Recall Zero

He just wished that it wasn’t the same career path that had gotten her mother killed and ruined the relationship with her father.

“So.” Greg cleared his throat, sitting beside Maya on the sofa while Zero sat across from them in a recliner. “Maya tells me you’re an accountant?”

Zero smiled thinly. Of course Maya would choose such a bland occupation as his cover. “That’s right,” he said. “Corporate finance.”

“That’s… interesting.” Greg forced a smile in return.

What a sycophant. What does she see in this guy? “And what about you, Greg?” he asked. “What do you plan to do? Become an officer?”

“No, no, I don’t think that’s for me.” The kid waved a hand as if swatting away the notion. “I plan to go into the NCAVC. Specifically, the BAU…” He trailed off and chuckled lightly to himself. “Sorry, Mr. Lawson, I forgot I was talking to a civilian. I want to be an FBI agent, with their Behavioral Analysis Unit. Violent Crime Division. You know, the guys who hunt serial killers and domestic terrorists and such.”

“Sounds exciting,” Zero said flatly. Of course he knew what the NCAVC was, and the BAU—just about anyone who turned on prime time television knew that—but he didn’t say so. In fact, he had little doubt that if this smarmy kid across from him knew who he was, Agent Zero, he would wipe that unctuous grin off his face and devolve into a slobbering fan in point-five seconds flat.

But he couldn’t say any of that. Instead he added, “Sounds ambitious, too.”

“Greg can do it,” Maya chimed in. “He’s top of second class.”

“That means ‘junior,’” Greg offered to Zero. “But we don’t call them that at The Point. And Maya here is the best in third class.” He reached over and gently squeezed Maya’s knee.

Zero had to physically restrain himself from his lip curling in a snarl. Suddenly he understood why Maya brought this boy with her; he was more than just a buffer between them. With him there, they couldn’t talk openly. There would be no talk of the CIA, no talk of the past. Hell, he wasn’t even sure he could ask the one thing he wanted to ask the most, which was about Sara.

Maya leaving for school crushed him. But Sara… even after all this time, it felt like that nail in the coffin had pierced straight through to his heart.

Greg was still talking, saying something about the FBI and cleaning house in light of the scandal that had rocked the former administration, and how his family had connections, or something of the like. Zero wasn’t listening. He looked over at her, his daughter, the young woman he had raised, given everything he could. He had changed her diapers. Taught her to walk and talk and write and play softball and use a fork. He’d grounded her, hugged her when she cried, brightened her day when she was feeling down, put Band-Aids on scraped knees. He’d saved her life and gotten her mother killed.

When he looked over at her, tried to catch her eye, she looked away.

And in that moment, he knew. There would be no reconciliation, at least not tonight. This was a formality. This was Maya’s way of saying you deserve to know that I’m alive and well, but not much more than that.

She stared at the carpet while Greg droned on about something or other, her gaze pensive. Her smile faltered, and as it vanished, so did Zero’s hope of getting his daughter back.

CHAPTER THREE

Maya dipped a crust of sourdough into the Polish stew and chewed it slowly. It was delicious, better than the food that the academy served, but she didn’t have much of an appetite. Her dad was seated across from her at the small dining table, with Maria on her left and Greg to the right.

He was staring at her again.

She wished she hadn’t come. She didn’t owe him anything. And she knew that she couldn’t bring herself to look up, to look into his eyes and see the unmasked pain of their rift. So instead she stared at a mottled chunk of kielbasa in her bowl.

Being here, in this new house and seeing him living with Maria, dark circles forming under his eyes and weight pinched around his midsection, her own father felt like a stranger to her. He no longer had the youthful, playful light in his eyes like he did when they were growing up. She hadn’t heard his laugh in more than a year. She missed their sarcastic, quipping exchanges and at times heated debates.

“Isn’t that right, Maya?”

“Hmm?” She looked up at the sound of her name to find Greg gazing at her expectantly. “Oh. Yeah. That’s right.” Good god, is he still talking?

