The Athena Project

CHAPTER 23

ISTANBUL

TURKEY

Armen Abressian blinked his eyes and looked at his watch. It was late. Business never sleeps, he thought to himself as the phone on the nightstand kept vibrating.

He picked it up and placed his feet over the side of the bed. He was a handsome, powerfully built man in his early sixties with gray hair, a thick beard, and deeply tanned skin. When he spoke, he did so with a soothing, basso profundo voice coupled with a slight accent that was difficult to place.

Looking out over the twinkling lights of the Bosporus, he activated the call and said, “I’m here, Thomas.”

“I’m sorry to bother you, Armen. I assume you have a guest,” said Thomas Sanders, Abressian’s second in command.

Abressian looked over at the gorgeous creature in his bed. She was less than half his age and worth every penny. He’d have to see if he could hire her for another night. Things were not moving as quickly as he had planned.

“What is it I can do for you, Thomas?”

“We have a problem.”

Another one? It had been just over twenty-four hours since Nino Bianchi had been abducted from his home in Venice. While no one knew for sure who had done it, it smacked of the Israelis, especially as they had used women to pull off the job. That would be just like them. And the timing couldn’t have been worse. Abressian still had one more shipment he was expecting from Bianchi.

Turning his attention back to Sanders, he replied, “What is the problem?”

“It’s Professor Cahill.”

Of course it was. “What has happened now?” Abressian asked calmly.

“The Bratva want him.”

Bratva was slang for the Russian mafia who ran the town of Premantura at the southern end of Croatia’s Istrian peninsula. There wasn’t a single official or law enforcement officer in the area who wasn’t on the Bratva’s payroll. It was a place where people learned to keep quiet. The locals kept to themselves, minded their own business, and didn’t ask any questions. That was one of the reasons Abressian had selected it. Via his relationship with the Russians, he was able to purchase a significant amount of goodwill. Professor Cahill, though, had been burning through it very quickly.

When it came to quantum physics, George Cahill was a genius. When it came to everything else, he was an idiot.

Abressian had discovered him toiling away in a physics lab at the Australian National University. Technically, he was on unpaid administrative leave. Cahill had been reprimanded twice for his substance abuse, but when it came to light that he had been involved in several inappropriate relationships with students, he was removed from his duties until he could complete a rehabilitation program with a full review of the charges against him. But Cahill’s situation had rapidly deteriorated.

It seemed that the harder his demons rode him, the faster he descended into a hell of his own making. Incredible brilliance often dwells on the razor’s edge of madness, and this was certainly the case with George Cahill.

When Armen Abressian had found the twenty-nine-year-old Cahill, he was being beaten outside a seedy bar on the outskirts of Canberra. The wheels had completely come off Cahill’s axles. Abressian suspected the man might have been bipolar or sociopathic, prone to incredible mood swings and incredibly self-destructive behavior. Alcohol, drugs, prostitutes, and gambling had sucked the young genius into a suicidal black hole from which not even the faintest hope of escape appeared possible. That is, until Abressian had made Cahill the offer of a lifetime.

Cahill had a bad habit of blaming his problems on others. He claimed that because the university didn’t give him enough support and leeway to pursue his research, he hadn’t been able to make greater headway. He saw other, far less intelligent professors soaring to academic heights and pawned it off on their ability to play “the game.” Everyone knew that university life was all about publish or perish, but until you could prove your hypothesis, there was nothing to publish. The more frustrated he became, the more depressed, and the more depressed, the more self-destructive.

What Abressian offered him was an opportunity to be his own boss, to prove to everyone that he had been right; that he was smarter than everyone else. It was a chance for redemption. Abressian had appealed to both the man’s intellect and his ego, and Cahill had accepted.

Cahill tendered his resignation at the university and with Abressian’s help, disappeared.

When he arrived at the facility in Croatia, Cahill had been sober for a month and a half. He was filled once again with purpose. He had been given something people rarely ever receive in life: a second chance.

The project began well, very well indeed. Cahill oversaw a team of brilliant scientists provided by the project’s funders, a mysterious organization known as the Amalgam. They were a group of powerful elite who kept their membership and their agenda secret.

The only thing they demanded was results. To that end, whatever Cahill needed, Sanders and Abressian made sure he received. No matter how obscure or expensive a piece of equipment, all he had to do was ask and it would arrive within twenty-four hours. Cahill found it all so perfect that he felt it was like falling in love.

Of course, his feelings of euphoria had everything to do with the fact that he had made significant strides in the beginning. With the schematics and other information the Amalgam had been able to secure, he had rebuilt Hans Kammler’s badly damaged Engeltor device. By manipulating the properties of certain “miraculous minerals” the scientists working at Zbiroh had discovered, he was able to transport small, inanimate objects to the Amalgam’s receiving site on a small island in the Andaman Sea.

But then Cahill’s progress began to slow. When it came to a complete halt, his feelings of euphoria soon crashed and were replaced by depression.

