Saul's Game

by Andrew Kaplan

  Now, as she sat in a Damascus café on a sunny afternoon, sipping coffee, nibbling a slice of baklava, and watching people walk by and the honking cars on Al Nasr Street, one thing was becoming crystal clear: a leak like this, that involves a Top Secret SOG mission that suddenly gets delivered to IPLA, doesn’t happen by accident. Either somebody talked out of turn or something far worse.

  They had a mole.

  She took a taxi to the Al-Hamidiya Souk, first walking past the rug shop to make sure it was clear to approach, then coming back. Orhan had an antique Persian-Kurdish yellow rug thrown on a chair; the signal it was clear to approach. She went in and poked around.

  Orhan was playing tawla with a cigarette-smoking Syrian businessman in sunglasses and a mustache. Orhan threw the dice, made his move, then stood up and said to Carrie in accented English, pointing at the yellow rug:

  “Please, madam, so beautiful lady. It is of the genuine Kurdish-Persian antique. This is tribal and handmade, of very finest of the Bidjar quality. Here, let me turn it over for you to see the knots of handmade, madam.” Showing her.

  “Very nice,” she said. “I have a friend who likes such things.” Hoping he understood she was talking about Cadillac.

  With his eyes, Orhan indicated that Cadillac hadn’t come in. Not yet.

  “Please sit”—he gestured—“dearest beautiful lady madam. Would you like tea? Café? Perhaps a cold gazooza, yes?”

  She sat, her back to the businessman, her back blocking his view. Checking the front of the shop to make sure no one was watching, she slipped the black flash drive into the brass pot under the table

  Two minutes later, despite Orhan’s entreaties—“We have many, many carpets, dearest lady, of finest Isfahan, so many”—she left the shop. With a shrug to his businessman friend, Orhan went back to his game.

  That evening, back at the apartment on Al Nasr Street with all the lights out, Carrie stood, peering from behind the edge of the heavy drapes with binoculars at the sidewalk café across the street. At this point, she was ready to pull the emergency eject handle on this one. The black flash drive she had left at the drop at Orhan’s shop in the Al-Hamidiya Souk contained a bunch of videos, cute stuff about dogs and children. Anyone who looked at it would see nothing unusual. But inside one of the videos, she had embedded a Word file that only the CIA software she’d given Cadillac would find. On the Word file were instructions to meet her at the sidewalk café, which was, although Cadillac didn’t know it, directly across the street from the safe house.

  She had arranged to meet Cadillac at the café at 7:15 tonight, and included the sentence “I saw your cousin Abdulkader at the Jaish versus Horriya football game,” the code words “cousin Abdulkader” meaning “extreme urgency.” Just in case, she had also sent him an email about the soccer match, supposedly coming from the same mythical cousin Abdulkader, using code to give him the name of the café on Al Nasr Street.

  She’d picked that café so she could watch it herself from the relative protection of the safe house before she went there, because operating in Syria was always dangerous and that was even before the mission failure at Otaibah. Take it easy, Carrie, she told herself as she watched people going inside the café or sitting at the outside tables. Whatever was going on, she was alone, deep in the red zone.

  She checked her watch one last time: 8:21 P.M. Cadillac wasn’t coming. And she had no way of knowing if he was still operational.

  Game over, she thought. She should report to Saul and get back to the hotel, the posh Cham Palace. But even that wasn’t simple. Nothing in Syria ever was, she thought, grabbing her jacket and shoulder bag. On an impulse, she decided to give it one more try. She would go to the café herself, on the off chance that Cadillac had sent someone else. It nearly cost her her life.

  She walked up the long block to the corner by the Palace of Justice and crossed over to the other side of Al Nasr. She started coming back down the street toward the café when suddenly two black Toyota SUVs raced past her. Instinctively, Carrie froze, then, looking around, went over to a shop window, where she pretended to examine the display. Men’s shoes.

  The Toyotas screeched to a halt in front of the café. A man’s body was thrown from the front vehicle onto the street. A woman screamed. The doors of the second SUV opened and four men in suits came rushing out.

  The men ran to the sidewalk café and began grabbing customers, shouting and demanding to see their identity cards. One young man—he looked like a student in a windbreaker—began to run and one of the men took out a pistol and shot him in the leg. The young man went down. They grabbed both him and the young woman he had been sitting with and hustled them into the lead vehicle. The two SUVs drove off into the night.

  No one said a word. This was Syria.

  Everyone who had been sitting in the café hurriedly left. The owner of the café had his employees take the chairs and tables inside and closed up the place. No one approached the dead man lying in the street. Cars slowed down and drove around the body. No one stopped.

  Carrie walked carefully down the street toward the café, scanning the buildings and cars for security cameras and watchers. She was taking a huge chance, but there was no choice. The needle was way over the red line on this one. Langley would have to know. She had to know the dead man’s identity.

  Just a few feet closer, she thought. If she could just get a look at his face, her eyes darting everywhere, because there were sure to be watchers.

