"Some people are fortunate," she said under her breath. "I've been waiting to die for five years now."
Austyn, struck speechless, stared at her. He'd somehow expected that she might not break her silence. He noticed that she had a slightly British accent. But even more so than her words and the accent, he was stunned that she was looking at the pictures again. This time, her face was lifted enough that he could see her.
Rahaf's green eyes were a startling feature in her pale face. He'd never noticed their color from looking at the old pictures they'd had on file. But they shouldn't have been such a surprise. Unlike so many people from the Middle East, who had more of a Mediterranean look, Kurds were known for their more northern European complexions. The thirty or so pounds that Rahaf had lost while in prison made a difference, too, Austyn thought. With her face thin and pale, her eyes were far more startling than they would have been otherwise.
Without touching his hand, she pushed the pictures away and inched along the fence until she was sitting in the shade. He noticed that she'd not once looked at the mountains or the sky.
Something didn't sit right with Austyn, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it.
"They aren't the Adirondacks," he said, "but I thought you might enjoy being outside."
She was back to being silent, looking at a crumpled knot of cassette tape dangling from a roll of fencing a couple of feet ahead of her in the yard. A loop of the tape hanging down from the rest danced in the dry breeze.
Austyn held the pictures in his hand, keeping them in front of him where they were visible to her. "What we've seen with these bodies is unlike anything on record. The strain is connected to the microbes that were found in your laboratory and the samples that were collected there." He wasn't sure if he was repeating himself or not, but she didn't appear to be affected by the severity or urgency of what they were facing. If she cared at all, she wasn't showing it.
She gathered her knees to her chest and tucked the blanket tighter around her. She leaned her chin on her knees, lost in her own world once again.
Austyn noticed a mark above her left ear just inside her hairline and stared at it. A moon-shaped birthmark. He could see it through the short-cropped hair.
"I have to say, officially, that no one thinks that you have any personal connection to any biological attack… if that's what it is."
Her eyes cut to him for a second, conveying without a word how stupid she thought his statement was. She'd been rotting in prison for exactly that crime for all these years. He let it go.
"At this point we don't know how the microbe reached the United States. We don't know who is responsible for it. There are other agents who have been tasked with getting those answers," Austyn explained methodically, calmly. "My partner and I are here to seek your assistance as a scientist, as an expert. You're the only one with the years of research in this specific area that can possibly help us, to give us answers as far as what we should or shouldn't do. You were able to contain the microbe in a dormant stage in your lab. To start, we're hoping that you can tell us if the steps we've taken are good enough to contain the bacteria to where it is. Dr. Banaz, millions of people are at risk. We're trying to save lives."
Rahaf closed her eyes again.
Austyn wasn't ready to give up. "You're a scientist, one of the smartest in the world in this area. I can't undo the fact that you've been detained and moved around in this way. I'm sure no apology would suffice for the way you've been treated for all these years by my government. But I can, at least, tell you that no charges will be brought against you for your work on behalf of Saddam's regime."
It wasn't much of an apology, and she acted as if he hadn't said a word. The troubling part was that he understood her. There were far better ways to deal with her after her capture than what the CIA had done. Since the days of the Romans, people like Rahaf — with her intelligence and background — had always been considered a prize, part of the spoils of the war. The victorious nation would honor them and buy their cooperation. In any situation but this Iraq war, she'd have long been working in one of the top U.S. government labs, heading some important project, having her own staff of scientists. Austyn couldn't understand what had happened here, how they could have done so many things wrong. There was no excuse for how she'd been lost to them for so long.
"Dr. Banaz, since the execution of Saddam and his closest advisers, the new Iraqi government has been trying to move forward. The U.S. has also been trying to—"
Her eyes locked on his face.
"You didn't know that he was executed."
She looked away, but it didn't appear that she was upset by the news.
Austyn's thoughts turned to what he'd read in Rahaf's files. During her years of studying in the U.S., Rahaf had been a dedicated scholar, but she'd also been active politically. She had been outspoken about women's rights, and involved in a number of clubs. Her high energy level had been repeatedly referred to in college and graduate school files and letters.
When she'd returned to Iraq, someone in Saddam's regime had been smart enough to recognize her talents and interests. It didn't appear that she'd faced any discrimination because of her gender or her Kurd heritage. She'd been given her own staff and facility within a year of her return. Knowing this about her, Austyn could not quite figure out why she hadn't raised more hell during her detention. Transcripts of her CIA interrogations had contained no mention of her making demands regarding her rights.
He glanced at her again. Perhaps she had, and the files had been edited, he thought. It was terrible to think they may have killed the spirit in someone so valuable.
The warm, dry breeze swept through the yard, raising a cloud of dust. Despite the heat, he saw her shiver. He found himself staring at her thin arms, at her pale skin. She was definitely not well.
The sensation that something was off continued to bother him. He looked again at the birthmark above her ear and paged through the file he'd brought outside. He was looking for two pictures of Dr. Banaz that were in this file. One was of Rahaf leaving a conference in Stockholm. It was dated 2000. Large sunglasses hid most of her face. He stared at the shape of her chin, her high cheekbones. In the other photo, she was standing on a podium and delivering a speech during the same conference. There was no telling of the color of her eyes. Austyn held the picture at arm's length and compared it to the woman sitting before him. The same slender build and dark hair. She was simply much thinner now and she looked different with her buzz cut.
The door leading to the building opened. Austyn saw Matt coming through it. He tucked the photos back inside the file folder, closed it and placed a broken piece of brick on it. Standing, he met his partner halfway across the yard, where they were out of earshot of both Rahaf and the guards.
"Anything?" Austyn asked.
Matt shook his head. "No new cases reported. And they're completely done with the sweep of the locations where each of the Maine victims came from. There's been no sign of the bacteria."
"So the monster was just lying there waiting for them to arrive?" Austyn commented.
His partner shrugged. "The only new info was that there's been a recommendation made by the team working out of the National Institute of Health to have mega quantities of some new antibiotic drug made and ready to go."
"What's the drug?"
Matt looked down at a notepad. "DM8A. I don't really know anything about it. Do you?"
Austyn summarized the information he knew for his partner. DM8A had been awaiting FDA approval for over a year now. It was originally designed to be given intravenously to fight infections resulting from internal injuries. Of everything out there, the antibiotic would be the strongest drug they had to fight resistant strains of necrotizing fasciitis. Still, this was simply a tweak of a basic format. The holdup in approving the drug stemmed from the fact that it was potent enough to shut down the liver of the patient in two to five percent of the cases. Of course, there were other side effects, too, but they were more of a nuisance than dangerous.