Saul's Game Page 17

  Al-Rashawi motioned to one of his aides, a lean, fierce-looking man, with eyes and a nose like a hawk. The sheikh pointed at the photo.

  “This blond American woman, Ali. She is your sister. If any harm, or worse, dishonor comes to her, to her honor, it is a dishonor to you. Is it good?” al-Rashawi said.

  Ali nodded. “If any man touching her,” he said in clumsy English, “even of Albu Mahal,” gesturing at the other aide, “he die.”

  “Yes,” Saul said. “It’s good.”

  “Still one more thing,” al-Rashawi said, looking at the two of them. “I need more serious American weapons. Javelin antitank and Stinger missiles. MRAPs too.”

  “That’s a problem.” General Demetrius frowned. “With the Sons of Iraq being officially transferred to the ISF and us having signed the Status of Forces Agreement, I can’t. It would be a violation.”

  Saul grimaced. “This isn’t about al-Qaeda. You’re thinking of the Shiites after we leave.”

  “You Americans,” al-Rashawi said, shaking his head. “You come, you go. But we stay. We have been here thousands of years, since the dawn of Adam, praise be to Allah. You will have been a cloud that has come and gone. As always, Sha‘wela knows my heart,” nodding at Saul. “Yes, the Shiites and what is to come when you Americans leave.” He looked at the general. “You want our help, General, you must also give it. Javelins. Stingers. Serious weapons. Ali has a list.”

  General Demetrius didn’t answer. For a long moment, the only sound was that of the fan. The general looked sharply at Saul, who gave an imperceptible nod.

  “I’ll get you everything I can. There may be a little flexibility in the SOF Agreement,” General Demetrius said finally to the sheikh.

  “Good. Time for blood. Inshallah, we end this Abu Nazir,” al-Rashawi said, putting his hand to his chest.

  Later, in the MRAP, driving back to Camp Blue Diamond, General Demetrius told Saul: “I didn’t want to cut you off at the knees in front of the sheikh, but I didn’t agree with everything you said back there. And I’m not sure what, if anything, I can give them—or if I should. Even if I agreed—which, by the way, I don’t; we shouldn’t take sides in this mess—the secretary of defense or the president might reject it.”

  Saul smiled. “Of course not. Just give them something. A handful of Javelins. The important thing is we pulled in the Sunnis. That’s half the battle.”

  “You lied to him. How many troops am I supposed to send to Baquba?”

  “None. Zero. But you’ll generate activity as if you’re sending a strong force along with the ISF. Send some preliminary people up there for a day or two to scout things out. Pass the word to General Allenford. Maybe line up some units on Highway 4, tanks and APCs or something. Have your scouts up there inadvertently drop the word you might be there in force in a week. Maybe even you yourself. On the key day, we use Predator drones to hit their hidden weapons depots in Baquba. Not a single American is going to die,” Saul said.

  “A diversion?”

  “Big-time.”

  General Demetrius turned to Saul. Behind him through the window, sand-colored walls of houses and the occasional palm tree slid by.

  “This is some game you’re playing, Saul,” he said. “And it’s all on that female agent?”

  Saul took off his glasses and blinked like an owl waking up.

  “Yes. Yes, it is.”

  “She better be damn good.”

  “She is. She has to be. For all our sakes,” Saul said.

  CHAPTER 22

  Habibiya, Baghdad

  25 April 2009

  “You were spying on me,” de Bruin said. He was sitting on the side of the pool, naked, his feet in the water. Estrella handed him a SIG Sauer handgun, which he put down beside him. Carrie was still in the water, holding on to the side of the pool.

  “Of course,” she said.

  “For the CIA?” he asked.

  Say the wrong thing now, it’ll go very bad, something told her.

  “As a woman. I’ve got competition,” indicating the bedroom with a jerk of her head.

  “Dasha?” he said, looking amused.

  “She’s beautiful.”

  “Very. Mmm . . .” He hesitated. “I wanted to . . . Maybe I shouldn’t ask this?”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t,” she said.

  “Last night . . . Who—did you enjoy more? Her or me?”

