Saul's Game Read online

  29 April 2009

  When the plane cleared Iranian airspace, Saul ordered tequila shots over ice for both of them. Through the window, Carrie could see only open Iraqi desert below. It would be a short flight to Baghdad. Saul raised his plastic glass as if to toast, but she ignored him and drained her glass.

  “The MOIS guy, Khanzadeh. You’re going to bring him to the U.S.? New start, new identity?” she asked finally.

  “Part of the deal. If anyone ever asks any questions, he can’t be there,” he said. “Besides, MOIS isn’t the real power in Iran.”

  “You mean the Revolutionary Guards?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Why did you ask about his mother?” she asked.

  Saul exhaled. “Bad day,” he said. So much came back to that day. “During the revolution in Iran, things got—” He stopped. The worst mistake of his life. He’d been trying to get his agents out of Iran, but needed a place to hide them in the meantime. He had trusted his most important agent, Majid Javadi, who told him about a SAVAK safe house. “It was chaos. I trusted someone I thought was a friend,” he continued. “I found all four of them dead. Shot in the back of the head. One of them was a professor of political science. Sanjar Hootan. He wanted so much to see Iran become a modern state that could be a beacon . . .” Saul looked away for a second. “He had a sister, Sepideh. Khanzadeh is her son. What he’s doing for us is their revenge, although why they still trusted me, I don’t know.”

  Because people want to believe in America, Carrie thought. Even when we let them down. Because without America, what is there?

  “He said I would be executed. I thought I was going to die,” she said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Bullshit! That’s bullshit! You keep saying that, Saul, but it doesn’t mean a goddamn thing anymore. Do you know what they did to me? First Syria, now this,” she hissed in a whisper. “They stripped me. They tortured me. I thought I was going to die. You wouldn’t use the lowest whore in the street the way you used me.”

  “I couldn’t tell you everything,” Saul said, his eyes incredibly sad. “What if, under pressure, you blurted something out, looked at Khanzadeh for help, anything? I couldn’t take the chance.”

  Her hand holding the plastic glass was trembling. She steadied it with both hands, looking at Saul to see if he had noticed. He’d turned away for a second. She was starting to feel light, as if she were made of helium. Soon she wouldn’t need the plane to fly. Some part of her realized that if she didn’t get her meds soon, she was going to be in serious trouble. She could almost hear the plane’s intercom announce: “Will someone please see to the crazy lady in Seat 12A?”

  “I don’t think I can do this anymore,” she said. “I told them everything.”

  “No. You told them what you were supposed to. And in a way that will absolutely convince them, even if, as Khanzadeh suggests, it goes all the way up to the Expediency Council and the Supreme Leader himself. You prevented a war and the bloodiest retreat in American history, Carrie. Saved I don’t know how many lives. And no blowback. You were never in Iran. No one knows but us,” he said. “We just need one more thing in Baghdad and we’re done. You’ll come back to Langley.”

  Not looking at him.

  “Maybe I don’t want to. What we do, the things I do . . . I feel dirty, Saul. And do you know what’s worse? Not what they did. What I did . . . do. I think about that Iranian girl in the body bag. What about her?”

  “It’s almost done,” he said.

  “I don’t want to be a martyr, Saul. A jihadi for America. Because then what the hell’s the difference between them and us?”

  “One difference,” he said quietly. “It’s what keeps me going.”

  “What? Because I swear I don’t know anymore.”

  “They want to kill people. We want to stop killing.”

  She stared at him; the beard and glasses, the glint of ruthlessness in his eyes that sometimes only she saw. The Rabbi Pirate.

  “We kill too. We lie, we cheat,” she whispered. “What do you file that under?”

  “It’s a slippery slope,” he admitted, then tried a smile. “But look at a globe sometime. The whole damn world’s on a slant.”

  “Give me a break,” she said, shaking her head. “What about the others? Perry? Virgil? Warzer?”

  “They’re good. We haven’t heard from Warzer in Karbala, but—”

  “What do you mean you haven’t heard? Day after tomorrow’s the—” She stopped herself, a thrill of fear going through her. “Where’s Warzer?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What the hell do you mean, you don’t know? Where is he?” Her heart was fluttering. The way she’d parted from Warzer. What if something happened to him? The horrible thing she’d said. She had to fix it.

