Homeland: Carrie's Run: A Homeland Novel Page 3

  Carrie stood up.

  “Listen, Davis,” she said, trying to control herself. “There’s something bigger going on here. Has it occurred to you to wonder why they wanted a CIA case officer when if Nightingale was a double, they could have fed us garbage for years and we’d have eaten it like pigs at a trough? Ask yourself why.”

  “Sit down,” Fielding snapped. “Where do you think you’re going? I’m not done with you.”

  She sat. Inside, she was shaking with anger. She could have ripped his eyeballs out, she was so furious. She was that strong, that powerful. Oh God, was she going on one of her flights? She could feel control slipping; she was almost on the verge of killing him. Control yourself, Carrie. You can do it.

  “Dima set the contact up. We need to consider her,” she said carefully, trying to hold it in.

  “What about her cell phone?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing in the dead drop either.” For emergency contacts with Dima, she used the hollow of a tree in Sanayeh Park. When she’d gone there in the middle of the night after trawling the clubs, the hollow was empty. She had left a chalk mark on a branch, indicating that Dima should contact her ASAP, but she had a bad feeling about hearing from her.

  “Where else did you look?”

  “Le Gray, Whiskey, the Palais, her place—and you don’t have to say it; I was careful—everywhere. No one’s seen her. I picked the lock in her apartment. She hadn’t been home. It looked like she hadn’t been there for a couple of days.”

  “So she’s shacked up with the latest hunk from Riyadh with cash in his pocket, so what?”

  “Or she’s being tortured or is already dead. There’s been a security breach, Davis. You can’t ignore the possibility.”

  “So you say,” he said, biting his lip. “What else?”

  “There was no one in the safe house,” she said. “What was that about?”

  “Budget. Bean counters in Washington.” He shrugged. “They’re running the universe. We had to cut back. So according to you, you were clean. They chased you. You got away. No one followed you to Achilles? What about this older woman you got the car from?” He steepled his index fingers, his blue eyes lasering into her. “She gives her car to a complete stranger. Why would she do that?”

  She swallowed. “She was a decent person. Woman to woman. She could see I was in trouble.” She could see I was desperate, she thought.

  “Or maybe she was one of theirs and told them where to find you. Either that, or they persuaded her,” he said, making a gesture like pulling out a fingernail.

  Is he crazy? she wondered. Where does he come up with this crap?

  “She had no idea where I was going. I told her I’d leave the car at the Crowne Plaza and I did. She knew nothing about the Achilles location.”

  “No, but like everyone in Beirut, she knew the Crowne was on Rue Hamra, so where you were going couldn’t be far. All they had to do was blanket the area. Fifty watchers in the Friday-night crowd and you didn’t even spot one.” He shook his head disgustedly. “The only amateur in this whole ridiculous fiasco is sitting right across from me.”

  “I don’t believe this. I manage to escape a deadly Hezbollah trap and it’s my fault?” she said, standing again. She felt sick to her stomach. What was happening? Was he firing her? “What are you saying? Would you rather I’d died or been captured?”

  “I’m saying you’re done here. You’re certainly compromised and we’ll have to get a new safe house, thanks to you.”

  “What about my agents? They count on me,” she said, her heartbeat pounding in her head like a drum. She’d never been fired before. It was the most sickening feeling she’d ever experienced.

  “For the time being, I’ll handle Dima and your other Joes. You’re done. Talk to Carol about arrangements and your flight back,” he said. “And I’ll call Berenson. He’s the one who foisted you on me in the first place.”

  “So that’s it. All my work and I’m gone for something that isn’t my fault?”

  “Go pack, Carrie. I’m sending you back to Langley. Maybe they can find something useful for you. Not everybody’s cut out for the field.”

  “You’re wrong, Davis,” she said, her jaw clenched, knowing she was wasting her breath. “I wasn’t followed. There’s a security breach. You need to check it out.”

  “We’ll look into it,” he said, waving her off and picking up the phone.

  On the way to the airport, Virgil Maravich made the turn off El Asad Road at the Boulevard El Sader roundabout. He kept glancing sideways at Carrie, who was dressed in a full head-to-foot black abaya.

