Rendition Protocol

by Nathan Goodman

  Jana had hunted Jarrah for three years, yet she had left that life behind with the specific intent of starting fresh, living a simple existence. She sought to surround herself with the beauty of nature, and the anonymity of self that she could not find back in the dark hallways and dangers of the FBI.

  Back then she believed killing Waseem Jarrah would cause her post-traumatic stress episodes and nightmares to subside. After all, he was the person that had orchestrated the nightmares in the first place. She believed Antigua’s breathtaking blue waters would wash away her terrors and carry them out with the tide, the waters returning the next day, clean and new. But now, although she did not know why, she began to understand that her fears would never leave her.

  As Jarrah spoke to her in the vision, the center-most scar on her upper torso burned and she winced in her bed. The trio of gunshot wounds along her chest had been left there by one of Waseem Jarrah’s disciples two years prior—terrible calling cards that would never let her forget.

  “Perhaps it is time for you to learn the truth, Agent Baker,” Jarrah said as he pulled a piece of paper from a backpack on the table.

  His voice felt like a cigarette singeing her skin at the site of the scar. And she was sure this time; the scar was moving, as though it were the mouth of Jarrah himself. On the bed, Jana’s heart rate exploded and the vibration in her hand increased into a thrash.

  The nightmare played forth and Jarrah held the paper in front of her. Jana pulled against the bindings on her hands and feet but could not free herself. Then Jarrah withdrew a knife from the backpack, an ancient blade, razor sharp, and walked behind her. He held the edge against her throat, the effect forcing her to hold her head upright.

  Jarrah again raised the paper in front of her. “Read it,” he said with grit in his voice.

  “I can’t! I can’t!” Jana screamed. The blade touched her throat and blood leaked onto the cold steel. He let the paper drop to his side.

  “Tell me, Agent Baker, did you search for more information about your parents?”

  Jana’s sobbing was low and silent. She struggled to keep her neck high enough to avoid another stinging cut.

  “Answer me, Miss Baker, or things will not go so well for you.” Jarrah’s tone had deepened.

  “Yes,” she whispered over the building lump in her throat.

  “And how much did you learn? Were you able to uncover the truth about them?”

  She started to speak, but the blade touched her in the same spot and she winced.

  “Oh, are you not able to speak freely? Such a pity,” Jarrah said, now laughing. “Perhaps you see the way a woman should be, submissive.” He removed the knife and laid it on her lap. “Now, please continue.”

  “Did I learn the truth about them? Yes, but I’ve always known the truth about my parents. Having a father who died of cancer and a mother of a car accident is nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “The information-gathering capabilities of the FBI, NSA, and CIA at your fingertips, and that’s the best you can do?”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “Is it?” he said, a smile oozing onto the edges of his lips.

  He held the sheet of paper in front of her again. At the top, the paper read:

  State of North Carolina, Certificate of Live Birth.

  “Read the name and date of birth aloud, Miss Baker.”

  Jana squeezed her eyelids shut to push free her tears.

  “Jana Michelle Ames. Born October 19, 1986. But, but . . . this isn’t me. My name is Baker.”

  “Is it? Read the names of the birth parents listed here, please.”

  “Father, Richard William Ames, born December 16, 1959. Mother Lillian Baker Ames, born February 9, 1960.”

  “Fascinating, Miss Baker, isn’t it? It is true, you do not recognize the surname Ames, but your father’s name was Richard William, was it not? He was born on December 16, 1959, correct? And your mother, Lillian Baker, was, in fact, born on February 9, 1960. And let’s examine this date, October 19, 1986. This is your birthdate, correct?”

  Jana’s mouth hung open.

  Jarrah continued. “And your mother’s maiden name was, in fact, Baker, was it not? Baker, the same surname of your grandfather. How very interesting. I can tell by that stupid expression on your face that you have never known the truth.”

  Jana shook her head and more tears streamed down her face. “No. No, this can’t be. You falsified these documents! This is not my birth certificate!”

  “Is it not? Yes, it would be a most disturbing revelation indeed. A federal agent just now discovering her entire life to be a lie.”

  “My life is not a lie!”

  “Tell me. How is it that you were not aware of your own surname?”

  “My last name is not Ames, it’s Baker. It’s always been Baker. My parents were never married. Are you happy now? They never married. When my father died, I was two years old. That’s why my last name is the same as my mother’s.”

  “Is that what your grandfather told you? Hmmm, I see. And what then was said to be your father’s name?”

  “His name was Richard William.”

  “Richard William? It is true, the name of William is used in the Western world as a surname, but more commonly as a first or middle name, no? The surname of Williams,with an s on the end, is much more common. And this birth certificate says Richard William Ames. It is quite a coincidence that all the first names, middle names, and birthdates match up to you, your mother, and your father. Well then, let’s read further, shall we? These documents are so fascinating.” Jarrah was enjoying Jana’s anguish.

  He held up another document. At the top, it read:

  FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

  UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

  WASHINGTON, DC

  CURRENT ARREST OR RECEIPT

  Further down on the paper was a mugshot and other details.

