Agent Zero (An Agent Zero Spy Thriller—Book #1)

CHAPTER ONE

The first class of the day was always the toughest. Students shuffled into the lecture hall at Columbia University like shiftless, dead-eyed zombies, their senses dulled by all-night study sessions or hangovers or some combination thereof. 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.

Professor Reid Lawson’s job was to teach, but he also recognized the need for a morning boost—a mental stimulant to supplement the caffeine. 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.

“Good morning,” he said loudly. The announcement jarred several students, who looked up suddenly as if they hadn’t realized they’d wandered into a classroom. “Today, we’re going to talk about pirates.”

That got some attention. Eyes looked forward, blinking through the slush of sleep deprivation and trying to determine if he had really said “pirates” or not.

“Of the Caribbean?” joked a sophomore in the front row.

“Of the Mediterranean, actually,” Lawson corrected. He paced slowly with his hands clasped behind his back. “How many of you have taken Professor Truitt’s class on ancient empires?” About a third of the class raised their hands. “Good. Then you know that the Ottoman Empire was a major world power for, oh, almost six hundred years. What you may

not

know is that the Ottoman corsairs, or more colloquially, the Barbary pirates, stalked the seas for much of that time, from the coast of Portugal, through the Strait of Gibraltar, and much of the Mediterranean. What do you think they were after? Anyone? I know you’re alive out there.”

“Money?” asked a girl in the third row.

“Treasure,” said the sophomore from the front.

“Rum!” came a shout from a male student in the back of the room, eliciting a chuckle from the class. Reid grinned too. There was some life in this crowd after all.

“All good guesses,” he said. “But the answer is ‘all of the above.’ See, the Barbary pirates mostly targeted European merchant vessels, and they would take everything—and I mean

everything

. Shoes, belts, money, hats, goods, the ship itself… and its crew. It’s believed that in the two-century span from 1580 to 1780, the Barbary pirates captured and enslaved more than two

million

people. They would take it all back to their North African kingdom. This went on for centuries. And what do you think the European nations did in return?”

“Declared war!” shouted the student in the back.

A mousy girl in horn-rimmed glasses raised her hand slightly and asked, “Did they broker a treaty?”

“In a way,” Lawson replied. “The powers of Europe agreed to pay tribute to the Barbary nations, in the form of huge sums of money and goods. I’m talking Portugal, Spain, France, Germany, England, Sweden, the Netherlands… they were all paying the pirates to keep away from their boats. The rich got richer, and the pirates backed off—mostly. But then, between the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, something happened. An event occurred that would be a catalyst to the end of the Barbary pirates. Anyone want to venture a guess?”

No one spoke. To his right, Lawson spotted a kid scrolling on his phone.

“Mr. Lowell,” he said. The kid snapped to attention. “Any guess?”

“Um… America happened?”

Lawson smiled. “Are you asking me, or telling me? Be confident in your answers, and the rest of us will at least

think

you know what you’re talking about.”

“America happened,” he said again, more emphatically this time.

“That’s right! America happened. But, as you know, we were just a fledgling nation then. America was younger than most of you are. We had to establish trade routes with Europe to boost our economy, but the Barbary pirates started taking our ships. When we said, ‘What the hell, guys?’ they demanded tribute. We barely had a treasury, let alone anything in it. Our piggy bank was empty. So what choice did we have? What could we do?”

“Declare war!” came a familiar shout from the rear of the hall.

“Precisely! We had no choice but to declare war. Now, Sweden had already been fighting the pirates for a year, and together, between 1801 and 1805, we took Tripoli Harbor and captured the city of Derne, effectively ending the conflict.” Lawson leaned against the edge of his desk and folded his hands in front of him. “Of course, that’s glossing over a lot of details, but this is a European history class, not American history. If you get the chance, you should do some reading on Lieutenant Stephen Decatur and the USS

Philadelphia.

But I digress. Why are we talking about pirates?”

“Because pirates are cool?” said Lowell, who had since put away his phone.

