Trapping Zero

She wasn’t upset reliving the events of last month. She was angry.

Reid lowered himself slowly into a chair. He knew about most of what she told him by virtue of having followed the trail to find the girls, but he had no idea about another girl being gunned down in front of them. Maya was right; Sara was not trained to deal with any such things. She wasn’t even an adult. She was a teenager who had experienced things that anyone, trained or not, would find traumatizing.

“When you showed up,” Maya continued, her voice lower now, “when you actually came for us, it was like you were a superhero or something. At first. But then… when we had some time to think about it… we realized that we don’t know what else you’re hiding. We’re not sure who you really are. Do you know how frightening that is?”

“Maya,” he said gently, “you don’t ever have to be afraid of me—”

“You’ve killed people.” She shrugged one shoulder. “Plenty of them. Right?”

“I…” Reid had to remind himself not to lie to her. He had promised he wouldn’t anymore, as long as he could help it. Instead he only nodded.

“Then you’re not the person that we thought you were. That’s going to take time to get used to. You need to accept that.”

“You keep saying ‘we,’” Reid murmured. “She talks to you?”

“Yeah. Sometimes. She’s been sleeping in my bed the past week or so. Nightmares.”

Reid sighed dolefully. Gone was the untroubled, content dynamic their small family had once enjoyed. He realized now that things had changed for all of them and between all of them—maybe forever.

“I don’t know what to do,” he admitted softly. “I want to be there for her, for both of you. I want to be your support when you need it. But I can’t do that if she won’t talk to me about what’s going on in her head.” He glanced up at Maya and added, “She’s always looked up to you. Maybe you can be a role model for her now. I think that getting back into a routine, a shot at normal life, would be good for both of you. At least finish your Georgetown classes. Besides, they’re not likely to let you in if you flunked an entire semester.”

Maya was silent for a long moment. At last she said, “I don’t think I want to go to Georgetown anymore.”

Reid frowned. Georgetown had been her top choice of colleges since they’d moved to Virginia. “Then where? NYU?”

She shook her head. “No. I want to go West Point.”

“West Point,” he repeated blankly, completely thrown by her statement. “You want to go to a military academy?”

“Yes,” she said. “I’m going to become a CIA agent.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Reid balked. He was certain he had heard her right, but the combination of words that came from her mouth made little sense to him.

She’s winding me up, he thought. She was expecting an argument and I resisted. This was just youthful angst. It had to be.

“You… want to be a CIA agent,” he said slowly.

“Yes,” said Maya. “More specifically, I want to attend the National Intelligence University in Bethesda. But in order to do that, I would first have to be a member of the armed forces. If I go to West Point instead of enlisting, I would graduate as a second lieutenant and be eligible to attend NIU. There I can get a master’s in strategic intelligence, and by that point I’d be over twenty-one, so I could enroll in the agency’s field-training program.”

Reid’s legs felt numb. Not only was she very obviously serious, but she had already done some thorough research to find her best course of action and education.

But there was no way in hell that he would ever let his daughter choose that path.

“No,” he said simply. All other words seemed to fail him. “No. No way. That’s not happening.”

Maya’s eyebrows shot up in unison. “Excuse me?” she said sharply.

Reid took a deep breath. She was headstrong, so he would have to deny her more carefully than that. But his answer was an unequivocal and emphatic “no.” Not after everything he had seen and everything he had done.

“It hasn’t been all that long since… the incident,” he said. “It’s still fresh in your mind. Before you make a decision like this, you need to consider all angles. Finish your classes. Graduate high school. Apply to colleges. And we can revisit all of this later.” He smiled as pleasantly as he could muster.

Maya did not. “You don’t get to dictate my life like that,” she said heatedly.

“Actually, I do,” Reid countered. He was quickly growing irritated himself. “You’re still a minor.”

“Not for long,” she shot back. “Let me tell you what’s going to happen. I’m not going back to those classes at Georgetown. In fact, I’m not going back to school until September. I’ll flunk my spring semester and I’ll have to take all those courses over again. I’ll be seventeen next month, which means by the time I graduate I’ll be eighteen. And then you don’t get to tell me where I can go or what I can do anymore.” She folded her arms to punctuate her point.

