Recall Zero

There in the Plaza hotel, with Alan out getting pizza and a sitcom muted on the TV mere feet from them, Zero told his daughters that their mother, Kate Lawson, had not died of an ischemic stroke as had been reported.

She had been poisoned.

The CIA had called a hit on her.

Because of him. Agent Zero. His actions.

And the person who carried out the sentence…

“He didn’t know,” Zero told his daughters. He stared at the bedspread, the carpet, anything other than their faces. “He didn’t know who she was. He had been lied to. He didn’t know until later. Until after.” He was rambling. Making excuses for the man who had killed his wife, the mother of his children. The man Zero had sent away instead of killing him outright.

“Who?” Maya’s voice came out hoarse, a harsh whisper, more of a sound than a word.

Agent John Watson. A man who had saved his daughters’ lives more than once. A man they had come to know, to trust, to like.

The silence in the next few moments was crushing, like an invisible hand squeezing his heart. The hotel room’s air conditioning unit rattled to life suddenly, loud as a jet engine in the otherwise vacuum.

“How long have you known?” Maya’s tone was direct, almost demanding.

Be honest. That was the stance he wanted with his girls. Honesty. No matter how bad it hurt. This admission was the last barricade between them. He knew it was time to tear it down.

He already knew it would be what broke them.

“I’ve known for a little while that it wasn’t an accident,” he told her. “I needed to know who. And now I do.”

He dared to look up then, to look at their faces. Sara cried silently, tears streaming down both cheeks, not making a sound. Maya stared at her own hands, expressionless.

He reached for her. It was the only thing that made sense in the moment. To connect, to hold a hand.

He remembered exactly how it had actually happened. As his fingers closed around hers, she pulled away violently. She scrambled backward, leapt off the bed. Sara jumped, startled, as Maya told him she hated him. Called him every name in the book. And he sat there, and he took it, because it was what he deserved.

But not this time. As his fingers closed around hers, Maya’s hand disintegrated beneath his in a wisp of fog.

“No…”

He clambered for her, a shoulder or an arm, but she vanished under his touch like a column of ash in a breeze. He turned quickly and reached for Sara, but she only shook her head ruefully as she too evaporated before his eyes.

And then he was alone.

*

“Sara!”

Zero woke with a start and immediately groaned. A headache roared through his forehead. It was a dream—a nightmare. One he’d had a thousand times before.

But it had happened that way, or nearly so.

Zero had saved the day. Thwarted a presidential assassination attempt. Stopped a war before it began. Uncovered a conspiracy. And then he and his girls had gone to the Plaza; none of them wanted to go home to their two-story house in Alexandria, Virginia. Too much had happened there. Too much death.

It was there that he’d told them. They deserved to know the truth.

And then they left him.

That was… how long ago now? Nearly eighteen months, by his best recollection. A year and a half ago. Still the dream plagued him most nights. Sometimes the girls evaporated before his eyes. Sometimes they screamed at him, hurling curses far worse than had actually happened. Other times they silently left, and when he ran out into the hallway after them they had already vanished.

Though the ending varied, the real-life ramifications were the same. He woke from the nightmare with a headache and the grim, despairing reminder that they really were gone.

Zero stretched and rose from the sofa. He couldn’t remember falling asleep in the first place, but it wasn’t surprising. He didn’t sleep well at night, and not just because of the nightmare about his daughters. A year and a half ago he had recovered his memories, his complete memories as Agent Zero, and with them came harrowing nightmares. Recollections would shoulder their way into his subconscious while he slept, or tried to. Heinous scenes of torture. Bombs dropped on buildings. The impact of hollow-point bullets on a human skull.

Worse still was that he didn’t know if they were real or not. Dr. Guyer, the brilliant Swiss neurologist who had helped him recover the memories, warned that some things might not be real, but a product of his limbic system manifesting fantasies, suspicions, and nightmares as reality.

His own reality felt barely just so.

Zero trudged into the kitchen for a glass of water, barefoot and groggy, when the doorbell rang. He jumped a little at the sudden break in silence, every muscle tightening instinctively. He was still pretty jumpy, even after all this time. Then he glanced at the digital clock on the stove. It was almost four thirty. There was only one person it would be.

