Target Zero

CHAPTER FOUR

Reid was barely out of the driveway on his way to meet with Maria before he called Thompson to ask him to keep watch on the Lawson home. “I decided to give the girls a little independence tonight,” he explained. “I won’t be gone too long. But even so, keep an eye out and an ear to the ground?”

“Sure thing,” the old man agreed.

“And, uh, if there’s any cause for alarm, of course, head right over.”

“I will, Reid.”

“You know, if you can’t see them or something, you can knock on the door, or call the house phone…”

Thompson chuckled. “Don’t worry, I got it. And so do they. They’re teenagers. They need some space now and then. Enjoy your date.”

With Thompson’s watchful eye and Maya’s determination to prove herself responsible, Reid thought he could rest easy knowing the girls would be safe. Of course, part of him knew that was just another example of his mental gymnastics. He’d be thinking about it the whole night.

He had to bring the GPS map up on his phone to find the place. He wasn’t yet familiar with Alexandria or the area, though Maria was, thanks to its proximity to Langley and CIA headquarters. Even so, she had chosen a place that she had never been to before either, likely as a way to level the playing field, so to speak.

On the drive over, he missed two turns despite the GPS voice telling him which way to go and when. He was thinking of the strange flashback he’d now had twice—first when Maya asked if Kate knew about him, and again when he smelled the cologne that his late wife had loved. It was gnawing at the back of his mind, so much so that even when he tried to pay attention to the directions he quickly grew distracted again.

The reason it was so bizarre was that every other memory of Kate was so vivid in his mind. Unlike Kent Steele, she had never left him; he remembered meeting her. He remembered dating. He remembered vacations and buying their first home. He remembered their wedding and the births of their children. He even remembered their arguments—at least he thought he did.

The very notion of losing any part of Kate shook him. The memory suppressor had already proved to have some side effects, like the occasional headache spurned by a stubborn memory—it was an experimental procedure, and the method of removal was far from surgical.

What if more than just my past as Agent Zero had been taken from me?

He didn’t like the thought at all. It was a slippery slope; before long he was considering the possibility that he might have lost memories of times with his girls as well. And even worse was that there was no way for him to know the answer to that without restoring his full memory.

It was all too much, and he felt a fresh headache coming on. He switched on the radio and turned it up in an attempt to distract himself.

The sun was setting by the time he pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant, a gastropub called The Cellar Door. He was a few minutes late. He quickly got out of the car and trotted around to the front of the building.

Then he stopped in his tracks.

Maria Johansson was third-generation Swedish-American, and her CIA cover was that of a certified public accountant from Baltimore—though Reid thought it should have been as a cover model, or maybe a centerfold. She was an inch or two shy of his five-eleven height, with long, straight blonde hair that cascaded around her shoulders effortlessly. Her eyes were slate-gray, yet somehow intense. She stood outside in the fifty-five-degree weather in a simple navy-blue dress with a plunging V neck and a white shawl over her shoulders.

She spotted him as he approached and a smile grew on her lips. “Hey. Long time no see.”

“I… wow,” he blurted. “I mean, uh… you look great.” It occurred to him that he had never seen Maria in makeup before. The blue eye shadow matched her dress and made her eyes seem nearly luminescent.

“Not so bad yourself.” She nodded approvingly at his choice of apparel. “Should we go in?”

Thanks, Maya, he thought. “Yeah. Of course.” He grabbed the door for her and pulled it open. “But before we do, I have a question. What the hell is a ‘gastropub’?”

Maria laughed. “I think it’s what we used to call a dive bar, but with fancier food.”

“Got it.”

Inside was cozy, if not a bit small, with brick interior walls and exposed wood beams in the ceiling. The lighting was hanging Edison bulbs, which provided a warm, dim ambience.

Why am I nervous? he thought as they were seated. He knew this woman. Together they had stopped an international terrorist organization from murdering hundreds, if not thousands, of people. But this was different; it wasn’t an op or a mission. This was pleasure, and somehow that made all the difference.

Get to know her, Maya had told him. Be interesting.

