Andrew Kaplan - Carrie's run

“Be back in my office tomorrow. We’ll go over it all then. And, Carrie. .”

“Yes?”

“Helluva job. Really. I can’t wait to talk to you in person. There’s a lot to go over, even though Perry says he needs you there,” he said. A warmth shot through her like tequila. Saul was happy with her. She could lap up his praise like a junkie forever.

She’d booked her flight back to Washington, but on a sudden impulse, while waiting in Amman for her connecting flight to JFK and from there to Dulles, she’d changed her ticket and flown to Beirut.

Now, flying over Beirut, she could pick out the landmarks. The Marina Tower, the Habtoor, the Phoenicia Hotel, the Crowne Plaza. It’s funny, she thought. Everything that had happened had all started here with the aborted meet with Nightingale in Ashrafieh. It was like a single run, a kind of marathon that just hadn’t stopped. In a way, coming back to Beirut was like coming full circle, because this was where it began for her. Not just that night in Ashrafieh, but when she had gone back to Princeton after her first bipolar breakdown, the one that nearly ended her college career and anything resembling a future life.

Two things had saved her life, she thought. Clozapine and Beirut. The two were connected.

Summer. Her junior year at Princeton. She had gone back to class and spent all her time studying. She no longer ran, was off the track team. No more five A.M . runs. Her boyfriend, John, was also history. She was on lithium and sometimes Prozac as well. They kept adjusting her doses. But she hated it. She felt, she told her sister, Maggie, as if the lithium took away twenty IQ points.

Everything was harder. And it felt, she told the doctor at McCosh, the student health center, like she was seeing everything through a thick glass. As if she couldn’t touch it. Nothing seemed real anymore. Also, she had periods where she was excessively thirsty or she’d lose her appetite completely. She’d go two, three, four days at a time not eating, doing nothing but drinking water. She hardly ever thought about sex anymore. All she did was go from class to class, back to the dorm, thinking, I can’t do this. I can’t live like this.

What saved her was when one of her professors mentioned a summer program for Near East Studies students: the Overseas Political Studies Program at the American University of Beirut. At first her father wasn’t going to pay for it, even after she told him she needed it for her senior thesis.

“What happens if you have a breakdown there?” he asked.

“What happens if I have a breakdown here? Who’s going to help me? You, Dad?” Not saying, Remember Thanksgiving? because they both knew what she was talking about and that what had happened with him might happen with her too. What she didn’t tell him or anyone was that she was barely hanging on, that she wasn’t far off from suicide. Not far at all.

“I need this,” she told him. And when even that didn’t work, she added, “You drove Mom away. You want to drive me away too, Dad?” Until he finally agreed to pay for it.

And then, coming into Beirut, surrounded by this amazing city and ancient ruins, meeting students from all over the Middle East, walking on Rue Bliss with the other kids, eating shawarma and manaeesh , clubbing on Rue Monot, and when she was almost out of lithium, she made the great discovery. She went to an Arab doctor in Zarif, a small, clever-looking man who looked at her when she told him about the way lithium made her feel and said, “What about clozapine?”

Just being able to tell someone, finally, how it felt. And it worked. She was almost like the old Carrie, before the breakdown. When she went back to see him as a follow-up and to get a prescription refill, he was leaving on vacation. She asked, “What if I can’t get a prescription from another doctor?” and he told her, “This is the Levant, mademoiselle. For money, you can get anything.”

That summer in Beirut, where the pieces all came together for her. The ancient Roman ruins and Islamic mosaic art and listening to jazz late at night and the musicality and poetry of everyday Arabic, the Corniche and the beach clubs, the scent of fresh-baked sfouf and baklava, the call of the muezzins from the mosques, the clubs and the hot Arab boys who looked at her like they could eat her for breakfast, and she knew that whatever happened in her life, the Middle East would be part of it.

Now, descending to Beirut-Rafic Hariri airport, she wondered if the pieces would come together for her again in Beirut. This never-ending run she had been on since the night of the aborted RDV with Nightingale in Ashrafieh. Because she didn’t believe that asshole Fielding had killed himself. And if he hadn’t, it meant someone had killed him. Someone still out there. And that like her, an operation was still running.

She took a taxi from the airport. Riding in traffic on El Assad Road past the golf course, the driver, a Christian, telling her about the preparations for Easter in town and how his wife’s mother made the best maamoul -little Easter cakes made with walnuts and dates and topped with icing, that time of year-in the city. She had him drop her off near the clock tower in Nejmeh Square and walked the few blocks to the CIA’s cover office, where she was to meet with Ray Saunders, the new Beirut station chief.

Walking past the crowded outdoor tables of the street café under the old arched portico, she couldn’t help remembering the last time she’d been here, to see Davis Fielding, who’d basically told her that her career was over. It seemed a lifetime ago.

She went inside and up the stairs, pressed the doorbell, said who she was into the intercom and was buzzed in. A young American man in a plaid shirt had her wait in a small reception area till Saunders came out and greeted her. Saunders was a tall, thin, intense-looking man in his forties with long sideburns that gave him a vaguely Eastern European look.

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” he said, leading her to Fielding’s old office overlooking Rue Maarad. “Frankly, I was surprised to get your call. So was Saul.”

“Is he pissed I didn’t come straight back to Langley?” she asked.

“He said he couldn’t stop you from coming here if he tried,” he said, and gestured for her to sit down. “By the way, congrats. I heard about Abu Ubaida. Nice work.”

“I don’t know what to say. My being here might be a wild goose chase.”

“When I told him, Saul said you had a bug up your ass about Davis Fielding’s death. Is that what this is about?”

“You know it is,” she said. “Doesn’t it concern you? If Fielding didn’t commit suicide, then whatever reason or operation was the cause is still running. For all you know, you could be a target.”

“I’m curious. From what I heard, you and Fielding weren’t exactly a love match. Why are you so concerned about his death?” he asked, studying her with frank interest.

“Look, Fielding was a dick and no loss to anyone. He was going back to face the career equivalent of a firing squad at Langley and I’ll bet you’re scrambling right now to clean up his mess and figure out how badly Beirut Station’s been compromised.”

“Sounds like a pretty good reason to commit suicide to me,” Saunders said quietly.

“Yeah, but you’re not Davis. He wasn’t principled enough for that. Someone killed him-and I have to believe it has something to do with the actress, Rana Saadi, and Nightingale. That was my op and that means there is a loose end.”

He studied her, not saying anything. From outside, a car horn honked, starting a chorus of honking from other cars. The Beirut cinq á sept traffic, she thought mechanically.