by Jan Coffey
As they left the camp, two more military vehicles joined them, one in front and one in the back, forming a caravan. They passed through a number of security checkpoints before reaching the open road.
“We have to be careful,” Adams told them. “We still have roving gangs of insurgents that pop up unexpectedly under our noses.
Both agents listened to the captain as she told them briefly about the base and the ancient city of Bagram and the locals. Much of what was being said was similar to what they’d heard from the pilot. Neither agent interrupted, though, and soon Adams was asking about news from stateside. It was clear that the lack of attention the country was giving to Afghanistan was a source of irritation for her.
Austyn pulled on his glasses. Even with the windows shut, they were eating their escort’s dust. The slight discomfort they were experiencing, however, was nothing compared to what was going on outside.
The poverty was palpable. The drawn, worn faces of the few ragged Afghanis that they passed after coming through the checkpoints were clear indicators of their suffering. At one point a mob of kids playing in front of a corrugated steel shack started running after the cars, lining the road and chanting something in their native tongue. Many were missing arms and legs, hobbling on crutches behind the others. Austyn remembered what he’d heard about the landmines. The Afghani children formed the largest number of casualties. Outbreaks of a number of epidemics had also been taking their toll over the past few years.
The harsh landscape and the culture of survival here was fascinating to Austyn, but he knew he had to focus. When Captain Adams paused, he broke in with his questions.
“Captain, what have you been told about our visit here?”
“The information has been trickling down too slowly for my liking, but I understand there’s been a biological attack in the US.”
“I hope you were also told that this is classified information,” Matt responded. “Unlike the Anthrax scare of few years ago, none of the details have been officially released to the press or public.”
“Yes, sir. I understand,” Adams answered, motioning to the driver. “Sgt. Powell here has all the necessary clearances, but it’s up to you what you care to tell us. In fact, no one else at our station has been briefed in any way about the purpose of your visit.”
“Begging your pardon, sirs,” Sgt. Powell told them, looking in the mirror. “You should know that the secrecy has started a lot of speculation. Everyone working at the Brickyard thinks you’re part of that congressional committee focusing on the detention facilities.”
“I can live with that,” Austyn replied. “About this prisoner, what can you tell me that’s not in the files?”
“I don’t really know what is and what isn’t in the files that were passed on to you,” Captain Adams told him. “Rahaf Banaz is thirty-five years old and a Kurd. Why she was working for Saddam’s regime is still a mystery. She was captured after the Marines raided a laboratory in the eastern Diyala region in Iraq back in 2003. She was moved around to different black sites in Iraq, Turkey, Romania and Latvia, and then brought here eight months ago.”
Austyn had read about the moves. Dr. Banaz was well known enough in the international research community that there had been a lot of squawk about her whereabouts. The US response from the very start was that she’d been killed in the attack when they’d raided her laboratory.
“How has she been treated?” Matt asked.
Captain Adams shrugged. “Off and on solitary confinement. There have been no interrogations for quite some time. None since her arrival here. And there’s certainly been no abuse,” she added defensively.
“And her cooperation level?” Austyn asked.
“Nonexistent.” The captain turned around in her seat. “She never complains. She doesn’t speak. In fact, she doesn’t respond to anything at all. She has moved into a zone that we see some prisoners go into once they’ve lost any hope of freedom. Four times since she arrived here eight months ago, she’s gone on a hunger strike. Each time, we had to move her to the medical facility at Bagram, hook her up to tubes, and force feed her. But I was told when she arrived not to conduct any more interrogations of her for the time being.”
“Why do you think you were given that order?” Matt asked.
She shrugged again. “I assumed that we had what we needed—that final disposition of her case would be coming down.”
“What do you mean?” Austyn asked, alarmed.
“This woman was a scientist in Saddam Hussein’s biological warfare program. Our people have collected tons of samples and evidence at the site where she was captured. She was the sole survivor of the air attack. So what are we going to ask? What’s she going to confess to? We already know what she was working on. And as far as other facilities like the one she was found in, she was the nuts and bolts person—the actual scientist—and that was her lab. She wasn’t administering any other labs. That much she told her captors at the time of her arrest. And our evidence has confirmed that,” Adams explained. “Our understanding is that she is being kept here until it’s time to move her again to some other facility…permanently.”
Austyn looked out the window at the stark countryside. Dust, rocky hills, and more dust. Every now and then a lone tree had sprouted in the middle of nowhere. It occurred to him that Rahaf Banaz was one of those lone trees. The difference was that she’d been uprooted from the dry rocky terrain of her native Kurdish Iraq and dropped inside the walls of one prison and then another, probably for the rest of her life.
He tried to shake the image. Thoughts like that wouldn’t help him get his job done here. She was a ghost because of her own choices, and there were American lives that could be saved if he stayed focused on his task.
“The intelligence information that was passed down to us indicated that the strain of bacteria found in the US seems to match what the prisoner was working on,” Captain Adams told them.
