An undisclosed location in Iran
It was a week before Dre saw Liz again. At least it felt like a week; she wasn’t really sure how much time had passed.
The day of the attack, it took nearly six hours before the door to the women’s restroom at the Jamkaran conference center opened again. She’d heard Liz shouting in Farsi outside the door, heard the heavy tread of men’s boots, the rattle of weapons—but no gunshots—then hours of silence.
For a long time, Dre huddled on the tile floor next to the body of Lakshmi and the toilet that reeked of bleach.
Her brain refused to work. She was a spy. All this had been explained to her before she agreed to come to Iran. If she was caught, the United States would not acknowledge her existence. She was on her own.
Finally, Dre got to her feet and ran water in the sink. She washed her face and hands and dressed her injuries as best she could. She had a raging headache, a huge black eye, and bruises all over from the fight with Lakshmi.…
And possible exposure to a bioweapon.
She stared at her reflection. Other than that, she was in decent shape.
Dre took a seat on the floor as far away from the contaminated toilet and Lakshmi’s body as she could get. And waited.
She heard someone working on the door lock. When the door finally opened, the two men who entered were dressed in biohazard suits. One of them had a gun. He spoke English.
“Get up,” he said, his voice muffled through the suit. He motioned with the muzzle of the weapon for emphasis.
“Strip,” he said when she was on her feet.
“Pardon?”
“Take off your clothes.” He held up a hospital gown. “Put this on.”
Dre took off her clothes until she was in her bra and panties.
“Everything.”
She shut off the part of her mind that felt embarrassment and stripped naked. She had signed up for this. She was on her own.
Clad in the paper-thin hospital gown, she stepped into booties outside the restroom with the two men’s help. They escorted her outside, where they had a shower set up in the parking lot.
“Strip,” said the one with the gun.
Dre shed the gown and booties and stepped into the ice-cold spray of water. Under their direction, she soaped and washed every square inch of her flesh with a harsh disinfectant. Her teeth chattered. They gave her a blanket and bundled her into the back of an ambulance.
At the hospital, Dre was placed in a room with no windows, white walls, a glass door, and a camera high in the corner. She had a bed and a toilet and the lights were on twenty-four hours a day. All the twenty-first-century means of spending time—TV, books, phone, internet—were absent.
The only interruption in her solitude was two meals and two blood draws each day. She found she longed for someone to walk through the door and stick a needle in her arm just to break the boredom.
Dre slept when she was tired, ate when food arrived, and stuck out her arm when the doctor came in for blood. In between those fleeting moments, she sat cross-legged on the bed and stared at the opposite wall.
Fourteen meal–blood draw cycles passed before a doctor pushed through the glass door. He was not wearing a face mask. “You were not infected,” he said in halting English.
Dre felt like a great weight had been lifted from her chest. She had suspected as much, but confirmation was still a relief she had not known she was seeking.
“What happens to me now?”
The doctor shrugged and left.
She got her answer an hour later when two armed policemen in bulletproof vests walked through the door. They shackled her hands and feet to a chain around her waist, and she followed them, still wearing hospital pajamas and sandals. It was cold outside and she shivered, but neither of the men cared. She was put in the back of a police van without windows.
The vehicle moved through stop-and-go traffic, and then there was a long stretch of highway during which she fell asleep. Dre woke up when the van began to jounce along a bumpy road. When the doors opened, she saw a flash of snow through an open doorway. The men hustled her down a gray-painted damp hallway and into a cell.
Liz was there.
Liz had a bruise healing on her face and she held her arm close to her body in a protective way. She hugged Dre with her good arm.
“You’re okay?” Liz said.
“I was in a hospital for a few days. They said I was not infected, then they brought me here.” Dre looked around the cell. A bunk bed, a toilet, a sink. “Where is here?”
“I don’t know. They took me west—I think. It’s been ten days—I think. If they kept us alive this long, they must have plans for us.”
“Like what?”
Liz put her hand behind Dre’s neck and pulled her close until they touched foreheads. “It could get bad. They could use us against each other. Just … you know your training. Just do your best. That’s all anyone can ask for.”
Despite the cloud of doubt over her situation, it was a relief to have someone to talk to. They huddled together on the bottom bunk and spoke in whispers. Dre talked about her mother and the farm where she grew up. Liz told her funny stories about her kids and how she let Brendan know she was pregnant the first time.
