The Athena Protocol

by Shamim Sarif

  Far below, the road is sealed off in anticipation of Aleks’s triumphant arrival and, far across the street, more people move toward the wide marble steps and magnificent statues, to join the crowd that’s already there. A broadcast van from the main news station trundles around the corner and parks next to another one that’s already set up. A tech crew jumps out of the back, unwinding cables and setting up handheld cameras.

  A little boy goes from person to person, trying to sell sweets to the crowd. It’s like a festive holiday, and all to celebrate the man who has put Peggy, his friend, into a coma that’s killing her. The man who was willing (before I drove a knife through his hand) to let hundreds of women suffer and die to fill his bank account so he could pay his bills and then retire to Monaco. I’m not one of those people who have an issue with wealth. I’m surrounded by it. Although Kit maybe doesn’t have the millions she once had, Li has enough to buy a small country. But they both built it all themselves. They gave the world something in return. Unlike Aleks, who’s only been blackmailed into doing the right thing. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s a hypocrite.

  It’s like I’m psyching myself up to open the case and fit together the pieces of the sniper rifle. The cool metal weighs heavily in my palms. It feels solid, substantial, true. It gives me power. The same power that people like Gregory and Aleks have, although I’m using that power for something better.

  Placing the rifle on its bipod, I slide down so that I’m lying flat on my stomach. I lean in to place my eye against the viewfinder. It’s really crisp and clear, a lovely lens, with light crosshairs that don’t cover everything so I can have a good look around. I examine the faces of the people waiting. They’re happy, content to stand about chatting. A couple of officials jostle for position near the podium where Aleks is supposed to give his speech. Then a sort of ripple passes through the crowd, like a breath of wind disturbing the air. Some kind of message is being passed around, and people turn to look up the wide boulevard.

  So do I. I swing the rifle around and, sure enough, Aleks’s black limousine is on its way, crawling slowly up the street. The windows are tinted, but I can see him, dimly, inside, with some other men. Possibly security guys. I follow the car along in the rifle sight, hardly breathing now. It pulls up outside the wide marble steps, and the door opens. I swallow. I know I’m doing the right thing. I know I am.

  A bodyguard steps out of the front seat and holds open the back door for Aleks. Another guard, wide, barrel-chested, exits the back, forming an effective shield for Aleks to hide behind as he emerges.

  “Coward,” I mutter. Because there’s no way I can get him at this moment without taking out his escorts. But then Aleks hears the cheering, the applause, the welcome, and he’s tempted. His men are forming a tight shield around him, but he pauses and turns to wave at the crowd and press a few hands.

  I have a shot on his arm, but that’s all.

  Move, I tell the guards in my mind. Move!

  That’s why we have a protocol, Jessie . . . To protect, not to kill . . .

  Where Peggy came from in my head, I don’t know. My eyes fill suddenly, but I dash away the tears. She wouldn’t approve of revenge—but I can’t let Peggy’s advice derail me now; it’s Peggy I’m doing this for. I hunker down, because when Aleks turns back for the stairs, he will be exposed, if only for a moment. But the chance is short, and I don’t want to lose it; I can’t lose it.

  With a weird suction sound that I feel even from up here, a bullet flies out and into the back of one of the bodyguards. Right between the shoulder blades—it’s a perfect shot, and he is down, slumped on the ground, and Aleks has turned to look at him. It’s strange, but it takes a moment for anyone to realize what’s just happened. Including me. My heart is pounding. I check my rifle, because I was sure I hadn’t fired yet. I take my finger off the trigger, but I keep my eye on the scope, and now the second guard is pulling Aleks back to the car, shielding him, gun out. That guard is shot too, twice, in the chest. Leaving Aleks exposed. I can see him in my crosshairs, the target that I’ve been waiting for; but it’s not me shooting.

  I swivel the rifle around to my right and there, on a rooftop two buildings across from me, is another sniper. His head is bent, his finger is on the trigger, and on instinct, because I know he will kill someone else, I shoot. The bullet hits him in the shoulder. He gives a yelp and looks across and sees me. He turns his rifle on me, so I shoot again. He falls off to the side, away from his weapon, and doesn’t move.

