Saul's Game Read online

  So what was it? Blind chance? Luck? Fate? Or had his father been right all along? You think your battle with Him is over? It isn’t. Had Ha Shem, God Himself, the Ruler of the Universe, finally decided to take a hand in the game? Because suddenly, what he and Mira and the CIA and the rest of the world wanted didn’t matter. Only it wasn’t just his life and Mira’s that changed that day, Saul thought, sweating in the stifling airport terminal. It was everyone’s.

  Of all things, it was a soccer match. So odd that his life and Mira’s, that the fate of nations, of the world, could swivel on such a seemingly trivial thing, a football game, made it even more incomprehensible. Only Mira, furious, ever said anything that tried to make sense of it. Afterward, when he had come back to Langley from Tehran and cried out in frustration and anger: “If only I hadn’t gone to that game!”

  And she said: “Maybe that’s all we are, Saul . . . a game for your Old Testament God. The one who demands that fathers go up on a mountain to murder their sons just to prove their loyalty to Him, like some lunatic Mafia don! Unless you’re telling me your Jewish God was just playing a sadistic game, which kind of proves my point, doesn’t it?”

  The football game.

  Tehran, November 1977. Aryamehr Stadium. Packed to the gills, one hundred thousand screaming fans, including the seventeen-year-old Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, for the most important soccer match in Iranian football history. The World Cup qualifying match against a powerful Australian team.

  Iran had qualified by winning the Asian Cup 1–0 against a weak Kuwaiti team. Australia had beaten tough teams from Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, and New Zealand. Iran’s chances hung by a thread. Only by beating the powerful Aussies would they qualify, for the first time in history, for the World Cup play-offs.

  It wasn’t just the stadium. The entire country had shut down. Every café and corner grocery, every home, had their black-and-white television tuned to the game. In the mountains and deserts, whole clans and villages crowded into the house of the one person in the village with a TV set. The streets of North Tehran, normally clogged with traffic this time of day, were empty. Not a single car moved. There were no police to direct traffic. Even prayers from the empty mosques were hushed. The only prayers were from the fans.

  Saul was at the stadium. He had unbelievable seats, near midfield. Whitman had given him a pair of tickets from one of the top guys in the SAVAK. Mira didn’t want to go, so Saul sat with Crocker, an Office of Trade Affairs attaché at the embassy, who was the closest thing to a friend Saul had there, so isolated had he become.

  Saul had never been to a game like this. The entire country was roiling with discontent with the shah. Islamists had joined with communists, religious leaders, and democratic reformers. The harder the shah’s SAVAK cracked down, the more the discontent grew. There were calls for the return of the Ayatollah Khomeini from exile.

  No one knew what was possible. It was as if Iran’s future, the future of the Middle East, hung on the outcome of this one match.

  And then it started, and almost immediately the Australians proved they were no joke. Their midfielders ran around the Iranians, passed to the forwards, and a solid line-drive kick sailed right at the goal, an almost certain score. Except Iran’s bearded young goalkeeper, Nasser Hejazi, leaped sideways and with his outstretched fingertips deflected it inches away from the goal. An incredible save. An instantaneous roar went up from a hundred thousand fans in the stands, gripping Saul up from his groin like nothing he had ever experienced before. A people screaming for its life.

  The game went on like that. Muddled midfield play by the Iranians dominated by aggressive attacking by Australia’s forwards, but time after time, Hejazi’s brilliant saves kept them from scoring. At half time, the score was still 0–0.

  And then, after the break, Ghelichkhani got the ball from an attacking Australian and passed it to Hassan Rowshan. He slipped by two Australians, and suddenly he had a shot. As everyone held their breath, Rowshan kicked and suddenly, impossibly, the ball was in the net. A goal! And an entire nation went insane.

  The noise and vibration in the stadium was beyond imagining. Iranians who were too polite to even shake hands were hugging and kissing each other, their cheeks wet with tears. The shah’s son, oblivious, began hugging everyone, total strangers, as though they were intimate royal family members.

  Saul and Crocker hugged each other and people around them, complete strangers, dancing for joy. It was one of the most unbelievable moments of his life.