In those moments, Dre never felt closer to another human being.
They marked time by the appearance of meals twice a day, two plates of rice and a stale flatbread to share. No matter the meal, the menu was unchanged. If they were lucky there was some meat or other sauce on the rice, but that was rare.
Every few days, the door would open, and a new set of guards would move them to a new location.
“My guess is they’re moving us so that anyone who’s looking for us can’t find us,” Liz said with a tinge of hope in her voice. “That might mean somebody in the US is trying to locate us, but … who knows.”
Liz got thinner. The circles under her eyes deepened and darkened as the days passed. After their fifth move, she developed a hacking cough.
Neither woman was surprised when the door to their cell opened and a new set of guards strode in. Dre noticed immediately that these were military men and they wore a different type of uniform.
“Revolutionary Guard,” Liz whispered.
The bigger guard slapped Liz across the face, yelling something that Dre took to mean shut up. They were hustled outside, their thin shoes slapping against the frozen ground. It was nighttime.
The transport vehicle was different, too: an army transport with the insignia of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard emblazoned on the side. They were placed in the rear seat and hoods were drawn over their heads.
The big diesel engine roared to life and the transport shot away.
Liz leaned her head next to Dre. “I don’t like this,” Liz whispered. “All the other changes were done by police. The Revolutionary Guard … this is … not ideal, Dre.”
The men in the front spoke in low tones and smoked constantly. The vehicle left the paved road, bounced along for what felt like an hour, then began to climb.
When they stopped, the men left them in the back for a long time. She could hear one of them on the phone outside talking and walking, his voice fading in and out.
“What’s he saying?” Dre asked.
“He’s waiting for some kind of authorization, I think.” Liz’s voice was tight with emotion.
The doors to the vehicle opened on both sides and chill night air rushed into the cab. One guard grabbed Liz, the other Dre. Dre was force-marched across rocky, uneven ground, a hand clamped on her elbow.
They stopped. Dre felt the wind whip past her bare legs.
The guard ripped the cover off her head.
Liz was next to her, her head uncovered, blinking. A half-moon hung in the sky, illuminating a mountain vista all around them. Dre looked down. They stood on the edge of a precipice, the depths below them lost in shadow.
The breeze raised gooseflesh across Dre’s skin.
The lead guard barked out an order. Liz whispered, her voice shaking. “He says to get on your knees.”
Dre felt the rocky ground bite into the skin of her knees. The dirt scuffed under the thin soles of her prison sandals. The second guard unlocked their shackles, dragging the chains away. He said something to the first one and they both laughed.
She heard the rack of a slide on a handgun and closed her eyes. Liz reached across the space between them and laced her fingers into Dre’s. Her hand was ice cold.
“Remember what I told you: Don’t cry and don’t beg.”
Dre took a deep breath of the clean, thin air and closed her eyes. She tried to think of a prayer, but nothing came to mind.
She took another breath, feeling as if time had somehow stopped. Would this be the last breath? Or would there be one more?
The slam of the car door made her jump, her hand convulsively clenching Liz’s.
The vehicle roared to life and spun out in a cloud of dust.
Seconds passed. They knelt on the edge of the precipice. Fingers together, hearts beating. Breath being drawn.
Liz sagged back on her heels. “I—I think they’re gone.”
The words had no sooner left her mouth than headlights stabbed the darkness.
Dre lunged to her feet, pulling Liz up with her. Together, they got their first clear look around. They were on top of a mountain. There was nowhere to go.
The vehicle raced into the open space, skidding to a halt. Billows of dust floated toward them.
The door slammed shut. A flashlight beam cut through the darkness, pinning them in place.
“Dre? Liz?” Don Riley’s voice.
Dre felt herself falling. Strong arms caught her.
“I got you, Dre,” Michael said. “You’re safe now.”
Janet’s face appeared in the moonlight. She swooped in for a hug, leaving fresh tears on Dre’s cheek.
Don had Liz wrapped in a bear hug, weeping on her shoulder. “We’ve been back-channeling for weeks with no response and then today, they just called and gave us these coordinates on the Iran-Iraq border. No trade, no demands, just a place and time.”
In the shadows beyond the headlights of the Humvee, Dre saw the shapes of soldiers moving. An army captain stepped into the light. “We need to move, Mr. Riley. We’re exposed here.”
Don, his arm still around Liz, reached for Dre’s hand.
“Let’s get you home.”