Interrogation” made a great headline. Jack’s name was never mentioned, of course, but the media sank their teeth into the story of the federal agent whose tunnel vision not only caused him to falsely imprison a known anti- fundamentalist scholar, but also caused the father to learn of his own son’s death under the worst of circumstances. The Secretary of Homeland Security had been furious and had made his displeasure known. Jack had nearly been ejected from CTU, clinging to his job, much to Ryan Chappelle’s disappointment, only by the tips of his fingers. As it was, he was taken off any and all high-profile cases and demoted as Special Agent in Charge. Jack’s mentor, Richard Walsh, had brought in another agent, Kelly Sharpton, to head up the field teams temporarily. Meanwhile, Jack was assigned to the Domestic Threat Section, which was, considering the current world climate, the fetid backwater of U.S. counterterrorist work.
Memories of that investigation bounced around in Jack’s mind as his SUV hurtled down the 405 Freeway in the predawn hours. It wasn’t often that you could travel from Palmdale to Beverlywood in twenty minutes. From 7 a.m. to well after sunset the main artery from the West Los Angeles coast to the inland suburbs was a parking lot. Even at four-thirty in the morning there were cars on the road as suburbanites who had moved away to escape the grind now plunged back into it. In a few hours, Jack’s drive would take two hours. But the dearth of cars and a speed of a hundred miles an hour made for good time. Jack reached the top of the Sepulveda Pass and hurtled down into the city, exiting at Pico and turning east, his car flying straight as a black arrow into the Beverly Hills-adjacent neighborhood of Beverlywood.
The Rafizadehs’ address had changed in the six months since he’d investigated them. They had lived in staff housing provided by USC where the elder Rafizadeh had been a tenured professor. Now Jack pulled up to Spanish- style duplex on National Avenue that worked hard to keep its appearances up, but failed. Jack’s habitual eye for detail absorbed information quickly — rusted rain gutters, badly painted eaves, dying grass. The Rafizadehs had moved down in the world.
They lived in the upper apartment. Jack took the stairs three at a time. He rang the bell and knocked on the door firmly. He waited a few seconds, knowing the first knock would only wake them into confusion, then he knocked again. He heard footsteps on the other side of the door. A light turned on inside, and then a muffled female voice demanded, “Who is it?”
Jack winced. “It’s Bauer.”
There was a long pause while Jack stared at the wood grains in the door. The female voice finally said, “Are you joking?”
“No,” Jack said, trying to soften the habitual growl in his voice. “It’s Jack Bauer. I need to talk to you and your father.”
A bolt slid back and the door opened to the length of the security chain. A young woman looked furtively out from the space between the jamb and the door. Her dark, beautiful face was a mixture of sleep and anger. Her thick black hair was pulled away from her face by a terry cloth headband.
“Get the hell out of here,” she said and slammed the door shut.
He pounded on the door again. “Nazila! I’m here to help you!”
“We’ve had about all the help we can take, thanks,” thewoman said fromthe othersideofthe door.
“Open the door, Nazila,” Jack said, releasing the growl from his throat. “I’m not here to arrest you. I’m here to protect you.”
The door opened again. The chain was still attached. Nazila’s dark eyes studied him in the porch light. “From what?”
“Let me in, and I’ll explain. I promise, I’m not here to arrest anyone.”
“Do you know what you did to us?” she asked.
“Yes. And I think someone else is making the same mistake. I want to protect you. Open the door.”
Jack wanted to believe it was his sincerity that made her open the door. More likely, it was her resignation. Months ago he had cajoled his way into their lives. He had first posed as a graduate student interested in learning more about the Middle East — one of the contrarians who sought to understand 9/11 by looking in the mirror. He had been charming and disarming, not only convincing Professor Rafizadeh of his desire to become a scholar of Islamic history, but also casting a spell over Nazila. She was a grad student at Cal Poly, working on her Ph.D. in applied mathematics. Like her father, she was brilliant, but unlike him, she’d allowed herself to become a little more westernized. They had shared dinners together, visited museums and concerts, and seen movies. Nazila Rafizadeh had just begun to wonder if she could fall in love with a non-Muslim when he appeared on their doorstep one day with a search warrant and a gang of federal agents.
Now Nazila unchained the door and stepped back, allowing Jack to slip inside. He recognized furniture he had seen in their previous house — there was a chocolate velvet sofa and chaise, a leather ottoman that doubled as a coffee table, a beautifully framed replica of a 15th-century map of the Persian Gulf and Indian subcontinent. All these items had been crammed into the tiny duplex. The boundaries of their lives had shrunk, but all the baggage remained.
Nazila stood in the middle of the cramped living room and smoothed the folds of her terry-cloth robe. She neither sat down nor offered him a seat, and she certainly would not offer him tea. She was short, but in that small room she seemed to gather size like a bird puffing up its feathers.
“After the problems with your case I was demoted to another unit—” Jack began.
“Good.”
“I was investigating a militia group. They’re nuts, but they’re well-funded and active. They got hold of information similar to the intelligence that steered me toward you and your father. I believe they’re going to act on it.”
Jack delivered his information in the short bytes he would have used for another professional. Nazila was quick and, as he knew well, very strong. She absorbed the facts as fast as he could say them. “So you’ll stop them,” she said.
“We did stop them. We arrested their leader tonight. That’s how we found out they had targeted you. But a few of them got away, and if I know these guys, they’ll still try to finish their mission. I came here to warn you.”
Now Nazila sat down, hugging her stomach and folding over like a flower closing up. “I feel sick. Why does this keep happening to us?”
“Bad luck,” Bauer said. “Bad people.”
He meant the Greater Nation, but her eyes bored into him. “Yes, bad people.”
“Wake your father up. I want to tell him what’s going on. I think we should move you to a safer location until we can find these guys.”
Nazila Rafizadeh felt the tiny apartment grow even smaller. She stared at Jack Bauer, whom she hated more than a human being ought to hate someone. He had toyed with her feelings and terrorized her father. He could not have done more to ruin their lives if he had tried. She had no reason to trust him. But, then, he had no reason to be here. He had already taken everything from them, and as cruel as she believed him to be, she also knew that he did not waste his own time.
She unfolded slowly from the couch and stood up. She went into the cramped hallway and passed the single bathroom, toward two bedrooms. She felt Bauer’s presence behind her. He moved very quietly, but she knew he was there. Her own bedroom door was thrown open. Her father’s was closed. He was a heavy sleeper, especially these days. He did not sleep long, but when exhaustion overtook him, he slept the sleep of the dead. She knocked loudly.
She opened the door into the darkened room. Jack leaned in over her shoulder. Even in the darkness he could see that the bed was empty and undisturbed. Professor Rafizadeh was not there.
“Where?” he asked.
“I…I don’t know. He had plans this evening. He teaches English as a second language at the mosque since he lost his job. I’m always asleep before he gets home on Tuesday nights. ”
Before Nazila had finished her sentence Jack was on his cell phone to CTU, and by the time her surprise had turned to fear, he knew two things: Professor Rafizadeh had left the Culver City Mosque just after two o’clock in the morning, and his car was last seen at the corner of Centinella and Pico.
He repeated the information to Nazila as it was relayed to him by Jessi Bandison.
“How do you know these things so fast?” she asked.
