Saul's Game Page 11

  “I know. The general is very worried. We are signing this damn agreement with the Iraqis. We are locked up,” Larson said. He looked at Saul. “Do we have any kind of lead?”

  Saul scratched his beard.

  “You know the battle of Cannae? Hannibal?” he asked.

  “Of course. Classic battle. We studied it at West Point,” Larson said. “Hannibal defeated the Romans. He used a deceptively weak center to lure the Romans into attacking his center. Then, as they advanced into the trap, he attacked them on both flanks simultaneously in a classic double pincer move, completely destroying them. It’s considered one of the greatest tactical victories of all time. Why?”

  “Because that’s what we’re doing. Two flanks at the same time. One to deal with IPLA and the Sunnis; one to deal with the Iranians and the Shiites,” Saul said.

  “And us, the people in this room?” Perry asked.

  “The deceptively weak center.” Saul smiled. In the distance, they heard the sound of an explosion. They looked at each other. Baghdad.

  Like Baghdad, Ibiza was also hot, but it was sunbathing hot, putting-on-sunscreen-after-an-hour-in-the-sun-so-you-don’t-burn-too-badly hot. The kind of heat that gets people thinking about cold drinks and daytime sex.

  Walking up the gate to the villa, all Saul could think of was that the blade he was about to use for the second flank cut both ways. He pressed the doorbell, but it didn’t sound. He knocked, but when no one came, tried the door and it opened. He walked inside.

  The stone-paved entryway led into a spacious room with glass windows, open to a broad teak deck with recliners and an infinity pool, framed by palm trees, and at the edge of the cliff, a breathtaking view of the Mediterranean and the island of Formentera. A man clad only in a towel around his waist was standing out on the deck, facing the view. As Saul came closer, the man whirled around in perfect shooting position, a 9mm Beretta pistol aimed directly at Saul’s chest.

  Dar Adal. The CIA’s go-to person for Black Ops; the kind no one talked about, not even inside Langley.

  “Jesus, Saul! Don’t sneak up on me like that. I almost killed you. You set off a dozen damn sensors,” Dar said. A thin, swarthy man, bald, goateed, with intense, intelligent eyes.

  Two men rushed in from opposite sides of the house behind Saul. One was big, at least six foot four, muscular, in jeans and a T-shirt. The other was Spanish, about eighteen or nineteen years old and exceptionally good-looking. The kind of looks you might see on a male model in a perfume ad. He was wearing a silk bathrobe. Both men were holding MP5 submachine guns.

  Dar waved them off. The good-looking young man, holding his MP5 like a banjo, smiled at Saul and went to another room. The big man, holding his MP5 like a soldier who knew exactly how to use it, stared at Saul suspiciously, then left.

  “You want sangria?” Dar asked.

  “Sangria? Are you kidding? What time is it? Ten A.M. Coffee,” Saul said.

  Dar went over and pressed the reheat button on the coffee maker.

  “The young man’s name is Antonio. He’s twenty. And don’t say a damn word,” Dar said.

  “I didn’t say anything,” Saul said.

  “You didn’t have to. I could see that little rabbi inside your head spouting some Talmudic bullshit on the evils of homosexuality without you saying a goddamn word. You always were a little Yiddische prude, something Mira, coming from a culture that invented the Kama Sutra, should’ve thought of before she married you,” Dar said, sitting on the edge of one of the recliners. “How is she?”

  Saul, sitting on a recliner facing him, didn’t answer.

  “Like I said, she should’ve given it more thought,” Dar continued. “They don’t teach that in college, do they?”

  “Not at my alma mater. Part of my revolt. Back then, it was ‘sex, drugs, and rock and roll.’ My Orthodox Jewish parents came to visit just once when I was in college. Never even got to the dorm. They saw some Christian group sign-up tables outside the Student Union—and fled like the devil was after them.”

  “An orphan, like the rest of us. How the hell do you think we all got in this business?” Dar said, motioning to the young man, Antonio, who had reappeared dressed in linen slacks and a black Ninja Boy T-shirt.

  Antonio brought Saul a cup of coffee and Dar a sangria with an orange slice, then smiled at them both and went back into the villa.

  “What about you?” Saul said. “What were you running from? A little Druze boy, growing up with a gun in his hand in the Chouf in Lebanon?” Saul said.

