24 Veto Power (5 page)

“How do you know that?” Jack said, growing upset as his only lead walked out the door. “That’s what I’m trying to find out!”

“We found out for you,” Chappelle said. He handed Jack a manila folder. “This got missed somewhere along the way. Rafizadeh’s son died two years ago.”

The fallout had been enormous. The press had a field day with it. “Scholar Learns Of Son’s Death During 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.

4:43
A
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M
. PST 405 Freeway Southbound

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.
“Pedar?”

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.

“Traffic cameras, security feeds, cell phone records . . .”

She shook her head. “The power you have is terrifying.”

“You won’t think so if it helps find your father. His cell phone placed a call here. Check your message machine.”

Nazila went back to the living room. A silver cordless telephone stood upright on a stand that also contained the message system. She pressed play, the machine beeped at her, and her father’s voice chimed in. “Nazi, I will be home a little late. Someone wants to see me about a research project for a movie. It’s late for an old man, but if it is something, we could use the money. The name of the company is on a card on my nightstand. That’s where I’ll be if you worry.”

“Movies?” Jack asked.

“He consulted on a movie once before, when they needed an expert on Islam in the Middle Ages. A movie about the Crusades.”

He followed her back to her father’s room and scanned the room as soon as she turned on the lights. This was the room of a scholar—every flat surface piled high with books, magazines, and pages of notes. The nightstand was no different—Jack counted a stack of five books by the bed, plus two more that lay facedown and open, as though Rafizadeh had been reading both at the same time. On top of the stack was a precariously balanced pile of papers— brochures, business cards, junk mail, and letters. Nazila lifted a business card off the top, and the rest of the pile fell to the floor. She handed it to Jack, then hurriedly gathered up the papers that had fallen. He dialed CTU again, but his eyes were on her furtive movements.

“Bandison, Bauer again. Run a check on this company—” he glanced at the business card—“Minute Man Films. Based here in Los Angeles. I’m guessing it doesn’t exist.”

“Right back,” Jessi Bandison said in shorthand, and put Jack on hold.

Nazila stacked the papers neatly and quickly—so quickly, in fact, that Jack almost missed her sleightof-hand as she slipped one piece of paper into the pocket of her robe.

When Jack was taken off hold, Jessi Bandison was on the line. “Jack, there’s no Minute Man Films.”

“I figured. Thanks.”

He snapped his phone shut. “Nazila, I’m sorry. I think your father’s been taken by the Greater Nation. This company he was meeting doesn’t exist.”

Her faced paled. “Can you help him?”

“I’ll do my best. I owe it to you,” he said. “But first show me what you just slipped into your pocket.”

Her hand covered her robes. “Nothing. It’s personal.”

“Show me anyway.”

Reluctantly, defeated, she pulled the slip of paper from her pocket. It was a four-by-six generic greeting card with pictures of a watercolor of flowers on the front. Inside, spidery handwriting crawled from side to side. Jack didn’t read what it said, because his eyes were drawn to two facts immediately.

First, the card was dated two months ago.

Second, it was signed by Nazila’s dead brother.

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THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLAC
E
BETWEEN THE HOURS OF
5 A.M. AND 6 A.M.
PACIFIC STANDARD TIME

5:00
A
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M
. PST

At five in the morning, the streets of San Francisco lost all their romance. In another hour or two, the sun would rise across the bay, and anyone with a good view and a penchant for rising early could sit with a cup of Peet’s Coffee and watch the fog roll back out the Golden Gate like a retreating army. But at this hour, San Francisco was simply another dark and quiet city, except with very steep hills.

The hour was, however, a convenient running time for a U.S. senator whose circadian rhythms were still set to East Coast Time and whose biological clock kept sending all her weight into her hips. Debrah Drexler, consummate feminist and liberal though she was, was not above a little vanity. Her one self-indulgence in a hectic schedule was her three-mile jog every morning. She had been what was called a looker in her day, and while in her head she knew that the days had passed when she’d turn a man’s head, in her heart she felt that one ought to at least make an effort.

She slipped out of her apartment in those first min
utes after five onto the dark street spotted with street lamps. She started up the road at a slow pace, and a young man in an Adidas track suit fell in beside her.

“Bobby,” she greeted.

“Senator,” the young man said. She never said the word
bodyguard
out loud, but he wasn’t a regular part of her staff—at least, he did none of the analysis or fund-raising work—but when she’d started her predawn runs a month ago, her staffers had gotten him from somewhere to make sure that she always returned home. He ran, and they talked sometimes, but more often she was involved in her own thoughts, and he just kept pace with her.

She kept silent for the first mile, running the streets that led to Golden Gate Park, trying to wrap her mind around Quincy’s phone call. What had been the point of it? He knew which way she was going to vote, and it wasn’t like the AG was going to twist her arm. Barnes might try—she could at least imagine him getting on the phone and using his President voice to intimidate her. That would have failed, too, of course. Barnes’ party might have succeeded in cowing a lot of other members of her party, but not her. So if the President himself would have failed, why had the AG even bothered?