by Mike Kraus
“Yes, madam, as requested.”
“And no external viewers?”
The officer hesitates. “Yes, madam. Although it’s most irregular that—”
“So I’ve been told.” Linda’s tone remains cordial even as she speaks bluntly to the officer. He clears his throat and nods in response.
“Very good, madam.”
Another minute passes in silence until the elevator finally stops. The officer enters another code on the pad and twists his key and the doors open, revealing a brightly-lit corridor. The officer steps out of the elevator first. “Follow me, please, madam.”
Linda follows him, cringing internally with each step. Each step in her high heels echoes harshly in the enclosed space and she finds herself wishing she was back in a pair of sneakers or combat boots. Her attire is necessary for the ruse, however, as it both adds legitimacy to what she claims and provides a visual distraction for those around her who might otherwise notice that all of the points of her story don’t quite add up.
Halfway down the hall the officer stops and motions to a small room to the side. “The interrogation room, madam.”
Linda stops at the door and tilts her head. “Is he inside?”
“He will be brought in momentarily.”
“Very good.” Linda brushes past the officer, pushes open the door and enters the room. She walks to the seat with its back to the large mirror on the side wall. Her overcoat slips off with a shrug and she folds it over the back of the seat. Her clutch is carefully placed on the corner of the table and she gently adjusts its position.
As she sits down the door opens and three people appear. The first and third are both officers, though the man in between them is not. He is dressed in plain clothes—a button down shirt and khakis—and carries a nervous expression on his face. The officers escort him to the seat opposite Linda, point to it and then step back behind him.
“Gentlemen.” Linda raises an eyebrow as she speaks to them in German. “Please leave us. There is to be absolutely no monitoring of this conversation.”
The officers, already knowing full well what she has told them, slowly walk out of the room. They each cast a wary glance at the man seated across from Linda and the first man stops and speaks to her as he watches the man. “We’ll be right outside, madam. Should you need anything.”
Linda makes a show of adjusting her burgundy dress as she runs her tongue across her teeth. “Should I need anything I will let you know. Until then I expect to be left in peace.” The officer nods and exits the room, closing and locking the door behind him.
With the officers out of the room and—she desperately hopes—no one watching from the room behind the mirror Linda turns her attention to the man seated across from her.
“Mr. Namazi, is it?”
Chapter 9
As Frank and Linda meandered down the road they began to see more residents of the survivor city. Most were in their homes, watching out the windows or talking on their front porches. Others carried bags and boxes stamped with military codes from the road into their houses and Frank nudged Linda and whispered to her.
“What’s with the boxes?”
“Looks like rations. Two, maybe three days’ worth could fit into a box of that size for a family of five.”
Frank nodded. “Makes sense. Smaller, more condensed distribution inside a place like this versus trying to deliver emergency supplies to every Tom, Dick and Harry across the country. Makes you wonder why they aren’t having the people walk to pick them up, though.”
“Probably for disease and population management. You get a big group together in one place and even the smallest problem turns into something major.”
A few seconds later, as Linda turned to look down the opposite street, she stopped and snorted. “Or because of that.”
Frank looked off to his side and his eyebrows shot up. Half a dozen large covered military vehicles were parked on the street in front of a row of stately white houses with large lawns and white picket fences. On the other side of the street from the houses sat a wide field that normally would have been empty.
Today, though, the field was filled with soldiers who were working to assemble a dozen or more structures. The structures were dark green in color, one story tall and looked like they were made out of a combination of aluminum and plastic. A door sat in each end of the structure and the roof had a slight slope to it. Through one of the open doors of a finished building Frank and Linda could see a row of bare metal cots lined up on one side.
“Are those emergency shelters?” Frank whispered to Linda, not wanting to attract the attention of the soldiers.
“Not just emergency shelters. Long-term shelters.” Linda shook her head in disbelief. “That sort of verifies that they’re setting this place up as a survivor city. I bet it’s another reason for supply deliveries, too. They’re going to be filling up every square inch of free space in the area they’ve selected with shelters and they’re making sure their distribution points are up to the challenge.”
“How many people do you think they’ll cram in here?” Frank tugged at Linda’s sleeve as he asked the question, prompting her to keep moving. One of the soldiers had noticed them standing in the middle of the road and Frank wanted to stay out of any trouble.
“As many as they can. There’s already something like six million people in DC and the surrounding areas. You could probably squeeze five times that many in here if they set things up properly.”
“People who live here won’t like that, will they?”
“No. No they will not. Especially if they’re forced to give up space in their homes to house people.”
Frank glanced at Linda. “They’d do that?”
She nodded. “Absolutely. National emergency, martial law, suspension of habeas corpus. All the good stuff.”
“Lovely.” Frank sneered in disgust.
“Come on, now.” Linda slapped him on the back, adding a thick layer of sarcasm to her words. “It can’t be that bad, right?”