  Carrie pulled herself out of the water and sat beside him, naked, dripping wet. The sun coming up over the palm trees felt warm, good on her skin. At that moment, she thought, This is interesting. My sister Maggie’s got the doctor’s degree, and the nice safe life. The nice house and car and two great kids, but even if my head gets blown off in two minutes, maybe it’s my disease and I’m crazy as a bedbug, but this is interesting.

  “Do you know, I don’t know. It all got mixed up,” she said, standing up. She wanted him to look at her. Look at me, she thought. If you’re going to kill me, look at me. At that moment, she felt sexier, more like a woman, than she ever had. “Women. We mark our territory. If we’re interested in a man, we try to find out everything we can about him, by any means we can—and if you don’t know that about us, at your age, you’re a complete idiot.”

  She went back to the bedroom to find her clothes. De Bruin came after her. He grabbed her and turned her around.

  “I went to a lot of trouble for you. You think arranging a soirée in Baghdad is simple? Every one of those people risked their lives,” he said.

  “I know. I’m here. What do you want with me?”

  “I don’t know.” He frowned. “I have a meeting today. Big security conference with the Iraqi leadership and General Allenford, head of Baghdad security.”

  “That’s interesting,” she said, changing her plans that instant. “So do I. Same meeting.”

  He put one big arm around her, held her tight, and grabbed her face with his other hand.

  “Don’t try to jerk me around, Anne, if that’s even your name. I think you’re a spy. Whatever you are, you’re trouble. I don’t know whether to screw your brains out or get rid of you.”

  “I vote for the first,” she said, looking up at him. “I’m not Iraqi, you know. I’ll be missed.”

  “Have you any idea how much money is involved? This is Baghdad, Lady Anne. People who play games don’t survive here very long.” He shook his head. “What am I to do with you?”

  “Did somebody say ‘jerk off’?” said Dasha from the bed.

  “Go play with yourself, dorogoi. Anne and I have to go to work.” He let go of her. “See you there?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” Carrie said, pulling on her clothes.

  She said good-bye to Warzer in the car queue at the Qadisaya Expressway checkpoint. They were in the SUV, the one without embassy plates that he would be driving down Highway 8 to Karbala. His job would be to see if he could locate and, if possible, get a photo or an ID on Abu Ghazawan, Abu Nazir’s man in Karbala. Carrie would join him there as soon as she could.

  “You’ve got all your badges?” Carrie asked, feeling like a mother hen. Since the Iraqis had taken over control of the Green Zone checkpoints, various kinds of different-color badges were required to get through checkpoints that had sprung up all over the city.

  “Or they won’t let me back into the Emerald City? I won’t get to see the Wizard?” Warzer half smiled. “And you? Will you let me back?” Looking so much like an Arab that morning, with his dark eyes and beard. All he lacked was the kaffiyeh and prayer beads. He tugged at her sleeve.

  “What do you want, Warzer? I need to know,” she said as they sat in the midst of a line of cars inching up to the checkpoint, where she would get out. She was supposed to meet Perry Dryer and Virgil later that morning. Virgil, who was tailing de Bruin (whom they’d code-named “Robespierre”), had already texted her as he followed the Mercedes.

  “Where is he?” she’d texted back.

  “lots of zigzag in g.z. and al qasim xway to los
e tails. very pro. headed habibiya?”

  So de Bruin was trying to lose any tails, zigzagging in the Green Zone and on the Mohammed Al-Qasim Expressway. Habibiya was a dangerous Shiite area south of Sadr City in “New Baghdad,” the eastern part of the city built by Saddam Hussein.

  Sadr City was the headquarters of the Mahdi Army and had been the site of a major battle between American forces and the Mahdi Army only last year. Virgil’s question mark meant he was wondering what the hell de Bruin was doing in a Shiite stronghold. A dangerous place for anyone who wasn’t local.

  “???” she texted back. She had no idea. It didn’t add up. If de Bruin was passing American intel to IPLA, who were Sunnis, what the hell was he doing in the Shiite part of the city?

  “??? sida sq,” Virgil texted back.

  Sida Square? That meant de Bruin was definitely in Habibiya, Carrie thought. And Virgil couldn’t figure out what de Bruin was doing there either. Now what?

