The Last Refuge

by Ben Coes

  Dewey glanced at the driver.

  “Can you take me to the Mark Hotel?” said Dewey. “Seventy-seventh and Madison.”

  The CIA agent didn’t move, except for his eyes, which glanced into the mirror at Calibrisi.

  “He’s not there,” said Calibrisi from the backseat, running his hand through his mop of black hair. “Iranian agents abducted him. It happened day before yesterday.”

  Dewey’s eyes shot from the driver to Calibrisi.

  “He was coming to see you,” said Calibrisi. “Do you know why?”

  “I have no idea,” said Dewey.

  “How was it arranged?” asked Calibrisi.

  “He called me. He said he needed my help on something. He wouldn’t tell me what.”

  “Why wouldn’t he tell you?”

  “How the hell should I know? He called. We spoke for about a minute. He said he needed my help. He wanted to discuss it in person. That’s it.”

  He looked back at Jessica and Calibrisi, who stared at him in silence.

  “Where did they take him?” asked Dewey.

  Calibrisi glanced at Jessica.

  “Why are you asking?” asked Calibrisi.

  “Hector, where the fuck did they take him?”

  Calibrisi shook his head.

  “Dewey, the president doesn’t want us fucking around in Iran right now. Not with the Iranians about to stop their nuclear weapons program. Dellenbaugh doesn’t want to risk it. That’s why we flew up here.”

  “God forbid we offend the fucking Iranians,” said Dewey.

  “More important than the agreement is the fact that rescuing Kohl is a suicide mission,” said Calibrisi. “He’s in Evin Prison. No one gets out of Evin once they’re inside. Not Delta, not SEAL, not Special Operations Group. Not even you.”

  “Is Israel going to do something?” asked Dewey.

  “We assume they’re going to go out and kill a bunch of Iranians,” said Calibrisi. “If they haven’t already.”

  “I meant, are they going to try and rescue him?”

  “They came to us for help, if that tells you anything,” said Calibrisi. “He’s in Evin Prison. The only way he’s coming out is in a body bag.”

  “What about a prisoner exchange?”

  “There’s no prisoner Iran would trade for Meir. He’s a prize catch.”

  “They’re going to dangle it over Israel’s head,” said Jessica. “Like Hamas did with Gilad Shalit, let him rot away, or else have some sort of trial and then execute him.”

  Dewey stared out the window, at a plane taking off in the distance.

  “If you came here to talk me out of going over there, you’re wasting your time.”

  “President Dellenbaugh wants America on the sidelines,” said Calibrisi.

  “I don’t work for President Dellenbaugh.”

  “You’ve already done more than we ever asked of you,” said Jessica. “You went into Pakistan and risked your life because your country asked you. Now your country is asking you to leave this one alone.”

  “Jess and I don’t want you to die,” added Calibrisi, leaning forward and placing his hand on Dewey’s shoulder. “That’s why we’re here. It’s a suicide mission.”

  Dewey’s mind flashed back to the tarmac at Rafic Hariri. Pinned down by Hezbollah to the south, Lebanese Armed Forces to the north. Six dead Israelis were bleeding out on the bullet-pocked tarmac around them. The Israeli chopper, which they needed to rescue them, was nowhere to be seen. Death was imminent and both he and Meir knew it.

  Dewey would never forget the look in Meir’s eyes as they exhausted the last of their ammunition, as they prepared to die; a fearless look that told Dewey not to give up.

  Or was it his look that told Meir to hold on?

  He felt it then, a surge of warmth, bitter at first, then all-consuming, like fire.

  “You think Kohl Meir and that Shayetet team thought about the risks before they went to Beirut that night to save me?” asked Dewey. He calmly turned and looked at Calibrisi, then Jessica. “Six Israelis died, men who didn’t even know me. Thank you for thinking about my safety, but Kohl Meir saved my life. I know you’ll understand.”

  Dewey reached for the car door.

  “Where are you going, Dewey?” asked Jessica.

  Dewey turned and looked one last time at Jessica. He opened the door and climbed out.

  As he walked away, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. On it was a long number. He stared at it for a second, then put it back in his pocket, replaying Meir’s words.

