Brad Thor - The Athena Project

“I know what a 66 percent success rate means. What happened to the stray device?”

Cahill shrugged. “I have no idea.”

“No hypothesis? No guesses?”

“Who cares?”

“I care, George,” replied Abressian. “It’s sloppy.”

“You and your friends are about to begin wielding one of the most powerful weapons the world has ever seen. I wouldn’t care so much about how sloppy it is. You should be quite pleased with a 66 percent success rate. Two out of three ain’t bad. Consider the one you lost as the cost of doing business.”

The man had made a reasonable point and Abressian nodded.

“Now,” said Cahill. “All I need are a few new bombs and the address to which you want them sent. After that, history will take care of the rest.”

DENVER

So how exactly do these work?” asked Ben as he examined the devices disguised as smart phones that were arranged on his kitchen counter.

“Apparently, they can triangulate to create some sort of underground geopositioning system,” said Suffolk. “They pick up on atmospheric signals like lightning strikes, gravity fields, and geomagnetic noise.”

He looked at her. “How’s that going to tell us what’s going on beneath Denver International?”

Vicki smiled. “Think of them as highly sensitive listening devices. They have the ability to pick up cellular conversations, radio transmissions, computer activity; even electromagnetic phenomena. How much they’re able to pick up, though, depends on how deeply you can penetrate the facility beneath the airport.”

“What if there’s nothing there?” he asked. “What if it’s a big hoax after all?”

“You’re not having second thoughts, are you?”

“No. I’m just-”

She leaned over and took his earlobe between her teeth for a moment. After she was sure she had him hot and bothered, she let go and said, “Ben, this is the only way we’ll be able to discover the truth.”

Matthews smiled. “How about we continue this conversation in the bedroom?”

All this guy thought about was sex. It made Suffolk laugh to herself. Don’t they all? Even the debonair, sophisticated Peter Marcus was an animal around her. She’d never been sure if Peter’s seducing her had been part of his effort to recruit her, or if it had just happened.

The sex between them was intense, and he matched her spirit of adventure in lovemaking quite well, but more than that, he was the first man to ever appreciate her for who she truly was. And because of that, Peter Marcus had represented a turning point in her life.

He cared for her, maybe even loved her, but he didn’t try to possess her. In fact, he understood that she needed to be free. He was good to her, really good. Somehow, he had been able to break her long history of abusive relationships with men.

They had met when she was doing a study abroad program in St. Petersburg, Russia. Originally, he told her that he was a banker, but when he finally admitted what he did for a living, she wasn’t upset. In fact, she found it incredibly romantic, dangerous, and exciting.

Thanks to her mother, she possessed both Canadian and American citizenship. Even though she lived right across the border in Vancouver, she had never had any desire to visit the United States. With their imperialism and warmongering, not to mention how they treated their poor and downtrodden, who would want to? She was quite content to remain in Canada. But then Peter had recruited her and had changed all of that.

Being a spy was terribly exciting, and Peter had received special permission to train her himself. He came to Canada when he could, but mostly she traveled to the United States to see him. It was all so clandestine, and it made their time together even more electrifying.

And while she preferred to use her wits to get what she needed, she liked the fact that he didn’t mind if she slept with other men. He understood that if she used sex to get what she needed, it was only because that’s what was necessary for the assignment. She made sure, though, to stress that she took no enjoyment from it, even if it meant she was lying to him.

And with that willingness to lie to the man who had marked such a turning point in her life, she realized that she had reached another turning point and that she was slowly beginning to come more fully into her own.

Turning her mind back to Ben, she said, “I’m not going anywhere near a bedroom with you until you answer my question.”

“Okay yes,” he said, wrapping his arm around her waist. “I will plant them as deep beneath the airport as I can.”

Suffolk smiled.

“Where’d you get these things anyway?” he asked, reaching over with his other hand and picking up one of the devices.

“I told you. I know a guy at the university who tinkers with all this stuff.”

The woman was an incredible liar. Ben set the device back down on the counter. He didn’t want to look at it. He didn’t want to look at any of them. As soon as he walked those into Denver International for her, that would be it. The whole operation would be over. Pence had marked that as their endpoint, the moment at which they would present their full case to their SAC in order to arrest her.

Of course, Pence still had no idea that he was sleeping with her. That was something they were going to have to deal with. But not right now. All he wanted was to freeze this moment, so that no matter what happened, he’d never forget how she looked, how she smelled, how she felt pressed up against him.

He’d already told several lies, and there’d be many more before the case against Vicki Suffolk was closed. Instead of telling yet another one, he simply pressed his lips against hers and drew her closer.

As he did, Vicki could feel how badly he wanted her. She decided to give in. This would probably be their last time. She was almost done using him.

PRAGUE

John Vlcek had been rightly impressed with Megan Rhodes’s interrogation skills. She hadn’t even touched Pavel Skovajsa. All the intimidation, except for a couple of slaps to the back of the man’s head by Vlcek himself, had been psychological. None of it had been physical and none of it had been torture.

With that said, he doubted Radek Heger would be as easy to break, and he told her so.

Rhodes smiled. “I’ve got more ability in my little thumb than you’ll ever know.”

“Honey, I don’t know what the rest of them look like in that village back in the Amazon you come from, but trust me, there ain’t nothing little about you or your thumb,” replied Vlcek, smiling right back at her.

“Your fascination with my height aside, I’ll bet you dinner that I can get what I want out of Heger.”

“Without laying a hand on him?”

“And without you laying a hand on him either,” said Rhodes.

Vlcek didn’t believe she could do it. “You’re on,” he stated. “And I expect you to dress very nicely for our dinner because you’re going to be taking me someplace very special.”

“We’ll see, cowboy,” she said as she opened the door and headed down the stairs to the basement. “Just make sure you keep your cool no matter what happens during the interrogation, okay?”

“Anything you say, Thumbelina.”

Megan shook her head and then focused on putting her game face on. Interrogation might have been something she was extraordinarily gifted at, but it required the right mind-set. It was all about power, even if it was just the perception of power. Power perceived, she had been taught, was power achieved.