Carrie's run

CHAPTER 25

Ouzai, Beirut, Lebanon

Fielding answered the door, gun in hand. It was Saul Berenson, pulling a wheeled suitcase, obviously having come straight from the airport. Virgil was with him, carrying his assault rifle in a rigid plastic gun case.

“Hello, Davis. Expecting an invasion?” Saul asked, coming in, eyes on the gun. Virgil followed.

“Mathison blew Achilles, our last safe house. I wouldn’t put it past her to blow this one,” Fielding said, putting the gun into his pocket.

Saul took off his jacket and sat opposite Carrie. He looked at Fielding, who, after a moment, put the gun away.

“I understand Nightingale’s dead,” he said to Carrie.

“Rana too,” she muttered, looking away. “Fielding says she was just a contact.”

Saul rubbed his hands as if it were cold. “Pity we couldn’t interrogate him. Might’ve nailed it down a thousand percent.”

“What did you expect?” Fielding said. “I told you she’s too new to run an op like this. You should have given it to me.”

Saul looked at Fielding. “What would you have done differently, Davis? For the record,” he said quietly.

“I would’ve used our people, not Forces Libanaises. And I would’ve picked the spot,” Fielding said.

“There wasn’t time-and he was already susp-” Carrie started to say, but Saul held his hand up to stop her.

“She had my authorization,” he said.

“Look, Saul, I know she’s your protégé, but this is my station. Do you want me to run it or don’t you?” Fielding said.

“Wait,” Carrie said, taking the cell phone out and handing it to Saul. “It wasn’t a total loss. This is Nightingale’s.”

Saul tossed it to Virgil.

“I want every damn nitpicky little thing that’s ever been on that phone,” he told Virgil, who nodded; then he turned to Fielding. “I need to talk to Carrie alone, Davis. But you’ll be glad to know she’s leaving Beirut.”

“But, Saul-” she said, then stopped at a look from him.

Saul turned to Fielding, who was smiling broadly.

“You’re doing the right th-” Fielding started to say, but Saul interrupted.

“You’re leaving too, Davis. I need to talk to you too. I’ll meet you at your office, the one on Rue Maarad, in”-he glanced at his watch-“about an hour.”

“What are you talking about? Leaving?” Fielding said, standing up.

“Langley. We need you back there.” Saul smiled. “It’s all fine. I’ll explain everything. Now I need to straighten Carrie out first, okay?” He looked at Carrie. “What are you drinking?”

“Vodka. Belvedere.”

“May I?” he said, reaching for her glass. “It’s been a hell of a long flight.”

Fielding looked at Carrie grimly and got his jacket. He watched Saul finish the vodka in the glass.

“What about the station? Who’s going to be in charge?” Fielding asked.

“We’re bringing in Saunders from Ankara. Don’t worry. It’s just temporary,” Saul said reassuringly, making a gesture like it was no big deal.

“Jeez, Saul. Can you give me a hint?” Fielding asked.

Saul shook his head. “Your ears only. I don’t want these two”-he indicated Carrie and Virgil-“to know. I’ll be by shortly. I promise.”

Fielding studied Saul for a moment as if trying to decide whether to believe him. “So you know, I’ve got some of my guys coming,” he said. “We didn’t want a repeat of Achilles.”

“Call ’em off. We won’t need them,” Saul said, waving him away. “I’ll brief you in an hour, okay?”

Fielding nodded and, not taking his eyes off Saul, left the apartment.

“Are you completely insane? Do you know what that asshole-” she started to say, but Saul put his finger to his lips to stop her and looked at Virgil, who went to the door and opened it to make sure Fielding was gone. “What’s going on? Why’d you want to see me alone?”

Saul broke into a grin. Virgil, looking at the two of them, smiled.

“Do you know what you did? Have you any idea?” Saul said.

“What are you talking about?”

“That picture you sent. The one from the contact you tracked down, that Marielle.”

“The man, Mohammed Siddiqi. What about him?”

Saul leaned forward and touched her arm. “Well, according to your former boss Alan Yerushenko and his entire team, plus everyone at NESA, they are telling us with a seventy-plus percent probability that what you sent, the person you identified as one Mohammed Siddiqi, a so-called Qatari, who, by the way, according to Doha doesn’t exist, is the only known photograph of Abu Ubaida, right-hand man and number two of Abu Nazir, head of al-Qaeda in Iraq and the person in all likelihood behind the attacks in New York.”

She rocked back, stunned. Unbelievable, she thought. One minute she was being shipped off to Poland and now suddenly she had just hit a home run to win a World Series game.

“What about Fielding?” she asked.

“When he gets off the plane, Langley’ll handle it.” He frowned. “It won’t be pleasant. I don’t know what in the name of God he was thinking. Or how deep he’s in, or with whom.”

