Homeland: Carrie's Run: A Homeland Novel (3 page)

She tightened the belt on the railing and pulled at it hard. It felt like it would hold. It would have to. Climbing over the edge, she let herself down hand over hand on the belt. The glass door to the balcony of the apartment on the floor below was dark. No one home. Arms straining, she reached with her toes for the lower balcony’s railing. Don’t look down, she told herself as her toes touched the railing. She pushed forward, letting go as she fell forward onto the balcony. A deafening explosion above shook the building.

They’d blown the safe house door. Ears ringing, she smashed the glass in the balcony door with the Glock, then put her hand through the jagged hole and opened the door.

Putting her shoes back on to avoid stepping on broken glass, she ran to the apartment’s front door, unlocked it and raced out into the corridor and down the stairs to the ground floor. Another few seconds and she was out the service door to an alley in back. She went cautiously down the alley to a side street. It looked clear. No watchers from the Mercedes around the corner. Taking off her heels again, she ran as hard as she could, her slender figure disappearing into the darkness.

CHAPTER 2

Central District, Beirut, Lebanon

“What went wrong? And don’t bullshit me. You’re on very thin ice, Carrie,” Davis Fielding said, rubbing his hands together as though he were cold. They were in his office in the old-fashioned building on Rue Maarad, near Nejmeh Square, with its iconic clock tower, where Beirut Station maintained a cover company, Middle East Maritime Insurance SA, a cover so solid they actually sold policies.

“You tell me. Nightingale was your idea. Dima was your agent. I just inherited her,” Carrie answered, rubbing her eyes. She felt tired, grimy in the same clothes she had worn the previous day, having only slept a few hours on Virgil’s living room couch after a night spent going all over Beirut, looking for Dima.

“Don’t pull that shit on me,” Fielding growled. “She was your bird. You ran her. You brought Nightingale to me and I okayed an approach. That’s all. Toe in the water. Nothing more. Next thing I know, you’re being chased all the hell over Beirut by so-called assassins and leading them right to our safe house door! You’ve jeopardized our position here, which, as you know, is damn delicate,” he said, tapping the desk with his index finger.

“I didn’t lead them anywhere,” Carrie said, thinking, Why doesn’t he see it? He should have been patting her on the back for escaping. How could he be so thick? “I got away. I was clean. I ditched a car at the Crowne Plaza and walked away a hundred percent clean, but just to be sure I spent an hour in the mall, walking around blocks, reversing, you name it. There was nothing. Not mobile, not on foot, not electronic, not with a telescope from twenty miles away. You better face up to it, Davis. We have a security breach.”

“The hell we do. You screwed it up and now you’re running for cover. I warned you, Mathison. We play Beirut Rules here. Now, let’s go over it again. First of all, where’s Dima?”

“You tell me. After the fiasco at the contact and again at the safe house, I spent half the night looking for her. Instead of yelling at me, how about considering that she might be a double? Maybe she set me up. Because if not, when did you become so trusting?”

“We don’t even know that you were set up. Maybe you panicked because Nightingale got the contact location wrong. Maybe he was on Lebanese time. Maybe he was drunk. Shit, Carrie. This was supposed to be a fly-by, that’s all. Get a look at him; let him get a look at your tits and set up the next one. You panicked. Admit it,” Fielding said, face red as Santa Claus, but his eyes cold and blue as ice.

“Not true. You weren’t there. I was. He motioned to me,” she said, showing him. “He’s supposed to be a senior intelligence officer and he motions to a contact he’s never met to come right over like we’re housewives in the park? Are you kidding?”

“Maybe that’s how they do it in the GSD. Maybe he thought you got it wrong. You’re a woman, for crying out loud. No man in the Middle East is going to take you seriously. Based on last night, they’re probably right.”

She could feel her heart pounding. What was going on here? There’d been a serious screw-up that nearly led to her capture or death. He should have been supporting her; not ripping her a new one. “There were two men in a van and four in a Mercedes. They tried to kidnap me, dammit! They shot at me. Here.” She showed him the scab on her leg where the piece of sidewalk had hit her.

“Yes—and then you led them right to the safe house, which for all I know was the object of the exercise for them in the first place!” Fielding snapped. “This is going in your 201,” he added, referring to the CIA’s personnel file on each employee. “Don’t think it isn’t.”

Carrie stood up.

“Listen, Davis,” she said, trying to control herself. “There’s something bigger going on here. Has it occurred to you to wonder why they wanted a CIA case officer when if Nightingale was a double, they could have fed us garbage for years and we’d have eaten it like pigs at a trough? Ask yourself why.”

