Andrew Kaplan - Carrie's run

“Come on, Saul. Look at the connections. Rana, Bilal Mohamad, Dima, Nightingale and finally, Abu Nazir. That’s some crew. Look how close he let them get. I mean, look at Bilal. How could he?”

Saul smiled.

“What’s so funny?” she asked.

“Something my father used to say: ‘When a man’s penis is erect, his brain is in the ground.’ It’s a lot funnier in Yiddish.” He shrugged.

“So he betrayed his country for a piece of ass? Literally.”

“Oldest story in the world. And to be fair, it was unwittingly. He was a fool, not a traitor.”

“What about the missing database records? Ours and the NSA’s? He wasn’t alone.”

“Don’t go there, Carrie,” he said, shielding his eyes from the sun with his hand to look at her.

She had to take a breath on that one.

“Really Saul,” she whispered. “It goes up that high? Is that what this is about?”

“No.” He shook his head. “It’s about friendship, not some gay cabal. Returning favors that go back decades. It’s over. Davis is dead.”

“So that’s it? You’ve got to be kidding.”

“What do you want, Carrie? You plugged the leak. And you even got the son of a bitch who killed him. That’s all that matters.”

“Except Abu Nazir’s been reading our mail for who knows how long. How bad is it?”

“We’re still assessing. But after you left Beirut the first time, without telling anyone, Estes and I shut down everything critical going through Beirut Station. When it came to intelligence, Fielding was on a starvation diet-and he knew it, Carrie. He suspected. That’s why until you proved otherwise, the idea that he committed suicide was a real possibility. And don’t forget the plus side.”

“There’s a plus side?” she said, raising her eyebrows as she watched the tour guide lead the little group down to the stage’s side entrance, where there was a small museum. Except for a pair of tourists on the stage, she and Saul were alone in the amphitheater. So odd to be sitting there in that ancient site within a few meters of traffic and the modern city, she thought.

“Very much so. Right now, Abu Nazir is the most dangerous enemy we have. And you got us the first solid lead we’ve ever had to getting him. We’re still going through Bilal Mohamad’s cell phones and other things, but we’ve confirmed calls to Haditha in Iraq. It wasn’t just Nightingale and Romeo. That confirms the intel you provided before; Abu Nazir is in Haditha.”

“He may not be there any longer.”

“It’s a place to start, which is more than we ever had.” He turned to her. “We need you to go back to Iraq, Carrie.”

She bit her lip. “I lost people there, Saul. Dempsey, Romeo. Virgil wounded, also Crimson. How’s Virgil?”

“He’s good. He had a chance to see his daughter. He said to say hi. He’s anxious to get back. As for Warrant Officer Blazell, a.k.a. Crimson, he’s got one of those fancy new prosthesis legs. He’s adjusting,” Saul said, hesitating.

“What is it?” she asked. She could always tell when Saul was holding back. He’d make a lousy poker player, she thought.

“I’m not supposed to tell you, but you might want to get used to the idea.”

“What idea?”

“What you’ve done, Carrie, is-well, you’re in line for a promotion. When Perry Dreyer moves on, we’re going to recommend you to be Baghdad station chief. You’ll be the youngest station chief ever-and the first woman.”

She was stunned. Of all the things she’d thought he was going to say, she hadn’t expected that.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Well, that’s a first.” He grinned. “Anyway, Perry’s still there. And he wants you back ASAP. So do we. If you can nail Abu Nazir, we can break al-Qaeda’s back.”

She looked down at the ancient stage. The two tourists had moved on; it was empty. What plays, what public agonies must have happened here two thousand years ago? A station chief with bipolar disorder, she thought. She would be hiding something that could backfire on them just as much as Fielding had.

“Saul, there’s just one problem. We missed something.”

“Oh?”

“Walid Karim. Romeo. When Abu Ubaida was interrogating him in the factory he said something I haven’t been able to get out of my mind. Romeo told him to get Abu Nazir to confirm that what he was saying was true.”

“And?”

“Except Abu Ubaida wasn’t buying it. Like he didn’t trust what Abu Nazir would tell him. He told Romeo that whatever he needed to hear about us had to come from Romeo. Why? Okay, they were rivals, but Abu Nazir and Abu Ubaida were the leaders of AQI. They were supposed to be working together. So why would he say that and why did he kill Romeo? He didn’t have to do it to trap us. The recording alone would have been enough. He didn’t have to kill him, but he did. Why?”

“Good. Very good,” Saul said, standing up. “Now we’re getting to it. But first, let’s take a walk, I’m thirsty.”

They went down the aisle to the orchestra section of the amphitheater and out to the street, past men in red-checked kaffiyehs and honking cars to a juice stand with mesh bags of oranges, lemons and carrots dangling from an overhead beam. Saul ordered a cold orange juice, squeezed in front of him. Carrie got a bottle of Petra beer from the refrigerated glass cabinet.

They walked on the shady side of the street, sipping their cold drinks. Out of habit, Carrie checked for tails, but they were clear.

“It bothered me too,” Saul said. “Especially why Abu Ubaida killed Romeo. I came to a conclusion, but it’s not a pretty one.”

Carrie stopped and looked at him. A young woman in a pink hijab walked by. They waited till she was out of earshot.

“He was a triple agent, Romeo, wasn’t he? No one in this whole thing, not Nightingale, not Rana, not Dima, not Fielding, no one was what they seemed.”

Saul nodded. “We’re spooks. We lie for a living.”

“Romeo was a double agent for AQI and for me, but all the while he was really working for Abu Nazir against Abu Ubaida. Abu Nazir used Romeo to get me, the idiot, to eliminate Abu Ubaida for him. He couldn’t lose. If Abu Ubaida’s attack on the Green Zone and assassination of al-Waliki had succeeded, he would have had his civil war and made it impossible for the American effort in Iraq to succeed. If Abu Ubaida’s attack failed, no problem. There would have been some damage to us and Abu Nazir would have eliminated his only rival within AQI. Either way he wins,” she said.

“That’s about it.” Saul nodded. “But you’re looking through the wrong end of the telescope. Taking out Abu Ubaida was a good thing. You saved thousands of lives, Carrie. American casualties alone would have been horrendous.”

“He used us, me.”

“We use each other. Crabs in a basket. Sometimes we eat each other,” Saul said.

Green Zone, Baghdad, Iraq

Back at Baghdad International Airport. Heat, flies and Demon giving his Route Irish spiel, telling them it was only six miles from the airport to the Green Zone. He recognized Carrie from the last time.

“I see we have a repeat customer. Wasn’t it a nice ride in last time, miss?” he called out to her.

“I’ve been in Ramadi, Demon. Route Irish is pussy,” she shouted back to raucous male laughter and a few good-natured catcalls and cheers.

They got into a convoy of SUVs and Blackwater Mambas. Leaving the airport, driving past the “Condition Red” sign and onto Airport Road, riding on the highway into Baghdad, past the blasted palm trees and burned-out wrecks of cars and trucks, she had the oddest sensation.