  A droplet of blood rolled down Jana’s throat and landed in her lap. Her eyes locked onto the mugshot.

  “You look white as a sheet, Agent Baker. The face looks familiar, no? A striking resemblance to your father, is it not? Now, read for me this part here,” Jarrah said as he pointed.

  Jana’s voice became monotone as she read the words. “Date arrested or received, 10/29/1988. Charge or offense,” Jana’s body shook. “18 U.S.C. 793 : US Code - Section 793: Gathering, transmitting, or losing defense information.” Her body rattled into the overwhelming emotions. “No. No, this isn’t my father. It isn’t true!”

  “But it is true, Miss Baker. The evidence is right in front of you. And having been at the top of your graduating class at Quantico, I assume this is a federal code section you are familiar with. And this is a federal arrest warrant, isn’t it? Tell me, what does code section 793 pertain to?”

  “Espionage,” she whispered.

  “Correct, Miss Baker, espionage. Spying. And how interesting the date on this document is. October 29, 1988. You would have been two years old at the time.” He put his face against hers and she tried to recoil from his nauseating breath. “That particular date is etched into your memory. Don’t lie to me, Miss Baker.”

  “Yes,” she said as a tear rolled down her face.

  “And what does October 29, 1988 mean to you?”

  “It’s the date my father died.” The enormity of the revelation lay upon Jana’s psyche like a thousand-pound weight.

  “Your honesty is refreshing. October 29, 1988. The date your father died. Now, perhaps, you are starting to believe. Your father didn’t die on that date. It’s the date he was arrested, arrested for espionage against the United States.”

  “No!” she screamed.

  “You don’t know how much like your father you actually are.”

  “No!” she screamed once more, this time the effect causing her to awaken from the nightmare.

  ***

  Jana sat upright in her bed, and tears burst forth, unabated. She wrapped her arms around her herself, but then
loosened and her fingers found their way to the three bullet-hole scars on her upper torso. The burning sensation on the center one was visceral. Now that she was awake, Jana sensed the vibrations in her right hand and knew that a PTSD episode was moments from overtaking her. I can’t be like my father. I can’t be, she thought. She tried to rid her mind of the awful images, but the realization that the centermost scar now represented Waseem Jarrah caused a wave of intense nausea to roll her system.

  She struggled to control the images still flashing in her mind. But this time other images mixed in as well: memories from her childhood—a photo of her and her father sitting together on a sled, the smell of his aftershave, her as a toddler on the couch with her father outside throwing snowballs at the window to make her laugh. But the thought of him having committed treason was the most intense. As much as she tried to convince herself that she could not possibly be like him, the vivid memory of how she left the FBI, and the things she’d been accused of, gushed forth. The popping and flashing was as bright as a strobe, and the room began to spin.

  “No, no, no,” she said to herself with determination in her words. “You can stop it from happening. I know you can. Come on, Jana, get a grip.” Each word vibrated out as it crossed her tightened vocal cords. She rocked back and forth on the bed and began a series of deep inhalations. “Find it, Jana. Find it,” she said as she closed her eyes. “Come on, think back.”

  Before she had begun her career with the FBI, she hadn’t known terror could be this big. She’d never considered the enormity of the costs, larger than anything in her experience.

  Waking from the nightmare was the first step toward thwarting the PTSD episode, but this one set her into a tailspin she couldn’t recover from. The episode began like many of the others, as though a lion was punching its head through a taught net. Then came the gut-wrenching feeling that her heart would burst from her chest. Jana struggled to vacuum up enough oxygen as the tears streamed down her face. This time she was seeing the nightmare even though she was awake.

  With all her strength, she thought back to the safest place she knew in her childhood. It had been a simpler time, when she would flee to the safety of a favorite hiding spot. She pictured her then seven-year-old self at her grandfather’s rural farmhouse in the rolling hills of Tennessee. She watched herself descend from the front porch, run down the creaking steps and across the hayfield. Once at the wood line, she ran through the opening in the muscadine vines, a tangle of leafy green ropes that twisted and snaked through tree trunks and other foliage. She ran down the path and up the next hill. “The path used to be an old game trail,” Grandpa had told her, “streaming with whitetail deer,” a species he’d hunted in his younger years.

  Once she crested the top of the hill, she could see it. The fort, as she had called it, was nothing more than heavy branches leaning against a sheer piece of granite outcropping. The rock stood about four feet tall and formed the fort’s wall on one side. The branches joined together to create a roof which was covered in a heavy layer of leaves. The door was made from a bramble of vines which Jana could shift aside. When pulled closed, the vines served to camouflage the entrance from prying eyes.

  It was her fort, her hiding place, and after the deaths of both her parents, represented the only place where little Jana had felt safe. There were times in those days when she felt like she couldn’t breathe. But here in her fort, everything became calm. It was quiet and no one, not even her grandfather, knew where she was.