“That’s correct,” Austyn replied, turning his attention back to the occupants of the vehicle. “But considering how long she’s been in American hands, we can’t accuse her of having a direct connection with any attack.”
“What we’re hoping to gain is information,” Matt continued. “We’d like to find out who else might have had access to her research back then. Who was working with her, besides the scientists we know are dead. We want her cooperation.”
“Good luck.”
“Even more important, we hope she’ll tell us how to produce an antidote.”
Captain Adams turned more fully around to face them. “There’s none?”
“No,” Austyn said. “Not yet. That’s why we’re here. Dr. Banaz may be the one with the key.” He wanted to be hopeful. He wanted to think that their trip might be as simple as asking her the questions, and the scientist offering them all the answers. He wasn’t foolish enough to think it would really happen, but it certainly was worth hoping for.
“My communication mentioned a bacteria that produces some kind of flesh-eating disease,” Adams said. From her expression it was obvious that even her years of tough military training didn’t offer protection from imagining how horrific a death this could be.
“Necrotizing Fasciitis. In extreme circumstances and without medical attention, the flesh-eating disease can claim a life in twelve to twenty-four hours,” Austyn explained. “But what we’re dealing with now is a super-microbe. The bacteria we’ve seen in Maine is much worse than anything the medical community has had to deal with in the past.”
“That bad?” Captain Adams asked incredulously.
“What we know, what we’ve seen, is that there are no external wounds, no warning signs. Once contracted, this super-microbe eats away at the internal organs of its victim,” Austyn told her. “The disease actually consumes its victim from the inside out. Septic shock and death can occur in less than an hour.”
The silence in the Humvee was unbroken for a few minutes. He realized the gravity of the situation hadn’t hi
t the two people riding in front until now.
“And how contagious is it? How does it spread?” Captain Adams asked.
“Very contagious. But as far as how it spreads…there’s a lot we don’t know,” Matt explained. “Two families—seven people and their pets—were found in advanced stages of decay in Maine by the owner of the property, who radioed in for help. Unfortunately, he and the two emergency personnel who arrived on the scene contracted the disease at the site. An additional emergency group, already on their way, suspected a disaster and called in for more help.”
“We’re assuming the disease spreads primarily by contact, but we don’t know. It’s possible that normal protective gear won’t stop the microbe. Insect or even airborne particles may also spread the disease, manifesting themselves in the body of a potential victim,” Austyn said, continuing where his partner stopped. “In short, there’s too much that we don’t know. We have no idea if those ten casualties are all we’re dealing with. We have no clue how the first family contracted the bacteria. Maybe they brought it in from some other part of the country, and we’re focusing our attention on the wrong source. We don’t know if there’s an incubation period for the germ in the body before it becomes active.”
He could go on and explain everything that he didn’t know, but that would take forever. They had hundreds of questions—but that was why they were here.
“How were you ever able to tie this to what was found in Dr. Banaz’s laboratory in Iraq?” Captain Adams asked.
“The computers in Washington showed a match in the DNA sequence of this super-microbe to what was in Banaz’s lab in Iraq,” Matt told them. “A data base of billions of combinations and that’s the only match we have identified so far.”
Captain Adams adjusted the glasses on the rim of her nose. Her struggle with the information she’d received was obvious in her fisted hands and tight jaw muscles. “There are fifty-two soldiers living in close quarters at the Brickyard. There are thousands of troops stationed in or traveling through Bagram Airbase. I don’t want to sound paranoid, but we’re very exposed,” she said. “Have either of you had any contact with those bodies?”
Austyn perfectly understood her concern. “No, the island has been quarantined.”
“How about the samples. The DNA sequence? How was all this collected and tested?” she persisted.
“The protective gear was upgraded to the levels NASA uses in space. The sanitation techniques used are similar to what we use with nuclear spills. We’ve had no new report of the disease since the initial outbreak,” Austyn told her.
Captain Adams didn’t look very relieved. She turned around and stared straight ahead.
Austyn had seen the same reluctance back in US. The professionals that had finally traveled to the small island to monitor a sample collection had drawn the short straw. Though Austyn and Matt weren’t allowed to be part of the onsite investigation, neither had been terribly disappointed. There was so much that they didn’t know about the microbe. Despite all the precautions, there was no guarantee that an outbreak might not happen right now.
“In your opinion, do you think Dr. Banaz will cooperate once we tell her what’s going on?” Matt asked.
“Are you prepared to offer her a deal?” Captain Adams asked.
“We’ve come prepared to negotiate,” Austyn answered. “We’ll do whatever it takes.”
The satellite phone attached to the front dash came to life. The driver answered it and passed it along to his superior. Captain Adams said very little, but listened intently. Austyn could tell from the tightening of her shoulders that the message was not to her liking. Still, he turned his attention back to the road as the Humvee hit a large pot hole. The landscape was beginning to change. The rocks were now interspersed with clumps of greenery. From what he’d seen from above, he suspected they were near their destination.
Captain Adams turned around in her seat to look at them once she’d ended the call. She made no explanations.
