The Athens Solution: A Short Story

by Brad Thor

  Hugging the wall, he followed the corridor for several hundred meters. He was well beyond the grounds of the villa above when he began to smell salt water.

  Soon thereafter, the tunnel and its string of bulbs ended at narrow fissure in the rock. Harvath couched down and looked inside. As best he could tell, it went back several feet and then made a jagged turn to the right.

  He used his tactical light sparingly as he picked his way along this much smaller passageway winding its way through the rock like a snake trying to escape a grass fire.

  Thirty-five meters later, the tunnel opened onto a brightly lit grotto with a strip of sand. Upon it were beached two heavily armed Farallon DPVs, or Diver Propulsion Vehicles. Any doubts Harvath may have harbored about the quality of the CIA’s intelligence were quickly melting away.

  From just beyond the sand, a sudden flash of sparks and a high-pitched, grinding whine caught Harvath’s attention. A metal canister was propped between two large rocks, and someone dressed in black was attempting to cut into it using a circular saw.

  Harvath’s instinct was to call in what he was seeing to Washington, but he had lost all radio contact the minute he descended the stairs beneath the kitchen.

  Finding a narrow footpath, he carefully picked his way down, sweeping his eyes back and forth across the grotto for threats. When his feet hit the sand, he moved forward as silently as a shadow.

  With sparks flying and the screech of metal grinding upon metal, the black-clad figure was oblivious to Harvath’s approach. It wasn’t until he gave two bright bursts from his tactical light that the wet-suited man even knew he was there.

  Slowly the man set the saw down and turned to face him. As he did, Harvath was nearly speechless. “Ambassador Avery?” he asked. “I don’t understand. I thought you were dead.”

  The silver-haired ambassador quickly masked his surprise at being discovered. “Obviously I’m not,” he replied. “Who the hell are you?”

  “My name’s Harvath. I was tasked by the Pentagon to find your killers.”

  “The Pentagon? They couldn’t find their ass with both hands. I suppose you’ve also been tasked with retrieving the device.”

  There was something about looking into the eyes of a dead man that caused Harvath to mentally pull back and play it dumb until he could get a handle on what was going on. “The device, sir? What device?”

  “Don’t bullshit me,” barked Avery. “That’s what this is all about. Put your weapon down and give me a hand. We haven’t got much time.”

  “Where’s Papandreou, sir?”

  When Avery didn’t respond, Harvath repeated, “Where is Papandreou?”

  “He went for a swim,” said the ambassador, motioning over his shoulder toward the water. “I don’t think he’s coming back.”

  Harvath looked to where the beach dropped off into the deep water of the grotto. Several feet below the surface he could make out the shape of a man wrapped multiple times in what looked like heavy anchor chain. Had he driven the other DPV into the grotto, only to be double-crossed by Avery?

  The hair on the back of Harvath’s neck was standing up. He didn’t like this. Steadying his SR25 on the center of the ambassador’s chest, he ordered, “Get your hands up where I can see them.”

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Taking you into custody.”

  “No, you’re not. I’ve got an assignment to complete. If you get in my way and fuck this up, I’ll make sure you burn for it.”

  “Just the way you did in Athens?” Harvath replied, recalling the crime scene photos he’d seen of the ambassador’s burned out vehicle. Everyone believed the killers had firebombed the BMW to impede the eventual investigation. Little did they know how right they had been.

  “I ought to put a bullet in you right here,” continued Harvath. “Good men on your detail died. And for what? Money?”

  “Lots of money,” a voice suddenly said from behind. “Twenty-five million and counting. Now drop your weapon.”

  Harvath did as he was told.

  Turning, he saw the one of the two DS agents from the ambassador’s security detail, the one known as Point Guard. He was a large man, much bigger than Harvath. He was wearing an Infrared reduction suit and carried a fully automatic French FA-MAS rifle with a high-powered scope.

  “So much for the difference between porcupines and BMWs,” said Harvath.

  Point Guard stared at him. “What are you talking about?”

  “Usually with a BMW, the pricks are on the inside. But in the case of you and the ambassador, the pricks actually were on the outside.”

  Stepping up to Harvath, the agent raised his MAS and butt-stroked him across the jaw.

  Harvath saw stars and fell to one knee.

  “We’ve all gotta do what we’ve all gotta do,” said the ambassador as he stripped Harvath of his weapons and equipment and tossed them into the water.

  “And in your case,” replied Point Guard as he kept him covered, “you’re going to join Mr. Papandreou for a swim.”

  Harvath spat a gob of blood from his mouth. “Probably not a good idea. I just ate before I got here.”

  “Very funny, wiseass.”

  “How long have you been working for 21 August?”

  The ambassador smiled. “We don’t work for them. They work for us. Mr. Papandreou screwed up very badly a while back. I just happened to be there and offered not to turn him in if he would be my eyes and ears inside the organization.”

  “Did the State Department or CIA know about this?”

  “Of course not; Papandreou was too valuable an asset to be shared.”

  “And Nomikos?” Harvath asked. “What was his role in all of this?”

