The Athena Project

CHAPTER 45

Branko Kojic answered the door in a short, black silk bathrobe embroidered with a dragon. He had a potbelly, a hairy gray chest, and a receding hairline. The sound of a soccer game came from a TV somewhere inside his unit.

Julie Ericsson didn’t give him a chance to speak. “Do you speak English?” she asked, glancing nervously over her shoulder and then back at him. “I’m visiting and I got locked out. I can’t go downstairs like this. Can I use your phone?”

By the look on Kojic’s face, he definitely wasn’t gay. He liked what he saw, a lot. Had she been a man, even a man in his underwear, he would have told him to wait outside in the hall for security, but he wasn’t going to do that to this gorgeous woman. No way. Besides, she was in her underwear. She couldn’t possibly pose any harm to him. What’s more, this was going to be one hell of a story. No one was ever going to believe it. “Yes,” he stammered. “I speak English. Would you like to come in? You may use my phone and I’ll give you something to put on.”

Ericsson stood on her tiptoes, ostensibly to look over his shoulder and into his condo. The provocative move only accentuated the length of her legs and the tautness of her body. “It sounds like you have company,” she replied. “Maybe I should ask one of the other neighbors.”

“No, no, no,” Kojic insisted. “I’m all alone. That’s just the television.”

“Well, in that case,” she said, stepping inside.

The man tried to move out of her way to let her pass and they had an awkward moment as she brushed against him in the doorway.

She stepped back into the hall and said, “After you.”

Kojic smiled and retreated into his unit. As he did, Ericsson stepped in front of the door so he couldn’t slam it shut. That’s when Casey sprang.

“Not a word,” she ordered, her Glock leveled at Kojic’s head as she burst into his condo. “Down on the floor. Do it now!”

Kojic did as he was told.

Casey produced a set of FlexCuffs and handed Ericsson her weapon. When the Serbian was fully prone, she bound his hands behind his back. “If you make one single sound, I will kill you. Do you understand that?”

Kojic nodded.

“Good.”

Julie retrieved her clothes from the hall and stepped back inside. As she locked the door behind her and got dressed, she said over the radio, “We’re in.”

Casey cleared the expensive condo room by room to make sure that they were indeed alone.

When she came back to the entry hall, Ericsson asked, “Where do you want to do this?”

From their walkthrough with the realtor that day, they knew that most residents had panic buttons located throughout their units. The last thing they needed was for Kojic to get near one.

Casey looked around as she thought about it. “Let’s use the guest bathroom.”

Helping him to his feet, they led him down the hall to the bathroom. Pushing the door open with the toe of her boot, Casey turned on the light and then knocked the much larger Kojic to his knees in front of the bidet.

“What do you want from me?” he said. “Who are you?”

“I told you not to talk,” said Casey, as she kicked him in the ribs. She didn’t necessarily like to get violent, but she could when she had to. Interrogations were a power game, especially between men and women. She could be just as efficient as Megan when it came to interrogating suspects, but she could be a lot more physical, even brutal if the situation called for it. Megan was much more patient.

The thing she had learned early on was to assert her dominance right from the beginning and to answer any challenge to it in the harshest of terms. Some people were slower than others, but once they realized that they were going to get whacked for disobeying or challenging your authority, the challenges stopped pretty quickly. It was only the most hardened subjects who seemed to like it rougher. She didn’t want this to get too rough, but if it had to, she was willing to go there.

“Branko,” she said as the man looked up at her, “I’m going to ask you a series of questions.”

“But I didn’t do anything,” he offered.

“Shut up.”

Kojic closed his mouth.

“I know more about you than you realize. If you lie to me, I will be very upset. Do you understand me?”

Kojic nodded.

“Good. I want to talk to you about a man named Radek Heger.”

“I don’t know any man named Heger.”

Casey looked at Ericsson. “Lift his robe up.”

“My robe? Why do you want to-” his voice trailed off as Ericsson bent down and flipped the robe up, exposing his thong underwear.

