ducked into the bathroom. Maya started to follow, but Reid quickly grabbed her by the arm.

  “Wait. Maya… I have to go.”

  She blinked at him. “What?”

  “There’s something I have to do,” he said quickly. “I have an appointment.”

  Maya raised an eyebrow warily. “Doing what?”

  “It has nothing to do with the CIA. At least, not directly.”

  She scoffed. “I can’t believe this.”

  “Maya, please,” he pleaded. “This is important to me. I promise you, I swear, it’s not fieldwork or anything dangerous. I just have to talk to someone. Privately.”

  His daughter’s nostrils flared. She didn’t like it one bit, and worse, she didn’t truly believe him. “What do I tell Sara?”

  Reid had already thought of that. “Tell her there was a problem with my credit card. Someone back home trying to use it, and I have to get that cleared
up so that we don’t have to leave the ski lodge. Tell her I’m right outside, making phone calls.”

  “Oh, okay,” Maya said mockingly. “You want me to lie to her.”

  “Maya…” Reid groaned. Sara would be exiting the bathroom at any moment. “I promise you I will tell you all about it afterward, but I just don’t have the time right now. Please, go in there, have a seat, and watch the movie with her. I’ll be back before it’s over.”

  “Fine,” she agreed reluctantly. “But I want a full explanation when you’re back.”

  “You’ll get one,” he promised. “And don’t leave that theater.” He kissed her forehead and hurried away before Sara came out of the bathroom.

  It felt awful, once again lying to his girls—or at least keeping the truth from them, which as Sara had astutely pointed out the night before, was pretty much the same as lying.

  Is that how it’s always going to be? he wondered as he hurried out of the museum. Will there ever be a time that honesty is really the best policy?

  He hadn’t just lied to Sara. He had lied to Maya as well. He had no appointment. He knew where Dr. Guyer’s practice was located (conveniently close to the Swiss National Museum, which Reid had considered in his plan) and he knew from an anonymous call that the doctor would be in today, but he did not dare leave his name or make a formal appointment. He didn’t know who this Guyer was at all, other than the man that had implanted the memory suppressor in Kent Steele’s head two years earlier. Reidigger had trusted the doctor, but that didn’t mean Guyer didn’t have some kind of link to the agency. Or worse, they could be watching him.

  What if they knew about the doctor? he worried. What if they’ve been keeping tabs on him all this time?

  It was too late to concern himself with that now. His plan was simply to go there, meet the man, and find out what, if anything, he could do about Reid’s memory loss. Consider it a consultation, he joked to himself as he walked briskly down Löwenstrasse, parallel to the Limmat River and towards the address he had found online. He had about two hours before the documentary at the museum was over. Plenty of time, or so he assumed.