The Athena Protocol

by Shamim Sarif

  And someone arrives at the door. One of her waiters, I think. My heart is already pounding so hard that I’m startled by the sight of another person standing there. But Paulina is unfazed. Smoothly, without any stiffness or sense of being caught in a moment, she turns and walks over to the door. She has a whole exchange with the guy—laughing, joking—and he comes in and goes to the back to start work. Meanwhile, I look up at the TV screen, blinking, trying to recover, trying to regain my balance.

  Aleks Yuchic is on the screen. It’s not a live broadcast, clearly, but a recent report. Shots of Aleks passionately addressing an adoring crowd, intercut with images of men being arrested and police cars outside a run-down address.

  Paulina comes back to the table.

  “I didn’t realize the time,” she says apologetically. “Sorry we were interrupted.”

  As I think about what we were doing when we were interrupted, I feel embarrassed, and I look up at the TV again as a way to break the spell. Paulina follows my glance to the screen.

  “Who’s this guy?” I ask, trying to make conversation, struggling to find a space in my head where I can think more clearly.

  “Yuchic?” she says. “He’s a fraud.”

  “Looks like he’s cleaning up Belgrade,” I say.

  Paulina gives a short laugh. “Are you kidding?”

  I look at her, keeping my tone as relaxed as possible, but my heart has plunged to my shoes.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Yuchic cares about only one thing.”

  “What?” Panic rises.

  “Money. The guys he arrests are the ones who won’t pay him enough. He’s the worst kind. Pretending to care about corruption.”

  Paulina gets up again and walks behind the counter, because now her mobile phone is ringing inside her bag. I follow her because she can’t be right about Aleks, but I need to make sure.

  “How do you know?”

  “He’s always trying to squeeze my father for money in his nightclubs,” she says, matter-of-fact. “And he always gets paid in crypto currency. One of the smaller coins—Alexa.” She rummages in her bag for the phone. “I remember the name because it’s so close to his name.”

  I know about Alexa. It’s used a lot on the dark web. Never has to show up in the usual online crypto “wallets,” and is only usable with a printed key. Even PDF keys self-destruct after a set time. Could I have missed something when trawling Aleks’s computer? I remember finding crypto trades, but nothing huge, and I thought he was just speculating . . . Please, Jessie—don’t have messed this up. Fear sticks in a congealed lump in the base of my stomach, as I think about Peggy. Please don’t let Peggy be in trouble.

  Meanwhile, Paulina has answered her phone, and something is clearly wrong. She speaks very quickly in Serbian. The agitated voice at the other end undoubtedly belongs to Gregory.

  While she speaks, I take out my mobile and text Peggy.

  Careful with Aleks. Danger. J

  I add my initial to the end because the stealth phone won’t show up as mine. I don’t know what to think, or what danger I expect her to actually be in. But this whole thing has a bad feel to it. When I think about Aleks and Peggy having dinner together the other night, the way she trusts him . . .

  Maybe Paulina is wrong—maybe Gregory’s spun her a line about how terrible Aleks is.

  But I need to find a way to leave so I can look into this. Luckily for me, it looks as if Paulina’s heading out in a hurry. She hangs up the phone, switches off the TV, and puts her bag over her shoulder. Her face is filled with stress.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “My father found something missing in his office,” she says. “I need to go back to the house.”

  “What’s missing? Money?” I say. Like I have no idea.

  She shakes her head. And then she stops in her tracks. “I don’t want to leave you,” she says.

  I glance at my phone, where there has been no response from Peggy to my text. I’m itching to get out of there.

  We both head to the door.

  “Let’s meet later?” I say. “Back here?”

  She nods eagerly, touching my hand with her own, briefly. I watch her get into her car, then I head for my motorcycle. On the way, I text Peggy again, then call her, but there’s no answer. As I sit astride the bike, I try Amber.

  “I was just going home to sleep,” she answers. “Is it urgent?”

  “I need Aleks’s address.”

  “I’m not authorized to give you anything—”

  “Peggy’s in danger.”

  “Then I’ll alert Caitlin. . . .”

