The Zero (38 page)

He nodded, as if convincing himself. “No,” he said again, “it’s the right name.”

Remy swallowed. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m doing what we agreed to do, what you told me to do.”

Remy felt for the gun in his pocket. “I’m not going to let anyone get hurt.”

Jaguar stared at Remy with those implacable eyes. “I am on your side, remember?”

“Is that good or bad?”

The corner of Jaguar’s mouth rose in a smirk. “Point taken.” He cocked his head and seemed to be reading Remy for the first time. “For just a second there you looked like you couldn’t decide whether to pay me or shoot me.”

It sounded like he was joking, but Remy’s hand remained in his pockets, between the gun and the money The Boss had given him. “Does it matter?” Remy asked.

“It matters a little to me,” he said darkly, holding out his hand.

Remy had no idea what to do. “Maybe I should shoot myself,” he said.

“You tried that,” the man said without looking away, his hand still out.

Finally, defeated, Remy handed over the money.

As he counted, Jaguar said, “I’d better not see anyone there.”

Remy said nothing.

“I mean it. No one moves until I’m gone. Right?”

Remy said nothing.

Jaguar looked up. “Look, if I so much as see a patrol car while I’m making the drop, I’m out of there. Do you understand?”

“No…Not at all.”

Jaguar continued: “I sure as hell better not see
you
there.”

“See me where?” Remy asked quietly, already sensing the answer.

“Good,” Jaguar said. “That’s more like it.” He stuffed the money in his wool coat, tipped his finger to his head, and walked away.

Remy glanced over his shoulder, toward Wall Street, and saw the first tourists edging their way in, mouths open, cameras up. They posed for pictures on either side of a plastic American flag, which had been zip-tied to the railing. Remy watched this for a moment, and then he fell forward, his fingers locked in the wire fence surrounding the hole where the world had been.

THE WIRE
room hummed with activity, translators pitched forward, agents coming in and out with printouts, computer screens registering the levels of voices. Remy edged in, breathless, as if he’d just run over here. The room was long and narrow, like a cheap motel conference room, with one bank of windows looking out over the river, the other long wall lined with bookshelves covered with bound books of transcriptions, and on either end of the room a station equipped with a computer registering the levels of digital recording. Translators sat next to technicians, headphones over their ears. Over a speaker, Remy could hear an Arabic drone in the background—
“Bism-allah—al-Wadud. Ar-Rahim”
—while two other men argued in whispers.

“Name of God loving…and merciful,” the translator said.

“Where have you been?” Markham whispered. “You almost missed it.
We got three targets in a hotel room waiting for Jaguar. And then they’re gonna go. We’re listening to Kamal make his suicide videotape. It’s…cool.”

The agent Dave was standing, his head pitched forward like a vulture, looking over the shoulder of the seated translator, a man in his fifties with a dark tangle of black hair, who was concentrating on the drone in the background. He translated in a consonant-heavy English punctuated by pauses and hums: “…as…uh…commanded by Allah…um…something infidels…those who would enslave and uh…what’s the word…seduce…”

“Rape,” yelled the other translator from across the room.

“Right,” said the first translator. “Uh…rape…the Land of the Two Holy Places…the infidel wolf…”

Above the chanting Arabic was the sound of the other two men, whose whispered English was picked up by the wire.

“This is crazy,” said one of the men on the wire, above the background drone. “I am not going to do this.” Remy recognized the voice. It was Mahoud, the restaurant owner.

“Look, just say some crazy shit on the tape,” Bishir whispered back. “You don’t have to do anything after that. Just cover your face, hold the machine gun, and say infidels and wolves and shit like that.”

“No. I can’t do it.”

“Do you see that guy?” Bishir whispered. “Does he look like he’s fucking around? He’ll have us both killed if he thinks we’re backing out.”

In the wire room, Dave was chewing his thumbnail. “Come on, come on. Hold him.”

“But I never intended…” Mahoud began.

“Look, it doesn’t matter what you intended,” Bishir said. “We’re here now. Just make your tape, and then you can run. But if you leave now we’re both dead.”

“That’s right,” said Dave. “Keep him hooked, Bishir. Don’t let anyone out of that room.”

