terrorist?”
“I’d say it’s worth it.”
“What if they step on the rights of a hundred people and don’t find any terrorists.”
“I see your point, ma’am.”
She wasn’t sure he did, but he was polite. Their jogging path joined another, and another jogger fell in beside them.
“Hey,” the newcomer gasped. “Hope…you… don’t mind some company…for a mile.” He looked like a mile would kill him.
Drexler smiled. She’d been there a month ago, when she’d first started running again. “No problem. We’re turning around in a minute anyway.”
The man nodded and glanced ahead. She could see his face intermittently, illuminated and then lost as they passed under lamps on the park’s jogging path.
He was on the far side of middle-aged (her age, she thought regretfully), with a bit of a paunch and thinning hair. He glanced at her once or twice, too, as though he was trying to place her. She got that a lot. Most of the electorate was, unfortunately, ignorant as to who their elected representatives were. Every once in a while she came across someone who’d seen her on CNN or the Sunday news programs. It always took them a minute to place her face.
“Don’t I know you?” he said at last. “I’ve seen you somewhere before.”
I’m your public servant,” she said with a chuckle. “I’m Senator Debrah Drexler.”
“No kidding?” the man said. He was still panting, but his voice had become more firm. “That’s not what I was thinking. I was thinking I knew you from a long time ago. Maybe twenty years. I thought maybe I was a customer of yours back in the seventies.”
Debrah Drexler stopped running. So did the other man, and so did Bobby. All three stood there panting for a moment — the Senator turning pale, the bodyguard trying to assess the threat, and the stranger smiling blissfully.
“What did you say?” Drexler asked. She ignored the sweat running into her eyes.
“I thought maybe you and I did some business way back when.”
“Not unless you were selling shoes, my friend,” she said coldly.
His smile widened into a leer. “There were lots of names for it back then, but I don’t think we ever called it shoes.”
“Bobby,” Drexler said, “I don’t think I like this man.”
She was grateful when he stepped immediately between them. “You’ll be going now,” he said.
The man nodded. “Yes, I will. Just keep that in mind, Senator. I’m sure if I keep thinking about it, I’ll remember exactly what kind of business we did together. See you later!”
And then he was off into the Park.
As Debrah Drexler was slipping on her running shoes, Jack Bauer had stood in the Rafizadeh apartment. For one of the few moments in his life he was paralyzed by mixed emotions — anger, confusion, fear.
“Ramin Rafizadeh is alive,” he growled. “Ramin Rafizadeh is alive.”
Nazila stood before him, her back straight, her feet set slightly apart. The only sign of her nervousness was the quiver in her hands hanging at her sides. She was an island bracing for a storm. Jack felt that storm brewing inside him, the pent-up fury of six months banished to the backwaters of counterterrorism, listening to rednecks spew brainless bigoted curses at blacks and Jews when he should have been chasing down madmen who dreamed of killing thousands. Six months infiltrating a penny-ante gang of thugs led by a wannabe guru who’d read the Constitution backwards and wanted to relive his glory days as a soldier by starting a war on United States soil. Six months in exile…for the wrong reasons. He’d been right. Ramin Rafizadeh had been connected to a terrorist group in Lebanon and Ramin Rafizadeh was alive.
Ibrahim Rafizadeh was in contact with him. Jack had connected the dots. He’d done his job, and somehow the mission got screwed anyway. His sense of injustice at his exile was followed by the stinging irony that the weekend warriors and political radicals he’d been investigating for six months had been on the right track when his own people had gone astray. The Greater Nation, of all people, was still on the case while CTU was sitting on its ass.
He didn’t say anything, but his face hardened into stone as he replayed these thoughts over and over in his head. Finally Nazila could not stand it anymore and said quietly, “He is innocent.”
“Don’t,” he snarled, physically resisting the urge to strike her. “Sit.” He pushed her so that she fell back onto the bed.
He took out his cell phone and dialed CTU. A second later he was connected to Kelly Sharpton. “I need a rundown on Ramin Rafizadeh. Everything we’ve collected.”
He could hear Kelly’s confusion. “Ramin? You mean the son? That’s a dead file, isn’t it?”
“Everything,” Jack repeated.
“Hold on.”
Jack waited for two minutes while Kelly called up the file and scanned it. He gave Jack a summary over the phone. Most of it was exactly as Jack had remembered it from six months ago.
Ibrahim Rafizadeh had spent years as a voice of moderation in Iran. He had cheered the downfall of the Shah — though he was a bit older than the students who helped overthrow the tyrant, he had applauded their passion. But he was dismayed a short time later when the Shah’s corruption was replaced by a fundamentalist theocracy. Ibrahim himself had dreamed of a free Islamic state, guided by Sharia but not dominated by it. That dream had been naive. Still, he remained in Iran, believing that as time passed and more moderate voices were heard, the government would relax. He raised his son and his daughter there, trying to strike the right note between a pure love of Islam as he saw it and obedience to the laws of the state. This was no easy task, and Ibrahim Rafizadeh would be the first to say he had gotten it only half right. His daughter had proved an apt disciple. His son, too, was a disciple — but one who’d turned toward a more absolute life than Ibrahim lived.
By the end of the 1980s, Ibrahim believed his patience had paid off. Rafsanjani was elected President, and although he was still conservative, he was a pragmatist who sought to improve Iran’s reputation in the world at large. Reform, it seemed, could not be far behind. But by the middle of the 1990s, Ibrahim had grown cynical, and even with the rise in power of Mohammed Khatami, a true reformer, he believed little would change. By the time Khatami came to power in 1997, Ibrahim had already left Iran.
But Ramin refused to go. In 1997 he was eighteen years old, fiery, and passionate, with nowhere to sow his wilds oats. Finding no other outlet for his energy, Ramin had plunged into politics. He swirled like a leaf in the conflicting winds of reform and dogma, believing that Iran could and would become the ideal Muslim state for which everyone yearned. He refused to follow his father to America. From that moment on, Ramin Rafizadeh’s life became a list of dates, places, and vague associations. He lived in his father’s home near Tehran for another year, becoming active in Khatami’s reform movement, then somehow leaving it in 1999 to work with more conservative voices attached to the Guardians Council. He popped up again in 2000 in Lebanon. This fact by itself immediately put him on American watch lists, since a young man’s general route from Iran to Lebanon was through the terrorist group Hezbollah. But very little information came out of Lebanon about him, which meant he was either well-hidden, or not active. He all but vanished for two years, until, of course, the commandos had seen his name on a list in the remains of a terrorist camp near the Syrian border. That had been Jack’s line of investigation, until it was cut short by the discovery that Rafizadeh had been killed in Lebanon, and Jack was accused of violating Ibrahim Rafizadeh’s civil rights.
“There’s got to be something more in there,” Jack said when Sharpton finished his summary. “I’ve just found something that says Ramin Rafizadeh is alive.”
“Jack. ” The skepticism in Sharpton’s voice was thick.
“I’m not obsessed with this,” Bauer said. “I’m looking at a note written by Ramin to his father. It’s dated two months ago.”
That news hit Sharpton as hard as it had hit Jack. “Holy shit.”
“Right. Keep digging, will you?”
“I’ll see what we missed. Out.”
Jack closed his phone and turned all the energy he’d been gathering for the last few minutes on Nazila
