Carrie's run

CHAPTER 24

Basta Tahta, Beirut, Lebanon

She and Virgil split up by the French embassy next to the racetrack to ensure one of them would make it back. Taking buses and Services back and forth across the northern part of the city to make sure she was clean, she headed for Iroquois, the safe-house apartment on Avenue Independence in the Basta Tahta quarter. When she knocked on the apartment door using the code, three knocks, then two, Davis Fielding opened it, a Beretta pistol pointed at her.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” Fielding said.

“Have you got any tequila? I need a drink,” she said.

“Just vodka. Belvedere,” he said, gesturing at a cupboard.

She went over and poured herself a glass of vodka and took a gulp, then flopped into an armchair. It didn’t feel like there was anyone else in the apartment, which surprised her. Fielding rarely went anywhere without a couple of CIA operations personnel with him. And he never went to the safe house except for interrogations. So why was he here? she wondered.

Fielding sat on a sofa, framed by a curtain that completely covered the window behind him. He was still holding the gun, she noticed.

“Planning on shooting me, Davis?” she asked.

“Might not be the worst idea in the world. How many did you kill this time, Mathison?” he said, making a face.

“That’s right, Davis,” she said, taking another drink, feeling it burn going down and thinking, Thank God for the alcohol, at this moment not caring how it reacted with her meds. “People die. Tonight it was your girlfriend, Rana. Nightingale shot her in the face. She’s not pretty anymore. Cheers,” she said, and took another sip.

The blood drained from his face. She could see how shocked he was. His hand clenched the pistol so tightly his knuckles turned white. She wondered if he really was going to shoot her.

“This time you’re finished. Saul’s little pinup girl,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Before I’m done with you, you’ll be in a federal prison.” He stood up and began pacing as he talked. “I’ve been onto you all along. Did you really think you could come to my station, my city, and me not know about it? You stupid amateur. I was matching wits in Moscow with the real professionals, the KGB, while you were still crapping in your diapers.”

“Missed a few beats since then though, haven’t you?” she said. “Like how your prize pigeon, Dima Hamdan, came to New York to kill the Vice-President of the United States and blow up the Brooklyn Bridge, and not a peep out of Beirut Station. Or that she was Sunni, not Christian. Or that your mistress was a double agent for Nightingale, who was himself doubling for both Hezbollah and al-Qaeda in Iraq, and nothing, not one word, from the great Davis Fielding, King of Beirut, just a great big pile of nothing!”

He stopped pacing and stared at her, his mouth working like he was trying to swallow but couldn’t.

“We looked for Dima. She disappeared,” he said.

“Is that so?” she said. “She filed a DS-160 using the cover name Jihan Miradi, right through your own lousy embassy, and you didn’t catch it. Not to mention that your mistress was passing on everything you touched via Nightingale to Abu Nazir in Iraq. So the only question is, are you totally incompetent or a traitor, you son of a bitch?”

He looked at the pistol in his hand like it was some kind of alien object he had never seen before. His finger, she noticed, was on the trigger.

“Rana wasn’t my girlfriend,” he said finally. “I barely knew her.”

“Bullshit!” she snapped. “You telephoned her multiple times a week for months. Then you had the messages deleted from Company files and the NSA database. It was done the same day you ordered me out of Beirut-and by the way, I’d really like to know how you managed that little trick.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

“Sure you do, Davis. You didn’t think anybody would ever find out, did you? Well guess what, asshole? I know. And I’m not the only one.”

He looked at her strangely, with a sick little smile. She wondered if he was mentally stable. Funny, coming from me, she thought.

“You think you know something, Mathison, but you don’t. There are things going on; you don’t have a clue,” he said, straightening. “Tell me about your latest screwup. How did Rana die?”

“We were going to snatch Nightingale. He was both a double and a bridge agent between Hezbollah and, we think, al-Qaeda in Iraq. He’s linked with Abu Ubaida and possibly Abu Nazir. We especially wanted to know about Dima’s boyfriend, Mohammed Siddiqi, who, by the way, you also never mentioned to anyone back at Langley and who may have been the link. Only the Forces Libanaises jumped the gun. Nightingale shot her.”

He looked bleakly at the window curtain, as if he could see through it. It made the room feel closed, like a prison cell.

“Poor Rana,” he said, letting the gun hang by his side. He went back to the sofa and sat down. “She was such a beautiful woman. Smart. When you were with her, people noticed you.”

“She was your mistress?”

“She was a contact. We may have had sex a few times, but. .” He hesitated.

“What’s the matter, Davis? She wouldn’t let you have any? Or was it you who couldn’t get it up?”

He looked at her as if seeing her for the first time.

“You really are a bitch, aren’t you?”

“But not a traitor,” she said, looking around. “There’s nobody here. Just between us girls, you didn’t have a clue what she was? Who she was working for?”

He almost imperceptibly shook his head. “What about Nightingale?” he asked.

“He’s dead too. Damned FLs. Two of his Hezbollah guards got away. We had one wounded FL.”

“So you got nothing?”

“Not exactly,” she said, taking a cell phone out of her pocket. “This is Nightingale’s.”

He held out his free hand. “Let me see it,” he said.

She shook her head no, her blond hair swaying. “I’m curious, Davis. How did you know about tonight’s meet? Who told you? It wasn’t me and it wasn’t Virgil. Was it Ziad? One of the FL guys? Did they jump the gun because of you?”

He pointed the pistol at her.

“You seem to be confused, Mathison. In case you’ve forgotten, I’m the station chief, not you. If I can give the cell phone to Langley, maybe the mess you’ve made won’t be a total fiasco. Give it here.” He held out his free hand.

She put the cell phone back into her pocket. “What are you going to do, Davis? Shoot me?” she said.

“You really don’t have a clue, do you?” He smiled. “This is a midterm election year. No one is going to screw with the Agency. You’re done here. We’re doing extraordinary renditions of Islamist extremists. You’re being reassigned. You can interrogate bad guys in northeastern Poland, middle of piss-all nowhere. I suggest you dress warm, Mathison. I hear it’s cold there this time of year.”

“I’m not going anywhere. And you’ll have to take this from me,” she said, tapping the pocket where she’d put the cell phone.

“I have people coming. When they get here, they’ll take you to the airport,” he said, leaning back. “Before that’s done, you’ll of course give me the cell phone.”

“I won’t go.”

“In that case, you’re done,” he said, looking as smug as a fraternity president watching a pledge make a fool of himself. “Your career’s over. And I will press charges, Carrie. I guarantee we’ll get something to stick. Truth is, it’s impossible to be in this business and not break some law or congressional rule or other.”

They sat not speaking, Carrie thinking that shits like him always got away with it, but she’d nail him somehow if it was the last thing she did. The apartment was silent, not even the sounds of Beirut evening traffic breaking through. She wondered if her career really was over. It would end when Fielding’s people came. Just like her father, she thought.

There was a knock at the door.