He answered the door and forced a smile for his old friend. “Right on time.”

Alan Reidigger grinned as he held up a six-pack, a thumb and forefinger looped in the plastic rings. “For your weekly therapy session.”

Zero snorted and stepped aside. “Come on, we’ll go out back.”

He led the way through the small house and out a sliding glass door to a patio. The mid-October air was not yet cold, but crisp enough to remind him that he was barefoot. They took a seat in a couple of deck chairs as Alan liberated two cans and passed one to Zero.

He frowned at the label. “What’s this?”

“Dunno. The guy at the liquor store took one look at my beard and flannel shirt and said I’d like it.” Alan chuckled, popped the tab, and took a long sip. He winced. “That’s… different. Or maybe I’m just getting old.” He turned somberly to Zero. “So. How are you?”

How are you. It suddenly seemed like such a strange question. If anyone other than Alan had asked it, he would have recognized it as a formality and answered with a simple and hasty “Fine, how about you?” But he knew that Alan genuinely wanted to know.

Yet he didn’t know how to answer. So much had changed in eighteen months; not just in Zero’s personal life, but on a macro scale. The US had averted a war with Iran and its neighbors, but tensions remained high. The American government had seemingly recovered from the infiltration of conspirators and Russian influence, but only by cleaning house. President Eli Pierson had remained in office for another seven months after the attempt on his life, but was ousted in the next election by the Democratic candidate. It was an easy victory after Pierson’s cabinet was revealed to have been a veritable nest of snakes.

But Zero hardly cared. He wasn’t involved in any of that anymore. He didn’t even have an opinion about the new president. He barely knew what was going on in the world; he avoided the news whenever possible. He was just a citizen now. Whatever was unfolding in the shadows did so without his influence.

“I’m fine.”

He was stagnating.

“Really. I’m good.”

Alan took another sip, obviously dubious but not mentioning it. “And Maria?”

A thin smile crossed Zero’s lips. “She’s doing well.” And it was true. She was taking to her new position swimmingly. In the wake of the conspiracy coming to light, the CIA had been completely restructured; David Barren, high-ranking member of the National Security Council and Maria’s father, was named interim director of the agency and oversaw vetting of each and every person under its banner until a new director was named, a former NSA director named Edward Shaw.

Maria Johansson had been appointed as deputy director of Special Activities Division—a job that had been formerly held by the now-deceased Shawn Cartwright, Zero’s old boss. She in turn named Todd Strickland as Special Agent in Charge, a position formerly held by one Agent Kent Steele.

And she was good at it. There would be no corruption under her watch, no renegade agents like Jason Carver, and no shadowy conspirators like Ashleigh Riker. It was obvious, though, that she still missed the fieldwork; it wasn’t often, but occasionally she would accompany her team on an op.

Zero, on the other hand, had not gone back. Not to the CIA, not even to teaching. He hadn’t gone back to anything.

“How’s the shop?” he asked Alan, for want of changing the subject from something other than himself and his morose introspection.

“Keeping busy,” Reidigger replied casually. He ran the Third Street Garage, which despite Alan’s background in espionage and covert operations was, in fact, a garage. “Not much to say there. How’s the basement coming?”

Zero rolled his eyes. “It’s a work in progress.” After the falling out with his girls, he just couldn’t stay in the Alexandria house alone. He put it on the market and sold it to the first offer that came along. He and Maria had made their relationship official by then, and she too was seeking a change of scenery, so they bought a small house in the suburbs of the unincorporated town of Langley, not far from CIA headquarters. A “Craftsman bungalow”—that’s what the real estate agent had called it. It was a simple place, which was good for them both. One of the many things he and Maria had in common was that they yearned for simplicity. They could have afforded something bigger, more modern, but the little one-story house suited them just fine. It was cozy, pleasant, with a big picture window in the front and a master suite loft and an unfinished basement, all smooth concrete walls and floor.

About four months earlier, at the beginning of summer, Zero had the idea that he’d finish the basement, make it into usable living space. Since then he’d gotten as far as framing out the walls with two-by-fours and stapling up some strips of fluffy pink insulation.