  “I shouldn’t be doing this,” he said. “Not to mention, Dahiyeh isn’t exactly the safest place in the world for outsiders.”

  He was right, of course, Carrie thought. Dahiyeh, in southern Beirut, was poor, Shiite, and controlled by Hezbollah militia armed to the teeth, who might stop you at any intersection. Driving through, there were still plenty of bombed-out buildings and empty lots filled with weeds and rubble from past Israeli attacks and the long civil war.

  “I appreciate it,” she said, shaking her head. “What is his problem?”

  “Fielding?” Virgil grinned. “He’s one of the old-boy network, don’t you get it? He knows the rules. Somebody’s head had to roll over Nightingale and the breach at Achilles. He puts it on you, it’s not on him.”

  “That’s disgusting,” she said, looking over at Virgil. Tall, thin, bald on top; she had met him on her first surveillance in Beirut. Then as now, they’d been talking about Fielding.

  “Did he give you his ‘Beirut Rules’ speech? One mistake and they kill you and then they go and party. Asshole,” he’d said with a grin that first time. It had been Virgil who’d given her the idea of wearing a wedding band when going out at night or on RDVs. “Your sex life is none of my business,” he’d told her. “But unless you want it to be everybody’s business or you enjoy being groped, in this part of the world it’s a good idea to let men think you belong to another man, which is how they think of it. Breaking that is a bigger taboo than rape. At least the ring gives you the choice.”

  She’d never been attracted to Virgil. She didn’t know how he felt about her and she never let it go there. He was married but didn’t talk about it. It had nothing to do with her. They were colleagues, foxhole buddies. She respected him. She thought he felt the same about her. Even if she’d wanted to, they both knew that sex would only screw things up and the truth was, they’d come to rely on each other.

  “Welcome to the real CIA,” Virgil said with a grimace. He had the typical attitude of contempt that most field operatives had for the suits back at Langley. “We don’t need enemy spies. We’ve got our own little organizational cesspool. I’m sorry you got caught up in it.”

  They drove to the Ghobeiry district, where they turned off into side streets filled with kids playing, kicking cans and using sticks for guns, and men playing tawla, a form of backgammon, and sipping tea outside storefronts. On the sides of buildings were the giant painted faces of martyrs, most of them bearded men so young their beards looked fake, and everywhere, yellow and green Hezbollah flags hanging like laundry.

  Before she’d ever gone to Lebanon, Saul had told her, “Beirut is like Istanbul; it’s on two continents. North Beirut is Paris with palm trees; Dahiyeh is the Middle East.”

  “Where are you meeting her?” Virgil asked.

  “Supermarket,” she said. “It’s hard for her to sneak away.”

  “How do you want to play this?”

  “You stay in the car, engine going, in case we need to get away. If anyone asks, you’re my male guardian.”

  “Well, don’t let anyone get too close. With that Irish-American mug of yours, even with an abaya and veil, you’re not fooling anyone.” He grinned.

  “Thanks, Virgil. I appreciate this. You’re always there for me.” She looked at him. “Why?”

  He glanced over at her. The abaya, the hijab she was wearing; it was
weird.

  “You really want to know?”

  “Yeah, I really do.”

  He nodded. “Don’t let it get around, but you’re the smartest damn person here. Oh, and you’re not bad to look at either. No wonder Fielding hates your guts. Just do me one favor.”

  “Name it.”

  He drove the narrow street up the hill. Four young men with AK-47s, smoking water pipes outside a shisha café, watched them drive slowly by, Carrie pulling her niqab, her veil, across her face as they passed.

  “This is nuts,” he muttered, looking around.

  “I have to do this. She only trusts me. I can’t just leave her hanging.”

  “All I want is, don’t push it. As soon as you’re done, Fielding’s orders, I’ve got to take you to the airport.”

  “I’ll make it fast.”

  “Better be,” he said, pulling into a narrow street with sandbags piled in front of a sand-colored mosque. “I don’t know how long the welcome mat’s going to be out around here,” he added, eyes darting around.