  Back on the ground, Aleks is going for the car. Panting, stressed, I swivel the gun back and have him in my crosshairs for a moment, such a short moment, and yet long enough for someone like me—but I don’t pull the trigger.

  He dives into the car, the door shuts, and the limo screams away. The police have their weapons drawn, everyone is crouched down, the two bodyguards lie sprawled and bleeding and it’s remarkably quiet. Everything has happened so fast that there’s nothing but silent shock.

  Without thinking, I’m packing up the rifle, unscrewing it, fitting the pieces into the case, and then I’m heading for the door, to take the stairs down. But I can hear wailing starting. Wailing people, wailing sirens. I stop and look back over at the other rooftop, at the other sniper lying there. The gap between buildings is tiny—these are old brick structures, packed close together. I run back across my roof and jump across over to the next and then to the next, where the gunman lies, unmoving.

  I check his pulse, but there isn’t one. My second kill in less than a week. But it was me or him. Somewhere, a phone starts ringing, muffled. With an effort, I roll the sniper onto his other side and check his pockets. In the background, behind me, sirens are going mad, police cars and fire engines are closing in. There are also armed police inching carefully across the street, edging nearer and nearer to where I am.

  Still the phone rings. Thrusting my hand into his jacket, I find it, one of those old, tiny, plastic things with no screen. Disposable. I press the green button and hold it to my ear.

  “Hello?” says a voice.

  I say nothing. I just wait.

  “Did you do it?” repeats the voice. It’s a female voice that makes me gasp inside. Because it’s someone I recognize all too well.

  22

  I SAY NOTHING, OF COURSE. I just wipe off the phone, leaving it back in the sniper’s pocket. The police have figured out that there’s only one strip of buildings that the shots could have come from, and they’re heading toward me.

  Grabbing my guitar case, I run, crouching down, over to the next roof. Already, I can hear men emerging onto the first roof in the block, the one that I was on a few moments ago. I jump down onto the roof next to me. It’s a bit lower, and it’s a commercial building. Through the skylight in the middle, I can see desks and files and computer terminals. I push at the skylight with no luck, but at the rear of the roof there’s a thin fire escape ladder that zigzags down the back of the building, all the way down to an alleyway. How long will it take for the SWAT team to reach this street? Between the raid on the hospital and the shooting at Gregory’s home, they can’t have had a busier day in ages, and yet there seems to be more of them arriving all the time.

  I clamber down into the alley and turn quickly into a small street and then into another. The guitar case slows me down, but I can’t risk dumping it. The main danger is from the rows of windows all around me. I’m hoping everyone inside all these apartments is glued to their front windows, watching the drama outside the House of the National Assembly, but the truth is that anybody could have seen me climbing down that building just now, and it will take just one of them to say something to the police for me to become a suspect in Aleks’s attempted assassination. It will help when they find the sniper’s body, but they could still view me as an accomplice, and that doesn’t thrill me, because what I feel like after this trip is a year in a spa, not a decade in a Serbian jail.

  My feet move as fast as they can without actually drawing attention
to myself by running. Blood is pounding in my ears. The voice I heard on the end of that phone was Paulina’s, and I don’t know what to think, except that she hired that sniper to avenge her father. I keep my hands thrust into the pockets of my jacket, where I take a bit of comfort in the familiar feel of my folded army knife and the bag with the solitary blue pill.

  There is so much confusion around that I make it out of the area without much problem. There’s still a high chance that someone is currently giving my description to the SWAT guys as they go from door to door, sweeping each apartment, but for now, I’m clear.

  A block away from my apartment, I circle around for a bit to see if anyone’s watching the place. On the way, I spot a rubbish truck, parked outside a greasy café. The driver’s probably having lunch. I toss the guitar case into it and head toward my room.