***
They continued down the two-lane road that wound along like a country road with stands of trees and large fields on both sides. Linda’s assurance that they would blend in better walking on the road—and therefore looking like they belonged there—made sense even if doing so made him extremely nervous.
At times, though, it felt like they were out in the middle of nowhere as they walked for minutes without seeing any sign of homes or other people. At other times it was clear they were moving into a more populated area as the houses—most of them two stories or taller—grew more frequent. If it wasn’t for the increased frequency of these homes along with manicured lawns, pruned trees and immaculately painted wooden fences Frank would have thought he was about to hear banjo music. The thought that he was just a few miles from the capital made him rethink how he saw the Northern Virginia area.
After cutting across a few streets and fields the pair drew closer to Langley High School. It had been a while since Linda had visited the area but she remembered using the school as a landmark more than once when she was driving around and was certain she could find her way to the CIA annex from there.
“How much farther?” Frank leaned up against a tree to take off his shoe. He smacked it against the tree a few times and a pebble fell out.
“The school’s not far from the main building.” Linda pointed out to the east as she shielded her eyes with her left hand from the sun that was still low in the sky. “We can cut down through the neighborhood next to it and out towards the parkway and the river.”
“Linda.” Frank sat down slowly and motioned for her to join him. “Let’s take a break. I could use some rest.” Frank had noticed that Linda’s limp was growing worse and wanted to get her to stop and give her leg a break before she hurt it even further. He figured that mentioning her injury would only lead to an argument about how it wasn’t really hurting.
“We really should keep moving.”
“Just tw
enty minutes. We’ve been walking all morning and I’m beat.”
Linda gave him a sideways glance before nodding in agreement. “Ten minutes. Then we keep going.”
She sat down slowly, trying to hide the pain in her leg, and sighed as she hit the ground. The wide-trunked oak was at the edge of the last field before they would reach the school. The wide, squat set of brick buildings sat just over half a mile away past a few more roads and groves of trees beyond the field, just out of sight of Frank and Linda from where they were sitting.
Glad for the moment’s respite not only for Linda but for himself, Frank leaned his head back against the tree and closed his eyes. A cool autumn breeze was gently shaking the leaves above, lending a serenity to their rest that he found to be both surprising and relaxing. Events of the last several days had grown far beyond anything he could have ever imagined. When he had stared at the burning wreck of his truck wondering just what was going on the thought that he’d be traipsing across half the country with a stranger would have never entered his wildest dreams.
“Linda?” Frank kept his head back and his eyes closed as he spoke.
“Hm?”
“What if this contact of yours isn’t there?”
“Hm.” Linda thought about the question for a long moment before responding. “She lives in a townhouse somewhere in Wildwood Hills, north of the river near the Westfield shopping mall. I don’t know her exact address but we can search there.”
Frank opened one eye and turned his head to look at Linda. “You know where she lives?”
“Mhm. The general area.”
“Were you two friends?”
“Nope.”
Frank paused. “How do you know where she lives?”
“I have my ways. Or, should I say, had my ways. I was involved with more than a few clandestine missions in my pursuit of Omar.”
“Were any of them government sanctioned?”
“Nope. All of them were self-funded. Sarah gave me a bit of support but it was never very much and never official.”
“Huh.”
“What is it?”
Frank shrugged, scratching his head and brushing off a leaf that had fallen from the branches overhead. “That’s just a completely different world for me. It’s hard for me to imagine devoting my life to pursuing one person for years and years.”
“Well, you’re part of the club now. Though we don’t have ‘years and years’ left to get this guy.”
“Is there a membership card?”
Linda chuckled and leaned back against the tree. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, focusing for a few moments on the cool air and the smells of autumn. The decaying leaves mixed with the chill in the air, taking her back to the falls she had spent in Maine.
Her hunt for Omar had turned her into a hermit, causing her to shun her friends, abandon her family and spend her days poring over pilfered documents, satellite images and internet message boards. She spent thousands of hours talking with other veterans, extracting information from obscure papers and learning how to speak three different languages all in the effort to track down Omar’s location.
She rarely left the house, heading out once every few weeks to get food. The only exceptions were the occasions she was forced outside to do work on her house to fix a broken shingle, replace the boards on the back deck or drain the swamp that used to be her swimming pool. A few of those times had been in the fall and winter and it was that smell she could recall— along with the feel of her rough denim jeans and soft flannel of her shirt—as if it was only yesterday.
Not wanting to dwell on the past for fear of letting old emotions worm their way back in, Linda sat up and went through her backpack. “Energy bar?” She held one out to Frank and he accepted it gratefully.
“Thanks.” He unwrapped the bar and ate it quickly before balling up the wrapper and putting it into his pocket. He looked at the lump under Linda’s pants where her bandage was and nodded at it. “How’s that doing?”
“It’s…” Linda paused for a second. “It hurts like hell. But I’ll make it.”
