by Jan Coffey
She opened her eyes and stared into the darkness of the new cell they’d moved her into this morning. She wasn’t allowed outside. With the exception of the face of the guard that brought the food, she never saw any other. When they moved her from prison to prison, she’d been either sedated or blindfolded. They never kept her in any one cell too long. She was beginning to believe they moved her every so often just to make sure she was still alive. This new cell had no windows, no lights, only a sliver of daylight creeping in at the base of the door. She remembered being moved into this cell, or one similar to it, a number of times before. She hated it. It felt like a grave in which she had been buried alive.
The cement floor smelled of urine. She sat up. Her eyes were already adjusted to the darkness. The size of the room was perhaps four by six feet. She looked up and knew the ceiling wasn’t high enough for her to stand.
Fahimah pulled the old wool blanket that they let her keep over her shoulders. The old rag smelled like death. The only other thing in the cell was the hospital chamber pot, glinting dully in the corner. She sat back against a wall, her legs crossed. Waves of panic were clawing their way inside of her. The air in the room was so heavy. She felt that there wasn’t enough of it.
She recalled how she’d started calming her mind and body those first weeks after her capture. Fahimah had always been enthralled by the idea of Sufism. She’d read about it and studied it. The great Sufi poet Rabi’a of Basrah was her favorite. One of the many myths surrounding Rabi’a was that she was freed from slavery because her master saw her praying while surrounded by light. He realized that she was a saint and feared for his life if he continued to keep her in captivity.
There had been many times in the darkness of her cell that Fahimah had prayed, chanted quietly, and meditated. No one had freed her. What her captors thought of her could not be further from sainthood. Despite it all, she’d been able to reach the peace inside she’d been after. She’d discovered her dreams.
She closed her eyes and started her meditation now. She had to observe, guard, and control her thoughts. She had to escape this room…this body.
The noise outside of the cell cut through her concentration with razor sharpness. There was the sound of grinding metal, footsteps, voices. She forced her eyes to remain shut. Somebody was coming in. Perhaps they were going to move her again to another cell, perhaps to a different prison. Even though they had just moved her in here, that was the way they worked. They never allowed her to feel settled, especially since she had made trouble for them by refusing food. She inhaled deeply, and the closeness of the cell made her stomach turn slightly.
The door opened loudly on rusty hinges. Even with her eyes closed, Fahimah could feel the light pour over her.
“Dr. Banaz.”
It was a new voice. She held her breath. No one had called her that for nearly her entire imprisonment. To them—to the Americans—she was Rahaf. She was called by her sister’s first name.
“Dr. Banaz,” the man’s voice called out gently again. “My name is Austyn Newman.”
Another American, she thought. She knew their accents, understood their ways. She would never trust them.
“My partner and I were sent here to make arrangements for your release,” the man said in the same quiet tone.
Fahimah wrapped the blanket more tightly around her shoulders and dipped her chin to her chest. Another lie. She willed herself to shut the voice out.
Four
Sedona, Arizona
Boynton Canyon consisted of a dry, rugged landscape boxed in by distant buttes and cliffs of varying shades of red rock. Because of its close proximity to Sedona and the paved roads that added to its accessibility, the canyon crawled with visitors who loved walking its trails. In recent years, the beautiful scenery wasn’t the only thing that drew the tourists. Boynton Canyon’s popularity had grown tenfold since it was included on a flyer identifying it as a local vortex—a sort of energy field emanating from the inner earth. Whether or not one believed in this bit of modern mysticism, locals and tourists alike agreed that some sort of powerful feeling could be experienced here among the buttes, the crimson cliffs, and the natural desert gardens.
It was one of those locals who’d called the police at six in the morning about a red pickup truck sitting in a gully beyond the barricades, not too far off the hiking trail.
In twenty minutes a police cruiser skirted a luxury resort and drove past the signs and around the barricades to the canyon floor to a spot designated for emergency vehicles. Last night, there’d been the report of a stolen red pick up truck from the front of the movie theater. It would be too good if this were the stolen vehicle.
The driver of the cruiser radioed in their location as a young officer stepped out of the vehicle. The sky was overcast, giving the cliffs a grayish hue. This was Sedona’s rainy season, but nothing kept the tourists away. In another hour, there’d be quite a few out hiking the trail.
“See anything?” The driver opened the door and stood beside the car.
The younger cop glanced back at him. “The caller mentioned he’d seen it from the Kachina Woman rock formation.” He looked down. Tire treads were visible, leading off through the brush. He pointed them out to his partner. “You wanna drive it or hike?”
“Let’s walk,” the driver replied with a grin. “If we have a couple of lovebirds out there, we don’t want to shake ‘em up too bad.”
“Shake ‘em up?” The younger cop shook his head. “Who’re you kidding? You’re just hopin’ to see a little skin, Floyd. I know you.”
The older cop laughed, and the two started following the tracks. They didn’t have to go too far to spot the vehicle in a gully edged by scrubby ponderosa pines. As they moved closer, two coyotes, which looked up at them from the far side of the ditch, turned and trotted off into the brush.
