The Athena Protocol

by Shamim Sarif

  Amber uses her fingerprint to open up, and I’m right there, before the metal gate slams behind her.

  She jumps as I touch her shoulder, then takes a breath of relief as she turns and sees me. As usual, there are no pleasantries.

  “Lurking in alleyways? You must be up to no good.”

  “I was just having a coffee,” I say. “And enjoying the beauty of the day.”

  My eyes meet Amber’s, and she looks away, a half smile on her face. Then she remembers I don’t work here anymore.

  “What do you want?” she asks.

  “They gave me happy pills a month ago, and I left them behind before the last job. In my locker.”

  “You’re not depressed,” Amber responds. It is a statement; no hint of a question about it. Most of Amber’s speech is like this. Direct declarations, in a crisp, upper-class accent. She looks like a South Asian artist and she sounds like Mary Poppins.

  “How do you know?” I ask.

  “I don’t. I just wonder if it’s your personality that makes people think that.”

  It actually makes me want to smile, that assessment, but I stifle it, because Amber hasn’t moved any farther inside and I feel like she’s blocking me.

  “Jessie, I can’t let you in here,” she says. “We’ll send you your things by the end of the week.”

  I nod, a picture of understanding, and then I look away from her, like I’m suddenly emotional and need to get a grip.

  “It’s been a tough time, to be honest,” I say, keeping my voice low. “I don’t care about the clothes and stuff—but the pills? I think I might need them sooner than later.”

  When I look back at her, Amber’s eyes hold genuine concern. Which makes me feel crap about pulling this kind of emotional drama. But then, that’s what Athena has trained us to do. Lie to almost everyone, at all times, about who we really are. It just feels a bit harder with someone you like, I suppose.

  I can see Amber is wavering, and I try to push her over the line.

  “Two minutes, and I’ll be out of your hair. Forever, probably.”

  That last bit popped into my head from nowhere, but we both realize, suddenly, that it’s most likely true. And we would miss each other. She likes me, and I like her. I can’t describe it. We’re not friends—not really—but we get each other. She starts walking and indicates I should follow.

  Once we’re in the confined space of the elevator, I lean against the side wall to give Amber enough room while the space fills up with the perfume that she always wears—floral and honeyed.

  “Enjoying your newfound freedom?” she asks.

  “Adore it,” I say. “I’m taking up Pilates. And origami.”

  Amber smiles, and as the elevator doors open, I stick close behind her as she flicks on lights from an app on her phone, straightens a vase of flowers, and drops her bag onto her desk. Then she turns, at last, and looks at me properly. Her gaze is intense, and I step back a bit.

  “You do look terrible.” She frowns. “Tired.”

  “Well, you look great,” I tell her. Which is true. Amber smiles, though I can see she is trying not to.

  She turns away and picks up a record. When I say record, I mean one of those big round pieces of black vinyl that play music. Amber, the technology worshipper, is also a vinyl addict. She has an entire wall of them right here in her tech cave. What she really loves is old music, of all kinds. Now and then, she’ll listen to stuff from this century, but nothing much past 2010, which means that Kit is also one of her heroes—not that she would admit to it openly, in case it makes her seem less than professional. I watch her as she slips her chosen record out of its sleeve and places it gently onto the turntable of her prized record player. Then she actually wipes it clean with a little microfiber cloth that she keeps just for that purpose, and only then does she actually let the thing play. It’s Dinah Washington, singing “What a Difference a Day Makes.” Dinah could be right about that. Amber turns back to me.

  “What are you smirking at?” she demands.

  I wipe the expression from my face and shake my head.

  “Nothing.”

  Irritated, Amber turns and walks behind a long metal counter that separates us from the wall where the box lockers for each agent are kept. She loves that counter; she uses it as an unofficial line, beyond which we agents must not cross. She likes to stand behind it, handing out weapons and gadgetry as if serving us on a shop floor.

