The Athena Protocol

by Shamim Sarif

  “Jessie, you got our last mission plastered all over the news. And then you went off by yourself . . . you could have been killed. So easily. And now Peggy is . . .” She can’t say the word. Dying. “It’s enough,” Kit adds decisively. “It has to end here.”

  I look away from Kit, shell-shocked. Slowly, I step forward, and touch my lips to Peggy’s forehead. Suddenly, I feel I can’t be there anymore, packed into this oppressive room, looking at Peggy like she’s an exhibit. Waiting for her to die. The walls are closing in on me. I walk out, on autopilot, and get into the lift. It smells like it always does, of disinfectant and fried food. I don’t know where to go, so I head down to the cafeteria, where they are laying out some plastic-wrapped ham sandwiches that look like the most miserable meal on earth. I buy a watery coffee and a chocolate bar. But I don’t touch either of them. Instead, I leave them on one of the Formica tables by the window.

  Outside, the trees are shifting in a breath of wind, a bird takes off from a branch, a young couple walks by on the street, holding hands. Nothing changes. We have our dramas and stresses, and whether Peggy lives or dies, the world just goes on the same way. It feels unfair and so random. That everything Peggy did, every person whose day she made better with her kindness, every girl she rescued from a life of imprisonment—it will all be forgotten when she’s not here anymore, and everything will carry on exactly like it did before.

  Except that Athena won’t be there to help anyone or anything. I leave the depressing cafeteria and go out into the street and start walking, fast. It makes me furious, but not with some higher power—with Gregory, for his disgusting “business”—and also with Aleks. I can’t help but feel he’s getting off too lightly. Even if he’s able to throw Gregory into jail, where’s the justice for Peggy in all of this? That’s who Athena is—the goddess of justice. But Athena, our organization, is dying. And, the truth is, I’m terrified that Peggy is dying too.

  I keep moving. The sky is overcast and gloomy. No longer does all the colorful graffiti look cool and exciting; now it just makes the city feel dirty and out of control. I walk past a wall spray-painted with taglines and pictures of snarling dogs and turn into the street that has started to feel disturbingly like home.

  Up in my own apartment, there’s a sour stench coming from the kitchen. I flick on the TV and go to investigate. A carton of milk has gone off, left out on the counter. I must have forgotten to put it away last night when I made tea. I get rid of it and boil the kettle. I don’t even want tea, but maybe it’s force of habit. Growing up in England, that’s what you do in times of stress. Put the kettle on. In the background an excited commentary spews from the TV, none of which I can follow until I hear the word Pavlic.

  Quickly, I walk back into the living room, and there it is on the screen—the hellish hospital. The pictures seem to be playing live, and behind the reporter talking into the camera I can see a news broadcast van, several police cars, and a couple of SWAT trucks. At least Aleks has had the presence of mind to call in the media to make sure we can see what he’s doing. I perch on the edge of the bed to watch more. Eventually, a stream of men, Gregory’s men, are marched out in a long column, hands behind their heads, and thrust into the police vans.

  With much excited commentary from the reporter, the broadcast switches locations, changing over to a view of a private estate taken from a helicopter. From the swimming pool and those turrets, I immediately recognize Gregory’s home. Again, the place is swarming with police. The reporter is going ballistic, almost shouting, a fast stream of Serbian that I can’t catch anything of. But then a picture of Gregory Pavlic comes up on the screen with a caption underneath that reads:

  Pavlic je ubijen

  I sit up straighter. There is a cut to some audio, police radio back and forth. All of this plays over the live pictures of Gregory’s home, so I’m assuming it’s audio from the raid. And then gunfire cracks into the audio. Voices are shouting, more gunfire pops. Then quiet. I tap je ubijen into my phone translator—it means Pavlic has been killed.

  What the hell is going on? And if Gregory is really dead, where is Paulina? Could she have been caught in this cross fire? What if she’s shot? I turn up the TV, listening for any mention of her name, but there’s nothing that I can make out. Stressed, I run to the window, hoping to see Paulina’s car down there on the road outside the gallery—but the street is empty.

