The Athena Project

CHAPTER 52

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Jack Walsh hadn’t had a full night’s sleep in two days. The trip to Paraguay had only heightened his anxiety. His sixth sense was telling him that there was going to be an attack of some kind. He could feel it.

He had called his counterpart at the CIA, Phil Farnsworth, to try to get some assistance, but it wasn’t going well.

“A friend of mine at the FBI,” said Walsh, “tells me that they’ve never heard of Armen Abressian before.”

Farnsworth sounded distracted, as if maybe he was checking his email while on the phone. “I’m not surprised,” replied the CIA man.

“Why not?”

“Who knows?”

“Phil, am I interrupting something?” asked Walsh.

“I’m sorry, we’ve just got a lot going on here.”

“You were saying about Abressian?”

“What was I saying?”

Walsh gripped the phone a little tighter. “That you weren’t surprised that he’s stayed off the FBI’s radar.”

“He’s probably a smart guy.”

“Wait a second. We went from you not being surprised that he’s stayed off the FBI’s radar to you saying he’s probably a smart guy? What’s going on over there?”

“It’s sensitive, Jack.”

“That’s why we all have top-secret clearances,” replied Walsh. “C’mon, what do you know about this guy?”

There was a pause on the other end as Farnsworth’s attention was diverted once again. Finally, he said, “What’s your interest in Abressian?”

Walsh had assumed he’d ask, so he had his story prepared. “We’ve got some unconfirmed intel that he might have provided a couple of Taliban factions with material support in southern Afghanistan.”

“Hmmm,” replied Farnsworth distractedly. “Why don’t you write up what you’ve got and send it over? I’ll have our guys take a look at it and see what they can come up with for you.”

“I was hoping you could do a little more than that for me, Phil.”

Suddenly, the CIA man was interested in the conversation. “I find it heartwarming that you finally want to work with us.”

Walsh shook his head. “Let’s not do this.”

“Hey, you’re the guys with all the money who are out there running around hiring away our best people.”

“You’ve got plenty of excellent people at Langley.”

“But when the best of them retire and get into contract work, they’ve all been signing up at your shop,” stated Farnsworth.

Walsh really didn’t want to get into this with him. “You’re talking to the wrong guy, Phil. I’m just a cog in the wheel, trying to make it to Friday. You know that.”

Farnsworth laughed out loud. “That’s priceless. It’s a total load of BS, but it’s definitely priceless.”

“Are you going to share what you’ve got with me or not?”

“I told you to write it up-” began Farnsworth.

“And send it over,” replied Walsh, finishing the man’s sentence for him. “Yeah, I got that. And I’m asking you, not your people, to help me out right now.”

“What do you know about an Italian arms dealer named Bianchi who was ghosted in Venice a couple of days ago?”

Walsh leaned forward in his chair and lied. “Nothing. Why? Are they connected?”

“Maybe,” said Farnsworth. “Listen, I shouldn’t be going into this with you.”

“You haven’t gone into anything. Come on, Phil. What do you have? Please.”

“Hold on a second.”

Walsh heard Farnsworth get up from his desk and shut his door.

“You still there?” he asked when he returned.

“I’m still here.”

Farnsworth took a deep breath. “The arms dealer out of Venice was named Nino Bianchi. Anything, anywhere, anytime was his reputation; and he was that good.”

“Who grabbed him?”

“We don’t know. All we’ve heard was that it was an all-female team. We think it might have been the Russians.”

“Any idea why they would have wanted him?” asked Walsh.

“This guy Bianchi double-crossed a lot of people,” replied Farnsworth. “We’re still trying to figure it out.”

“You said there was a connection between Bianchi and Abressian?”

The CIA man took in a deep breath and exhaled. “This is not for dissemination and you didn’t get this from me, okay?”

“Understood,” said Walsh.

“We believe Abressian has built a sophisticated shadow intelligence network. From what we can tell, it’s filled with former and even current spooks and special operations types. Kind of like the stuff you’re running.”

Walsh let the remark slide.

“Anyway,” continued Farnsworth. “Abressian began by contracting his merry band out to wealthy individuals and corporations. Then he moved on to small countries with limited intelligence agencies that needed to improve their capabilities and their reach. He provided training and his people even helped plan and conduct operations.

“Right out of the box, that was bad enough. Then, we started hearing they were taking jobs for larger countries that didn’t want their fingerprints on certain, let’s say sensitive, undertakings like assassinations, kidnappings, terrorist attacks, and other various ops that would draw international condemnation. Abressian’s group guarantees complete anonymity, which brings us back to Nino Bianchi.

“We began taking a serious interest in Bianchi when a source of ours in Pakistan told us he was looking to buy whatever he could get his hands on there. He was particularly interested in nukes and EMP devices. He bought two shipments of the latter, allegedly for Armen Abressian.

“Now, Abressian wasn’t mentioned by name. He normally uses cutouts to do his business. The name of the person Bianchi was buying these EMP devices for was some character named Sanders. Thomas Sanders.”

“You’re sure about all of this?” asked Walsh.

“As sure as we can be,” replied Farnsworth. “But it gets more troubling. From another source, completely unrelated and outside of Pakistan, we heard that Abressian’s group was looking to help facilitate some sort of spectacular attack on the United States with those same EMP devices.”

Walsh’s worst fears had just been confirmed. “Do you know who Abressian’s group was supposed to be helping?”

“No, we don’t,” said Farnsworth.

“Do you know what the targets were?”

“We had hoped Bianchi might lead us to those, or at the very least Sanders and Abressian. We were in the process of trying to put something together with the Italians when Bianchi got taken.”

Walsh didn’t know what to say. “That’s it? You don’t have any other leads?”

“We’re chasing down a rumor right now about a hit that happened yesterday in Croatia.”

“Croatia?”

“Yeah,” replied Farnsworth. “A former KGB official and his three-man bodyguard detail were ambushed. Lots of AK47s and an RPG were used. The hitters appear to have been imported for the job.”

“What’s this got to do with Bianchi?”

“It doesn’t. This is about Abressian. Supposedly, he and this deceased KGB man, a Viktor Mikhailov, had some sort of falling out.”

“Over what?” asked Walsh.

“We don’t know. Like I said, this just happened yesterday. I’m getting it all out of a source in Moscow. We’ll probably have more in a week or two.”

“Do you think Abressian was behind it?”

“I don’t know,” replied Farnsworth. “Mikhailov was no choir boy. I’m sure he’s made more than his share of enemies.”

“Interesting.”

“Yup,” said the CIA man, wrapping up the call. “Listen, don’t forget to get me anything you’ve got on Abressian and the Taliban. The more I hear about him, the more I don’t like him.”

“Me too,” replied Walsh. We’ll get something over to you as soon as we can.” With that, the two men said their good-byes and hung up.

Jack Walsh then immediately dialed Rob Hutton at Fort Bragg.