“Sit down,” Fielding snapped. “Where do you think you’re going? I’m not done with you.”

She sat. Inside, she was shaking with anger. She could have ripped his eyeballs out, she was so furious. She was that strong, that powerful. Oh God, was she going on one of her flights? She could feel control slipping; she was almost on the verge of killing him. Control yourself, Carrie. You can do it.

“Dima set the contact up. We need to consider her,” she said carefully, trying to hold it in.

“What about her cell phone?”

She shook her head. “Nothing in the dead drop either.” For emergency contacts with Dima, she used the hollow of a tree in Sanayeh Park. When she’d gone there in the middle of the night after trawling the clubs, the hollow was empty. She had left a chalk mark on a branch, indicating that Dima should contact her ASAP, but she had a bad feeling about hearing from her.

“Where else did you look?”

“Le Gray, Whiskey, the Palais, her place—and you don’t have to say it; I was careful—everywhere. No one’s seen her. I picked the lock in her apartment. She hadn’t been home. It looked like she hadn’t been there for a couple of days.”

“So she’s shacked up with the latest hunk from Riyadh with cash in his pocket, so what?”

“Or she’s being tortured or is already dead. There’s been a security breach, Davis. You can’t ignore the possibility.”

“So you say,” he said, biting his lip. “What else?”

“There was no one in the safe house,” she said. “What was that about?”

“Budget. Bean counters in Washington.” He shrugged. “They’re running the universe. We had to cut back. So according to you, you were clean. They chased you. You got away. No one followed you to Achilles? What about this older woman you got the car from?” He steepled his index fingers, his blue eyes lasering into her. “She gives her car to a complete stranger. Why would she do that?”

She swallowed. “She was a decent person. Woman to woman. She could see I was in trouble.” She could see I was desperate, she thought.

“Or maybe she was one of theirs and told them where to find you. Either that, or they persuaded her,” he said, making a gesture like pulling out a fingernail.

Is he crazy? she wondered. Where does he come up with this crap?

“She had no idea where I was going. I told her I’d leave the car at the Crowne Plaza and I did. She knew nothing about the Achilles location.”

“No, but like everyone in Beirut, she knew the Crowne was on Rue Hamra, so where you were going couldn’t be far. All they had to do was blanket the area. Fifty watchers in the Friday-night crowd and you didn’t even spot one.” He shook his head disgustedly. “The only amateur in this whole ridiculous fiasco is sitting right across from me.”

“I don’t believe this. I manage to escape a deadly Hezbollah trap and it’s my fault?” she said, standing again. She felt sick to her stomach. What was happening? Was he firing her? “What are you saying? Would you rather I’d died or been captured?”

“I’m saying you’re done here. You’re certainly compromised and we’ll have to get a new safe house, thanks to you.”

“What about my agents? They count on me,” she said, her heartbeat pounding in her head like a drum. She’d never been fired before. It was the most sickening feeling she’d ever experienced.

“For the time being, I’ll handle Dima and your other Joes. You’re done. Talk to Carol about arrangements and your flight back,” he said. “And I’ll call Berenson. He’s the one who foisted you on me in the first place.”

“So that’s it. All my work and I’m gone for something that isn’t my fault?”

“Go pack, Carrie. I’m sending you back to Langley. Maybe they can find something useful for you. Not everybody’s cut out for the field.”

“You’re wrong, Davis,” she said, her jaw clenched, knowing she was wasting her breath. “I wasn’t followed. There’s a security breach. You need to check it out.”

“We’ll look into it,” he said, waving her off and picking up the phone.

On the way
to the airport, Virgil Maravich made the turn off El Asad Road at the Boulevard El Sader roundabout. He kept glancing sideways at Carrie, who was dressed in a full head-to-foot black
abaya
.

“I shouldn’t be doing this,” he said. “Not to mention, Dahiyeh isn’t exactly the safest place in the world for outsiders.”

He was right, of course, Carrie thought. Dahiyeh, in southern Beirut, was poor, Shiite, and controlled by Hezbollah militia armed to the teeth, who might stop you at any intersection. Driving through, there were still plenty of bombed-out buildings and empty lots filled with weeds and rubble from past Israeli attacks and the long civil war.

“I appreciate it,” she said, shaking her head. “What is his problem?”

“Fielding?” Virgil grinned. “He’s one of the old-boy network, don’t you get it? He knows the rules. Somebody’s head had to roll over Nightingale and the breach at Achilles. He puts it on you, it’s not on him.”

“That’s disgusting,” she said, looking over at Virgil. Tall, thin, bald on top; she had met him on her first surveillance in Beirut. Then as now, they’d been talking about Fielding.