Reid pinched the bridge of his nose. “You cannot just skip three months of school. And what about all these study sessions you’ve been doing? All that time would be wasted.”

“I haven’t been going to study sessions,” she admitted.

He looked up at her sharply. “So you’ve been lying to me? After everything?” He scoffed in dismay. “Then where have you been going?”

“After you drop me off, I go to the rec center,” she told him matter-of-factly. “There’s a self-defense class there a few times a week. It’s taught by a former Marine. I’ve also been reading up on counterintelligence and espionage tactics.”

He shook his head. “I can’t believe this. I thought we weren’t going to have any more secrets between us.” Even as he said it, a painful memory flashed through his mind—Kate’s murder, the truth about their mother. He still hadn’t told them, despite his promise to himself to cease the lying and guile. It killed him to keep it from them, but in the wake of the incident it had been too soon to reveal something so horrible. Now, four weeks later, he was afraid it was too late and that they would be angry at him for keeping it to himself for so long.

“I knew you’d react like this,” Maya said. “That’s why I didn’t tell you the truth. But I’m telling you now. That’s what I want to do. That’s what I’m going to do.”

“When you were seven you wanted to be a ballet dancer,” Reid told her. “Remember that? When you were ten you wanted to be a veterinarian. At thirteen you wanted to be a lawyer, all because we watched a movie about a murder trial—”

“Do not patronize me!” Maya leapt up from her seat, standing in front of him with a pointed finger of warning and a glare on her face.

Reid leaned back in his seat, shocked by her outburst. He could hardly even be angry at her, as surprised as he was at the strength her reaction.

“This is not some little girl’s fairytale pipe dream,” she said quickly, her voice low. “This is what I want. I know that now. Just like I know what keeps Sara awake at night. She has nightmares about her experience, what she went through. What she survived. But that’s not what traumatizes me. What keeps me awake is knowing that it’s still happening out there right now. What I saw and what I went through is someone’s life. While I’m in my warm bed, or eating pizza, or going to classes, there are women and children out there living every single day like that—until they’re dead.”

Maya put one foot up onto the chair and yanked the leg of her pajamas pants up to the knee. There on her calf were thin, ruddy-brown scars spelling out three words: RED. 23. POLA. It was the message that she had carved into her own leg in the moments before the traffickers’ drugs took hold of her; the message that provided a clue as to where they had taken Sara.

“You can pretend this is just a phase if you want,” Maya pressed on. “But these scars aren’t going anywhere. I’ll have them for the rest of my life, and every time I see them I’m reminded that what happened to me is still happening to others. All I did was figure out that if I want it to end, the best way to do it is to be part of the people trying to stop it.” She pulled down the pajama leg again.

Reid’s throat felt dry. He couldn’t counter her argument any more than he could consent to it. Something Maria had once said to him flashed through his mind: You can’t save everyone. But he could save his daughter from living the kind of life he had been thrust back into. “I’m sorry,” he said at last. “But no matter how noble your intentions might be, I can’t support this. And I won’t.”

“I don’t need your support,” Maya declared. “I just thought you should know the truth.” She stormed out of the dining room, her bare feet stomping up the stairs. A moment later a door slammed shut.

Reid slumped in his chair and sighed. The pizza was cold. One daughter was disturbed into silence and the other was determined to take on the underworld. The psychologist, Dr. Branson, had told him to be patient with Sara; she had said that time heals all things, but instead he had pressed the issue and upset her anew. On top of all that, Maya’s intention of joining the CIA was the very last thing he had expected to hear.

In a strange way, he admired her ability to channel the trauma she’d experienced into a cause. But he simply could not agree with the means she’d chosen. He thought back to everything he had seen and the injuries he had sustained. The things he had to do and the threats he had to stop. The people he had helped, and all of those he’d left broken or dead along the way.

Reid realized suddenly that he had no idea what had inspired him to join the CIA in the first place. His own motivations had been long lost, shoved into the darkest recesses of his mind by the experimental memory suppressor. It was possible that he would never remember why he became CIA Agent Kent Steele.

You know that’s not true, he told himself. There might be a way.

