And then he heard it. There was something, or someone, moving through the brush behind him.
He froze.
The sounds continued. Leaves brushing against each other, unnatural on a windless night. Now a soft breathing. No, more like panting.
An animal.
Lukwiya started to walk faster. He couldn’t risk firing his pistol for fear of raising the alarm back at camp. No way he’d hit something totally blind like this anyway. It was probably just a little forest rat, or a monkey. Did they roam around at night?
The ground cleared a little as he got deeper into the forest. He looked back over his shoulder. Nothing. The canopy above was too thick to allow even the faintest hint of moonlight through.
A deep growl sounded from the darkness behind him, and he took off running.
Not this. Anything but this.
Something firm and heavy hit Lukwiya in the center of the back, sending him flying through the air just as he felt a sharp pain in one arm. He landed hard on his chest, desperately trying to free the arm from a snarling iron grip that only seemed to get stronger.
Weren’t leopards supposed to bite at the neck? Straight for the kill? But this didn’t smell like a wild animal. No, it was more familiar.
A dog. It was a fucking dog.
The harder he fought, the more painful it became. There was no way out. He only screamed when he heard the horrific sound of his own bone crunching between the dog’s teeth.
Finally, Lukwiya gave up and lay still. As if it had been waiting for just that response, the dog stopped fighting too. It didn’t let go of his arm, but at least there was no more flinging him around like a piece of rope.
“Out.” The dog released its bite. “Good boy, Rico.” The American voice came from somewhere behind his head. “Don’t try anything stupid. That dog would be happy to chew up your other arm, too.”
Vincent Lukwiya obeyed. He didn’t want to. But he was out of options.
Cole leaned into the night, trying to find Innocence in the chaos of moving shapes on the ground fifty meters below the hovering aircraft.
“There he is,” he shouted. “Tall bald guy in olive camos. He’s coming with me!”
“Sir, we’re under orders not to evacuate anyone else from this location.” The young Air Force pararescue jumper was trying to pull him away from the Osprey’s open hatch. “CBRNE teams are inbound now. They’ll take care of him.”
Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and Explosives. They were putting the whole camp under quarantine. He’d overheard something about taking precautions for nuclear radiation, and they knew about the virus, too.
“No way—he’ll be guilty until proven innocent down there.” Cole pulled against the harness holding him inside. “We’ve got to bring him up with us.” He wasn’t leaving Innocence behind, not after everything they’d been through together. Not while the man was still dealing with his own brother’s death.
“Sorry, sir, we’re already late.”
The camp started getting smaller. They were leaving. Strong hands pulled him further into the Osprey’s bay and forced him down onto a stretcher.
The last few minutes had been a total blur. First the initial verification of his identity, then this guy had strapped him into the harness and they’d both been pulled straight up into the Osprey.
“You guys are assholes,” Cole said. “He was my friend.”
„You‘re welcome—for the rescue, I mean.” The airman shook his head. “Your guy’s in good hands. I guarantee it.”
Cole tried to control his anger. It was finished. He was safe. And Innocence would be, too. “Where we going, anyway?”
“Entebbe airport.” The pararescue jumper started cutting off his filthy clothing. “C-17’s already there, waiting just for you.”
“Huh?”
“You’re going home, sir. President’s orders.”
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines is pleased to announce that Flight 3575 to Amsterdam is now ready for boarding.” The woman’s friendly voice came over the intercom first in English, then Farsi, her accent flawless in both languages. Leila slipped into the line already forming at the gate. She’d gotten in the habit of waiting until the final boarding call—no need to waste so much time standing around—but not today. Each little step felt significant in distancing herself from the palpable danger that seemed to be lurking around every corner.
She was surprised how smoothly the whole process had gone. Baba never came home—probably for the best—and Sohrab’s own driver picked her up at an ungodly hour for an uneventful drive out to the airport. Maybe the Iranian government really didn’t care about her after all, just another Persian-American back in Tehran for a family emergency.
