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They wore sweatpants and yesterday’s T-shirts and clutched Styrofoam cups of soy mocha lattes or artisanal blonde roasts or whatever it was the kids were drinking these days.
Lawson gave them a moment to find their seats and get comfortable while he took off his tweed sport coat and draped it over his chair.
“For literal centuries, none of the European powers wanted to stand up to the Barbary nations. It was easier to just pay them. It took America—which was, back then, a joke to most of the developed world—to be the change. It took an act of desperation from a nation that was hilariously and hopelessly outgunned to bring about a shift in the power dynamic of the world’s most valuable trade route at the time. And therein lies the lesson.”
History has taught us, again and again, that there is no regime too big to topple, no country too small or weak to make a real difference.”
He glanced around the empty auditorium. This was his favorite time of day, between classes—the present satisfaction of the previous mingled with the anticipation of the next.
Reid melodramatically gripped the table with both hands. “Oh God, don’t tell me you’re pregnant. I don’t even own a shotgun.” Sara giggled.
He had always assumed that his daughters would date at some point, but he was hoping that it wouldn’t be until they were twenty-five. It was times like this that he resorted to his favored parenting acronym, WWKS—what would Kate say?
A dress, dinner in the city, and some boy… this wasn’t anything he’d actually considered having to deal with before.
When had Maya grown up so quickly? For the last two years, ever since Kate passed, he had played the parts of both parents (with some much-appreciated help from their Aunt Linda). They both still needed him, or so it seemed, but it wouldn’t be long until they were off to college, and then careers, and then…
Despite the horrifying situation, a bizarre thought struck Reid. These men, their voices, these blows all suggested a personal vendetta. He did not just feel attacked. He felt loathed. These men were angry—and their anger was directed at him like the pinpoint of a laser.
The bag had been removed from his head. Whether or not that was a good thing remained to be seen.
Why did they keep asking his name? He’d told them already. Did he unwittingly wrong someone?
My name is Reid Lawson. I am a professor of European history at Columbia University. I am a widower, with two teen…” He stopped himself. So far his captors had not given any indication that they knew about his girls. “If that’s not what you’re looking for, I cannot help you. Please. That’s the truth.”
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…
Before he could utter another word, Reid’s right hand shot out and grabbed the first implement it closed on—a black-handled precision knife. As the interrogator tried to stand, Reid pulled his hand back. The blade raked across the man’s carotid.
Reid smirked. “I don’t think so. I think you’re in the same position I am, ferrying information, swapping secrets, having meetings in shitty bars.” Interrogation tactic—relate to them on their level. Yuri was clearly a polyglot, and seemed to lack the same hardened demeanor as his captors. But even if he was low-level, he still knew more than Reid did. “How about a deal? You tell me what you know, and I’ll tell you what I know.” He lowered his voice to nearly a whisper. “And trust me. You want to know what I know.”
“He is no stranger!” Yuri yelped. “He is Agent Zero! I have brought you Kent Steele!”
The sharp report of the Beretta echoed in the otherwise silent room. Otets screamed in pain. Both hands flew to hold his left thigh—the bullet had only grazed him, but it bled liberally. He spat a long, angry slur of Russian curses.
Yesterday my biggest problem was keeping my students’ attention for ninety minutes. Today he was white-knuckling a lever to a bomb while trying to elude Russian terrorists.
“Guns down,” Reid commanded, “or I’ll blow it.” The bomb-makers carefully set their weapons in the dirt. Reid could hear shouts in the distance, more voices. There were others coming from the direction of the old estate house. Likely the Russian woman had tipped them off.
He took a few steps closer and called out, “Before today, I didn’t think I had ever fired a gun before. Turns out I’m a really good shot.”
A rush of memory came to him, but not the flashing visions of his new mind. These were actual memories, Professor Lawson’s memories. We’re in the Ardennes. The Battle of the Bulge took place here. American and British forces held the bridges against German panzer divisions on the river…
The rest of their conversation was in French. It felt strange for Reid to speak it, to suddenly know the words as they came to his mind in English, but it was stranger still to hear a foreign language and instantly understand it as it was spoken.
As soon as she was gone he pulled the curtains shut and stripped out of his wet shoes and clothes. It was not easy, stiff with frost and clinging to his skin as they were. He realized how exhausted his muscles felt—how generally exhausted he was. When was the last time he slept that he wasn’t drugged or knocked unconscious? He could barely remember. He draped his clothes on the mantel over the electric stove and then stood in front of it for several minutes, wearing just his boxer shorts and slowly warming his body and working his limbs to get the blood flowing fully again.
Otets occasionally mumbled unintelligibly under his breath. Reid couldn’t understand if he was speaking Russian or English, but judging by the snarl of his lip, whatever he was saying wasn’t pleasant.
He decided it was time to amend his acronym. With his girls, he used to ask himself, “What would Kate do?” The letters were the same—WWKD?—but the name was different. What would Kent do?
