Andrew Kaplan - Carrie's run

“Bilal Mohamad.” She nodded. “Any idea where he might be?”

“Who wants to know?” he asked.

“Benjamin Franklin,” she said, showing him a hundred-dollar bill.

“You’re not Bilal’s type, habibi ,” the man said. “Actually, you’re no one’s type around here.”

“Don’t be so sure. There are some really sick sluts in Beirut, habibi . I might even be one of them.” She grinned.

“You are a bad girl,” he said, tapping her shoulder with catty delight. “The key question, my darling habibi , is, does Assayid Franklin have a brother?”

“If he does, how do I know you’ll tell me the truth?” Carrie said, taking out a second hundred-dollar bill and sliding both bills toward him on the bar top.

“He’s in the Marina Tower. Sixteenth floor. You don’t believe me, ask Abdullah Abdullah,” the man said, pocketing the money and flicking his finger at the bartender, who came over.

“Are you really Abdullah Abdullah?” Carrie asked the bartender.

“No, but it’s what they call me.” The bartender shrugged. He motioned her closer. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing, mademoiselle?”

“Does anyone?” she asked.

“Bilal has dangerous friends,” the bartender muttered.

“So do I.”

“No, mademoiselle. There’s dangerous and then there’s Bilal. He’s a psychopath. Trust me, you don’t want to go there. If you want coke, hashish, heroin, let me get it for you. Safer. Better quality. Better price too.”

“Is he at the Marina Tower?”

“You know the saying ‘The only way to get an apartment in Minet al-Hosn is for someone to die’? They’re not just talking about availability and money. They’re talking about what people are willing to do for such wealth-and what they’ll do to protect it,” the bartender said.

“I’m a big girl, sadiqi . Is he there?”

“I haven’t seen him in days. If you’re lucky, you won’t either,” he said, crushing mint leaves for a mojito.

The Marina Towerwas a crescent-shaped white high-rise overlooking the waterfront, the lights from the building reflected on the water of the Marina. The lobby was ultramodern and expensive, an advertisement for the tenants who could afford the millions that an apartment here cost. She’d had to argue with Saunders to get him to let her go in on her own.

“We already know that he killed Davis Fielding-and probably others. And that was even before the bartender’s warning. And nobody makes that much money in Beirut without either being very dangerous himself or having very dangerous friends,” Saunders said in the BMW SUV on the way over. With them were two new Beirut Station operatives, Chandler and Boyce, two short-haired hard-as-nails transfers from the CIA’s Special Operations Group, both ex-Navy SEALs, whom Saunders had brought with him from Ankara to help him clean up Beirut Station.

“Chandler and Boyce. They sound like a law firm, don’t they?” Saunders had said, introducing them to Carrie.

“More like antique dealers,” she’d said, shaking their hands. “Look, don’t get me wrong. I’m glad they’re here. But we don’t want a shoot-out. We want to know who sent him to kill Davis.”

“I think we already know. Abu Nazir,” Saunders said.

“No, we think we know. That’s not the same thing,” she said.

“I should do it. Or Chandler or Boyce.”

“Better me. I’m a woman. Less threatening, less likely to escalate. And I speak Arabic better than anyone here.”

“All the same, the only way you’re going in is wired up like crazy. The second I hear something that even smells like trouble, my antique dealers here-and me too-will be blasting in, shooting first and taking names later. That son of a bitch is dead, understood?”

“I get it. I just want to see what I can get out of him first,” she said as they parked the SUV on a side street and walked to the Marina Tower parking lot, the building lit up at night with horizontal lines of white light along the balconies, like a stack of curved neon blades.

“I don’t think you do, Carrie. Get it, I mean,” he said as they approached the parking lot. “If anything happened to you, Saul would crucify me. Possibly literally.”

“I know.” She looked at Chandler and Boyce. “If you think I’m in trouble, guys, come get me, please.” The two men nodded.

Kneeling beside a Mercedes sedan, they did a voice check on her wire setup and readied their weapons and equipment. When they were set, they walked, one at a time, to the back service entrance from the parking lot.

One of the men, Boyce, picked the service-door lock. They went inside to the elevator and took it up to the sixteenth floor. Three of them exited, one of them, Boyce, going up one more floor. He would set up to make an entrance onto Bilal Mohamad’s balcony from the balcony of the apartment on the floor above. The other two, Saunders and Chandler, would wait and monitor Carrie from the hallway stairwell, ready to break in to Bilal’s apartment at a moment’s notice. Her emergency code was anything to do with flowers. The instant she mentioned it, they would come running.

At a signal from Saunders, Carrie went to Mohamad’s apartment door-there were only two apartments on the entire floor-and, taking out her Beretta, knocked.

There was no answer. She knocked again, harder. And again. Nothing. All this and nobody home, she thought, annoyed. She put her ear to the door and listened but heard nothing. Then the faint whirr of something electric, like a razor. Looking back at the doorway to the stairwell, which was cracked slightly open, she couldn’t see Saunders or Chandler, but she was glad they were there. She took a deep breath and, taking out her lock pick, began working on the lock, trying to remember her training at the Farm.

There was a click; she turned the handle and opened the door, the Beretta ready. She stepped into a large, luxurious main room, brightly lit and with a panoramic glass view of the marina and the sea. The whirring electric sound was louder. It sounded like it was coming from the bedroom. Leaving the apartment door open a crack for Saunders and Chandler, she moved in a shooting stance toward the bedroom. Pushing the bedroom door open with her toe, she stepped in and stopped at the bizarre sight of a boyish-looking man, muscular, presumably Bilal Mohamad, his hair bleached pure blond-white and his body draped in a black plastic garbage bag with his head sticking out, with a gun with a silencer aimed directly at her.

They stood there, frozen. Neither moved a muscle. The oddest thought occurred to Carrie: he was like a male Marilyn Monroe, sexy and lost. And then it struck her that the whirring sound had stopped.

“ Ya Allah , this is awkward,” Bilal said finally in Arabic. “Should we kill each other or see if there’s a way for us both to survive?”

“Put your gun down and, inshallah , we’ll talk,” Carrie replied in Arabic.

“Okay, but if you kill me I’m going to kick myself in hell for trusting a CIA agent. You are CIA, aren’t you? Idiotic question. Of course you are,” he said in English. “American, female, gun. Some idiot’s finally figured out that Davis Fielding didn’t kill himself. Was it you? Of course it was. They don’t take women as seriously as they should, do they?” he said, tossing his gun onto the bed. Now that she was able to pay attention, she noticed that his hands were covered with blood. He caught her looking at his hands. “You came at a bad moment. Another half hour and I’d have been gone,” he added.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“See for yourself,” he said, gesturing at the bathroom. “I hope you don’t have a weak stomach.”