Brad Thor - The Athena Project

Gretchen thought about it for a moment. “If you were going to hide something like that, where would you put it?”

He didn’t need to ponder the question. He was military through and through. “Somewhere out in the middle of nowhere. A place where I could see people coming from miles off. A place where I controlled all the property and had great interlocking fields of fire.” As he looked at her, he could see the wheels spinning. “You don’t agree, do you?”

“No,” said Casey as she shook her head. “I think it’d be better to hide it right in plain sight. I might even draw a little attention to it just to throw people off balance.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “It’s probably just me. I can’t think of anything more mind-numbing than to be kept on some dusty military base day in and day out the way they were with Manhattan Project. Of course, you’ve gotta have security, but if you can allow people to come and go, live somewhat normal lives, that has to be good for productivity, not to mention people with families.”

“So you’re a yes on the Mayor Daley and Comiskey Park theory then.”

Casey ignored his joke. She knew what would happen if the conversation got too personal. To stop that from happening, she brought them back to the business at hand. “What happened that made Walsh dispatch us to the facility at Zbiroh?”

Hutton knew he couldn’t keep it from her any longer. “Somebody else is pursuing the technology.”

“I kind of figured that.”

His face was deadly serious. “This isn’t just anybody. This is someone who has gotten their hands on Kammler’s technology.”

“How do you know for sure?”

“Because they’ve started sending through human subjects. And the results have been exactly the same; disastrous. Worse still, the bodies are fresh, so we know it happened recently.”

Casey was at a loss for words.

“And that’s not all,” added Hutton.

“There’s more?”

“I saved the best for last. Whoever is doing this, they’ve also been trying to get a bomb through.”

Casey’s eyes went wide.

This time, it was Hutton who leaned in toward his camera. “We’ve got to find out who this is, and we need to stop them.”

“Agreed,” replied Casey. “One hundred percent. Where do you want us to start?”

He looked at her, but he was all business. “Have Rhodes start with the man you brought back in the trunk of your car. Find out everything he knows about who stripped that facility at Zbiroh bare.”

“And then?” she asked, even though she had a good feeling she knew what the answer was going to be.

“And then we’re going to make sure nobody ever gets the ability to fax a bomb or a laser to us. ”

ISTANBUL

The swim did little to clear Armen Abressian’s mind. When he climbed out of the water, there was a message waiting for him on his phone. Thomas had called again.

“I’m here, Thomas,” he said, calling the younger man back.

“I thought you’d want to know that Viktor came by a half-hour ago. He was drunk and so were his men.”

This wasn’t good. “Tell me what happened,” said Abressian.

“I did just what you told me. I told Viktor that Professor Cahill was with me and that while I was sorry to hear about his girls disappearing, Cahill couldn’t have had anything to do with it.”

“Did he believe you?”

Sanders laughed. “No. In fact, he told me to my face that I was a liar.”

“Then what happened?”

“Then he said he wanted to talk to you. I told him you were out of the country, but that I expected you back soon. I told him you were sorry to hear about his girls having gone missing, but that you’re also certain the professor had nothing to do with it.”

“And what did he say to that?” asked Abressian.

“He seemed a lot less prepared to call you a liar than he was me.”

Armen smiled. Mikhailov was no fool. “Was that it?”

“No. He wanted to see Cahill. He wanted to talk to him, himself.”

“You told him that wasn’t possible of course.”

“Of course I did. Had I produced Cahill, they would have shoved him in the trunk of Viktor’s Audi and we never would have seen him again.”

“Good work, Thomas. What about the extra security we discussed?”

“I’ve doubled the number of men.”

“Then everything is okay for now,” replied Abressian.

“There’s one other thing,” said Sanders.

“I’m listening.”

“I was hoping to get confirmation on that new assignment in Prague. The artifact the Amalgam wants recovered.”

“Yes,” said Abressian. “We were going to use the Czech.”

“Well, I heard from our man in Belgrade. Apparently, there was an incident at the hotel in Zbiroh tonight.”

“What kind of incident ?”

“There were reports of gunfire on the property. Apparently, the police are involved now, but the details are still very sketchy.”

“What about our Czech?”

“Our man in Belgrade says he can’t reach him. He has talked with a couple of hotel employees who said he was there shortly before the shooting, but that no one has seen him since. Our man in Belgrade says the Czech’s entire network has gone dark. He can’t reach any of them.”

This was not good. First Nino Bianchi, now Radek Heger. It might be coincidental, but Abressian had learned not to believe in coincidences. Those who did, ended up dead.

“I think I am going to check out of my hotel,” said Abressian.

“Do you need me to make other arrangements?” asked Thomas.

“No, just keep focused on what I have asked you to do.”

“Okay, what about the job in Prague? Should I look for someone else to handle it?”

“Let’s put Prague on hold for right now,” replied Armen. “We need to finish our current job first.”

“Does that mean you’ll be putting Istanbul on hold then too?”

Abressian cast his eyes up toward the hotel and thought about the beautiful young woman in his bed. Finally, he replied. “Yes. I’ll let our clients here know that we’ll have to reschedule.”

“Should I send the plane for you?”

“Please.”

Armen spent the flight back to Croatia thinking about his problems. The one immediately at the forefront of his mind was Viktor Mikhailov.

Abressian’s initial reaction was to find someone to take the fall for the disappearance of Mikhailov’s women. He’d make it look like a murder/suicide and then burn the house down around them so that the bodies couldn’t be identified. At first blush, it seemed like the most expedient path. There was no way he was going to let that Russian mobster get his hands on Professor Cahill. It made no difference what insanity Cahill had committed, he was too valuable.

He was also all too human. If Mikhailov got his hands on him, Cahill would barter with anything he had to save his own skin. That would mean spilling everything he knew about the project.

The Amalgam wouldn’t like that. Abressian had been hired because of his almost supernatural ability to keep things quiet. There were no such things as leaks in his operations. He hired only the best people and he’d had a perfect record because of it. This modus operandi had begun to translate into some very good money. He had no desire to see that stop now.

What’s more, he knew how angry the members of the Amalgam could get. The punishment for failure would be worse than anything some Russian like Mikhailov could ever dream of dishing out.