Homeland: Carrie's Run: A Homeland Novel Page 16

  “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.

  CHAPTER 22

  Bashoura, Beirut, Lebanon

  Carrie watched Rana open her eyes. They were in a basement storage room of the safe house building near the Bashoura Cemetery that Beirut Station had code-named Iroquois. The room was empty, lit by a single lightbulb; its walls were soundproofed and the door locked. Th
e actress had been tied to a chair with plastic ties. The only other furniture was the chair that Carrie sat in, a stool and a wooden bench on which they’d put a bucket of water and a towel. On a stool next to her, Carrie had put her Glock 26 with a sound suppressor attached.

  “You can scream your head off, no one will hear,” Carrie told her in Arabic.

  “Not my style,” Rana said. “Not unless they pay me. I did a great scream in a horror movie once. Evil Cannibal Streets. As opposed to Good Cannibal Streets, I suppose. Do you want to hear?”

  “I don’t care about your credits. This isn’t an audition,” Carrie said.

  “Do you want money? I’m not rich,” Rana said.

  “You’re famous.”

  “Not the same thing.”

  “It’s not money. Let’s talk about Taha al-Douni.”

  “Who?”

  Carrie looked down at the floor, then up at Rana.

  “I need you to tell me the truth. If you do, you’ll be back to your old life in a few hours. If not, you’ll never leave this room,” she said.

  For a long moment, neither spoke. Rana looked around, as if seeking a way out.

  “What is this about?” she asked, only a slight tremor in her voice betraying her nervousness. She’s an actress, Carrie reminded herself. She lies for a living. Like the rest of us.

  “Listen, there’s already a lot you don’t have to tell us. We know about you. And about Dima and Marielle and that you’re Davis Fielding’s, the CIA station chief in Beirut’s, little whore. We’ll get to that in a minute.” She could see that Rana was shocked by what she had said, that she knew all that.

  Interrogation 101, she thought. Let the subject think you know about him and what he’s doing and he’ll assume you know more than you are letting on. Amazing the things he’ll let slip because he thinks you already know them. “You met with Taha al-Douni in Baalbek. What was the meeting about?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Rana said.

  “Yes, you do.” Carrie frowned and took out the video camera and showed her the playback of her and Nightingale talking in the ruins. “Min fathleki, let’s not make this unpleasant. Actually, even before we get to that, I’ve a better question. What’s a nice Sunni Muslim girl from Tripoli doing with a Shiite spy for the GSD and Hezbollah?”

  Rana stared at her, wide-eyed.

  “Who are you? What do you want from me?” she whispered.

  “The truth. The Christian Bible says it’ll set you free. In this case, that’s the literal truth. But if you lie to me”—she looked at the bench and the bucket of water—“trust me, you won’t like it.”

  “How do you know about me? About Tripoli? Was it Dima, that bitch? She couldn’t keep her mouth closed any more than she could keep her legs together.”

  “Did you really imagine you could be the mistress of a CIA station chief and meet with Syrian spies and not attract attention?” Carrie said. “Who are you working for?”

  “Don’t you know?” Rana moistened her lips. Dark hair, dark eyes. An attractive woman, Carrie thought. One who thought that her looks would always get her out of a tough spot. “God, I would kill for a cigarette.”

  “Later.” Carrie frowned. “You’re going to have to start answering my questions or it’s not going to go well for you. Who are you working for? Hezbollah?”

  Rana shook her head, the faintest hint of a smile on her lips. “Kos emek Hezbollah,” she said, using the worst Arabic vulgarity. “Neither Hezbollah nor the Syrians.”

  “Who then? Al-Douni is GSD.”

  “Who told you that? Dima? Are you CIA? Do you have her? Has she been talking?”

  Carrie thought for a moment, deciding. Was Rana was trying to play her? They’d see who played whom.

  “Dima’s dead. Right now, your chances don’t look so good either,” she said. That got her. She could see Rana go pale. She shook her head, her famous brown hair tossing back and forth. “Last chance. Then the men come. They’re dying to jump in. Work on a good-looking woman like you. Something we women know,” Carrie said, crossing her legs. “Beauty is such a fragile thing, isn’t it? Who are you and al-Douni working for?”

  Rana shook her head. Carrie decided to try a little more truth.

  “Is al-Douni a double agent? The only way I can help you is if you’ll let me. All you have to do is nod.”

  Almost unwillingly, Rana nodded.

  Carrie’s mind raced. If al-Douni was a double, who was he doubling for? Who was running him? Dima’s boyfriend, Mohammed Siddiqi? The Iraqi pretending to be a Qatari, according to Marielle. Or was Rana just telling her what she thought Carrie wanted to hear?

  “Who’s he really working for?”

  “I’m not sure. But he was the one who introduced Dima to her boyfriend, the Qatari,” Rana said.