  “If I’m not there, it means something happened to me. Call my father. He’ll know what to do.”

  “What to do about what?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  Dewey walked to the front of the taxi stand, cutting in front of a man in a suit who was talking on his cell phone.

  “Hey, you’re cutting,” said the man, but Dewey ignored him and climbed into the cab.

  “Where to?” asked the driver.

  “JFK,” said Dewey. “Step on it.”

  10

  EVIN PRISON

  TEHRAN, IRAN

  Kohl Meir opened his eyes and felt nothing but a deep sense of drift, loss, bewilderment, as if he’d been asleep for days. His eyes took several seconds to adjust to the light. Where am I? Where the hell am I? Meir tried to move his arm, but it was shackled. His legs were tied tight, strap restraints at the ankles and just above the knees; a belt across his torso, tightly bound so that breathing was difficult, another strap across his neck. His arms were fastened down as well, just above the elbows, and at the wrists.

  The burning in his arm went from mild to severe, razor-sharp like a snakebite, and suddenly, against his will, he found himself screaming.

  “There, there,” came the voice.

  Meir’s mind was a scrambled mess, but he quickly allowed the accent to cut through the fog of his misplaced mind: Persian, some British; a cut of deep desert country. Iran.

  His brain still worked. That was a start.

  Meir looked to his left, blinking several times. He saw a short man with gray and black hair, a round face, glasses, and a big bushy mustache. He was wearing a white doctor’s jacket. He stood at Meir’s left arm, holding a syringe. The man pressed the plunger.

  Meir screamed again as he felt whatever was in the needle invade his veins.

  “It’s not meant to hurt you, Mr. Meir,” said the man. “It’s an antidote, to wake you up. You were tranquilized. You’ve been out for some time. The pain will pass.”

  Gradually, the burning moderated. Meir stopped screaming as it went from severe to merely deep throbbing. As he calmed, Meir’s mind sharpened. In front of him, blacked-out glass so he couldn’t see out. He was in an ambulance. They were moving quickly. The road was rough, perhaps unpaved, or at least potholed.

  The girls on the stoop.

  Meir suddenly remembered his last thoughts. Walking down the sidewalk, the crowded sidewalk in Brooklyn. The warmth of the sun. The brownstone. Pressing the intercom buzzer, then waiting.

  “You wonder where we are?” asked the doctor. He completed the injection, pulled the syringe out, then wiped Meir’s arm with an alcohol swab.

  Meir remained silent. With the pain, the consciousness, with his reawakening, he let his training begin to take hold.

  Don’t talk. Don’t say a fucking thing.

  How long had it been? Hours? Days? Weeks?

  “Stop the chatter,” came the order from behind his head. Another voice, this one with a deep, thick Iranian accent, telling the talkative doctor to shut up. He could hear, in the man’s voice, years of cigarettes, military training, authority; a soldier, a commander of soldiers. A voice that gave orders.

  He watched the doctor’s eyes. Their reaction told him all he needed to know.

  Meir strained to look behind him. But the restraints were too tight.

  Now, his nose acclimated, he identified the smell, the cigarettes that the
man’s voice hinted at.

  Meir shut his eyes, shut out the smell, the motion, everything.

  He recalled the voice that came across the intercom. A soft, female voice.

  “Yes.”

  “Hello, Mrs. Bohr, it’s Kohl Meir.”

  The dull buzzer, a lock unbolting. He’d pushed the big door open and stepped into the small lobby in the brownstone. He had shut the door behind him. He had stepped toward the stairs, but he hadn’t even made it to the first step. Someone had been behind him. A sharp painful electric jolt to his neck. And that was all. That was the last memory he had.

  There was a low chirp from the cell phone of the man behind him. The man cleared his throat.

  “Yes. One hour ago. Yes.”

  Meir kept his face blank. It had been a while but he could understand the words.

  “It will be done.” Then a click as he shut the phone.

  Meir opened his eyes again.

  “Evin?” asked the doctor.

  The man behind him said nothing.

  Evin. The word sent a small wave of dread through his body. It was the most notorious prison in Iran. They had many names for it. The “torture chamber” was the one he remembered.