Greg was not actually her boyfriend. At least she didn’t think of it like that. They were being casual about it, unofficial. She knew he liked her—they’d made out a few times, though she wouldn’t let him get any farther than that—yet she couldn’t help but think it was more of a status thing for him than anything else. He came from a good family, a mother in politics and a father high up in the NSA. She was top of her class and (depending on who asked) likely better than him at most things, particularly academics. Some of the other cadets in second and third class made jokes about the two of them being “the prom king and queen of West Point.”

He was cute. He was athletic. He was generally nice enough. But he was also a blowhard, self-centered, and completely oblivious to his faults.

“If you ask me,” Greg was saying, “Pierson should have done hard time. My mother says—my mother was the mayor of Baltimore for two years, did I mention that? Anyway, she says that his negligence was enough to impeach him, or at least indict him when he left office…”

Stop staring at me. She wanted to blurt it out, to shout it even, but she held her tongue. She could feel how desperate her father was to talk to her. That was part of the reason she brought Greg, so that they couldn’t open any cans of worms during this visit. She knew he wanted to ask about Sara. She knew he wanted to apologize, to try to make amends, to put all the ugliness behind them.

The truth was, she didn’t hate him. Not anymore. To hate someone required energy, and she was putting everything she had into school. To her, he was a non-issue. This visit was not reconciliatory; it was bureaucracy. Decorum. Etiquette. The values that the academy instilled in its cadets were not entirely applicable to Maya’s unique situation, but her takeaway was that she should at least have a check-in with the man who raised her, this shell of his former self. If for no other reason than to prove to herself that she could still stand to be in the same room as him.

But now she wished she hadn’t.

“So,” Maria said suddenly. Greg had stopped talking long enough to spoon some stew into his mouth, and Maria was taking full advantage of the temporary reprieve. “Maya. Have you spoken to your sister lately?”

The question took her off guard. She had expected it from her dad, but not from Maria. Still, it was as good a time as any to practice the skills she’d been developing on her own time. She fought the instinct to display any betraying expressions and instead smiled lightly.

“I have,” Maya replied. “Just yesterday, in fact. She’s well.” Only half of that was a lie.

“You have a sister?” Greg asked.

Maya nodded. “Two years younger. She’s in Florida on a work-study program. Very busy.” Another lie, but she told it with ease. She was getting better at that all the time, and often told small, off-the-cuff fibs just for practice—and, admittedly, for a bit of a thrill.

“And, uh…” Her dad cleared his throat. “She’s getting by okay? She has everything she needs?”

“Mm-hmm,” Maya answered curtly without looking at him. “Doing great.”

Greg simpered as he turned to her father. “You ask that like you don’t talk to her, Mr. Lawson.”

“It’s like Maya said,” her dad answered quietly. “Sara is very busy.”

Maya knew that her own sudden departure was a blow to him. But if that was the case, then Sara leaving was a death stroke.

In that first summer, just a few months after their father saved President Pierson’s life, after he told them the truth about their mother and the tension in their home was sky-high, Maya confided her plans in her sister. She told Sara that she had tested out of her senior year of high school and was running down admission to West Point.

As long as she lived, she would never forget the panicked expression on her little sister’s face. Please. Please don’t, Sara had begged her. Don’t leave me alone with him. I can’t do it.

As much as it broke her heart, Maya had made her plans and intended to see them through. So Sara made some of her own. She went online and found a lawyer who would take her case pro bono. Then she filed for emancipation. She knew it was a long shot; there was no proof or evidence of neglect, abuse, or anything like that.

But in a turn that shocked both sisters, their father did not fight it. Less than two weeks after Maya left for military school in New York, her dad attended the court date and, in front of a judge, told his then-fifteen-year-old daughter that if she wanted freedom from him enough to do this, to take him to court for it, she could have her freedom.

That same night came another event that Maya would not soon forget. Her father called her. She ignored it. She still hated him back then. He left her a voicemail that she didn’t listen to for two days. When she finally did, she wished she hadn’t. His voice wavering, breaking even, he told her that Sara was gone. He admitted that he deserved all of it and then some. He apologized three times, and told her he loved her.

It would be another six months before they spoke again.

But Maya did keep up with her sister. Upon emancipation, Sara packed up what she could carry and got on a bus. She ended up in Florida and took the first job she found, as a cashier in a thrift store. She still worked there. She lived in a co-op, a rented house with five other people. She shared a bedroom with a girl a couple years older than her, and a bathroom with everyone else.