  Of course, the match wasn’t over. The Aussies were now desperate. They kicked, they played physical, but shot after shot was knocked away by the goalkeeper, Hejazi. Impossible saves, as though he had grown an extra pair of arms and the laws of gravity no longer applied to him.

  As the final whistle blew, the stadium erupted again. The Aussie players ran for their lives as spectators swarmed the grass. Saul and Crocker were caught in a stampede and got separated.

  The force of the crowd carried Saul from the stadium gate out to Ferdous Street. There was insanity everywhere. People were in the street, honking auto horns, cheering and screaming, and street musicians of every kind played music that couldn’t be heard over the noise of the crowds.

  Men and women embraced openly in the street, something never seen in Iran before or since. It was as if they had been dead and now they were alive. Suddenly anything was possible. Anything, even revolution.

  An old man embraced Saul, his face wet with tears.

  “The lions of Persia. I have lived to see the lions of Persia,” he said.

  “Bale, brother,” Saul said, trying to squeeze out of the press in the street into a packed café. “I was there.”

  A honking convertible packed with joyous young men, screaming and waving team banners and their shirts that they had taken off, made its way through the crowd as someone accidently pushed Saul and he fell directly in front of the convertible’s wheels. He was about to be run over when a trim, well-dressed young man pulled him to safety on the curb as the convertible, oblivious, still honking, moved on.

  Saul managed to get up. He turned to thank the young man.

  “Mersi. Thank you, I think you saved my . . .” Saul began, then stopped. The young man stared at him as though he had seen a ghost.

  “You were there, baradar?” the young man said. Brother. “In the stadium? You saw?”

  “I was there,” Saul said. “After meeting my wife, it was the greatest moment of my life.”

  The man embraced him tightly.

  “Mine too. Was not Nasser Hejazi wonderful?”

  “Beyond wonderful! The best!”

  “You’re American?”

  “Bale. Yes, I am.”

  “Always I have mistrusted Americans. But as of this moment, we are brothers,” the young man said.

  Majid Javadi. A SAVAK officer, but even more importantly, one with links to revolutionary groups too. They became friends, Saul and Mira and Javadi and his wife, Fariba.

  The strange mating dance of case officer and agent. Can I trust you? Is it safe? What’s in it for me? What’s the fallback? Tradecraft. Time and place for RDVs. “Chance meetings” that were anything but chance. Ciphers. Memorized phone numbers. Dead drops. The rituals of tradecraft; their own little CIA religion.

  And Mira drifting away, growing ever more lonely.

  With Javadi as an asset, Saul became the most important CIA case officer in the Middle East. Barlow and Whitman may have despised him, but the intel he was bringing in was too vital to let him go. No way to quit now. Although, there were times when Saul wondered who was running whom, him or Javadi? Like some kind of Iranian Zen koan. Who is the player and who’s being played?

  By the time he learned the answer to that question, it was too late.

  It’s done, past. The dogs bark; the caravan moves on. And we poor humans? Shadows on the sand, Saul thought as he boarded the Al-Naser flight to Kuwait. The white-painted skin of the plane was so bright in the sun
he couldn’t look at it, the ladder so hot he could not touch it as he climbed to board.

  It would be a short flight. Maybe fifteen, twenty minutes.

  Lions of Persia, remembering that old man as the plane rose high over groves of palm trees and the city clustered beside the brown waters of the Shatt. It was all on Carrie now, he thought. Her turn to enter the lion’s den.

  CHAPTER 24

  Mansour, Baghdad

  26 April 2009

  “Did you see it?” Virgil said.

  “I’m not sure,” Carrie admitted. “Can we slow it down?”

  She, Perry Dryer, and Virgil were in a private office off a conference room in the Republican Palace, watching a video of the security meeting between Vice Prime Minister Mohammed Ali Fahdel, de Bruin, General Allenford, Eric Sanderson, from de Bruin’s party, representing the U.S. embassy, and other members of the Coalition and Iraqi government. Sitting next to the vice prime minister was his aide, Ali Hamsa, to whom Carrie and Virgil had assigned the code name “Arrowhead.” He was a skinny man with a narrow face and a lean parrot’s beak of a nose like an ax. You could cut wood with that face.