  This wasn’t the deal we made with Aleks. But then, maybe Gregory and his crew were never going down without a fight, or maybe Aleks provoked it knowing that it would be safer to have Gregory finished off than plotting his way out of prison. Gregory’s death can only be a relief to his victims and their families, but he was still Paulina’s father, and she must be devastated.

  On the TV, the live picture cuts out to be replaced with a portrait of Gregory Pavlic in sunglasses on one side of the screen and Aleks Yuchic on the other, positioned like prizefighters pitted against each other. The excitement over what Aleks has achieved by taking down Pavlic is insane. Probably no one believed in a million years that someone like Gregory could actually be stopped. There’s another cut to the parliament building where, it seems, Aleks will hold a press conference late this afternoon.

  The report goes back to the abandoned hospital, where the girls I was imprisoned with are now being taken out of the building and helped into buses. Their faces are blurred out by the news station, so I can’t tell if Dasha is among them. I let the TV run on in the background and go to the window to see if there’s any movement in the gallery, but there’s still nothing. Paulina must have been at home when they came for her father, and she would be completely freaked out right about now. I hope to God she didn’t get hurt—or worse—trying to protect him.

  I turn away from the window. On the screen, the news piece moves back to the studio, and in the background, behind the newscaster, a series of clips of Aleks Yuchic play in slow motion. The conquering hero. And would-be murderer of Peggy. It makes me sick. Literally. I feel my stomach turn, and I run to the bathroom.

  Leaning over the cracked, stained porcelain of the toilet bowl, waiting for the spasm to pass, I glance through to the living room and the TV. The report cuts to ecstatic reactions from people on the streets. A crowd is already gathering outside the parliament building.

  We brought down Gregory. So why does it feel like nothing is right? Peggy is dying. Hala will never get to see her brother. Good people suffer. We work like mad, risking everything to save other women, but we don’t see justice done for the people closest to us.

  I’ve had an idea in the back of my mind since I listened to that horrible recording of Peggy’s last moments of consciousness. And I’ve been trying to push it away—but the truth is we didn’t choose to fight evil men like Gregory by giving power to slightly less evil people like Aleks. That’s not what I signed up for with Athena. But now, Athena is over. And Peggy’s not here, and she may never be here again. So there’s no one to tell me what to do or how to do it. Anger and adrenaline start to pulse through me, and I feel impelled to move, to act, to finish this the way it should be ended. I throw on a jacket, tuck my hair under a small beanie, and head outside.

  21

  I PAUSE ON THE STREET outside my apartment, thinking, and then go down a couple of doors to my landlord’s place. There’s not much sign of life, but I bang on the door anyway. It takes a minute for him to open up. He’s in shorts and a torn tank top—not a great look—and he peers at me sleepily. Then he reaches across to a table behind him and thrusts a can of insect killer at me. He thinks I’m here to complain about the roaches.

  “I want a gun.”

  He rubs his eyes, then stares at me. Maybe being a teenage girl isn’t helping me in my quest for a weapon. Or maybe he thinks I’m going to blow the heads off the vermin.

  “I need a gun,” I repeat.

  He sniffs and shakes his head like he has no idea what I’m talking about.

  “I saw you, the first day.” I point ins
ide the room, to the place where his visitor had picked a bag full of pistols off the table like he was doing his weekly grocery shopping.

  His eyes open wider. So does the door. I step inside, and the door slams behind us, echoing in the room, leaving a residual rattle shaking the windows. On the table is a beer bottle, a glass, and a small tin containing something he’d rather keep secret because he picks it up and places it in a drawer.

  “Gun?” he sniffs. Finally, we’re getting somewhere.

  “A sniper rifle,” I clarify.

  He frowns. I’m not sure whether he doesn’t understand, or whether he just thinks it’s a tall order. I bring out my phone and hold it out to him, showing him a picture of the kind of thing I’m looking for. He sighs.

  “Yes or no?” I ask him.

  He rubs his chubby fingers together, indicating cash.