Maya made sure to call her sister at least once a week, and more when her schedule allowed. Sara always promised that she was doing fine, but Maya wasn’t sure she could believe it. She’d left high school with the assurance that she’d go back, but she never did. These days Maya didn’t bother trying to convince her to return; instead, she pushed for Sara to test for her GED. Just another thing Sara claimed she’d do. Someday.

Maya lived at the academy year-round, and was given a stipend every semester for uniforms, books, food, and the like. She usually didn’t have much left over, but she sent her sister some money when she could. Sara was always appreciative.

Neither of them needed anything from him anymore. They didn’t want anything from him anymore.

They really had talked the day prior; that part wasn’t a lie. Sara was sixteen now, and one of the girls in her co-op was teaching her to drive. It pained Maya that she was missing out on such important parts of Sara’s life, but she had her own goals and was determined to meet them.

Simply put, the truth about their mother’s death and their father’s lies had driven a wedge between not only them and their father, but the two girls as well. They were on separate paths, and though they could keep in touch and help each other when able, neither was about to go too far out of their way to disrupt their own lives.

“Would anyone like some more?” Maria offered. “There’s plenty.”

Maya’s attention snapped back to the dinner table. She’d been lost in her own thoughts, and when she looked around she saw that everyone else was finished eating. Still she set the spoon down. She just wanted this visit to be over, to thank them and get the hell out of there. “No thank you. It was very good.”

“Agreed,” said Greg enthusiastically. “Absolutely delicious.” And then the blond idiot went and opened his big mouth yet again. “Thank you, Mrs. Lawson.”

A flash of anger combusted inside her like a swelling backdraft. The words forced their way out of Maya’s mouth before she even thought about them. “She is not Mrs. Lawson.”

Maria did a double-take. Her father continued to stare, but now his eyes were wide in surprise and his mouth slightly open.

Greg cleared his throat nervously. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I just assumed…”

More anger welled inside her. “I told you that on the ride down here. You wouldn’t have to assume anything if you stopped talking about yourself for five damn minutes!”

“Hey,” Greg bristled. “You can’t talk to me like that—”

“Why not?” she challenged. “Is your mommy going to do something about it? Yeah, Greg, I know, she was the mayor of Baltimore for two years. You only mention it every other sentence. No one gives a shit!”

His throat flexed and his face flushed red, but he said nothing in return.

“Maya.” Maria spoke softly, yet firmly. “I know you’re upset, but it was just an accident. There’s no reason to be rude. We’re all adults here—”

“Oh.” Maya scoffed. “I think there’s every reason to be rude. Would you like me to enumerate them for you?” She was smart enough to know what was happening, but angry enough not to care. The truth was evident; she was still very angry with her father, despite telling herself she wasn’t. But she had channeled all of that hostility and ire into school and her goals. Here and now, without any of that and sitting across from the man who had done this to her, it all came bubbling back to the surface. Her face felt hot and her heartbeat had doubled its pace.

She was suddenly keener than ever that she could not conjure a single happy memory from her childhood without the stabbing realization that her father’s life, and by extension much of her own, was one big lie wrapped in a thousand smaller lies. The brightest light in her young life, her mother, had been cruelly and coldly extinguished because of it, at the hands of a man Maya had been foolish enough to put her own trust in.

And her father not only knew about it. He let that man, John Watson, walk away.

“Maya,” her father started. “Please just—”

“You don’t get to speak!” she snapped. “She’s dead because of you!” She surprised even herself with the intensity of it, and was then surprised again that her dad did not have a burst of anger in response. Instead he clammed up, staring down at the table like a kicked pup.

“Look, I don’t know what’s going on here,” Greg said gently, “but I think I’m going to bow out…”

He started to rise, but Maya stuck a threatening finger in his face. “Sit down! You’re not going anywhere.”

Greg immediately lowered himself back into his chair as if she were a drill sergeant ordering a private. Maria regarded her aloofly, one eyebrow arched slightly, as if waiting to see how this was going to play out. Her father’s shoulders slumped and his chin nearly touched his collarbone.