  Carrie nodded. She had to take this chance. Of all her assets, Fatima Ali, code-named “Julia”—because she and Carrie had first met in a movie theater and afterward, the two of them walking, Fatima had confided that she loved American movies and was a big fan of the movie star Julia Roberts—was the one she was closest to. Behind her abaya and niqab, Julia was a pretty, dark-haired, sharp-as-a-razor woman whose husband, Abbas, abused her nonstop because she had painful endometriosis that prevented her from having children.

  He hit her almost every day, called her a sharmuta—a whore—and a useless piece of childless khara, and had once beaten her so badly with a tire iron, she’d had to drag herself to the hospital with six broken bones, including a smashed tibia, a skull fracture and a shattered jaw. He had taken a second wife, a gap-toothed teenage girl, and when she became pregnant, he made Julia subservient to her and allowed the young girl to slap her in the face and laugh whenever Julia did anything that displeased her.

  She couldn’t leave him because Abbas was commander of the Harakat al-Mahnum, the Organization of the Oppressed brigade, within Hezbollah. If she left, he’d track her down and kill her. Movies were her only escape. All Carrie had to do to recruit her was to listen. Only now, she was leaving Julia without a lifeline. She had to at least warn her face-to-face.

  Virgil pulled into an unpaved parking area behind a small supermarket. As Carrie got out of the car, he pulled out a Sig Sauer automatic and said, “Make it quick. I think I’m outgunned around here.”

  She nodded and as she walked into the supermarket, she heard the loudspeaker from a nearby mosque with the call for the noon Dhuhr prayer and it tore at her in a way she didn’t expect. She was going to miss Beirut.

  Taking a basket, she walked over to the dry-goods section. Julia, also in an abaya and veil, was examining a box of Poppins, a popular Lebanese breakfast cereal. Carrie put a Poppins box in her basket too.

  “So good to see you,” Carrie said in Arabic. “And how is your husband and family?”

  “Good, alhamdulillah”—thank God—Fatima said, pulling her aside, her eyes darting around. “What’s happened?” she whispered. Carrie had left her a one-word note, ya’ut, the Arabic word for “ruby,” their code for an emergency contact, under a potted urn in the Muslim cemetery near Boulevard Bayhoum. Julia’s husband monitored all her calls and e-mails; the dead drop was the only way to communicate with her.

  “I’m being pulled from Beirut. Another assignment,” Carrie whispered as they pretended to shop together.

  “Why?”

  “I can’t say.” She took Julia’s hand. They walked hand-in-hand like children. “I’ll miss you. I wish I could take you with me.”

  “I wish too,” Fatima said, looking away. “You go to real America, but for me it’s like the movies. A made-up place.”

  “I’ll come back, I swear.”

  “What will happen to me?”

  “They’ll assign you to someone else. Not me.” Julia’s eyes welled up. She shook her head and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “They’ll be okay. I promise,” Carrie said.

  “No they won’t. I won’t talk to anyone else. They’ll have to send you back.”

  “You have to listen,” Carrie said. “They won’t do that.”

  “Then, inshallah”—God willing—“they’ll never get another word from me.”

  “If there’s an emergency, use the cemetery. I’ll have someone monitor the dead drop,” she whispered.

  “There is something I have to tell you.” She looked around to make sure they weren’t overheard and pulled Carrie close. “There’s going to be an attack against America. A big one.”

  “How do you know?”

  Fatima’s eyes darted around like a trapped animal’s. She took a few steps and motioned for Carrie to follow. She glanced around the corner of the aisle to make sure there was no one near.

  “I overheard Abbas talking on his special cell phone. The one he only uses when it is important,” she whispered.

  “Who was he talking to?”

  “I don’t know. But the way he stood and listened, someone of importance.”

  “What about the attack?” Carrie whispered. “Any details? Time? Place? Method?”

  “I don’t think they told him. I’m not even sure it’s Hezbollah. But it’s soon.”

  “How soon?”

  “I don’t know. But he said ‘khaliban zhada,’ you understand?”

  “I understand,” Carrie said. Very soon. She leaned close to Fatima’s ear. “Any idea how big or where?”