Lawson chuckled. “I can’t disagree. But no, that’s not the point. We’re talking about pirates because the Tripolitan War represents something rarely seen in the annals of history.” He stood up straight, scanning the room and making eye contact with several students. At least now Lawson could see light in their eyes, a glimpse that most students were alive this morning, if not attentive. “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.”

“Don’t mess with America?” someone offered.

Lawson smiled. “Well, yes.” He stuck a finger in the air to punctuate his point. “But moreover, that desperation and an utter lack of viable choices can and has, historically, led to some of the biggest triumphs the world has ever seen. 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 winked. “Think about that next time you’re feeling like little more than a speck in this world.”

By the end of class, there was a marked difference between the dragging, weary students who had entered and the laughing, chatting group that filed out of the lecture hall. A pink-haired girl paused by his desk on the way out to smile and comment, “Great talk, Professor. What was the name of that American lieutenant you mentioned?”

“Oh, that was Stephen Decatur.”

“Thanks.” She jotted it down and hurried out of the hall.

“Professor?”

Lawson glanced up. It was the sophomore from the front row. “Yes, Mr. Garner? What can I do for you?”

“Wondering if I can ask a favor. I’m applying for an internship at the Museum of Natural History, and uh, I could use a letter of recommendation.”

“Sure, no problem. But aren’t you an anthropology major?”

“Yeah. But, uh, I thought a letter from you might carry a bit more weight, you know? And, uh…” The kid looked at his shoes. “This is kind of my favorite class.”

“Your favorite class so far.” Lawson smiled. “I’d be happy to. I’ll have something for you tomorrow—oh, actually, I have an important engagement tonight that I can’t miss. How’s Friday?”

“No rush. Friday would be great. Thanks, Professor. See ya!” Garner hurried out of the hall, leaving Lawson alone.

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.

His phone chimed. It was a text from Maya.

Home by 5:30?

Yes

, he replied.

Wouldn’t miss it.

The “important engagement” that evening was game night at the Lawson house. He cherished his quality time with his two girls.

Good

, his daughter texted back.

I have news.

What news?

Later

was her reply. He frowned at the vague message. Suddenly the day was going to feel very long.

Lawson packed up his messenger bag, pulled on his downy winter coat, and hurried to the parking lot as his teaching day came to an end. February in New York was typically bitter cold, and lately it had been even worse. The slightest bit of wind was downright blistering.

He started the car and let it warm for a few minutes, cupping his hands over his mouth and blowing warm breath over his frozen fingers. This was his second winter in New York, and it didn’t seem like he was acclimating to the colder climate. In Virginia he had thought forty degrees in February was frigid.

At least it isn’t snowing

, he thought.

Silver linings

.

The commute from the Columbia campus to home was only seven miles, but traffic at this time of day was heavy and fellow commuters were generally irritating. Reid mitigated that with audiobooks, which his older daughter had recently turned him on to. He was currently working his way through Umberto Eco’s

The Name of the Rose

, though today he barely heard the words. He was thinking about Maya’s cryptic message.

The Lawson home was a brown-bricked, two-story bungalow in Riverdale in the northern end of the Bronx. He loved the bucolic, suburban neighborhood—the proximity to the city and the university, the winding streets that gave way to wide boulevards to the south. The girls loved it too, and if Maya was accepted to Columbia, or even her safety school of NYU, she wouldn’t have to leave home.

Reid immediately knew something was different when he entered the house. He could smell it in the air, and he heard the hushed voices coming from the kitchen down the hall. He set down his messenger bag and slid quietly out of his sport coat before carefully tiptoeing from the foyer.

“What in the world is going on here?” he asked by way of greeting.

“Hi, Daddy!” Sara, his fourteen-year-old, bounced on the balls of her feet as she watched Maya, her older sister, perform some suspicious ritual over a Pyrex baking dish. “We’re making dinner!”

“

I’m

making dinner,” Maya murmured, not looking up. “

She

is a spectator.”

Reid blinked in surprise. “Okay. I have questions.” He peered over Maya’s shoulder as she applied a purplish glaze to a neat row of pork chops. “Starting with…

huh?

