by Jan Coffey
Another guard went in. The room was now almost too crowded to maneuver her. The blanket over her shoulders fell on the threshold as they moved awkwardly through the cell. Rahaf was not helping at all.
Austyn eyed the old rag that once was a jumpsuit. One of the guards lost her grip on Rahaf momentarily and the prisoner collapsed, her chin hitting the cement floor with a loud thud.
After the years of working for Homeland Security, Austyn had thought that he’d snuffed out any sympathy for prisoners. They were enemies of the United States and lawbreakers. He’d always been quite happy putting them behind bars. He had no sympathy, in particular, for the educated and the disillusioned who enjoyed the comforts and freedoms democracy offered, while planning acts that would plant terror in innocent people’s hearts.
Something was different here, he thought. Rahaf was different. There was something wrong in what he was witnessing. Her case was nothing like those he’d dealt with before in his career.
She had been an extremely promising student, and the Iraqi government had paid for Rahaf’s undergraduate degree at Columbia University in New York City, in spite of her Kurdish heritage. She’d done her graduate work at California Institute of Technology. Her research and publications had been well received from day one. Coming back to Iraq, a fast-track career had been waiting for her. During the following years, she’d been a regular speaker at international symposiums around the world.
And now she was reduced to this.
Two guards on either side, taking hold of Rahaf by each arm, started to drag her to one end of the hall. Austyn had to swallow his objection this time.
He picked up the blanket from the floor. Tucking the folder he’d taken out from his briefcase earlier under his arm, he followed them. Windowless doors lined each side of the hallway. Going past one of them, he heard a man cry out. He hurried along, telling himself that he needed to catch up to Rahaf and the guards. The truth was, he knew, he didn’t want to think about who else was in those cells or whether they deserved what was happening to them. He had one task that he needed to focus on.
They went through two sets of steel doors and crossed through a dim space that looked as if it had been a woodworking shop and storage area for the old brick-making facility. The air was warm and musty inside, and Austyn’s boots kept sticking to something on the brick floor as they made their way through. Distant hills were visible through small windows jagged with shards of broken glass. One of the guards unchained a door that opened to a yard of sand and brick. .
Outside, an eight-foot chain-link fence with barbed wire along the top served as their only visible barrier to the hills. Beyond the enclosure, there was a short stretch of a manmade clearing with signs warning of landmines and another perimeter fence farther out. Beyond that, rocks and the rugged mountainous terrain took over. Austyn looked up, spotting the guard’s station that Captain Adams had spoken of. He could imagine there were many places in the looming mountain where agents of the Taliban could be hidden, spying on what was happening in the old brick factory.
“Where would you like her?” one of the guards asked over her shoulder.
Austyn looked around the enclosed area. Garbage was strewn everywhere. There were no chairs, no benches, nothing to sit on. The yard was small and only a thin section of it by the fence was getting the sun right now.
“The ground by the fence will do,” he told them, motioning to the area.
They took Rahaf to the fence and stood her against it. She slid down, her legs folding under her. Austyn quickly spread the blanket over her knees. She was too thin, too weak. Her chin sank to her chest again, her back against the fence.
“You can leave us alone,” he told the guards.
“We’ll wait by those doors, sir, if you need us.”
He wouldn’t, but he decided against pursuing it. So long as they were on the other side of the yard, it was fine with him.
Austyn waited until the guards had moved away before sitting cross-legged on the ground near her. He made sure to sit in the shade, as he could already feel the sweat running down his back. The heat here was different from anything he was accustomed to. It was so much more intense. An occasional waft of wind running through the yard didn’t cool the skin but only raised the dust, making it harder to breath. He’d give her ten minutes in the sun, and then help her move into the shade.
She wasn’t meditating now. He could see that her eyes were partially open, but she refused to look up. The sun poured over her short-cropped hair and shoulders. He saw her take a deep breath.
“Dr. Banaz,” Austyn started. He introduced himself again, identified the department he worked for in Homeland Security. There was no reaction. He told her about his partner and what Matt did, and that he would join them out here very soon.
“I know that you are fluent in English, so I’ll just continue to speak. If you need any clarification on anything I say, however, please just ask me. Do you understand me?”
He watched her a moment, but she still made no sign.
“Your classification has changed, Dr. Banaz. I flew here directly from Washington with complete authorization to make you an offer of freedom and to meet any reasonable demand you might have…in return for your cooperation on a medical situation that has arisen.”
No movement. Still no acknowledgement that she’d heard or understood anything he was saying. Austyn decided to get to the point. He opened the folder he’d brought along, leafed through it, and found the pictures he was looking for. There were some twenty photos, grotesque, showing bodies in advanced stages of decomposition.
“I know anything I say must come across as totally insincere, considering your detention these past few years. You have every right not to want to have anything to do with me…or even to hear what I have to say,” Austyn said softly. “Dr. Banaz, I ask you to look at these, though. We’re desperate. And by we, I don’t mean only Americans. This situation could be happening anywhere in the world today. It could be happening among your own people. We’re afraid it might be the start of something devastating.”
