Recall Zero. Джек Марс
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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