Andrew Kaplan - Carrie's run

“Makes two of us. So that’s it? We’re done?” Marielle said, reaching for her purse.

“There is one thing.”

“Now it comes. Do you know, habibi , I almost believed you. Almost,” she said, wrinkling her nose as if something smelled bad.

“I just need one thing. But it has to be the truth.”

“And the five thousand American?”

“Put your hand under the table.”

Carrie reached into her handbag under the level of the table, took out the wad of hundred-dollar bills and passed it to the other woman.

“I need to count it,” Marielle said. Carrie nodded. Marielle added, “How will you know if I’m lying?”

“Because I’ll know,” Carrie said, and leaned closer. “Go into the ladies’ room; make sure no one sees you. Count the money, then take a good look at the photograph I put in your purse. I need you to confirm for me who that man is.”

“What makes you think I know this man?”

“Because you do,” Carrie said with a lot more conviction than she felt. She didn’t have much time in Beirut, and Marielle was the best shot she had. All or nothing, she thought, taking a deep breath. All or nothing.

“I just tell you and then I leave? That’s it?” Marielle asked.

“And bon voyage.” Carrie nodded.

Marielle got up and said something to the waiter, who pointed the way to the salle des dames . Carrie sat there at the edge of her chair, thinking that this was such a long shot. But if she was right, Marielle had to know the unknown janitor.

That night, after the shootout at the Hippodrome and after she and Fielding and Saul had had it out at the safe house, when Fielding had gone back to his Rue Maarad office, he’d had his Beretta with him. Say what you would about Davis Fielding-and God knew she could say plenty-he knew his basic tradecraft. Under ordinary circumstances, he never would have let a stranger into the Rue Maarad office at night.

But that night, with everything that was going on and with him under suspicion from Langley, sitting there on edge, waiting for Saul and the ax to drop, never in a million years would he have let someone in unless he knew them very well, much less let them get the drop on him and kill him with his own gun. Which meant Davis not only knew his killer, he knew him well. And if he knew him, then Rana knew him-and that meant it was possible, even likely, that Dima and Marielle did too.

If not-and with the Beirut police out of it-they truly were at a dead end, she thought, gulping down the rest of her drink. Where the hell was Marielle? What was taking her so long? How long did it take to look at a photograph? She wouldn’t try to make a run for it, would she? No, she knew Carrie knew where she lived in Bourj Hammoud with her aunt or whomever the older woman was. Saunders, glancing over, caught her eye. She tried to look more confident than she felt. All or nothing. All at once, she breathed a sigh of relief when Marielle came walking back to the table.

She knows, Carrie thought excitedly. From her eyes, she could tell Marielle had recognized the unknown janitor in the photograph.

“It’s very strange,” Marielle said, handing her the photo and sitting back down. “Why is he dressed that way? Like a bawaab ?” The Arabic word for “janitor.”

“Who is he?” Carrie asked, holding her breath. Come on, she thought. Come on.

“It’s Bilal. Bilal Mohamad. I’m surprised you didn’t know,” she said, looking curiously at Carrie.

“Why should I?”

“Everyone knows Bilal,” she said, tweaking her nose with her fingers in a sign for cocaine. “He’s a pédé . A friend of Rana’s. Also her American papa gâteau certainly knew him. Dima too. You’re not just testing me? You really don’t know him?”

Carrie’s mind was bouncing all over the place like a pinball. She had a name. Bilal Mohamad. A gay man who knew Rana-and according to Marielle, he also knew Rana’s American sugar daddy, her papa gâteau, Davis Fielding. It struck her like a bolt of lightning. Suddenly everything made sense.

What was it Rana had said about her sexual relationship with Davis when she’d interrogated her after Baalbek? “ At first we did, but now I’m mostly just for show. ” It had puzzled her at the time, but now it fit perfectly. Was this what Davis Fielding had been hiding? That he was gay? But why hide? Who gave a shit? Why would he need a beautiful mistress like Rana as a cover so people would think he wasn’t gay? And what about this Bilal Mohamad? Why did he kill him? Was Bilal Davis’s lover? Because if he was, it would explain why Davis had let him into the office that night.

Davis knew he was leaving Beirut. Probably forever. That was the other dangling thread that had been nagging at her, threatening her theory about the murder. How was it that the very night he faced ruin and the end of his career, his last night in Beirut, was the night that coincidentally someone just happened to drop by to murder him? Before Saul, who was on his way, showed up? Coincidences like that don’t happen. Not in real life, they don’t.

So Bilal hadn’t just shown up. Davis had called him. Probably told him it was urgent, that he was leaving. If they were lovers, Davis had wanted to say good-bye.

Bilal must have dropped what he was doing and hurried right over. It would have been his last chance to silence Fielding before he spilled everything to the Company, before he, Bilal, was in the CIA’s crosshairs. Nothing coincidental about it. She needed to get Ray Saunders and Saul to check Fielding’s landline and cell phone records.

The pieces finally fit. Once they started digging, she was confident they would find Bilal connected to both Nightingale and Abu Nazir.

“I’ve been away. What’s he do, this Bilal Mohamad?” she asked.

“This and that.” Marielle shrugged. “It’s Beirut,” she said, making a sign for someone sticking cocaine up their nose.

“Where can I find him?”

“Where do you think? Most nights, Wolf,” Marielle said. Of course, Carrie thought. A gay bar. “So I should just leave?”

“The sooner the better. Take a few weeks. Enjoy Paris,” Carrie said, getting up to leave. “Everyone does.”

Minet al-Hosn, Beirut, Lebanon

The gay bar Wolf was on a side street in the Hamra district, close to the American University. By eleven at night, the sidewalk outside was crowded with men in shirts open to their navels with cocktails or bottles of 961 beer in hand. Carrie squeezed through and walked past the bouncer, a big shaved-headed man who stared at her quizzically.

Inside, the club was jammed, hip-hop music blasting, laser lights flashing across a sea of men, some talking, some kissing and groping each other. Along the walls were leatherette benches where slim young men in tight short-shorts gave lap dances to older men with money to spend. Carrie threaded her way through the crowd to the bar. She was the only woman there. Although she spent time looking, she didn’t see Bilal Mohamad anywhere.

“What’ll you have?” the bartender asked her in Arabic. He was a slim, baby-faced thirtysomething who could have passed for twenty, topless except for a pair of red suspenders holding up tight leather pants.

“Tequila, Patrón Silver,” she said, nearly shouting to be heard over the noise.

“Are you lost?” the bartender said when he came back with her drink.

“No, but he is,” she said, showing him the photograph of Bilal Mohamad on her cell phone. “Where I can find him?”

“Haven’t seen him,” the bartender said, moving down the bar to help someone else.

“You looking for Bilal?” a man crowded in next to her said.