Lion Eyes

by Claire Berlinski

  From: Imran Begum imranbegum@gmail.com

  Date: November 24, 2003 06:45 PM

  To: Claire Berlinski claire@berlinski.com

  Subject: Re: Should I say yes?

  Dear Friend, I would advise you to meet this man in person, yes. A confrontation with reality will do you no harm. No use living in a phantasy world. But do keep your expectations low, dear friend! Remember how little you know this man. Letters are not relationships. Patients who cannot see the person to whom they are speaking will readily confess their most private thoughts. Letter-writers, too!Don’t be misled by this. It is the relief of confession—and the acceptance offered afterwards—that causes you to believe you’ve found a kindred spirit. Little to do with the person to whom you’re writing, I’m afraid.

  A patient threw up this morning. I briefly considered moving. All septic cheese.

  Much love,

  Immie

  He was right, I thought. I would never stop wondering about the Lion if I didn’t meet him. There was, to be sure, a chance I would be terribly disappointed, but if I didn’t meet him, there was no chance I wouldn’t be.

  And with that thought, I gave in to my hope: I wrote back to Arsalan and said, Yes, come.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The CIA training information is so true to life, you wonder how high Claire Berlinski’s security clearances go. However, it’s the interwoven love story that will make you shake your head, remembering all those exes who seemed so right at the time, until you discovered otherwise. I couldn’t put it down.

  —Customer review

  of Loose Lips on Amazon. com

  The sound of the phone broke through my earplug barrier. Thinking it might be Arsalan, I rushed to answer it, but it was only Sally. She hoped she wasn’t disturbing me while I was working—Dave had poached and chilled an enormous salmon in a lime-ginger reduction. “He got it at the fish bazaar. He didn’t mean to get such a big one, but he got confused with his numbers, and by the time he figured it out they had it all packed up.” There was just far too much for the two of them; should she bring over a care package with some zucchini fritters, too?

  I looked at the clock. It was 8:30 in the morning. “ Maybe a little later?” I asked.

  “I have to go to work. Can I just pop over right now?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” I said, wishing I were assertive enough to say no. I didn’t want to be ungracious when she was trying to be generous. I told myself I would probably appreciate the fish come dinner time.

  Sally rang the doorbell twenty minutes later. She was dressed in her blue pinstripe consular officer suit. “Special delivery!” she said, holding out a mountain of salmon under Saran wrap.

  “Wow. Thank you.” I had no idea what I’d do with that much fish.

  “Can I come in just for a jiffy? These shoes are pinching my feet so bad. I just need to put a Band-Aid on my toe.”

  “Sure,” I said, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and wondering why people assume that if you work at home, you’re not really working.

  She walked into the kitchen and settled herself on one of the wooden stools, taking off her navy pumps with a sigh and massaging her toes. “Damn. I’ve run my nylons. How’s the book coming along?” She nodded in the direction of my computer. It was sitting open on the kitchen table. I preferred to work in the kitchen—it was a bit quieter than the bedroom, and the Egyptian death mask in the study gave me the creeps.

  “Okay, I suppose. Slowly. Lots to do,” I said meaningfully.

  “Wow, this apartment is really noisy,” Sally said loudly. “Is it hard to concentrate?”

  I closed the kitchen window. “Nearly impossible.” Especially with you here. I stood up to make some coffee. Sally looked even more annoyed by the noise than I was. “I was hoping for a few minutes of quiet time with you,” she said. “I’d like to talk to you about something important.”

  My heart sank. From her serious expression, I could tell she was aching to have a long conversation about her marriage. However sympathetic I was to Dave, I could see why she might be exasperated. After two years in Istanbul, it did seem that the man should be able to speak Turkish well enough to avoid coming home with a fish the size of Moby Dick. Still, I didn’t want to hear about it right then. “Well, have some coffee; the prayers will be over soon.” I resigned myself to getting no work done that morning.