“If somebody’s sleeping in that truck,” Floyd said, “they don’t know nothing about the flash floods out here.”
The younger cop nodded. “Starting to look like teenagers took it for a joy ride last night and dumped it here.”
“Long walk back to town,” Floyd replied.
The men approached the vehicle cautiously. In a moment, they were close enough to see the license plate.
“It matches,” Floyd said, checking it against the notebook he’d taken out of his shirt pocket.
From some twenty or so yards away, no one appeared to be inside the truck. It looked as if the driver had just run it straight down into the ditch. It was hard up against a pine on one side. Both of the windows were open.
“The driver wouldn’t be able to open his door,” the younger officer noted.
“He might have got out the other way or just climbed through the window.”
Both men approached the truck more cautiously.
“What’s that stink,” Floyd asked, looking around.
The younger officer approached the passenger side and then froze, his face going white. A second later, he turned away from the truck and emptied the contents of his stomach into the gully.
“What is it?” Floyd asked, approaching the truck and looking through the open window.
The odor was foul, but the sight was worse. The older cop had never seen anything like this. Two partially decomposed bodies were slouched next to each other on the seat.
Both still had their seatbelts on.
Five
Brickyard Prison, Afghanistan
Austyn didn’t know what kind of reaction he’d expected, but this wasn’t it.
“Dr. Banaz,” he said again. “Did you hear me?”
She never moved. Her head must have been shaved a month or two ago, he noted. He could see nothing of her face for she had her chin pressed against her chest. Her frame was small and she appeared to be physically fragile. Except for the lowered head, she appeared to be in a meditation posture. With the old wool blanket around her shoulders, the peacefulness of the pose reminded Austyn of images of Gandhi.
; He crouched down just outside the door. The cell looked like a small kennel with a very low ceiling. He’d have to bend down to enter.
“Rahaf?” he called her by her first name. There was still no reaction. He stood up.
Captain Adams had led Matt and Austyn here. She was now giving them a knowing look. She shrugged.
“Would you like us to bring her out of there?” Adams asked quietly. “We can move her to one of the interrogation rooms.”
Austyn shook his head. They would never get her to cooperate there. The scientist looked so thin. He looked at her arms and wrists, extending from the cover of the blanket. They were like twigs, he thought, frowning.
“When was the last time she ate?” Matt asked, obviously following the same path of Austyn’s thoughts. She looked like she was starving herself to death.
Captain Adams turned to the female guard who was standing by the open door. The young soldier didn’t have an answer, since the prisoner was moved into this cell only a few hours earlier.
The captain turned to another guard behind them and ordered him to find out when the prisoner last ate.
“What would you like to do?” Adams asked, looking back at the two visitors.
As the ranking investigator, Austyn had been coached on the psychological aspects of interrogation before he left Washington, specifically on the interrogation of women. Despite the fact that the US Government had denied Rahaf’s rights by hiding her for all these years without a trial, they were abiding by the Geneva Convention IV and Amnesty International guidelines regarding treatment of female detainees.
Female guards had to be present during the interrogation of female detainees and prisoners, and they had to be solely responsible for carrying out any body searches to reduce the risk of sexual abuses. He’d been assured by Adams that there was no contact between male guards and Rahaf without the presence of a female guard. When they had to seek medical assistance for her, Rahaf had been put under the care of a female doctor.
Austyn had been loaded up with a pile of manuals to read on the topic during his twelve-hour flight to Afghanistan. None of what he’d read or been told seemed to apply here. She wasn’t what he’d expected. Even before talking to her, his instincts told him that this woman was not crazy, just…resigned to fate. He sensed that when he looked into her eyes, he’d know without a doubt if she could create a substance as terrible as the one that had killed in Maine.
“I’d like to speak to her here,” he told the prison commander.
She looked up and down the hallway. “I’m afraid not, sir. We have other prisoners in cells along this corridor. It would be disruptive, and there is the problem of security. Every one of them would hear you.”
Still, Austyn wanted her to come willingly out of that hole. He wanted to start off on the right foot. He wished they hadn’t moved her. He’d hoped they had taken better care of her.
A thought crossed his mind, something that had occurred to him as he’d read Rahaf’s files. It was the only useful thing that had come out of the reading that he’d done on the flight over. “When was the last time Dr. Banaz was outside?”
“You mean, out in the open?” Captain Adams asked doubtfully.
Austyn nodded.
“These prisoners are not allowed to exercise in an open yard, if that’s what you mean. She gets thirty minutes of fresh air every day in a special containment unit.”
“And the rest of the time, she’s in solitary confinement?”
“These prisoners are here because of special circumstances, sir,” Adams replied defensively. “I have specific instructions regarding their handling.”
“I know that,” Austyn said testily. “When was the last time she saw a horizon, Captain?”
“I can’t say, sir. Not since she was moved here. She was blindfolded the times that we had to transfer her to one of the field hospitals because of self-inflicted nutritional issues.”