  She pulls a slim card key from her left jacket pocket and slips it into one of the lockers—my locker. The chamber pops open and the box slides out. Casually, as if I can hardly be bothered to look, I move behind the counter to stand next to Amber. We both look down at the contents of the box.

  Inside it is everything that I want, nestled into carefully organized compartments. Guns, passports, my stealth phone, earpiece communication devices as thin as slips of silver foil . . .

  “No antidepressants in here.” Amber’s voice interrupts my thoughts. “Funnily enough.”

  I whip my fingers clear of the edge of the box just as Amber slams it shut.

  “Good reflexes,” she says dryly.

  “Reactions,” I say. “Reflexes are involuntary . . .”

  But she turns away, removing the key card and slipping it into her pocket. I turn to her, just a little closer than I need to be.

  “Actually,” I say, as if recalling. “I think I left them in my clothes locker.”

  Amber’s eyes flick up to another door at the end of the tech cave. Beyond that door is a state-of-the-art gym, health-monitoring equipment, showers, and lockers where we keep our body armor, combat trousers, boots, and other work gear, as well as changes of our own clothes.

  Amber hesitates. Just to encourage her, I move far away from the counter and her precious lockers and throw myself into a curved white chair. I pull out my phone and start playing a game. As if I’m waiting, bored. Amber turns and touches a series of numbers on an alarm panel, deftly, and without letting me catch a glimpse of them. Great. With a yawn, I kick off my shoes, waiting while she heads toward the door to the lockers.

  “I’ll have a look,” she says. “Don’t move. I just alarmed the floor by the boxes.”

  “You have trust issues.”

  “Only with some people.”

  I smile and continue to look at my phone, listening to the suction sound of the door being released, then to Amber’s steps and the closing of the door behind her.

  The slam is still echoing in the room when I am up. Since I need to avoid the floor, I jump lightly onto Amber’s much-loved countertop in my socks, pulling off the belt from my jeans. My heart is pounding, but it feeds my system the right amount of adrenaline to get the job done. I toss the end of my belt over the exposed ventilation pipes that run across the ceiling between the counter and the lock boxes. The buckle sticks between pipes. Wrapping the other end of the belt around my wrist, I leap and grasp hold of the top of the lockers with my other hand. Not bad—though Hala, the parkour champion of the world, could doubtless do much better.

  Having got this far, I pause to listen for Amber, but it’s only been thirty seconds, and there is no sound except for my own ragged breathing. I inhale deeply to slow it, then improve my grip on the cool metal and lean forward until I’m almost upside down. In my other hand is the key card that I just picked from Amber’s jacket pocket. I reach down to insert the card into my own locker. It slips open smoothly, and I move fast, picking out comms units, the phone, two passports, and a sealed bag with some ID cards. My hand hesitates over a gun before I decide to leave it.

  “You have a ton of rubbish in here.”

  Amber’s voice issuing from the ceiling speaker right next to my ear startles the hell out of me—enough that I lose my grip on one of the passports. I see it slip toward the alarmed floor. I stretch to bat it upward, and somehow manage to grasp the edge of it before it can fall.

  Panting with the effort, I look back at the speaker. Of course, Amber would be on the
intercom. There are cameras recording my every move as well—I can even see myself in the feeds lined up on Amber’s computer screen—but by the time she thinks to wind back and check them, I’ll be long gone.

  “Try the leather jacket,” I call back, and there is a sound of acknowledgment in return, a noise that suggests Amber has found the pills. Swiftly, I pick out my last requirement, a small plastic bag containing a single blue pill, then I slam the locker shut, lever myself upward, and jump back across to the counter. I nearly slip over the other side of it in my rush to make it back before Amber does—for she must be nearly at the door by now. I retrieve the belt off the pipework and jump down from the counter just as the door handle moves. There’s no time to sit down without looking like I was just in motion, so instead I stand there, scratching my arm and pretending to watch the daft aquarium screensaver on one of the computers on the desk.