  “We haven’t heard. The assumption is he’s hooked up with IPLA’s Abu Ghazawan in Karbala. Warzer’s a Sunni from Anbar, a Dulaimi from Ramadi. Abu Ghazawan is a Salmani, a branch of the Dulaimi. He’d accept Warzer as al-Qaeda.”

  She stared at Saul.

  “You assume? You’re going to sacrifice Warzer too? You used me up; now Warzer?”

  “Carrie, Warzer wanted Karbala. He came to me,” Saul said, twenty centuries of Jewish sadness in his eyes. “I don’t think he was happy.” He left it unsaid. He didn’t have to say it. Warzer wasn’t happy about what was happening with you, Carrie.

  “Go to hell, Saul. Jesus.”

  “Carrie . . .” He sighed. The seat-belt sign came on. He ignored it. The plane began its descent for landing in Baghdad. “You talk like we have a choice. We’re like the little Dutch boy. If we don’t keep our finger in the dike . . .” His voice trailed off.

  “I’m going to Karbala, Saul. Don’t try to stop me.”

  “Knowing you, what choice do I have? But if you get yourself killed, I’m really going to be pissed,” he said, securing his seat belt.

  An Army helicopter, a Black Hawk, reminding her of the mission in Otaibah that started it all, brought Carrie, along with two Army officers, to Security Station Hussayniyah, the joint U.S.–Iraqi Army base in the northern part of the city of Karbala. She’d taken a clozapine before she boarded the helicopter at Camp Victory in Baghdad, but wasn’t sure it was working. She wasn’t sure anything was. Saul’s plan was so complex and she could only see a piece of it. She had to trust him—and trust isn’t what spies do, she thought grimly.

  In a ladies’ room at the base, she changed into a clean black chador that covered all but her face. This was how she would dress in Karbala, she decided. Like a good Shiite woman, showing her ID to a guard at the base gate, who just stared at her, studying the photo on her U.S. passport and then at her several times. Finally, shaking his head, he let her pass. She went to the street outside the base and caught a taxi.

  Riding into the heart of Karbala down a wide boulevard, palm groves on one side, a canal on the other, she went over what Saul had told her about the Sunnis, the Albu Mahal tribesmen that Sheikh al-Rashawi of Ramadi had sent for her to liaise with. In this most Shiite of cities, they would have to be extremely wary. As would the IPLA group of Abu Ghazawan they were hunting. Everyone would be lying low till the anticipated attack tomorrow at the Friday sermon at the shrine, which would be overflowing with pilgrims.

  Was Warzer undercover with Abu Ghazawan? she wondered. Was that why they hadn’t heard from him? Either that or he was being held captive, or quite possibly dead. Not Warzer; he’s too good. He must have gotten close, which is what Saul wanted him to do.

  But that’s why she was here. The one thing she could do that the Albu Mahals couldn’t. Spot Warzer instantly, anywhere, even in a massive crowd, such as those expected for the sermon of the Grand Ayatollah al-Janabi at the Imam Hussein Shrine. The ayatollah would speak to the crowd tomorrow at the noon Dhuhr prayer. And then she had to hope that Warzer could bird-dog them to Abu Ghazawan. Otherwise, there was no way to stop whatever it was that Abu Nazir had planned for Karbala.<
br />
  Even though it was still early morning, just after six, and a day early, the crowds were already heavy on Al-Moheet Street that ran alongside the plaza around the shrine. Behind the walls, she could see a golden dome and gilded minarets gleaming in the sun. People were already lining up to form a procession. The men were dressed in black; the women, standing in a separate group, wore black chadors. She was right in style, she thought.

  Some of the men carried hand-painted signs that read in Arabic BISMILLAH (I Place My Trust in Allah) and YA HUSSEIN! (O Hussein!). And WE WILL DIE FOR YOU, HUSSEIN! All for Hussein, the martyr buried in the holy shrine. Along one side of the street, vendors were setting up booths and tents, with fruit drinks, kebabs over charcoal braziers, and religious paraphernalia for sale. The turnout tomorrow would be huge, she realized. In the tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands. A terrible sense of urgency gripped her. She and Saul had left it very late, a taste like metal in her mouth.