Lately, just the thought of going back down there exhausted him.

“Anytime you want me to come by and help out, say the word,” Alan offered.

“Yeah.” Alan made the same offer every week. “Rome wasn’t built in a day, you know.”

“It might have been if they hired contractors who knew what they were doing.” Alan winked.

Zero scoffed, but smirked. The can in his hand felt light, too light. He shook it and was surprised to find it empty. He didn’t remember even taking a sip, let alone registering the taste. He set the can down on the patio beside him and reached for another.

“Careful,” Reidigger warned with a grin. He gestured toward Zero’s midsection and the speed-bump of a paunch that was developing there.

“Yeah, yeah.” So he’d gained a few pounds in his semi-retirement. Ten, maybe fifteen. He wasn’t sure and certainly wasn’t about to step on a scale to find out. “Look who’s talking.”

Reidigger laughed. He was a far cry from the round-faced agent Zero had known four years earlier, with his boyish looks and stubbornly thick torso. In order to obscure his appearance after his faked death, and to assume his alias of a mechanic named Mitch, Alan had put on at least forty pounds, grown out a bushy beard flecked with gray, and perpetually wore a trucker’s cap pulled low on his forehead, the brim of it permanently stained with both sweat and dark oily thumbprints.

The cap had become such an omnipresent accessory that Zero wondered if he wore it to bed.

“What, this?” Reidigger chuckled again and slapped his stomach. “This is all muscle. Y’know, I go down to the gym twice a week. They’ve got a boxing ring. The young kids, they love to talk trash to the older guys. Right before I whip their asses.” He took a sip and added, “You should come sometime. I usually go on—”

“Tuesdays and Thursdays,” Zero finished for him. Alan made that offer every week too.

He appreciated the effort. He appreciated that Alan came by so often to sit around on the patio with his old friend and shoot the breeze. He appreciated the check-ins and the attempts to get him out of the house that were growing more halfhearted with every visit.

The truth was that without the CIA or teaching or his daughters around, he didn’t feel like himself, and it had led to a sort of sickness settling into his brain, a general malaise that he couldn’t seem to overcome.

The sliding glass door opened suddenly then, and both men turned to see Maria step out into the October afternoon. She was dressed smartly in a crisp white blazer with black slacks and a thin gold necklace, her blonde hair cascading around her shoulders and dark mascara accentuating her gray eyes.

It was strange, but for the briefest of moments it was jealousy that swept through Zero at the sight of her. Where he had stagnated, she had flourished. But he pushed that down too, pushed it down into the murky swamp of his stifled emotions and told himself he was glad to see her.

“Afternoon, boys,” she said with a smile. She seemed in good spirits; her mood upon arriving home from work tended to be as varying as the odd hours she kept. “Alan, it’s good to see you.” She bent at the waist to give him a hug.

“Astonished” wasn’t quite the term that came to Zero’s mind when Maria discovered that Alan was not only still alive, but holed up in a garage not thirty minutes from Langley. But she took the news in stride—a bruising punch to his shoulder and a harsh rebuke of “you should have told us!” was seemingly all the catharsis she needed.

“Hi, Kent.” She kissed him before grabbing a beer from Alan’s sixer and joining them. “Good day?”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “Good day.” He didn’t elaborate, because the only elaboration he could have offered was that he’d spent the day watching old movies, napping, and vaguely thinking about returning to the waiting and still unfinished basement. “You?”

She shrugged. “Better than most.” She tended not to talk too much about work with him—not only because of security clearance, of which Zero currently had none, but also out of the unspoken fear (at least Zero presumed) that it might trigger him, jar some old memory, or otherwise inspire him to get back in the game. She seemed to like him where he was. Though his suspicion about that was another matter entirely.

“Kent,” she said, “don’t forget that we have dinner plans.”

He smiled. “Right, of course.” He hadn’t forgotten about the guest they’d be hosting that evening. But he was actively trying not to think about that.

Kent.

She was the only one who still called him that.

