The Athena Protocol

by Shamim Sarif

  I try to look young and clueless and friendly. I don’t have to act the first two. But it’s not having much impact.

  “I can pay you for your time,” I try.

  That seems to do the trick. Katarina motions me inside.

  I follow her down the thin hallway, past a living room where the bearlike man slumps in an armchair in front of a TV playing cartoons. We veer left and into Katarina’s room. The wallpaper is striped maroon and gold and the bedcovers, so recently thrown back, are also maroon, with satin edging. In one corner there’s a low armchair, and in another, a floor lamp casts a warm pool of light. Katarina sits down tiredly on the bed. I perch on the chair and try to think of a conversational way in.

  “Your mother gave me your address,” I say.

  “Why?” Katarina asks crisply.

  So much for a chat about the parents, then.

  “I told her I had work for you.”

  “Do you?”

  “No,” I reply. “But I will pay you for your time.”

  This makes Katarina laugh, and her laugh dissolves into a cough that sounds like the residue of a thousand cheap cigarettes. I’m feeling out of my depth here. I can’t gauge her at all. I decide to plow on and see what happens. I take out two fifty-pound notes and reach across to leave them on the table beside the bed.

  “You want only to talk?” says Katarina.

  “Yes, please.”

  “Then this money is too much.”

  I appreciate the honesty, but I leave the cash where it is.

  “Do you know a company called Lavit?” I start.

  Katarina shakes her head, and I believe her.

  “You’re listed as a director of the company.”

  Katarina shifts slightly. “I never hear of it,” she says.

  “Have you heard of Gregory Pavlic?” I ask.

  She shrugs the question off, but this time I know she’s lying. She picks up a pack of cigarettes and takes one out. She offers me one, and I refuse. I watch her light up and drag on it and I think about her father dying of emphysema in front of a TV game show. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s smoking. You stink, your clothes reek, your mouth tastes like an ashtray, and then you die an early and painful death. Awesome marketing from tobacco companies though; you have to give them their due.

  “You know Gregory Pavlic,” I say.

  Katarina sighs. “You’re stupid,” she tells me. “Pavlic will kill you if you write about him.”

  “I’m not a journalist.”

  She shrugs again.

  “I don’t know Pavlic, and I don’t want to know him,” she says, and she turns her head away from me.

  I’m beginning to get ticked off. “Everybody here knows him,” I say.

  Katarina sighs again and looks at her watch. “His guys are always around,” she offers.

  “Do they give you any trouble?”

  “I’m not worth it for them. There are many girls who are young and stupid enough to buy their stories.”

  “What stories?” I ask.

  “The usual. They sell dreams. Money, champagne, rich guys in fancy nightclubs . . .”

  As she talks, Katarina uses the nail of her right thumb to chip away at the black varnish on her left hand. It seems like a losing battle to me, but it’s probably a nervous habit.

  “And they fall for that?”

  Katarina looks at me sharply. For the first time, her eyes take me in properly, my clothes, my shoes. Hardly high-end but not cheap either.

  “When you’re fifteen,” she says, “with no job, and a boyfriend who beats you, you fall for anything.”

  That shuts me up. Katarina looks down and continues picking at her nail polish until tiny black splinters fall onto the sheets. I’m not sure what to do next except try hinting at the half-formed theory that’s been bugging me since I found that website with the designer babies on it.

  “Pavlic is doing something new,” I say. Just from the way she glances up, I feel like I’m on to something. I wait, because Peggy once told me that, given a silence, most people will fill it up. But Katarina apparently hasn’t read that page in Peggy’s Ivy League etiquette manual. She just gives me a good, long stare, then carries on tormenting her nails.

  “He’s harvesting eggs from these girls, isn’t he?”

  She seems almost relieved at that. Why would she be relieved to hear that Gregory is taking eggs from these women?

  “They like it better,” she says. “No sex work. Just take fertility drugs and give the eggs.”

  “What does he do with the eggs?”

  Katarina looks up. “How do I know? Probably sells them.”

  “To Russia?”