*

Reid’s office was on the second floor of the house, the smallest of the bedrooms that he had outfitted with his desk, shelves, and impressive book collection. He should have been preparing his lecture for Monday on the Protestant Reformation and the Thirty Years’ War. As an adjunct professor of European history at Georgetown University, Reid’s commitment was hardly more than part-time, but still he craved the classroom. It represented a return to normalcy, much like he wanted for his girls. But that task would wait.

Instead, Reid reverently laid a dark disc on the spindle of an old phonograph in the corner and lowered the needle. He closed his eyes as Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 began, slow and melodic, like a springtime thaw after the long winter’s freeze. He smiled. The machine was more than seventy-five years old but still worked perfectly. It had been a gift to him from Kate on their fifth wedding anniversary; she had found the ramshackle phonograph at a flea market for an asking price of six dollars, and then paid more than two hundred to have it refurbished to nearly its former glory.

Kate. His smile faded to a grimace.

You’re at the black site in Morocco, nicknamed Hell-Six. Interrogating a known terrorist.

There’s a call for you. It’s Deputy Director Cartwright. Your boss.

He doesn’t mince words. Your wife, Kate, was killed.

It happened as she was leaving work, walking to her car. Kate had been given a powerful dose of tetrodotoxin, also known as TTX, a potent poison that caused sudden paralysis of the diaphragm. She suffocated on the street and was dead in less than a minute.

In the weeks since Eastern Europe, Reid had revisited the memory many times—or rather, the memory had revisited him, forcing its way into the forefront of his mind when least expected. Everything reminded him of Kate, from the furniture in their living room to the scent that somehow still lingered on his pillow; from the color of Sara’s eyes to Maya’s angled chin. She was everywhere… and so was the lie that he withheld from his girls.

He had tried several times to remember more, but he wasn’t actually certain that he knew any more than that. After his wife’s murder, Kent Steele had gone on a dangerous rampage across Europe and the Middle East, killing dozens that were associated with the terrorist organization Amun. Then came the memory suppressor, and the subsequent two years of oddly blissful ignorance.

Reid went to the closet in the far corner of the room. Inside it was a small black duffel bag, what CIA agents called a bug-out bag. In it was everything that an operative would need to go dark for an indeterminate amount of time, should the situation call for it. This particular bag had belonged to his former best friend, the now-deceased Agent Alan Reidigger. Reid had few memories of the man, but he knew enough to know that Reidigger had helped him in a time of need—and had paid for it with his life.

Most importantly, in the bag was a letter. He pulled it out, the third-length creases well worn with time and rereading.

Hey Zero, the letter began prophetically. If you’re reading this, I’m probably dead.

He skipped a couple of paragraphs down the sheet.

The CIA wanted to bring you in, but you wouldn’t listen. It wasn’t just because of your warpath. There was something else, something you were close to finding—too close. I can’t tell you what it was because even I don’t know. You wouldn’t tell me, so it must have been heavy.

Reid believed he knew what Reidigger was referring to—the conspiracy. A brief flash of memory he had recovered while tracking down Imam Khalil and the smallpox virus had shown him that he knew something before the suppressor was implanted in his head.

He closed his eyes and returned to the memory:

The CIA black site in Morocco. Designation H-6, aka Hell Six. An interrogation. You pull the fingernails from an Arab man for information about the whereabouts of a bomb maker.

Between screams and whimpers and insistences that he doesn’t know, something else emerges—a pending war. Something big coming. A conspiracy, designed by the US government.

You don’t believe him. Not at first. But you couldn’t just let it go.

He knew something back then. Like a jigsaw puzzle, he had started to put it together. Then Amun happened. Kate’s murder happened. He got distracted, and while he vowed to return to it, he never got the chance.

He read over the rest of Alan’s letter:

Whatever it was, it’s still there, locked away in your brain somewhere. If you ever need it, there is a way. The neurosurgeon that installed the implant, his name is Dr. Guyer. He was last practicing in Zurich. He could bring back everything, if you choose. Or he could suppress them all again, if you wanted to do that. The choice is yours. Godspeed, Zero. —Alan

Reid could not recall how many times he had sat in front of the computer or on his phone and tried to motivate his fingers to type Dr. Guyer’s name into a search bar. His desire to have his memory restored—no, his necessity to have it back was growing more intense with every passing week, to the point that it felt urgent that he know just how much he didn’t know. He needed to be able to recall his own past.