  She glanced out the window. “It’s a nice balcony, though.” She struggled to project her voice over the traffic and the muezzin without shouting. “I wish we had one like that. You could grow a beautiful garden there. It’s too bad the guy who lives here doesn’t do anything with it.”

  “I don’t think he’s the gardening type.”

  When at last the muezzin stopped, Sally put down her coffee. “Claire,” she said again, “I’d like to talk to you about something really important.” Again, she glanced at the balcony, and suddenly I had a suspicion. No way, I thought. I’m not taking the turtles. It wasn’t even my apartment—I couldn’t exactly leave them there as a surprise for Dr. Mostarshed.

  “Why, what’s up?”

  “Let’s step out on the balcony, okay? I want to see what the view’s like.” It’s the same as it is from the window, I thought. And it’s staying turtle free. But it was a sunny day, and if she was going to talk my ear off, I figured we might as well get some air. I opened the door to the balcony. Sally stepped outside and sat on one of the uncomfortable canvas chairs. “This is wonderful,” she said. “Imagine how you could fix it up in the summer—a hammock, tiki torches—anyway, sit, sit; I want to talk to you.” She motioned toward the chair opposite her. I sat down reluctantly.

  “So what’s up?” I asked her again, trying to get comfortable on the little chair. It was so low that crouching on it instantly made my leg ache. It was the one I’d injured in the motorcycle accident. The leg only hurt me in certain positions, but that was one of them.

  Sally leaned toward me, placing both elbows on her knees and clasping her hands. “Well, let me start by saying that I think we’ve developed quite a good friendship here. ” Her tone of voice, I thought, was peculiar. She’d suddenly become almost formal. “And over the time we’ve spent together, I’ve come to respect and trust you. I’ve been impressed by your character and your intelligence and your common sense.”

  “Well . . . thank you.” Although everyone likes to be praised, I was a bit puzzled. I wasn’t sure what I’d done to impress her that much. We hadn’t really known each other that long.

  “I think you may already have an idea what I’m going to say to you.” I wasn’t sure. Somehow this seemed a bit too heavy to be about the turtles. I hoped she wasn’t about to tell me she was thinking of leaving Dave.

  She looked at me as if she wanted me to encourage her to continue. “No idea; tell me,” I said. My neighbor started hammering something. Whack, whack, whack. Sally looked in the direction of the noise. I turned up my palms. “I don’t know why he’s hammering. He hammers all day. It’s just what he does. You want to go back in?”

  Sally took a deep breath and shook her head “No, this is great out here. Okay—” A car with an unmuffled engine roared up the street and squealed to a halt below the balcony. The driver leaned on his horn. Everyone on the street began shouting in Turkish. I cupped my hand to my ear to indicate that I couldn’t hear a word she was saying. She rolled her eyes and waited for a few seconds, then tried again, speaking loudly. “Okay. As I was saying, I’ve been impressed by you. You’re extremely knowledgeable and clear-minded about foreign affairs. When we’ve spoken about my job at the consulate, I’ve sensed that you understand what’s at stake—how serious it is.” The honking and shouting stopped, but the hammering continued. I missed a few words. “—the kinds of challenges we face since September 11,” she finished. I cast my mind back over the conversations I’d had with Sally. We had discussed politics only a few times, and I didn’t recall saying anything particularly incisive.

  Her expression was d
istinctly odd, I thought. I’d never seen that look on her face before. I tried to figure it out. Her face was professional. As if she were explaining that my visa application had been rejected because I had failed to provide legible photocopies of the supplementary documents requested on the nonimmigrant visa application form. She leaned over farther, then she reached over and put her hand on my knee—the knee that hurt. The warm gesture seemed incongruous with her expression. “Claire, as you’ve probably guessed, I have some special responsibilities at the consulate.”

  “Huh?”

  “Because of your expertise and your contacts, our government has asked me to ask you for your help. You’re in a unique position to assist us.” Whack, whack, whack.

  “What on earth do you mean?” Her hand was still on my knee.

