Carrie's run

CHAPTER 21

Baalbek, Lebanon

The lobby of the Palmyra Hotel in Baalbek was filled with palms, antiquities and dusty furniture left over from the French colonial era. It smelled of mold and could have been lifted intact from an Agatha Christie novel, but the hotel’s upper rooms had an incredible view of the Roman ruins. After they checked in, Virgil and Ziad set up the equipment and the guns in a room that opened to a balcony that overlooked the columns of the Temple of Jupiter towering over the Beqaa plain.

Driving up the mountain road in a rented Honda Odyssey, they had few illusions about where they were. The road and town were festooned with yellow Hezbollah flags hanging from every building and lamppost. Since they were GPS-tracking Rana’s cell phone, they didn’t have to follow closely, so she had no way of suspecting they were following her. The only question, as Virgil put it, was firepower.

How many men was Nightingale bringing with him?

From inside the room, they scanned the ruins with binoculars, making sure no glint of the sun on the lenses gave them away.

“Do you see her?” Carrie asked.

“Not yet,” Virgil said, moving the binoculars inch by inch in a back-and-forth sweep. “There she is, by the Temple of Bacchus. On the left. See her?”

Carrie trained her binoculars on the virtually intact temple. The ruins were staggering; it was the biggest, best-preserved complex of Roman ruins in the Middle East, possibly anywhere. They dated from when Baalbek was known as Heliopolis and served as an important temple center for worship of the Roman gods Jupiter, Venus, and Bacchus, the first two of which had been merged with the local deities Baal and Astarte. The temple complex was organized around the Grand Court, a vast rectangular space where Carrie spotted Rana, talking to someone beside a column near the steps to the Temple of Bacchus.

“I see her. Who’s she talking to?” Carrie said.

“Can’t see from here. But he’s brought armed men with him,” Virgil said, nudging her arm. “Over there, by that big stone at an angle and over by the Temple of Venus.”

She saw them. A man with what looked like an AK-47 on top of a giant stone lying sideways at an angle, another on the steps to the Grand Court and two more by the Temple of Venus.

“I see four,” Carrie said.

“What the hell,” Virgil muttered. “How’d they get into the museum complex with guns?”

“They’re Hezbollah. How do you think?” Ziad said.

“Can we hear what they’re saying?” she asked Ziad, who had unpacked a suitcase and set up a parabolic microphone dish with multichannel equalizers aimed through the open balcony door at Rana.

“Maybe.” Ziad shrugged. “They’re about four hundred meters from us. I’ve adjusted the equalizers for conversation at that distance. It’s fifty-fifty.” He handed her the earphones and set up the video camera to record what they were watching.

Carrie listened intently. She heard a woman, Rana, talking in Arabic, saying something-the words were unclear-about “him,” whoever that was, telling her they’d have to be more circumspect after (something unclear) about New York. Someone, a man, was saying (something unclear) about “focus on Anbar.”

She sat up straight. That couldn’t be right. What the hell would an actress screwing an American CIA station chief in Beirut have to do with Anbar province in Iraq? Why would Hezbollah care? They had nothing to do with Iraq. But Iran, Hezbollah’s sponsor, did, she thought. Still, that couldn’t be right. Both Rana and Dima were Sunnis from the North pretending to be Christians. Why would they be feeding intel to Hezbollah or the Syrian GSD, which was Alawite?

At that moment, the man stepped away from the column. She focused the binoculars on him.

“Is that Nightingale?” Virgil asked her.

Although at this distance identification was iffy, she was almost certain it was Nightingale.

“It’s him. Fielding’s girlfriend is a nasty little mole,” she said.

“Man oh man! He’s a station chief. He’s got the keys to the kingdom. What has he given her?” Virgil breathed.

No, Carrie thought. The question wasn’t what he’d given, but to whom he had given it. Who was he really working for? And suddenly, she had it.

What if Nightingale was a double?

Then the question became, who was actually running him? The Iranians via Syria and Hezbollah, or al-Qaeda in Iraq? There was only one way to find out. They had to take Rana, she thought, straining to hear through the headphones.

“Anything on Iraq is [the words were broken up] top priority, do you understand? If you can get to his laptop computer,” she heard Nightingale say.

“It isn’t easy,” Rana said. “What about Dima?”

“We’ve heard only that the action failed. We have to assume the worst. And your other friend, Marielle?” She and Marielle had both been right, she thought. They were after her too. He said something more, but she couldn’t catch it. Through the binoculars, she could see they were walking farther away, behind some stones. Shit, she thought.

“How’d Nightingale get here?” she asked Virgil.

“I spotted two black Toyota SUVs parked near the souk,” Virgil said. There was an outdoor market with shawarma stalls and souvenir vendors just outside the temple complex grounds. “There were two Hezbollah fighters keeping guard.”

“Could we distract them long enough to get bugs in them?” Carrie said.

“Not unless you’ve got a harem of Hezbollah girls available,” he said, and Ziad turned and grinned, showing them his gold tooth.

“No, and I’m not volunteering,” Carrie said. She watched through the binoculars as Rana and Nightingale went inside the Temple of Bacchus. It was impossible to hear anything they said through the thick ancient marble walls. “We need to take Rana.”

“You want to do it here?” Virgil said, a slight gesture taking in the entire Beqaa Valley. She understood what he meant. They were in solid Hezbollah country. If it went wrong, they didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of coming out alive.

“She came in her own car,” Carrie said. Rana had driven here alone in a pale blue BMW sedan. They had spotted it parked on a side street leading to the souk and the entrance to the temple complex.

“What if she’s not alone?” Ziad asked.

