“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.”
She nodded and as she walked into the supermarket, she heard the loudspeaker from a nearby mosque with the call for the noon Dhuhr prayer and it tore at her in a way she didn’t expect. She was going to miss Beirut.
Taking a basket, she walked over to the dry-goods section. Julia, also in an abaya and veil, was examining a box of Poppins, a popular Lebanese breakfast cereal. Carrie put a Poppins box in her basket too.
“So good to see you,” Carrie said in Arabic. “And how is your husband and family?”
“Good, alhamdulillah”-thank God-Fatima said, pulling her aside, her eyes darting around. “What’s happened?” she whispered. Carrie had left her a one-word note, ya’ut, the Arabic word for “ruby,” their code for an emergency contact, under a potted urn in the Muslim cemetery near Boulevard Bayhoum. Julia’s husband monitored all her calls and e-mails; the dead drop was the only way to communicate with her.
“I’m being pulled from Beirut. Another assignment,” Carrie whispered as they pretended to shop together.
“Why?”
“I can’t say.” She took Julia’s hand. They walked hand-in-hand like children. “I’ll miss you. I wish I could take you with me.”
“I wish too,” Fatima said, looking away. “You go to real America, but for me it’s like the movies. A made-up place.”
“I’ll come back, I swear.”
“What will happen to me?”
“They’ll assign you to someone else. Not me.” Julia’s eyes welled up. She shook her head and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “They’ll be okay. I promise,” Carrie said.