Target Zero (An Agent Zero Spy Thriller—Book #2)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Rais was careful to maintain the legal speed limit as he drove the SUV southbound on an otherwise empty Swiss avenue. He kept his eyes open and alert and listened keenly for the sound of sirens, which he expected to begin their telltale scream in the night at any moment.

The first thing he had done after his escape, after killing the two Swiss officers and the hospital guard, was take the guard’s truck. He knew he could not keep it long, but he also knew that the authorities would expect him to get on the highway immediately and put some distance between him and Sion. Instead he drove up the road from the hospital until he found a gas station that was still open at that late hour.

He looked the station over from across the street before pulling in. There would be cameras at the pumps; he spotted two in the front, each angled toward the entrance, and another in the rear. However, the western-facing façade, a brick wall with no point of egress, had no cameras and no lights.

Rais secured his seatbelt and drove the truck into that wall at twenty-five miles an hour.

The impact was not enough to even deploy the airbags, but the crunch of steel on brick was definitely enough to alert the attendant, who came running out a moment later.

“Sir!” he said frantically in German as he rounded the truck. “Are you all right? Should I call an ambulance?”

Rais pointed the gun, the Sig, from the driver’s seat. “Put your hands up,” he said in German, “and take one step back.”

The terrified attendant did as he was told, though it did not look like the first time he had been held at gunpoint. Rais climbed out of the truck. He noted with some dismay that even the minor impact against the brick wall had left him sore. He had to remind himself that he was not fully recovered; he could not act too brashly.

The attendant was a couple of inches taller and stockier than Rais, but it would do better than the thin, ill-fitting scrubs he had taken from the Swiss nurse Elena. “Remove your clothes.”

“Excuse me?” said the bewildered attendant.

Rais sighed irritably. It was not a difficult request, yet so many seemed to have trouble understanding it. “Take off your jacket, your shirt, and your pants, or I will kill you.”

Threats will get you everywhere, Rais thought with minor satisfaction as the attendant, jarred into action at the notion of being murdered that night, tore out of his denim coat, dark gray shirt, and jeans. He stood there, shivering in a pair of boots and white briefs.

Rais flipped the Sig in his hand and brought it down on the attendant’s head in a powerful blow. The man crumpled, unconscious and bleeding from a gash on his forehead. His skull was likely cracked and he would need stitches, but he was alive. Probably.

Rais dressed quickly, pulling the jeans over the scrub pants (it was still cold in Switzerland in March, and the layers would be helpful) and then the shirt and jacket. In the pockets of the pants he found a cell phone, a disposable lighter, a wallet, and a ring of keys. He kept the lighter. There was no cash in the wallet, so he tossed it at the man’s unconscious body. The phone he crushed under a boot heel. The ring of keys led him to a pickup truck parked behind the gas station.

In the distance the sirens began to scream. They were growing steadily louder. The police would be looking for the guard’s stolen car.

He pulled the truck out of the parking lot, across the road, and down a side street that led into a residential neighborhood. Driving slowly, he looked left and right until he found what he was seeking—a home with a long driveway and two other cars parked in it. Rais switched off the headlights and backed the truck up the drive, alongside the other two cars.

Once the police discovered that the SUV had been crashed into the side of the gas station—which would be only a matter of minutes—they would look for the attendant’s stolen car. But they would be looking for it on roads and highways, not parked in someone’s drive. It was nearly two in the morning by then; with any luck it would be hours before the residents would wake and report the strange truck on their property.

Rais set out on foot, striding down the road at a pace that was not too fast yet what he hoped looked like someone simply eager to get home. Sion was not a large city; he doubted they had a sizable police force at their disposal. Even so, it was quite late at night and there were very few people on the streets. Whenever he saw headlights approaching he quickly ducked into hiding until they passed.

Even he had to admit that Sion was an attractive town, sprawled at the base of the Alps as if it had slipped off the mountainside. From nearly anywhere in the city he could look up and see the Valère Basilica, the twelfth-century fortified cathedral that sat upon a hill overlooking Sion’s downtown. Most tourists mistook it as a castle.