”

Maya still didn’t glance up. “Don’t give me that look,” she said. “If they’re going to make home ec a required course, I’m going to put it to some use.” Finally she looked up at him and smiled thinly. “And

don’t

get used to it.”

Reid put his hands up defensively. “By all means.”

Maya was sixteen, and dangerously smart. She had clearly inherited her mother’s intellect; she would be a senior that coming school year by virtue of having skipped the eighth grade. She had Reid’s dark hair, pensive smile, and flair for the dramatic. Sara, on the other hand, got her looks entirely from Kate. As she grew into a teenager, it sometimes pained Reid to look at her face, though he never let on. She’d also acquired Kate’s fiery temper. Most of the time, Sara was a total sweetheart, but every now and then she would detonate, and the fallout could be devastating.

Reid watched in astonishment as the girls set the table and served dinner. “This looks amazing, Maya,” he commented.

“Oh, wait. One more thing.” She retrieved something from the fridge—a brown bottle. “Belgian is your favorite, right?”

Reid narrowed his eyes. “How did you…?”

“Don’t worry, I had Aunt Linda buy it.” She popped the cap and poured the beer into a glass. “There. Now we can eat.”

Reid was extremely grateful to have Kate’s sister, Linda, only a few minutes away. Gaining his associate professorship while raising two girls into teenagers would have been an impossible task without her. It was one of the primary motivators for the move to New York, for the girls to have a positive female influence close by. (Though he had to admit, he wasn’t crazy about Linda buying his teenage daughter beer, regardless of who it was for.)

“Maya, this is amazing,” he gushed after the first bite.

“Thank you. It’s a chipotle glaze.”

He wiped his mouth, set down his napkin, and asked, “Okay, I’m suspicious. What did you do?”

“What? Nothing!” she insisted.

“What’d you break?”

“I didn’t…”

“You get suspended?”

“Dad, come on…”

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.

“Would you stop?” Maya huffed. “I’m allowed to be nice, you know.” They ate in silence for a minute or so before she casually added, “But since you mention it…”

“Oh, boy. Here it comes.”

She cleared her throat and said, “I sort of have a date. For Valentine’s Day.”

Reid nearly choked on his pork chop.

Sara smirked. “I

told

you he’d be weird about it.”

He recovered and held up a hand. “Wait, wait. I’m not being weird. I just didn’t think… I didn’t know you were, uh… Are you dating?”

“No,” Maya said quickly. Then she shrugged and looked down at her plate. “Maybe. I don’t know yet. But he’s a nice guy, and he wants to take me to dinner in the city…”

“In the city,” Reid repeated.

“Yes, Dad, in the city. And I’d need a dress. It’s a fancy place. I don’t really have anything to wear.”

There were many times when Reid desperately wished Kate was there, but this might have topped them. 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? As an artist and a decidedly free spirit, she probably would have handled the situation much differently than he would, and he tried to stay cognizant of that.

He must have looked particularly troubled, because Maya laughed a little and put her hand on his. “Are you okay, Dad? It’s just a date. Nothing’s going to happen. It’s not a big deal.”

“Yeah,” he said slowly. “You’re right. Of course it’s no big deal. We can see if Aunt Linda can take you to the mall this weekend and—”

“I want you to take me.”

“You do?”

She shrugged. “I mean, I wouldn’t want to get anything you weren’t okay with.”

A dress, dinner in the city, and some boy… this wasn’t anything he’d actually considered having to deal with before.

“All right then,” he said. “We’ll go on Saturday. But I have a condition—I get to pick tonight’s game.”

“Hmm,” said Maya. “You drive a hard bargain. Let me consult with my associate.” Maya turned to her sister.

Sara nodded. “Fine. As long as it’s not Risk.”

Reid scoffed. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Risk is the best.”

After dinner, Sara cleared the dishes while Maya made hot chocolate. Reid set up one of their favorites, Ticket to Ride, a classic game about building train routes across America. As he set out cards and plastic train cars, he found himself wondering when this had happened. 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…

“Dad?” Sara entered the dining room and took a seat across from him. As if reading his mind, she said, “Don’t forget, I have an art show at school next Wednesday night. You’ll be there, right?”

