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.