  Carrie had attended the conference openly with Perry. But Virgil had been busy installing a set of hidden video cameras.

  Perry Dryer presented evidence of increasing supplies of sophisticated weapons from Iran to the Shiite Mahdi Army coming in through Baquba. Not one word on Iron Thunder.

  “Go slow,” Carrie said. They were looking at the moment when the meeting broke up.

  “There! See,” Virgil said, freezing the image, then moving it imperceptibly forward, a fraction of a second at a time. It showed de Bruin placing a pen on the conference table as he left. A moment later, Ali Hamsa picked it up.

  “Run it again,” Carrie said. “We have to be sure.”

  “It’s in the bank, Carrie. That’s a direct hand-over. Perry’ll make sure we get this to Saul ASAP, right?” Virgil said to Perry, who nodded. “You know what’s in it?”

  “Ten to one it’s the Iron Thunder intel from my cell phone that one of de Bruin’s little Peruvian helpers lifted from me. Ali Hamsa—sorry, Arrowhead—is the missing link.”

  Leaving Virgil and Perry, Carrie went back to the conference room table where Ali Hamsa had been sitting. He had taken his notepad, but a glass he had been drinking water from remained. She picked up the glass with a tissue and brought it to Virgil.

  “What’s this?” Perry asked.

  “Evidence,” she said.

  “What do we do with it? Fingerprints?”

  “Everything. Fingerprints, DNA. Ali Hamsa’s dirty. Let’s do a complete work-up on this bastard,” she said.

  “So the leak’s definitely coming from the Iraqi government?” Perry said.

  “Some, not all. Remember, they didn’t know about the raid on Otaibah. That was classified. But Ali Hamsa’s part of the chain. He feeds intel from both the Iraqi government and de Bruin to IPLA, and as we now know, also to the Iranians via some Shiite in that damn tea shop, because otherwise he never would’ve been in Habibiya.”

  “What makes you so certain?” Perry said.

  “Look, Ali Hamsa is a Sunni, aide to one of the leading Sunnis in the country. Yet instead of the Shiites killing him, he’s sitting there, in a Shiite stronghold, sipping tea. He’s probably passing it to someone high up in the Mahdi Army. All we have to do is follow him. See who he passes it off to,” she said, getting up, their meeting over.

  Perry returned to his office. Carrie went outside the Republican Palace, where she waited for Virgil to pick her up on a side road that ran alongside the palace grounds. He had to get a different car; they couldn’t use the Mersin van again.

  She waited by the curb near where the road intersected with Haifa Street. Standing there, glancing at the lavish palace grounds, the statues and green grass and palm trees, she felt they were getting close to shutting the network down. Arrowhead/Ali Hamsa was right in the middle of everything. Just squeeze him and they’d get it all.

  She heard a car pull up from behind, but when she turned around, it wasn’t Virgil. Sitting there was de Bruin’s big black Mercedes. A back window rolled down.

  “Get in,” de Bruin said.

  “I’m really busy. I can come by later,” Carrie said, her heart racing, looking around to see if there was any way out. This was definitely not in the plan.

  “It’s not a request, Anne—or should I call you Carrie? Get in,” he said, as a big Peruvian climbed out of the front passenger seat, aiming a large pistol at her.

  She got in. De Bruin moved over to make room for her in the backseat. The big Peruvian got in and, as they drove off, turned and kept the pistol aimed at her. They drove up the wide Fourteenth of July Street, moving with traffic, not checking for tails, she noticed.

  Not good.

  “What the hell is this?” she said.

  “It accomplishes two purposes. It gives Juan something to do and it reminds you of the stakes here,” de Bruin said.

  “Well, if this is your idea of how to get a girl back into bed, let me tell you, it isn’t working.”

  “Don’t play games with me, Carrie? We—you—need to decide some things, and fast,” he said.

  “Is that supposed to impress me? That you know my name? Took you long enough, King of Baghdad. Maybe we should demote you to duke or count?” she snapped, her mouth dry. This was going bad very fast.

  He slapped her hard across the face. When she tried to slap back, he grabbed her wrist and twisted it.

  “Stop. You’re hurting me.”