Reid was quiet for a long moment. Was getting information really worth what he was thinking about doing? If it means keeping people alive—especially my girls—then yes.
“Gulag,” said Otets. “You know this word, ‘gulag’?” “Russian prison camp,” said Reid. “Yes. Your government believes gulags were all closed when the Soviet Union dissolved. But no.” Otets jerked a thumb over his shoulder, gesturing toward the crosshatched scars on his back. “There is nothing you can do to me worse than what has already been done.”
Some would call waterboarding an interrogation technique. Most would simply call it torture. It came to public prominence in 2004 when leaked CIA reports detailed its use on suspected terrorist cells.
Waterboarding simulates the effects of drowning. The porous surface—in this case, a towel—becomes saturated and impermeable. The captive cannot breathe; water fills their passageways.
“Have it your way.” Reid held the towel over his face again, pulling it tight. Otets grunted and tried to thrash, but he couldn’t move. Reid poured the water. Otets gagged and choked beneath the towel.
Otets gulped and winced. He gazed at the ceiling. He was thinking—and Reid knew that even if he was a killer, even if he was a terrorist, there was still a logical man in there. He knew Reid was right.
Reid shook his head. That name, Amun, sparked something in his memory—but not his new memories as Kent Steele. It was in his academic mind, the Professor Lawson side of him. “Are you talking about Amun-Ra? The Egyptian god?”
“Agent Zero,” said Otets slowly. “Many of us know you as Kent Steele, but all know of Agent Zero. Like a legend—an urban myth. A name that inspires fear in the most stalwart.”
“You truly do not remember, do you?” The Russian grinned. Blood stained his teeth. “That is for you to discover. Go ahead and kill me. I am no one of consequence, in the grand scheme.”
I didn’t do this to myself, he decided. This was done to me. To make me forget what I had learned… so I wouldn’t get in the way.
He had never felt so alone as he did in that moment, sitting in a tiny cabin in Belgium with the dead body of a Russian terrorist at his feet. Where would it be safe for him? Could he trust any authorities—or anyone at all, for that matter?
Finally, he took the wool blanket from the cabin’s bedroom. He turned off the lights and the electric stove and left the Bible on the front porch, just outside the door. In the morning, the Belgian woman would come to check on them, and hopefully she would question the book’s placement and at least open the front cover, where she would find several more hundred-euro bills and Reid’s note, written in French: I’m sorry. I gave you my word that we wouldn’t cause you any trouble, but I was forced to break that. Please do not go into the cabin. The man that came here with me is dead inside. You
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The city’s downtown took his breath away. The architecture was stunning; the amount of history on every block was simply awe-inspiring.
Here, in Belgium, he was standing in the center of more than a thousand years of Western civilization. The Professor Lawson side of him would have been downright giddy to explore such a historically rich city.
With that thought came a tinge of mild panic. He hadn’t even realized it, but the further he delved into this plot, the less he still felt like Professor Reid Lawson. With each new development, with every life-threatening situation, and with all the new memories that returned, he was feeling more and more like Kent Steele.
If I’m right, and the CIA did this to me, then they know about my girls. And if Otets wasn’t lying, and there are moles in the agency, it wouldn’t be that hard for them to find a hotel reservation under the name Lawson.
What is wrong with Americans that everyone assumes that? Reid thought. Still, it was a decent enough alibi. “Yes,” he said, trying to look sheepish. “My family is waiting for me in Zurich.”
He realized how exhausted he was and tried to doze off, but every time the truck hit a rut in the road he jolted alert. He wasn’t yet accustomed to these new instincts; his muscles went taut as steel cables and his eyes scanned for threats.
Reid took no time to appreciate the beauty of the wondrous city. Funny, he thought, that it used to be the tax-collecting hub of Roman provinces nearly two thousand years earlier, and now one of the world’s financial capitals. If we live through today, maybe we can come back and see it again sometime. Kent’s voice—it was his own inner voice, but the Kent side—teasing him.
Your wedding. You stand next to Kate and hold both her hands. She’s never looked more beautiful. You both say “I do.” You head down the aisle, holding hands and smiling. Scanning the crowd as they applaud.
“I don’t believe this,” said the voice. “You were KIA… is it really you? That’s incredible. Listen, stay there, okay? We’ll send a team to get Reidigger and extract you—”
I couldn’t have done this to myself. I wouldn’t have. Even the Kent side of him agreed with that. Someone must have done it. A vision flashed across his mind—the hotel room in Abu Dhabi. Cold pizza. “We’re worried about you.”
He knew it—he knew it as Professor Reid Lawson, since it was a famous Renaissance-era fountain built by architect Giacomo della Porta—but it was more than that. He knew it as Kent Steele. He had been there, which was obvious from the photograph, but the place held a greater significance.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured to Reidigger’s body. “I don’t know what we did, but I’m certain you didn’t deserve this. I’m going to find out. And I’m going to make it right.”
