The Athena Protocol

by Shamim Sarif

  I look around at the house because, if the band’s on, Kit must be close behind. Sure enough, there’s a tight knot of people walking briskly down a side path and toward the stage. In the middle of that small group, somewhere, is Kit. Being moved along in a protective shell of bodies. I recognize a couple of women who have sung backup for Kit before, but the others are all entourage I don’t know. Probably hair, makeup, and a costume person, if Kit is doing an outfit change midperformance. Caitlin is walking right next to Kit. And encircling them both are three of Gregory’s black suits. Looking around as if they’re expecting an assassination attempt, for goodness’ sake. The irony. That the most feared, ruthless man in the country is protecting my mother. I catch only a brief glimpse of Kit as they round the path to the back of the stage. She’s looking down, serious. Probably nervous as anything. And then she’s gone.

  Onstage, the band has moved into the opening bars of Kit’s most famous song, a house-rocking number that she usually leaves for her last encore, but I guess she wants a big opening for this party. They play the intro again and again, teasing the audience, and I watch, intrigued, as the crowd gets louder and louder, more and more excited, until they are literally chanting Kit’s name.

  I move closer, a little, but staying in the shadows, until I see Paulina’s red dress. She’s sitting in the front row next to her father, along with the eager Markus. There’s an empty seat on Paulina’s other side, and I feel guilty that she must have left it for me. Another young man approaches, shaking hands with Gregory. He’s angling for the seat beside her, but Paulina fends him off and keeps it clear. I feel a quick rush of gratitude toward her. Being so loyal to someone she just met.

  In my earpiece, I hear Caitlin talking to Amber.

  “I’m back in the house. I need you ready in ten seconds.”

  “As my boyfriend told me last night,” is Amber’s crisp reply, and I smile. Caitlin doesn’t answer though. She must be busy laying the print onto the security pad.

  “Print’s not working,” she says, her voice stressed.

  “Is it moist?” Amber asks.

  “What?”

  “A tiny bit damp. Try a little saliva.”

  That seems to work, because Caitlin makes a happier sound.

  “I’m in.”

  Now that I know she’s made it inside Gregory’s office, I relax. I head toward Paulina, ready to reconnect with her—but Kit’s appearance onstage makes me stop in my tracks. My mother is no more than five-foot-four, a good three inches shorter than me. But right now, appearing in a haze of backlit smoke, she looks a hundred feet tall.

  Gregory’s guests go insane. They’re all on their feet, clapping, whistling, cheering—and she hasn’t even sung a note yet. She just stands there, letting them all adore her. Then she hums the opening of the song. They go even more crazy. She hums a little more. Then, with a beautifully timed nod back to the band, she starts singing. The applause dies down and everyone is listening, entranced. Not a single set of eyes is off the stage. I watch my mother, and I have to say, it’s astounding. The power she has over these people she’s never met. One long low note, and she’ll make them go quiet. A command to dance, and they’ll all jump to their feet. I look at the faces in the crowd. Excitement, joy, smiles everywhere.

  Before I can get anywhere near Paulina though, I hear more stress in Caitlin’s voice.

  “This isn’t right, Amber.”

  “Are you in the safe?”

  “Yup.”

  “Tell me what you see.”

  “A tiny black box. Doesn’t look like a hard drive. There’s a digital panel on it. Letters and numbers running over it. Changing all the time.”

  That’s not the drive, I realize, it’s a decoder. Immediately, I turn and stride back toward the house, stopping to pick up a glass of champagne at the bar, so it looks like I just want a drink. As I round the corner to the rear of the house, I toss it away. The black suit is there, but he’s walking back the other way. I wait for him to be out of my range.

  “Sounds like a decoder,” Amber’s telling Caitlin.

  “For what?”

  “Probably for reading encrypted files on the hard drive. . . .”