  Meir shut his eyes. He tried to put those thoughts out of his mind. The dark thoughts. This was how they said it started, dark, uneven, bitter thoughts, when you realized that you were a prisoner. That you would almost certainly be tortured.

  Under his lids, he felt tears, which he struggled to keep away. He had to stay strong now.

  “Whatever you’re thinking, Commander, it’s wrong,” he said, coughing. “Whatever assumptions you have about where you’re going, or what we are going to do to you, I can assure you you are wrong. You are about to experience hell. I know you have been trained in torture. In pharmaceuticals. I know that you know that torture always, in the end, wins out. But torture is only part of what is coming. The part that you don’t yet understand is what it feels like to be the sword that slays your own people. That is what you are to become, Kohl. The symbol of Israel’s defeat. How do you think your fellow Jews will feel when we parade you in front of them, shackled like a dog?”

  Meir let the words wash over him then. He let the man’s hatred take him over, like a sickness. He remained blank. Cold and blank as stone. For Meir knew that his strength in the coming hours would have to come from this wellspring of hatred. He would have to welcome it, draw energy from it. They could parade him in front of the world. Torture him. But if he could remain cold, unaffected, dignified, then he would win.

  Meir let the thought of Israel, his country, come to him. He pictured the faces of his Shayetet unit, and the thought of the love and sacrifice of his fellow soldiers. He pictured his father, maimed permanently on the battlefield fighting in the Six Day War. He thought of all of the Israeli children who had lost their fathers, and all of the mothers who had lost their sons. He was not alone now. He let the strength of the Israeli soldiers who were still out there fighting forge like steel around him.

  After what seemed like hours later, Meir felt the ambulance slow down. He heard the sound of a gate creaking open. There were voices, someone speaking with the ambulance driver, then laughter.

  After the checkpoint, they drove farther on, slowly now. Then they came to a stop and the back doors of the ambulance opened.

  Meir looked up. He saw no less than a dozen soldiers, standing in a loose semicircle behind the ambulance doors. Two soldiers reached for the steel frame of the gurney and pulled it out. Joined by two more men, they lifted him from the back of the van.

  It was nighttime. He glanced up and could see stars. To the right, he spied a yellow sliver of moon. The soldiers stared at him like fishermen staring at a large tuna, dangling from a hook above the dock. From the back, a short man, dressed in a suit jacket, no tie, stepped through the crowd, a maniacal smile on his face. Meir recognized him immediately. The man stepped forward, a large grin painted across his lips. Photographs did not do justice to the man; he was far uglier in person than Meir could believe.

  “I had to see it for myself,” said Mahmoud Nava, Iran’s president. “I can’t believe it. Welcome to Iran, son.”

  Meir remained silent.

  “Would you like something?” asked Nava. “Some water? Some food. Yes, yes, they will feed you. You have had a long flight. Would that be good?”

  Meir said nothing.

  Nava nodded, smiled, turned to the gathered soldiers.

  “Ah, yes, I see,” said Nava. “Tough guy. Well, that is fine. This is not about you, Kohl. This is about your country. We will endeavor to treat you as well as can be expected, as long as you do what we say. We are not intent on hurting you. We are, however, determined to hurt your fellow countrymen. Do you see? Ah, yes, you will understand soon enough.”

  Nava turned, walked back through the semicircle to a black sedan that was waiting.

  They unstrapped Meir from the gurney. He collapsed, his legs having been immobile so long they had become numb, but a pair of soldiers caught him before he hit the ground, lifting him by the arms, which they cuffed tightly behind his back. They left the shackles around his ankles.

  “Come,” said one of the soldiers, motioning toward a concrete building.

  Meir walked, shackled, taking tiny steps, just inches with each step, slowly toward a door. Two soldiers, one at each side, guided him, holding his arms at the biceps behind his back.

  He entered a hallway. Fluorescent lights overhead allowed him to see, for the first time, traces of blood on his shirt and khakis.

  He moved down the hallway and entered a large, windowless room. A rectangular wooden table sat in the middle of the room. Two chairs, one on each side, faced each other.