“She came alone. That’s how she’ll go back. Why do you think they came all the hell the way to Baalbek? She didn’t want anyone to know about this little tête-à-tête,” she said.

“You better be right. Once the shooting starts, we’ll have a thousand dicks in our ass,” Ziad replied, using an Arabic vulgarity.

“If she’s in trouble, Nightingale or his people might step in,” Virgil said.

“I’ll delay her,” Carrie said. “Once their meet is over, he’s not going to hang around for shawarma. We just have to make sure she leaves after he does.”

“Are we done here?” Virgil said.

“Let’s pack up. You two get into costume and disable her BMW. I’ll see she’s late to the party.”

The two men nodded. They pulled out green berets with the Hezbollah insignia on them, camouflage fatigues and assault rifles; put them on; and started to pack up the rest of the gear. In this environment, everyone would assume they were on legitimate Hezbollah business and if anyone stopped them, Ziad would speak Arabic to them and let them know to mind their own business. Carrie would follow based on what was happening with Rana and Nightingale in the ruins.

Virgil and Ziad left a few minutes later. They packed up the listening gear and the headphones and left her with only a pair of mini-binoculars.

She checked the Glock 26, the small nine-millimeter pistol Virgil had given her, and put it back into her handbag. She hoped to God she wouldn’t need it, then trained the binoculars on the Temple of Bacchus.

Nightingale came hurrying out of the temple. He glanced at his men and they headed toward the Grand Court and the entrance steps. A minute later, wearing a green hijab, a Hezbollah-friendly color, Carrie thought, Rana came out of the temple and followed.

Carrie put the binoculars in her handbag and went out of the room and down to the street. She rushed to the souk and pretended to shop on a lane near the gateway that Rana would be coming out of. She just had to make sure Nightingale didn’t see her; she pulled one end of her hijab over her face like a veil. She knew that Virgil and Ziad were heading to disable the BMW and get the Honda minivan into position.

“If we have to, how will you do it?” she’d asked him on the ride from Beirut.

“Lead wire from the coil pack.” He shrugged. “Just disconnect it. She won’t be able to start the car.”

“Then just reattach it and she’s ready to go?”

He nodded. And with them wearing the Hezbollah berets, hopefully no one should stop them, she thought. Hopefully.

Nightingale and his men were coming. She stepped into a recessed stall selling antiquities. Coins, pottery, amber and silver jewelry. All presumably from the Roman and Phoenician periods. Ten-to-one made in China, she thought.

“These are all genuine?” she asked the shopkeeper, a round man with a mustache, in Arabic.

“I will give you a certificate of authenticity from the Bureau of Antiquities myself, madame,” he replied as Nightingale and his men went by. One of them glanced toward her and a shiver went down her spine.

“Look, madame, Roman jewelry,” said the shopkeeper, showing her a silver and colored glass bracelet.

“Authentic?” she asked, stepping away to check the lane. It was clear.

“One hundred fifty thousand livres, madame. Or if you pay in U.S. dollars, eighty-five.”

“Let me think about it,” she said, putting down the bracelet and walking out.

“Seventy-five thousand, madame,” he called after her as she headed down the lane. “Fifty thousand! Twenty-five American!”

She saw two little Arab girls, aged about ten and seven, standing by a stall selling prayer beads and went up to them.

“You know Rana Saadi, the television star?” she said in Arabic.

They both nodded.

“She’s here! She’ll be here any second. You should get her autograph. At least say hello to her,” she said, guiding them into the lane, just as Rana came down the ancient stone steps to the exit from the temple complex. “See, look!” she said, nudging them toward the actress. And as Rana approached, she called out loudly, “Look! It’s Rana, the famous star! Onzor!”

People in the souk looked up, and a half dozen women and the two girls crowded around Rana, who at first looked startled, then began to smile and wave at everyone as though she was on a Rose Parade float. As she started to sign autographs, Carrie turned and walked away. She found Virgil and Ziad eating shawarma in pita bread at a stand across the street from Rana’s BMW.

“Where’s the van?” she asked.

“Around the corner,” Virgil said, indicating the direction with his chin.

“And Nightingale?”

“Gone. Both SUVs.”

A few minutes later, they watched Rana come down the street and get into the BMW.

“Go bring the van,” Virgil told Ziad, who left.

They watched her try to start the car and heard it whine and not turn over.

“When do we move?” Carrie asked.

“Wait till she gets out of the car,” Virgil said as Ziad came around the corner in the minivan. Ziad stopped the minivan about five meters back.

They watched Rana try to start the BMW, then just sit there in frustration. As she sat there trying to figure it out, every second making it more dangerous, Virgil took the syringe out of his pocket, removed the tip and hid it in his hand.

“C’mon, get out of the damn car,” he muttered.

As she started to get out, Carrie and Virgil walked over, Ziad inching closer in the minivan.

“Ahlan, do you need help?” Carrie asked her in Arabic.

“It’s this stupid car-” Rana started to say, but didn’t finish because Virgil grabbed her and stabbed the needle into her arm. “What is-” she tried to call out, but she had already started to slump as Carrie opened the minivan door and Virgil bundled her into the seat. Carrie put a plastic tie around her wrists even though she could see it was redundant. Rana was out cold. The ketamine worked fast, Carrie thought, putting the seat belt on the slumped woman as Virgil opened the BMW’s hood and reattached the coil lead.

“Key’s in the ignition. Go,” he told her as he went around and got into the minivan next to Rana. Within seconds, the minivan was moving, Carrie following in the BMW.

By the time Rana came to, they would be back in Beirut. One way or another, Carrie thought, she would get some answers.