"All the prisoners are given three meals a day," she told Austyn. "But this one tends to nibble, at best."
The sound of a woman's voice came from the cell. "Come on. Stand up now. Get your legs under you "
Austyn went to the door and saw two female guards bent over at the waist, trying to drag Rahaf onto her feet. Either she was being stubborn, or her legs weren't strong enough to hold her weight. One of the guards jerked at the prisoner's arm.
"Be gentle with her," he found himself saying sternly.
Another guard went in. The room was now almost too crowded to maneuver her. The blanket over her shoulders fell on the threshold as they moved awkwardly through the cell. Rahaf was not helping at all.
Austyn eyed the old rag that once was a jumpsuit. One of the guards lost her grip on Rahaf momentarily and the prisoner collapsed, her chin hitting the cement floor with a loud thud.
After the years of working for Homeland Security, Austyn had thought that he'd snuffed out any sympathy for prisoners. They were enemies of the United States and lawbreakers. He'd always been quite happy putting them behind bars. He had no sympathy, in particular, for the educated and the disillusioned who enjoyed the comforts and freedoms democracy offered, while planning acts that would plant terror in innocent people's hearts.
Something was different here, he thought. Rahaf was different. There was something wrong in what he was witnessing. Her case was nothing like those he'd dealt with before in his career.
She had been an extremely promising student, and the Iraqi government had paid for Rahaf's undergraduate degree at Columbia University in New York City, in spite of her Kurdish heritage. She'd done her graduate work at California Institute of Technology. Her research and publications had been well received from day one. Coming back to Iraq, a fast-track career had been waiting for her. During the following years, she'd been a regular speaker at international symposiums around the world.
And now she was reduced to this.
Two guards on either side, taking hold of Rahaf by each arm, started to drag her to one end of the hall. Austyn had to swallow his objection this time.
He picked up the blanket from the floor. Tucking the folder he'd taken out from his briefcase earlier under his arm, he followed them. Windowless doors lined each side of the hallway. Going past one of them, he heard a man cry out. He hurried along, telling himself that he needed to catch up to Rahaf and the guards. The truth was, he knew, he didn't want to think about who else was in those cells or whether they deserved what was happening to them. He had one task that he needed to focus on.
They went through two sets of steel doors and crossed through a dim space that looked as if it had been a woodworking shop and storage area for the old brick-making facility. The air was warm and musty inside, and Austyn's boots kept sticking to something on the brick floor as they made their way through. Distant hills were visible through small windows, jagged with shards of broken glass. One of the guards unchained a door that opened to a yard of sand and brick.
Outside, an eight-foot chain-link fence with barbed wire along the top served as their only visible barrier to the hills. Beyond the enclosure, there was a short stretch of a man-made clearing with signs warning of land mines and another perimeter fence farther out. Beyond that, rocks and the rugged mountainous terrain took over. Austyn looked up, spotting the guards' station that Captain Adams had spoken of. He could imagine there were many places in the looming mountain where agents of the Taliban could be hidden, spying on what was happening in the old brick factory.
"Where would you like her?" one of the guards asked over her shoulder.
Austyn looked around the enclosed area. Garbage was strewn everywhere. There were no chairs, no benches, nothing to sit on. The yard was small and only a thin section of it by the fence was getting the sun right now.
"The ground by the fence will do," he told them, motioning to the area.
They took Rahaf to the fence and stood her against it. She slid down, her legs folding under her. Austyn quickly spread the blanket over her knees. She was too thin, too weak. Her chin sank to her chest again, her back against the fence.
"You can leave us alone," he told the guards.
"We'll wait by those doors, sir, if you need us."
He wouldn't, but he decided against pursuing it. So long as they were on the other side of the yard, it was fine with him.
Austyn waited until the guards had moved away before sitting cross-legged on the ground near her. He made sure to sit in the shade, as he could already feel the sweat running down his back. The heat here was different than anything he was accustomed to. It was so much more intense. An occasional waft of wind running through the yard didn't cool the skin but only raised the dust, making it harder to breathe. He'd give her ten minutes in the sun, and then help her move into the shade.
She wasn't meditating now. He could see that her eyes were partially open, but she refused to look up. The sun poured over her short-cropped hair and shoulders. He saw her take a deep breath.
"Dr. Banaz," Austyn started. He introduced himself again, identified the department he worked for in Homeland Security. There was no reaction. He told her about his partner and what Matt did, and that he would join them out here very soon.
"I know that you are fluent in English, so I'll just continue to speak. If you need any clarification on anything I say, however, please just ask me. Do you understand me?"
He watched her a moment, but she still made no sign.
"Your classification has changed, Dr. Banaz. I flew here directly from Washington with complete authorization to make you an offer of freedom and to meet any reasonable demand you might have… in return for your cooperation on a medical situation that has arisen."
No movement. Still no acknowledgement that she'd heard or understood anything he was saying. Austyn decided to get to the point. He opened the folder he'd brought along, leafed through it, and found the pictures he was looking for. There were some twenty photos, grotesque, showing bodies in advanced stages of decomposition.
"I know anything I say must come across as totally insincere, considering your detention these past few years. You have every right not to want to have anything to do with me… or even to hear what I have to say," Austyn said softly. "Dr. Banaz, I ask you to look at these, though. We're desperate. And by we, I don't mean only Americans. This situation could be happening anywhere in the world today.
It could be happening among your own people. We're afraid it might be the start of something devastating."
He started spreading the photos on the blanket on her lap.
She closed her eyes and turned her head. Austyn was relieved that she'd at least taken a peek at them.
"The same DNA sequence of microbes discovered in your lab in Baquba has been identified in the remains of these bodies," Austyn told her. 'This is the first time we've seen anything like this outside of a laboratory environment. We don't know what to do with it or how to stop it… if there is a way to stop it."
A breeze threatened to blow the pictures away; he scooped them up, placing three of them on her lap and holding them there.
"These three bodies you see in the photos were teenagers. The others are their parents and innocent people who went there to help them, volunteer rescue workers. These were civilians, totally innocent of what's going on in the world." He paused, wondering if those words would mean anything to her. "We've never seen anything like this, bacteria this destructive and this fast-acting." He shook the pictures lightly. "These children and these adults… we suspect they died in less than an hour after being exposed."