“About the prisoner,” she said. “You can negotiate with someone who’s responsive, who wants something, a person who values life. But as I told you before, your Dr. Banaz is past all that. This woman has lost all hope.”
Three
Her body may have grown weaker, but her mind never ceased to weave shelters where she could escape to. These imaginary houses were in a different place and time. There she experienced no pain, no grief…no discomfort at all. Those moments of peace were not memories of exact events from her past. She knew, as well, that they couldn’t be any premonition of her future. They were only a confused mélange of reality and dream, of truth and falsehood. She didn’t mind the mingling of the real and the unreal; it provided her with a few moments each day of sanctuary.
The people she met and spoke to in those imaginary moments were only those whom she invited. Her sister was a regular visitor. They would often repeat some conversation they’d had some years ago. Or there would be some recollection of the past. Friends’ names from long ago would fill her with a sense of well being. Her sister was good at recalling all of these things, much better than she herself was. Lying alone in one cell or another, she would savor each thin slice of good she could recall, living each moment—smelling it, tasting it—as deeply as she could.
Other times, she would invite her students in her mind. They would surround her with their enthusiasm, with their questions. She was the gardener who sewed the seeds of learning. She’d nurture their thoughts as if they were tiny sprouts of palest green, propping them up and protecting them. She would feed their minds with the gentle mist of experience.
We are indebted equally to our teacher and to God. Her mother’s words were always with her. Why was it, though, that she could remember the proverbs, the lips speaking them, but never her mother’s face?
There were other moments of sanctuary, too. She’d recall an instance where a warm arm might wrap around her. Sometimes, she could feel the smooth touch on her skin. Was it real or imagined? Was it a memory or a longing? She didn’t know. It didn’t matter now.
In those moments, though, she’d sometimes feel herself escape out of her own body. A touch on her wrist would open a portal for her spirit, and she slide out of her body like a silk scarf from her father’s pocket. Floating above herself—her body motionless in the dark below—she would come as close to being alive as she had ever been.
She never knew at that instant if it was really happening or not. It was only in the crushing aftermath of such moments that she knew her life was, now and forever, only the stuff of dreams.
The first days were a blur. Perhaps the first weeks were, as well. She didn’t know. Eventually, she’d regained her balance, her sense of time. Months had flowed into years and then she’d lost her bearings once again. In the end, it didn’t matter whether it was now or tomorrow or last year. Time means nothing when you are suspended in hell. Sometimes she’d feel as if she almost knew. She’d hear some guard mention a date. She’d focus in on it, try to hold onto it. And then, it would slip away until she had no idea, once again, if it was one year or ten years since she’d been a free human being, teaching at the university six days a week, having routines and friends and a busy life.
As her sense of time wavered, though, her ability to concentrate on other things—on inner strengths—had grown. She’d taught herself to be indifferent to pain. Cold, heat, shackles, verbal and physical abuse…none of it meant anything to her. She’d learned to become numb to the physical world. She could close her eyes and shut down everything, retreating in silence to her house of dreams.
God finds a low branch for the bird that cannot fly. Yes, Mother. I know.
Lately though, more and more, Fahimah was finding it more difficult to concentrate. Her discipline was wavering. She was running across some bumps in the road. The groan of a prisoner, the cry of a night bird, the shaking of the ancient and decrepit walls that were her prison brought reality to her consciousness again and again. Whether i
t was a mine exploding in the hills or American troops bombing a new target, she didn’t know. But she could not ignore them as she once had. Increasingly, she could not block out the stark reality of her situation.
During these new moments, her entire life focused. She knew who she was and she even seemed to know how long she’d been in prison. She remembered how hard she’d worked in life to get where she’d been before her capture. She recalled the sacrifices she’d made, how much she’d achieved. She remembered the respect she’d commanded of her peers, her students. She felt inside of her the warm realization that she’d made something of herself, despite being a woman and a Kurd in a country where one was not particularly valued and the other was so often seen as the enemy of Saddam and his regime.
It was during these moments that she’d also recall with vibrant clarity her sister Rahaf lying on the cot in the basement, her leg gone, the wound from the amputation raw and bleeding and exposed to the musty air. She could still hear her sister retching piteously, her body trying to puke out the poison that she’d injected into her own bloodstream in an attempt to survive. More clearly than any of these things, though, she could remember her sister asking for her help.
These had been the deciding moments. Should she tell them after all this…or not?
Fahimah knew there was only one possible way that she could ever end this living hell, but telling the truth wasn’t an option. Over the years there had been two separate messages passed on to her by other prisoners. Although there had been no name attached to them, she knew they were from her sister. The last one had come about nine months ago, just before they’d moved Fahimah to this facility. Rahaf was alive and looking for her.
The situation was impossible; Fahimah knew that very clearly. She had acted to protect her sister, never thinking that her imprisonment would be so…final. Still, she was committed now. She would never expose her sister to this. Her captors believed the deceit she had weaved. Fahimah would go to her grave before shattering the truth they had accepted.