  There’s a white van a couple of doors down from me, a nice one, but not dressed up as a phone company van or anything. I hesitate. There’s no one in it, which is good. And the rear windows are darkened glass, which is bad. My options are limited. I don’t want to go back to the hospital or to the Athena house, not while I’m a possible suspect in the shootings. And I can’t go straight to the airport without my passport, which is upstairs.

  I decide to risk it and head up to collect my stuff. It’ll only take me two minutes, because I have everything packed. The key sticks in the lock in the familiar place and everything feels the same as I walk in. I’m relieved. For about two seconds. Then a massive set of arms grabs me from behind, pinning my own hands to my waist. I wrench myself to the side and get a glimpse of a broad chest behind me level with my eyes. Whoever’s grabbed me is huge. I’m struggling like mad, lifting my legs off the floor to make it harder for him to keep hold of me. And then I remember to scream. One of his hands comes up to muffle my mouth. He’s smart enough to grab a pillow off the bed and slam it over my face so I can’t bite him. But I also can’t breathe very well now. I twist as hard as I can and wriggle my left arm free enough to hammer down a fist on his inner thigh. He cuffs me so hard on the temple that I stagger across the room. Even as I get up, he’s on me with a hood. It smells like it’s been used on a lot of people before me. But I can’t stop it from going over my head. As I struggle, I stumble and fall, hitting my head on something. The last thing I feel is a searing pain at the base of my skull, and then the relief of blackness.

  My brain feels like jelly as I start to emerge back into consciousness. The first thing I register is that the hood is off me. My eyes close again for a moment as I recall what happened in the apartment. Snatches of the fight come back to me. And I strain to remember what I was doing before that . . . leaving, because of the sniper, because of Aleks . . .

  I open my eyes. There’s a stained ceiling above me. Black, oozing, dripping patches of mildew. I’m lying on a mattress, but I’m up high off the floor. I try to bring my hand up to rub at my eyes, but my arm is trapped. Moving my head sideways stirs up a shooting pain, and I blink till it subsides. My arms, both of them, are tied down to a bed of some kind. And they look bare. I realize my clothes are off, and a worn blue smock is covering me instead. My feet are lashed together with a reinforced fabric strap, like an airplane seat belt but without a buckle.

  I look sideways and Paulina is sitting there, watching me. I close my eyes again, then blink them open. Her eyes are clear and watchful, and she’s sitting so still, so silently, that I think I must be dreaming her.

  “Paulina?” I say, and my voice sounds like someone else’s, croaky and weak. I clear my throat and say her name again. If she doesn’t react, I’ll know I’m hallucinating.

  But she moves. She uncrosses her legs, gets up from her chair, and comes over, standing tall above me. Her eyes look sad, disappointed. I can see better now, and the fog in my mind is less thick, but I’m still confused. She needs to be careful or they’ll get her too.

  “Paulina, you need to get out. It’s dangerous here,” I say.

  She smiles slightly and nods.

  “That’s the first true thing you’ve ever said to me.”

  I watch her silently.

  “I trusted you, Jessie, and now my father’s dead.”

  This is not good. On instinct, I try moving my arms again, but it’s pointless. I glance around. On my left, on the other side of the bed, a looming shadow solidifies into a tall, broad man in a polo shirt and jeans. Most likely the hulk who overpowered me in my apartment. Behind him are double doors, and a row of empty metal beds like the one I’m tied to. It finally dawns on me where we are. Gregory’s abandoned hospital. Apparently abandoned by the police too.

  I swallow a surge of panic and look back at Paulina.

  “Your father deserved it,” I say.

  “He was my family.” She practically spits the words at me. I guess the honeymoon’s over, then. “Maybe it’s not like that where you come from,” she continues, “but here your family is the most important thing.”

  “He buys and sells women,” I point out.

  “They all have choices. They just made the wrong ones.”

  “You can’t really believe that! Paulina?”

  I look at her; into the eyes that I had found so captivating before. There’s nothing there that I recognize. No warmth, no humor, no kindness. Just rage, and it’s burning cold.