“So, how’s work?” he ended up asking. He groaned internally at his halfhearted attempt.

Maria smiled with half her mouth. “You should know I can’t really talk about that.”

“Right,” he said. “Of course.” Maria was an active CIA field agent. Even if he was active too she wouldn’t be able to share details of an op unless he was on it with her.

“How about you?” she asked. “How’s the new job?”

“Not bad,” he admitted. “I’m adjunct, so it’s part-time for now, a few lectures a week. Some grading and whatnot. But it’s not terribly interesting.”

“And the girls? How are they doing?”

“Eh… they’re coping,” Reid said. “Sara doesn’t talk about what happened. And Maya actually was just…” He stopped himself before he said too much. He trusted Maria, but at the same time he didn’t want to admit that Maya had guessed, very accurately, what it was that Reid was involved in. His cheeks turned pink as he said, “She was teasing me. About this being a date.”

“Isn’t it?” Maria asked point-blank.

Reid felt his face flush anew. “Yeah. I guess it is.”

She smirked again. It seemed she was enjoying his awkwardness. In the field, as Kent Steele, he had proven he could be confident, capable, and collected. But here, in the real world, he was just as awkward as anyone might be after nearly two years of celibacy.

“What about you?” she asked. “How are you holding up?”

“I’m good,” he said. “Fine.” As soon as he said it, he regretted it. Had he not just learned from his daughter that honestly was the best policy? “That’s a lie,” he said immediately. “I guess I haven’t been doing that great. I keep myself busy with all these unnecessary tasks, and I make excuses, because if I stop long enough to be alone with my thoughts, I remember their names. I see their faces, Maria. And I can’t help but think that I didn’t do enough to stop it.”

She knew exactly what he was referring to—the nine people who had been killed in the single successful explosion set off by Amun in Davos. Maria reached over the table and took his hand. Her touch sent an electric tingle up his arm, and even seemed to calm his nerves. Her fingers were warm and soft against his.

“That’s the reality we face,” she said. “We can’t save everyone. I know you don’t have all your memories back as Zero, but if you did, you would know that.”

“Maybe I don’t want to know that,” he said quietly.

“I get it. We still try. But to think that you can keep the world safe from harm will make you crazy. Nine lives were taken, Kent. It happened, and there’s no way to go back. But it could have been hundreds. It could have been a thousand. That’s the way you need to look at it.”

“What if I can’t?”

“Then… find a good hobby, maybe? I knit.”

He couldn’t help but laugh. “You knit?” He couldn’t imagine Maria knitting. Using knitting needles as a weapon to cripple an insurgent? Certainly. But actually knitting?

She held her chin high. “Yes, I knit. Don’t laugh. I just made a blanket that’s softer than anything you ever felt in your whole life. My point is, find a hobby. You need something to keep your hands and mind busy. What about your memory? Any improvements there?”

He sighed. “Not really. I guess I haven’t had much going on to jog it. It’s still kind of jumbled.” He set the menu aside and wrung his hands on the tabletop. “Although, since you mention it… I did have something strange happen just earlier today. A fragment of something came back. It was about Kate.”

“Oh?” Maria bit her lower lip.

“Yeah.” He was quiet for a long moment. “Things with Kate and me… before she passed. They were okay, right?”

Maria stared straight at him, her slate-gray eyes boring into his. “Yes. As far as I know, things were always great between you two. She really loved you, and you her.”

He found it hard to hold her gaze. “Yeah. Of course.” He scoffed at himself. “God, listen to me. I’m actually talking about my late wife on a date. Please don’t tell my daughter.”

“Hey.” Her fingers found his again across the table. “It’s okay, Kent. I get it. You’re new to this and it feels strange. I’m not exactly an expert here either, so… we’ll figure it out together.”

Her fingers lingered on his. It felt good. No, it was more than that—it felt right. He chuckled nervously, but his grin faded to a perplexed frown as a bizarre notion struck him; that Maria still called him Kent.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Nothing. I was just thinking… I don’t even know if Maria Johansson is your real name.”