  “Then be a good girl and behave.”

  “Go to hell, de Bruin. Beating up girls, is that what gets you off? Ecstasy and Ukrainian girls aren’t enough anymore?”

  He twisted her wrist further. She cried out in pain.

  “If you twist it any more, I think it’ll break,” she gasped.

  He let her go.

  “Loop kak, Carrie,” he cursed. “You’re making things very difficult.”

  “Who taught you your negotiating technique? Hitler?” she said, rubbing her wrist and looking out the window. They were making a turn. Damascus Street. She recognized the dome of the planetarium.

  Not good, she thought. She should be tailing Arrowhead, although she was betting ten to one Arrowhead was on his way back to Habibiya to pass details of Iron Thunder and General Demetrius’s planned military action in Baquba to some Shiite bridge agent who’d get it to—whom? Close the circle. What about Muqtada al-Sadr, leader of the Mahdi Army? Sadr City, next to Habibiya, was his base. Or the Iranians? Or was that the same thing now? Saul would know. God, she missed being able to walk down the hall to talk to him.

  What about Virgil? What would he do when he discovered she was missing? Try to find her or follow Arrowhead? Stay on Arrowhead, Virgil, not me, she tried to will him mentally. For God’s sake, stay on the son of a bitch, sensing that he wouldn’t. That he would hit the panic button and go looking for her.

  “There are things you don’t understand,” de Bruin snapped.

  “Like what, lover boy?” she said sarcastically.

  He made a face. “Shit, Lady Anne. You are not easy.”

  “I know,” she said.

  He exhaled. “I was a Recce, South African Special Forces. I built Atalaxus Executive from nothing, just me. Now you Americans are looking for the exit and everyone’s scrambling, Anne or Carrie or whatever the hell you want me to call you. You’ll walk away, you bloody Americans, and leave the rest of us holding the shit end of the stick.”

  “What does that have to do with me?”

  “Don’t bullshit me, Anne. We’re past that,” he said.

  “What do you want, Marius? If you really want me, I have to tell you, kidnapping a woman and almost breaking her arm with a gun pointed at her head—tell that son of a bitch to stop pointing that fucking thing at me—isn’t the least bit seductive,” she said, looking out the window. They were passing the big Mansour gas station, cars lin
ed up, as usual, for what seemed like a kilometer, waiting to get gas. “What is this about?”

  De Bruin waved off the Peruvian with the pistol. The man turned around and kept his eyes on the street.

  “Am I the target of a CIA operation? Is that what this is?” de Bruin asked.

  “I have no idea,” she said.

  “The hell you don’t. You’re part of it.”

  “Am I? News to me,” she said, seeing where this was heading.

  “I can make you tell me,” he said. “Trust me.”

  “Not if I don’t know,” she said.

  For a long moment, neither said anything. Around them, there was just normal Baghdad traffic on the wide street. People walking, vendors selling kebabs and fruit drinks, houses surrounded by blast walls, a small grocery store with vegetables in boxes outside in the hot sun.

  “Bloody hell, Anne,” he said, having settled on the name she’d first used when they met. “You’re making this very hard.”

  “Hard to what?” she said softly.

  “To keep you alive, dammit,” he snapped. “Do you understand what is happening? We’re like people on a damaged plane losing altitude. If we don’t throw things overboard, we crash.” Staring at her.

  “Am I one of the things?”

  “What do you think?”

  Time to choose, Carrie, she decided, taking a deep breath. If he had already decided to kill you, he wouldn’t be talking. He hasn’t made up his mind. For some reason he doesn’t want to.

  What is it? That he likes me? The hell of it was, she had to admit she was attracted to him. He was sexy. Even the scent of him: Santos de Cartier and expensive whiskey. That means there’s a play here. C’mon, you’re a trained CIA operations officer. MICE. Money. Ideology. Compromised (circumstances). Ego. That’s why people do things. Pick one and go.

  “De Bruin, Marius, listen, I’m not what you think. But if I were, hypothetically, me disappearing would make things worse, not better,” she said. “For both of us.”

  “Shit,” he said. “You are CIA. This is an operation and I’m the target.”

  “I didn’t say that.”