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The television behind the bar was playing highlights from the previous night’s hockey game, the Washington Capitals’ four-to-one victory over the Buffalo Sabres, when it was interrupted by a breaking news story out of Davos, Switzerland.
Somewhere in the sports bar with him was a member of Amun. Bolton had no idea who it might be or if there was more than one, but he knew they were watching him, following him, and picking up his correspondence as he left them. They would intercept the coaster and see his note. And then… Well, he had no idea what might happen from there.
“Yes. And you know how mainstream media is. It’s the top story everywhere. So… the agency has decided to roll with it. The glyph of Amun is being disseminated to law enforcement agencies around the world, with the warning to be watchful for anyone with the mark branded on their skin.”
The assassin lay in a hospital bed in Sion, Switzerland. There was a breathing tube down his throat, a feeding tube in his stomach, and a catheter in his urethra. Even the most basic of bodily functions were impossible for him in his state. The doctors dosed him with so much pain medication that he slept twenty hours that first day.
Amun’s plot had failed. The bomber was in custody. The Egyptian, his point of contact with Amun, was dead. The sheikh and the German doctor were arrested. Everything Rais had worked for in the past several years was gone. Everything except one crucial factor—Kent Steele was still alive. And so was he. On the third day of his hospitalization, his doctor, a short white man with spectacles and a shiny bald patch, entered the room to check his wounds. He methodically peeled back the dressings and gently prodded at the raw, painful sutures.
The two of them sat across from each other in a conference room in CIA headquarters in Zurich, waiting for Cartwright and debriefing. The first thing that Reid had done upon returning to HQ was to get on the secure line to the safe house and make sure his girls were all right.
But his daughters were safe, if not a bit afflicted with cabin fever and eager to go home. For the first time since he had disappeared from the house in New York, Reid was able to honestly promise them that he was safe and would be home to them soon.
“Maybe that’s not such a bad thing,” Maria suggested. “Maybe without some of those memories, you can be a new person. Maybe you can be all the best parts of Kent, and all the best parts of Reid.”
Reid turned the envelope over in his hands. He very much wanted answers—but at the same time, he wasn’t sure he’d like them. It didn’t feel like the right time to open it, not there, sitting in a conference room. He wasn’t sure it would ever be the right time.
“I don’t like to mince words,” he said. “You’ve already been reinstated for this case. I’ve spoken to Directors Mullen and Hillis, and in light of what you’ve done, we can maintain that reinstatement—pending a psych eval, MRIs, a few other tests. You could come back, full-fledged.” Cartwright paused a moment. “Or, you could choose not to.” He tapped the brown folder with an index finger. “In here is your full debrief from this case. Once this mess is wrapped up, Zero’s files have to go somewhere. Either the archives… or the active database.”
“You haven’t realized that yet?” The deputy director leaned forward. “Don’t kid yourself into thinking you’re some big mystery, Zero. It’s quite simple. You are Reid Lawson. You were born as Reid Lawson. It’s not an alias. That’s why we never found you in our follow-up after your alleged death; we thought you were smart enough not to use your real name. Who would do that? Turns out you were hiding in plain sight all along.” Reid felt a wave of relief wash over him. He was Reid Lawson. His wife had been Kate Lawson. His children were Maya and Sara Lawson. That’s who they were, who he was. “But
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He worked his thumb under the flap and tore the envelope open. He wasn’t sure what he had expected, but was a little surprised to find only a single sheet of paper in the envelope—and on it, a fairly short, neatly written letter in a familiar hand, the same handwriting he had seen once before on the note he found in Reidigger’s passport.
Kent was struck speechless. He had heard the stories, of course; legend had it that the CIA had been experimenting with the human brain for decades, but he had never seen anything legitimate come of it. He’d always chalked it up to urban myth.
memory suppressor had been torn from him. He had done this willingly, for his girls—and for himself, to end his self-destructive warpath. Suddenly the words from Reidigger’s note, the one he had found in Zurich, made a lot more sense: If you’re reading this, it’s because what we did came back to bite us in the ass. I always thought it might, which is why I’ve been carrying this around ever since.
Reid stared at the letter for a long moment, rereading it twice more before he fully grasped what Reidigger was telling him. He could bring it all back, if he wanted. He could know everything. Or he could suppress it again.
“Alexandria,” he told her. “I’ll be taking an adjunct position at Georgetown.” “Virginia, huh?” She shrugged. “You know, that’s only about an hour or so from me.” He smiled. “I, uh… yeah. That’s close.” He looked at her gray eyes, her vibrant smile. She was more familiar to him now, and not just because of what they had been through in the last few days. It was like reuniting with a childhood friend after decades apart; the memories were fuzzy, perhaps even lost, but there was a closeness, a kinship—maybe more than that. Something bordering on intimacy.
“You excited, Squeak?” she asked her sister. Sara smiled wide and nodded eagerly. If her younger sister was at all affected by the events of the past week, she didn’t show it. She was resilient—and she hadn’t seen what Maya had witnessed.
That fact, combined with the safe house, the armed guards, the two men that had assaulted them on the boardwalk, and Watson’s honorific of “Agent” meant that Maya had put together a pretty good idea of what her father might have been spirited away for. At least, she believed she did, but she didn’t try to vocalize it or even ask any questions. She was smart enough to know that none of the men protecting them would give her an honest answer.
She tried to keep the tears at bay, but she couldn’t. All of her emotions came bubbling to the surface, all at once—not just her joy at seeing her father alive, but her alarm at seeing him in such a state, the fear she had squelched so she could keep her sister safe, the horror of seeing the scene at the boardwalk.