But I can’t leave the girls. In the wake of the incident, there was no way he could just up and go to Switzerland. He would be downright neurotic about their safety, even with the tracking implants. Even with Agent Strickland watching over them. Besides, what would they think? Maya would never believe it was for a medical procedure. She would think he was doing field work again.

So bring them. The thought entered his head so easily that he nearly laughed at himself for not thinking of it before. But then he discounted it just as quickly. What about his job? What about Sara’s therapy sessions? Hadn’t he just tried to convince Maya to return to school?

Don’t overthink it, he told himself. Wasn’t the simplest solution usually the right one? It wasn’t like anything else had worked to snap Sara out of her funk, and Maya seemed intent on being headstrong, as usual.

Reid pushed Reidigger’s bug-out bag back into the closet and scrambled to his feet. Before he could convince himself to change his mind he strode down the hall to Maya’s room and knocked rapidly on her door.

She opened it and folded her arms, clearly still unhappy with him. “Yeah?”

“Let’s go on a trip.”

She blinked at him. “What?”

“Let’s go on a trip, the three of us,” he said again, pushing past her into the bedroom. “Look, I was wrong to bring up the incident. I see that now. Sara doesn’t need to be reminded of it; she needs the opposite.” He was ranting, gesticulating with his hands, but he pressed on. “This past month all she’s done is lie around and dwell on what happened. Maybe what she needs is a distraction. Maybe she just needs to make some pleasant memories to be reminded of how good things can be.”

Maya frowned as if struggling to follow his logic. “So you want to go on a trip. To where?”

“Let’s go skiing,” he replied. “Remember when we went to Vermont, about four or five years ago? Remember how much Sara loved the bunny slope?”

“I remember,” Maya said, “but Dad, it’s April. Ski season is over.”

“Not in the Alps, it’s not.”

She stared at him as if he had lost his mind. “You want to go to the Alps?”

“Yes. Switzerland, to be specific. And I know you think this is crazy, but I’m thinking clearly here. We’re not doing ourselves any favors stagnating around here. We need a change of scenery—especially Sara.”

“But… what about your work?”

Reid shrugged. “I’ll play hooky.”

“No one says that anymore.”

“I’ll worry about what to tell the university,” he said. And the agency. “Family comes first.” Reid was mostly certain the CIA wasn’t going to fire him over demanding some time off to be with his girls. In fact, he was fairly certain they wouldn’t let him quit even if he tried. “Sara’s cast comes off tomorrow. We can go this week. What do you say?”

Maya pursed her lips tightly. He knew that look; she was trying her best to hold back a smirk. She still wasn’t exactly pleased with how he had handled her news from earlier. But she nodded. “Alright. It makes sense. Yeah, let’s go on a trip.”

“Great.” Reid grabbed her by the shoulders and planted a kiss on his daughter’s forehead before she could squirm away. As he left her bedroom, he glanced back and definitely caught her smiling.

He crept into Sara’s room and found her lying on her back, staring up at the ceiling. She didn’t look at him as he entered and knelt beside her bed.

“Hey,” he said in a near-whisper. “I’m sorry about what happened at dinner. But I have an idea. What would you say about us going on a little trip? Just me and you and Maya, and we’ll go somewhere nice, somewhere far away. Would you like that?”

Sara tilted her head towards him, just enough so that her gaze met his. Then she nodded slightly.

“Yeah? Good. Then that’s what we’ll do.” He reached over and took her hand in his, and he was pretty sure he felt a slight squeeze from her fingers.

This will work, he told himself. For the first time in a while he felt good about something.

And the girls didn’t need to know about his ulterior motive.

