Homeland: Carrie's Run: A Homeland Novel (14 page)

“So here we are.” He looked around the room. “Nice room.”

“Perfect for cheating wives and husbands,” she nodded.

“It wasn’t just sex, you know. Not for me. Flattering, that an attractive young woman like you would find me . . .” He hesitated. “I felt alive for the first time in years. Hell of a thing, isn’t it?”

“Me too.” She came over, wriggled onto his lap and kissed him.

CHAPTER 18

Verdun, Beirut, Lebanon

“I knew you’d be back. Never doubted it for a second. Wait a minute, there,” Virgil said, disabling the security alarm. He inserted his Peterson universal key into the door lock, tapped and opened the door. He inched it open a crack, inspected for any secondary alarms and, holding a handheld RF scanner before him like a candle, entered the apartment.

They were on the fourteenth floor of a high-rise on Leonardo da Vinci in the trendy Verdun section of Beirut. The apartment belonged to Rana Saadi, a Lebanese actress and model known in the Middle East for her role in a movie about the love lives of women working in a Beirut beauty salon. Fielding called her cell phone at least twice a week according to the COMINT intercepts on the flash drive Jimbo had given Carrie. Yet, they never went anywhere together, although according to Virgil, they sometimes showed up at the same social function or party.

She followed Virgil into the apartment. Holding his finger to his lips, he began checking for hidden cameras and bugs, using the scanner and studying light fixtures and land phones and removing the plastic plates over electrical outlets. While he checked the rooms, Carrie, her hands in latex gloves, checked the drawers and desk in the bedroom, going through Rana’s expensive Huit and Aubade lingerie and, in the closet, her clothes and shoes, being careful to put each thing she touched back in exactly the same position.

“It’s clear,” he whispered. “But don’t talk,” he mouthed.

She nodded. She felt with her fingertips along the closet’s top shelf and found a photo album. Noting its exact position, she carefully lifted it up and brought it down. She sat on the floor and opened it, while Virgil went about the apartment installing electronic listening devices and hidden cameras. Every room from every angle was to be covered. In CIA parlance, it was a “360 black-bag job.”

She pored through the photo album. Mostly pictures of Rana throughout her career, starting as a teenage model on up to her roles on television and in movies. In the pages she went from a thin gawky teenager with long chestnut hair posing with a puppy to a sexy black-haired bombshell in a low-cut dress on the cover of
Spécial
magazine and in promo stills from her films.

Then a picture stopped her cold.

It was a photo of Rana in a magazine ad for Aishti, an upscale women’s clothing chain. She was with two other models in what looked like the ABC mall, all of them looking impossibly stylish and slim. One of them was Dima. There was no credit on the front of the photograph, but it was a studio print, the photo pasted on the page. She carefully separated the edge of the print from the page and lifted it up to see the back. A name had been stamped on it: François Abou Murad, Rue Gouraud. She knew where that was, in the Gemmayzeh section of the Ashrafieh district. She pressed it back down and took a photo of the print with her cell phone.

So Dima and Rana knew each other. Were they working together? She raced through the rest of the album, but nothing else caught her eye. She put the album back in the same position on the closet shelf and began rummaging through the pockets of all the clothes hanging in the closet. It was near the end, in the pocket of a short velveteen jacket, that she found a cell phone. She took it out and showed it to Virgil.

He nodded and did a “swipe,” NSA-based technology that enabled him to hack someone’s cell phone with another appropriately configured cell phone just by coming within a few meters of it. Rana’s cell phone was now “slaved,” so that via NSA SIGINT satellite communications, Virgil could eavesdrop on everything said or done with it. He tapped the screen and checked the cell number. He and Carrie looked at each other. This wasn’t the one that Fielding had called and since Rana wasn’t here, it wasn’t the one she carried. So what was it for? Carrie wondered.

He looked at his watch. They’d been there almost forty minutes. There wasn’t much time left. Carrie put the cell phone back into the jacket pocket, went to a writing table in the dining area that Rana apparently used as a desk and started going through the drawers. It was while she was going through Rana’s checkbook and bills that she got the text message from the third person on their team, Ziad Atawi. A member of Les Forces Libanaises, a Maronite Christian militia affiliated with the March 14 group, Ziad had been one of Carrie’s old assets in Beirut. Now she had formed a team with him and Virgil without the knowledge of anyone else in the CIA’s Beirut Station, especially Fielding.