“What about Langley? Am I off the shit list?”

Saul grinned. “Are you kidding? As far as the director’s concerned, you are the prom queen, Wonder Woman and the female James Bond rolled into one. Yerushenko said if he wasn’t already married and a grandfather, he’d marry you. We finally have a shot at getting this son of a bitch.”

“What about David?” she asked, not looking at him.

“Estes too.”

“So why’d you say I was leaving? I’ve got a lot more to do here.”

He shook his head. “You’re going to Baghdad. Your flight leaves in four hours. You have a new mission. It’s all yours. You’re running it.”

“Which is?”

“This is from Bill Walden himself. Bring us the heads of Abu Ubaida and Abu Nazir. Al-Qaeda’s on the verge of taking over all of Anbar Province in Iraq. The country’s about to explode into civil war. Our troops are caught in the middle. It’ll be a bloodbath. The Defense Intelligence guys’ve got casualty estimates you wouldn’t believe. The only way to stop it is to stop those two.”

“Why me?”

“I understand. This is big. But you found him. You have a better feel for him than any of us. You speak Arabic like a native. Who better? You were born for this, Carrie.”

“And maybe a little justice for Dima. And Rana,” she murmured.

“Ah, Carrie,” he sighed. “Don’t look for justice in this life. You’ll be a whole lot less disappointed.”

“The targets. How do you want ’em? Dead or alive?” she asked.

“In a million pieces for all I care. Just get the bastards,” Saul said through gritted teeth.

She and Virgil were in a taxi heading down Rue Ouzai toward the airport. The road was crowded and noisy, even this late at night. The buildings near the coast were old and cracked, with washing and black banners with white lettering proclaiming, “Death to Israel,” hanging from their balconies.

She’d gone back to Virgil’s place to pack. When she started to fold her Terani dress, Virgil just shook his head.

“Won’t have much use for that in Baghdad,” he said.

“Probably not,” she said, folding it and putting it in the suitcase, not knowing what else to do with it.

When they were ready, they headed for the cemetery near Boulevard Bayhoum so she could leave a message in the dead drop letting Julia/Fatima know she had to leave again. She told her to stay safe. She didn’t have to mention what they both knew: that the bombs were coming.

“What about Julia’s warning about Hezbollah and the Israelis?” she’d asked Saul when they were still at the safe house apartment. “She’s been solid gold. There’s a war coming. It’s only a matter of weeks or months.”

“We’ve kicked it upstairs. It was in the President’s Daily Brief. Estes made sure the president saw it,” Saul said.

“Are they warning the Israelis?”

Saul raised his hands in a gesture that somehow inexplicably encompassed two thousand years of Jewish history. “That’s up to the administration. Sharing with other countries isn’t intelligence, it’s politics,” he said.

“Even allies?” she asked.

“Especially allies.”

“If it happens, Lebanon will get the worst of it,” she said, pouring the last of the Belvedere into glasses for the three of them.

“Always. L’chaim,” he said, raising his glass.

“Up yours,” Virgil said, and drank.

Looking out the window, she saw the outline of a palm tree silhouetted against the ugly slum buildings in the headlights of passing traffic and she felt something tug at her.

“I’m going to miss Beirut,” she said to Virgil. There was something about this life, these people. A kind of gallant madness. What was it Marielle had said? That they lived on “a bridge over an abyss.”

“It’s not Virginia,” he nodded. A road sign indicated the airport was up ahead.

Her cell phone rang. It was Saul.

“Carrie?” he said.

“We’re almost at the airport,” she responded.

“Fielding’s dead.”

She felt a sudden vacuum, a hole open in the pit of her stomach. She’d hated him, but still. Unable to stop herself, she thought about her father, feeling sick at the memory of finding him the day before Thanksgiving, seeing what he had done to himself and rushing him to the hospital in an ambulance, thinking I’m sorry, Dad, so sorry, and in a horrible awful way, wishing she hadn’t come home early at the same time.

“What happened?” she asked.

“Gunshot to the head. Looks like suicide.”

Virgil glanced over at her, wondering what was happening, then straight ahead, squinting against the headlights from oncoming cars.

“We’re coming back,” she said. “We need to get to the bottom of this.”

“Carrie, he wasn’t stupid. He knew what was coming.”

“Saul, listen to me. He was a lying piece of shit, a pathetic excuse for a human being, but he wouldn’t do this. Not this. He wasn’t the type.”

“What type do you think he was?”

“The kind who thought he was smarter than anybody. That no one could touch him. He would always come out on top.” She tapped Virgil’s arm. “Listen, just wait for me. We’re coming back.”

“Don’t. That’s an order. Iraq’s too important. Besides, whatever caused this, the answers are in Baghdad,” he said.