But did every visitor get a tail like hers, the silent suited men who just happened to show up in all the right places? She’d last seen them at the security checkpoint and was even tempted to flash a little wave goodbye before thinking better of it. No reason to raise any final flags in their minds.
A tired group of men stood in line ahead of her, their business-class tickets trumping her elite SkyMiles status in boarding priority. Most were middle-aged and looked distinctly Persian, but there were a few exceptions. The branded carryon bags gave three of them away. European auto executives, returning home after making a big sale? The new trade embargoes were clearly not having their desired effect.
She followed the eyes of one Scandinavian-type to a large muted flatscreen hanging from a column in the waiting area. It was an early morning news program, state-run like them all, but at least this one featured an attractive female anchor. The woman looked especially excited to be talking about something, but wasn’t that her job? Then the image changed. A large mansion in the Mahmoodieh neighborhood almost filled the screen, its gated drive blocked by the typical black SUVs of the Revolutionary Guard.
Uh oh, someone’s in trouble.
“Excuse me.” The large man directly behind her nodded and pointed to the moving line. She turned away from the screen and took a few steps towards the gate.
That house looked way too familiar.
Leila stepped out of line and set her bag down. She hadn’t seen it in the daylight the night before. Hell, she’d barely looked at it at all. But it was the right shape in the right neighborhood. Two strikes.
The driveway’s gate started rolling open, and there he was. Sohrab. Held closely between two brutish uniformed men, arms behind his back. They tucked him into one of the waiting cars, and the image flashed back to fancy Ms. Iran at the studio.
Her brother’s face appeared in the top left corner of the screen, along with his name and a single word written in Farsi:
Khaen
. Traitor.
Shit. Shit shit shit.
What had she done?
Shit.
What could she do? Nothing. That was the point. She was powerless. The only thing that mattered now was getting back to the States in one piece. She felt for the scrap of paper deep in the pocket of her loose cotton pants.
Go to this address immediately on your arrival
, Sohrab had said.
Tell him about me, the virus—everything you know.
He’ll take care of you.
It was a simple street address in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Someone from his grad school days?
“Boarding pass and passport, ma’am?” The gate agent was looking at her with an impatient expression.
“Sorry.” Leila handed her the documents.
“There’s no visa in here,” the woman said, holding up her American passport. “You must have entered Iran on a different document?”
Leila’s heart skipped a beat. Of course she had. Iran didn’t recognize dual citizens, so she’d come in on her old identification card.
“Whoops.” Her attempted chuckle sounded more like the croak of a dying frog. “Here you go.”
The woman took the old laminated card from her hand and looked at it closely. “They really let you through immigration on this?”
“Yes, no problems at all.” That wasn’t entirely true. She’d been informed that the obsolete identification cards were not supposed to be used for international travel anymore, but after a few calls it had worked in both directions. Risky—especially with all the reports of Iranian-Americans being detained on suspicion of espionage in the last few years—but it was her only option.
“Well.” The agent took one more look at the card, then handed it back to Leila. “Enjoy your flight.”
Leila looked out over the runway from her window seat at the back of the plane. She’d torn the
hijab
off the second she sat down, but the sweat still dripped from every pore. She reached up and twisted the tiny air vent all the way open. Just minutes to go until she was free. It didn’t help that she and Travis had watched that horrible movie about the hostage crisis just a week earlier, the night before she left for Africa. The final scene replayed itself in her mind, Ben Affleck and the rest of them sitting on this very same runway, waiting to know their fate.
Then she saw it. A blue flash of light in the distance.
No way.
But that couldn’t be for her. It was just a movie. No one cared that much. Did they? Still, she couldn’t pull her eyes away from the window.
The engines kicked in, and the plane crawled forward. But there were more lights now, dark vehicles speeding across the tarmac. Did Iran’s security forces make a habit of tearing around the international airport, just to scare people off from ever coming back? She sat back in the seat. Or maybe it was a hallucination. That watermelon was the only thing she’d eaten in twenty-four hours.