“Did he give you his ‘Beirut Rules’ speech? One mistake and they kill you and then they go and party. Asshole,” he’d said with a grin that first time. It had been Virgil who’d given her the idea of wearing a wedding band when going out at night or on RDVs. “Your sex life is none of my business,” he’d told her. “But unless you want it to be everybody’s business or you enjoy being groped, in this part of the world it’s a good idea to let men think you belong to another man, which is how they think of it. Breaking that is a bigger taboo than rape. At least the ring gives you the choice.”

She’d never been attracted to Virgil. She didn’t know how he felt about her and she never let it go there. He was married but didn’t talk about it. It had nothing to do with her. They were colleagues, foxhole buddies. She respected him. She thought he felt the same about her. Even if she’d wanted to, they both knew that sex would only screw things up and the truth was, they’d come to rely on each other.

“Welcome to the real CIA,” Virgil said with a grimace. He had the typical attitude of contempt that most field operatives had for the suits back at Langley. “We don’t need enemy spies. We’ve got our own little organizational cesspool. I’m sorry you got caught up in it.”

They drove to the Ghobeiry district, where they turned off into side streets filled with kids playing, kicking cans and using sticks for guns, and men playing
tawla
,
a form of backgammon, and sipping tea outside storefronts. On the sides of buildings were the giant painted faces of martyrs, most of them bearded men so young their beards looked fake, and everywhere, yellow and green Hezbollah flags hanging like laundry.

Before she’d ever gone to Lebanon, Saul had told her, “Beirut is like Istanbul; it’s on two continents. North Beirut is Paris with palm trees; Dahiyeh is the Middle East.”

“Where are you meeting her?” Virgil asked.

“Supermarket,” she said. “It’s hard for her to sneak away.”

“How do you want to play this?”

“You stay in the car, engine going, in case we need to get away. If anyone asks, you’re my male guardian.”

“Well, don’t let anyone get too close. With that Irish-American mug of yours, even with an
abaya
and veil, you’re not fooling anyone.” He grinned.

“Thanks, Virgil. I appreciate this. You’re always there for me.” She looked at him. “Why?”

He glanced over at her. The
abaya
,
the
hijab
she was wearing; it was weird.

“You really want to know?”

“Yeah, I really do.”

He nodded. “Don’t let it get around, but you’re the smartest damn person here. Oh, and you’re not bad to look at either. No wonder Fielding hates your guts. Just do me one favor.”

“Name it.”

He drove the narrow street up the hill. Four young men with AK-47s, smoking water pipes outside a
shisha
café, watched them drive slowly by, Carrie pulling her
niqab
,
her veil, across her face as they passed.

“This is nuts,” he muttered, looking around.

“I have to do this. She only trusts me. I can’t just leave her hanging.”

“All I want is, don’t push it. As soon as you’re done, Fielding’s orders, I’ve got to take you to the airport.”

“I’ll make it fast.”

“Better be,” he said, pulling into a narrow street with sandbags piled in front of a sand-colored mosque. “I don’t know how long the welcome mat’s going to be out around here,” he added, eyes darting around.

Carrie nodded. She had to take this chance. Of all her assets, Fatima Ali, code-named “Julia”—because she and Carrie had first met in a movie theater and afterward, the two of them walking, Fatima had confided that she loved American movies and was a big fan of the movie star Julia Roberts—was the one she was closest to. Behind her
abaya
and
niqab
,
Julia was a pretty, dark-haired, sharp-as-a-razor woman whose husband, Abbas, abused her nonstop because she had painful endometriosis that prevented her from having children.

He hit her almost every day, called her a
sharmuta
—a whore—and a useless piece of childless
khara
,
and had once beaten her so badly with a tire iron, she’d had to drag herself to the hospital with six broken bones, including a smashed tibia, a skull fracture and a shattered jaw. He had taken a second wife, a gap-toothed teenage girl, and when she became pregnant, he made Julia subservient to her and allowed the young girl to slap her in the face and laugh whenever Julia did anything that displeased her.

She couldn’t leave him because Abbas was commander of the Harakat al-Mahnum, the Organization of the Oppressed brigade, within Hezbollah. If she left, he’d track her down and kill her. Movies were her only escape. All Carrie had to do to recruit her was to listen. Only now, she was leaving Julia without a lifeline. She had to at least warn her face-to-face.

Virgil pulled into an unpaved parking area behind a small supermarket. As Carrie got out of the car, he pulled out a Sig Sauer automatic and said, “Make it quick. I think I’m outgunned around here.”