Courtney had not heard from her husband in three weeks. Five weeks ago Jacob had gone to Iran to track down cigarette smugglers. He was working for a US company that was losing millions of dollars worth of cigarettes annually to criminal activity. He had communicated with Courtney at least once a day for the first two weeks. Then his calls and emails stopped coming.

Jacob was a retired FBI agent who had his own private investigation agency. He had no enemies that Courtney knew of. After the third day of not hearing from Jacob, Courtney contacted her US representative in Congress and her two US senators. They all said they would look into the matter. Three weeks later, after many calls from her, they all said they were still looking into the matter. Courtney had also made many calls to the US Embassy in Iran. The officials there told her they had no idea where her husband was, but they were "looking into it."

Desperate to find her husband, Courtney flew to Tehran. She did not speak Farsi, and she knew nothing about Iran and nobody in Iran. All she knew was that she loved her husband and she would not leave Iran until she found him. If worse came to worst, she had decided to sell their house to continue her search. They had been married for forty years, and she loved him now as much as she had on her wedding day.