  “Amber, there’s no time.” Hesitation. I try again. “Will you forgive yourself if something happens?”

  I hear her tapping a keyboard.

  “Where are you?”

  “Paulina’s gallery.”

  “Link me to the GPS on your other phone and head north,” she says. “I’ll get you there.”

  18

  WHY IS IT THAT IN such a small city, the one route I want to take is now thick with commuter traffic? I weave, scrape, and curse my way in between cars as best I can, but I’m heading to a bottleneck where they are all crammed tightly together. Desperate, I look to the pavement. It’s more or less clear, if you don’t count a couple of outdoor café tables. Since Kit’s always telling me that obstacles are just there to be overcome, I take her advice and swerve off the road and onto the sidewalk, alarming a couple of passersby, and I roar through, past the traffic. Horns blare at my back, and irate drivers curse at me out their windows, but I use the stress to spur me on. Once I’m past the traffic jam, Amber has me zooming along much quieter residential streets.

  “Don’t kill yourself in the process,” she says into my phone’s bluetooth earbud.

  I don’t answer.

  “You can’t help Peggy if you’re dead.”

  Boy, she doesn’t let up.

  “Thanks, I hadn’t thought of that.”

  She guides me to turn right at the next junction, and then I’m on the road where Aleks lives. I can see the gates from where I am, in front of which a couple of armed soldiers stand, protecting the so-called hero of anti-corruption.

  I swerve into the road and find myself head-on with a speeding ambulance, bearing down on me. I lean and skid to the right, low to the ground, swerving so sharply that I come off the bike—but I make it out of the way, just. I pick myself up, then the bike. Aleks’s front gates are wide-open. The ambulance came from there. The top lights are flashing, and the siren begins to wail as it disappears up the road. Through the gates I can see Aleks standing in the driveway. A woman in a housekeeper’s uniform is beside him, wringing her hands. I feel my stomach drop. Because if he’s out there watching, it has to be Peggy in the ambulance. Aleks looks up and sees me—a strange girl in a helmet, on a motorcycle, in the road outside his house. I hesitate for a second as the gates start to close. Then I turn around and follow the ambulance.

  It takes six agonizingly long minutes to arrive at the hospital emergency room, and I drop the bike right behind the ambulance and run alongside as the paramedics push the gurney, holding Peggy, through the corridor.

  Someone talks to me in Serbian, trying to get me to drop back, but I’m sticking to my place, and short of stopping the gurney, there’s not much they can do about it until they lift Peggy onto a bed and pull curtains around her. Then the doctor on duty starts listening to Peggy’s chest and looks up at me. She says something in Serbian and I ask her if she speaks English.

  “Do you know her?” she asks.

  “Yes.”

  “You need to give us space to work.”

  I nod again. My hand is holding Peggy’s, but there is no grip or flicker of movement under my touch. Her eyes are closed, and her breathing is so light and shallow that I can hardly see it.

  “Please,” the doctor says, and she’s kind about it. I know she’s right. Reluctantly, I let Peggy’s hand go and step back as more medics come
in. With one more sweep of a green curtain, she is lost to my sight.

  The others have arrived, and we are waiting in the hospital chapel because Kit was too distraught to stay in the antiseptic-smelling corridor while sick people were wheeled back and forth.

  The downside is that here in the chapel, the smell of incense is overpowering, and the wooden painted eyes on a statue of a weeping Virgin Mary are staring at me. If it’s supposed to inspire comfort and peace, it’s really not working that well.

  “Jess, please don’t.”

  Sitting on the chair next to me, Kit turns and puts a hand over my own. Her eyes are teary. My fingers have been drumming up and down, tapping out a nervous pattern. But I feel my mother’s hand is not just there to stop me from moving. It’s comforting me, and maybe looking for comfort too. I guess we both need something to hang on to while we wait for news of Peggy. The first diagnosis is sketchy—they’re checking for a stroke—because Peggy is alive, barely, but not responsive.

  On the row of chairs in front of me Caitlin sits alone, her strong frame slumped, head down. I lean forward and put out a hand to grasp one of her shoulders, and she turns her head a little to acknowledge, but she doesn’t look at me.