He smiled. “Of course, honey. Wouldn’t miss it.” He clapped his hands together. “Now! Who’s ready to get demolished—I mean, who’s ready to play a family-friendly game?”

“Bring it on, old man,” Maya called from the kitchen.

“Old man?” Reid said indignantly. “I’m thirty-eight!”

“I stand by it.” She laughed as she entered the dining room. “Oh, the train game.” Her grin dissolved to a thin smile. “This was Mom’s favorite, wasn’t it?”

“Oh… yeah.” Reid frowned. “It was.”

“I’m blue!” Sara announced, grabbing at pieces.

“Orange,” said Maya. “Dad, what color? Dad, hello?”

“Oh.” Reid snapped out of his thoughts. “Sorry. Uh, green.”

Maya pushed some pieces his way. Reid forced a smile, though his thoughts were troubled.

After two games, both of which Maya had won, the girls went to bed and Reid retired to his study, a small room on the first floor, just off the foyer.

Riverdale was not a cheap area, but it was important to Reid to ensure that his girls had a safe and happy environment. There were only two bedrooms, so he had claimed the den on the first floor as his office. All of his books and memorabilia were crammed into nearly every available inch of the ten-by-ten first-floor room. With his desk and a leather armchair, only a small patch of well-worn carpet was still visible.

He fell asleep often in that armchair, after late nights of taking notes, preparing lectures, and rereading biographies. It was starting to give him back problems. Yet if he was being honest with himself, it wasn’t getting any easier to sleep in his own bed. The location might have changed—he and the girls moved to New York shortly after Kate passed—but he still had the king-sized mattress and frame that had been

theirs

, his and Kate’s.

He would have thought that by now the pain of losing Kate might have waned, at least slightly. Sometimes it did, temporarily, and then he would pass her favorite restaurant or catch a glimpse of one of her favorite movies on TV and it would come roaring back, as fresh as if it had happened yesterday.

If either of the girls experienced the same, they didn’t talk about it. In fact, they often spoke about her openly, something that Reid still hadn’t been able to do.

There was a picture of her on one of his bookshelves, taken at a friend’s wedding a decade earlier. Most nights the frame was turned backward, or else he would spend the entire evening staring at it.

How stunningly unfair the world could be. One day, they had everything—a nice home, wonderful kids, great careers. They were living in McLean, Virginia; he was working as an adjunct professor at the nearby George Washington University. His job had him traveling a lot, to seminars and summits and as a guest lecturer on European history to schools all over the country. Kate was in the restorations department at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Their girls were thriving. Life was perfect.

But as Robert Frost famously said, nothing gold can stay. One wintry afternoon Kate fainted at work—at least that’s what her coworkers believed it to be when she suddenly went limp and fell out of her chair. They called an ambulance, but it was already too late. She was announced DOA at the hospital. An embolism, they had said. A blood clot had traveled to her brain and caused an ischemic stroke. The doctors used barely comprehensible medical terms wherever possible in their explanation, as if it would somehow soften the blow.

Worst of all, Reid had been away when it happened. He was at an undergraduate seminar in Houston, Texas, giving talks about the Middle Ages when he got the call.

That was how he discovered his wife had died. A phone call, just outside a conference room. Then came the flight home, the attempts to console his daughters in the midst of his own devastating grief, and the eventual move to New York.

He pushed himself up from the chair and spun the photo around. He didn’t like thinking about all that, the end and the aftermath. He wanted to remember her like this, in the photo, Kate at her brightest. That’s what he chose to remember.

There was something else, something right at the edge of his consciousness—some sort of hazy memory attempting to surface as he stared at the picture. It almost felt like déjà vu, but not of the present moment. It was as if his subconscious was trying to push something through.

A sudden knock at the door startled him back to reality. Reid hesitated, wondering who it could be. It was nearly midnight; the girls had been in bed for a couple of hours. The brisk knock came again. Fearing it might wake the kids, he hurried to answer it. After all, he lived in a safe neighborhood and had no reason to fear opening his door, midnight or not.

