Jack Mars - Trapping Zero

So bring them. The thought entered his head so easily that he nearly laughed at himself for not thinking of it before. But then he discounted it just as quickly. What about his job? What about Sara’s therapy sessions? Hadn’t he just tried to convince Maya to return to school?

Don’t overthink it , he told himself. Wasn’t the simplest solution usually the right one? It wasn’t like anything else had worked to snap Sara out of her funk, and Maya seemed intent on being headstrong, as usual.

Reid pushed Reidigger’s bug-out bag back into the closet and scrambled to his feet. Before he could convince himself to change his mind he strode down the hall to Maya’s room and knocked rapidly on her door.

She opened it and folded her arms, clearly still unhappy with him. “Yeah?”

“Let’s go on a trip.”

She blinked at him. “What?”

“Let’s go on a trip, the three of us,” he said again, pushing past her into the bedroom. “Look, I was wrong to bring up the incident. I see that now. Sara doesn’t need to be reminded of it; she needs the opposite.” He was ranting, gesticulating with his hands, but he pressed on. “This past month all she’s done is lie around and dwell on what happened. Maybe what she needs is a distraction. Maybe she just needs to make some pleasant memories to be reminded of how good things can be.”

Maya frowned as if struggling to follow his logic. “So you want to go on a trip. To where?”

“Let’s go skiing,” he replied. “Remember when we went to Vermont, about four or five years ago? Remember how much Sara loved the bunny slope?”

“I remember,” Maya said, “but Dad, it’s April. Ski season is over.”

“Not in the Alps, it’s not.”

She stared at him as if he had lost his mind. “You want to go to the Alps?”

“Yes. Switzerland, to be specific. And I know you think this is crazy, but I’m thinking clearly here. We’re not doing ourselves any favors stagnating around here. We need a change of scenery—especially Sara.”

“But… what about your work?”

Reid shrugged. “I’ll play hooky.”

“No one says that anymore.”

“I’ll worry about what to tell the university,” he said. And the agency. “Family comes first.” Reid was mostly certain the CIA wasn’t going to fire him over demanding some time off to be with his girls. In fact, he was fairly certain they wouldn’t let him quit even if he tried. “Sara’s cast comes off tomorrow. We can go this week. What do you say?”

Maya pursed her lips tightly. He knew that look; she was trying her best to hold back a smirk. She still wasn’t exactly pleased with how he had handled her news from earlier. But she nodded. “Alright. It makes sense. Yeah, let’s go on a trip.”

“Great.” Reid grabbed her by the shoulders and planted a kiss on his daughter’s forehead before she could squirm away. As he left her bedroom, he glanced back and definitely caught her smiling.

He crept into Sara’s room and found her lying on her back, staring up at the ceiling. She didn’t look at him as he entered and knelt beside her bed.

“Hey,” he said in a near-whisper. “I’m sorry about what happened at dinner. But I have an idea. What would you say about us going on a little trip? Just me and you and Maya, and we’ll go somewhere nice, somewhere far away. Would you like that?”

Sara tilted her head towards him, just enough so that her gaze met his. Then she nodded slightly.

“Yeah? Good. Then that’s what we’ll do.” He reached over and took her hand in his, and he was pretty sure he felt a slight squeeze from her fingers.

This will work , he told himself. For the first time in a while he felt good about something.

And the girls didn’t need to know about his ulterior motive.

Maria Johansson walked the concourse at Istanbul Atatürk Airport in Turkey and pushed open the door to the women’s restroom. She had spent the last few days on the trail of three Israeli journalists who had gone missing while covering the story of Imam Khalil’s sect of zealots, the ones who had nearly unleashed a deadly smallpox virus on the developed world. It was suspected that the journalists’ disappearance might have had something to do with surviving followers of Khalil, but their trail had gone cold in Iraq, short of their destination of Baghdad.

She very much doubted that they would ever be found, not unless whoever was responsible for their disappearance claimed responsibility. Her orders currently were to follow up on an alleged source that the journalist had here in Istanbul, and then return to CIA regional headquarters in Zurich where she would be debriefed and possibly reassigned, if the op was deemed dead.

But in the meantime, she had another meeting to attend.

In a bathroom stall, Maria opened her purse and took out a waterproof bag of thick plastic. Before she sealed her CIA-issued phone inside it she called the voicemail of her private line.

There were no new messages. It seemed that Kent had given up trying to reach her. He had left her several voicemails in the past weeks, one every few days. In the short, one-sided snippets he told her about his girls, how Sara was still dealing with the trauma of the events she’d endured. He mentioned his work for the National Resources Division and how bland it was compared to field work. He told her he missed her.

It was a small relief that he’d given up. At least she wouldn’t have to listen to the sound of his voice and realize how much she missed him too.

Maria sealed the phone into the plastic bag and carefully lowered it into the toilet tank before replacing the lid. She did not want to risk any prying ears to listen in on her conversation.

Then she left the bathroom and headed down the terminal to a gate with a couple dozen people milling about. The flight board announced that the plane to Kiev would be leaving in an hour and a half.

She sat in a rigid plastic chair in a row of six. The man was already behind her, seated in the opposite row facing the other direction with an automobile magazine open in front of his face.

“Calendula,” he said, his voice husky but low. “Report.”

“There is nothing to report,” she replied in Ukrainian. “Agent Zero is back at home with his family. He has been avoiding me ever since.”

“Oh?” said the Ukrainian curiously. “Has he? Or have you been avoiding him?”

Maria scowled, but did not turn to face the man. He would only say such a thing if he knew it was true. “You’ve tapped my private cell?”

“Of course,” the Ukrainian said candidly. “It seems that Agent Zero very much wants to speak with you. Why have you not contacted him?”

Not that it was any of the Ukrainian’s business, but Maria had been ducking Kent for the simple reason that she had, again, lied to him—not once, but twice. She had told him that the Ukrainians she was working with were members of the Foreign Intelligence Service. While a few of their faction might have been, at one time, they were about as loyal to the FIS as she was to the CIA.

The second lie was that she would stop working with them. Kent had made clear his distrust of the Ukrainians while they were en route to rescuing his daughters, and Maria had agreed, halfheartedly, that she would put an end to the relationship.

She hadn’t. Not yet. But that was part of the reason for the meeting in Istanbul; it wasn’t too late to make good on her word.

“We’re done,” she said simply. “I’m through working with you. You know what I know, and I know what you know. We can swap intel for the sake of building a case, but I’m finished doing your errands. And I’m leaving Zero out of this.”