Agent Zero

The pliers gripped something in Reid’s head—was it his bone?—and the interrogator tugged. Reid screamed in agony as white-hot pain shot through his brain, pulsing out into nerve endings. His arms trembled. His feet slapped against the floor.

The pain crescendoed until Reid thought he couldn’t possibly take any more. Blood pounded in his ears, and his own screams sounded as if they were far away. Then the procedure lamp dimmed, and the edges of his vision darkened as he slipped into unconsciousness.

CHAPTER THREE

When Reid was twenty-three, he was in a car accident. The stoplight had turned green and he eased into the intersection. A pickup truck jumped the light and smashed into his front passenger side. His head struck the window. He was unconscious for several minutes.

His only injury was a cracked temporal bone in his skull. It healed fine; the only evidence of the accident was a small lump behind his ear. The doctor told him it was a bone spur.

The funny thing about the accident was that while he could recall the event, he couldn’t recall any pain—not when it happened, and not afterward, either.

But he could feel it now. As he regained consciousness, the small patch of bone behind his left ear thrummed torturously. The procedure lamp was again shining in his eyes. He squinted and moaned slightly. Moving his head the slightest amount sent a fresh sting up his neck.

Suddenly his mind flashed onto something. The bright light in his eyes was not the lamp at all.

The afternoon sun blazes against a blue cloudless sky. An A-10 Warthog flies overhead, banking right and dipping in altitude over the flat, drab rooftops of Kandahar.

The vision was not fluid. It came in flashes, like several still photographs in sequence; like watching someone dance under a strobe light.

You stand on the beige rooftop of a partially destroyed building, a third of it blasted away. You bring the stock to your shoulder, eye the scope, and sight in on a man below…

Reid jerked his head and groaned. He was in the concrete room, under the discerning eye of the procedure lamp. His fingers trembled and his limbs felt cold. Sweat trickled down his brow. He was likely going into shock. In his periphery, he could see that the left shoulder of his shirt was soaked in blood.

“Bone spur,” said the interrogator’s placid voice. Then he chuckled sardonically. A slender hand appeared in Reid’s field of vision, gripping the pair of needle-nose pliers. Pinched between its teeth was something tiny and silver, but Reid couldn’t make out details. His vision was fuzzy and the room tilted slightly. “Do you know what this is?”

Reid shook his head slowly.

“I admit, I have only ever seen this once before,” said the interrogator. “A memory suppression chip. It is a very useful tool for people in your unique situation.” He dropped the bloody pliers and the small silver grain into the plastic tray.

“No,” Reid grunted. “Impossible.” The last word came out as little more than a murmur. Memory suppression? That was science fiction. For that to work, it would have to affect the entire limbic system of the brain.

The fifth floor of the Ritz Madrid. You adjust your black tie before you kick in the door with a solid heel just above the doorknob. The man inside is caught off guard; he leaps to his feet and snatches a pistol from the bureau. But before the man can level it at you, you grab his gun hand and twist it down and away. The force snaps the wrist easily…

Reid shook the muddled sequence from his brain as the interrogator took a seat in the chair across from him.

“You did something to me,” he muttered.

“Yes,” the interrogator agreed. “We have liberated you from a mental prison.” He leaned forward with his tight smirk, searching Reid’s eyes for something. “You’re remembering. This is fascinating to watch. You’re confused. Your pupils are abnormally dilated, despite the light. What is real, ‘Professor Lawson’?”

The sheikh. By any means necessary.

“When our memories fail us…”

Last known whereabouts: Safe house in Tehran.

“Who are we?”

A bullet sounds the same in every language… Who said that?

“Who do we become?”

You said that.

Reid felt himself slipping again into the void. The interrogator slapped him twice, jarring him back to the concrete room. “Now we may continue in earnest. So I ask you again. What… is… your… name?”

You enter the interrogation room alone. The suspect is cuffed to a looped bolt in the table. You reach into your inner suit pocket and produce a leather-bound ID badge and open it…

“Reid. Lawson.” His voice was uncertain. “I’m a professor… of European history…”

The interrogator sighed disappointedly. He beckoned with one finger to the brutish, scowling man. A heavy fist plowed into Reid’s cheek. A molar bounced across the floor in a wake of fresh blood.

For a moment, there was no pain; his face was numb, pulsing with the impact. Then a fresh, nebulous agony took over.

“Nnggh…” He tried to form words, but his lips would not move.

“I ask you again,” said the interrogator. “Tehran?”

The sheikh was holed up in a safe house disguised as an abandoned textile factory.

“Zagreb?”

Two Iranian men are apprehended on a private airstrip, about to board a chartered plane to Paris.

“Madrid?”

The Ritz, fifth floor: an activated sleeper cell with a suitcase bomb. Suspected destination: the Plaza de Cibeles.

“Sheikh Mustafar?”

He bargained for his life. Gave us everything he knew. Names, locations, plans. But he only knew so much…

“I know you are remembering,” said the interrogator. “Your eyes betray you… Zero.”

Zero. An image flashed in his head: A man in aviator sunglasses and a dark motorcycle jacket. He stands on the street corner in some European city. Moves with the crowd. No one is aware. No one knows he’s there.

Reid tried again to shake the visions from his head. What was happening to him? The images danced in his head like stop-motion sequences, but he refused to acknowledge them as memories. They were false. Implanted, somehow. He was a university professor, with two teenage girls and a humble home in the Bronx…

“Tell us what you know of our plans,” the interrogator demanded flatly.

We don’t talk. Ever.

The words echoed through the cavern of his mind, over and over. We don’t talk. Ever.

“This is taking too long!” shouted the tall Iranian man. “Coerce him.”

The interrogator sighed. He reached for the metal cart—but not to turn on the polygraph machine. Instead, his fingers lingered over the plastic tray. “I am generally a patient man,” he told Reid. “But I admit, my associate’s frustration is somewhat contagious.” He plucked up the bloody scalpel, the tool he had used to cut the small silver grain from his head, and he gently pressed the tip of the blade against Reid’s denim jeans, about four inches above the knee. “All we want to know is what you know. Names. Dates. Who you’ve told about what you know. The identities of your fellow agents in the field.”

Morris. Reidigger. Johansson. Names flashed across his mind, and with each came a face that he had never seen before. A younger man with dark hair and a cocky smile. A round-faced, friendly-looking guy in a starched white shirt. A woman with flowing blonde hair and steely, gray eyes.