  “Papandreou was an investor in his company. When the device went missing, Nomikos started putting things together. He wanted to talk, so Papandreou invited him out here tonight. He was a loose end that needed to be dealt with.”

  Harvath had to hand it to them. “You skate with the money and the device, ready to start a new life anywhere you choose. And everything gets blamed on 21 August.”

  “Precisely,” replied Point Guard.

  “And the device’s rumored Jordanian buyer?”

  “Will be meeting us in a hotel on Sicily in three days,” said Avery, “so I’m sure you can appreciate that we need to get on with our business.”

  Handing his weapon to the ambassador, Point Guard grabbed a length of anchor chain and approached Harvath.

  Harvath made a move to take his legs out from under him and get control of his sidearm, but he wasn’t fast enough. The DS agent dodged left and brought an elbow crashing down into Harvath’s temple. He saw stars once again and fell to the ground.

  Point Guard worked quickly, wrapping the anchor chain around Harvath’s wrists and ankles and then began half-dragging, half-carrying him into the water. All Harvath could think about was staying alive, but no matter how hard he struggled he couldn’t get free.

  As Harvath felt the bottom sloping beneath the bigger man’s feet, he knew that any moment now he was going to be let go.

  Drowning seemed like an ignoble death for a SEAL, and yet that was exactly what was rushing headlong to meet him.

  He counted to three and then as fast and as hard as he could rolled his shoulders forward, his hands grasping for any item of his killer’s clothing.

  As he did, there was a snap, followed by a searing pain in his upper arm. Somewhere in the back of his mind something told him it was serious, but he didn’t care. All that mattered was staying alive.

  Trying again, struggling with all of his might to break free, he heard another snap and a second later blood began dripping into his eyes. But upon looking up, he realized the blood wasn’t his.

  It was only a quick look—something lodged in Point Guard’s throat, and blood wa
s spurting out all around it. And then the powerful hands that had been dragging him into the water released their grasp.

  In an instant, the heavy chain pulled him under. It happened so quickly he’d had no time to fill his lungs with air.

  He scrambled desperately to locate the upward slope and inchworm his way back to the beach, but it was no use. The sand was too soft, and each time he moved he only sank deeper.

  His chest felt like it was pinned beneath a thousand pounds of concrete. Every fiber of his body screamed for air. His vision was dimming at the edges, and he knew it was only going to be a few seconds before his mouth reflexively opened in one final, desperate attempt at life and his lungs sucked in and hopelessly filled with water.

  Harvath had no intention of dying and redoubled his fight. But as he did, he felt something strange bump his back. It felt, maybe, like the nose of a shark, which was all too possible, as the grotto was connected to the sea.

  The bump came again, followed by another. Soon he was being pulled away. He strained to see what it was, but his vision was almost completely black, and the water was filled with blood. Harvath told himself it would all be over soon.

  Finally, there was quiet. Deep, cold, the-end-is-finally-here quiet.

  No sooner had the quiet settled over him than he had the eerie sensation of breaking the surface. Immediately, his eyes shot open and he began sucking in searing, greedy gasps of air.

  Thrashing in the shallow water, he swung left and right, trying to find the shark.

  “Easy,” said a voice as a pair of weathered hands began unwinding the chain from around his wrists and ankles.

  Harvath looked up and saw the face of Ben Metaxas. “Ben, what—”

  “Careful, my friend, don’t move,” he said.

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  “Yannis is a much better shot than I am, I’m afraid.”

  Harvath didn’t understand. “What are you talking about?”

  “Your arm,” said Ben.

  Looking down at his arm, Harvath saw a long metal shaft and realized what had pierced the throat of his killer: a speargun. Harvath’s own wound was almost as serious. The spear had gone straight through his left biceps and almost punctured his rib cage.

  “How did you get here?”

  Ben held up his mask and swim fins, “There was another boat offshore. We saw lights under water come this way. When we couldn’t reach you on the radio, we came to find you.”

  Harvath remembered the ambassador. “The other man. What happened to the other man?”

  “The man on the beach?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s dead,” said Yannis as he made his way back toward them. “I shot him with this.” Yannis held up Point Guard’s weapon.

  “What about the canister?” asked Harvath, fighting back the shock beginning to take over his body.

  “He dropped it in the tunnel. Don’t worry.”

  But Harvath was worried. They had to secure the canister and get the hell out of there. “We need that canister. Go get it.”

  Harvath collapsed onto the sand and waited for Yannis to come back with the device. While he lay there, Ben found a pair of shears and clipped off as much of the spear’s shaft as he could and then dressed the wound. It was an incredibly painful procedure.

  The longer Yannis was gone, the more Harvath began to worry. When he did finally return, it wasn’t with good news. “I can’t find it.”

  “What do you mean?” said Harvath as Ben helped him to his feet.

  “The canister is gone.”

  “That’s impossible. We’re the only ones here.”

  “It’s gone,” he repeated.

  Suddenly the bottom dropped out of Harvath’s stomach. The second DS agent from Athens. “We’ve got to get upstairs.”