“He’s good,” Markham said in a low voice. “I wish we could’ve afforded someone like that.”

Remy felt the ground spinning.

The translator droned on: “…guide me in the straight path…not the path of those who have incurred the wrath of…”

“We’ve got to stop this,” Remy said.

Markham reached out and grabbed Remy’s arm.

“Is that Remy?” Dave asked. “Look, this is not the time, Remy. We’re trying to work here.”

“Somebody stop this!” Remy yelled.

Dave took a drink of the largest iced coffee drink Remy had ever seen, a pail of coffee and whipped cream. “No one does anything until Jaguar gets there with the bomb.”

“They have a bomb?” Remy asked Markham. He watched as agents and translators moved around the room like ants on ice cream.

“It’s not much of a bomb threat if they don’t have a bomb,” Markham said under his breath.

“We gave them a bomb?”

“The detonator isn’t real,” Markham said.

“This is crazy,” Remy said. He yelled again, “Look! You’ve got to stop this! Right now!”

“All right! That’s it. Get him out of here!” Dave yelled, pointing at Remy without looking back. “You had your chance, Remy. Now leave us alone and let us do our jobs.”

“This is insane!” Remy yelled.

Markham began pulling him by the arm out the door.

“And the seas shall boil,” the translator was saying, “and…uh…every soul shall know what it has done.”

“Wrought,” said another translator.

“Right,
wrought
,” said the first translator as the door closed behind them.

In the hallway, Markham held Remy by the arm. “What’s wrong with you?”

Remy felt sick. “They’re all our guys.”

“Technically,” Markham said.

“No. They’re all moles. Every one of them.”

“Ye-e-eah,” Markham said, as if Remy had just mentioned that the sun had come up.

“They all work for us.”

“That’s what makes it so perfect. What can go wrong?”

Remy pushed away from Markham and began running down the hallway.

“Brian!” Markham called. “Come back.”

Remy turned the corner and still he heard Markham’s voice. “You’re gonna miss the raid!”

Remy ran out the door, into a long, empty hallway. The door behind him had a name that Remy assumed must be for a phony business—
All Field Transit
. There was a stairwell on his right. He crashed through it. An alarm went off somewhere, but he kept running down the dark stairs, taking two at a time, down three flights to the first floor. He burst out into a lobby, past a napping security guard, through the revolving door and out onto the street. He stood on the curb mid-block, eyes darting from building to building. Listening posts were often set up nearby; the cell could be meeting in one of these buildings.

It was a rainy morning, cabs jostling for lanes with delivery trucks and limos. He ran down the street. At the corner he stopped and looked both ways, glancing up at windows as if he might see a familiar face in one of them. Then, right in front of him, he saw the silver gypsy cab. The passenger door opened and Buff got out, a cord dangling from his ear, his middle finger on an earpiece.

“Jesus, Remy, should you be on the street? We’re expecting Iceman any minute. You listening to this shit?” he asked, like a teenager who’s
found a peephole into a girls’ locker room. “We got three bogies in this hotel room saying prayers and talking crazy. Just like on TV.”

“You need to stop it!”

“Stop it? We got our CI in there and we got people all over the building.” He waved at the buildings. “We got enough snipers for fifty guys. Soon as the last guy shows up, we move.”

“No, no. What if something goes wrong? What if the bomb goes off?”

“No worries. They got a phony detonator.”

“Other way around!” called the other agent from the car.

“Oh, right,” said Buff. “The detonator’s phony. Bomb’s real.”

“No. It’s the other way,” said the other agent from the car again.

Buff ducked his head so he could see inside the car. “Real bomb, phony detonator?”

“No,” the voice said from the car. “You keep saying it the same way. It’s the other way around.”

Buff shrugged. “Anyway, don’t sweat it. We got it under control. Soon as Ice Guy gets here, we move. Fuckers at the agency are gonna shit their pants when we raid their deal.” He hit Remy in the shoulder. “Thanks again, man.”

Remy rubbed his brow.

Just then, the agent in the car leaned across the seat and hissed, “Ice on the pond!”

Remy’s eyes drifted across the street, to where an older Middle Eastern man, face and head clean-shaven, wearing new rectangular glasses, was walking toward the brownstone. He carried an athletic bag over one shoulder and had his wool coat under the other arm. The sidewalk traffic parted and Jaguar reached for the door of the building, his eyes darting about.

