Carrie's run

CHAPTER 9

McLean, Virginia

The next day, she managed to make herself go to work. There was something about Dima, how she could never be alone. Carrie was determined to have it out with Saul. But not at headquarters, she thought. She needed to get him someplace they could talk.

Putting on her makeup, she thought she looked like a ghost. That’s what I am, she decided. The ghost at the party. But before she disappeared into the darkness, she’d make Saul listen. He had to listen, she thought.

She drove in to work. Joanne was all concerned.

“Where’ve you been?” she asked. “Yerushenko’s ready to dump you. You’re lucky he’s at an all-day meeting on the threat post-Abbasiyah.”

Yeah, boy am I lucky, Carrie thought.

The day lasted forever. It moved so slowly she could have sworn at times the clock moved backward. In her mind, she kept going back to the same questions. Who had deleted the NSA database records? And redacted the details about Beirut? Who was Dar Adal? What did he have to do with anything?

An even better question was, why? What were they protecting? What had gone wrong? Why wasn’t anything happening on Beirut or on the intel she’d given them from Julia? There were only questions and no answers-and time, moving slower than the traffic on I-95.

That evening, she waited in the parking lot until Saul came out, around eleven P.M. She followed his car, tailing him back to his house in McLean. It was a white colonial on a dark tree-shaded street without sidewalks. She’d been there once a long time ago for lunch. She watched him go in, waited twenty minutes, then got out and rang the doorbell.

Saul’s wife, Mira, an Indian woman from Mumbai whom Saul had met in Africa and whom Carrie had met once before, answered the door in a nightdress and robe.

“Hi, Mira. Remember me? I need to see Saul.”

“I remember,” Mira said, not moving from the doorway. “He just got home.”

“I’m sorry,” Carrie said. “It’s important.”

“It’s always important,” Mira said, moving aside so Carrie could come in. “Someday you people are going to realize it’s what’s not important that really matters.” She motioned with her head. “He’s upstairs.”

“Thanks,” Carrie said, going up the stairs. A bedroom door was half-open. She knocked and went in. Saul was still in his trousers but had changed into his pajama top. He was eating out of a yogurt container. The bed was made and looked small to her. It made her wonder if they slept together. He put the yogurt down.

“Who’s Dar Adal?” she asked.

“Where’d you get that from?” he said.

“Going through CTC files. The work you and David put me on when I came back. Only there’s a bunch of it redacted-and piss-all on the Syrian GSD out of either Damascus or Beirut Station. Plenty of reports, but once you squeeze the air out of it, there’s nothing there. So you tell me what’s going on.”

“Go home, Carrie,” he said. “It’s been a long day.”

“Who is he?”

“Ancient history. Not our finest hour,” he said, looking away. “I can’t get you back. I know that’s what you want, but I can’t. Go home.”

“Not till you talk to me.”

He shook his head. “Grow up, Carrie! It’s done. I’ve done all I can.”

“It isn’t fair.”

“You’re just finding out that the world isn’t fair? Get used to it; you’ll be a lot less disappointed in life. Look, this is my home. You have no right to be here. I mean it. I want you to leave,” he said, his face set like it had been carved in stone.

“Listen to me, dammit!”

“I’m listening, Carrie, but you’re not saying anything, just whining.”

“There were records deleted from the NSA database. They said they’d never seen that before. Ever. They were deleted the day I was sent from Beirut,” she said. “Who can do that?”

For a moment, neither of them spoke. There was the sound of a TV from the master bedroom down the hall. Jay Leno. They really don’t sleep together, she thought, feeling like an intruder. She really didn’t belong here in his house.

“What were the records on?” he asked finally.

“Cell phone records from three of Davis Fielding’s eleven phones. Goes back months,” she said.

“Shit,” he said, and sat down on the edge of the bed.

She sat next to him.

“Why does Estes hate me?” she asked.

Saul took off his glasses and wiped them with his pajama top. “I don’t think he does. I once caught him watching you walk away. He just looked at me. I assumed it was just a male thing, but whatever it is, he’s aware of you.”