  She shook her head. “But when he heard, Abbas said something. Allahu akbar.” God is great, Carrie translated automatically. “We say this all the time.” She shrugged. “But it was the way he said it. I can’t explain, but it scared me. I wish I could help you more. Something very bad is going to happen.”

  “This helps a lot. Truly. Are you okay?”

  “No.” She looked around again. “I can’t stay. Someone might see us.”

  “I know. Shokran.” Thank you. Carrie squeezed her hand. “I have to go too. Be careful.”

  “Carrie,” Fatima said. “You’re my only friend. Think of me. Otherwise, I think I’m lost forever.”

  A horn honked outside. Virgil. Carrie took Fatima’s hand and put it to her own cheek.

  “Me too,” she said.

  CHAPTER 3

  Langley, Virginia

  After four years in Beirut, plus time in Iraq, it felt strange driving the woodsy George Washington Memorial Parkway, handing the badge she’d gotten out of her safe-deposit box to the guard at the gate like an everyday commuter. Coming into the George Bush headquarters building, she was struck by how many people she didn’t know. No one gave her a second glance in the elevator. In a skirt, blouse, jacket and makeup for the office, she felt like she was wearing a disguise. I don’t belong here, she thought. Maybe I never did.

  She’d been up all night, unable to sleep. When she closed her eyes to try to sleep she saw her father, Frank Mathison. Not as he was now, but how he was when she was a child back in Michigan. He’d lost his job at Ford Motor Company when she was six. She remembered her mother coming into her sister’s and her room to sleep with them, the three of them huddled under the covers while her father paced the house all night, saying nonstop that there was a miracle coming; he had seen the sign in computer code.

  She remembered her father driving them up to New Baltimore on Lake St. Clair when she was in first grade in the middle of December, talking about the miracle and how they were to be witnesses, and sitting there on a dock near the water tower, away from the center of the town decorated for Christmas, all of them shivering, freezing cold, looking out at the gray waters of the lake for two days while her father kept saying, “It’s coming. Just you wait. It’s coming.”

  And her mother shouting at him, “What’s coming, Frank? What’s the big miracle? Is Jesus gonna come strolling toward us across Anchor Bay?
Because if he is and if the angels are coming with him, tell ’em to bring us some heaters, because me and the kids are freezing to death.”

  “Do you see the water tower, Emma. It’s mathematics. Don’t you get it? The universe is mathematics. Computers are mathematics. Everything is math. And look where it sits. Right by the water.”

  “What has math got to do with it? What are you talking about?”

  “I measured it. It’s thirty-seven miles exactly from our front door to the water tower. This is where the miracle is going to happen. Thirty-seven.”

  “What has thirty-seven miles got to do with anything?”

  “It’s a prime number, Emma. It was in the computer code. And water is life. Moses struck the rock for water. Christ turned water into wine at Cana. Look at it. It’s coming. This is where it’s going to happen. Don’t you see?”

  “It’s a damn water tower, Frank!”

  Until finally they drove back to Dearborn, her father not saying anything, just driving like he wanted to kill someone, her mother yelling, “Slow down, Frank! Do you want to kill us?” and her big sister, Maggie, next to her, crying and screaming, “Stop, Daddy! Stop! Stop!” And when she got ready to go to school the next day, her mother telling her, “Don’t say anything about your father, understand?”

  It wasn’t till later that she realized that whatever strange thing had taken her father over had taken them over too when she heard her parents arguing with each other at the top of their lungs in the middle of the night. Maggie told her to stay in bed, but she tiptoed out of their room and saw them in the kitchen, the walls and floor smeared with food and broken plates and her mother screaming:

  “Three weeks! They said you haven’t been at work in three weeks without telling anyone! Of course they fired you! What the hell did you expect them to do? Give you a promotion?”

  “I was busy. You’ll see, Emma. It’ll be good. They’ll be begging for me to come back. Don’t you see? It’s all about the miracle. That’s where everyone gets it wrong. They don’t understand. Remember those license plate numbers on the cars we passed coming back from New Baltimore? They were a code. I just have to figure out the numbers,” her father said.