The town proper was a mélange of narrow, winding streets arranged in no discernible pattern, as if the city planner had been a child with a crayon in their fist. It would be easy for him to lose the authorities here, if need be, but he was eager to be off the road. He hid out in the courtyard of a small hotel and waited until morning, catnapping on and off for fifteen to twenty minutes at a time.

He didn’t realize how exhausted he was until he stopped moving, hiding himself between two shrubs with his back to the hotel’s brick façade. His limbs ached and his wounds still pained him. If he could have risked only a few more minutes during his escape at the hospital, he might have grabbed some narcotics to assuage his pain.

No, he thought. I must stay sharp. He needed his mind keen if he was to get out of Sion.

Twice during the five hours before sunrise the phantom nerve pain gripped his body, what the doctors had called stingers. The first time was while he was napping, and the pain was so intense that he clamped both hands over his mouth to stifle the scream that lurched from his throat. The second time he was awake when they came on, but no less surprising. He bit the inside of his cheek, hard enough to taste blood, until the pain subsided.

Eventually the horizon turned pink as the sun began to rise—as did Rais, climbing carefully from his position and stretching in the dim light of morning. It was no coincidence that he had chosen this small hotel at which to hide.

On the southern-facing exterior wall was a loose brick, about a foot above eye level. To see it was not to think it loose, but he knew it was there. He worked his fingertips into the crevices and tugged the brick out. Behind it was a single, small gold key.

A month earlier, when the city of Sion had hosted the Winter Olympics, Rais had plotted to kill Agent Kent Steele. He would have gladly given his life for his mission to be a success—but even so, he had planned for the contingency of his survival, which would have required the necessary means to escape without notice. His circumstances may have changed, but his plan remained viable.

Across the street from the hotel was Sion’s largest post office, with a revolving door entrance and a sign that read Sion Hauptpost. It opened at seven a.m. At four minutes past the hour, Rais hastily crossed the street, entered the building, and strode straight to a bank of steel-door PO boxes just beyond the foyer. He avoided eye contact with anyone and resisted the urge to glance over his shoulder. Doing so would only attract attention.

Instead he went straight to his rented box, number 0276. He slid the key in, opened it, removed the only item inside—a brown leather satchel—and then closed the door again. He was in and out of the Hauptpost in less than two minutes.

As he crossed the street once again, he pulled the satchel’s strap over his shoulder. Then he entered the small hotel to find a young female clerk at the front desk.

“Hallo,” he said pleasantly. “I apologize; my Swiss-German is not good. I am checking in as a guest here later today. For now, may I just use your restroom?”

The young woman smiled warmly. “Na sicher.” Of course. She directed him down the hall and to the right. He smiled graciously and followed her instructions.

As soon as the bathroom door was locked behind him, he set down his satchel and got to work. He was no stranger to altering his appearance; going incognito was a requisite for one whose job had been traveling frequently with the intended goal of committing murder. He took out his implements, one by one, and laid them out on the closed seat of the toilet.

Rais began by cutting off his hair, first with a small pair of silver scissors and then buzzing it down to short bristles with an electric shaver. He did the same with his facial hair. Next, he inserted brown contact lenses to hide his emerald-green eyes.

In his satchel was a German passport—not a fake, but a legitimate one sold to another member of Amun by an unscrupulous citizen of Hamburg who needed a thousand euros to post his brother’s bail. The man was of a height and build similar to Rais, but the passport holder was eight years his senior and had a much different facial aspect.

Rais only had to get close enough for a believable match.

In the passport photo, the man’s hair was shorn short, as Rais’s now was. His eyes were brown, and he had a fairly substantial beard up both cheeks and hanging down about five inches. The prosthetic in Rais’s satchel was of an approximate length—convincingly real, made of horse hair, and easy enough to find on the internet. The color of it was a shade or two darker than the one in the photo, but it matched Rais’s natural hair color enough to (hopefully) avoid scrutiny.