  Katarina’s eyes catch mine. But she says nothing.

  “The company you are a director of is Russian, and it has something to do with the Victory Clinic near Moscow.”

  Katarina stands up, stubs out her cigarette, and hands me back the cash I left her. I refuse to take it. I stand up too, planting myself in the room. What’s she going to do, throw me out? Then I remember the enormous guy in the other room. I change tack.

  “Please, Katarina,” I say. “A lot of money is going through this company suddenly. What for?”

  I am a little taller than her, and stronger, but I try not to intimidate her.

  “Do you work for Pavlic?” I ask.

  She sticks to a stubborn silence.

  “Katarina, there are a lot of girls in trouble. You can help them. And, whatever is going on, when it comes out, you’ll be the one in jail. It’s your name on that company.”

  More silence. But I can feel her caving. Whether from the goodness of her heart, or the idea of rotting in a Serbian prison, I don’t know and don’t care.

  “Pavlic let me go,” she says. “He liked me. First, I was one of those girls. In the nightclubs. I made friends with big politician. Married guy. For Gregory to take pictures of us together. And I told him what this politician told me. It helped Gregory. So he helped me. He paid for my father’s hospital treatment. And he told me he will not use me anymore, only my name. For a business.”

  “So why are you still working here?” I ask. I’m not trying to offend her, but the idea of this young, fragile girl in this room with a succession of customers stresses me out.

  “I am good at this job,” she says with a short laugh.

  I feel nauseous, suddenly, and oppressed. I look at the window while I think. I can’t figure out why she’s told me all this. Beyond the net curtain, a thin branch curls past, touching the glass, and a little brown bird lands on it. The living creature feels out of place here, where everything else feels dead. I turn to Katarina again. She leans her head back against the wall and adjusts her robe back over her thigh.

  “So the new business in Russia is selling eggs to infertile couples?”

  “I don’t know what Pavlic is doing.” Her voice rises, and it sounds like panic. “But he is the devil. Trafficking is not enough. Eggs, not enough. He wants more.”

  “Like what?”

  But she just stands up and opens the bedroom door.

  “You want some service?” she asks, matter-of-fact. “You paid a lot.”

  That takes me by surprise. “No, thanks,” I reply, polite.

  I come out to the hallway. Katarina’s voice calls out an instruction in Serbian. I assume she’s asking meathead to escort me out, but instead he lumbers into Katarina’s room. He is gone for maybe twenty seconds before he emerges and moves down the hallway to where I stand. He hands me a business card. A thin, dog-eared scrap with an outline of a naked woman on it, and a phone number.

  I step out into the concrete stairwell, confused and a bit depressed by the whole incident. As I reach the bottom of the steps, I’m relieved that the old lady with the daisy scarf and the broom has gone. I look down at Katarina’s card and as I turn it, I see black ink scrawled across the back. Quickly, I read. She’s written down an address, here in Belgrade, along with a time—3:00 a.m. I look b
ack up at the dingy windows, and they stare back at me blankly. I tuck the card into my pocket and walk away as fast as I can.

  10

  THE FIRST THING I DO when I’m back in the apartment is locate the address that Katarina scrawled down. It’s not all that far from where she lives, just a set of high-rise apartment blocks. So, what is happening there in the early hours of tomorrow?

  Then I settle in to try and dig up something more on this Victory Clinic in Moscow. I get as far as page nineteen of an internet search. That’s persistence for you, but sometimes it pays off. There’s a blog sitting there, in Chinese, with a JPEG attachment. I can’t make much sense of the blog, even with a web translator, but the attachment is a photo of part of an article (in English) about the Victory, and, even though one side of the article is missing, it’s pretty clear that it’s a place where wealthy Chinese and Russians go for fertility treatments, surrogacy, and designing their perfect babies—which are mostly boys, it seems. Clearly the article has been suppressed. But then, Victory Clinic can probably afford to hire a hundred Russian hackers to bury anything they think is bad press.