“Lying makes me angry, Branko,” said Casey. “When I get angry, things get worse for you. You just lied to me, so now, as promised, things are going to get worse.”

Julie reached over and pulled so hard, she ripped the man’s thong off.

“What are you doing?” he implored.

“First, I want to hear you lie to me again. Tell me you don’t know Radek Heger.”

“I don’t. I don’t know him.”

Ericsson grabbed him by the back of the neck and pressed his cheek against the bidet.

Most stress postures worked across all cultural boundaries. Sexual humiliation, though, was different. It worked very well with more religiously oriented cultures, in particular with Muslim fundamentalists. But Western males weren’t turned off or threatened by female sexuality.

What they were doing with Kojic was a hybrid the Athena Team program had developed. They called it the prison posture. When men were naked and bent over, it had a profound psychological impact on 97 percent of them. It was an incredibly vulnerable position. The key was what the interrogator did next.

The Iraqis under Saddam did unspeakable things to their male victims. There was a definite line Casey would not cross. Instead, she preferred to heighten the subject’s fear by going in a completely different and more terrifying direction, something worse than what he thought was coming.

She reached into the bag she was carrying, pulled out a roll-up tool pouch and laid it on the floor. “Do you like the ballet, Mr. Kojic?” she asked as she unrolled the twenty-five-pocket organizer.

The man stared at the hypodermic needles, screwdrivers, medical instruments, and other items arrayed inside.

“The reason I ask,” Casey said as she examined her interrogation apparatus, “is that I love the ballet. I mean I really, really love it. I have since I was a little girl. Isn’t that nice?”

Kojic had no idea if it was nice or not. In fact, he found it a rather bizarre question considering the circumstances. Nevertheless, he didn’t want to make her any angrier than she already was. So, he nodded that it was nice.

Casey saw him nod and she smiled. “I like that you agree. The ballet is nice.”

“Very nice,” said Kojic.

“Do you know which ballet is my favorite?”

The man watched as she selected an instrument from one of the pockets of her organizer and shook his head.

“The Nutcracker,” Casey replied with a smile as she withdrew a pair of pliers.

Kojic nearly fainted.

Casey pointed at his ankles. “Spread his legs,” she ordered Ericsson.

“No. No. No. No. No,” the man begged, but Ericsson did what she was told. Letting go of his neck, she reached down, grabbed his ankles, and pulled so hard she almost split him like a wishbone.

With no one keeping his face pressed into the bidet, he immediately rocked back on his knees and raised his head. Casey took care of that, though.

Standing up, she pushed his head back down so that his chin hung over the edge of the bidet. She kept him there with her forearm so she could snap on a pair of latex gloves.

“Please,” he begged. “Please don’t do this.”

Casey opened the pliers and began fishing for what she was looking for.

Kojic frantically twisted his head, first to the left and then to the right. “You don’t need to do this. We can make some sort of a deal.”

She found his testicles, got hold of one with the pliers, and applied pressure. Kojic’s body stiffened.

“Mr. Kojic, I now have one of your you-know-whats in a literal vise. I suggest you tell me everything you know about Radek Heger.”

“But, if you will only allow me to-” he began, but Gretchen applied even more pressure and cut him off.

“We’re a little squeezed for time, Mr. Kojic,” she said. “No more games, please.”

“I have many clients. I deal with many people,” he said, but the word people came out as a shriek as Casey squeezed even harder.

“Listen to me, Branko. I’ve got a pair of nice, rusty scissors with me. I’d be happy to cut off your eggs and put them all in one basket for you, if you’d like.”

Kojic shook his head back and forth. “No, please, no.”

“I’m giving you one last chance,” she said. “Tell me what I want to know, or after I get done with the pliers and the scissors, I’m going to get out my scalpel and we’ll play chop goes the weasel.” She tapped the corresponding piece of his anatomy to make sure the man was suffering from no delusions as to what part of his nether regions she was talking about.

“Radek Heger,” he said, as if the name had just come to him. “Of course. Radek Heger the Czech!”