by John Whitman
Her hand covered her robes. “Nothing. It’s personal.”
“Show me anyway.”
Reluctantly, defeated, she pulled the slip of paper from her pocket. It was a four-by-six generic greeting card with pictures of a watercolor of flowers on the front. Inside, spidery handwriting crawled from side to side. Jack didn’t read what it said, because his eyes were drawn to two facts immediately.
First, the card was dated two months ago.
Second, it was signed by Nazila’s dead brother.
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THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 5 A.M. AND 6 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
5:00 A.M. PST
At five in the morning, the streets of San Francisco lost all their romance. In another hour or two, the sun would rise across the bay, and anyone with a good view and a penchant for rising early could sit with a cup of Peet’s Coffee and watch the fog roll back out the Golden Gate like a retreating army. But at this hour, San Francisco was simply another dark and quiet city, except with very steep hills.
The hour was, however, a convenient running time for a U.S. senator whose circadian rhythms were still set to East Coast Time and whose biological clock kept sending all her weight into her hips. Debrah Drexler, consummate feminist and liberal though she was, was not above a little vanity. Her one self-indulgence in a hectic schedule was her three-mile jog every morning. She had been what was called a looker in her day, and while in her head she knew that the days had passed when she’d turn a man’s head, in her heart she felt that one ought to at least make an effort.
She slipped out of her apartment in those first minutes after five onto the dark street spotted with street lamps. She started up the road at a slow pace, and a young man in an Adidas track suit fell in beside her.
“Bobby,” she greeted.
“Senator,” the young man said. She never said the word bodyguard out loud, but he wasn’t a regular part of her staff—at least, he did none of the analysis or fund-raising work—but when she’d started her predawn runs a month ago, her staffers had gotten him from somewhere to make sure that she always returned home. He ran, and they talked sometimes, but more often she was involved in her own thoughts, and he just kept pace with her.
She kept silent for the first mile, running the streets that led to Golden Gate Park, trying to wrap her mind around Quincy’s phone call. What had been the point of it? He knew which way she was going to vote, and it wasn’t like the AG was going to twist her arm. Barnes might try—she could at least imagine him getting on the phone and using his President voice to intimidate her. That would have failed, too, of course. Barnes’ party might have succeeded in cowing a lot of other members of her party, but not her. So if the President himself would have failed, why had the AG even bothered?
It had all started with the Patriot Act. Drexler had voted for it, too. Like everyone else, she’d been caught up in the emotions of 9/11 and her judgment had been clouded by the smoke of the burning towers. But Congress had possessed the sense, at least, to make the act temporary. She’d been appalled when the government had expanded it, and now she was furious that the Administration was attempting to replace it with an even more intrusive bill. The New American Privacy Act—the name itself was so Orwellian it sent shivers down her spine—granted the FBI and other investigative bodies powers that were tantamount to dropping the Bill of Rights into a paper shredder. Every time the politicians on her side of the aisle tried to sound the alarm, Quincy and the administration simply wrapped themselves in the flag and talked about the hordes of terrorists lurking in the shadows.
Of course, it didn’t help that there actually were terrorists out there.
They reached Golden Gate Park, which wasn’t nearly as big as Central Park in New York but had a beauty all its own, and started down the jogging path.
“Bobby, do you follow politics?”
The young man said, “I follow you, Senator.”
She laughed. He was quick. “Seriously, I talk with the rest of my staff, I ask their opinions, I’m interested in their views.” She was beginning her second mile. Her breath and her sentences were getting shorter. “I want yours.”
“I’m not much on having opinions on the job, Senator.”
“You’d make a good politician, then.”
“There’s no need to get nasty, Senator.”
She laughed again. “So you’re in security, or law enforcement, or something like that. I want to know what you think of the NAP Act.”
He paused. She could tell he didn’t want to talk about it. “I’m not really an investigator, ma’am. I mean, I only had a little training in investigation at FLETC.”
She repeated it the way he pronounced it. “Fletsee?”
“Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. You get a little of everything there, but I focused mostly on the protective services area. I’m not really qualified to know what investigators need. This NAP Act stuff is over my head.”
“No, it’s not,” she argued. “It’s not over anyone’s head. The bottom line is, do you want the government to be able to ignore all your rights if they think you’re a terrorist?”
He considered. “I don’t mind them ignoring the terrorists’ rights when they catch them.”
“But what if they catch the wrong people? What if they step on the rights of a hundred people to find one terrorist?”
“I’d say it’s worth it.”
“What if they step on the rights of a hundred people and don’t find any terrorists.”
“I see your point, ma’am.”
She wasn’t sure he did, but he was polite. Their jogging path joined another, and another jogger fell in beside them.
“Hey,” the newcomer gasped. “Hope...you... don’t mind some company...for a mile.” He looked like a mile would kill him.
Drexler smiled. She’d been there a month ago, when she’d first started running again. “No problem. We’re turning around in a minute anyway.”
The man nodded and glanced ahead. She could see his face intermittently, illuminated and then lost as they passed under lamps on the park’s jogging path.