He looked at the pale skin of the prisoner’s wrists, the short fuzz covering her skull. If she was listening to anything that was being said, she showed no indication of understanding. “Is there a place outside where I can talk to her?”
The prison commander motioned to him to step away from the open cell.
Austyn complied. She moved to a steel door that they had come through into this section of the prison. Beneath the fluorescent lights of the corridor, he could see she was trying to control her anger. He exchanged a look with Matt, who stood behind her.
“I don’t know what you’re doing, sir, but you need to keep in mind that this prisoner is a high-security risk. Because of her classification, she is not allowed to be seen by other prisoners or by anyone other than a select number of guards. We’ve had to use extreme caution and use medical staff with a high level of clearance each time that she’s had to be hospitalized. She’s supposed to be dead, Agent Newman, remember?”
He remembered. “Is there anywhere private enough outside that we could take her?”
“You’re obviously not hearing what I’m telling you, sir,” she said sharply. “My orders regarding this prisoner are clear and specific.”
“And do you really think that none of the other prisoners know she’s here?” Austyn asked.
“There is absolutely no contact between them.”
“Maybe since she’s been at the Brickyard,” Austyn argued. “But we have information from Iraq that the insurgents there know that Rahaf Banaz survived the US attack on her lab. The only people we’re trying to fool are United Nations and Amnesty International.”
“Look, Agent Newman, the communiqué I received regarding your visit doesn’t change my overall charge.”
“Captain Adams, my purpose here is to extract information that Dr. Banaz has not shared in almost five years under other interrogation. I want to try something different. I think it could prove beneficial to take her outside for some fresh air.”
She stared at him for a moment. “I’d like to see your orders concerning the prisoner,” she responded stubbornly.
“All right, Captain.” Austyn motioned to Matt to dig the papers out of the briefcase. “I understand your concern, but as of today, her classification changes. These orders supersede your previous orders. As of this moment, she is to be classified as a Homeland Security detainee.”
She took the papers that Matt offered and started looking through them. “Then take her. We can help you with transportation.”
“We may take her with us if I deem necessary, or she may remain here.” Austyn watched her reading the orders. He would do what he felt was necessary, but he didn’t want to rub her nose in it. He was after cooperation, not hostility. Captain Adams appeared to be very good at what she did, and there was no telling if their paths wouldn’t cross again.
“I’d like to talk to her here in your facility before we make any decisions,” Austyn said in a reasonable tone, trying to make her understand. “Because time is critical until we know more about the nature of the bacteria, we don’t want to waste time moving her to another facility. According to her files, the one leisure activity that Rahaf pursued while she was studying in the US was hiking, getting outdoors. There were a number of references to how she loved being out in nature. Now, it may be heading up toward 110 degrees outside, but if moving her into the open air can jolt her a little, help her to open up, then I’d like to try it.” He paused a moment. “Can you help us out with that, Captain?”
His plea worked. She nodded, satisfied. “We’ve fenced in an area in the back of the building where they used to dry bricks. It’s walled in on two sides by the old kiln and a garage building. It faces the hills. We don’t use it as it doesn’t meet security standards. You’re welcome to it.”
“Could she been seen there?” he asked, not really caring, but at the same time not wanting to make the personnel here feel as if whatever they’d done so far had no significance.
“Probably not,” Adams said. “We have guards’ housing on the adjacent hill.”
“Okay,” he said. “We’ll talk to her there.”
“Agent Newman, as I mentioned before, I don’t think you’ll get any cooperation from her. The chances are that she won’t go willingly outside with you or answer any of your questions. Do you want to have one of our interrogators work along with you?”
That suggestion had been made back in Washington, too. He was authorized to use whatever resources he needed.
“No.” Rahaf Banaz looked like nothing more than a slender bag of bones. There was no way he’d risk losing her under rough interrogation. “Agent Sutton and I will handle it.”
“Then would you like to have a couple of guards take her outside?”
So much for letting Rahaf go out willingly, Austyn thought. But he guessed there was probably no chance of that anyway. He didn’t know if she even had the strength to walk. He nodded. “Thanks.”
As she relayed the orders to the guards, Matt motioned to Austyn and tapped his watch.
“Captain Adams,” Matt said to her. “If you don’t mind, I need to use a secure phone to call Washington.”
“Of course. You can use the phone in my office. I’ll show you.”
Austyn decided to stay with Rahaf and make sure he didn’t lose her, now that they were this close. As they opened the steel door, the soldier who’d been sent to find information on Rahaf’s eating schedule came back. They really couldn’t pinpoint the last time she’d eaten.
“All the prisoners are given three meals a day,” she told Austyn. “But this one tends to nibble, at best.”
The sound of a woman’s voice came from the cell. “Come on. Stand up now. Get your legs under you.”
Austyn went to the door and saw two female guards bent over at the waist, trying to drag Rahaf onto her feet. Either she was being stubborn, or her legs weren’t strong enough to hold her weight. One of the guards jerked at the prisoner’s arm.
“Be gentle with her,” he found himself saying sternly.
