go back and see if anything was done in the past. That way, if the shit hits the fan, everyone gets sprayed.”
“Thanks for that image.”
At Kelly’s direction, Jessi searched for key words that included
At the Greater Nation compound, SUV engines were revving as the SEB unit prepared to take their prisoners away. Jack nearly missed the phone call.
“Bauer,” he said.
“Jack, we’ve got nada. No reports, no tips, no nothing. If your weekend warriors told anyone, it must have been the post office.”
“Thanks.” Jack snapped his phone off and glared at Marks. “No tips. Truth is, that’s what I expected. You’re not the type to rely on the government.”
Marks shook his square head. “You don’t get us, Jack. I don’t know why I didn’t see that. We believe that protecting our borders from terrorists is one thing the government should do. Of course I’d tip them if I learned something. But no one did a thing. The only difference between me and you is that you think if you can’t stop it, we regular citizens ought to just lie down and take it. Sorry, that’s not my style.”
“Is that where Newhouse went? You told him to focus on a mission. Was this it?”
Marks said nothing.
“All right. You’re such a patriot, then tell me the plan. Tell me where I can find these terrorists.”
“Absolutely.” The immediacy of his answer surprised Jack. “There’s a family in Beverlywood. A father and a daughter. One of the terrorists is linked to them and we’re sure they know what he’s doing. Our plan was to start with them.”
Jack felt the same cold groping in his stomach, like an ice-cold eel swimming through his guts. “A father and daughter. What name?”
“It’s all in there,” Marks said. “The address and everything. The name is Rafizadeh.”
The eel in his gut found its home and settled heavily. “Shit,” Bauer said.
Six months ago. A holding cell inside CTU headquarters, with a bare steel lamp hanging down from the darkness and bright, directed bulb that illuminated an uncomfortable steel table and left the rest of the room in darkness. Jack Bauer stood at the edge of the light, staring down at the man handcuffed to the table. He was an older man, his hands softened by a scholar’s life and his belly rounded by many comfortable meals. The handcuffs weren’t necessary for security — this old man offered risk of neither fight or flight — but they added to Jack’s psychological advantage. The man in the chair was a prisoner. Jack was the jailer.
“Stop protecting them,” Jack growled. “We’ll find them anyway. Then we won’t need you anymore.”
The old man blinked at Jack. His glasses had been taken away — another small part of the psychological war — and he could barely see past the bright lights in his eyes. His cheeks above his thin, gray beard were sunken with fatigue, and three days of questions had bent his back and slumped his shoulders. But his voice was still as firm as the day Jack had brought him in.
“I hope you do them find, whoever they are,” said the old man with a gentle Farsi lilt in his speech. “In the meantime, I once again ask for my lawyer.”
“No.”
Jack let the denial hang in the air. He didn’t explain that the Patriot Act gave him permission to detain suspected terrorists — even U.S. citizens — indefinitely. The denial held more power without the rationale behind it. Of course, he also didn’t explain that even with the broadened powers the Patriot Act gave him, Jack’s hold on this old man was tenuous, and based on little more than one email picked up by the FBI’s Internet-searching
Jack straddled the chair across from his captive so that their eyes were level. He smiled. “Professor Rafizadeh, you’ve had a fairly unpleasant time here with us. But this is the honeymoon. I can promise that the marriage will be really ugly.”
The old man shrugged his shoulders. “You are threatening me, sir, but with what? Do you think I don’t know what is waiting for me out there? My job will be gone. My tenure, it is nothing now. My daughter will suffer from this also. You have already ruined everything I have, just with what you have done. What will you do, send me back to Iran?”
“At a minimum,” Jack said. He stared at the scholar. He refused to ask again. Rafizadeh knew what he wanted.
The investigation had been fairly straightforward. A contact in Lebanon had pointed Israeli security to a training camp on the Syrian border. Israeli commandos had raided the camp a month earlier. There wasn’t much there, but the commandos came across a few names that hadn’t been deleted from computer lists. Some of those names turned up on Homeland Security’s watchdog list of possibles who had entered the United States. Inside the country, they’d disappeared. That’s where Bauer and CTU had come in. Like bloodhounds sniffing a cold trail, they’d tracked most of the names to dead ends. Only one lead had played out — the name of a suspected terrorist training at the Syrian camp turned out to be the son of Ibrahim Rafizadeh, professor of middle eastern history at the University of Southern California. From the moment he’d met the professor, Jack believed Rafizadeh was a prime example of a criminal who hid in plain sight. He was an Iranian immigrant, naturalized in 1998, but who kept close ties in Iran. He had been an outspoken advocate for Muslim rights after 9/11 and a harsh critic of United States policies toward Muslims, including detainees held at Guantanamo Bay and other locations. At the same time, however, he published papers and had spoken on news programs lambasting fundamentalist Islamists as backward and dangerous. An Iranian ayatollah had even issued a fatwa against him in 2002 after his book,
But a month’s worth of wiretaps, tag-team tails, and round-the-clock surveillance hadn’t dug up a shred of evidence beyond Rafizadeh’s connection to his son, whom he had apparently not seen in several years. It didn’t make sense to Jack. He’d been in the Rafizadeh house several times — both with their permission and without — and the pictures on the walls, the scrapbooks, the framed report cards, all told Jack the story of a man who adored his children and would not,
The professor shrugged again. “If the fatwa is still in effect, it may be a short visit.”
“Where is your son!” Jack yelled, slamming his fist on the table. He was surprised at the level of his anger, but he went with it. A change of rhythm might meet with success.
“I don’t kn—”
“Yes, you do! He’s here, in the U.S., and he’s a threat to innocent lives. You tell me now or I swear I’ll bury you so deep they’ll—”
The door to the interrogation room had burst open. Ryan Chappelle had entered, flanked by two uniformed security men. Chappelle’s face looked more pinched and angry than usual.
“Release this man,” Chappelle wheezed. The two uniforms entered and immediately begun unlocking the old man. “See that he’s escorted safely home. If he’s hungry or thirsty, get him anything he wants. Mr. Rafizadeh —”
“Professor,” the old man said, rising to his feet and rubbing his wrists. He looked uncertain, as though he thought this might be one of Bauer’s tactics.
“Professor Rafizadeh,” Chappelle restarted, “on behalf of this agency I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience we’ve caused. I hope you’ll trust that we try to act in the best interest of the country—”
“Inconvenience!” Rafizadeh said.
“What’s going on?” Bauer said, turning on Chappelle. Chappelle glared back, his ears turning slightly red. “He’s clear, Bauer. The connection didn’t pan out.”
“How do you know that?” Jack said, growing upset as his only lead walked out the door. “That’s what I’m trying to find out!”
“We found out for you,” Chappelle said. He handed Jack a manila folder. “This got missed somewhere along the way. Rafizadeh’s son died two years ago.”
The fallout had been enormous. The press had a field day with it. “Scholar Learns Of Son’s Death During