“Goddammit,” Maya muttered as she ran her hands over her short hair. She thought she was past all this, past the emotional surges that crashed on her like an errant wave, past the attempts to reconcile the smiling, humorous professor that she called Dad with a deadly covert agent who had been responsible for the trauma she would carry with her for the rest of her life. Past the late-night sobbing bouts when she changed her clothes and saw the thin white scars of the message she had carved into her own leg, back when she thought she was going to die and used her last ounce of strength to give him a clue to her sister’s whereabouts.

Don’t you dare cry.

“This was a mistake.” She rose and started for the door. “I don’t ever want to see you again.”

She was too angry to cry, she realized. At least she was past that.

Maya slid behind the wheel of the rental car and turned the key in the ignition before Greg came jogging out after her.

“Maya!” he called. “Hey, wait!” He tried to pull the handle of the passenger side, but she’d already locked the doors. “Come on. Let me in.”

She started backing down the drive.

“This isn’t funny!” He slammed a palm on the window. “How am I supposed to get back?”

“Your mom sounds useful,” she shouted at him through the closed window. “Try giving her a call.”

And then she drove away, down the street, with a tiny version of Greg standing in the rearview mirror with his hands on his head in disbelief. She knew she’d catch hell for that back at the academy, but in the moment she didn’t care. Because as the foreign house of her father grew smaller behind her, it felt like a weight was lifting from her shoulders. She’d gone there that day out of some sense of family, a sense of responsibility. A burden, really.

But now, she realized, if she never saw them or that house again, it would be okay. She was fine on her own. There was no closure, and there never would be. Her mother was dead, and her father was dead to her.

CHAPTER FOUR

Karina Pavlo sat at the furthest corner of the bar, obscured by beer taps but with a clear view of the front entrance. She’d chosen a place that no one in their right mind would ever think to look for her, a seedy dive bar in the southeast quadrant of DC, not far from Bellevue. It was not the best of neighborhoods, and the day was quickly becoming dusk, but she was not concerned about petty thieves or would-be muggers. She had bigger problems than that.

Besides, she had just done some petty theft herself.

After eluding the Secret Service agent and hiding out in the bookstore for a short while, Karina risked heading back out onto the street for less than a block before ducking into a department store. Aside from the fact that she was shoeless, she was still well dressed and, holding her head high and walking confidently to avoid scrutiny, looked the part of any upper-middle-class businesswoman.

She headed straight to the women’s department and grabbed some casual clothing off the rack, items that wouldn’t draw a lot of attention. She left her skirt and blouse and blazer in the dressing room, pulled on a pair of sneakers, and walked back out a different entrance of the store without anyone looking twice at her. Two blocks later she stopped in at another store and, after pretending to browse for a few minutes, walked out with a pair of stolen sunglasses and a silk scarf that she tied over her dark hair.

Back on the street, she targeted a chubby man in a striped polo with a camera hanging around his neck. He couldn’t have been more of a tourist if he was wearing a sandwich board that said so. She bumped into him roughly as they passed, gasping and immediately apologizing. His face turned red and he opened his mouth to shout at her, until he saw that she was a slight, pretty brunette. He muttered an apology and scurried along on his way, unaware that his wallet was missing. Karina had always been quick with her hands. She did not condone stealing, but this was a time of necessity.

The wallet had a little less than a hundred dollars in cash in it. She took the money and dropped the rest of it, ID and credit cards and photos of kids, into a large blue postal box on the next corner.

Finally she took a cab east, across town, where she headed into the dive bar, its windows darkened and the place smelling like cheap beer, and took a seat at the bar and ordered a soda.

The television suspended over the beer taps was on and tuned into a news station, the current story an update on sports scores from the night prior. She sipped her soda, calming her nerves and wondering what she would do next. She couldn’t go back to the hotel; that would be a fool’s errand. Besides, there was nothing for them to find there but clothes and toiletries. She had one phone number memorized, but she was hesitant about finding a pay phone. They were getting rarer, even in the cities. The Secret Service had her cell phone, and they might be watching the pay phones.

She was considering asking the bartender to use their phone, but her contact was an international number and that might draw undue attention.

The next time Karina glanced up at the television, the story had changed. A male anchor she didn’t recognize was talking at her, and though the volume was too low to hear she could clearly see the words on the black ticker across the bottom of the screen: HARRIS AND KOZLOVSKY HOLD PRIVATE MEETING.