  In any event, what that piece tells me is that my guess was probably a good one. That Gregory most likely imprisons these girls in the abandoned hospital, pumps them with drugs and harvests their eggs, sending a constant supply to Moscow. That also fits what I saw on Hala’s screen from the drone footage. And yet . . . Katarina’s words come back to me—that eggs were not enough for Gregory. What did she mean?

  My little apartment feels dark and drab suddenly. I divert myself by connecting back in to Athena chatter. Now that Gregory’s party is happening, the final piece of the plan is being put into place—the plan to break into Gregory’s office and retrieve the drive where he keeps the data that he uses for blackmailing police and politicians. I tune in and listen. Hearing Caitlin’s slow drawl makes me smile as she chats to Amber. The truth is, I miss Caitlin and Amber, and even Hala’s pessimism. It’s like having a family. Was like having a family.

  “She’s had two rehearsals and she sounds great,” Caitlin says, obviously discussing Kit.

  “Is she nervous?” Amber asks.

  “Jumpy as a cat before a thunderstorm.”

  One day, I plan to spend some time in Kentucky and see if people really do talk like that, or if Caitlin enjoys playing it up.

  “How about you?” Amber asks.

  “Got everything I need.”

  “Make sure you plant that dot on the camera feed first,” Amber instructs. She loves laying down the law.

  “Check.”

  “And careful how you get his fingerprint. Without a full one, you can’t access his office.”

  Caitlin is supposed to pick up Gregory’s print off a glass or whatever and re-create it using a tiny little 3D printer and skin solution, so she ends up with a print to place over her own finger. We’ve tested the tech before but never used it in the field. Li is super proud of it, the way it reconstitutes skin. It sounds disgusting, and it is, but it’s quite incredible how it works.

  “I hear you,” says Caitlin.

  “Good.”

  Another voice chimes in.

  “And you’re sure Aleks is all set?” That’s Li, of course. If she had a coat of arms, it would be inscribed with the words Trust No One. And Peggy answers her. So it’s a full-on Athena conference call, minus Kit, who’s probably stressing about her performance. Impossible to tell if Hala’s on or off the call, because she so rarely speaks unless expressly asked a question.

  “Aleks needs a little time to build the case against Pavlic, but he’s keen on it,” says Peggy.

  “And where does he think this evidence is coming from?”

  “He thinks I have contacts in the CIA who want to help stabilize Serbia,” Peggy replies. “He suspects nothing more.”

  Now Li starts in on Amber, demanding to know why she hasn’t tracked me down yet.

  “The dot Hala put on her led to a dumpster,” says Amber. I smile. Good thing I threw my jacket away then. But I can hear the tension in her voice. Li is going nuts that she has a building crammed full of cutting-edge technology and she can’t find me.

  “She’s using a dark web browser—or it’s possible she’s offline completely,” Amber is telling Li, about me. “Sooner or later she’ll use a debit card, or her VPN will drop, and I’ll find her.”

  Li makes unhappy noises, but Caitlin cuts in.

  “Listen,” Caitlin says. “I gotta go. It’s two hours till showtime, and I’ve gotta get into my bodyguard suit.”

  “Okay, break a leg,” Peggy says. “Hala will be outside in an unmarked van as backup for Amber when she replaces the camera feeds, and in case there’s any need for an extraction. We’re a woman down on this mission. I wish we weren’t, but just be extra careful, okay?”

  “You bet.”

  The call ends, and I sit back. A woman down means me, of course. And they won’t get Hala in to help tonight, because if something goes wrong, they want her able to lend a hand without being trapped inside Gregory’s four walls. Somehow I feel better that they mentioned me. And, also, that I will be there this evening, even though they aren’t expecting it.

  A few, final streaks of sunlight smear over the late-evening sky, and in the gathering darkness, the light from hundreds of candles in Gregory Pavlic’s garden dance and glimmer. I say “garden” but, really, what I see here is more like one of the major London parks. Seriously, I’ll bet the grounds of Buckingham Palace are smaller. But then, if you live in Serbia, maybe you can buy half the country for what Gregory makes.