  The chapel door opens, and Hala stands there, outlined in the harsh light from the hospital corridor. She beckons, and the three of us rise like one body and follow her outside.

  “The doctor’s back,” she says, walking ahead of us.

  The specialist is a tall, slim man with thick hair streaked with silver. He’s in green scrubs and he doesn’t look that different from the doctor who tried to examine me in Gregory’s nightmare hospital. I wonder if he’ll ever get an offer to work there, and what he’d do if he did.

  “Who is the next of kin?” he asks.

  “We all are,” says Kit, with authority.

  The doctor hesitates as he looks us over. We must look like a motley bunch. One dark-haired Brit, one blond Southerner, an Arab, and a music star. None of which fits remotely well with Peggy’s African American heritage. I can see that he recognizes Kit, dimly, even if he can’t place her right now. As for Kit, she’s probably thinking it’s better not to mention that Peggy has two grown children in the States—not if we want to get any answers. She starts firing questions, before the doctor can think up any to ask us. And, no match for Kit’s crossed arms and attitude, he starts talking.

  “She’s not showing the usual symptoms of a stroke,” he says. “Her heart results are weak but not consistent with a heart attack.”

  “Could she have been attacked?” I ask.

  He stares at me, uncomprehendingly.

  “Could she have been given something?” Kit clarifies.

  “Blood tests are due back very soon.”

  “How soon?” snaps Hala.

  The doctor’s taken aback by all of us on him like a ton of bricks.

  “In twenty minutes, maybe,” he says. “For now, we’re keeping her comfortable. She’s in a private room, as you asked.”

  He ushers us to the right, to a smaller corridor that leads into a room with a glass door. Through it, we can see Peggy lying there unconscious. She’s so imposing in real life, but she looks tiny on that awful, metal-framed bed. The sight makes me want to cry, but I do my best to hold it together. From the side of my eye I see Kit’s hand go to her mouth. I move inside quickly and find a seat next to Peggy’s bed. Caitlin sits beside me. Kit and Hala go around the other side.

  There’s a choking sound next to me, and I glance sideways. Maybe it’s the sight of Peggy laid out like a corpse right here in front of us, but Caitlin has lost it; she can’t stop crying. One of my hands is on Peggy’s, which is warm but lifeless, and the other goes to Caitlin, just rubbing the top of her back, soothing her as best I can. She’s been closer to Peggy than any of us. Peggy is like the mother Caitlin never had. Warm, caring, always a kind word and a smile. And Caitlin is as loyal to Peggy as Amber is to Li. And like Amber, when she was asked to join Athena and sworn to secrecy for the rest of her life, she didn’t hesitate.

  We sit there, helpless, listening to the steady bleep of the machine that’s monitoring Peggy’s vital signs. Caitlin calms down a bit, and I look across the bed at Kit.

  “Aleks has something to do with this,” I say. I swallow, because it’s hard for me to put into words my growing fear that I messed up somewhere in the preparation for this mission. I was the lead on researching Aleks. If I missed something, it’s my fault that Peggy is lying here, barely alive.

  Downcast, I start to explain, but Kit puts a finger to her lips for me to stop talking. On cue, Hala reaches into her compact backpack, pulling out what looks like a normal USB stick, but inside, there’s a switch that she flicks on. It’s an audio blocker that takes the feed from any listening device and turns it into white noise. It’s not likely the hospital is bugged, but we’re always aware that our cell phones are possible targets for eavesdropping through an app or virus.

  Once Hala nods that it’s safe, Kit turns to me.

  “Why are you saying that about Aleks?”

  “Paulina said he’s dirty. And why isn’t he here, worried about her?”

  Hala shoots me a look. “We’re believing Gregory’s daughter now?”

  I ignore the sarcasm and relay what Paulina told me. Kit gives me a searching look.

  “Jess, she might be telling the truth, but we need more . . .”

  I don’t answer. Because the audio blocker made me think of phones and now I’m busy looking for Peggy’s bag. It’s in a little alcove at the base of her bed.

  “What are you doing?” Kit asks.

  “I want to know if Peggy got my texts.”