He used spirit gum adhesive to attach the beard to his shaven cheeks, applying it as carefully and evenly as possible. He used the scissors to trim and fray the ends of it—it looked too perfectly sculpted, he thought—as well as his own sideburns to blend in with the edges.

Rais looked at the passport photo again. Next would be the difficult part; the obvious age gap between his face and the photo. After studying it for a moment, he took a tube of rubber cement from his bag and carefully pinched the skin at the corners of his eyes. He beaded the rubber cement into the pinched crevice and held it for a few minutes. His skin burned at first, but he held it fast and the pain eventually subsided to a tingle. When he released it the pinch remained, effectively creating wrinkles around his eyes. He repeated the process twice on each side.

For additional effect, he removed the denim jacket, T-shirt, and scrub top, and then put the shirt and jacket back on. The scrub top he balled up and tucked beneath his shirt, partially tucked into the hem of his jeans, smoothing it out to create a small paunch.

Rais took a step back and inspected his new appearance in the mirror. He barely looked like himself anymore. Though, he noted with some concern, the false wrinkles around his eyes looked puckered and forced. He would have to affect a slight squint if he wanted to maintain a natural mien. No easy task to hold for hours, to be sure, but he was nothing if not methodical.

In the bottom of the satchel was a wallet with a photo ID (this one was a fake, created using the passport’s photo and information) and a few thousand euros in cash. There was also a burner phone, the battery likely dead, but he would not risk attempting to reach any of his contacts in Amun anyway. They were probably detained by now or on the lam. Besides, they would be little help in what he was planning to do. He was alone now, and he would do things in his own way.

I endure, he thought.

He pulled the battery from the phone and tossed it in the bathroom’s trash.

Satisfied with his new appearance, he collected his tools, cleaned up the hair as best he could, and flushed it down the toilet. He could affect a German accent fairly well, but still he stood in front of the mirror, squinting his eyes and murmuring phrases to be sure he still sounded the way he ought to. Satisfied, he slung the satchel back over his shoulder. The entire process had taken less than thirty minutes.

He left the bathroom and, instead of returning to the main entrance, walked further down the hall to a side exit. He could not risk walking past the young lady at the front desk. His appearance was altered, but he was still wearing the same clothes.

Back out on the streets of Sion, the sun was up and people were filtering out from their homes, on their way to jobs or errands or whatever it was that ordinary people did with their lives. Rais walked among them freely, not warranting a second glance from anyone. As he walked, he dropped the PO box key into a storm drain. He wouldn’t need it anymore. The burner phone, void of a battery, he slipped into a street-corner trash bin three blocks further.

As he suspected, the police were watching the train station (as they would be the airports and bus depots, and had likely set up roadblocks on major points of egress from the city). First he entered a public restroom. He made sure he was alone before he pried open a paper towel dispenser and hid the Sig P220 in it. He was not happy to leave it behind—it was an excellent gun—but he could not risk trying to get it past security. Then he went into a stall and dropped the second gun into a toilet tank. With any luck, it would be a few days before either was found.

Rais got on a train to Zurich without incident. He did not speak to anyone; instead, he pretended to be sleeping in order to not be bothered. Once during the train ride he rose and went to the restroom to check his wounds. They were closed, but some stitches remained. He would have to cut them out himself.

From Zurich he could take a plane to the US, but first he needed to take some precautions to avoid obvious flags. His first stop was to a thrift store, where he found an old suitcase and bought enough items of clothing to make it seem as if he was on a trip. He couldn’t very well get on a plane without luggage.

Next he went to a pharmacy and purchased a prepaid debit card. The maximum allowable load was two thousand euros, which was most of his cash, but he put it on anyway. At an electronics store on the same block he picked up a new burner phone and paid for a few megabytes of data. The first thing he did was check the internet. Sure enough, Interpol had established a hotline for the public to call in with any potential leads on Rais’s whereabouts. He wasn’t mentioned by name, but his connection with Amun was well noted.