He started spreading the photos on the blanket on her lap.
She closed her eyes and turned her head. Austyn was relieved that she’d at least taken a peek at them.
“The same DNA sequence of microbes discovered in your lab in Baqouba has been identified in the remains of these bodies,” Austyn told her. “This is the first time we’ve seen anything like this outside of a laboratory environment. We don’t know what to do with it or how to stop it…if there is a way to stop it.”
A breeze threatened to blow the pictures away; he scooped them up, placing three of them on her lap and holding them there.
“These three bodies you see in the photos were teenagers. The others are their parents and innocent people who went there to help them, volunteer rescue workers. These were civilians, totally innocent of what’s going on in the world.” He paused, wondering if those words would mean anything to her. “We’ve never seen anything like this, bacteria this destructive and this fast-acting.” He shook the pictures lightly. “These children and these adults…we suspect they died in less than an hour after being exposed.”
“Some people are fortunate,” she said under her breath. “I’ve been waiting to die for five years now.”
Austyn, struck speechless, stared at her. He’d somehow expected that she might not break her silence. He noticed that she had a slightly British accent. But even more so than her words and the accent, he was stunned that she was looking at the pictures again. This time her face was lifted enough that he could see her.
Rahaf’s green eyes were a startling feature in her pale face. He’d never noticed their color from looking at the old pictures they’d had on file. But they shouldn’t have been such a surprise. Unlike so many people from the Middle East, who had more of a Mediterranean look, Kurds were known for their more northern European complexions. The thirty or so pounds that Rahaf had lost while in prison made a difference, to
o, Austyn thought. With her face thin and pale, her eyes were far more startling than they would have been otherwise.
Without touching his hand, she pushed the pictures away and inched along the fence until she was sitting in the shade. He noticed that she’d not once looked at the mountains or the sky.
Something didn’t sit right with Austyn, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
“They aren’t the Adirondacks,” he said, “but I thought you might enjoy being outside.”
She was back to being silent, looking at a crumpled knot of cassette tape dangling from a roll of fencing a couple of feet ahead of her in the yard. A loop of the tape hanging down from the rest danced in the dry breeze.
Austyn held the pictures in his hand, keeping them in front of him where they were visible to her. “What we’ve seen with these bodies is unlike anything on record. The strain is connected to the microbes that were found in your laboratory and the samples that were collected there.” He wasn’t sure if he was repeating himself or not, but she didn’t appear to be affected by the severity or urgency of what they were facing. If she cared at all, she wasn’t showing it.
She gathered her knees to her chest and tucked the blanket tighter around her. She leaned her chin on her knees, lost in her own world once again.
Austyn noticed a mark above her left ear just inside her hairline and stared at it. A moon-shaped birthmark. He could see it through the short cropped hair.
“I have to say, officially, that no one thinks that you have any personal connection to any biological attack…if that’s what it is.”
Her eyes cut to him for a second, conveying without a word how stupid she thought his statement was. She’d been rotting in prison for exactly that crime for all these years. He let it go.
“At this point we don’t know how the microbe reached the United States. We don’t know who is responsible for it. There are other agents who have been tasked with getting those answers,” Austyn explained methodically, calmly. “My partner and I are here to seek your assistance as a scientist, as an expert. You’re the only one with the years of research in this specific area that can possibly help us, to give us answers as far as what we should or shouldn’t do. You were able to contain the microbe in a dormant stage in your lab. To start, we’re hoping that you can tell us if the steps we’ve taken are good enough to contain the bacteria to where it is. Dr. Banaz, millions of people are at risk. We’re trying to save lives.”
Rahaf closed her eyes again.
Austyn wasn’t ready to give up. “You’re a scientist. One of the smartest in the world in this area. I can’t undo the fact that you’ve been detained and moved around in this way. I’m sure no apology would suffice for the way you’ve been treated for all these years by my government. But I can, at least, tell you that no charges will be brought against you for your work on behalf of Saddam’s regime.”
It wasn’t much of an apology, and she acted as if he hadn’t said a word. The troubling part was that he understood her. There were far better ways to deal with her after her capture than what the CIA had done. Since the days of the Romans, people like Rahaf—with her intelligence and background—had always been considered a prize, part of the spoils of war. The victorious nation would honor them and buy their cooperation. In any situation but this Iraq war, she’d have long been working in one of the top US government labs, heading some important project, having her own staff of scientists. Austyn couldn’t understand what had happened here, how they could have done so many things wrong. There was no excuse for how she’d been lost to them for so long.
“Dr. Banaz, since the execution of Saddam and his closest advisors, the new Iraqi government has been trying to move forward. The US has also been trying to—”
Her eyes locked on his face.
“You didn’t know that he was executed.”
She looked away, but it didn’t appear that she was upset by the news.
Austyn’s thoughts turned to what he’d read in Rahaf’s files. During her years of studying in US, Rahaf had been a dedicated scholar, but she’d also been active politically. She had been outspoken about women’s rights, and involved in a number of clubs. Her high energy level had been repeatedly referred to in college and graduate school files and letters.