It read, “leaving bobs.” Bob’s Easy Diner was a popular Armenian lunchtime spot on Rue Sassine, only a few blocks away. It meant that Rana was leaving the restaurant and might be home any minute. She went over and showed it to Virgil, who nodded. They had to go.

They left the apartment, Virgil carefully resetting the alarm and locking the door. A few minutes later, they parted on a crowded avenue. He was heading back to Iroquois, the new safe house on Independence, near the Muslim cemetery, to monitor Rana from there. Carrie caught a Service to the Corniche, the palm-lined promenade along the sea front, to meet Julia/Fatima. Getting out of the Service, she placed a black
hijab
over her hair.

She spotted Fatima waiting in her black
abaya
and veil near the Mövenpick, not far from where the tourists gathered to take photos of waves crashing against Pigeon Rocks, jutting up out of the water.

“Dearest friend,
afdal sadeeqa
,
petals of a chamomile cooled by the night,” Carrie said in Arabic, taking Fatima’s hand in both of hers.

“Ibn ’Arabi. You quote Ibn ’Arabi,” Fatima said, her eyes glistening.

“She is the cure, she the disease,” they said, reciting the poem’s famous refrain together.

“I missed you. I’m so sorry,” Carrie said.

“I thought you were never coming back.”

“I would always come back. And I must tell you, what you told me saved lives. Many lives. Whatever anyone else says, what you did was wonderful.” Holding hands like schoolgirls, they walked side by side on the promenade, the breeze off the water rustling the palm trees, the sun shining on the sea.

“Was it?” she asked. “Do they believe me now?”

“For them, you are solid gold. So . . .” Carrie hesitated. “How goes it with you?”

“Not good,” Fatima said. “Sometimes I think he wants to kill me. There are days I think it is better to be a dog than a woman.”

“Don’t,
habibi
. Don’t say this. Just tell me, how can I help you?”

Fatima stopped walking and looked at her; only her eyes were not hidden by her veil.

“I want to go to America and get a divorce. That’s what I want.”

“
Inshallah
,
I’ll do what I can. I swear.”

“Don’t swear, Carrie. If you say it will be done, then I know it will be so. How is it they let you back?”

“Because of you,” Carrie said, squeezing her hand. “Truly.”

“Then I’m glad I did it.”

They walked along the Corniche, stopping at a kiosk for ice cream cones that they ate as they walked.

“Anything new?” Carrie asked.

Fatima stopped and tilted her head close to Carrie’s. “There’s something that’s going to happen in the south. On the Israeli side of the border,” she said.

“A terrorist incident?”

The woman shook her head. “More than an incident. A provocation.” She looked around again. “They think they’re ready for war. Soon.”

“Where will the incident be?”

“I’m not sure. But Abbas is being deployed in the south to a Lebanese town near the border, Bint Jbeil. Only underground, the entire town is a fortress. A trap for the Zionists. That’s all I know.”

“Good. There’s something else,” Carrie said, taking out her iPhone. “Something I want you to look at.” They stepped over by the seawall. She brought up Dima’s passport photograph. “Do you know her? Have you ever seen her?”

Fatima shook her head. Carrie closed Dima’s photo and brought up Rana’s picture.

“What about her?”

“That’s Rana Saadi. Everyone knows her,” Fatima said.

“Have you ever met her? Has Abbas ever spoken about her?”

She shook her head again. “I can’t help. I’m sorry,” she said.

“No matter. I’m so glad to see you,” Carrie said.

Fatima looked at her sharply. “You won’t forget about America?”

“I won’t forget,” Carrie said.

She went up
the stairs to the studio on Rue Gouraud. It was on the second floor of an old-fashioned colonial-era building. Behind the glass door, a young, very pretty female receptionist sat behind a sleek, ultra-modernistic desk in a tiny reception area.

“
Bonjour.
Do you have an appointment?” the pretty receptionist asked.

“I called earlier. I’m from al-Jadeed, the TV station,” Carrie said, handing her a business card with the Jadeed logo she’d had made up yesterday.

“I remember. François—that is, Monsieur Abou Murad is in the studio. I’ll let him know you’re here.”

