Chapter 53

Tension was rising inside the beach cottage. Nouri’s deadline— I want this deal wrapped up in thirty minutes —was ancient history, and Jack’s phone was silent.

“They’re out there,” said Nouri. “I can feel it.”

Nouri had moved Jack, Zahra, and Yasmin to the dining room, away from the glass doors and large windows in the kitchen. It

was more of a dining area than a formal dining room, rectangular in shape with large openings at the short ends, one that

led to the kitchen and the other to the great room. Slatted plantation shutters covered the doors and windows throughout the

cottage, and Nouri had closed all of them to prevent anyone from seeing inside. Jack and Zahra were seated at the glass-top

table. Nouri had threatened to tie them up with an extension cord if they moved without his permission, but it hadn’t come

to that. Yasmin lay asleep in the corner on a blanket. The dimmer was on low to keep the chandelier light from waking her.

Nouri was standing along the wall, off to the side of the window. Every few minutes, he would peer through a tiny slit in

the shutters. Paranoia was setting in.

“Who’s out there?” asked Jack.

“SWAT. I know they are. This is taking too long.”

“You told Jack’s wife that the next call better be from someone with authority to meet your demands,” said Zahra. “I’m sure

it’s just taking time to find the right person.”

“Zahra, shut up,” he said harshly. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

There was silence. Nouri walked to the kitchen entranceway to check for the sound of SWAT outside the cottage, and then to

the front opening to the great room.

“You won’t hear them if they’re out there,” said Jack.

“You agree with me, then? They’re here?”

“All I know is that this is pointless, and you should give up. The FBI won’t agree to your demand.”

“You don’t even know what my new demand is.”

“Money? An airplane out of the United States? Whatever it is, you don’t need three hostages. You should at least let Yasmin

go.”

Nouri glanced at Yasmin, who was sound asleep on the floor. “She’s the only reason SWAT hasn’t busted down the door already.”

Jack couldn’t disagree, at least not convincingly, so he tried a different strategy.

“I could probably help you,” he said.

“Help me what?”

“Shape your pitch. Give it the best chance of success.”

“I can make my own demand,” said Nouri.

“See, you already have the wrong focus. It’s not about your demand—what you have to gain. It’s about the quid pro quo. You have to make them understand clearly what they stand to gain. Or what they stand to lose if they don’t give you what you want.”

“The US government knows what it stands to lose.”

“That’s an assumption on your part. Assumptions are dangerous in negotiations.”

“Have you not been paying attention, Swyteck? If they don’t meet my demand, the world learns the truth about Ava Bazzi.”

“But what does that mean, exactly—‘the truth about Ava Bazzi’?”

“They know what it means.”

“Do they? When I was a young lawyer, I lost a trial I never should have lost. We proved all the facts we needed to win, but

I didn’t deliver the closing argument I should have. I assumed the jury knew my client should win.”

“What’s your point?”

“Sometimes, even when people know something, they need you to help them visualize what winning means. How are you going to do that, Nouri? How are you going to make the FBI visualize what ‘the truth about Ava Bazzi’ looks like?”

Nouri was silent. Jack pushed a little harder.

“Not just see it,” said Jack. “How are you going to make the US government fear it enough to give you what you want?”

Nouri stared back at Jack, intensely at first, and then his gaze drifted to a place more distant. He seemed to be going back

to that night outside the Evin Prison walls, to the end of the video he’d captured.

“Guthrie was waiting in the car,” said Nouri.

Jack needed to catch up with him on the timeline, and he got there quickly. They were literally picking up where the bodycam

video ended. “Was Guthrie alone?”

“Yes. Alone.”

“Did Ava get in the car with him?”

“We put her in the trunk so that she wouldn’t be seen.”

“Did you get in the car with Agent Guthrie?”

“No. It was my job to buy her out of prison. It was Guthrie’s job to get her out of the country.”

“Did he get her out?”

Nouri’s gaze grew more distant, as if he were looking past Jack. “No,” he said.

“How do you know?”

“He called me the next morning,” Nouri said in a hollow voice. “From a little town near the Kuwait border.”

“What did he say?”

“He told me I needed to come and get Ava.”

“Why? What happened?”

Jack’s phone rang. It was on the table in front of him, and the screen lit up with Andie’s number. Nouri answered it on speaker,

leaving it where it lay.

“Nouri, this is Agent Henning,” she said.

Nouri glanced at Jack, then spoke toward the phone. “There’d better be someone important on the line with you, Agent Henning. I said the call needed to be from the right person. Someone with authority to deal.”

“You’re talking to the right person,” said Andie. “I have full authority to meet reasonable demands.”

Jack knew she was bluffing; no hostage negotiator ever led with “I have full authority” and gave up the ability to say “I

need to check with the powers above me.”

“You’re too late,” said Nouri. “My demand has changed.”

“Okay. Let’s work with that. Maybe I can still help. What’s the new demand?”

Jack assumed that her questions were intended only to stall for time. He joined her effort.

“Nouri, remember what we just talked about,” he said. “Quid pro quo. What do they stand to lose?”

Nouri looked at Jack with skepticism at first, but as the silence lingered, he seemed to come around and see the value of

Jack’s advice.