The harsh winter wind was not what froze him in his tracks. He stared in surprise at the three men on the other side. They were decidedly Middle Eastern, each with dark skin, a dark beard, and deep-set eyes, dressed in thick black jackets and boots. The two that flanked either side of the exit were tall and lanky; the third, behind them, was broad-shouldered and hulking, with an assumedly perpetual scowl.

“Reid Lawson,” said the tall man to the left. “Is that you?” His accent sounded Iranian, but it was not thick, suggesting he had spent a decent amount of time stateside.

Reid’s throat felt dry as he noticed, over their shoulders, a gray van idling at the curb, its headlights turned off. “Um, I’m sorry,” he told them. “You must have the wrong house.”

The tall man to the right, without taking his eyes off Reid, held up a cell phone for his two associates to see. The man to the left, the one asking the question, nodded once.

Without warning, the hulking man lurched forward, deceptively fast for his size. One meaty hand reached for Reid’s throat. Reid accidentally twisted away, just out of reach, by stumbling backward and nearly tripping over his own feet. He recovered, touching down with his fingertips on the tiled floor.

As he skittered backward to regain his balance, the three men entered his house. He panicked, thinking only of the girls asleep in their beds upstairs.

He turned and ran through the foyer, into the kitchen, and skirted around the island. He glanced over his shoulder—the men gave chase.

Cell phone

, he thought desperately. It was on his desk in the study, and his assailants blocked the way.

He had to lead them away from the house, and away from the girls. To his right was the door to the backyard. He threw it open and ran out onto the deck. One of the men cursed in a foreign tongue—Arabic, he guessed—as they ran after him. Reid vaulted over the railing of the deck and landed in the small backyard. A bolt of pain shot up through his ankle with the impact, but he ignored it. He rounded the corner of the house and flattened himself against the brick façade, trying desperately to quiet his ragged breathing.

The brick was icy to the touch and the slight winter breeze cut through him like a knife. His toes were already numb—he’d run out of the house in only his socks. Goose bumps prickled up and down his limbs.

He could hear the men whispering to each other, hoarsely and urgently. He counted the distinct voices—one, two, and then three. They were out of the house. Good; that meant they were only after him, and not the kids.

He needed to get to a phone. He couldn’t go back into the house without endangering his girls. He couldn’t very well bang on a neighbor’s door. Wait—there was a yellow emergency call box mounted on a telephone pole down the block. If he could get there…

He took a deep breath and sprinted across the dark yard, daring to enter the halo of light cast from the streetlamps above. His ankle throbbed in protest and the shock of the cold sent stings up his feet, but he forced himself to move as fast as he could.

Reid glanced over his shoulder. One of the tall men had spotted him. He shouted to his cohorts, but did not chase after him. Strange, Reid thought, but he didn’t stop to question it.

He reached the yellow emergency call box, tore it open, and jammed his thumb against the red button, which would send an alert to the local 911 dispatch. He looked over his shoulder again. He couldn’t see any of them.

“Hello?” he hissed into the intercom. “Can anyone hear me?” Where was the light? There was supposed to be a light when the call button was pushed. Was this even working? “My name is Reid Lawson, there are three men after me, I live at—”

A strong hand grabbed a fistful of Reid’s short brown hair and yanked backward. His words caught in his throat and escaped as little more than a hoarse wheeze.

Next thing he knew, there was rough fabric over his face, blinding him—a bag on his head—and at the same time, his arms were forced behind his back and locked into cuffs. He tried to struggle, but the strong hands held him firmly, twisting his wrists nearly to the point of breaking.

“Wait!” he managed to cry out. “Please…” An impact struck his abdomen so hard that the air rushed out of his lungs. He couldn’t breathe, let alone speak. Dizzying colors swam in his vision as he nearly passed out.

Then he was being dragged, his socks scraping the pavement of the sidewalk. They shoved him into the van and slid the door shut behind him. The three men exchanged guttural foreign words with each other that sounded accusatory.

“Why…?” Reid finally managed to choke out.

He felt the sharp sting of a needle in his upper arm, and then the world fell away.