  “You have a friend we need to speak to. We’d like you to help us meet him. I can tell you we wouldn’t ask this if it wasn’t critically important to national security.”

  “What are you talking about, Sally?” Her hand was making me quite uncomfortable, and so was her weird, rehearsed tone of voice. Was she kidding? Or was Sally kind of nuts, like poor Mad Bob Popovich? Mad Bob was one of Imran’s classmates in medical school. He seemed absolutely normal in every way, save his conviction that the KGB had placed hidden cameras in the traffic lights to track his every movement. “Who do you mean by we?” I asked.

  “I mean that I’m authorized to speak on behalf of the U.S. government. We understand that you’re in regular contact with an Iranian national named Arsalan Safavi. We urgently need to speak to him in person. We need your help to make that happen.”

  I stared at her. I had never said a word to her about Arsalan. The hammering seemed to grow louder and louder. Whack, whack, whack, whack, whack. “You’re kidding me, right?” I said. “You’re fucking kidding me, aren’t you?”

  She wasn’t smiling at all.

  • • •

  My neighbor was still hammering. A driver began honking, and then, like neighborhood dogs who begin howling just because the first dog started it, every other driver in the vicinity began honking too. Sally’s hand was still on my knee. I shifted to the side to dislodge it. “Are you telling me that you work for the CIA?” I asked, needing her to say it out loud.

  “Yes, I am.” She put her hand back on her own knee. She was still leaning close enough that I could smell her chewing-gum breath.

  “You’ve been lying to me this whole time?”

  “The only thing I haven’t told you is that. Everything else I’ve told you is a hundred percent true. And you understand why I couldn’t tell you that.”

  “You’ve been reading my mail? You can’t do that. It’s against the law. I’m a U.S. citizen.”

  “No, we haven’t been reading your mail. I promise you.”

  “Then how do you know we write to each other?”

  “We’ve been reading his mail.”

  “Oh, well—no problem then! I’m sure that’s just what Congress intended you to do! Do you rip off the parts of the letters I wrote before you pass them around the whole fucking federal government?”

  “Claire.” Sally’s voice was calm. “I know this is upsetting, and of course I can understand how you feel. I want to assure you that we’re doing this for a reason—a very good reason. You and I both want the same thing. We both want a world where people don’t hijack planes and fly them into the World Trade Center. The people we’re trying to learn about aren’t Boy Scouts. You know there are people in the world who want to see us dead. A lot of them live in Arsalan Safavi’s neck of the woods. You saw those towers collapse like everyone else. Can you think of anything we need more these days than good intelligence? Do you really think we’re doing this because we just like reading other people’s mail?”

  “Who is he? Why do you want to talk to him?”

  “Unfortunately, Claire, this is going to be the hard part for you. I can’t tell you much about that.”

  “You can’t tell me?” I could hear my voice rise and end in a squeak. I made myself take a deep breath. “How can you not tell me?”

  “The fact that I can’t tell you should give you confidence that we take operational security very, very seriously. It should reassure you that we’re professionals and we know how to keep both of you safe.”

  Keep us safe? This freckled, button-nosed woman with teeth like piano keys—a woman who couldn’t even keep her own husband from building a turtle hutch in the living room—was going to keep me safe? From what?

  “Is he a terrorist? Is he in Hezbollah? Why the hell has he been writing to me?”

  “No. No. Relax. He is definitely not a terrorist. He’s not a bad guy at all. You don’t need to be afraid of him. We just need to talk to him.”

  “About what?”

  “About things U.S. policy makers need to know to keep us safe. I wish I could tell you more than that—I understand how frustrating it must be to hear this—but I know you understand why I can’t.”

  “Why has he been writing to me? Why me?”

  “I can’t tell you that, unfortunately—”

  “Oh yes you can. If you don’t tell me that, I’m getting on the next plane out of here. And as soon as I’ve done that, I’m writing to him and telling him everything you’ve just told me.”

  She blanched. “Claire—that would be a really bad move. You seem to know the law pretty well, so you probably know the laws about divulging the identity of an undercover operative.”