He began drinking again, heavily. He also began gambling. Much to his surprise, he was somewhat successful. Little did he know that Mr. Sanders had been arranging for the games to be fixed in his favor. Abressian had placed Sanders in charge of the project. It was up to him to make sure it succeeded.

Sanders had rigged the games in the hope that if Cahill hit a winning streak, his creativity would be reignited and his mood would improve. But instead of focusing on work, Cahill focused on women.

The Russians were all too happy to supply him with as many as he wanted. With Cahill getting lucky in cards and in love, Sanders encouraged him to refocus his energies on the project. The scientist, though, wasn’t “in the mood,” so Sanders cut him off. No more gambling and no more women.

When Cahill went on strike, Sanders had him roughed up. His pride and his body wounded, the scientist dutifully returned to work, but made no headway. The only change was in his mood, which had become increasingly more malevolent; darker. The man probably needed to be under the care of a doctor.

“Did you hear what I said, Armen?” Sanders asked, interrupting Abressian’s thoughts. “Viktor wants to see you personally about it.”

Viktor Mikhailov ran the Russian mafia in Croatia. He was an extremely dangerous man, but he could also be very reasonable. A former Russian intelligence operative, he understood the art of compromise.

Abressian closed his eyes and massaged the bridge of his nose. “I can’t leave Turkey right now,” he said as he closed the bedroom door and walked into the suite’s sitting room. “We’ll just have to pay off whatever debt the professor has again incurred.”

“Armen, three of Viktor’s girls have gone missing over the last week,” said Sanders.

Abressian opened his eyes. “Missing?” he repeated.

“As in gone. Vanished.”

“And he thinks Cahill had something to do with this?”

“Apparently, the professor was the last one seen with any of them.”

Abressian had known a lot of psychopaths during his life. In fact, he actively employed a good number of them, but Cahill didn’t fit the profile. He had problems, sure, but he wasn’t a killer. It didn’t add up. “Have you talked to George about this?”

“After the first time Viktor’s men came around, I asked him.”

“And?”

“And,” replied Sanders, “he told me he had no idea what happened to them.”

“Do you believe him?”

“No. And there’s something else you need to know. There was a fourth girl. She went missing last night.”

“Where was the professor?”

“I don’t know,” said Sanders. “Out.”

Abressian was silent for several moments before he exhaled and said, more to himself than to his aide-de-camp, “What has he done?”

“I think you and I both know the answer to that question.”

“No,” said Abressian. He refused to believe it. “Laboratory animals maybe, but not a human being. Not four human beings.”

“Did anything come out on the other side?”

“No,” replied Sanders. He didn’t say anything else after that. He knew his employer was thinking exactly what he was thinking. Whether those girls had stepped through the device willingly or had been pushed, they were gone. And they’d never be seen again.

“I’m going to need time to figure this out,” Abressian said.

“There’s no time, Armen. Viktor wants his girls back. The only reason he hasn’t snatched Cahill and started torturing him yet is out of respect for you. If he does get his hands on him, Cahill will tell him everything. And I mean everything,” said Sanders, drawing out the last word.

Abressian didn’t need to be reminded what was at stake, or the price he’d be forced to pay if they failed. “We need to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“What would you like me to do?”

“For starters,” said Abressian, “lie. Tell him you know for a fact that Cahill couldn’t have done anything to those girls because he was with you.”

Sanders laughed nervously. “I don’t think Viktor would believe me.”

“Make him believe you.”

“I’ll try. In the meantime, what should we do about Cahill?”

“I don’t want him out of your sight,” replied Abressian. “If you have to handcuff him to your wrist, you do it.”

“So I have your permission to restrain him?” asked Sanders.

Abressian exhaled. “You have my permission to do what’s necessary,” he said. “But use your brain. That’s what I pay you for. Let’s not let the situation get any further out of control.”

“And if Viktor calls and asks for you again?”

“Tell him I am still out of town, but that I will meet with him as soon as I get back.”

“I will do that,” said Sanders.

“What about that other assignment we discussed?”

“The new one in Prague?”

“Yes,” said Abressian. “You were planning to use that same Czech again, Heger. Correct?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ll run him through our man in Belgrade so it doesn’t trace back?”

“That’s my plan. I expect to hear something tonight.”

Abressian nodded. “Good. Any further word on what happened in Venice?”

“Still nothing,” said Sanders, “but I have feelers out. I’m confident we’ll hear something soon.”

Armen wasn’t so sure. Bianchi might not ever resurface again, and that meant they wouldn’t get their shipment. “Keep pressing. We need that delivery.”

“I will,” replied Sanders, who then changed the subject. “How’s Istanbul?”

“Don’t ask. Just do what I have requested. I will be back as soon as I can.” And with that Abressian hung up the phone.

He thought about returning to bed and the beautiful young woman who would graciously and professionally perform any act he wished, but he wasn’t feeling aroused. He was feeling overburdened and stressed.

He decided on a swim. Perhaps then he could clear his head and get answers to the problems that seemed to suddenly be mounting up against him.