“Korva,” she sighed. Shit. Then in English: “Can you turn this up, please?”

The bartender, a Latino man with a handlebar mustache, scowled at her for a moment before turning his back to show just how blatantly he was ignoring her.

“Zalupa,” she muttered, an unkind curse in Ukrainian. Then she leaned over the bar, located the remote, and turned the volume up herself.

“…anonymous source inside the White House has confirmed that a private meeting was held earlier today between President Harris and Russian President Aleksandr Kozlovsky,” the anchor declared. “The two days since Kozlovsky arrived in the United States have been highly publicized and well documented, yet the notion of a closed-door meeting held in a conference room of the White House basement has many people nervously reminiscing on the events from nearly a year and a half ago.

“In response to the leak, the press secretary issued this statement, and I quote: ‘Both presidents have been under a veritable microscope these past two days, due largely to the indiscretions of their predecessors. President Harris and his guest simply wanted a brief reprieve from the limelight. The meeting in question was less than ten minutes in length, and the subject of this meeting was for each leader to become better acquainted with the other without the pressure of media presence or scrutiny. I can assure each and every person here and tuning in that there was no clandestine agenda. This was simply a closed-door conversation, and nothing more,’ end quote. When questioned further about the specifics of this meeting, the press secretary joked, ‘I wasn’t privy to details, but I believe the meeting was largely about their mutual love of scotch and dachshunds.’

“Though the true nature of the meeting remains shrouded in secrecy, we have confirmed through our anonymous source that there was only one other person present in the room with the two leaders—an interpreter. Though her identity has not been released, we have confirmed that she is female, and a native to Russia. Now the world wants to know: were the two leaders discussing drinks and dogs? Or does this unidentified female interpreter hold the answer to a question that many Americans have on their—”

The television suddenly flickered out, the screen turning black. Karina looked down sharply to see that the Latino bartender had grabbed the remote and turned it off.

She was about to call him an asshole in plain English but stopped herself. There was no point picking fights; she was supposed to be incognito. Instead she mulled over the report. The White House had not released her identity, at least not yet. They wanted to find her and silence her before she could tell anyone what she had heard. What the two presidents were planning. What Kozlovsky had asked of the American leader.

But Karina had an ace in the hole—two of them, in fact. She again absentmindedly caressed the pearl studs in her ears. Two years earlier, she had been translating for a German diplomat who had accused her of misinterpreting his words. She hadn’t, but it had almost landed her in some real trouble. So with some help from her sister and her contacts in FIS, Karina had the earrings made. Each of them contained a tiny unidirectional microphone that recorded a speaker on either side of her; together, the two earrings combined would capture any conversation that Karina interpreted. It was, of course, highly illegal, but also very handy, and since she had begun using them she hadn’t found any reason to need the recordings and subsequently deleted them.

Until now. Every word that had been spoken between her, Harris, and Kozlovsky was contained in those two studs. Getting them into the right hands was all that mattered now.

She slid silently off the stool and stole toward the rear of the bar, making a beeline for the bathroom, but then kept on going down a dingy corridor and pushed out through a metal security door and into a rear alley.

Out on the street, Karina tried to look as cool and casual as possible, but inside she was terrified. It was bad enough that the Secret Service was looking for her—and no doubt had the police involved, possibly even the FBI—but when Kozlovsky found out, he would send his own people to find her, if he hadn’t already.

And worse, any John Doe citizen who heard the news might look twice at her and wonder. Americans were not the most open-minded when it came to foreigners. Luckily she could do a decently passable American accent. At least she hoped it was passable; she’d never had to use it in any serious situation before. So far she had gotten by just fine pretending to be Russian.

I need a phone. She couldn’t risk a pay phone. She couldn’t steal a cell phone; the victim would report it and the Secret Service could easily run down the device’s location and last-called number, which would put Veronika at risk as well.

Think, Karina. She pushed the sunglasses up the bridge of her nose and looked around—a-ha. The answer was right there in front of her, half a block away and across the street. She glanced both ways and trotted over to the cellular store.

The shop was tiny, smelled of disinfectant, and harshly lit by too many fluorescent tube lights. The young black man behind the counter couldn’t have been more than twenty, poking idly at a phone in front of him with his chin in his hand. There was no one else in the store.