  She and Warzer were almost at the checkpoint, which was blocking the entire road. It was manned by Iraqi ISF soldiers, who had erected barriers that squeezed the approach down to a single lane. Two U.S. soldiers watched from a Humvee by the side of the road. Time to say good-bye, Carrie thought.

  She got out of the SUV and walked around to Warzer’s side. There were taxis on the opposite side of the road, waiting to take people from the checkpoint into the Green Zone.

  “Tell me what you really want,” she said.

  “Loving you is killing me. I want to marry you. I want to divorce my wife,” he said.

  Before she could stop herself, the words came out of her mouth.

  “A free ticket to America. Is that what I am to you, Warzer?” she said.

  “Is that what you think? Kos emek, Carrie,” he snapped, cursing her mother. Not looking at her, he drove up to the checkpoint and stopped to show his badge to the Iraqi soldier, who barely glanced at it and waved him on. A lot easier getting out of the Green Zone than getting in.

  “Warzer, wait! Please! Oh God, I didn’t mean it!” she called after him, standing by the side of the lane as he drove away on the expressway, but she didn’t think he heard.

  She never spoke to him again.

  “Who the hell is he?” Carrie asked.

  She and Virgil were driving on Palestine Street in a Mersin delivery van, images of Iraqi cheeses and yogurts painted on its sides. They were four cars behind de Bruin’s Mercedes. Because the neighborhood was conservative Shiite and hostile to outsiders, Carrie wore a full abaya, wig, and veil. The only part of her that was visible were her eyes. She and Virgil were the rear half of a front and back tail, tracking de Bruin’s car after he had briefly stopped at a teahouse on Umal Street, a block from Sida Square.

  Although it was morning, the day was already hot. Heat haze shimmered over the cars and streets, busy with women in abayas with shopping baskets, men working or sipping tea outside a shop, boys on their way to school. Everything seemed normal, but they were Shiites here. They had been persecuted and killed by Saddam for a long time and they knew who their enemies were.

  Outsiders who came by for a look might find a young man smiling and saying “Salaam aleikem” to them while a confederate, unnoticed, stuck something on the side of their car, and twenty seconds later, there would be an explosion.

  One of de Bruin’s Peruvians had gone into the tea shop and came back out with an Arab in a Western business suit, no tie. He spoke briefly to someone—de Bruin?—and then the two men got into the Mercedes. The good news was that Virgil managed to get a few cell-phone snapshots of the Arab before he got into the car.

  Virgil passed his cell phone to Carrie, who emailed the photos to a cover gmail account that got routed through several cutout servers to Perry Dryer, at CIA headquarters in the Republican Palace in the heart of the Green Zone.

  Who was the Arab meeting with de Bruin? Identifying him was essential before the security meeting this afternoon. Carrie waited anxiously for Perry to respond.

  Traffic was getting heavy, she noticed. They were driving on a wide three-lane street, ragged trees on the center divider. Come on, Perry, Carrie thought, getting jumpy. She was on her meds, back in Baghdad with all the clozapine she wanted from Samal on Haifa Street, but still, she was getting jittery.

  This whole op—and now the thing with Warzer and de Bruin—was becoming more terrifying by the minute. It was the operation to end all operations. And there was something about de Bruin, his cunning and unpredictability. She sensed that she was getting in way over her head this time.

  De Bruin’s Mercedes made a sharp right at a big intersection, losing the front tail. He sped up Thawra Street, a broad boulevard with a wide tree-lined center divider, cutting in and out of lanes, then turned right again onto a side street.

  What the hell is he up to? Carrie wondered, then realized what de Bruin was doing. They were in an area of two- and three-story concrete houses and empty lots. A poorer neighborhood that had gone even further downhill since the fall of Saddam. Dead easy to spot a tail.

  “Shit. We’ve been made,” Virgil said, going slowly, still on Thawra Street. “He knows he’s being followed.” He glanced at Carrie. “Now what?”

  “Go slow. Stay on Thawra,” she said.

  “You realize this street takes us straight into the heart of Sadr City? A month ago, they were killing Americans on sight here,” he said.

  “I know.” She called Perry back on her cell phone and said: “Anything?”

  “Yeah, but not one hundred percent. Say eighty,” Perry answered

  “Cut the foreplay, Dallas-One,” his code name. “Just tell me.”

