Homeland: Carrie's Run: A Homeland Novel (29 page)

“Neither. You’re going to work for us now,” she said, and, looking around, spoke into the air: “You know, flowers would do wonders for this place.”

Bilal sat up straight. “Who am I to spy on? Abu Nazir?” he asked.

She just stared at him. The sounds of Saunders and Chandler running in were combined with the sight of Boyce rappelling down onto the balcony.

“
Ya Allah
,
you don’t know Abu Nazir at all, do you?” he said.

Reaching under the seat cushion of his chair, he pulled out a nine-millimeter pistol. Before she could react or say or do anything, he raised it and fired a bullet into his head.

CHAPTER 38

Amman, Jordan

“The Roman Theater was built, as you might guess, in Roman times during the reign of the Emperor Antoninus Pius, in years 138 to 161 of the Common Era. In those days, the city of Amman was being called ‘Philadelphia.’ So you see, the city in America gets his name from our city, Amman,” the tour guide, a curly-haired young Jordanian in Oakley sunglasses, told the half dozen tourists clustered around him. They were standing in the highest row of an ancient semicircular stone amphitheater gouged into the side of a hill in the middle of bustling downtown Amman.

Seated by herself in a row about halfway down, Carrie watched as one of the tourists, a bearded American wearing sunglasses and a trilby hat against the hot sun, which would’ve looked ridiculous on anyone else but on him seemed exactly right, detached himself from the little group and made his way down the stone aisle to where she was sitting.

“What do they say about mad dogs and Englishmen?” Saul said, sitting next to her.

“Why’d he do it, Saul?” she asked. “Fielding. What was the big deal about being gay? I mean, who gives a shit? And why’d he go to such lengths to hide it? A phony mistress, an expensive one, who opened him to moles, blackmail? It makes no sense.”

“You’re too young. Davis Fielding went back to the old KGB days, the Cold War, when gays were considered serious security risks. Remember, those Brits from Cambridge who turned out to be KGB spies—Philby, Burgess, Maclean—were all gay. The stuff of John le Carré novels. Back then, the prevailing view was that gays were more susceptible to being blackmailed. There was even a big court case about it. Bottom line, in those days you couldn’t be in the CIA if you were gay. It would have been the end of his career. Fielding knew that.”

“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.

CHAPTER 39

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.

I’m home, she thought. All my life I’ve been looking for a place to belong, never felt at home anywhere. Growing up with her father and mother had been like living in a foreign country—how else could her mother have left like that without saying a word?—and incredibly, home had turned out to be here. Iraq. The Middle East. In the middle of a war. As their convoy drove under overpasses, gunners swiveling in unison like dancers to cover them against anyone who might drop a grenade or IED onto one of their vehicles, past Iraqis in cars who had stopped on the shoulder to let their convoy pass by, staring at them unblinking, she realized it was the risk, the game, that she was addicted to.

As if bipolar wasn’t bad enough, she had to be an adrenaline junkie too. Or was it something else? she wondered as they made the turn onto the Qadisaya Expressway, thick with traffic. They drove past palm trees and buildings, some pockmarked with holes from rockets and bullets. It’s like crossing a finish line; something is ending or beginning, she thought.

Ever since that night in Ashrafieh when Nightingale had tried to ambush her, she’d been on a run, like when she was at Princeton. The longest run ever. Only now it was over. When she was running NCAA, she’d imagined she could run forever. Now she knew better.

Take a breath, Carrie, she told herself. Time for a new run. This time the rabbit she was chasing was Abu Nazir, as the convoy drove through the checkpoint into the Green Zone, past the parade ground and the Unknown Soldier Monument, back to Yafa Street and the al-Rasheed Hotel.

Abu Nazir. What was there about him? Something truly frightening. Men would rather die than face him. Bilal Mohamad was no
jihadi
religious nut and no pushover either. He was truly evil. She had felt her skin crawl just being in his presence. How was it Davis Fielding hadn’t spotted it? Or was Fielding so blinded by the sex? Maybe it was like Saul had said: his head was stuck in the ground. But Bilal had wanted to live. He had been calmly chopping up a gay friend of his so that Abu Nazir would believe him dead when she walked in. Yet when confronted with the chance to stay alive, even Bilal had preferred to kill himself rather than face Abu Nazir.

Well, Abu Nazir, the next dance is you and me, she thought grimly.

Walking into the hotel’s marble lobby, she was greeted by Warzer, carrying a big bouquet of roses.

“
Marhaban!
Welcome, Carrie. It’s good to have you back,” Warzer said, handing her the roses.

“
Shokran
,
Warzer.” She smelled the roses. “Won’t your wife be jealous?”

“She would be, if I were foolish enough to tell her. How is Virgil?”

“Virgil is well. He’s hoping to come back.”

She left her rolling suitcase with the hotel porter and the two of them went outside and crossed over to the Convention Center grounds. Security had improved since she’d been there last; the Convention Center was ringed by concentric layers of protection. In addition to personnel, surveillance cameras and sensors were everywhere, she noted.

She and Warzer presented their credentials to the U.S. MPs at their sandbagged emplacement, again to Blackwater guards and at a third checkpoint manned by Iraqi ISF soldiers at the front entrance.

“How are things, truly?” she asked Warzer as they walked down the open hallway.

“Things are hanging by a thread, Carrie. The Iranians and the Mahdi Army are smuggling in arms and explosives. The Kurds are going their own way. The Americans are caught in the middle—and once Saddam’s trial is over and he is executed . . .”

“Is that a foregone conclusion?”

“Absolutely. He will be hung. Very soon now.”

“Then what?”

“That depends on Abu Nazir—and also you, Carrie.” He smiled.

They were at the door of the “U.S. Refugee Aid Service.” They went inside the reception area and she told the female CIA staffer to let Perry Dreyer know she was there and to get her a vase for her roses, which she handed to the staffer. The woman got up and left, then came back and said to follow her.

They walked into a large bullpen of a room where CIA operatives sat at computers or worked on telephones, the space busy with activity. On the wall, someone had posted framed photographs of Ambassador Robert Benson and Prime Minister Wael al-Waliki in their combat utility uniforms. There was one of the station chief, Perry Dreyer, and on a wall by themselves, the photographs of two United States Marines, labeled “U.S. Marines Missing in Action, presumed captured by AQI, Operation Iraqi Freedom.”

The first photograph was of an African-American, “U.S. Marine Scout Sniper Thomas Walker. Captured outside Haditha, Anbar Province, May 19, 2003.” Three years. A hell of a long time to be held by al-Qaeda, if he was still alive, poor bastard. Probably not a chance in hell he was alive. Haditha, she mused. The last known location of Abu Nazir. Where she was headed next.

The second photograph was labeled “U.S. Marine Sergeant Nicholas Brody, Captured outside Haditha, Anbar Province, May 19, 2003.” They’d been taken together. She studied the photograph carefully.

It was an interesting face, she thought.