Maria shrugged coyly. “It might be.”

“That’s not fair,” he protested. “You know mine.”

“I’m not saying it isn’t my real name.” She was enjoying this, toying with him. “You can always call me Agent Marigold, if you prefer.”

He laughed. Marigold was her code name, to his Zero. It was almost a silly thing to him, to use code names when they knew each other personally—but then again, the name Zero did seem to strike fear into many he’d encountered.

“What was Reidigger’s code name?” Reid asked quietly. It almost stung him to ask. Alan Reidigger had been Kent Steele’s best friend—no, Reid thought, he was my best friend—a man of seemingly unyielding loyalty. The only problem was that Reid barely remembered anything about him. All memories of Reidigger had gone with the memory implant, which Alan had helped coordinate.

“You don’t remember?” Maria smiled pleasantly at the thought. “Alan gave you the name Zero, did you know that? And you gave him his. God, I haven’t thought about that night in years. We were in Abu Dhabi, I think, just coming off an op, drunk at some hoity-toity hotel bar. He called you ‘Ground Zero’—like the point of a bomb’s detonation, because you tended to leave a mess behind you. That shortened up to just Zero, and it stuck. And you called him—”

A phone rang, interrupting her story. Reid instinctively glanced at his own cell, lying on the table, expecting to see the house number or Maya’s cell displayed on the screen.

“Relax,” she said, “it’s me. I’ll just ignore it…” She looked at her phone and her brow knitted perplexedly. “Actually, that’s work. Just a sec.” She answered. “Yes? Mm-hmm.” Her somber gaze lifted and met Reid’s. She held it as her frown grew deeper. Whatever was being said on the other end of the line was clearly not good news. “I understand. Okay. Thank you.” She hung up.

“You look troubled,” he noted. “I know, I know, you can’t talk about work stuff—”

“He escaped,” she murmured. “The assassin from Sion, the one in the hospital? Kent, he got out, less than an hour ago.”

“Rais?” Reid said in astonishment. Cold sweat immediately broke out on his brow. “How?”

“I don’t have details,” she said hastily as she stuffed her cell phone back into her clutch. “I’m so sorry, Kent, but I have to go.”

“Yeah,” he murmured. “I understand.” Truthfully, he felt a hundred miles away from their cozy table in the small restaurant. The assassin that Reid had left for dead—not once, but twice—was still alive, and now at large.

Maria rose and, before leaving, leaned over and pressed her lips to his. “We’ll do this again soon, I promise. But right now, duty calls.”

“Of course,” he said. “Go and find him. And Maria? Be careful. He’s dangerous.”

“So am I.” She winked, and then hurried out of the restaurant.

Reid sat there alone for a long moment. When the waitress came over, he didn’t even hear her words; he just waved vaguely to indicate that he was fine. But he was far from fine. He hadn’t even felt the nostalgic electric tingle when Maria kissed him. All he could feel was a knot of dread forming in his stomach.

The man who believed it was his destiny to kill Kent Steele had escaped.

CHAPTER FIVE

Adrian Cheval was still awake despite the late hour. He sat upon a stool in the kitchen, staring blurry-eyed and unblinking at the laptop computer screen in front of him, his fingers typing away frenetically.

He paused long enough to hear Claudette padding softly down the carpeted stairs from the loft in her bare feet. Their flat in Marseille was small but cozy, an end unit on a quiet street a short five-minute walk from the sea.

A moment later her slight frame and fiery hair appeared in his periphery. She put her hands on his shoulders, sliding them up and around, down his chest, her head coming to rest upon his upper back. “Mon chéri,” she purred. “My love. I cannot sleep.”

“Neither can I,” he replied softly in French. “There is too much to be done.”

She bit him gently on the earlobe. “Tell me.”

Adrian pointed at his screen, displayed on which was the cyclical double-stranded RNA structure of variola major—the virus known to most as smallpox. “This strain from Siberia is… it is incredible. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. By my calculations, the virulence of it would be staggering. I am convinced that the only thing that might have stopped it from eradicating early humanity thousands of years ago was the glacial period.”