  The taxi skirted the procession and drove past the plaza, dropping her off at a corner of the Al-Tarbiyah roundabout, with its odd monument in the center that looked like a frozen yogurt. She made her way to a side street off the square, unable to shake the feeling of being watched, pausing for a second by a poster of Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini to check. No one. But the feeling didn’t go away.

  Then she spotted the building, identifying it by the faded blue door she’d been told to look for. A dilapidated three-story, pocked with bullet holes like other buildings on the block. She crossed the street, checking for watchers. A curtain moved at a second-story window of the building on the opposite side of the street. Shit.

  I hope these guys have had a sighting of Warzer or Abu Ghazawan, she thought, walking to the building, a creepy feeling at the back of her neck, knowing she was being watched. She opened the door and went inside. The entrance hallway was dark; it smelled of fried fish and cigarette smoke. She had to wait for her eyes to adjust. There was a wooden staircase on her right. Before she took two steps, she felt hard metal against her neck and a man’s voice said, “U’af.” Stop. She froze.

  “Go up the stairs,” he told her in Arabic.

  She did, the gun at the back of her neck. They went up a narrow wooden staircase in the dark, Carrie feeling her way forward. The man with her knocked at an apartment door. A second Arab, with a fierce hawk’s nose and coppery skin, dressed in the uniform of an Iraqi Security Forces officer, opened the door. He held an M4 carbine in one hand, pointed straight at them. When he saw Carrie, he smiled.

  “Salaam aleikum,” he greeted her.

  “Wa ‘aleikum es salaam,” she murmured back.

  “I am Ali Ibrahim. I am your brother. You must be Carrie,” motioning her inside. “Come, we have much to do, and only a short time, little sister.”

  He introduced her to the others. Four of them, including Big Mohammed, the man who’d put a gun to her neck. And Little Mohammed, a short man with a harelip not disguised by a sparse mustache, who grinned at her like a teenager from the couch where he was checking an RPG grenade launcher. The other two were Emad and Younis. Like Ali, they were dressed in ISF uniforms. All of them, she learned were of the Albu Mahal tribe. Ali and Little Mohammed were cousins.

  “The house is being watched from across the street,” she said.

  “We know. A Shiite woman, Mrs. Fawzi. She thinks we’re from the Shiite Badr Brigade here to protect Grand Ayatollah al-Janabi tomorrow,” Ali said.

  “How do you know?”

  “We saw her watching, so we gave her that story. We know she believes. She told Emad she will watch the street for us.”

  That doesn’t prove anything, she decided.

  “Have you seen Warzer Zafir?” she asked, holding up the photo of him on her cell phone. She knew they were aware that Warzer was originally from Ramadi, of the Dulaimi tribe, of which the Albu Mahal was one of many branches.

  “Just once. Little Mohammed thinks he saw him with three men in the Al-Shafaa neighborhood. It was at a distance—and all we had to identify him by was a cell-phone photograph, so he’s not sure it was him.”

  “Did we locate their safe house?”

  Ali and the other men nodded.

  “They stay inside, like us,” Ali said.

  “Who’s watching them now?” she asked.

  “Another of us. Ismail. There’s a bakery, on that street. He got a job helping the owner, an old man who lost a leg in the Iran-Iraq War, for a few days. He calls us from the back, by the ovens, on his cell phone,” Ali said.

  “If we go there, I can recognize him,” she said, biting her lip. She had a sickening feeling about Warzer, the way they parted, the IPLA attack Saul believed Abu Nazir had planned for tomorrow. She had left it too late, she thought. Glancing around the apartment, empty of anything that would suggest some person had ever actually lived there, she began to think it was too late for all of them.

  “We know. It’s good you have come.” Unsaid, that she’d come so late they must’ve thought she wasn’t coming, that this mission, which could cost them their lives, would have been for nothing.

  “Please excuse me for coming so late to Karbala,” she apologized. “What of the men Little Mohammed saw?”

  “They were all armed with pistols and AK-47s. Everyone there is Shiite, so the people of the neighborhood must believe they are of the Mahdi Army. If anyone in that district were to think they were Sunnis, like us, they would be dead,” Ali said, pouring tea into glasses from a metal teapot.

