Agent Zero

But he had just killed four men, and his own blood was all over the basement. And there was the other, clearer problem.

“I don’t know who I am,” he murmured aloud.

Those flashes, those visions that stalked his mind, they were from his perspective. His point of view. But he had never, would never do anything like that. Memory suppression, the interrogator had said. Was that even possible? He thought again of his girls. Were they safe? Were they scared? Were they… his?

That notion jarred him to his core. What if, somehow, what he thought was real wasn’t real at all?

No, he told himself adamantly. They were his daughters. He was there for their birth. He raised them. None of these bizarre, intrusive visions contradicted that. And he needed to find a way to contact them, to make sure they were all right. That was his top priority. There was no way he would use the burner phone to contact his family; he didn’t know if it was being traced or who might be listening in.

He suddenly remembered the slip of paper with the phone number on it. He stood and pulled it out of his pocket. The bloodstained paper stared back at him. He didn’t know what this was about or why they thought he was anyone different than who he said he was, but there was a shade of urgency beneath the surface of his subconscious, something telling him that he was now unwillingly involved in something that was much, much bigger than him.

His hands shaking, he dialed the number on the burner.

A gruff male voice answered on the second tone. “Is it done?” he asked in Arabic.

“Yes,” Reid replied. He tried to mask his voice as best he could and affect an accent.

“You have the information?”

“Mm.”

The voice was silent for a long moment. Reid’s heart pounded in his chest. Had they realized it wasn’t the interrogator?

“187 Rue de Stalingrad,” the man said finally. “Eight p.m.” And he hung up.

Reid ended the call and took a deep breath. Rue de Stalingrad? he thought. In France?

He wasn’t sure what he was going to do yet. His mind felt like he had broken through a wall and discovered a whole other chamber on the other side. He couldn’t return home without knowing what was happening to him. Even if he did, how long would it be until they found him, and the girls, again? He had only one lead. He had to follow it.

He stepped out of the small house and found himself in a narrow alley, the mouth of which opened onto a street called Rue Marceau. He immediately knew where he was—a suburb of Paris, mere blocks from the Seine. He almost laughed. He thought he would be stepping out into the war-torn streets of a Middle Eastern city. Instead, he found a boulevard lined with shops and row homes, unassuming passersby enjoying their casual afternoon, bundled against the chilly February breeze.

He tucked the pistol into the waistband of his jeans and stepped out onto the street, blending in with the crowd and trying not to draw any attention to his blood-stained shirt, bandages, or obvious bruises. He hugged his arms close to him—he would need some new clothes, a jacket, something warmer than just his shirt.

He needed to make sure his girls were safe.

Then he would get some answers.

CHAPTER FOUR

Walking the streets of Paris felt like a dream—just not in the way that anyone would expect or even desire. Reid reached the intersection of Rue de Berri and Avenue des Champs-Élysées, ever the tourist hotspot despite the chilly weather. The Arc de Triomphe loomed several blocks away to the northwest, the centerpiece of Place Charles de Gaulle, but its grandeur was lost on Reid. A new vision flashed across his mind.

I’ve been here before. I’ve stood in this spot and looked up at this street sign. Wearing jeans and a black motorcycle jacket, the colors of the world muted by polarized sunglasses…

He turned right. He wasn’t sure what he would find this way, but he had the eerie suspicion that he would recognize it as he saw it. It was an incredibly bizarre sensation to not know where he was going until he got there.

It felt as if every new sight brought on some vignette of vague recollection, each disconnected from the next, yet still somehow congruent. He knew that the café on the corner served the best pastis he would ever taste. The sweet scent of the patisserie across the street made his mouth water for savory palmiers. He had never tasted palmiers before. Had he?

Even sounds jarred him. Passersby chattered idly to one another as they strolled the boulevard, occasionally stealing glances at his bandaged, bruised face.

“I would hate to see the other guy,” a young Frenchman muttered to his girlfriend. They both chuckled.

Okay, don’t panic, Reid thought. Apparently you know Arabic and French. The only other language that Professor Lawson spoke was German and a few phrases in Spanish.