“Look natural,” Buff said, and he grabbed Remy in the most unnatural hug Remy had ever felt.

As Jaguar entered the building his head turned a few degrees, his gaze narrowed, and Remy wasn’t sure, but he thought, for just the briefest moment, that Jaguar might’ve seen him.

“Target is inside. Move into positions,” Buff said into his wrist. The other agent eased out of the car and began wading into traffic, as Buff let go of his smothering hug and stepped in behind the other agent.

Remy was left on the sidewalk, his feet glued to the spot. He turned to his left and saw, in the building he’d just left, Dave and Markham and another agent from the wire room emerge on the street. They began crossing the street in the middle of the block, and then Dave turned to look up the street, to where Buff was crossing at the corner, his head bobbing above the cab line.

“Come on. You’ve got to be kidding me,” Dave yelped. He began moving faster.

Buff turned, saw Dave and began running for the building.

“Wait,” Remy said helplessly. He looked up to the building Jaguar had gone into and saw two men suddenly appear in the top-floor windows, wearing black Kevlar jackets, rifles strapped across their backs. They began rappelling down the face of the building. “This is crazy,” Remy muttered, to no one. And that’s when the phone at his waist buzzed. He reached down and saw the number. April—

“HELLO?” REMY
stood in a crowd, breathing heavily. He was covered in sweat, as if he’d been running. “Hello?”

“Yes?” asked a confused man in return. “Do I know you?” The man had a long burn on his face, like a baby’s footprint. He was sitting on a wheeled trunk.

“Oh. No. I’m sorry. I was just,…” Remy looked around. “Talking to myself.”

“You said ‘Hello’ to yourself?”

“I guess I did.” Remy tore his eye from the man’s face and looked around. He was standing at the gate of a subway station, between MetroCard machines, in front of a map encased in Plexiglas. Remy moved past the confused man to the wall map, which showed subway lines snaking toward the bottom of the island and then going hard left—red, blue, orange, green, and brown—like the plumbing schematic for a high-rise. A huge piece of pale green chewing gum was stuck to the map. After a moment, Remy pulled the gum away and saw the
You Are Here
arrow. He was at a subway stop at the train station.

Remy turned away from the map. He put his hands to his head, as if he could locate his memory manually.
April had called
. Yes. Remy pulled his cell phone out, but there was no service down here. His breath shortened; he felt a twinge of the same creeping claustrophobia he’d felt that helpless morning
(standing on the street…paper raining…no-service message on his cell…)

Remy looked around wildly. He tried to concentrate, but there was nothing. She had called. Was she leaving on a train? She’d be going west, home to Kansas City, or maybe to San Francisco. Perhaps a bus? The bus depot was only a block away. No, she wouldn’t take a bus. Maybe the train to one of the airports; he remembered there was a line to Newark Airport. The platforms would be across the terminal, two underground blocks away. He tried to remember: Was it New Jersey Transit or Amtrak that went to Newark?

Remy ran down the stairs and sprinted along the tunnel that ran beneath the street. He bumped people at the end of the hallway and was leaping up another set of steps, head clouded with memory
(moving slowly up the hot stairwell…coughing stragglers with smoke-stained faces going the other direction)
when he spun around a group of soccer players and crashed into a kiosk—like a machine gun nest of consumer goods. And he had the strangest thought as he tried to put the things back that cascaded down around him: magazines and candy bars, pista
chios and gum, cigars, razors, pain relievers, batteries, film, pens and pencils (how long could a person survive on the contents of a single kiosk?) “Hey asshole!” said the clerk, but Remy was running up the ramp.

He came into the great terminal, but here he was slowed by the crowd, by streams of subway riders with backpacks and bags and crosscurrents of rail riders with briefcases and rolling suitcases, their faces flipping past his good eye like snapshots. Though he’d grown used to having a blind side, now and then he still bumped someone and mumbled his apologies. He stopped in the middle of the huge terminal for a moment, surrounded by travelers, their voices low and humming, like droning bees on a nest. Something felt wrong, and familiar
(turning back suddenly…stopping on the stairs…trickle of people moving down…)
.