Jack played to it, picking up where they’d left off. “Nouri was telling me what happened after Ava got in the car with Agent

Guthrie,” he said. “The information he intends to make public.”

“We don’t want you to make any of that public,” said Andie. “That would be very dangerous for Agent Guthrie.”

“Guthrie doesn’t deserve protection.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” said Andie. “Guthrie had your back as your handler.”

“Guthrie was a fuckup.”

“That’s not the information I have.”

Jack didn’t know what “information” Andie had, but he knew he was so close to the truth. He wanted to hear it from Nouri.

“Tell me, Nouri,” said Jack. “Tell me with the FBI on the line. Help them visualize the truth before you make your demand.”

Nouri’s anger rose as he spoke. “The plan was to leave Ava hidden in the trunk for a little while. Just until they got out

of Tehran, away from the morality police. But Guthrie lost his nerve.”

“Lost it how?” asked Jack.

“He was afraid of getting caught by the police with Ava in the car, even after they got outside Tehran.”

“So what did he do?”

“He kept Ava in the trunk.”

“How long?”

“All the way to the border.”

“How long was that?”

Nouri didn’t answer.

“ How long? ” Jack pressed.

Nouri’s voice tightened. “Ten hours. The first hour or so at night in Tehran, not so bad in October. But the last three hours

were in the province of Khuzestan. Do you know Khuzestan, Jack?”

“No, I don’t.”

“One of the hottest places on earth. Every day in summer is more than forty-five degrees. Even in October, over forty in the

sun.”

Jack realized he meant forty degrees centigrade, which was over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit.

“The morning Guthrie got to Khuzestan,” said Nouri. “That’s when he called me and said to come get Ava.”

“Did you go?”

“Yes. Guthrie left her in the car on the side of the road.”

Zahra gasped, which told Jack that she’d never heard these details before.

“What kind of shape was she in?” asked Jack.

Nouri looked at him, his eyes filled with anger. “Ava was dead. She suffocated.”

Jack felt a chill. It came as no shock that Ava was dead, but the manner of death was deeply distressing. Zahra covered her

mouth to contain her reaction. Andie was silent on the line.

Nouri finished by saying what needed to be said.

“It wasn’t the Iranian morality police who killed Ava Bazzi. It was that coward from the CIA. That’s what the truth looks like,” he said, and then he spoke directly to Andie on the cell phone. “Does the US government get the picture, Agent Henning?”

“Yes, we get it,” said Andie.

Jack could hear it in her voice: she too was hearing this for the first time. But she stayed in role.

“Before we meet your demand, I need to know that Yasmin is safe.”

“She’s safe,” said Nouri.

“Jack, is Yasmin safe?”

“Yes. She’s right here in the room with us. Asleep on the floor.”

“Okay, good. Have you been playing that silly Harry Potter game with her? The one you play with Righley?”

The question was out of left field, but Jack had to assume there was a point to it. “You mean the cloak of invisibility?”

“Yeah, that one. Have you played it with Yasmin?”

In the Harry Potter series, Harry and his friends at Hogwarts could become invisible by covering themselves with the cloak

of invisibility. It wasn’t actually a “game” that Jack played with Righley, but more of an annoying “daddy trick” in which

he became the cloak and smothered her entire body in a giant hug.

“No, we haven’t played it,” said Jack.

“Well, you should.”

Nouri was losing patience. “Enough with the Harry Potter bullshit.”

“You should definitely play that game with Yasmin,” said Andie.

“I said enough!” shouted Nouri.

“Jack, do it now!”

Jack took her cue, launched himself from his chair, and dove to the corner of the room, “cloaking” Yasmin with his body as

a human shield.

In the same instant the glass doors to the kitchen exploded, sending glass pellets and fragments of the wood shutters flying.

Zahra screamed at the top of her voice as a SWAT team burst into the cottage and charged toward the dining area.

“FBI, drop your weapon!” they shouted.

Jack heard the crack of gunshot from very close by, probably from Nouri. A flurry of return fire followed, and Nouri fell

to the floor beside him.

Yasmin was crying, confused and frightened. An FBI agent snatched her from Jack’s arms, and a barrage of questions came from everywhere.

“Are you okay?”

“Is anyone injured?”

“Is everyone okay?”

Nouri was still breathing, but barely. He lay in a crimson pool of his own blood.

“Don’t move!” a SWAT agent shouted.

Nouri’s eyes blinked open. Jack moved closer and sat at his side. He was struggling to say something.

“My demand,” he whispered.

“Don’t try to talk,” said Jack, but the look in Nouri’s eyes drew Jack’s ear closer.

“I want what they promised me,” he said in a voice that faded. “I want my parents and my sister out of Iran.”

The request cut to Jack’s core. This dying man, Ava Bazzi’s handler, had been used by the US government and then used by Zahra.

Jack wasn’t ready to forgive him for having put a gun to his head and put Yasmin at risk, but still, he was struck that after

all that, Nouri wanted nothing for himself.

Jack wasn’t sure if Nouri could hear him, but he answered anyway.

“It will happen,” said Jack. “I promise.”

Nouri’s eyes closed, and he was gone.