“A new Deluge.” Claudette moaned a soft sigh in his ear. “How long until it is ready?”

“I must mutate the strain, while still maintaining the stability and virility,” he explained. “No simple task, but a necessary one. The WHO obtained samples of this same virus five months ago; there is no doubt that a vaccine is being developed, if one hasn’t been already. Our strain must be unique enough that their vaccines will be ineffective.” The process was known as lethal mutagenesis, manipulating the RNA of the samples he had acquired in Siberia to increase virulence and reduce the incubation period. At his calculations, Adrian suspected the mortality rate of the mutated variola major virus could reach as high as seventy-eight percent—nearly three times that of the naturally occurring smallpox that had been eradicated by the World Health Organization in 1980.

Upon returning from Siberia, Adrian had first visited Stockholm and used the deceased student Renault’s ID to access their facilities, where he ensured that the samples were inactive while he worked. But he could not linger under someone else’s identity, so he stole the necessary equipment and returned to Marseille. He set up his laboratory in the unused basement of a tailor’s shop three blocks from their flat; the kindly old tailor believed that Adrian was a geneticist, researching human DNA and nothing more, and Adrian kept the door secured with a padlock when he was not present.

“Imam Khalil will be pleased,” Claudette breathed in his ear.

“Yes,” Adrian agreed quietly. “He will be pleased.”

Most women would likely not be terribly keen to find their significant other working with a substance as volatile as a highly virulent strain of smallpox—but Claudette was not most women. She was petite, standing only five-foot-four to Adrian’s six-foot figure. Her hair was a fiery red and her eyes as deep green as the densest jungle, suggesting a certain irascibility.

They had met only the year prior, when Adrian was at his lowest. He had just been expelled from Stockholm University for attempting to obtain samples of a rare enterovirus; the same virus that had taken his mother’s life only weeks earlier. At the time, Adrian had been determined to develop a cure—obsessed, even—so that no one else would suffer as she did. But he was discovered by university faculty and summarily dismissed.

Claudette found him in an alley, lying in a puddle of his own desolation and vomit, half-unconscious from drink. She took him home, cleaned him up, and fed him water. The next morning Adrian had awoken to find a beautiful woman sitting at his bedside, smiling upon him as she said, “I know exactly what you need.”

He swiveled on his kitchen stool to face her and ran his hands up and down her back. Even sitting he was nearly her height. “It is interesting you mention the Deluge,” he noted. “You know, there are scholars who say that if the Great Flood truly did occur, it would have been approximately seven to eight thousand years ago… nearly the same epoch as this strain. Perhaps the Flood was a metaphor, and it was this virus that cleansed the world of its wicked.”

Claudette laughed at him. “Your constant endeavors to blend science and spirituality are not lost on me.” She took his face gently in her hands and kissed his forehead. “But you still do not understand that sometimes faith is all you need.”

Faith is all you need. That was what she had prescribed to him the year before, when he awoke from his drunken stupor. She had taken him in and allowed him to stay in her flat, the very same one that they occupied still. Adrian was not a believer in love at first sight before Claudette, but she came to hold many influences on his way of thinking. Over the course of some months, she introduced him to the tenets of Imam Khalil, an Islamic holy man from Syria. Khalil considered himself neither Sunni nor Shiite, but simply a devotee of God—even to the point that he allowed his fairly small sect of followers to call Him by whatever name they chose, for Khalil believed that each individual’s relationship with their creator was strictly personal. For Khalil, that god’s name was Allah.

“I want you to come to bed,” Claudette told him, stroking his cheek with the back of her hand. “You need your rest. But first… do you have the sample prepared?”

“The sample.” Adrian nodded. “Yes. I have it.”

There was but a single, tiny vial, barely larger than a thumbnail, of the active virus, hermetically sealed in glass and nestled between two cubes of foam, those inside a stainless steel biohazard container. The box itself was sitting, quite conspicuously, on the countertop of their kitchen.

“Good,” Claudette purred. “Because we are expecting visitors.”