He was on the far side of middle-aged (her age, she thought regretfully), with a bit of a paunch and thinning hair. He glanced at her once or twice, too, as though he was trying to place her. She got that a lot. Most of the electorate was, unfortunately, ignorant as to who their elected representatives were. Every once in a while she came across someone who’d seen her on CNN or the Sunday news programs. It always took them a minute to place her face.
“Don’t I know you?” he said at last. “I’ve seen you somewhere before.”
I’m your public servant,” she said with a chuckle. “I’m Senator Debrah Drexler.”
“No kidding?” the man said. He was still panting, but his voice had become more firm. “That’s not what I was thinking. I was thinking I knew you from a long time ago. Maybe twenty years. I thought maybe I was a customer of yours back in the seventies.”
Debrah Drexler stopped running. So did the other man, and so did Bobby. All three stood there panting for a moment—the Senator turning pale, the bodyguard trying to assess the threat, and the stranger smiling blissfully.
“What did you say?” Drexler asked. She ignored the sweat running into her eyes.
“I thought maybe you and I did some business way back when.”
“Not unless you were selling shoes, my friend,” she said coldly.
His smile widened into a leer. “There were lots of names for it back then, but I don’t think we ever called it shoes.”
“Bobby,” Drexler said, “I don’t think I like this man.”
She was grateful when he stepped immediately between them. “You’ll be going now,” he said.
The man nodded. “Yes, I will. Just keep that in mind, Senator. I’m sure if I keep thinking about it, I’ll remember exactly what kind of business we did together. See you later!”
/>
And then he was off into the Park.
5:23 A.M. PST West Los Angeles
As Debrah Drexler was slipping on her running shoes, Jack Bauer had stood in the Rafizadeh apartment. For one of the few moments in his life he was paralyzed by mixed emotions—anger, confusion, fear.
“Ramin Rafizadeh is alive,” he growled. “Ramin Rafizadeh is alive.”
Nazila stood before him, her back straight, her feet set slightly apart. The only sign of her nervousness was the quiver in her hands hanging at her sides. She was an island bracing for a storm. Jack felt that storm brewing inside him, the pent-up fury of six months banished to the backwaters of counterterrorism, listening to rednecks spew brainless bigoted curses at blacks and Jews when he should have been chasing down madmen who dreamed of killing thousands. Six months infiltrating a penny-ante gang of thugs led by a wannabe guru who’d read the Constitution backwards and wanted to relive his glory days as a soldier by starting a war on United States soil. Six months in exile...for the wrong reasons. He’d been right. Ramin Rafizadeh had been connected to a terrorist group in Lebanon and Ramin Rafizadeh was alive.
Ibrahim Rafizadeh was in contact with him. Jack had connected the dots. He’d done his job, and somehow the mission got screwed anyway. His sense of injustice at his exile was followed by the stinging irony that the weekend warriors and political radicals he’d been investigating for six months had been on the right track when his own people had gone astray. The Greater Nation, of all people, was still on the case while CTU was sitting on its ass.
He didn’t say anything, but his face hardened into stone as he replayed these thoughts over and over in his head. Finally Nazila could not stand it anymore and said quietly, “He is innocent.”
“Don’t,” he snarled, physically resisting the urge to strike her. “Sit.” He pushed her so that she fell back onto the bed.
He took out his cell phone and dialed CTU. A second later he was connected to Kelly Sharpton. “I need a rundown on Ramin Rafizadeh. Everything we’ve collected.”
He could hear Kelly’s confusion. “Ramin? You mean the son? That’s a dead file, isn’t it?”
“Everything,” Jack repeated.
“Hold on.”
Jack waited for two minutes while Kelly called up the file and scanned it. He gave Jack a summary over the phone. Most of it was exactly as Jack had remembered it from six months ago.
Ibrahim Rafizadeh had spent years as a voice of moderation in Iran. He had cheered the downfall of the Shah—though he was a bit older than the students who helped overthrow the tyrant, he had applauded their passion. But he was dismayed a short time later when the Shah’s corruption was replaced by a fundamentalist theocracy. Ibrahim himself had dreamed of a free Islamic state, guided by Sharia but not dominated by it. That dream had been naïve. Still, he remained in Iran, believing that as time passed and more moderate voices were heard, the government would relax. He raised his son and his daughter there, trying to strike the right note between a pure love of Islam as he saw it and obedience to the laws of the state. This was no easy task, and Ibrahim Rafizadeh would be the first to say he had gotten it only half right. His daughter had proved an apt disciple. His son, too, was a disciple—but one who’d turned toward a more absolute life than Ibrahim lived.
By the end of the 1980s, Ibrahim believed his patience had paid off. Rafsanjani was elected President, and although he was still conservative, he was a pragmatist who sought to improve Iran’s reputation in the world at large. Reform, it seemed, could not be far behind. But by the middle of the 1990s, Ibrahim had grown cynical, and even with the rise in power of Mohammed Khatami, a true reformer, he believed little would change. By the time Khatami came to power in 1997, Ibrahim had already left Iran.
