The Athena Project

CHAPTER 50

A Humvee showed up four minutes later and Gretchen Casey climbed in. Like everyone else she had met at Tuzla, the driver was polite, professional, and didn’t ask a lot of questions.

He drove her out toward the airfield. “Do I have a plane waiting for me?” she asked.

“No, ma’am,” her driver replied as he kept going.

The kid had obviously been told to pick her up and not make conversation, so she decided to leave him alone. From what she could tell, they weren’t driving off the base, which meant she’d find out what this was all about soon enough.

At the far end of the airfield was a cluster of prefabricated buildings. Just beyond the cluster was a building surrounded by a high cyclone fence. When Casey saw who was standing at the gate, twirling a key on his finger, she began to understand what this was all about.

“Where is he?” Casey said as she climbed out of the Humvee.

“We haven’t seen each other in days and that’s your first question? No, ‘Hi, Scot, How’s it been?’” replied Scot Harvath.

“Hi, Scot. You look like crap.”

“Actually, I haven’t been sleeping very well. Which is probably because I haven’t been letting Bianchi sleep very well. He’s a real tough nut to crack.”

Casey looked at him askance. “Is that some sort of macho, male anatomy joke?”

Harvath put his hands up. “No hostile work environment here, boss. I don’t want to get written up.”

“Relax. I’m just pulling your leg. Where is he?”

“He’s downstairs in the play place having a happy meal.”

“Can I see him?”

Harvath stepped back and swung open the gate. “I was told to give you full access. By the way, he’s probably not going to be very excited to see you.”

“I wouldn’t expect him to be.”

“When you tossed him out the window, did you know he couldn’t swim?”

Casey shook her head. “I had no idea. He sure picked an interesting city to live in then, didn’t he?”

They walked across the packed, brown earth to the building. “My only request is that you don’t tell him where he is.”

“No problem,” replied Casey as they reached the building’s main door and Harvath slid his key in and unlocked it. “Where’s Riley?”

“She went to hide her clothes. She’s afraid you’re going to borrow something again like you did on the yacht.”

“C’mon, seriously.”

“I am serious,” replied Harvath with a grin.

He walked them over to a steel door with an electronic card next to it. Removing a card from his pocket, Harvath swiped it through the reader. There was a buzz followed by a click as the lock released and he pulled back the heavy security door.

He led Casey down a flight of metal stairs to the basement level. They had not seen anyone else and she figured that was on purpose. The fewer people who knew Scot Harvath and Nino Bianchi were here, the better.

They passed several doors until they reached one marked 5. Harvath slid his card through another reader, the lock released, and he held the door open for her.

It was a long room, and sitting in the center was the play place, as it was known, an enormous cell, constructed out of heavy, modular concrete panels that could be broken down and moved. It had its own heating and air-conditioning unit that could create wild temperature swings inside if an interrogator so chose.

Casey had seen enough of them to know what the interior looked like. It would be monitored by video and be outfitted with strobe lights and Dolby surround-sound speakers. There would be an eye hook in the center of the floor to restrain the prisoner in stress positions. Not only would the prisoner have no idea where he was, but the play place was completely soundproof. Access was via yet another heavy security door and card reader. On the outside, someone had taped a picture of an evil Ronald McDonald.

There were two desks and a bank of closed-circuit monitors to watch what was happening inside the cell. Right now, Nino Bianchi was eating.

He looked worse than Harvath. His clothes were soiled and his hair was unkempt. He probably hadn’t bathed or shaved since Casey and her team had handed him over.

“Well,” said Scot. “He’s all yours. Do you want me to go in with you?”

Casey shook her head. “I’d rather go in alone.”

“Understood.”

“And no video, okay? I’m not here and this never happened. Are we good?”

“We’re good,” replied Harvath as he walked over to the cell door and swiped his card.

When the lock released, he pulled it back so Casey could walk in. Once she had entered, he closed the door behind her and waited for the lock to reengage before walking over to one of the monitors to watch her interrogation unfold.

“Hello, Nino,” Casey said as Bianchi looked up from his food.

If he was unhappy to see her, she couldn’t tell. The man had a drawn expression. Gone was the arrogance of only a few nights ago. He looked broken, but broken didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous. Despite his being shackled to the eye ring in the middle of the floor, she still made sure not to get too close. Caged animals were just as dangerous as those roaming freely in the wild.

“Have you come back to throw me out another window?” he asked.

“No,” she replied as she pulled a chair from the corner and straddled it. “I want to talk about weapons.”

“I sell computer parts. I don’t know anything about weapons.”

“What did they give you to eat?” she asked, trying to figure out what he was scooping up from his plate with a piece of bread.

Bianchi made a face and set the plate aside. “For an Italian, this is true torture.”

“I think the chef has a bottle of Dom Perignon White Gold outside. Would you like me to check?”

“Considering that it may be a very long time before I taste champagne again, I made a good choice,” he replied, a bit of a smile forming on his mouth.

“Have you been cooperating?”

“Are you the good cop, then? The other man who has been in here with me certainly isn’t.”

Casey had seen Harvath in action before. He had issues. He most definitely wasn’t the good cop. In answer to the man’s question, she said, “That depends.”

Bianchi sighed. “Of course it does. It always does.”

“You understand that because of your involvement in the bus bombing in Rome-”

“I wasn’t involved,” the Italian insisted.

“You sold the explosives to the terrorists,” stated Casey. “That’s involvement enough. More than twenty Americans died. At your trial, the United States will push for the death penalty.”

She expected some fervent defense, felt certain that he would stand up for himself and justify what he had done, but instead he just hung his head. She had no idea what Harvath had done to him. There wasn’t a mark on the man, at least not that she could see, but it was as if someone had gone to work on him with a hammer. There was no resistance, no fight in him.

“I’ll give up the people involved. I’ll make a deal. Is that what you want?” he asked.

Casey needed to be careful and not screw up whatever Harvath was trying to achieve with Bianchi. “That’s not why I am here, Nino. That’s for you to discuss with the other man.”

“The bad cop,” he said dejectedly.

“Yes,” she replied. “The bad cop. I need to talk to you about something else.”

He looked up and said, “You have come to talk to me about Thomas Sanders.”