CHAPTER FIVE

Maria Johansson walked the concourse at Istanbul Atatürk Airport in Turkey and pushed open the door to the women’s restroom. She had spent the last few days on the trail of three Israeli journalists who had gone missing while covering the story of Imam Khalil’s sect of zealots, the ones who had nearly unleashed a deadly smallpox virus on the developed world. It was suspected that the journalists’ disappearance might have had something to do with surviving followers of Khalil, but their trail had gone cold in Iraq, short of their destination of Baghdad.

She very much doubted that they would ever be found, not unless whoever was responsible for their disappearance claimed responsibility. Her orders currently were to follow up on an alleged source that the journalist had here in Istanbul, and then return to CIA regional headquarters in Zurich where she would be debriefed and possibly reassigned, if the op was deemed dead.

But in the meantime, she had another meeting to attend.

In a bathroom stall, Maria opened her purse and took out a waterproof bag of thick plastic. Before she sealed her CIA-issued phone inside it she called the voicemail of her private line.

There were no new messages. It seemed that Kent had given up trying to reach her. He had left her several voicemails in the past weeks, one every few days. In the short, one-sided snippets he told her about his girls, how Sara was still dealing with the trauma of the events she’d endured. He mentioned his work for the National Resources Division and how bland it was compared to field work. He told her he missed her.

It was a small relief that he’d given up. At least she wouldn’t have to listen to the sound of his voice and realize how much she missed him too.

Maria sealed the phone into the plastic bag and carefully lowered it into the toilet tank before replacing the lid. She did not want to risk any prying ears to listen in on her conversation.

Then she left the bathroom and headed down the terminal to a gate with a couple dozen people milling about. The flight board announced that the plane to Kiev would be leaving in an hour and a half.

She sat in a rigid plastic chair in a row of six. The man was already behind her, seated in the opposite row facing the other direction with an automobile magazine open in front of his face.

“Calendula,” he said, his voice husky but low. “Report.”

“There is nothing to report,” she replied in Ukrainian. “Agent Zero is back at home with his family. He has been avoiding me ever since.”

“Oh?” said the Ukrainian curiously. “Has he? Or have you been avoiding him?”

Maria scowled, but did not turn to face the man. He would only say such a thing if he knew it was true. “You’ve tapped my private cell?”

“Of course,” the Ukrainian said candidly. “It seems that Agent Zero very much wants to speak with you. Why have you not contacted him?”

Not that it was any of the Ukrainian’s business, but Maria had been ducking Kent for the simple reason that she had, again, lied to him—not once, but twice. She had told him that the Ukrainians she was working with were members of the Foreign Intelligence Service. While a few of their faction might have been, at one time, they were about as loyal to the FIS as she was to the CIA.

The second lie was that she would stop working with them. Kent had made clear his distrust of the Ukrainians while they were en route to rescuing his daughters, and Maria had agreed, halfheartedly, that she would put an end to the relationship.

She hadn’t. Not yet. But that was part of the reason for the meeting in Istanbul; it wasn’t too late to make good on her word.

“We’re done,” she said simply. “I’m through working with you. You know what I know, and I know what you know. We can swap intel for the sake of building a case, but I’m finished doing your errands. And I’m leaving Zero out of this.”

The Ukrainian was silent for a long moment. He casually flicked the page of his auto magazine as if he was actually reading it. “Are you certain?” he asked. “New information has recently come to light.”

Maria’s eyebrow rose instinctively, though she was sure this was just a ruse to keep her in their employ. “What kind of new information?”

“Information you want,” the man said cryptically. Maria could not see his face but she got the impression, based on his tone, he was smirking.

“You’re bluffing,” she said bluntly.

“I am not,” he assured her. “We know his position. And we know what might happen if he remains in his stance.”

Maria’s pulse quickened. She didn’t want to believe him, but she had little choice. Her involvement in uncovering the conspiracy, her decision to work with them and attempt to obtain information from the CIA, was more than just a matter of doing the right thing. Of course she wanted to avoid war, to keep the perpetrators from their would-be ill-gotten gains, to keep innocent people from being hurt. But more than that, she had a vested personal interest in the plot.

Her father was a member of the National Security Council, a high-ranking official in international matters. And though it shamed her to even think it, her biggest priority, bigger than saving lives or keeping the United States from initiating war, was finding out if he was in on this, if he was a coconspirator—and if he wasn’t, to keep him safe from those that would have their way by any means necessary.

