Page 22 of Grave Danger
“That was my reaction too. At first.”
“Do you have some other impression now?”
“I’ve seen a lotta punks so scared they’ll say anything. You grow up on the street, you kinda develop a knack for telling when they’re feeding you bullshit and when they’re not.”
“What’s your take?” asked Jack.
Theo’s expression turned very serious. “I’m not sure Farid’s lying.”
Andie walked down the hall to the kitchen for coffee, but she found cake. It was the tenth anniversary of the opening of the FBI’s state-of-the-art field office, which of course called for sheet cake with red, white, and blue icing. One sheet cake for one thousand employees in a 330,000-square-foot facility situated on twenty acres. First come, first served. Andie had never known the old field office, so she only grabbed coffee and left the cake for the more deserving agents and staff who’d endured the month-long move from North Miami Beach.
“Henning, I need you,” her ASAC said. He’d come to the kitchen for cake and found Andie. She followed him out.
Todd Tidwell was the newest assistant agent in charge, one of three in south Florida, having transferred from the Chicago office, which had reportedly celebrated withtwosheet cakes upon his departure. Andie was doing her best to get used to his style, which included annoying little things like walking ahead of Andie, not with her, to his office, as if he were King Charles and she were Camilla.
Tidwell closed the door and told her to pull up a chair for a videoconference. A man and a woman appeared on the forty-inch LCD screen on the wall. Tidwell introduced Andie to division directors Comstock andDavis from the State Department. Davis, director for the Eastern Hemisphere, did the talking.
“Agent Henning, we had a videoconference with your husband yesterday.”
Andie was taken aback. It would have been nice to have a heads-up from her ASAC that this was about Jack, but she rolled with it. “Oh? Jack didn’t mention it.”
“How much do you know about his case under the Hague Convention for Zahra Bazzi?”
She assumed the division chief had no idea that the question of what Andie knew or should know about Jack’s cases had landed them in marriage counseling. “I know very generally that Jack is trying to stop an abusive husband from using the US court system to take a little girl away from her mother.”
“Two years ago,” said Davis, “Zahra’s sister, Ava Bazzi, disappeared after Iran’s morality police arrested her at a hijab protest. The Iranian government says she escaped and is still alive.”
“Others say she was murdered by the morality police,” said Andie. “I do follow the news.”
“As we explained to your husband, Ava Bazzi’s disappearance is a very sensitive issue right now in US-Iranian diplomatic relations. It would be most unfortunate if Zahra Bazzi’s Hague proceeding turned into a political football about Ava Bazzi.”
“What did Jack say?”
“He hung up on us.”
Andie’s heart sank. “Maybe you got disconnected.”
“No. He told us that our opinions don’t matter, and he hung up.”
Andie’s gaze was fixed on the LCD screen, but she could almost feel the look of disapproval from her ASAC. She suddenly felt the need for damage control.
“Director Davis, all I can tell you is that Jack is a good lawyer. He wouldn’t inject Ava Bazzi into Zahra’s case just to make trouble or grab headlines.”
“It’s already an issue. There were protests outside the federal courthouse this morning. The Iranian government’s fear is that Ava Bazzi is becoming a launchpad to revive international outrage over thousands of other arrests that, for whatever reason, the world simply stopped talking about. Media coverage so far indicates that the demonstrators’ strategy is working.”
“I’m having a hard time seeing how international awareness of government oppression is a bad thing,” said Andie.
“It’s not. You’re missing the point. Every movement needs a face. If your husband’s case makes Ava Bazzi that face, the Iranians are going to hold us accountable. Our negotiations with the Iranians will be dead in the water.”
“I’m sure your negotiations are very important,” said Andie. “But it might help me understand things better if you could tell me something about them.”
There was complete silence, which left Andie feeling less than convinced.
“Look,” said Andie, “just because the demonstrators and the media are making Ava Bazzi the face of a new wave of opposition to the Iranian regime doesn’t mean Jack will make his case about Ava Bazzi.”
“It’s unavoidable,” said Davis. “The State Department has been in communication with lawyers for both sides. Farid Bazzi’s lawyer has a silver bullet argument that Zahra has no rights under the Hague Convention because her marriage to Farid was a fraud. It could end the case on day one. But if the judge doesn’t buy the argument, or if he defers ruling on it and the case moves forward, Farid’s lawyer has made it crystal clear that Farid intends to prove that Ava Bazzi is alive.”
“Why would he do that?” asked Andie.