  He led the way as quickly as he could through the low tunnel, down the corridor, up the stone steps into the house, and out into the courtyard—right up to the spot where Constantine Nomikos’s blue Land Rover had been sitting less than half an hour before. But now, it was gone.

  Harvath reached for his radio, only to realize that Ambassador Avery had pitched it into the water, along with the rest of his gear.

  Defeated, Harvath leaned back against the outer wall of the courtyard. He tried to tell himself that it would be impossible for the DS agent to hide forever, but he had been around long enough to know that with enough money, anything in life was possible.

  He had also been around long enough to know that the good guys didn’t always win.

  AFTERWORD

  Years ago, Vince Flynn and had a conversation about “going back.” As in, Would you ever go back and revisit one of your earlier novels?

  “No way,” Vince had said. “Absolutely not.”

  His rationale had been that as a writer, you would drive yourself crazy with everything you might want to change. It was an opinion I shared. Once my novels are released out into the world, they have to survive on their own. It’s kind of like how some people view children. Once they hit adulthood, shove them out the door and change the locks. If you have raised them right, they’ll do well. If you haven’t, your mistakes will haunt you forever.

  Obviously, there is a big difference between releasing a novel and preparing a child for a successful, productive life. As a writer and a father, I feel pretty safe saying that. But you do need to be prepared in both instances to step back. With The Athens Solution, though, I thought I would jump back in—and it has been a blast.

  The Athens Solution is the first, and only, short story I have ever published. It was published on June 1, 2006, as part of the highly successful Thriller anthology, benefiting the International Thriller Writers Association. I had published my very first novel, The Lions of Lucerne, just four short years before in January 2002. Almost a decade later, I still love this story—particularly its setting.

  I had fallen in love with Greece—if you can believe it—through two advertising campaigns. One was a television commercial for American Express, shot on the island of Santorini and featuring the song “Rescue Me” by Fontella Bass (which I have playing right now by the way). The other was Claudia Schiffer’s iconic, black-and-white magazine photo spread for Guess, shot on the island of Mykonos.

  I was studying abroad in Paris, and spring break was quickly approaching. French friends encouraged me to visit Greece. It was very affordable and nicely fit my student budget. I spent two weeks there traveling—a couple of days in Athens and then the rest in the islands.

  On the island of Paros, where I would return that summer and two summers later to work in a great little bar, I had the seed of the idea for the Athens Solution story. It was about an assassin who had traveled to Greece to carry out an assignment, only to be stymied by a terrible change in the weather.

  I had envisioned the assassin scaling the outside of the hotel, where I was living at the time, in the pouring rain. One bad turn would lead to another, and another, ultimately defeating an otherwise brilliantly conceived plan. In the end, much like Scot Harvath, the assassin was unsuccessful in achieving his ultimate goal.

  Not until revisiting The Athens Solution did I realize that it was the culmination of that idea born on a rainy day more than two decades ago on that little Greek island.

  I tried to keep as true to the original story as possible. Some things, though, I had to change. I hope those few changes made the story even more enjoyable for you.

  Going forward, I have a lot of short-story ideas, so expect to see many more from me. If they are even half as much fun to work on as this one was, we’re all in for a very good time!

  Read more of Brad Thor’s bestselling writing in Code of Conduct—and be sure to pre-order his next pulse-pounding thriller, Foreign Agent, available June 14, 2016, wherever books and ebooks are sold.

  PROLOGUE
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  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  When word leaked that the President had been taken to the Bethesda Naval Hospital for observation, panic set in. If the President of the United States wasn’t safe from the virus, no one was.

  Scot Harvath swerved around the car in front of him and sped through the intersection as the light changed. The traffic was worsening. Quarantine rumors had sent people rushing to stores to stock up.

  “We don’t need to do this,” the woman sitting next to him said.

  What she meant was that he didn’t need to do this. He could leave too. He didn’t have to stay behind in D.C.

  “I’ve already talked to Jon and his wife,” he replied. “You’ll be safe there.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll be okay. I’ll join you as soon as I can.”

  He was lying. It was a white lie, meant to make her feel better, but it was a lie nonetheless. They were already talking about shutting down air traffic. That’s why he needed to get her out tonight.

  “What if we’re overreacting?” she asked.

  “We’re not.”

  Lara knew he was right. She had seen the projections. Even the “best case” numbers were devastating. The cities would be the hardest hit. Hospitals were already at surge capacity, and were being overrun by otherwise healthy people who had convinced themselves they were showing one or more of the symptoms. It was beginning to make it impossible for real emergencies like heart attack and acute asthma sufferers to be seen. And it was only going to get worse.

  Cities, towns, and villages from coast to coast scrambled to figure out how they would continue to deliver essential services, much less deal with the staggering number of bodies if the death toll reached even half of what was being predicted. In a word, they couldn’t.

  As they succumbed to the virus, or stayed home to protect their own families, fewer and fewer first responders would be available. Soon, 911 call centers would go down. After that, water treatment facilities and power plants. Hospitals, pharmacies, and grocery stores would have all long ceased operating—the majority of them looted and burned to the ground. Chaos and anarchy would reign.