  I get out of the passenger side of Paulina’s Mercedes and wait while she hands her keys to one of several valet parking attendants who Gregory seems to have hired for the night. Unless he keeps them on staff every day. As we step forward, a black-suited security guy blocks me, guides me through a metal detector, and asks me to hand in my phone. Paulina looks embarrassed.

  “Kit Love doesn’t want anyone filming her.”

  No kidding. That wouldn’t get a deluge of likes on social media. I pass my phone across, but I’m not happy about it.

  It’s the stealth phone that I swiped from Amber’s locker. A normal phone has a single, static IMEI number that identifies it no matter if you change the number. But this one can change its IMEI and does so at the slightest sign of intrusion, even if you just download any old app. It’s virtually untraceable, and I hate to let it go. But I don’t see much option. The phone is tagged, placed into a secure mini locker, to which I choose the combination, and taken over to a guarded, portable cabin that seems to be there only for that purpose.

  Once that’s over, I take a good look around. Several hundred guests, dressed mainly in black tie and evening dresses, are already mingling on immaculate lawns that look like they’ve been trimmed with nail scissors. I glance dubiously at my own outfit. Slim black pants and a black top suited for an evening out, but not exactly in the same league as the other women here. Paulina, who’s in jeans and a blazer, seems to read my thoughts.

  “You look great, Jessie,” she says kindly. “But I need to change. Come up with me?”

  I follow her up to the house, more than interested to see how she lives. To one side, an Olympic-size swimming pool is lit from inside, like a magical aquarium. Blue, blue water and scarcely a ripple. Maybe I’d have liked it better if Gregory’s home was dark and forbidding, but the truth is, with the candles and strings of fairy lights on every tree, the place looks enchanted.

  To the right, a long stage has been set up for Kit with a huge white canopy cresting over it like a wave. On each side of the stage are massive posters of my mother, caught in midperformance. These are famous pictures of her, photoshopped and highlighted till they reek of glamour and stardom. My glance drops away, behind the stage, where grimy generator trucks idle, powering a bewildering number of lights and speakers.

  “What do you think?” Paulina asks.

  “Your home is beautiful.”


  She leads me along a path that curves away from the guests and toward the house, which is like a mini castle complete with a couple of turrets. The gray stone walls are broken up by long windowpanes that are lit up from within.

  “What does your father do again?” I ask, as if I am simply awed by the luxury and size of the party. Paulina answers without hesitation.

  “He has his own businesses. Clubs, restaurants, things like that.”

  She sounds so honest, but she can’t really believe that to be true. She feels my gaze on her and glances sideways at me with a soft smile.

  “He must be very clever,” I say.

  “He is, but he also likes showing off to his friends.”

  “That he’s wealthy?”

  “And that he can afford to buy Kit Love for the night.” Paulina smiles. I grin back, a big smile to hide the stab of horror that just hit me at those words.

  “She just has to sing for him, right?” I ask. I’m a bit panicked, to be honest.

  Paulina pauses to look at me, and her blue eyes are laughing.

  “Of course. But he’s invited all of Belgrade society. And everyone watches everyone else.”

  “Like a fishbowl?” I ask, recovering my sense of humor, but Paulina shakes her head and leans in to me, close enough that I can feel her breath on my ear when she whispers into it.

  “A shark tank.”

  She moves ahead. I like Paulina; I like her wit. We’re at the back door of the house now, where a massive ice sculpture shaped like a mermaid is being carried out into the garden. Paulina waits for it to pass before leading me inside, through a prep kitchen buzzing with caterers and chefs, and up a back staircase.

  Glancing across to where the main body of the house is visible through a series of double doors, I wonder where Kit and Caitlin are. The concert is due to start in less than forty minutes, and they will be working to get that fingerprint from Gregory and disable his office security. Caitlin can handle that okay, but, really, I’m concerned about Kit. She hasn’t given a concert in a few years, except for a short charity gig with several other bands in Hyde Park two summers ago. She’s always lived off her nerves as a performer, which was one of the excuses she had for constantly hydrating herself with vodka on tour. Now that she’s sober, I wonder how she’ll cope.