“Tonight?” Adrian’s hands fell away from the small of her back. He hadn’t expected it to happen so soon. “At this hour?” It was nearly two o’clock in the morning.

“Any moment,” she said. “We made a promise, my love, and we must keep it.”

“Yes,” Adrian murmured. She was right, as always. Vows must not be broken. “Of course.”

A brusque, heavy rapping on the door of their flat startled them both.

Claudette padded quickly to the door, leaving the chain lock on and opening it only two inches. Adrian followed, peering over her shoulder to see the pair of men on the other side. Neither looked friendly. He did not know their names, and had come to think of them only as “the Arabs”—though, for all he knew, they could have been Kurds or even Turkmen.

One of them spoke quickly to Claudette in Arabic. Adrian did not understand; his Arabic was rudimentary at best, limited to a handful of phrases that Claudette had taught him, but she nodded once, slid the chain aside, and granted them entry.

Both were fairly young, their mid-thirties or so, and sported short black beards over their mocha-tinted cheeks. They wore European clothing, jeans and T-shirts and light jackets against the chilly night air; Imam Khalil did not require any religious garb or coverings of his followers. In fact, ever since their displacement from Syria, he preferred that his people blend in whenever possible—for reasons that were obvious to Adrian, considering what the two men were there to procure.

“Cheval.” One of the Syrian men nodded to Adrian, almost reverently. “Forward? Tell us.” He spoke in extremely broken French.

“Forward?” Adrian repeated, confused.

“He means to ask for your progress,” Claudette said gently.

Adrian smirked. “His French is terrible.”

“So is your Arabic,” Claudette retorted.

Fair point, Adrian thought. “Tell him that the process takes time. It is meticulous, and requires patience. But the work is going well.”

Claudette relayed the message in Arabic, and the pair of Arabs nodded their approval.

“Small piece?” the second man asked. It seemed they were intent to practice their French on him.

“They’ve come for the sample,” Claudette told Adrian, though he had gathered that much from context. “Will you retrieve it?” It was clear to him that Claudette had no interest in touching the biohazard container, sealed or not.

Adrian nodded, but he did not move. “Ask them why Khalil did not come himself.”

Claudette bit her lip and touched him gently on the arm. “Darling,” she said quietly, “I am sure he is busy elsewhere—”

“What could be more important than this?” Adrian insisted. He had fully expected the Imam to show up.

Claudette asked the question in Arabic. The pair of Syrians frowned and glanced at each other before responding.

“They tell me that he is visiting the infirm tonight,” Claudette told Adrian in French, “praying for their release from this physical world.”

Adrian’s mind flashed to a memory of his mother, only days before her death, lying on the bed with her eyes open but unaware. She was barely conscious from the medication; without it she would have been in constant torment, yet with it she was practically comatose. In the weeks leading up to her departure, she had no concept of the world around her. He had prayed often for her recovery, there at her bedside, though as she neared the end his prayers changed and he found himself wishing her only a quick, painless death.

“What will he do with it?” Adrian asked. “The sample.”

“He will ensure that your mutation works,” Claudette said simply. “You know this.”

“Yes, but…” Adrian paused. He knew it was not his place to question the Imam’s intent, but suddenly he had a powerful urge to know. “Will he test it privately? Somewhere remote? It is important not to show our hand too soon. The rest of the batch is not ready…”

Claudette said something quickly to the pair of Syrian men, and then she took Adrian by the hand and led him to the kitchen. “My love,” she said quietly, “you are having doubts. Tell me.”

Adrian sighed. “Yes,” he admitted. “This is only a very tiny sample, not quite as stable as the others will be. What if it does not work?”

“It will.” Claudette wrapped her arms around him. “I have every confidence in you, as does Imam Khalil. You have been gifted this opportunity. You are blessed, Adrian.”

