Brad Thor - The Athena Project

“Peter, please. How stupid do you think I am? You trained me, after all. Do you really think I would leave something like that behind? We’ll take it all with us when we leave. Speaking of which,” she said as she gestured to her naked body, “you better have brought an extra set of clothes for me.”

Marcus began working on the wine bottle. “We’re in the middle of a forest. There’s bound to be a few fig leaves around.”

Vicki laughed and kept digging. She found a shirt and pair of women’s running pants, brand-new, with the tags still on them. Thanking her paramour, she set them off to the side.

As Peter poured them each a glass of wine, he said, “Bring the cigarettes over to me, would you please?”

“No,” replied Vicki.

“Trust me,” he said as he handed her a glass.

Vicki gave in and reached over to pick up the crumpled package. “I don’t even like touching these things,” she said as she offered it to him.

“Open it up.”

She started to ask why, but the look in his eyes stopped her. Gently, she lifted the lid. The inside was stuffed with cotton, like you would find in an aspirin bottle. “Peter, what is this?” she asked.

“You’ll see.”

Pulling out the lumps of cotton, Vicki quickly realized that the package hadn’t contained cigarettes at all. “It’s gorgeous!” she said as she removed the necklace. “Where did you find it?”

“Do you remember that jewelry store you liked?”

“The one in Naples?”

He nodded. “The woman remembered you. In fact, when I walked in, the first thing she asked me was where you were.”

Suffolk smiled as she held up the necklace and put it on. “You’re a liar, but I still love it. When were you in Naples?”

“About a month ago,” he replied. After a beat, he added, “Alone.”

“I’m not naïve, Peter.”

“It’s true.”

Vicki allowed herself to believe it and she pressed the necklace to her bare chest.

“How about you?” he asked. “Your reports have been very professional, very clinical. Are you sleeping with him?”

Suffolk took a sip of her wine as she decided how to respond. “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

Peter Marcus smiled. “You’re a very attractive woman, Victoria.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

Marcus took a sip of his wine. It was important that she felt the decision pained him and that he had trouble talking about it. “We don’t make the rules of the game. We are just forced to play by them.”

“Oh, puh-lease!”

He loved how direct she could be. “Okay, yes. I did say that you were authorized to sleep with him. Secretly I hoped it wouldn’t be necessary, but perhaps it was. At least you appear to have been successful. I will comfort myself with that.”

Suffolk moved back over and rubbed her body against his. “You can also comfort yourself with the fact that when I was in bed with him, the only way I could do it was if I pretended I was with you.”

She leaned over, her breasts brushing against his chest, and kissed his lips. As the tiny tea candles burned, they ignored the food and made love once more.

An hour later, the wine almost gone, Marcus stared at the ceiling and said, “We need to have a talk.”

Suffolk propped herself up on an elbow. “About what?”

He took his eyes from the ceiling and looked at her. “What you’re going to do with Ben Matthews’s body.”

ZBIROH

CZECH REPUBLIC

Gretchen Casey phoned down to the hotel’s concierge and asked him to prepare a list of restaurant and nightclub suggestions in Prague. When the women stepped out of the elevator and crossed the lobby forty-five minutes later, heads turned so fast you could hear necks snapping.

Considering what these women did for a living, they certainly wouldn’t have described themselves as being dressed to kill, but everyone else would have. High heels, perfect hair and makeup, and dresses that left very little to the imagination screamed: big night on the town.

Everything came to a stop as the four gorgeous women walked across the marble floor to the concierge desk. They made small talk with the staff as the concierge handed Casey the list he had prepared and then handed them a map and highlighted the route to Prague.

Outside, the valets had the ladies’ car ready and waiting. They wished the women a pleasant evening and seemed to take an unusual amount of care in seeing that their legs were fully tucked into the vehicle before closing the doors.

Once they had driven about a hundred yards, the women all burst out laughing. “They’re going to be mopping up the drool out of that lobby for a month,” joked Rhodes from the front passenger seat.

Cooper looked over her shoulder and out the rear window. “The valet who opened my door was kind of cute.”

“Now that we know you like them that young,” said Ericsson as she turned out onto the road, “we’ll stop hitting bars and start taking you to high school football games.”

After the laughter in the car subsided, Cooper said, “Okay, maybe not that young.”

“Stick with the young ones,” said Casey, looking out her window. “The older they get, the more of a pain in the ass they become.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” replied Rhodes.

“Whatever happened to if he’s older, he’ll hold her?” asked Ericsson, trying to catch Casey’s eyes in the rearview mirror.

Rhodes didn’t give her a chance to answer. “If he’s younger, he’s probably got the hunger , if you know what I mean,” she proclaimed.

That got a laugh from everyone but Casey, who was still staring out the window, preoccupied with her own thoughts.

The wooded hotel grounds were quite extensive, and after about two kilometers, Ericsson pulled the car off onto a barely visible dirt road. She drove slowly, the headlights bouncing with each rut and pothole they hit. Above them, the thick canopy of trees blocked out the night sky.

As a clearing approached, Ericsson slowed down and pulled in. She drove over uneven ground for about fifty yards until the car was completely hidden from the road and then shut off the ignition. “We go the rest of the way on foot.”

“Not in these shoes we don’t,” said Cooper.

Julie hit the trunk release button. “Boots and clothes are in back,” she replied. “Megan and I cached the rest of the gear up ahead.”

The women stepped out of the car and grabbed their backpacks from the trunk. As the car had been under the hotel’s control, nothing out of the ordinary had been left inside. If anyone had searched their vehicle, all they would have found was hiking gear.

Once they had changed, Megan Rhodes clicked on her flashlight and used its filtered beam to guide them deeper into the woods.

The equipment John Vlcek had provided had been organized in several black duffel bags, which were hidden well out of sight. Even in broad daylight, they would have been difficult to find unless you knew exactly where to look. Rhodes and Ericsson quickly divided up the gear.

In addition to night vision goggles, or NVGs as they were known, Vlcek had provided them with.40 caliber CZ Rami pistols and extra magazines, as well as encrypted radios and a few other items Hutton had asked for. After checking their weapons and loading the gear in their packs, they recached the duffel bags and Megan Rhodes once again took the lead, using a pre-programmed GPS to guide their way.

Hans Kammler had done an excellent job of hiding his research facility in the 1940s. Even modern satellite technology was unable to pick it up.