  “Mohammed Siddiqi? I heard he wasn’t a real Qatari,” Carrie said.

  “You’ve been talking to Marielle.” Rana frowned. “Inshallah, give me a cigarette and I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

  Carrie went to the door, went out and came back with a lit Marlboro cigarette. She put it between Rana’s lips. She’d find out now if Rana had really decided to cooperate.

  “Okay,” Rana said, taking a drag and exhaling a stream of smoke. “You’re right. I work for Taha. I mean al-Douni. I recruited Dima too, though she pretended to be a Maronite for March 14. As you obviously know, we’re both from the north, both Sunni, both daughters of fathers in the Murabitun.”

  “Taha al-Douni recruited you to become Davis Fielding’s mistress?”

  “I’m not his mistress,” she said, taking a deep drag and letting Carrie take the cigarette from between her lips so she could exhale.

  “What do you mean? You’re not saying you don’t have sex? You’re a beautiful woman. Famous even.”

  “It’s not that simple. At first we did, but now I’m mostly just for show. We meet at parties, diplomatic receptions, things like that.” She shrugged.

  “But you spy on him?”

  Rana nodded.

  “Does he know?”

  “I don’t know what he knows.” She shrugged. “Lately, with the arrival of Dima’s Mohammed, the emphasis shifted.”

  “From what to what?”

  “From anything we could get on CIA activities in Lebanon and Syria to Iraq. They want to know about what the Americans know and don’t know and what their plans in Iraq are.”

  “Is Mohammed, Dima’s boyfriend, running al-Douni?”

  She snorted with derision. “That ibn el himar?” Son of a donkey. “He’s a courier, a delivery boy. A nobody.”

  “Dima was afraid of him?”

  She nodded. “The bastard abused her, the pig. She was terrified of him. All he had to do was look at her.”

  That’s what Marielle said, Carrie thought. So that’s how they got Dima, the Sunni party girl, to become a terrorist. If Nightingale wasn’t running the show and Mohammed was just a messenger boy, whose op was it? And what was their interest in American intel about Iraq? The answer was obvious.

  “Does Mohammed work for al-Qaeda? Is he in contact with Abu Nazir?”

  “I don’t know. No one talks to Abu Nazir. No one knows who his contacts are. Taha once spoke about Abu Nazir’s deputy, Abu Ubaida.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said he was Abu Nazir’s executioner.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Le Hippodrome, Beirut, Lebanon

  They set up in the trees behind the grandstand at the Hippodrome racetrack, the sunset casting the shadow of the grandstand across the track and the trees. There were seven of them: her, Virgil, Ziad and four men of the Forces Libanaises he had brought with him. They were well armed, all four with M4 carbines; one of them had an M4 with an M203 grenade launcher attached.

  Carrie didn’t like using the FLs, but there wasn’t much choice. Things were moving too fast. She believed Saul was on his way to Beirut, but he wouldn’t get there in time and there wasn’t ti
me to put an SOG, a CIA Special Operations Group team, in place.

  There were a hundred reasons not to use the FLs. They weren’t trained, they weren’t under her control, they were sectarian to their core and they would be dealing with their Shiite enemies. A total wild-card scenario.

  There was only one reason to use them. Nightingale/al-Douni never went anywhere without armed Hezbollah guards, so she needed some kind of muscle. Saul had agreed, reluctantly, during their texting interaction earlier that day.

  She had gone to an Internet café on Rue Makhoul in Hamra, near the American University, getting onto a computer against the wall next to a teenage Arab boy gaming with online friends. As previously agreed, to keep what she was doing separate from normal channels that Davis Fielding would have access to, she and Saul communicated via a chat room for teenagers so heavily trafficked, there was little chance of their conversation being hacked. The volume was simply too great for even powerful intelligence-agency search-engine algorithms to find an individual conversation.

  The way they’d set the chat up, Carrie was supposedly a high school senior from Bloomington, Illinois, named Bradley, and Saul was a girl named Tiffany from nearby Normal Community High School. She sent him her report and the photo of Mohammed Siddiqi as attachments.

  “hey qt pie. u got every1 in nesa going loco,” Saul typed. NESA was the CIA’s Office of Near Eastern and South Asian Analysis, an elite group that included the Agency’s best Middle East experts.

  “ctc?” she typed back. Was David Estes’s Counterterrorism Center unit also involved?

  “24/7. im jealous. u got all the girls attention.” About time Langley paid attention, she grumped to herself.

  “do u no the real ms? who she is dating?” That was the big question. The one she absolutely had to know. Who was Mohammed Siddiqi really? What did the Company know about him? And who was he working for?

  “not yet,” Saul typed back. “but yr fmr bff, allie, is working on it like its her sats.” So her former best friend forever, “allie,” Alan Yerushenko, and her colleagues at the Office of Collection Strategies and Analysis were working on it nonstop too.