Karina stood there for a long moment before he looked up at her, his gaze flat.

“Yeah?”

“Do you jailbreak phones here?” she asked.

He looked her up and down. “We’re not allowed to sell that service.”

Karina smiled. “That’s not what I was asking.” She hoped her American accent wasn’t betraying her. It sounded rough to her ears, tinged with a Ukrainian lilt. “I’m not a cop, and I don’t have a phone. I want to use one. I need to make a call on an off-network device via Wi-Fi. Preferably through a third-party app. Something that can’t be traced.”

The kid blinked at her. “What do you mean, you gotta make a call?”

She sighed curtly, trying not to grow irritated. “I don’t know how to make it any clearer than that.” She leaned over the counter and lowered her voice conspiratorially, even though there was no one else in the store. “I’m in some trouble, okay? I need five minutes with the type of phone I just described. I can pay. Can you help me or not?”

He eyed her suspiciously. “What kind of trouble you in? Like with the police?”

“Worse,” she said. “Look, if it was the kind of thing I could tell you, do you think I’d be here at all?”

The kid nodded slowly. “All right. I got what you need. And you can use it. Five minutes… fifty bucks.”

Karina scoffed aloud. “Fifty dollars for a five-minute call?”

The clerk shrugged. “Or you can try someplace else.”

“Fine.” She pulled the wad of cash she’d stolen from the tourist, counted out fifty, and slid it across to him. “There. The phone?”

The kid rummaged around under the counter and came out with an iPhone. It was a few years old, one corner of the screen cracked, but it powered on just fine. “This one here is off-network, and has a Chinese calling app on it,” he told her. “It reroutes through a randomized out-of-service number.” He slid it over to her. “Five minutes.”

“Great. Thank you. You have a back office here?” To his frown she added, “Obviously this is a private call.”

The kid hesitated, but then jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Go ahead.”

“Thanks.” She headed into a tiny back office with wood-paneled walls and a melamine table as a desk, covered in invoices and assorted other paperwork. She opened the calling app on the phone, dialed the number she knew by heart, and waited as it rerouted. It took several seconds, and for a moment she thought it wouldn’t work, that the call wouldn’t go through, but at last it rang.

Someone answered. But they did not speak.

“It’s me,” she said in Ukrainian.

“Karina?” The woman on the other end of the line sounded confused. “What are you doing calling this number?”

“I need help, V.”

“What’s wrong?” Veronika asked urgently.

Karina did not know where to begin. “There was a meeting,” she said. “Between Kozlovsky and Harris…”

“I saw the news.” Veronika sucked in a breath as she realized. “You? You were the interpreter in that meeting?”

“Yes.” Karina quickly recounted what had happened, from her time with the two presidents to fleeing from the Secret Service agent. She tried to keep her voice steady as she concluded, “If they find me, they will kill me, V.”

“My god,” Veronika said breathily. “Karina, you need to tell someone what you know!”

“I’m telling you. Don’t you see? I cannot take this to the media. They will stifle it. They will deny it. You are the only one I can trust with this information. I need to get the earrings to you.”

“You have them?” Veronika asked. “You recorded the meeting?”

“Yes. Every word.”

Her sister thought for a long moment. “FIS has a liaison in Richmond. Can you get there?”

Veronika, Karina’s older sister by two years, was a top agent of the Foreign Intelligence Service, Ukraine’s version of the CIA. It was no secret to Karina that FIS had several sleepers in the United States. The thought of being under their protection was an attractive one, but she realized she could not risk it.

“No,” she said at last. “They will expect me to flee. I’m certain they’ll be watching the airports and highways carefully.”

“Then I will tell him to come to you—”

“You are not understanding, Veronika. If they find me, they will kill me. And anyone who is with me. I will not be responsible for that.” Her voice caught in her throat. Standing there in the dim back office of a shady cellular store, the events of the past few hours finally caught up with her. But she would not let her emotions get the best of her. “I’m scared, V. I need help. I need a way out.”

“I will not let anything happen to you,” her sister promised. “I have an idea. I will have our liaison make an anonymous tip to DC Metro that the meeting was recorded—”