Brad Thor - The Athena Project

What she had learned was that even with the harshest of interrogation methods, the ideological puritans, particularly the Muslim fundamentalists, were some of the hardest to break. Every time she had been required to interrogate one of them, she could tell the moment she walked into the room what it was going to take to get him to submit. It was like a sixth sense. Even though she was always right, she didn’t just go from zero to sixty; not unless there was a severe, ticking-time-bomb scenario where they needed the information the subject had immediately.

She sized up Pavel Skovajsa quite quickly. She knew that he was an idiot, or if not an actual idiot, he was quite careless.

Megan nodded and John Vlcek snatched the hood off the man’s head. He was bound to a chair in Vlcek’s darkened basement. Vlcek remained standing behind him while Rhodes sat on a chair several feet in front with a bright desk lamp shining in his face.

“Where am I?” Skovajsa said in Czech. “Who the hell are you?”

“Do you speak English?” asked Rhodes.

He called her a very nasty name and Vlcek slapped him in the back of the head.

“I’m going to ask you again,” said Rhodes. “Do you speak English?”

Skovajsa dropped his head. “Yes,” he said. “I speak English.”

“Good. Now, I am going to be very clear with you. The rest of your team is dead. All of them. My people are now going after their families.” She flipped open his cell phone, looked at it, and then tossed it to Vlcek.

Vlcek held it up so he could see the picture. “These are your little girls?” asked Rhodes.

Skovajsa didn’t reply.

Rhodes nodded at Vlcek, who advanced to the next picture. “This is your wife, along with your two little girls. Correct?”

The man still said nothing.

Rhodes nodded again. Vlcek advance to the next picture and kept advancing. “And either these pictures are of the model in your nude portrait class, or this considerably younger woman is your girlfriend.”

Once again, the man cursed her in Czech and once again Vlcek slapped him in the back of the head, this time with the cell phone in his hand.

“Mr. Skovajsa, if you tell me what I want to know, you, your children, your wife, and even your girlfriend will be allowed to live. If you do not, you will all be killed, but not before your wife and children are made aware of what kind of man you are. Do we understand each other?”

Skovajsa didn’t respond.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” said Rhodes. “How many years have you worked for Radek Heger?”

He was reluctant to answer, but he finally replied, “Five years.”

“Tell me about the bunker.”

“I don’t know about any bunker.”

“Sure you do. That’s where you tried to apprehend my friend and she head-butted you, knocked you out, and then broke your colleague’s neck when he tried to shoot her. Any of this coming back to you?”

He was about to curse her again, but thought better of it when he sensed Vlcek drawing back his hand. “I know the bunker,” he admitted.

“See, this isn’t so hard.”

There was a sneer on the man’s face.

“Now,” said Rhodes. “What happened to everything that was inside? Where did it go? Who took it?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m not going to ask you again, Pavel. This will be your family’s last chance.”

“I don’t know,” he growled.

Rhodes nodded at Vlcek, who set the phone down and picked up a roll of duct tape. Tearing off a piece, he placed it over Skovajsa’s mouth and then tossing the roll aside he picked the man’s phone back up.

Activating the speaker phone feature, he dialed Skovajsa’s wife and woke her out of a sound sleep. In perfect Czech, Vlcek then said everything Rhodes had told him to say.

“Yes, there’s been an accident… Your husband was drinking. We think it is better we bring him home to you. If the police get involved it will be a lot of trouble. Yes, he is injured… He is bleeding… You can probably clean him up. I don’t think a hospital will be necessary… The car, though, was very damaged… The problem is that your husband tells us he doesn’t want to go home for some reason. He is worried we will wake your girls. He is telling us we should take him to some woman named Margita?”

Skovajsa was fighting against his restraints and screaming from behind the tape. Vlcek had to move away from him with the phone lest his wife hear him making such a commotion.

“I don’t know if Margita is a whore, Mrs. Skovajsa,” continued Vlcek. “Oh, I’m sorry, you are confirming that she is a whore… His whore… I see… Well, we’ll let you settle that with him… Now, he seems to have left his wallet somewhere this evening and he will only give us Margita’s address… Yes, if you will give us your address we will bring him straight to you… Thank you, yes. I know that area. We will come now… Good… It is up to you, but you may not want the neighbors to see any of this… You have a garage and will leave the door open? Excellent. You are a good wife, Mrs. Skovajsa. He doesn’t deserve you. We will see you soon.”

When Vlcek finished the call, he hung up the phone and tossed it back to Rhodes. She studied Skovajsa’s face. She had no intention of harming his family, but he didn’t know that. All he knew was that his wife had now had her worst fears about his having a mistress confirmed. She had also just given out her address and was probably at this very moment going down to open the garage door so these strangers could gain access to the house. Any illusions he may have had about his family’s safety were now completely shattered.

Rhodes nodded and Vlcek snatched the tape from Skovajsa’s mouth. The minute it was off, he began talking. “They took everything out of the bunker several months ago,” he said.

“Who did?”

“I don’t know.”

Megan shook her head. “I’m very sorry for your family, Pavel.”

“I don’t know!” he shouted. “I’d never seen them before. They came with lots of equipment. First they cleared several tons of rock from the entrance. Mr. Heger then sent my team in with diving equipment to search for any explosives, any boobytraps. Then we figured out how to drain the water.

“Once the water was out, everything was packed into crates and loaded onto trucks. That’s all I know. I swear I have told you everything. Now, you have to swear to me you will not hurt my family.”

“That’s a good start, Pavel,” she replied. “But we’re not done yet. We’re not even close.”

Skovajsa was beyond angry. “Damn it!” he shouted. “I did what you asked. What else do you want?”

Megan leaned forward, her head and shoulders silhouetted by the light from behind, and said, “I want your employer. I want Radek Heger.”

According to Skovajsa, Heger kept a safe house in a rough, industrial area outside Prague known as Kladno. After what had happened at Zbiroh, that was where he would be headed.

The safe house was where Heger and his men planned their operations and stored their weapons, vehicles, cash, and other items. Standard operating procedure was to evacuate to that location and wait twenty-four hours for the surviving team members to assemble. Anyone who did not make it would be presumed dead or in custody.

Skovajsa confirmed they would not go looking for any bodies in Zbiroh, at least not right away. It was pointless to go looking while it was dark. What’s more, they had no idea who they were up against or if those same people would be waiting for them to come back and pick up their dead.