The plane was picking up speed.
She peeked out the window. Still there. The cars were coming in fast at a sharp angle. She gripped the seat cushion with all her might, willing the plane forward, hoping against hope that it was too late to stop.
And then they were airborne.
It was over.
She was free.
The sun’s first rays hit the rain-soaked garden in an explosion of dancing brilliance. A beautiful summer morning. Arthur Attenborough stepped off the front porch and closed his eyes as the fragrant aroma of his prize-winning roses settled over him. He’d bought the rambling old Victorian forty years earlier, back when faculty could still afford to live on these sacred blocks tucked away between Harvard Square and the Charles River. He was a lucky man, and the home’s welcoming location had served him well. Not only him, but his family, his university, and even his country.
Now where was that paper? Even after all these years, he couldn’t do without it.
The New York Times
, print edition of course, delivered faithfully by hand in the wee hours of the morning, ready and waiting for his immediate consumption over strong black coffee. The long winter found him in a rocker by the wood stove for this daily ritual, but for six glorious months from May to October, he relished the spacious porch’s more public setting.
No sign of the paper along the faded brick walkway, or nestled under the overgrown lilacs so delicately guarding the front gate.
Ah yes, the rain.
Attenborough opened the wood shingled mailbox and reached inside. Success. It was silly, this wave of endorphins that rushed through his aging body every time. But he was old enough to understand that the simple pleasures of a comfortable routine were among life’s greatest gifts. And by all outward appearances, he had enjoyed many of them. Tenured for almost as long as he’d owned this house, Attenborough didn’t concern himself with the petty competition and academic back-biting of university culture. He was employed to teach students and pursue his own scholarship exploring the impact of Shia-Sunni relations on Middle Eastern politics, and that was exactly what he did.
It was also why he always turned first to the
World
section, where he soon found himself staring at a brief story—hidden below the fold on the third page—reporting on an Iranian scientist’s very recent arrest.
As a Berkeley undergrad during the counter-cultural height of the mid-60s, Attenborough had quickly fallen in with hippie protester crowd. It made sense at the time, an immature understanding of the nature of evil in the world informing his opinions about the role of the United States in foreign conflicts. Disillusionment with his decidedly less serious contemporaries soon followed—they were usually more interested in finding the next party than in bringing their rhetoric to a higher level. And then a younger brother was drafted and killed in the Tet Offensive, followed by a childhood best friend, shot down somewhere over Cambodia. What was the point of all this loss? Wasn’t there a better way to deal with disagreements between nations? The weight of a confused moral responsibility crept uninvited into the back of his mind.
Years passed, the war finally ended, and Attenborough continued on the fast track to academic success at Harvard. Quickly reaching that triumphant goal of tenured full professor, he celebrated for exactly three days before realizing there must be something else for him in life. A chance meeting with a top Agency official at an alumni event led to conversations and then agreements he’d never even imagined. Finally returning to Cambridge after several months of training at Camp Peary, he knew he’d found that something.
So it was with great curiosity that he read and reread the half-column article in front of him. Sohrab Torabi. The name brought back a great wave of memories. Good ones, of long summer nights out on this same porch, debating Iranian politics over milky tea and cookies. And not such good ones, especially that final conversation in which Sohrab reaffirmed his decision to decline the recruitment, choosing instead to return to his country a faithful citizen.
They had met on a hot August morning when Attenborough welcomed another group of international graduate students to their new lives in the United States. His role as Dean Emeritus of International Student Affairs made natural interactions easy, and he took great care in handpicking potential candidates. The university was a magnet for the world’s best and brightest youth, many of whom might not be completely content with the ways their own countries were being administered. And they all turned in the end. The offer was just too good—work for the genuine good of their own countries while being paid a healthy stipend and, best of all, carrying a get-out-of-jail-free card just in case the going ever got too rough.