  “No easy. Big price.”

  No surprise there.

  “How big?” I ask.

  He names a price.

  “Pounds?” I say in disbelief. I turn for the door.

  “Dollars,” he says hastily.

  I walk back to where he’s standing, careful not to get too close because I remember his bad breath from before.

  “I need it today. In one hour.”

  He balks a bit, then agrees, but of course, like with dry cleaning, express gun services cost more. We set a time for me to return, and I head out to the hospital.

  There’s been no change in Peggy’s condition. The only surprise for me is that Li herself is here. While her medical expert is busy getting up to speed with the doctors outside, Li stands by Peggy’s bedside, arms crossed. She turns to glance at me when I arrive but says nothing. The others are back in the waiting room, but I sit down here, next to Peggy, for a moment. Li’s presence makes me even more depressed because it feels like she might have come to say her last goodbye. I watch Peggy closely, wishing and willing that this might be the moment when her hand moves, or her eyes flutter open, and she miraculously comes back to us. But nothing happens. The sound of the respirator grates on my nerves.

  I stand up to leave, to carry on with my plan. But Li’s voice stops me.

  “Athena got out of control,” she says.

  I’m not sure what that means exactly, but I’m pretty sure I can detect a strong note of blame directed at me.

  “You mean I did?” I reply. I mean, let’s just cut to the chase here.

  “Control is essential. Of an organization and each person in it.”

  Li’s way of talking—in little sound bites of wisdom—drives me a bit nuts at the best of times. But she’s looking at me, and there’s no judgment in her look (for once). It’s more like she simply asked a question and wants an answer. Not so long ago, I told Peggy that she couldn’t understand what it was like, to be out there, day in, day out, scared, fighting, desperate. So I didn’t bother explaining. But now, with Li, words start to form.

  “You want control,” I say. “But when we fight, we’re in a dark place. The kind of place that most people don’t want to admit they have inside. Where they’re savage and brutal and can hurt and kill.”

  I stop, because I feel my voice crack. Li is absolutely still, watching me. I clear my throat and speak again.

  “We all believe in the work we do for Athena. But some of that work is dirty. And maybe we should stop trying to pretend that it isn’t.”

  Peggy’s chest rises and falls with the air pumped into it through the machine beside her. Li says nothing. I touch Peggy’s hand as a goodbye before I turn around and leave.

  When I reach my landlord’s front door, there’s old-time country-and-western music playing loudly inside, so I knock hard enough that the thin window next to the door vibrates. The music drops in volume and the landlord opens up. He grins and beckons me in, locking the door firmly behind us. Then he leads me down a hallway lined with carpet that was once green but is now almost black with dirt, and into a tiny rear bedroom where the sole window is barred with thick iron rods. There’s a tiny bunk bed in the corner. It looks exactly like a prison cell, except for the fact that the bed has pink princess sheets on it and a ton of furry stuffed animals.

  “You have a daughter?” I ask. I think I’m safe to assume that even in this day and age, few men have the self-confidence to decorate their son’s bedroom entirely in pink.

  He nods. “Divorce,” he says. I guess what he means is that the kid doesn’t live with him full time. I think about my own bedroom in Kit’s house, also covered in stuffed animals when I was very young, presents that Kit would bring back by the armful when she returned from a tour.

  What Kit didn’t do, at least, is keep an arms cache in a locked drawer in my room. My landlord kneels down beneath the pink sheets of the bed and pulls it out, opening it up to reveal a sniper rifle. Better specs than I could have hoped. I kneel next to him, pull out the parts and check them over.

  “Good?” he asks.

  “Yeah, good.”

  He gets up, complaining about his knees as he does so, and holds out his phone, which has the crypto account for me to transfer the payment. I show him the proof on my screen and then his. Then I indicate that I need a bag to carry my purchase in, and he pulls out a proper rifle case, which is not ideal. It might as well have a sign on it that reads, “Look in here for illegal weapons.”