There was something else too, something harder to define. Beneath his rattling nerves and instinct to run, to go home, to hide somewhere, beneath all of that there was a cold, steely reserve. It was like having the heavy hand of an older brother on his shoulder, a voice in the back of his mind saying, Relax. You know all of this.

While that voice ushered him softly from the back of his mind, on the forefront was his girls and their safety. Where were they? What were they thinking right then? What would it mean for them if they lost both parents?

He had never stopped thinking about them. Even as he was being beaten in the dingy basement prison, even as these flashes of visions were intruding on his mind, he had been thinking about the girls—particularly that last question. What would happen to them if he had died down there in that basement? Or if he died doing the very foolhardy thing that he was about to do?

He had to make sure. He had to reach out somehow.

But first, he needed a jacket, and not just to cover his bloodstained shirt. The February weather was approaching fifty degrees, but still too chilly for just a shirt. The boulevard acted as a wind tunnel and the breeze was brisk. He ducked into the next clothing boutique and chose the first coat that caught his eye—a dark brown bomber jacket, leather with a fleece lining. Strange, he thought. He would never have picked a jacket like this before, what with his tweed and plaid fashion sense, but he was drawn to it.

The bomber jacket was two hundred and forty euros. No matter; he had a pocketful of money. He picked out a new shirt as well, a slate-gray tee, and then a pair of jeans, new socks, and sturdy brown boots. He brought all his purchases up to the counter and paid in cash.

There was a thumbprint of blood on one of the bills. The thin-lipped clerk pretended not to notice. A strobe-like flash in his mind—

“A guy walks into a gas station covered in blood. He pays for his fuel and starts to leave. The bewildered attendant calls out, ‘Hey, man, are you okay?’ The guy smiles. ‘Oh yeah, I’m fine. It’s not my blood.’”

I’ve never heard that joke before.

“May I use your changing room?” Reid asked in French.

The clerk pointed toward the rear of the store. He hadn’t said a single word during the entire transaction.

Before changing, Reid examined himself for the first time in a clean mirror. Jesus, he looked awful. His right eye was swelling fiercely and blood was staining the bandages. He’d have to find a drug store and buy some decent first-aid supplies. He slid his now-filthy and somewhat bloody jeans down over his wounded thigh, wincing as he did. Something clattered to the floor, startling him. The Beretta. He’d nearly forgotten he had it.

The pistol was heavier than he would have imagined. Nine hundred forty-five grams, unloaded, he knew. Holding it was like embracing a former lover, familiar and foreign at the same time. He set it down and finished changing, stuffed his old clothes in the shopping bag, and tucked the pistol into the waistband of his new jeans, at the small of his back.

Out on the boulevard, Reid kept his head low and walked briskly, staring down at the sidewalk. He didn’t need more visions distracting him right now. He tossed the bag of old clothes in a trash can on a corner without missing a step.

“Oh! Excusez-moi,” he apologized as his shoulder bumped roughly into a passing woman in a business suit. She glared at him. “So sorry.” She huffed and stalked off. He stuffed his hands in his jacket pockets—along with the cell phone he had swiped from her purse.

It was easy. Too easy.

Two blocks away, he ducked under a department store awning and took out the phone. He breathed a sigh of relief—he’d targeted the businesswoman for a reason, and his instinct paid off. She had Skype installed on her phone and an account linked to an American number.

He opened the phone’s Internet browser, looked up the number to Pap’s Deli in the Bronx, and called.

A young male voice answered quickly. “Pap’s, how can I help you?”

“Ronnie?” One of his students from the year prior worked part time at Reid’s favorite deli. “It’s Professor Lawson.”

“Hey, Professor!” the young man said brightly. “How’s it going? You want to put in a takeout order?”

“No. Yes… sort of. Listen, I need a really big favor, Ronnie.” Pap’s Deli was only six blocks from his house. On pleasant days, he would often walk the distance to pick up sandwiches. “Do you have Skype on your phone?”

“Yeah?” said Ronnie, a confused lilt in his voice.