  “Okay. A certain ‘Victor Papa.’ Someone near,” Perry said.

  Carrie tried to understand his reference. Victor Papa was the military alphabet for the letters V and P. VP. Vice president? Vice prime minister? Iraqi vice prime minister Mohammed Ali Fahdel? But he was a Sunni. A leader of the Sunni faction in the Iraqi parliament. Perry said “someone near.” What the hell was someone close to Fahdel, a Sunni, doing with de Bruin in a café in Sadr shithole City, the stronghold of the Shiites? Who was it? A relative or an aide? No one else could be close to him.

  “A helper?” she said into the phone. Was it someone who was an aide to Mohammed Ali Fahdel?

  “Bingo. Think forty thieves,” Perry said.

  Forty thieves? “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,” is that what he was trying to say? What was he trying to tell her? In her mind, she tried to think of people around the vice prime minister. Someone named “Ali.” Of course, Carrie. Ali Hamsa, the senior aide to Vice Prime Minister Mohammed Ali Fahdel. But in Sadr City? What on earth would Ali Hamsa be doing here?

  Then it hit her. She almost had it all. Almost. There was one other piece she couldn’t quite understand. Oh, Saul, she thought, terminating the call. You clever, clever man.

  Just then, they saw the Mercedes shoot out from a side street back onto Thawra and turn right, heading toward the Imam Ali Overpass into the heart of Sadr City.

  “There he is. Do we follow?” Virgil said, speeding up.

  “Turn around,” she told him. “We have to go back.”

  “Where?”

  “To the teahouse. What an idiot I am.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m saying forget about following them. We need to go back to the teahouse where they talked to that guy,” she said. And checking her watch, she called Perry back on Virgil’s cell phone.

  “Tell you-know-who,” she told Perry. Tell Saul.

  “What about continuing? Maybe a third?” Perry said. Carrie understood. He was obviously worried that the two of them, Ali Hamsa and de Bruin, were on their way to meet a third party.

  “Not enough time. Pass it along to you-know-who,” she said, and ended the call. Saul had to be told that the person de Bruin was passing intel to and getting intel from was Ali Hamsa. And they had to move fast. De Bruin had told her this morning about his security conference with
Vice Prime Minister Mohammed Ali Fahdel, General Allenford, and a few others that afternoon. And she had told him she would be there.

  “Back to the teahouse,” she told Virgil, checking her watch again. She barely had time to make it back to set up for the meeting.

  Virgil turned the Mersin van around and headed back to Sida Square. He drove the roundabout to the teahouse and found a parking space about fifty meters away.

  “I don’t get it,” he told her when they parked.

  “Ask yourself, Why did they do the pickup here, in a Shiite neighborhood? Because Ali Hamsa met someone else here. These guys are even bigger crooks than I thought,” she said, preparing to exit the van.

  Now was the tricky part. In Iraqi society, teahouses were for men; women rarely entered. This business of being a woman in the Middle East made her job somewhere between difficult and ridiculous, she thought, taking the Glock 26 out of her handbag, racking the slide so it was ready to fire, and putting it back in her purse.

  “Look,” she told Virgil. “First they did a pickup and ride here in Habibiya so there was no chance anyone they know would see them. Not in this part of town. Any Sunni or Coalition type who shows his face around here is a dead man.”

  “Okay, that makes sense,” Virgil said.

  “But why here exactly? I mean, okay, he was waiting at the teahouse. But maybe he was here because our friend, Ali, whom we now know is some kind of mole, is playing more than one side. And maybe our friend, de Bruin, who’d cut his own mother’s throat for an extra buck, is selling intel to both sides. IPLA and al-Qaeda on the one hand and the Iranians on the other.”

  “Shit, that actually makes sense. Otherwise, why risk coming to this part of town?” Virgil asked. As she started to get out of the van, he added: “Carrie, make it quick. The life expectancy of someone who looks like me isn’t long around here. Someone’s gonna attach a sticky bomb under this van any minute.”

  Pulling on her veil, she took a deep breath and walked into the teahouse. It was a long shot that the man Ali Hamsa might have met before de Bruin—that was still speculation on her part—was still here.