Carrie looked at the photographs displayed on the walls. Fashion shoots and magazine covers, including a series of female models shot from behind wearing only striped bikini bottoms. After letting her wait fifteen minutes to make sure she knew how important and busy he was, Abou Murad came out and apologized as he led her back to his studio.

“I thought you would bring a crew,” he said as they walked into a space with screens, drop cloths and lights, tall windows revealing old colonial-style buildings across the street. He was unbelievably short, not quite a little person, but less than five feet tall. He wore his hair long, like an old-fashioned rock musician.

“We always do a preliminary first. Saves time,” she said.

They sat in director’s chairs. There were glasses and bottles of Sohat water on a tiny table between them.

“I’ve had an amazing career,” he said.

“I can see. You like women?”

“Very much.” He smirked, looking pointedly at her breasts. “They like me back too.”

“At least the short ones—or maybe just the ones you get magazine layouts for,” she said, and put her laptop, its screen showing the Aishti ad photograph of Rana, Dima and a third model, on the little table.

“What’s this?” he said sharply.

“You know these women? Rana and Dima? Who’s the third?”

“Marielle Hilal. A wannabe model,” he replied, shaking his head.

“Why only a wannabe? She’s pretty enough.”

“She doesn’t
taneek
,
” he said, deliberately using “
neek
,
” the Arabic vulgarity for sex. “You won’t get much work that way.” He shrugged.

“And the others?”

“Rana, of course. I’ve done thirty-two covers with her. Publicity stills too. Of course I know her. Better than her own mother.”

“What about Dima?” She pointed at her on the screen. “You knew her, didn’t you? And don’t tell me you didn’t sleep with her. I knew her too—and when it came to getting ahead, she wasn’t so picky.”

“Dima Hamdan. What about her?”

“You took that shot?”

“You know I did,” he said, eyeing her like she had grown a second, very ugly head. “What do you want?”

“How close were she and Rana?”

“They knew each other. What do you mean I
knew
her? What’s happened?”

“She’s dead,” Carrie said.

“Who the
neek
are you? You’re not the police. Are you Sûreté Générale?” He stood up, although standing he was no taller than she was sitting. “You better leave, mademoiselle.”

“If I leave, you’re going to get visitors you’ll like a whole lot less,” she said, opening her handbag and putting her hand inside. “Best get it over with.”

Neither of them spoke or moved. Carrie could see motes of dust in the light coming from the windows. It was almost quiet enough to imagine she could hear the dust settle.

“Like a visit to the dentist,” he said finally.

“Those are usually for your own good,” she said. He looked at her hand in the handbag and sat back down.

“Are you threatening me?” he asked.

“I don’t have to. You’re Lebanese. Surely you understand what can happen here.” The implication was obvious. Lebanese politics was volatile and dangerous. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time could get you killed.

“What do you want?” He frowned.

“Tell me about Dima and Rana. How close were they?”

“They knew each other. Are you asking if they slept together?”

This was new, Carrie thought. Dima liked men. “Did they?”

“For a short time.
Pour de rire.
For fun. They both liked men better. They knew each other from before Beirut.”

“Really,” Carrie said, her heart speeding up. That Dima hadn’t come from Beirut had never been mentioned in the 201 file Fielding had given her when she first took over as Dima’s case officer. “Where did they come from?”

“They were both from the North. Dima was from Halba, the Akkar; Rana from Tripoli. Said she grew up in sight of the Clock Tower,” he said.

Those were both Sunni Muslim areas, not Christian, she thought. So what the hell was Dima doing with the Alawite Syrian Nightingale? She was ostensibly a March 14 Maronite Christian, but it still didn’t make sense even if she had been lying about that and was actually a Sunni Muslim. The Alawites, like Hezbollah, were both Shiite groups. Either way, whether she was a Christian or a Sunni Muslim, she would have seen Nightingale as an enemy. In Lebanon, to cross sectarian lines was about as safe as crossing a California freeway blindfolded.

“Those are Sunni areas,” she said carefully.

The little man nodded.

“What are you saying? That Dima and Rana were Sunni?” she asked.

“Me? I say nothing.” He shrugged. “I take pictures of women. Beautiful women.
C’est tout.
”

“They never discussed it?”

“Not with me. No,” he said, taking out a bright red pack of Gauloises Blondes and lighting one.

“But you suspected they were Sunnis. Did you know that Dima was involved with March 14?”