Next he downloaded a Chinese calling app that would generate international phone numbers for a small fee. He created two accounts, one with an Italian phone number and the second Slovenian. He paid a homeless woman fifty euros to call the Interpol tip line from his Italian number and report, in English, that a man bearing Rais’s description had stolen her car at gunpoint near Bormio, just over the Swiss-Italian border. She told them that the “horrible man” had said something about Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia.

Lastly he visited an internet café and booked his flight using the prepaid debit card. To pay for an airline ticket in cash at the counter would be highly suspect—and even more so for someone with a German passport to book one-way travel. He saw that a flight to JFK in New York was departing in less than three hours’ time, with a connection in Madrid, for just under six hundred euros. He booked a return flight for seven days later to Hamburg, to make it appear as if he had traveled first to Switzerland, then to the US, and then to home. He ended up spending about twelve hundred euros on the flight; most of his money was gone, but it would be worth it if it got him where he needed to be.

Of course there was a police presence at Kloten Airport, but once again his disguise proved worthwhile as he boarded a plane without incident.

The flight from Zurich to Madrid was just under two and a half hours. While waiting in the terminal at Madrid-Barajas Airport for his connecting flight, he made two more calls. The first was to leave a message with the Interpol hotline. He called from the Slovenian number and used his fake German accent to report that Rais was heading to an Amun safe house about fifty miles outside of Ljubljana.

He even gave them the address.

Immediately after ending the call, he made another to a number he had dedicated to memory. He wasn’t sure if anyone would pick up, but on the third ring the line was answered. But whoever did said nothing.

“As Amun, we endure,” Rais said in plain English, quietly so that no one else in the terminal would hear him.

“Who is this?” a male voice hissed. His accent sounded Serbian.

“A brother,” Rais replied. At least I was. “Agents will soon be en route to your location. Be prepared.”

“How do you—”

Rais hung up before the man could finish his question. If Amun members were hiding out in the Slovenian safe house, they would either have to vacate or attempt an ambush. It didn’t matter; what was important was that the CIA and Interpol believed him to be heading east.

He deleted the calling app from his phone and pulled the battery. In the restroom, he broke the phone in two and disposed of its pieces in three different receptacles.

*

Rais did not pause as he stepped off the second plane. He did not hesitate and he did not linger. He simply nodded politely to the flight attendant at the exit and followed the long line of weary passengers as they disembarked. He was, after all, incognito, and he had never been much of one for sentimentality.

Even so, it was the first time he had stepped foot on American soil in nearly two years.

As he made his way toward customs, he ran a hand over his shorn hair, cut close to the scalp. He casually patted at the dark, prosthetic beard, as if scratching an itch, to ensure it was still adhered firmly. He made sure to keep the omnipresent squint at the corners of his eyes (no easy task to maintain for a nine-hour flight) to give him the appearance of being several years older.

He had gotten quite lucky, it would seem. As he made his way toward customs he heard the collective groans and complaints of would-be passengers awaiting their flight. International travel was being shut down in the United States. Intercom announcements and digital boards scrolling through rows and rows of canceled flights told him that something was definitively amiss in the world. He did not know what, and it didn’t matter. He had reached his destination.

On the eight-hour flight from Madrid to New York, Rais slept fitfully in a window seat beside a polite middle-aged Spanish woman who, thankfully, had little interest in talking with him. In between catching bits of sleep, Rais plotted. He had no resources at his disposal, and only a bit of money to get where he needed to be. But he had his wits, and he had his knowledge, and his body was, for the most part, back in working order.

It would have to be enough.

Much like his long nights in the hospital, Rais plotted every scenario he could conceive of how to find Kent Steele’s residence. Finally he landed upon an idea that, if done correctly, he was confident would work.

At John F. Kennedy International Airport, his ears filled with the gripes and outcries of irate travelers whose flights abroad were being canceled. Yet he was hardly curious. It did not concern him.

At the customs desk, a blasé security official inspected his German passport and asked if Rais had anything to declare. He told the man no.

Internally, however, he had much to declare.

I endure.

I will find Kent Steele.

And he will suffer in unimaginable ways.