  Peggy’s phone is in the bottom of her bag, neatly placed on top of a makeup bag, wet wipes, and pens. It’s her “social” phone, the one she uses for daily life. She wouldn’t have brought her stealth phone to a meeting with Aleks. Like Li and Kit, she only uses that rarely to discuss Athena business if our private network isn’t usable for some reason. On the home screen is a recording app, flashing that the maximum limit has been reached. That’s odd. On instinct, I rewind it back and press play. Sounds of low voices in Serbian, shuffling, movement—and an ambulance siren. This must have been as they were bringing her here to the hospital. I run it back farther and get Aleks, his voice sounding bored and monotone.

  “Monaco, maybe. Somewhere that’s not here.”

  Then a Spanish accent. “Mr. Yuchic, what happened?”

  Aleks’s voice changes completely.

  “Elena! I thought you were at church! Thank God you’re here. Mrs. Delaney collapsed.”

  Then Elena on the phone, calling the ambulance, panicked.

  I pause the recording, and we all exchange breathless glances while I run it back a minute earlier than before, right to the beginning. This part is painful to listen to. Peggy is clearly finding it hard to breathe. She must have turned this on when she started to feel bad.

  Aleks: “You don’t feel well?”

  Peggy: “What was in this?”

  No answer. A sound, maybe Peggy collapsing. Breathing hard.

  Peggy: “Why?”

  Aleks: “My son needs cancer treatment, Peggy. Do you know what that costs at the Mayo? With this drive, I can blackmail Gregory and partner with him for a while. Then retire. Switzerland, Monaco, maybe. Somewhere that’s not here.”

  We’re back to the same point, and I switch it off. It’s just too terrible to listen to Peggy suffering in the background. I can feel the others looking at each other, stunned. But I can’t meet anyone’s eyes. I feel terrible. Aleks’s son is supposedly enrolled at university in Rochester, Minnesota. Which is exactly where the Mayo Clinic is—widely considered to be one of the best in the world for cancer treatment. How did I fail to find any link?

  “We have to find out what he gave her.”

  Caitlin’s voice is hoarse, and her face is taut and white. Instinctively, I know it shouldn’t be her who goes to find Aleks. Hala fee
ls that too, because she nods to me and gets up. Kit comes around to Caitlin and makes her sit down.

  “You and I will stay here with Peggy,” she says to her. “In case she wakes up.”

  Caitlin hesitates, enough to let Hala and me get out of the room together. Kit follows us into the corridor.

  “What’s the plan?” she asks us.

  “Make him talk.”

  “Then kill him,” says Hala.

  “Works for me,” I tell her.

  “Stop it!” says Kit. She glares at both of us ferociously. “Enough with the stupid bravado! You have to stop acting like kids running around with guns and think,” she hisses.

  We shut up and watch her and wait.

  “Aleks is still our best hope of getting those girls out of Gregory’s hospital alive,” she says.

  “He’s going to work with Gregory . . . ,” I start, but I pipe down under Kit’s stare.

  “And you’re going to make sure he doesn’t,” she says.

  19

  I TAKE HALA ON THE back of the motorbike with me. It’s by far the fastest way to Aleks’s home, and I only hope he’s still there and not off opening a new Swiss bank account or buying a first-class flight to some tax haven. We have to make a quick stop at the Athena house to pick up some things, giving me plenty of time to go over this whole Aleks thing in my head.

  Just the fact that his son was studying in the States was a red flag, because American colleges cost such a fortune. But Aleks had some savings, and a couple of investments that gave him regular dividends, so it passed through the Athena net. My net. But private cancer treatment would be a whole other level of cost. Potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars, and who knows for how long? I’m beyond angry with myself for not finding this information about his son’s health. It’s a huge miss. I feel guilty and, to be honest, it feels like I’ve taken Peggy to the brink of death as much as Aleks has.

  The thought makes me push the motorbike to go even faster. Hala responds by wrapping her arms more tightly around my waist, leaning into curves with me. In her jacket she has tucked the drugged dart pistol that she threatened me with in the woods the other night. And in mine, I have a small syringe.