  Amber walks briskly over to me, holding out a bottle of pills in one hand.

  “You never even opened them,” she says.

  “I don’t like drugs.”

  I smile, but Amber is looking at me closely now, like she suspects something. I swallow, stressed, as she keeps staring. But then her hand comes up to touch my forehead gently. Her palm feels cool against my warm skin, and we are so close that I feel her breath soft on my face for a moment. Close enough that I can slip the key card back into her pocket unnoticed.

  “You’re sweating,” Amber says, her voice full of concern.

  I look at her. Leaving aside the teasing, the flirting, the jokes between us—Amber’s a kind person. A grain of guilt sticks in my throat for a moment.

  “I must be coming down with something,” I say. “Thanks for these.”

  I hold up the pills and slip on my jacket. To my surprise, Amber reaches out and grasps me in a hug, which is kind of awkward, because I wasn’t expecting it. I lean in to hug her back and then she pulls away, briskly.

  “Take care of yourself, Jessie,” she says.

  My guilt at what I’ve done rises so fast that I can’t even wish her the same. I just nod and give her a quick smile, and she walks me back to the elevator. As the doors close on me, the remorse seeps away and a sense of opportunity replaces it. I breathe more easily as the lift moves back down, releasing me to the morning air, and to freedom.

  5

  ONCE I’VE MADE UP MY mind to go, I move fast. Soon enough, Amber will find out that I was snooping around on the Athena servers and she’ll figure out that I’ve broken into my own lockbox. Li will literally spit feathers. It’s bad enough when I imagine it; I don’t want to be around to see it in person.

  Back at home, I gather clothes, a couple of books, and my debit cards. They pay us pretty well to do the work we do, but I need to buy some things on my way to the station and realize I have more in cryptocurrency right now than in real money. Since I’m going undercover in a place like Belgrade with no weapons, that might not be a bad thing, but I still need some regular cash. I hurry downstairs to the home office where Kit keeps her desktop Mac. She changes passwords every month, but she always has me do it for her—I suppose because she’s never had a reason not to trust me. I was always good at school, never one of those kids stealing money from their parents to try drugs or smoking or whatever. No inappropriate boyfriends who I snuck around to meet. In fact, I remember Kit sitting down and giving me a talking-to once, about how it would be okay to rebel a bit.

  I don’t think this is what she had in mind. I find the little password-generating device from her bank in a wooden box in the bottom drawer of her desk. Right before I pull it out of there, I notice something underneath it. It’s familiar, but I can’t place it. Pale-blue paper with a flowery pattern on the back. I bring it out onto the desk and unfold it.

  It’s a note that I wrote her ten years ago, right before she left on a concert tour. I’d printed a date on the top left, like they taught us to do at school. Holding my breath, I read through it. It tells her how much I would miss her when she was on tour again for twelve weeks but that I would look after the house and Jeannette and keep up my grades at school. I fold it again, but something wet falls onto it. I brush the droplet away and realize that there are tears in my eyes, and one of them has fallen onto the paper and another onto the desk. I wipe my face with my hands and pull myself together. What on earth am I getting all sappy about? The fact that I was once able to say such adoring things to my mother, or that she got notes like that but left me anyway? Carefully, I put the note back. Alongside it in the box are a whole bunch of trinkets—a ring, ornaments—things I’d bought her for birthdays or whatever. I’m surprised that Kit kept them all.

  On the screen, the online banking app is flashing at me. I get on with it and transfer a small chunk of Kit’s money into my own account. Just enough that I can buy the kind of extras I might need along the way.

  As I close the door of the house behind me, I hesitate, just for a moment. Part of me feels reckless. Heading out to Belgrade on the off chance that my hunches about the new Russian company and Paulina Pavlic mean something. And after being fired. But the irony is, if I were still part of Athena, I’d be able to keep following these leads till I had something concrete to hand off to Caitlin and Hala. But now, I’ve got no other way of doing this.