  Carrie asked for a map of the city. Big Mohammed put one on the table and she studied it. He pointed out the Al-Shafaa district. It was near a highway. That meant they were thinking of quick movement, possibly even escape after an attack, she thought. It had all the earmarks of an Abu Nazir–planned attack.

  The two of them, Ali and her, sat over tea at a table, partially covered with the remains of breakfast, khubz bread and a small dish of butter, dates, honey, and also bullets and magazines for the carbines and other weapons.

  “You must know, it is strange for me to sit thus with a woman,” Ali said, putting his hand to his heart. “But you are from our friend Sha‘wela, Saul, whom we know can be trusted.”

  “He is lying. He sits thus with his sister, his wife. Also his mother, who still tells him what to do,” Little Mohammed said in Arabic, to general laughter.

  “With your wife too,” Younis called out to Little Mohammed, to more laughter.

  “How many of them are there?” Carrie asked, smiling.

  “We’re not certain. We’ve spotted three SUVs. All white Toyotas. Perhaps ten men. Perhaps fifteen. There may be more. But this is what we saw in Al-Shafaa. We watched them put jerry cans of gasoline in the SUVs,” he added.

  Car bombs, she thought. Three vehicles. Multiple simultaneous attacks. Practically a signature of Abu Nazir. And although things were easing up, there were still queues for gasoline in Iraq, which meant they had been planning this for months, accumulating the gasoline. And Warzer was in the middle of it.

  She said it out loud. What they were all thinking.

  “Car bombs. Where? In front of the shrine?”

  “Near the gates, yes. But if they want to destroy the tomb, someone must go inside on foot to get close to the sepulcher of Hussein itself,” Ali said.

  “If someone were to succeed in blowing up the tomb or damaging the remains of Hussein, would it be war?” she asked.

  “Not just in Iraq. The whole world,” Big Mohammed said, and the others nodded. “Every Shiite would become a martyr.”

  The question was, how could they approach the tomb tomorrow, when there would be a hundred thousand people clamoring to get close? The only way, she and Saul had agreed, was if Abu Ghazawan’s men went there ahead of time. They would blow it up tomorrow to maximize casualties, but Abu Ghazawan would have to get inside today.

  Ali answered his cell phone. He listened, saying “na’am . . . na’am,” yes and yes, and little else. He hung up. They looked at hi
m expectantly.

  “They’re moving,” he said.

  “Then we have to go,” Carrie said, getting up.

  “You must stay close,” Ali said, gathering his weapons. “My task is to protect you.”

  “Inshallah.” God willing, Carrie said. “But you know yourself what will happen if they harm the shrine. We have to stop it.”

  The apartment filled with the clicks of weapons being loaded and checked. Everyone made sure they had each other’s number in their cell-phone contacts. All of them using prepaid phones purchased for today only.

  The men were dressed as Iraqi Security Force militia, carbines slung over their shoulders. Carrie checked her compact Glock 26 pistol and stuck it in a holster she placed in the front of her jeans and belt, by her groin, the last place any Muslim should touch, which she wore under her chador. When they were ready, Ali walked around, checking the men’s uniforms

  “If we live, each of us will make his way back here separately. Make sure you are not followed. If anyone follows even one of us, we are all lost. If one of us is wounded, he is lost. We cannot stop,” he said.

  “So what should one do?” Little Mohammed asked.

  “Don’t get wounded,” Ali said.

  They got into two small cars, a Nissan and a Honda, and headed for the shrine. Carrie squeezed into the backseat, as befit a woman in a chador, with Little Mohammed. As they approached the neighborhood close to the shrine, the traffic became heavier and they had to navigate through crowds arriving on buses and on foot.

  Little Mohammed shook his head as they moved slowly up Qabla Street toward one of the gates in the stone wall that surrounded the shrine. Ahead, Carrie could see there were already several hundred people beginning to fill the vast open plaza outside the walls.

  “It’s funny. A joke I never would have believed,” Little Mohammed said to her in Arabic.

  “What?” she said.

  “We are Sons of Iraq.” He grinned, his harelip spreading in a way that gave him a toothy rabbit look. “We are Sunnis. And here we are, about to die to save a Shiite shrine. This is a big joke. We’re all crazy.” He leaned closer. “Sometimes I think Allah created this world as a place for all the crazy people in the universe.”