  I look around the room. In the corner there’s a black guitar case, covered with more pink princess stickers. I ask the question silently, and he hesitates, but a fifty-pound note helps to make up his mind. Carefully, I take out the guitar and lay it on the bed. Then I load the case with the rifle pieces and use one bedsheet to cover them up and another to stop them from rattling around. I glance at the clock on my phone. There’s no time to waste, so I nod goodbye and leave.

  As I stalk through the streets of Belgrade with my guitar case in hand, I can’t help but hear that song from The Sound of Music running through my head. “Cream-colored ponies and crisp apple strudels . . .”

  Kit sang that to me a couple of times when I was really young. I loved it, that list of favorite things wrapped up in a song. Even though I had no time for ponies and liked Lego more; even though I’d never eaten a strudel; it just sounded like happiness, and Kit’s gravelly voice singing it to me was happiness.

  My apartment is not even a fifteen-minute stroll from the parliament building, which they call the House of the National Assembly. It’s a good name for what’s happening outside today. Even from a few hundred yards away, I can feel a buzz of excitement in the air from the low babble of the crowd. I stop some distance from the steps, far from the loose cordon of police who are stationed around, and far from the security cameras that are mounted on the outside of the building. Kids are hoisted onto their parents’ shoulders, people are waiting, chatting, jostling for position, making sure they get a good view of Aleks when he arrives and makes his speech. It feels a bit like a British royal wedding, like a day off. Everyone wants a hero, I suppose. Someone who does the stuff they’re too scared to do themselves. Someone to stand up to a Gregory Pavlic, whatever the consequences.

  There’s a bitter edge of distaste in my mouth as I watch the gathered crowd. Until now, they were fine to just let things carry on; to look the other way, knowing Gregory is crooked, knowing he traffics women. What if all these people hadn’t looked the other way? They have ideals and skills. They could write about what men like Gregory do; they could demonstrate, vote out the bad politicians, build shelters for girls who want a way out; they could find ways to keep their teenagers in school, instead of on the streets for people like Gregory to exploit and recruit.

  But none of that is easy. And most of the time, it doesn’t feel like all those little things, the small sacrifices, even make a difference. But what if they do? If enough people made the effort? Maybe we need thousands of smaller heroes every day instead of just the occasional big one.

  Turning away so that my back is to the parliament building, I pause and look upward. R
ight across the wide street from the National Assembly is a vast green space, and set back behind that park is city hall. There’s not much chance of me getting in there easily. But to the right of city hall is a small street with a row of businesses and a few shops, and above the shops are six-story blocks of flats. I look at the sun, where it’s sitting now and where it will be in a little while, and I make my choice. While I walk toward the apartments, I pass a rundown café and stop to take away a coffee and a doughnut. For a moment, I imagine Li at my shoulder, shaking her head unhappily at the way I’ve fallen off the wagon of her ideal diet—but sometimes you can’t find a green smoothie, and even if you could, you don’t want it.

  Each storefront in this row has a small doorway next to it that leads up to the apartments above. I approach the second door and buzz on all the bells at once. Nothing happens, so I lean on them all again, for longer. This time a man’s voice snaps onto the intercom, and the front door clicks open for me.

  Inside the entrance foyer, it’s 1965. Or how I imagine 1965 looked. Little metal mailboxes with people’s names handwritten on them, some in Cyrillic script. A milk bottle outside the ground-floor apartment with a note pushed into the top. A tiny, red-painted tricycle. All very quaint. A couple of floors above, a door opens and a man’s voice calls out, most likely the guy who buzzed me in. There’s an ancient elevator, so I send it up a few floors, so he won’t expect a reply. At the sound of the lift rising, he closes his door again and I start running lightly up the stairs.

  Why do all stairwells in old buildings smell the same? Like cats and vegetable soup and stale carpet. The corners are so tight that the guitar case bumps against a couple of walls on the way up. But soon enough, I’m at the top fire-escape door and pushing through onto the roof. I jam the door shut behind me, so no one else can get up here. I edge past a big TV satellite dish and walk to the edge of the roof. Here, I kneel down and lay the guitar case beside me.