  And there’s another thing bugging me. Putting my mother in the field is not a great idea. Sure, Caitlin will be there as her pretend bodyguard, and she’s trained well enough to protect Kit from a lot. But Caitlin also has to raid Gregory’s office while Kit is onstage, which means she’ll have to replace his security camera feeds, disable alarms, and all sorts of nonsense—so guarding Kit is not going to be her main priority. What we’re hoping, I suppose, is that Gregory himself will be looking after Kit. Because he’s clearly paying her a small fortune to join the ranks of singers who perform privately for millionaires and billionaires. These stars—usually former stars, I’ve noticed—earn hundreds of thousands, or even millions for a single night’s work, and the birthday boy earns bragging rights to all his friends. I know Kit will put that money into the foundation she runs to help disadvantaged women. But no one else will know that. If word gets out, it will look like she’s sold out to a human trafficker for a nice pension because her records don’t sell anymore. I don’t know how I can help protect my mother—or her reputation—by following her to Eastern Europe, but it somehow feels better that I’m close enough to try.

  After thinking about all that, I’m fairly stressed out by the time I make it to the best electronics shop in Tottenham Court Road. On the bus there, I spend five minutes creating a fake profile on an app that finds accommodations from Belgrade locals wanting to rent their apartments. I know the street I want to stay on, and there’s only one room available. I book it online.

  Then I head into the shop and scope out the best cameras. An older man brings out a midrange SLR and I shake my head.

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  On a raised display is a camera protected by a glass case. I can feel the assistant looking me up and down. Maybe my combat pants, T-shirt, and backpack don’t help. He probably thinks I got lost looking for the pink phone cases.

  “I’d like to see that camera, please,” I say.

  “It’s two thousand pounds.”

  “Yes,” I agree.

  There’s a moment of standoff, when he stares me down and I smile back. Then he turns away and takes forever to find a supervisor to get the key to unlock a storage cupboard behind the till. Finally, he brings out the camera, presenting it to me as if it’s the Holy Grail.

  “Is this the absolute best camera you have?”

  “It came in last week. Brand-new model. And the most expensive.”

  Nice of him to point that out again.

  “I’ll take it,” I say, and I pull out a wad of cash.

  That throws him.

  “Would you like me to show you some of the features?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “What about a case?
”

  “Two thousand quid, and there’s no case?” I ask.

  Turns out he’s trying to upsell a fancy one. I refuse all the extras, pay for the camera, and get out of there. I have a train to catch.

  St Pancras station. High glass ceilings let in London’s late-morning sun at the Eurostar terminal. Lots of passengers mill around, waiting to check in, and I hope it’s the kind of place where I can blend in unnoticed.

  Among the items I managed to swipe from Amber was an EU identity card for a German called Helga Hess (really, Amber has almost no imagination in some things, like coming up with fake names) and the picture on it was mine.

  With the ID card, I figure I can glide through immigration control with less chance of being flagged than if I used one of the other passports that Amber must surely be able to track through airports. Here, at the train station, they don’t usually scan the ID into a system, they just check it.

  I make it through security with barely enough time to buy a selection of newspapers, and a sandwich for later. Then I find my seat and settle in for the journey—it’s a little over two hours to Paris.

  I’m jolted awake as we pull into the Gare du Nord. I have less than half an hour to get over to Gare de l’Est, but it’s only one stop, so I opt to walk rather than wait for another train. There’s a light summer rain falling onto the streets of Paris, and two things glow out at me as I walk by the beautiful buildings. One is a McDonald’s. The other is a small bakery. Ducking in there, I pick up a ham-and-cheese croissant (definitely not on any diet sheet from Li) and actually make it onto the train for Munich with time to spare. Helga Hess, my ID alter ego, is from Munich, so I try to feel good about heading home, even though I’ve never actually set foot in the city. I’ll barely have time to down a bratwurst before taking the sleeper train to Budapest, and then making the final leg south, at last, to Belgrade.