Andrew Kaplan - Carrie's run

The problem was how to run Walid Karim, to whom they’d assigned the code name “Romeo,” in a city under siege. Normal tradecraft like dead drops, coded messages, hidden radios and disposable cell phones wouldn’t work in a place where al-Qaeda checked every cell phone, even those of people they supposedly trusted, and you could get killed crossing any street in the city at the wrong time. Especially someone so embedded within al-Qaeda as Romeo.

The solution she and Warzer came up with was a teahouse in the souk , the downtown market near the central bus station, and a staggered set of prearranged days and times when Romeo would be there. The teahouse belonged to Falah Khadim, the uncle of a cousin of Warzer’s. For ten thousand American dollars cash and no questions asked, he was willing to risk it. Abu Nazir had cut people’s heads off for doing a lot less.

It was getting late in the day, after the loudspeaker call of the muezzin from a nearby minaret for the afternoon Asr prayer. Riding on the scooter to the souk on streets that were crowded despite the sound of gunfire and explosions coming from al-Thuba’t district near the Euphrates Canal, the waterway that branched from the main Euphrates River on the western side of the city, they went to meet the uncle, Falah.

Warzer went into the teahouse to get Falah, because as a woman, Carrie could not enter. In conservative Ramadi, the teahouse was where men went to drink strong Iraqi tea, smoke shisha hubble-bubble pipes and play dominos or tawla .

A group of men came walking toward her as she stood outside a shop selling hijabs and other women’s clothes. They were moving quickly, all of them with AKM assault rifles, and before she could move aside-thinking she needed to take cover and warn Warzer there was about to be shooting-one of them bumped into her.

“ Alma’derah ,” he apologized.

“ La mashkila ,” she said- It’s nothing -and then her heart stopped.

It was Abu Ubaida himself. She recognized him instantly from the photograph. He was attractive in an Arab male way and she could see why Dima had been drawn to him. He looked at her strangely and she turned away, pulling the edge of her hijab modestly across her face. Despite her dyed eyebrows and brown contact lenses, she could tell she looked odd to him. He was starting to say something when one of his men called and they ran off.

A moment later, she understood when there was the sound of an IED explosion near the entrance to the souk , followed a minute later by the roar of an American F/A-18 fighter jet overhead, making the awnings and the goods in the souk vendors’ stands rattle.

He’s here, she thought, hardly breathing as she moved to find Warzer. People were running everywhere. Some to get away from the blast scene, others to go to help. She ran to the teahouse just as Warzer and a short, fat Iraqi with a Saddam-style mustache came outside.

“I saw him,” she told them. “Abu Ubaida. He’s here.”

“Come inside, quick,” Warzer said, looking around. “It’s not good to talk out here.”

“I thought I couldn’t,” she said.

“There’s a storage room with a back door. Come,” the uncle said in Arabic, looking at her the same way Abu Ubaida just had. Her disguise wasn’t worth shit, she warned herself. They went around and into the storage room through a back door that had a padlock that the uncle, Falah, unlocked.

The room was small and piled high with boxes of tea and sugar and weapons of every kind.

“ Salaam . You sell guns?” Carrie asked Falah.

“Every teahouse and half the shops in Ramadi sell guns,” Falah said, looking at her as though he had never seen anyone like her. The disguise wasn’t working, but what the hell was she supposed to do? Walk around in a miniskirt and halter top? “You’re American, yes?”

“I appreciate you doing this,” she told him.

“Just give me the money and don’t tell anyone,” Falah said. She opened the plastic bag she was carrying and handed him the money from a stash of hundred-dollar bills Dempsey had in a safe in the USAID office. “When is he coming, this man?”

Carrie checked her watch. “In about twenty minutes. Can I meet him back here?”

“I don’t like to sell guns in front of my customers. Usually, I do it in back, but we can’t have a woman in a teahouse. You hide here. If someone wants to buy, I’ll tell him to come back later.”

“How’s business?” Carrie asked him.

“Not too bad, thanks to Allah,” Falah said. “Even though the supply is good, the prices keep going up. It’s cutting into my margins. If you’re interested”-he looked at her-“I can get you anything you want.”

“What are the ordinary guns going for?” she asked.

“Depends.” He shrugged. “For a brand-new American Glock 19, four hundred fifty dollars. For an AKM, Kalashnikov, never used, one hundred fifty to two hundred fifty dollars.” He studied her, then asked, “Will they execute Saddam?” Saddam Hussein, now in Abu Ghraib prison, had just been charged with war crimes against the Kurds and Shiites.

“I don’t know. It’s up to the Iraqis,” she said.

“Nothing is up to the Iraqis,” he said, motioning to Warzer.

The two men left, Falah back to his business and Warzer to keep watch while she waited for Romeo to show. The storage area was hot, claustrophobic; a thin blade of sunlight came from a crack between the back door and the sagging lintel.

After Romeo’s release from Abu Ghraib, using the cover story of an amnesty for a score of Sunni prisoners called for by al-Waliki, the new candidate of the Shiites after Jaafari had been rejected, they had gone back to the Green Zone. There Virgil tracked Romeo via the cell phone they had given him. As expected, they saw that he had gone back to Ramadi. But she had no illusions. She and Romeo didn’t trust each other. He could get rid of the cell phone and slip the leash any time he wanted. The only hold she had on him was the threat against his family.

“We’re threatening to kill his family with kindness, literally,” she told Virgil and Dempsey. Romeo was completely untrustworthy, but yet they were so close. Only minutes ago, she had literally touched Abu Ubaida. She thought about Dima and Rana and admitted to herself how badly she wanted him dead. And Abu Nazir.

Falah, followed by Walid/Romeo, came into the storage room.

“Not too long,” Falah said, and left.

“You have the money?” Walid said. She showed him the money in the plastic bag.

“Did the Tanzim accept the amnesty story?”

“I told my brothers that since they could never get real information no matter what they did to me, they never knew who they had. To the infidels, I was just another Sunni prisoner. They released me without knowing anything.” He twitched. His nervous tic.

“And they accepted it?”

“The news about al-Waliki and the amnesty was on the television. It seemed reasonable.”

“Tell me about Abu Ubaida. Is he in Ramadi?” She was testing him, not revealing she’d seen him.

“He’s here but may be leaving very soon,” he said, looking around as if they might be overheard.

“What about Abu Nazir?”

“No one knows. Some say here. Some say Haditha.” He twitched. “Or Fallujah. No one sees him. He is a jinn .” He twitched again and looked away. Something in the way he did it made her feel he was holding something back or had made a mistake.

“ ‘But those who swerve away, they are fuel for hellfire,’ ” she recited from the Koran, the sura on the jinn .

He stared at her. “So, you know the Holy Koran,” he said, as if something completely new had been added to the equation. “A woman no less.”