  “You’re right,” Dar said. “I went to the school of Kamal Jumblatt and the LNM. I learned to tape explosives and gouge fingernails at an age when most American kids are still learning how to spell C-A-T. The PLO, the Palestinians, were my teachers. The Maronites too, when they captured me once. They taught me things I’ll never forget,” he said, balancing the Beretta pistol on his thigh. “Look around, Saul,” gesturing at the villa and the view of the blue Mediterranean Sea. “We’re a long way from Mount Lebanon and the Chouf. What do you want?”

  “We need to talk privately,” Saul said.

  Dar shrugged. “Go ahead.”

  Saul shook his head.

  “I need to be sure I’m not being listened to, recorded, any of that,” he said.

  “You have a dirty mind,” Dar said.

  “I thought you said I was a prude. Where can we go?”

  “You are. Prudes have the filthiest minds in the world. Come on,” Dar said.

  Still carrying the Beretta and calling for Hector, the big man, he grabbed a T-shirt, a pair of running shorts, and keys and dressed on the way to the front of the villa. They went outside. Dar and Saul got into a red Audi. Hector, carrying his MP5, followed in a Range Rover.

  They drove along a winding road through the interior of Ibiza, the hills green from winter rains. Saul glanced at the side mirror. Hector was still behind them.

  “I knew someone from Langley would come knocking. I wasn’t going to be in exile forever,” Dar said.

  “Rawalpindi,” Saul said. “You were supposed to provide cover. People were upset.”

  Dar drove around a sharp curve. The road sign said PUERTO DE SAN MIGUEL 10 KM.

  “You know what happens when you’re dealing with hordes of people and chaotic situations like a revolution. Mistakes happen. You should know that better than anyone,” Dar said.

  Like a punch to the solar plexus. Tehran, 1979. Four bodies laid out in a neat row in the safe house on Saidi Street near Mellat Park. Each with his hands tied behind him and a bullet in the back of his head. Sanjar Hootan. Tal‘at Basari. Milad Rasgari. Ferhat Afshar. All courtesy of his onetime source and supposed friend Majid Javadi, Saul thought as they passed a roadside memorial. Crosses and wilted flowers for someone who died. You saw these markers everywhere in Spain. He looked back over at Dar.

  “Well, they better not happen on this one,” Saul said.

  Dar turned off to a side road and drove along the top of a cliff. Even from the road, Saul caught glimpses of the sea. They drove past a hotel and then stopped near a sign that read LAS CUEVAS DE COVA DE CAN MARÇÀ.

  A gated entrance led to stairs on the face of the cliff going down to the caves. Below them was a beautiful cove with a sandy beach and aquamarine water.

  “Don’t worry, we’re not going down there,” Dar said, indicating the stairs as they got out of the car. Instead, they hiked a rocky path to the top of the cliff overlooking the sea.

  Saul looked around. Except for Hector, sitting in the Land Rover about a hundred meters away, there was no one around. Nothing but sea and sky, the cove below, and the sound of the wind. As listener-proof as this world was ever going to get. They looked at each other.

  “This is a Special Access Critical operation. The focus is Iraq . . . and Iran. Code name: Operation Iron Thunder. It’s being run by me outside Langley. Completely separate operation and very, very tight,” Saul said.

  “Son of a bitch,” Dar said. “You’ve
got a mole.” Amazing how quickly he had figured it out, Saul thought. People forgot that about Dar. They focused on his ruthlessness, his effectiveness, forgetting how smart he was.

  “Dar, no killing. We need intel, not bodies,” Saul said.

  “You’re too damn squeamish for your own good. You always were.”

  Saul smiled. “Not according to the Kamal Jumblatt school-of-warfare playbook?”

  “He took me in, you know. After the Phalange raped and murdered my mother. My father had been blown up . . . oh, years earlier,” Dar said, shrugging at the memory. “Old Kamal himself. Him and his son, Walid. I was one of a number of orphans he groomed.” He looked out at the sun sparkling on the water below. “You’re wrong about my education, Saul. I’d done one year at the American University in Beirut when the civil war finally exploded and he called me back to fight. That was ’75. Where were you?”

  “Africa. Burundi.”

  “Another shithole.”

  “It’s where I met Mira,” Saul said.