  While they try to figure this out, I toss my line up and start scaling the wall. The edge of the roof has those little baby turret things along them, like Cinderella’s castle. Bizarre design, unless you’re aiming for that Disneyland look, or you’re expecting a medieval army to attack, but it’s easy for me to catch the metal at the end of my climbing line onto them. It takes me eleven seconds to scale that wall. I know, because I am running on pure adrenaline now, and everything is focused. I can count every second that passes without thinking about it; I can move easily; I can hear and see everything much better than in normal life. Sometimes I think it would be great to have these heightened senses all the time—except when you tried to stop moving, all those stress hormones would probably kill you.

  The top of the roof is mostly flat. As I run toward the air-conditioning vent, the stage blurs past my vision. Kit’s rocking it. I open up the vent and drop inside. There’s dust and crap everywhere, accumulated from the air being sucked in and out. I deal with it and struggle through.

  “I can’t see it,” Caitlin is saying, still looking for the sodding hard drive, I imagine. “So do you need the decoder?” Caitlin asks, impatient.

  “Can’t hurt,” Amber replies.

  Caitlin acknowledges. Then she swears—and it’s so rare for her that I know something’s wrong.

  “I just pulled out the decoder,” Caitlin tells Amber. “But there’s a timer under it. Dammit, it’s counting down . . .”

  I’ve reached the end of the air-conditioner tube. The room below is completely dark, but I think I can see a flicker of light and the top of Caitlin’s head. I push on the grate. Caitlin doesn’t respond to the noise because she is utterly freaked.

  “I have two minutes,” she’s saying. “Shit! Two minutes to what?”

  Amber sounds like death.

  “Best case, an alarm trigger. Worst case, the safe explodes and takes you with it. What can you see?”

  “What can I see?! I see a minute and fifty seconds left.”

  Caitlin is almost panting with fear. I bang on the grate.

  Now she hears me.

  “What the hell?” she says to Amber.

  I drag the grate aside at last and look down. I can’t see Caitlin till she steps out, her gun trained on me. I push my legs through, and Caitlin takes me onto her shoulders to help me down into the room.

  “Where’d you come from?” she says, breathless.

  I ignore the question as we’re a bit short on time for a catch-up right now. She leads me straight to the safe. The timer reads 1:23. I look at it. It is an explosive. Not a massive one, but enough to blow us sky-high if we stand here looking at it. If we run, the explosion will give us all away, and that’s if we’re not just gunned down by the plainclothes army patrolling Gregory’s house. Gregory would know that Caitlin was planted, and that would mean he’d suspect Kit. . . .

  Meanwhile, my hand is probing under the timer to see what I can find. The safe floor seems solid, but as I tap around it, there’s a hollow sound in one corner. The clock is at 1:04.

  “You’ve defused these before, right?” Caitlin asks me.

  “Yeah.”

  “What was your fastest time?”

  I hesitate. “Eight minutes.”

  She gives a little groan of despair.

  “Knife,” I say.

  Like lightning, Caitlin whips a knife out of her boot. I use it to probe at the hollow edge.

  We both look at the clock. Forty-five seconds left. But now the safe floor gives way under the pressure from the blade. It feels like progress, and I can feel Caitlin’s eagerness—but, really, there’s still an awful lot to do, and I don’t know that I can pull it off.

  “Flashlight. And cutters,” I say.

  She hands me both, and I peer down into t
he gloom, assessing the wire situation. It’s funny, but if you rush, time goes faster. I learned that in training. You start panicking and making mistakes. So I force myself to concentrate on doing the job. My face feels painful, contorted under the pressure. Sweat trickles down my nose. I touch the wires. Tracing them back. Not that it’s a guarantee of anything. Bombs don’t follow safety guidelines. They have creators, and those people delight in mucking around with the conventions.

  Thirty seconds to go.

  “What are you thinking?” Caitlin says.

  “That I should have stayed in my sodding room. In London.”

  I squeeze the wire cutter into the gap, and it hovers between the three wires.

  “Twenty-three seconds,” Caitlin says.

  “What are you, the speaking clock?” I’m pissed now.

  “Isn’t it usually the red wire?”

  Seriously?

  “Thanks, genius, they’re all black,” I snap.

  I’ve eliminated one. Of the other two, one is much more likely to be the detonator. I move the cutters away to the other wire. But what if I’m wrong?