But Ramin refused to go. In 1997 he was eighteen years old, fiery, and passionate, with nowhere to sow his wilds oats. Finding no other outlet for his energy, Ramin had plunged into politics. He swirled like a leaf in the conflicting winds of reform and dogma, believing that Iran could and would become the ideal Muslim state for which everyone yearned. He refused to follow his father to America. From that moment on, Ramin Rafizadeh’s life became a list of dates, places, and vague associations. He lived in his father’s home near Tehran for another year, becoming active in Khatami’s reform movement, then somehow leaving it in 1999 to work with more conservative voices attached to the Guardians Council. He popped up again in 2000 in Lebanon. This fact by itself immediately put him on American watch lists, since a young man’s general route from Iran to Lebanon was through the terrorist group Hezbollah. But very little information came out of Lebanon about him, which meant he was either well-hidden, or not active. He all but vanished for two years, until, of course, the commandos had seen his name on a list in the remains of a terrorist camp near the Syrian border. That had been Jack’s line of investigation, until it was cut short by the discovery that Rafizadeh had been killed in Lebanon, and Jack was accused of violating Ibrahim Rafizadeh’s civil rights.
“There’s got to be something more in there,” Jack said when Sharpton finished his summary. “I’ve just found something that says Ramin Rafizadeh is alive.”
“Jack . . .” The skepticism in Sharpton’s voice was thick.
“I’m not obsessed with this,” Bauer said. “I’m looking at a note written by Ramin to his father. It’s dated two months ago.”
That news hit Sharpton as hard as it had hit Jack. “Holy shit.”
“Right. Keep digging, will you?”
“I’ll see what we missed. Out.”
Jack closed his phone and turned all the energy he’d been gathering for the last few minutes on Nazila Rafizadeh. He didn’t have time for metaphysical mumbo-jumbo or New Age philosophy, but he knew that if you focused your whole self on another person, he felt it like a bullet come out of a gun. He focused on her now. He wanted to shout. He wanted to wring her neck for putting lives at risk by withholding information. He wanted to make her pay for the demotion he had suffered. But he didn’t. He stuck to the most important question.
“Where is he?”
“He never had anything to do with those people—”
“Life in prison. Guantanamo Bay, or somewhere even less enjoyable. You’ll be branded as terrorists yourselves.”
Nazila shook her head, her eyes pooling. “You tried all those threats before, Jack. If I thought my brother was actually a terrorist, I would—”
“You would be the first person to hand him over,” Jack terminated her sentence. “Bullshit.”
There were tears forming in her eyes now. “You know why I won’t tell you. All the reasons you just named. My brother has done nothing! But he’s on someone else’s list, so if you take him, he will end up one of those places you just talked about, and no one will see him again!”
“If he’s innocent, he’ll—”
“He’ll what? Only stay in a prison for two or three years as an ‘enemy combatant’?”
“Of course not,” Jack said, although he knew he was lying. It happened. It was the price you paid sometimes to keep people alive. “But everything we know so far points to the fact that there are terrorists in this country, probably somewhere in Southern California. I thought so six months ago, and now I’m getting more proof. We may have gotten lucky that they haven’t killed anyone yet. I need to find them, or people will die. And right now my only leads are your brother and those idiots in the militia. Tell me where he is.”
She hesitated. Her lips parted, but no words came out. She nearly buckled under the pressure he exerted on her, but at the last minute, she shifted her feet, as though preparing for a fight, and said, “I’ll tell you after you save my father.”
5:31 A.M. PST San Francisco
Debrah Drexler’s hands were still shaking as she closed her apartment door behind her and slumped down in the wide leather chair in her living room. She remembered the first time her ex-husband had slapped her, all those years ago. There was pain, but mostly there
was shock that such a thing could happen at all. That’s how she felt now.
Who was that man? How could he know?
The first two years after her divorce had been a nightmare only slightly less horrible than her marriage. The friendships and the promises that awaited her in San Francisco were all broken. It was 1979, Carter was president, and Debrah had her own personal misery index: a little girl to feed, no job, and no money. What she did have was a body that had survived childbirth intact. And even in the depression of 1980, there were men with enough money and lust to allow her to pay the rent.
She’d never worried about her secret getting out. She was in and out of that business in less than two years, and she’d been nothing special. A middle-rate call girl using a fake name. No one paid much attention to her. If anything, the men wanted it kept secret more than she did. She was never arrested, never photographed. Since then, she’d been through five elections, and that period of her life had never even been a blip on her political radar.
The phone rang. Debrah took a deep breath to settle her voice and her hands. She picked up the receiver. “Drexler.”
“Senator.” Quincy’s voice slid along the phone line like so much oil. “I hope you don’t mind a second phone call in one morning.”
“Why not,” she said, switching on her business voice, “since our first one was so pleasant.”
“I just wanted you to know that I am seriously considering your suggestion to use the media.”
“Wonderful. You look very handsome on television.”
“Oh, it won’t be me. It couldn’t be me. I’m not the one with the information.”
She felt ice form in her stomach. “I don’t understand.”
James Quincy chuckled on his end of the phone. “Senator, I’m sure you’ve heard that politics makes strange bedfellows. But didn’t they tell you you’re supposed to get those partners after you enter politics?”
He knew. Of course he knew. He’d found out, somehow. The jogger was on his payroll.