  She’s threatening me now? Some recruiting technique. I stood up. “It’s time for you to go, Sally. Or whatever your name really is.” I opened the door to the kitchen and pointed her toward it.

  “Wait. Wait. I’ll tell you this, okay? It’s just a coincidence. We think it’s just a coincidence. He just happened to start writing to you. Your involvement in this is a complete accident. But it’s a happy accident, as far as we’re concerned, because we know you’re a patriotic American who understands something about this world.”

  I stood there with my hand on the door. “He just happened to start writing to me? You expect me to believe that?”

  “He really loves spy novels.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “We know what he looks at on the Internet. He reads a lot of reviews on Amazon.com.”

  “Sounds like you have your proctoscope way the hell up the poor guy’s ass, so why don’t you just contact him yourself?”

  “We don’t want to cause trouble for him. We need to meet him outside of Iran—for his safety. We know he’s coming to see you—”

  “You know that already? You don’t waste a minute, do you.” It suddenly dawned on me that she had insisted on coming out to the balcony because she thought Dr. Mostarshed’s apartment was bugged. Who did she think was listening? I wondered. The Iranians? The Turks? “So why don’t you just meet him by accident in a coffee shop, the way you met me?”

  “Well—I don’t want to get into details, but Iranians are very suspicious. They have to be. They live under a brutal government. We think an introduction from someone he trusts would go a long way.”

  “So I’m supposed to invite him for a romantic weekend and then say, ‘Hey, baby, by the way, my friend Sally from the CIA will be joining us’?”

  “Actually, we’d ask you not to mention that to him. We’ll disclose our status when and if we feel it’s appropriate.”

  “Let me get this straight. You want me to lie to my friend, invite him to Europe under false pretenses, and put him at grave risk without his consent. Do you know what would happen to him if he got caught meeting an American spook? They’d hang him. No way. I can’t do that to him. I won’t do it.”

  “We’re going to make sure that doesn’t happen. We’re professionals. We know how to do this securely.”

  “Like you handled that guy who got hit by the taxi? No way.”

  “Hold on a second, Claire. What makes you so sure he wouldn’t want you to introduce us? Don’t you think h
e has the same concerns about the world that we do?”

  I was caught short by that question. I wasn’t sure how to answer it. Finally, I said, “He’s an archaeologist. I think I know him well enough to know that whatever you’ve got in mind is the last thing he wants to be mixed up in. The last thing either of us wants to be mixed up in.”

  “Don’t be so sure. Do you think living the way people live in Iran is easy? Do you think he likes living in a medieval theocracy? Do you think he supports their foreign policy? You know, Death to America?” She paused. “And if you think that, why would you protect him?”

  I stood there with my hand on the door. She gestured toward the chair, as if urging me to sit back down again. I remained standing. “What exactly would you want me to do?” I said at last. “I’m not saying I’ll do it.”

  “We want you to keep writing to him just as you have been. We want you to encourage him to visit you as soon as possible. And when he does, we want you to invite a few friends around to your home in a natural, nonalerting way. I’ll be one of those friends. That’s all we need. We’ll take it from there. ”

  I didn’t know what Arsalan would want me to do. “I need to think about this. I can’t make this decision on the spot.”

  “Why not?” Clearly, she had expected me to be more cooperative. Perhaps she’d thought I would be cowed by the mystique of the CIA. Perhaps she’d thought I would unquestioningly accept that this mission was vital to national security. Perhaps she’d thought that after September 11, there was nothing I wouldn’t do for my country if asked.

  And perhaps she was right about all of that. I just needed to think.

  “I’m not going to make a decision this big without thinking about it. I’ll call you when I’ve thought it over.”

  She rubbed her forehead wearily as if she were getting a headache. “Well, that’s fine. Think it over. I understand this is a lot to take in all at once. But it’s best if we don’t use the phone from now on. We want to take every possible measure to assure your confidentiality. So let’s meet in person.”