You are blessed. Those were the same words Khalil had used when they met. Three months earlier, Claudette had taken Adrian on a trip to Greece. Khalil, like so many Syrians, was a refugee—but not a political one, nor a byproduct of the war-torn nation. He was a religious refugee, chased out by Sunnis and Shiites alike for his idealistic notions. Khalil’s brand of spirituality was an amalgamation of Islamic tenets and some of the esoteric philosophical influences from Druze, such as truthfulness and transmigration of the soul.

Adrian had met the holy man in a hotel in Athens. Imam Khalil was a gentle man with a pleasant smile, wearing a brown suit with his dark hair and beard combed and neat. The young Frenchman was mildly taken aback when, upon meeting for the first time, the Imam asked Adrian to pray with him. Together they sat upon a carpet, facing Mecca, and prayed silently. There was a calmness that hung in the air around the Imam like an aura, a placidity that Adrian had not experienced since being a young boy in his then-healthy mother’s arms.

After prayer, the two men smoked from a glass hookah and drank tea while Khalil spoke of his ideology. They discussed the importance of being true to oneself; Khalil believed that the only way for humanity to absolve their sins was absolute truthfulness, which would allow the soul to reincarnate as a pure being. He asked many questions of Adrian, about science and spirituality alike. He asked about Adrian’s mother, and promised him that somewhere on this earth she had been born anew, pure and beautiful and healthy. The young Frenchman took great solace in it.

Khalil then spoke of Imam Mahdi, the Redeemer and the last of the Imam, the holy men. Mahdi would be the one who would bring about the Day of Judgment and rid the world of evil. Khalil believed that this would occur very soon, and after the Mahdi’s redemption would come utopia; every being in the universe would be flawless, genuine, and untainted.

For several hours the two men sat together, well into the night, and when Adrian’s head was as foggy as the thick, smoky air that swirled around them he finally asked the question that had been on his mind.

“Is it you, Khalil?” he asked the holy man. “Are you the Mahdi?”

Imam Kahlil had smiled wide at that. He took Adrian’s hand in his own and said gently, “No, my son. You are. You are blessed. I can see it as clearly as I see your face.”

I am blessed. In the kitchen of their Marseille flat, Adrian pressed his lips to Claudette’s forehead. She was right; they had made a promise to Khalil and it must be kept. He retrieved the steel biohazard box from the countertop and carried it to the waiting Arabs. He unclasped the lid and lifted the top half of the foam cube to show them the tiny, hermetically sealed glass vial nestled inside.

There did not appear to be anything in the vial—which was part of the nature of it being one of the most dangerous substances the world over.

“Darling,” Adrian said as he replaced the foam and clasped the lid firmly again. “I need you to tell them, in no uncertain terms, that under no circumstances whatsoever should they touch this vial. It must be handled with the utmost care.”

Claudette relayed the message in Arabic. Suddenly the Syrian man holding the box appeared far less comfortable than a moment earlier. The other man nodded his thanks to Adrian and murmured a phrase in Arabic, one that Adrian understood—“Allah is with you, peace be upon you”—and without another word, the two men left the flat.

Once they were gone, Claudette twisted the deadbolt and put the chain back on, and then turned to her lover with a dreamy, satisfied expression on her lips.

Adrian, however, stood rooted to the spot, his face dour.

“My love?” she said cautiously.

“What have I just done?” he murmured. He already knew the answer; he had put a deadly virus in the hands of not Imam Khalil, but two strangers. “What if they do not deliver it? What if they drop it, or open it, or—”

“My love.” Claudette slid her arms around his waist and pressed her head to his chest. “They are followers of the Imam. They will exercise caution and get it to where it needs to be. Have faith. You have taken the first step towards changing the world for the better. You are the Mahdi. Do not forget that.”

“Yes,” he said softly. “Of course. You are right, as always. And I must finish.” If his mutation did not work as it should, or if he did not produce the completed batch, he had no doubt that he would be a failure not only in the eyes of Khalil, but in Claudette’s as well. Without her he would crumble. He needed her as he needed air, food, or sunlight.

Even so, he could not help but wonder what they would do with the sample—if Imam Khalil would test it privately, at a remote location, or if it would be released publicly.

But he would find out soon enough.