When she’d returned to Iraq, someone in Saddam’s regime had been smart enough to recognize her talents and interests. It didn’t appear that she’d faced any discrimination because of her gender or her Kurd heritage. She’d been given her own staff and facility within a year of her return. Knowing this about her, Austyn could not quite figure out why she hadn’t raised more hell during her detention. Transcripts of her CIA interrogations had contained no mention of her making demands regarding her rights.
He glanced at her again. Perhaps she had and the files had been edited, he thought. It was terrible to think they may have killed the spirit in someone so valuable.
The warm, dry breeze swept through the yard, raising a cloud of dust. Despite the heat, he saw her shiver. He found himself staring at her thin arms, at her pale skin. She was definitely not well.
The sensation that something was off continued to bother him. He looked again at the birthmark above her ear and paged through the file he’d brought outside. He was looking for two pictures of Dr. Banaz that were in this file. One was of Rahaf leaving a conference in Stockholm. It was dated 2000. Large sunglasses hid most of her face. He stared at the shape of her chin, her high cheekbones. In the other photo she was standing on a podium and delivering a speech during the same conference. There was no telling of the color of her eyes. Austyn held the picture at arm’s length and compared it to the woman sitting before him. The same slender build and dark hair. She was simply much thinner now and she looked different with her buzz cut.
The door leading to the building opened. Austyn saw Matt coming through it. He tucked the photos back inside the file folder, closed it and placed a broken piece of brick on it. Standing, he met his partner halfway across the yard, where they were out of earshot of both Rahaf and the guards.
“Anything?” Austyn asked.
Matt shook his head. “No new cases reported. And they’re completely done with the sweep of the locations where each of the Maine victims came from. There’s been no sign of the bacteria.”
“So the monster was just lying there waiting for them to arrive?” Austyn commented.
His partner shrugged. “The only new info was that there’s been a recommendation made by the team working out of the National Institute of Health to have mega quantities of some new antibiotic drug made and ready to go.”
“What’s the drug?”
Matt looked down at a notepad. “DM8A. I don’t really know anything about it. Do you?”
Austyn summarized the information he knew for his partner. DM8A had been awaiting FDA approval for over a year now. It was originally designed to be given intravenously to fight infections resulting from internal injuries. Of everything out there, the antibiotic would be the strongest drug they had to fight resistant strains of Necrotizing Fasciitis. Still, he felt this was simply a tweak of the basic format.
The hold-up in approving the drug stemmed from the fact that it was potent enough to shut down the liver of the patient in two to five percent of the cases. Of course, there were other side effects, too, but they were more of a nuisance than dangerous.
“The eggheads at NIH say that the effectiveness of fighting this strain of bacteria with the DM8A is definitely questionable,” Matt continued. “But they’re taking out the biggest guns they have. They’ve ordered the pharmaceutical company to crank out as many doses of the antibiotic as they can. If there’s a widespread outbreak, they want it ready for distribution.”
“We’ve been trying to keep a lid on the situation since it first showed up ten days ago,” Austyn commented. “I guess that was a waste of effort.”
“Only one company is being used,” Matt told him, shaking his head. “Reynolds Pharmaceutic
al. They’re the same ones who take care of the vaccines for our troops. They do government jobs on a regular basis.”
Austyn had worked before with a number of engineers and researchers at Reynolds. He felt better that some confidentiality was being maintained.
“They’re more worried that the antibiotic won’t work at all,” Matt said voicing his concern.
“Or if we can distribute it to the victim early enough to have an effect.”
A stronger gust of wind swirled through the yard, raising dust and debris. Austyn looked over his shoulder at where Rahaf sat. She had leaned her head back against the fence, her eyes closed. The white column of her neck was exposed. Despite all the years of hardship, it was impossible to miss her delicate chin and how well proportioned her face was. In her healthy days, she surely must have been considered a delicate and beautiful woman. He glanced through the files containing the old photos of her. Looking at them, he’d not considered the woman on the podium beautiful. He knew, though, that many women working in scientific fields made a point of trying to look plain, trying to be noticed solely for their intelligence and their contributions. It was like you could only be beautiful or smart. Not both.
A vague suspicion, not yet a fully formed, wouldn’t leave him.
He motioned with his head toward the scientist, and they took a couple of steps closer to her. Austyn stopped abruptly, though, and his partner followed suit.
“Did I miss something out here?” Matt asked.
Austyn shook his head and looked at Rahaf again. “You’ve read everything in Dr. Banaz’s files. What color are her eyes?”
The other man shot him a curious look but went along. “Hazel. I expected them to be brown, but her student visa documentation said hazel.”
“That’s right. The file says hazel.” He motioned with his head to the prisoner. “But her eyes are green.”
“Hazel, green, blue…they’re all close,” Matt said, looking sharply at the prisoner. “You think this isn’t Banaz?”
“I’m not ready to jump to any conclusions,” Austyn replied. “How about an English accent? Do you remember reading anything in Dr. Banaz’s files that she had a British accent?”