Frank did his best not to show surprise over the small admission of weakness and nodded thoughtfully. “I know you will. We shouldn’t have much farther to go.”
“Nope.” Linda nodded. “We’ll head north from the school to the river. The annex is within sight of the main building so we’ll be fine.”
“Hey!” The shout came from behind Frank and Linda and they both turned, reaching for their pistols at the same time. They had been so engrossed in both their conversation and their own thoughts that they hadn’t noticed the sound of a car driving by, stopping and shutting off.
Frank was the first to see that the source of the voice was a police officer standing near the road, his hand on his gun. Frank pulled his right hand back around to his side slowly, glad that he hadn’t yet taken his pistol out. He waved at the officer and smiled. “Hi there!”
The officer didn’t return the smile and shouted back at them instead. “I need to see your admission papers!”
Frank turned to glance at Linda, keeping a forced smile on his face as his eyes grew wide and he hissed at her through clenched teeth.
“What now?!”
Chapter 10
The man seated across from Linda Rollins is afraid. That much is certain. There is a fear in his eyes that is genuine, the type of fear that cannot be manufactured except from raw, pure emotion. He is afraid of something. What that something is, though, is what she hopes to discover.
“Mr. Namazi?” Linda speaks his name again after waiting several seconds for him to respond.
He takes a short breath and looks at her, nods and speaks in broken German. “Yes. I am Namazi. Who you are?”
Linda smiles at him, switching languages. “Mr. Namazi, perhaps English would be better?”
The man is clearly startled and caught off guard by her words and he narrows his eyes. His response is hesitant but smooth with a deep middle eastern accent. “English is preferable, thank you. But who are you? Why are we speaking without my counsel present?”
Linda eyes Namazi coolly. “You are from Iran, yes?” She doesn’t give him a chance to answer. “Of course you are. Sixty-four years old as of three months ago, born in the north and selected to receive a state-funded education after scoring at the top of the charts on the national tests.”
Rahim Namazi audibly gulps. His heartbeat increases and a few beads of sweat break out on his forehead. Linda continues, rattling off fact after fact about him that she memorized only a few hours prior to arriving in Germany until, finally, he has enough. He slams his palms on the table and stands halfway out of his chair.
“Who are you, woman?! What is it you want?”
Linda leans back in her chair, a thin smile on her lips. “My name’s not important, Mr. Namazi. What is important, however, is something you know.” She leans forward again, across the table, lowering her voice to a confidential whisper. “And if you tell me what you know then I can help you.
Namazi sneers, trying to appear tough but still rattled by Linda’s knowledge of his past. “You? An American? Helping me? I don’t believe you.”
Linda shrugs. “I’m here on behalf of our government, Mr. Namazi. We need to know something about someone you once worked for. In exchange we’re ready to offer you immediate immigration into the United States and set you up with a home and a job in any city you’d like.”
Namazi’s eye twitches at the corner and he sinks back into his chair. He struggles with what he hears, somehow knowing what question will come next and trying to decide if the potential reward is worth the risk of answering said question. He murmurs a prayer beneath his breath and pushes his fingers through his hair before looking up at Linda again.
“What do you want to know?”
“Tell me about Farhad Omar.”
There it is. The question Rahim Namazi expected.
“Who is that?” He resists it at first, though he knows his attem
pt is ultimately futile.
Linda sighs. “Mr. Namazi. I already know the answers to many of the questions I’m going to ask you.” This is not entirely accurate but the lie is convincing. “If you try to dodge the questions or deceive me then I will walk out of here and you will spend the rest of your life rotting in a cell or you’ll be shipped home where Omar will have you killed within a week. Do you understand?”
Namazi hesitates before giving in. When he gives in, though, he does it in his own way, knowing that the woman from America can’t possibly know every single thing about his time spent with Omar.
“I was one of his scientists.”
“Go on.”
“Our goal was to create pathogens that had different properties. Some infected quickly. Some had no symptoms. Some could live for weeks or months in hostile environments.”
“What was the purpose for this?”
Namazi shrugs. “I don’t know. He kept us segmented from each other. We were not allowed to speak with anyone who wasn’t in our group.”
“Mm.” Linda nods. She already knows everything Namazi has told her. The next question will, if he answers, reveal new truths. “Where is Omar now?”
Namazi looks puzzled by the question. “Where is he? How would I know?”
Linda keeps her expression steady. “You worked under the man for months. Surely you heard things.”
Namazi shakes his head. “I was kept under lock and key, along with the rest of the scientists. We knew only our work.”
“Mr. Namazi.” Linda sits up straight in her chair and leans forward. “We have reason to believe that you were more than a simple scientist working under Omar.” Namazi’s eyes grow large as Linda speaks. “We have reason to believe that you worked with him and that you have intimate knowledge of what he was doing and where he might be right now.”
Panic grips Namazi’s heart and etches itself across his face. He stutters nervously as he tries to speak. “I—I don’t kn—know what you’re—”
