Category X

Rendition

"Please state your name," Sam said as she took a seat across the steel table from the man. Special Agent Samantha Frey was not a particularly frightening woman, quite the opposite, actually. She was of average height, sporting a petite build, with brown hair that would have fallen past her shoulders had she not worn it up. She was beautiful in more ways than one, with bright green eyes set in an oval face that was outlined by soft features and lips that would make most men shudder. Sam looked over the man for a long moment, her eyes never leaving his.

"I am sure that you can guess who I work for," she continued without pause, easing her way into her role; a role she knew the man was not prepared to combat. "Since you find yourself in a federal detention center instead of a shipping container somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic, you believe you are safe...that you have won." Her eyes narrowed, her demeanor prickled. "I can assure you that you are far from safe. Rendition protocol is for the second-class terrorists, for the ones we don't care about; for the ones we want to die in the middle of the ocean or some nameless shithole of a country. No, I'm afraid we have much bigger plans for you."

The man's name was Daif Ghazi, or such was the name he went by for the last thirty years. Daif did not immediately answer, but crossed his hands atop the table and matched her gaze. According to his file he was a stoic man, astute, calculating—in fact, in the last fifteen years alone he was responsible for orchestrating the assassinations of more foreign diplomats than anyone else they were tracking, which made his capture particularly momentous.

"I know you are—excuse me, were—a middle man working for Ibrahim Ansari," she paused to let the insult sting. Daif was in fact the number two man of the organization, but Sam knew that Middle Eastern men operated in a culture where personal pride and social status were more important than anything. "The same Ibrahim Ansari responsible for the sarin gas attacks in Syria a year ago. The same Ibrahim Ansari who orchestrated the attacks on Special Forces led ANA commandos last month." She cut her eyes once more from her dossier, her repetition beating into his skull. "The same Ibrahim Ansari that was killed two days ago in Tagab Valley by the very soldiers he attempted to ambush." The smile that she wished to display did not touch her lips; she only stared back at the man with a silent resolve that few could match.

Daif sat back in the chair, his face unreadable. "I do not know this man," he said through a heavy accent.

Sam only nodded, as if she expected as much, and opened a large brown folder that sat between them. After removing various documents, she picked through a few photos, studying each carefully before laying a few in front of the Middle Eastern man. "That man on the left," she pointed. "That is you, correct?"

It took Daif a moment before he glanced down at the photos. His face remained a mask as his eyes met hers once more.

"I'll take that as a yes," she said. "And that," she pointed to a smaller man around ten years Daif's senior who was in all of the photos, "is Ibrahim Ansari, or was, I suppose. So, do you still not know this man?"

Daif's eyes narrowed. "As I said before," he responded curtly.

"And how about this one?" she asked as she pushed the last photo in front of the man. It had a young adult male, also of Middle Eastern descent, speaking with an older man just outside of a market in some unknown location.

The man only sighed before looking down at the photo. His face changed, though only slightly, but Sam caught it. She was young, much too young to be an agent, or at least an agent of her stature according to pretty much everyone at the bureau, but she was as smart as they came, and she closed cases, plain and simple. Her new position in counterterrorism, a division of the FBI almost exclusively ran by men, was a constant reminder of just how far she had risen.