Agent Kent Steele had been his alias in the CIA, but now that was nothing but a memory. Zero had been his call sign, started as a joke by Alan Reidigger—who still called him Zero. And ever since he’d gotten his memories back, that was the name that he usually thought of himself by. But he wasn’t either of those anymore, Kent or Zero, not really. He wasn’t Professor Lawson anymore. Hell, he barely felt like himself, his real self, Reid Lawson, father of two and history professor and covert CIA operative and whatever other thing he identified himself as. Even though eighteen months had passed, he still bitterly recalled the shadowy conspirators dragging his name through the mud, releasing his image to the media, calling him a terrorist and attempting to pin the would-be assassination attempt on him. He was, of course, completely exonerated of those charges, and he had no idea if anyone else even remembered it. But he did. And now the name felt foreign to him. He avoided being known as Reid Lawson whenever possible, to the extent that the house, the bills, even the cars were all in Maria’s name. No mail came for him with his name on it. No one ever called asking for Reid.

Or Kent.

Or Zero.

Or Dad.

So just who the hell am I?

He didn’t know. But he knew that he had to discover it for himself, because the life he was leading was no life worth living.

CHAPTER TWO

Zero was glad he didn’t have to talk about them. But Alan knew better than to ask about the girls.

Reidigger stuck around for about forty-five minutes before rising from the deck chair, stretching, and in his usual fashion, announcing he’d better “hit the ol’ dusty trail.” Zero gave him a brief hug and waved as he pulled the pickup truck out of the driveway and silently thanked him for not asking about his daughters, because the truth was that if Alan had asked how they were, Zero couldn’t answer.

He found Maria in the kitchen, wearing an apron over her work clothes as she chopped an onion. “Good visit?”

“Yeah.”

Silence. Just the rhythmic tock of the knife against the cutting board.

“You ready for tonight?” she asked after a long moment.

He nodded. “Yeah. Definitely.” He wasn’t. “What are you making?”

“Bigos.” She dumped the cutting board’s contents into a large pot on the stove that already contained simmering kielbasa, cabbage, and other vegetables. “It’s a Polish stew.”

Zero frowned. “Bigos. Since when do you make bigos?”

“I learned from my grandmother.” She smirked. “There’s still a lot you don’t know about me, Mr. Steele.”

“I guess so.” He hesitated, wondering how best to broach the subject on his mind, and then decided direct was best. “Um… hey. So tonight, do you think you could maybe try not to call me Kent?”

Maria paused with the knife hovering over a dried mushroom. She frowned, but nodded. “Okay. What do you want me to call you? Reid?”

“I…” He was about to agree, but then realized that he didn’t really want that either. “I don’t know.” Maybe, he thought, she should just avoid calling him anything.

“Huh.” It was obvious from her expression that she was concerned, wanted to push further into whatever was going on in his head, but it wasn’t the time to unpack all that. “How about I just call you ‘pookie’?”

“Very funny.” He grinned in spite of himself.

“Or ‘cupcake’?”

“I’m going to get changed.” He headed out of the kitchen even as Maria called after him, laughing to herself.

“Wait, I got it. I’ll call you ‘honeybunch.’”

“I’m ignoring you,” he called back. He appreciated what she was trying to do, attempting to diffuse the situation with humor. But as he reached the top of the short staircase that led to the loft, the anxiety bubbled up within him again. He’d been glad for Alan’s visit because it meant he didn’t have to think about it. He’d been glad Alan didn’t ask about the girls because it meant he didn’t have to face facts or memories. But there was no avoiding it now.

Maya was coming to dinner.

Zero inspected his jeans, made sure they were free of holes or errant coffee stains, and traded his lounging T-shirt for a striped button-down.

You’re a liar.

He ran a comb through his hair. It was getting too long. Slowly turning gray, especially at the temples.

Mom died because of you.

He turned sideways and inspected himself in the mirror, pulling his shoulders back and trying to shrink the slight paunch that had gathered around his belly button.

I hate you.

The last meaningful exchange he’d had with his eldest daughter was vitriolic. In the hotel room at The Plaza when he’d told them the truth about their mother, Maya had stood from the bed. She’d started quietly, but her voice rose quickly by the octave. Her face growing redder as she cursed at him. Called him every name he deserved. Telling him exactly what she thought of him and his life and his lies.