“So he likes my ass. That doesn’t mean he likes me.”

“For some reason, he didn’t want you poking around where you’ve been poking.” He put his glasses back on. “Also, I think he really wanted you on Iraq. A smart, good-looking female CO who speaks Arabic like you do, I think he was trying to aim you at something, but this NSA thing fouled it up. I’m not sure why.”

“So you don’t believe this Senate budget bullshit either?”

“Not really.” He frowned. “What you said about the NSA data being deleted is a game changer. I have no choice now. We’ve got to look at Beirut.”

“C’mon, Saul, send me back. Virgil and me, we’ll find out what’s going on.”

“I can’t. I’ve got Estes looking over my shoulder, and what’s on his mind-and he’s not wrong-is Iraq, and whatever the hell al-Qaeda’s cooking up against the U.S. And trust me”-he looked at her-“there’s something coming at us soon. Very soon. And it won’t be Sinai, although you’re probably right about that too, not that anybody gives a shit. This is AQI, al-Qaeda in Iraq, and Abu Nazir, and when they come at us, it’ll be Washington or New York.”

“Could it have anything to do with what my Joe Julia told me?”

He frowned. “It’s hard to link Abu Nazir and Hezbollah. Sunni versus Shiite, plus they really don’t like each other.”

“But it’s possible?”

“Maybe. You have good instincts. But don’t force it. Only if that’s where it leads.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Two things,” he said, patting her hand. “First, we need to convert Estes. If he’s protecting Fielding, it’s because of the DCIA, Bill Walden. You need to turn Estes. Second, don’t underestimate OCSA. Or Yerushenko. I didn’t move you there by accident.”

“I thought it was a punishment.”

Saul grinned. “Yeah, like throwing Brer Rabbit into the briar patch. The patch he was born in, the place he’s most comfortable. Listen.” He touched her arm. “As an analyst in the Office of Collection Strategies and Analysis, you have a right to see anything. I mean anything. It’s the Holy Grail, the most general mandate in the whole Agency. And trust me, Yerushenko may be a weird son of a bitch, but if you dig up something, he’ll back you all the way to Jesus Christ himself if he has to.”

“Did David Estes understand that when you reassigned me?”

“I think so.” He nodded. “When I recommended it, he gave me a look. Don’t underestimate Estes. There’s a lot going on. He’s playing three-dimensional chess. He could’ve terminated you, ended your career over this NSA bullshit. Instead, he didn’t say a word about me moving you over to OCSA. More importantly, he could’ve cut you off. Told this Bishop character over at the Black House never to communicate with you again. He didn’t. Plus, by transferring you, he’s covered both our asses, his and mine. If anyone asks, he can say we disciplined you and prove it.”

She put her face in her hands. “You could tell a girl,” she said. “I’ve been sick for two weeks.” It took every bit of her self-control not to break down sobbing. She wanted to throw her arms around him and hug him forever. Saul hadn’t abandoned her. He still believed in her, a relief shuddering through her.

“No, I couldn’t,” he said. “I really couldn’t. Besides, he might have had another reason to want to transfer you.”

She looked at him, confused. Then it hit her.

“You’re not suggesting. .,” she said.

“It’s possible. There are plenty of men who might take advantage of an attractive woman working under them. David’s human, but he’s a by-the-book kind of guy. He would never do that.”

“So you think. .”

“I don’t know. I hear his marriage is in trouble, but whose isn’t?” Saul shrugged, looking away, and she suspected he was talking about his own marriage as well. Was Estes sleeping in a separate bed too? Did this job destroy everybody’s personal life?

“So you want me to find something and then use it to turn David?”

“ASAP. You’re a good Catholic girl. You can, what’s the saying, ‘bring him to the light.’ ”

“I haven’t been either of those things, good or Catholic, for a long time,” she said thoughtfully. “Besides”-she smiled wistfully-“that sounds funny coming from a Jew.”

“Well, we’re a funny people,” Saul said.