The Zero

“Listen to me, Paul. You shouldn’t talk like this. Okay?” Remy sca

“Yeah,” Paul said, “that’s what this agent of mine says. He says every time I open my fuggin’ mouth I give away what we could be getting paid for. You only got one story, he says, you have to protect it. So I promised him I’d shut up.” Paul shook his head. “But sometimes I think it’s crazy we don’t talk about this shit. Sometimes I think it’s crazy that we aren’t standing up and yelling about it.”

“Paul-” Remy began.

“I just wa

The waitress filled their coffees.

“Maybe you should see someone,” Remy said quietly. “A therapist.”

“A what?”

“A therapist. A psychiatrist. I think I might be seeing one.”

Paul shrugged. “They got counselors and priests down there all the time, always trying to strike up conversations, staring at me like I’m a fuggin’ mental. One day I’m pissing and this guy with a ponytail comes up to me and asks me how I’m doing. I say, ‘My stream’s all right, but it looks like I could use a little more water in my diet.’

“And this humorless fugger says, ‘No, how are you doing, friend?’ So I turn to him and say, ‘You really wa

“This jerkoff says: ‘Well, don’t worry. It’s go

They ate in silence. Remy watched the door but he didn’t see the guy from the gypsy cab. “What happened with Stacy?” he asked.

“Come on, Brian.”

“Indulge me,” Remy said.

“Indulge you.” Paul drank his coffee, then shrugged and stared at his fork. “Well… pretty much the same thing. She said maybe it would get better and I said, ‘Fugg you, Stacy. I don’t want it to get better.’” He took a bite of his hash, and stared out the window into the parking lot as he chewed. Remy looked outside, too. The silver gypsy cab tooled past once more, the two men staring straight ahead at-

THE DESK in front of him was smooth, whorls of blond wood like a satellite image of oak storms. He ran his fingers along its mostly empty surface, over a monthly pla

Remy hefted the slender envelope, turned it over, set it on the desk, and stared at it. Was he supposed to open it? Was it some kind of report on him, not for him? Was it a test?

Remy took the report, walked to his office door, and opened it, looking for someone to ask about the report. He stuck his head out and looked both ways, down a wainscoted corridor that stretched about forty feet in either direction. A half-dozen closed office doors lined the corridor, all of them with unlabeled windows of frosted glass. Remy turned right and followed the corridor to its end, where it came to a T with another hallway. Remy turned left this time and walked about fifteen feet, until he came to a pair of swinging doors that opened on a vast room, a maze of soft-walled cubicles bathed in fluorescent light. Again, there were no windows. He could hear the tapping of computer keys, like rainfall, and the low hum of people talking. The cubicles spread out before him like a huge field of crops, broken only by pillars every thirty feet or so. Inside the first cubicle a woman was hammering away at her computer keyboard, a telephone headset perched on her head, a plastic-sealed document in front of her. “Hell he did,” she said into her headset. “Bullshit. Come on now!”

Perhaps sensing Remy behind her, the woman turned. “Oh, hello, sir.”

Remy held up the envelope with his name on it. “Do you know-” he began.

The woman gestured to the phone headset, and Remy nodded and backed away. Leaving the room, he followed the T-shaped corridor in the other direction. It ended at another, more impressive pair of doors, the word SECURE lettered on the frosted glass. Remy opened the door and peeked inside. A woman sat behind a round desk reading a furniture catalog; behind her a big dark-wood door led to another office. Remy backed out, eased the door shut, turned left, and followed this hallway until he found himself back at another entrance to the huge maze of cubicles. He looked back over his shoulder. On the wall above the doorway he’d just come through was another sign like the ones he’d seen in the airplane hangar and the Quonset huts: “Our enemies should know this about the American people, which will not rest until Evil is defeated.”

Finally, Remy backtracked again down the T and down the corridor toward his office. Inside, the phone was ringing. He walked in and picked it up. “Hello?”

“Oh, good, you’re still there.” It was a woman’s voice.

“I’m still here,” Remy said.

“Did you get the envelope Shawn sent over?”

Remy set it on the desk. “Yes.”

“What do you think? Any of it helpful?”

“Uh… Probably too early to tell,” Remy said.

“Sure,” she said. “I tried to tell them it could wait until he got back from Washington, but you know those assholes in Partials.”

“Do I,” Remy said, surprised that it didn’t come out like a question.

“I know it. They’re all so mystical. I swear they could find significance in a used scrap of toilet paper. I guess it’s the training they get.”

“I guess,” Remy said

“Have you noticed how everyone in Partials eventually stops speaking in full sentences?”

“I hadn’t noticed that,” Remy said.

“Anyway, they’re ready for you now.”

“Right. Who’s that again?”

“Isn’t that the truth?” She laughed and hung up.

Remy hung up and opened the envelope. Inside were two sheets of paper sealed in Ziploc bags. The first was a crumpled empty letter-sized envelope addressed to Lisa Herote – the name Assan had offered him at the interrogation – at an address in Virginia. There was a coffee cup stain on the envelope and a stain that might have been yogurt, as if it had been found in a garbage can. There was no return address on the envelope, but someone had affixed a yellow flag: “CKed w/Bishir’s hw sample – positive.”