  “Caitlin?” I say. “I’m sorry I snapped at you. I’ve always appreciated your friendship.”

  “Shit,” she says. “We’re gonna die.”

  I squeeze the wire cutter, hard, and the wire snaps in two.

  The clock has stopped.

  Two seconds left.

  Neither of us is breathing.

  But we’re still alive.

  12

  I’M LOOKING AT THE SOLES of Caitlin’s shoes as she crawls ahead of me, back through the air-conditioning vent. The decoder is in her jacket pocket. It’s a lot harder getting back up than it was coming down, and dust is everywhere. We’re both coughing from the dirty air, but as quietly as we can.

  “Come on, Cait, nearly there,” I say, trying to push her along.

  I’m calming down now. We spent the past few minutes tidying up the safe and office till there was no trace of us, and we’re hoping that cutting those wires hasn’t alerted anyone, or someone would have shown up by now. And without a security override, no one can get into that office except Gregory (or Caitlin with her fake fingerprint), and he is busy watching Kit’s concert, so it feels like we have a little time at least.

  Emerging onto the roof and into the cool night air feels good. Caitlin reaches down to help me up. We can see the top of the stage and hear Kit singing. Neither of us says anything. We both feel rough, to be honest. All that stress and planning, and we nearly died, with nothing to even show for it. Gregory’s hard drive wasn’t there, and so we can’t prove how he blackmails the most powerful people in the region to keep himself out of trouble. Basically, we’ve failed.

  Our earpieces come to life. It’s Amber.

  “I’ve got a match on that decoder. It’s generally used to unscramble coded information attached to JPEG files.”

  “You mean like photos?” Caitlin asks.

  “Yes, or scans. Meaning Gregory probably keeps the information coded into files that look utterly innocuous.”

  Caitlin pats the pocket holding the decoder, like she’s making sure it’s still there.

  “And we have no intel on where those JPEGs are?” she asks Amber.

  “No.”

  Caitlin sighs. She’s pissed off that Amber sent her in and nothing was there, but she won’t say anything.

  Amber’s voice comes back through our earpieces: “Caitlin?”

  “Yeah?”

  A pause. Amber hesitates, then stumbles over the next part:

  “Jessie stole equipment and IDs. Li’s orders are to bring her in.”

  Caitlin looks at me, and I stare back. I can’t believe this. I just saved her life. Caitlin jerks her head at me. Telling me to get out of here.

  “What does Li want me to do?” Caitlin asks Amber dryly. “Knock her out and throw her over my shoulder while I go back to being Kit’s bodyguard?”

  As she speaks, I take hold of my bag, which I left hidden before I jumped into the vent, and pass my head and shoulder through the strap, so it’s held tight against me. Checking over the wall between turrets for guards, I see a black suit almost directly below me, patrolling away. I wait for him to pass. In my earpiece, Amber is conferring with Li, and Caitlin turns to give me a look—Hurry up. I indicate the guard situation, and Caitlin nods. Her hand goes to her pocket, and I know she’s popping a couple of her anxiety pills out of the foil. I turn away, looking over the wall again to give her some privacy. The guard rounds the corner, and I’m clear.

  “Anyway, it’s too late,” Caitlin is saying. “She’s gone. And I have to get back to Kit.”

  I start to lower myself down the wall.

  “The bigger question,” Caitlin says, turning angry to deflect attention from the subject of me, “is why you sent me in and there’s no hard drive?”

  Amber’s flustered. “It doesn’t make sense. Right until tonight, data shadows were coming from that section of the house. From his office.”

  Amber’s words make me pause halfway down the wall. Above me, on the top floor, is Gregory’s office. Below it, right below it, is Paulina’s bedroom. In the exact same part of the house as the office. Could the data packets be coming from there? I’m hanging off the building, and I’m right next to one of the windows. Not the one I looked out of with Paulina earlier, at the front of the house, but one on the other side of her suite, at the back, where the walk-in wardrobe is. But she had no computers in that place. Maybe she has a laptop neatly placed in a drawer somewhere. Where else could there be files, or JPEGs? And then it hits me.