  The soldiers moved him to one of the chairs. They chained him tightly around his waist to the chair.

  Meir sat for more than an hour in silence, alone, under the bright fluorescent lights. At some point, a young soldier brought him a bottle of water. The soldier held it to Meir’s mouth and he guzzled the entire bottle down in seconds. Then the soldier left.

  A short time later, the door opened again. A tall, hulking man entered. The man was bald with a thin mustache, wearing a white button-down short-sleeve shirt and dark pants. He walked around Meir, examining him as if he were an animal at the zoo, before finally taking the chair across from him.

  “Hello, Mr. Meir,” said the man in English with traces of a British accent. “My name is Moammar Achabar. I am your court-appointed attorney.”

  Meir stared at Achabar with a blank look and said nothing.

  “Now, let’s not have any pretense here,” continued Achabar. “We both know where this is going, and frankly I will be happy the day you’re found guilty. So don’t consider me a friend or even your advocate. I am an actor. And this is a play. And you are the star.”

  Meir remained silent. Achabar removed a pack of cigarettes from his chest pocket. He lit a cigarette.

  “Oh, yes,” continued Achabar, “in case you are wondering, it’s not a comedy. It’s a tragedy. At least, for you and your country. They will keep you at Evin for a period of time. I don’t know how long. You’ll be charged with crimes. What I’ve heard is that you’ll be charged with murder. You were involved with operations in the Strait of Hormuz, yes? Yes, of course you were. Well, there will be something to do with that.”

  Achabar took several puffs of his cigarette, held it up as he did so, watching the orange cinders burn down toward the brown filter, then stubbed it out on the table. He lit another one.

  “Whatever they charge you with, they will make an example of you,” said Achabar. “They’ll find you guilty. Will they execute you? It depends on the mood. I think it will hurt your country much more if you are rotting in a jail somewhere. So that is what I will advocate for. It’s funny, isn’t it? I want you to suffer, and yet they will say I’m your friend. That I fought for you. But really all I will be doing is trying to punish you in a way I believe is worse
even than to be shot by a firing squad.”

  Meir observed Achabar from his uncomfortable steel chair. He remembered, then, something his great-grandmother, Golda, had written, before she died. In one of her last letters, to a man named Farger, who had written expressing his concern as to what would happen to Israel when she died, she wrote:

  Do not be concerned, for it is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. It is merely the end of the beginning.

  The stark, brutal nature of the predicament Meir was now in struck him like a slap across the face. But he didn’t show it. Instead, he watched patiently, blankly, as his court-appointed attorney finished his third, then fourth cigarette.

  For his part, Achabar smoked the last two cigarettes without speaking, slightly reclined, with one leg up on the wooden table, and a knowing grin on his lips.

  “Would you like some food?” asked Achabar finally. He pulled his leg down from the table, stood up. “You must be hungry. Hold on.”

  Achabar gestured to the one-way mirror at the side of the room. Soon, the door at the back of the room opened and two soldiers entered. One held a stainless-steel tray. He walked over to the table and placed it down. On top of it sat two apples, a large piece of bread, and a small bowl of nuts, along with a bottle of water.

  The other soldier went behind Meir. He unlocked the cuff around Meir’s left wrist, pulled Meir’s wrist around in front of him, then refastened the cuffs, tightly, so that Meir’s wrists were touching in front of him. The soldiers pulled Meir’s chair forward, closer to the table, then turned and left the room.

  Meir stared at the food for several minutes. He did nothing.

  “I’m going to leave now, Kohl,” Achabar said. “Eat. You’re going to be here a while.”

  Achabar turned and left the room. Meir stared at the tray for a few minutes. Finally, he reached out and picked up an apple. He was ravenous. He ate the apple quickly, swallowing large pieces that he had barely chewed. He then wolfed the bread down, then the nuts, then the other apple. He was surprised at how good the food tasted, even Iranian prison food, after not having eaten in such a long time.

  Meir reached forward to the bottle of water. It was difficult to hold the wide bottle and unscrew the plastic cap. He struggled, then felt the bottle slipping from his shackled hands. He dropped the bottle. It bounced on the ground, then cracked. Water spilled on the ground.