  Kirundo Province. Both of them working with refugees. An amazing time despite the nightly Rwanda-Burundi cross-border killings between Tutsis and Hutus, because in that tent with her for the first time in his life, Saul felt alive. Her from India, him the Jewish boy from Indiana; beings from two different planets. And yet, Mira.

  Dar nodded. “Old Kamal. Intellectually, he was a communist. He used to quote Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, to us.”

  “Really? Like what?” Saul said.

  “His favorite saying was a line from Trotsky: ‘You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.’”

  CHAPTER 13

  Istanbul, Turkey

  19 April 2009

  The French were putting on a show. Petits fours, napoleons, pâtés, cheeses, champagne, jazz on loudspeakers, a video show with scenes from Paris, the Loire châteaux, and Provence. There was even a Marcel Marceau–like mime, circulating among the local diplomatic corps, Turkish officials, and to Carrie’s eye, at least three MIT (Turkish intelligence service) agents. She had come here on the trail of the Englishman Abd al Ali Nasser had told her about, the only lead to the Russian. The reception was being held in the très old fashioned French consulate building on Istiklâl Caddesi, just a block or two from Taksim Square.

  “A froggy mime! And piss to drink,” Gerry Hoad said, pouring his champagne into a potted palm. “I hate the bloody French.” He was middle-aged, rumpled tweed, shirt collar out in back—no woman in his life to see that he’s presentable, Carrie thought—and his longish hair was in need of a haircut. He looked like a midlevel academic hanging on for tenure instead of what he was, a diplomat whose career had driven into a ditch.

  “It’s their turn to do the DD. The mime’s perfect, actually. Repulsive, but he makes no noise,” Sally Rumsley said. She had dirty-blondish hair longer than she should; a woman of what the French call “a certain age.” Still attractive, slim, angular, but she’d reached the stage that when it came to men, she’d have to be more the hunter than the hunted, Carrie thought.

  She was feeling good. Maybe too good. She hadn’t taken clozapine in thirty-six hours and it was starting to show. Getting a twitch there, Carrie, she thought. Wanting a man between your thighs maybe? Missing Warzer too. Where the hell was he? Doing something for Saul? It had all happened so fast once the Otaibah mission got approved, she’d barely had time to say good-bye.

  Only Warzer to see her off in that utilitarian little departure building at Camp Victory before she’d left for FOB Delta and the Otaibah raid. One hurried kiss and then the helicopter lifting off and a reminder from the air of all the damn palm trees in Baghdad, the view of the Tigris River, and once they’d gained altitude and cleared the city, only desert.

  “What’s the DD?” Carrie asked.

  “Diplomatic Dervish. This month France heads the EU, so it’s their turn to reject any overture from the Turks while simultaneously telling them how much we value their cross-cultural contributions, whilst at the same time showing them how much they have to learn from us superior Europeans. It’s rather like kissing someone while kneeing them in the goolies. You just have to keep on spinning,” Sally said.

  A heavyset man in his fifties, Savile Row suit, hair in a comb-over, smiled and waved at someone as he approached.

  “Why aren’t you two circulating? And this is?” Indicating Carrie.

  “Sorry, Simon,” Gerry said. “Miss Anne McGarvey, this is Simon Duncan-Jones. Our Consul General, Head of Mission, Ruler of the Keep, OBE, CMG, etcetera, etcetera.” Making a circular semigenuflecting motion with his hand. “Mr. Simon Duncan-Jones, Miss McGarvey of the American State Department.”

  Duncan-Jones looked at him. “Don’t be deliberately dim, Gerry.” Then peered at Carrie. “Are you for real or is Langley sending us another damned spook? Heard you got booted out of Damascus. You two have something in common.” Pointing at her and Gerry. “I hope it’s not incompetence.”

  “I don’t plan to be in Istanbul long, Mr. Duncan-Jones. Just here to get the lay of the land,” Carrie said.

  “The lay of the land is that this country is in crisis. The Islamists mean to finish off the generals and the secularists with this Ergenekon trial and there’s talk of coups and civil war. We don’t need our Americans cousins screwing things up here as in Iraq,” Duncan-Jones said.

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Duncan-Jones. I wouldn’t screw you for anything,” Carrie said to Gerry and Sally’s muffled sniggers. Oh Lord, she thought. Did I just say that? She was starting to fly. Really fly. She’d better take a clozapine the next chance she got.