  Now, in the tiny bedroom of her bungalow, Jana wondered why images of her father had become interspersed with those of the terrifying ordeal with Waseem Jarrah. She’d gotten good at mentally running to her fort just before PTSD episodes started, and most times, the effect thwarted their advance. But this time, the harder she tried, the more fiercely the PTSD grabbed her. She felt as though her lungs couldn’t draw another breath. The fort blurred in her vision and she lost grip on the memory. Jana’s body convulsed as her pupils rolled into their sockets. The last thing she remembered was seeing the mugshot of her father on his arrest record. She blacked out and would not regain consciousness for several hours.

  8

  A Vile Gift

  Diego Rojas gripped the stair rail, and his jaw clenched. His agitation had increased upon learning his personal bodyguards would not be permitted at the meeting. He’d been to many such meetings, but, in his home country of Colombia, he always had the upper hand. Here on Antigua, as Rojas descended the wooden staircase, a single word entered his mind. Vulnerable. The basement was dark and boards creaked under each step. He saw nothing in the darkness below until a man seated in the far corner flicked a lighter at the tip of a cigar. As the man drew against the smoldering tobacco, an amber glow alighted black hair, a thick beard, and eyes like dead glass. The man said nothing.

  To Rojas, he appeared quiet, reserved. Yet Diego Rojas sensed something about the man that troubled him. It was like looking at a boiler that held too much pressure.

  The meeting had been arranged months in advance. Rojas was accustomed to danger, but the heightened sense of it tasted like sulfur in his mouth. He had been weaned on danger from birth. But these people were different. It was one thing to know you had the power of an entire drug cartel behind you. It was another to be engaged in business with an organization of this sort.

  The man motioned to a chair. Rojas turned and looked up the staircase at an oversized man of Middle Eastern decent blocking the top of the stairs. The man shut the door. The sound of a bolt throwing home reverberated. There was nothing left to do. Rojas walked toward the chair.

  Raised in the Hindu Kush region of Afghanistan near the borders of China and Pakistan, the man spoke, his accent a muddle of the three cultures. “Our paths have crossed and now our destinies become intertwined.”

  Rojas waited.

  “You are aware of our arrangement, are you not?” the man said.

  Rojas nodded. With people such as these, it was better to speak less.

  “And do you foresee any difficulty in delivering what has been discussed?”

  “I do not.”

  “Then we will double our volume, beginning immediately.”

  “Double? But—” Rojas said.

  “I am not asking,” the man said. He drew from the cigar and squinted into the smoke. “We intend to hold up our end of the bargain. Your little problem in Colombia will be taken care of. And all the loose ends will disappear.”

  Rojas stuttered. “We are not prepared to move that much. It will draw attention.”

  The man’s eyes focused on the amber tip of the cigar. “Or perhaps our people there will deviate from that plan, and the bomb will detonate elsewhere? Then another might find its way to a coca farm here, a processing laboratory there. . . . As for our new arrangement, you have no choice.”

  Rojas’s voice fluttered. “We will handle what must be handled.”

  The man stood and extended his hand. He was taller than Rojas had envisioned. “Delivery will occur at your estate.”

  “That was never discussed! We cannot take delivery of your shipment at my estate.”

  “And I will be there personally to oversee so that we have no mistakes.”

  Before Rojas could respond, the man walked through the darkness and opened a door.

  Rojas thought, This deal is getting worse at every turn.

  The man stopped and said, “But to celebrate our little partnership, I have brought you a gift from my homeland.” From out of a blackened corner of the room Rojas heard feet shuffling against the cement floor and the sound of a woman struggling. A man standing behind her pushed her forward into the dim light. Her hands were bound behind her back and there was duct tape over her mouth.

  “She is young and fresh,” the man in the doorway said. “We have saved her for you.”

  The woman yanked against her oppressor, a greasy man who held a knife to her throat.

  Rojas allowed himself to gaze upon her trim body.


  The man continued. “It is true, she is culturally different from you, but Middle Eastern women, Mr. Rojas, oh, they can be so enjoyable. This one, I’m afraid, may need to be taught manners.”

  Rojas smirked, then walked to her. He placed unwanted hands on her body and said, “Your gift is most generous,” and speaking of their business arrangement said, “We will redouble our efforts.”

  The man smiled. “I know you will,” he said before disappearing. The door slammed closed. He was gone.

  “Now, my dear,” Rojas said to the girl as he towered over her and looked down her blouse. “You and I shall become well acquainted.”

  She kicked at him and he cracked the back of his hand across her face. The man behind her held tight.

  “Take her to my car. I will have to begin by teaching her respect.”

  9

  Right in the Middle

  As they exited police headquarters, Cade squinted into the stark morning sunlight and donned a set of Ray Bans.

  Jana turned to him. “I don’t go by that name anymore.”

  “What name?”

  The pair walked into the parking lot. “Agent Baker. I’m not a federal agent anymore and you know it.”

  “Come on, Jana. I know you wanted to drop out of circulation for a while, but it’s time to come back to reality.”

  “Reality? This is my reality. I haven’t gone by the name of Agent Baker in over a year. And I’m never coming back. I’m not going back to the Bureau.”

  “When you disappeared last year, you not only left the Bureau, you left me. Did you ever think of that? What about us, Jana?”

  “There is no more us.”

  “Why don’t you just stab me in the heart with a knife? It would be less painful than to hear you say that.”