  I look back up to the roof to see if Caitlin’s watching, if I can give her a sign, but there’s nothing to see above the top of the house except an inky sky and a new moon, sitting there like a perfect sliver of fingernail. Below me, the guard is due back within a minute. I press the soles of my feet against the wall to walk myself over to Paulina’s window, which is open a little. Why wouldn’t it be? It’s a warm summer night and the place is gated and alarmed with security cameras everywhere and guards on patrol. It doesn’t take me long to crack the window wider and slide in.

  The first thing I do is slip off my shoes. They’ve sunk into about two inches of deep, soft carpet, and I don’t want to track dust from the air-conditioning vent all over her immaculate suite. Luckily, the lights are all off. I had noticed a tiny security camera in one corner of the bedroom, placed facing away from the bed (even traffickers’ families need privacy, I suppose), but I can’t see any surveillance equipment in the wardrobe. If anything does pick me up, I’m counting on the fact that Amber’s still in control of the internal house cameras and has replaced all live footage with tape from earlier. Quickly, I make my way into the main bedroom area. It’s really dark inside, but glimmering light from the concert gives me enough to work with. The whole place smells like Paulina, a sort of warm, citrus scent that only belongs to her.

  I run my fingers along the base of the digital picture frame—and there it is. A little door that slips open. Inside is the memory card. I grasp it with my fingertips and pull it out. But now what? I don’t want to swipe the card and have Paulina find it missing as soon as she tries switching on the frame.

  I pad over to Paulina’s en suite bathroom. No one with eyebrows that perfect could fail to have tweezers. I find them, then use them to separate the edges of the SD card. Once that’s done, I can tug the plastic casing of the card apart and pull out the metal chip, which is where the photos are kept. I pocket the chip and sandwich the card back together so that it slides perfectly into the frame again. If you didn’t take it out and examine it, you’d never know there was anything wrong with it. Then I use the same tweezers to tease out one of the wires in the cable casing that runs up the rear of the frame. That should kill the power so the frame won’t switch on at all. That way, they’ll waste time fixing the wiring before they even think to check the SD card. As quick as I can, I put everything back where it was and get
out the way I came in.

  Outside, I navigate a quiet route to the portable toilets that Gregory has set up for his guests. Since everyone’s enjoying the concert, the toilet stalls are completely empty, which is great for me. My outfit is a mess—dust and dirt from the vent covering my legs and arms. My hair is all over the place, and my face looks like I’ve sweated through the most stressful few minutes of my life, which I have, but it’s not a stylish way to reappear at the party.

  The bathrooms smell like flowery disinfectant. The walls are pink, the sinks are pink, the stall doors have pink flowers on them. And in the background there’s putrid piped elevator music coming in. Which sounds pink.

  On my earpiece, Caitlin and Li have exchanged words, and Caitlin has gone back to be ready for when Kit gets offstage. Amber is busy trying to figure out why the files we needed weren’t in Gregory’s office.

  I pull out the earpiece. If they think they can manage without me, let them. I don’t see them making an outstanding success of this plan on their own, and, frankly, I’m hacked off that I’m still being treated like a leper by Li. If I hadn’t been here, Caitlin would most likely have been blown to bits or shot by one of Gregory’s thugs.

  I spend a good few minutes brushing off my trousers till they look halfway decent. Then I take off my shirt and use the hand soap to wash my face, neck, underarms, and arms. By the time I’ve rinsed it all off, I feel a lot better. Cooler, and definitely cleaner. In my bag is another shirt. I always carry a spare top in case of spills. Juice, tea, blood—you never know. This top is the same as the last one. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s shopping, so when I find something I like, I buy lots of them. The upside tonight is that Paulina won’t notice that I’ve changed.

  When I come back toward the stage, I try to position myself off to the side, behind the first rows of chairs. I’m hoping that if Paulina looks around from her front-row seat with Gregory, she’ll think I’ve been watching quietly, not wanting to impose. I glance over the crowd. They’re all thrilled with the concert.