  Duncan-Jones glared at them.

  “Circulate, you two,” he said, and walked away.

  “Whose cousin is he to get this job?” Carrie asked, lifting a glass of champagne from a passing waiter and taking a sip.

  “Didn’t need one,” Sally said. “It’s the bugger-all Eton, St. Paul’s, Oxbridge mob. Good old Simon Duncan-Jones just put one plodding foot in front of the other. You Yanks have your Dems and Republicans cock-ups, we have our class wars. You wouldn’t know I took a First at Lancaster, not that it matters. Those nobs wouldn’t know a college even existed out past Blackpool. Gerry, darling, Anne and I are going to the loo.” She pulled Carrie aside.

  “Ace. I’ll wait here and wave the Union Jack, if anyone gives a shite,” Gerry said, grabbing a piece of cheese with a toothpick stuck in it from a passing waiter and waving it like a flag.

  Sally led Carrie out of the noisy entry hall and down a long hallway to the toilettes des dames.

  Inside, Sally leaned against the sink, pulled out a hashish pipe, tapped down the black paste, and lit up. She took a deep drag, then offered it to Carrie, who took a drag. It hit her at once. Between that and the champagne and the no clozapine she was feeling no pain.

  She smiled at herself in the mirror. She looked good. Nice dress. Her one and only LBD. Pretty Carrie. No, she was Anne. Starting to lose it, Carrie? Remember cover. Saul, long ago at the Farm, telling them: “Cover isn’t just some temporary identity; it’s who you are.” She dug into her handbag, turned away, found the clozapine, and took one with a sip of water from the sink in her cupped hand.

  “What’s that?” Sally asked. “Anything interesting?”

  “Diabetic,” Carrie said. She’d learned long ago that saying anything else, tummy, headache, anything, might prompt the other person to ask for one.

  “Ah. So, love, what really happened in dreary Damascus?” Sally asked, taking a big hit from the pipe and exhaling a dank-smelling stream of smoke.

  “No good deed goes unpunished. Tried to help someone. Next thing, I’m officially slapped on the wrist and sent here to mull over my sins,” Carrie said.

  “Lucky it’s only your wrist they slapped,” Sally said, eyeing her.

  “Yes.” Thinking of that concrete interrogation room near the old Al-Hijaz station, the man in the suit’s penis, then blinked to shake it off. “What about Gerry? This a way station for him
too?”

  “Gerry, is it?” Sally smirked. “Didn’t think your taste ran in that direction, darling. Still, between us girls, trying to find a decent cock, circumcised or the very rare uncircumcised one in these parts, that doesn’t stink of kebabs, is damned near impossible. Much less trying to find the owner of one who actually knows what to do with it. And you’ve got to be bloody careful. How you dress. How you move. Especially with Turko males. Just shake hands with one and he thinks it means you want him to bang your bum,” she said.

  “What about you guys? How’s Istanbul for you?”

  “It’s the same for us as for you. Let’s not kid ourselves. Istanbul may be a world city, but this is still just a la-de-da consulate, a diplomatic backwater. The embassy’s in Ankara. That’s where the action is. And it’s not the big time. It’s not Washington or Beijing or Moscow. It’s bollocks really. Mmm, you have lovely skin,” she said, coming close, touching Carrie’s cheek. “I used to have skin like that. Now I’m like a bloody tortoise. It’s a wonder men don’t crawl away at the sight of me.”

  Carrie looked at her. She had beautiful china-blue eyes.

  “You’re still an attractive woman,” she said, holding Sally’s arms. For a moment, they were almost on the verge of kissing and Carrie wondered whether it was the hashish or the lack of clozapine that hadn’t kicked in yet or everything that had happened since Syria.

  “You’re a liar,” Sally said. “A very pretty, young, American liar, but thank you anyway, darling. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. For me, Istanbul’s the last stop on the FO pension train. It’s not bad, actually, except for the Turko males groping your bum everywhere you go. Wonderfully exotic. Food’s a marvel. Not a prob. I’ll go back to Lancaster or Leeds, suck some lucky gent’s cock till he says ‘I do,’ and be one of those old ladies who tell scandalous lies about their wild days to the little girls. Except of course, in my case”—she winked—“they won’t be lies.”