  “He was planning to kill people for their organs,” I say, just to jolt her into something, some acknowledgment of what’s been happening.

  She smiles. She actually smiles. Disbelief? I wonder, with a shred of hope, but then she speaks.

  “And because of that, many more people will live.”

  Even if you suck at math, that just doesn’t add up to a good deal, but Paulina’s on a roll, so I keep my mouth shut and let her go on.

  “Aleks Yuchic could never stop this by killing my father. He did that for show,” she says angrily. “And then he had the nerve to try to make a deal with me, blackmailing me with information stolen from my home. From my room.”

  She looks at me accusingly. Safe to assume she figured out what I was up to during Kit’s concert, then. I think it’s probably best not to get into it now though. I keep eye contact and listen, while still pushing at my wrist and ankle straps, trying to find out how they work so I can find a way out of them.

  “I will finish what my father started,” Paulina continues. “And leave here with the money from that first harvest.”

  There’s a word that’s been ruined by the illegal organ trade. Harvest. It should make you think of farming and food and wheat and stuff.

  “Where are you going to go?”

  Paulina ignores that question, but then, I wasn’t expecting her to spill her future address. I’m just trying to buy time.

  “Who buys these organs?” I ask. “The Victory Clinic?”

  She looks surprised that I know the name. I hold eye contact with her, trying to connect, trying to find some way in to that other part of her, the part that must know that this deal is just evil.

  “You don’t have to do this, Paulina,” I say. “You already started selling art. It pays well. Why risk your freedom for this?”

  Even before she smirks, I realize what an idiot I was for believing that those huge chunks of money in her account were from art dealers. And her next words confirm it.

  “I made some money from art, but not enough. And Victory already gave us a down payment,” she says. “These are not people who you let down.”

  She looks away from me. So, she’s scared for herself too.

  “But I saw them release the girls from here. On TV,” I tell her.

  “A few of them,” she says. “Enough for the cameras.”

  My heart sinks. “So your plans stay the same?”

  Paulina nods, then smiles at me. “With one exception. You are going to be my first donor.”

  I stare at her. Frankly, I’m terrified. Paulina sits down on the edge of the bed that I’m lashed to, right next to me. I can feel her leg touching mine as s
he perches there, and I try to move away but I can’t. She watches me, but I can’t stand to look at her. Gently, her finger touches my chin, raising it up until my eyes are forced to meet hers.

  “Your eyes first,” she whispers. “Then kidneys . . . liver . . . lungs. And finally . . . well, we’ll see if you really have a heart after all.”

  Her finger touches my chest, and I recoil, pulling away as far as I can, but she leans in even closer. That perfume that used to make my head spin now makes me want to throw up. Her breath touches my ear as she whispers.

  “I can’t believe how you betrayed me, Jessie.”

  She pulls back and looks at me, and the mask is down, just for a second. Her eyes look real, like reflections of true feelings, and I know she’s been hurt by me.

  “I really felt something for you,” she says.

  I look at her squarely. “I wish I could say the same.”

  Then I spit at her, which is maybe not the smartest move, but it gives me a moment’s satisfaction and considering how close I am to death, I might as well take what I can get. Paulina wipes her perfectly draped shirt, where my spit has landed, and turns to the incredible hulk beside me.

  “Kristof,” she says. “Tell the doctor his first patient is ready.”

  I don’t know where Paulina disappears to, but there’s plenty of commotion in the wards next to this one. Low-level sniffling and crying; then I catch the tones of Paulina’s voice, barking instructions. To my right, double doors lead into a brightly lit room where there is a whole lot of activity going on. I catch glimpses of doctors and nurses, heads moving back and forth past the single round window in the door. One man flips on an overhead lamp, another pulls on a face mask. Looks like an operating room.

  I start to shiver, despite myself. It’s cold in here, but really, dread has taken hold of me. Nobody knows where I am. Li, Kit, Hala, and Caitlin are at the hospital, watching over Peggy. Amber and Tom are back in London thinking that these organ harvests have been stopped, as does the entire population of Belgrade.