It wasn’t as if Maria could simply call him up and ask him. Their relationship was somewhat strained, limited mostly to professional banter, talk of legislation, and the occasional short-lived catching-up of personal lives. Besides, if he was aware of the plot, he would have no reason to openly admit it to her. If he wasn’t, he would want to take action; he was a decisive man who believed in justice and the legal system. Maria tended to lean towards the cynical, and as a result, cautious.

“What do you mean, ‘what might happen’?” she demanded. The Ukrainian’s cryptic statement seemed to suggest that her father was none the wiser, while also carrying a certain weight of threat with it.

“We don’t know,” he replied simply.

“How did you find this out?”

“Emails,” said the Ukrainian, “obtained from a private server. His name was mentioned, along with others who… may not comply.”

“Like a hit list?” she asked plainly.

“Unclear.”

Frustration roiled in her chest. “I want to read these emails. I want to see them for myself.”

“And you can,” the Ukrainian assured her. “But not if you’re insistent on breaking ties with us. We need you, Calendula. You need us. And we all need Agent Zero.”

She sighed. “No. Leave him out of this. He’s home with his family. That’s where his focus needs to be right now. He’s not even an agent anymore—”

“Yet he still works for the CIA.”

“He has no allegiance to them—”

“But he has an allegiance to you.”

Maria scoffed. “He doesn’t even remember enough to make sense of the little that he does know.”

“The memories are still there, in his head. Eventually he will remember, and when he does, you need to be there. Don’t you see? When that information returns to him he won’t have a choice but to act. He will need you there to guide him, and he will need our resources if he wants to do anything meaningful about it.” The Ukrainian man paused before adding, “The intel in Agent Zero’s mind could provide the pieces that we are missing, or at least lead to proof. A way to stop this. That is the whole point, is it not?”

“Of course it is,” Maria murmured. While not the only reason she had agreed to work with the Ukrainians, stopping the war and unnecessary slaughter before it began, and to keep the wrong people from gaining the type of power that historically led to much bigger conflicts was paramount. Still, she shook her head. “Regardless of what I want, you only want to use him.”

“Having the CIA’s top agent turn against his government would indeed be useful,” the man admitted. “But that is not our goal.” He dared to turn slightly in her direction, just enough to murmur, “We are not your enemy here.”

She wanted to believe that. But continuing to work with them when she had promised Kent she would cut ties made it feel like she was, as he had once accused, a double-agent—but against him, not the CIA.

“I’ll deal with Zero,” she said, “but I want those emails, and any other information you have on my father.”

“And you’ll get it, as soon as you bring something new and useful to the table.” The man made a show of looking down at his watch. “Speaking of which, I believe you’re soon due back at CIA regional headquarters? That is in Zurich, right? You may want to inquire as to the whereabouts of Agent Zero. If I’m not mistaken, he won’t be far.”

“He’s in Europe?” Maria was so taken aback that she twisted halfway in her seat. “Are you spying on him?”

He shrugged. “His recent credit card activity showed three plane tickets to Switzerland.”

Three? Maria thought. It wasn’t fieldwork; it was a trip. Kent and his two girls, most likely. But why Switzerland? she wondered. A notion came to her… Would he try to do that? Is he ready?

The Ukrainian man stood, buttoned his overcoat, and stuck his magazine under one arm. “Go to him. Get us something useful. Time is running out; if you don’t do it, we will.”

“Don’t you dare send anyone near him or his girls,” Maria threatened.

He smirked. “Then don’t force our hand. Goodbye, Calendula.” He nodded once and strode away across the terminal.

Maria sank into the chair and sighed defeatedly. She knew all too well that a single renewed memory could trigger Kent’s obsessive nature, and he’d plunge back down the rabbit hole of conspiracy and deception in search of answers. She had seen firsthand how Kent had gone through hell to get his family back… but she also knew that the knowledge he once had would tear them apart again.

There in the terminal of Istanbul Atatürk Airport, she made a resolution to herself: she was personally responsible for bringing him into this, so she would make sure to be there if, or when, he remembered. And to stop him if she needed to.