After that, nothing had been the same. Their relationship had changed instantly, dramatically, but that wasn’t the most painful part. At least she was still there physically, at the time. No, the slow burn was so much worse. After the admission in the hotel, after they had returned home to their Alexandria house, Maya went back to school. She was ending her junior year of high school; she’d missed two months of work but she hit the books with an intensity Zero had never seen in her before.

Then that summer came, and still she exiled herself to her room, studying. It didn’t take long for him to figure out what was going on. Maya was fiercely intelligent—too smart, he’d often say, for her own good. But in this case, she was too smart for his good.

Maya studied and worked hard and, thanks to a little-known bylaw in her school district’s charter, she was able to test out of her senior year of high school by taking and passing every AP exam. She graduated from high school before the end of that first summer—though there was no ceremony, no cap and gown, no walking with classmates. No proud, smiling photos next to her father and sister. There was just a form letter and a diploma in the mail one day, and Zero’s abject astonishment as he realized what she was trying to do.

And then, only then, was she gone.

He sighed. That was more than a year ago now. He’d last seen her just this past summer, around July or August, not long after his fortieth birthday. She rarely came down from New York these days. On that occasion she’d come back to get some of her belongings out of storage, and had hesitantly agreed to have lunch with him. It had been an awkward, tense, and mostly silent affair. Him asking questions, prodding her to tell him about her life, and her giving him succinct answers and avoiding eye contact.

And now she was coming to dinner.

“Hey.” He hadn’t heard Maria come into the loft bedroom, but he felt her arms around his midsection, her head resting against his back as she hugged him from behind. “It’s okay to be nervous.”

“I’m not nervous.” He was very nervous. “It’ll be good to see her.”

“Of course it will.” Maria had organized it. She had been the one to reach out to Maya, to invite her over the next time she was in town. The invitation had been extended two months earlier. Maya was in Virginia this weekend to visit some friends from school, and reluctantly agreed to come. Just for dinner. She wouldn’t be staying. She made that very well known.

“Hey,” Maria said softly behind him. “I know the timing isn’t great, but…”

Zero winced. He knew what she was going to say and wished she wouldn’t.

“I’m ovulating.”

He didn’t respond for a long moment, long enough to realize that the silence was becoming uncomfortable as it yawned between them.

When they first moved in together, they had agreed that neither of them was terribly interested in marriage. Kids were not even on his radar. But Maria was only two years younger than him; she was rapidly approaching forty. There was no longer a snooze button on her biological alarm clock. At first she would just casually mention it in conversation, but then she ceased her birth control regiment. She started keeping keen track of her cycle.

Still, they’d never actually sat down and discussed it. It was as if Maria simply assumed that since he’d done it twice before, he would want to be a father again. Though he never said it aloud, he secretly suspected that was why she hadn’t pushed for him to return to the agency, or even to teaching. She liked him where he was because it meant there would be someone to care for a baby.

How can it be, he wondered bitterly, that my life as an unemployed civilian could be more complicated than as a covert agent?

He’d waited too long to reply, and when he finally did it sounded forced and lame. “I think,” he said at last, “that we should put a pin in that for now.”

He felt her arms fall away from around his waist and hastily added, “Just until we get past this visit. Then we’ll talk, and we’ll decide—”

“To wait longer.” She practically spat the words out, and when he turned to face her she was staring at the carpet in undisguised disappointment.

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

Yes, it is.

“I just think it warrants a serious discussion,” he said.

So I can man up enough to admit I don’t want it.

“We should at least deal with what’s in front of us first.”

Like the fact that the two children I already raised hate me.

“Yeah,” Maria agreed quietly. “You’re right. We’ll wait longer.” She turned and headed out of the bedroom.

“Maria, wait…”

“I have to finish dinner.” He heard her footfalls on the stairs and cursed himself under his breath for mishandling that so badly. It was pretty much par for the course in his life lately.

Then the doorbell rang. The sound of it sent an electric tingle through his nervous system.

He heard the front door open. Maria’s cheerful voice: “Hi! It’s so good to see you. Come in, come in.”