  The body was lying on its side, a hand outstretched as if asking for something. It was difficult to see clearly in the dark. Then the headlights of an approaching taxi lit the man’s face for an instant and there was no mistake.

  Cadillac. Mosab Sabagh. Her agent. There were cigarette burns on his face and something funny about the fingers of his hand. Was that nail polish? Jesus! They had cut off the ends of his fingers.

  She wanted to throw up, but kept walking. She had to get away, fast. The lights and shadows of the street around her were a blur. She wanted to look around, but didn’t dare. If there were GSD agents nearby, they might take her into custody any second. As the taxi slowed to go around the body, she signaled for it to stop. It was all so surreal. People were acting normally a few feet from a dead man. Everyone was afraid. Neither she nor the driver acknowledged that there was anything unusual, even though he had deliberately slowed to circle his taxi around the body.

  She got in and told the driver to take her to Leila’s.

  “Yes, madam,” the driver said.

  Leila’s was a popular restaurant in the Old City that overlooked the famous Umayyad mosque. At the moment, Carrie didn’t give a damn about Leila’s, but she desperately needed to call Saul and figured it would take the driver some time to negotiate the traffic and crowds in the narrow streets of the Old City.

  Although the ride might take twenty-five minutes, once she started the call, she probably had only three or four minutes before the Syrian GSD and military security would start GSP-tracking the cell phone call. After that, she would have only another two or three minutes before they took her into custody.

  The Syrian Security Forces, the army, the Mukhabarat, and the GSD monitored all calls, land and cell phone, and Internet in Syria, especially those to places out of the country. This one would certainly raise red flags all over the place for them, especially once they realized that it originated near Cadillac’s body, that it was being scrambled, and that they couldn’t decipher it with their normal decryption tools.

  They would quickly understand that it was a foreign intelligence service—automatically jump to the conclusion it was either CIA or the Israeli Mossad, because that’s how their minds worked—and there would be teams of GSD agents racing toward her cell phone’s location as fast as they could go. The only question was how long it would take for them to latch on to it.

  The trick was to keep the call short and sweet, use no names, and get rid of the cell phone’s SIM card as fast as she could, before she arri
ved at the restaurant.

  She dialed Saul’s number, thinking, Please pick up. Please. Please. She checked her watch. It would be around 2:45 in the afternoon on the East Coast. Saul should be in his office in Langley. Someone picked up.

  “Hi, it’s me,” she said. There was no time for passwords. This was all about recognizing voices.

  “I got your message. Are you okay?” Saul’s voice, flooding her with relief. Thank God. Just hearing him made her feel a little safer for the first time since the Black Hawk had lifted off from FOB Delta. He was letting her know he’d gotten the note about the leak from Glenn.

  “I’m okay. I’m in Damascus. I love it,” she said, nearly choking on that last bit. Make it fast, she told herself. The Syrians will be onto this sooner than you think. We don’t know what they got out of Cadillac or how much. And she hadn’t even had a chance to check on Orhan yet. Oh God, Orhan.

  “I’m a little worried about the car,” Saul said. Cadillac.

  “You should be. It’s pretty bad. I don’t think it’s going to make it,” she said.

  “How bad?” She could hear in his voice just how bad this news was. First the failed SOG mission, now Cadillac down. This was shaping up as a total disaster. Was the network blown? How to let him know in such a way so that the Syrians—if they managed to decipher their conversation—wouldn’t understand?

  “Remember last Christmas?” she asked. Saul had flown into Baghdad. They’d all gotten together, her, Perry, Warzer, some of the other key CIA personnel, in his room at the Al-Rasheed Hotel in the Green Zone, everyone getting plastered and telling stories over Scotch and Russian Standard martinis and Mrs. Fields cookies.

  When it was his turn, Saul had told them about growing up in the only Orthodox Jewish family in Calliope, Indiana, and how when he was a kid, on Christmas Eve, when his parents were asleep, theirs the only house without a tree or lights or presents in the whole town, he would sneak down and watch the black-and-white movie A Christmas Carol on TV. “The one you told us. Do you remember the first line of that story?” Come on, Saul. The first line of the Charles Dickens story: “Marley was dead.” “That’s how bad,” she said, hoping to God he’d get her meaning.

  For a moment, he didn’t answer. Please say something, she thought, the seconds ticking. Please. With every second, she could feel the GSD closing in on her, imagining Toyota SUVs, tires screeching as they surrounded the taxi, blocking off the street any second now.

  “Are you absolutely sure?” He got it. God, he was smart. She loved that about him.

  “A thousand percent,” she said grimly, trying not to think of Cadillac’s body, what they had done to him, what they might do to her.

  “Any idea what might have caused it?” he asked. She had nothing, only speculation. He wanted to know if she’d spotted something, someone. But in her heart, she knew. Cadillac, the deserted compound, just missing by a few hours. None of it was a coincidence and it wasn’t the SOG team. They’d had nothing to do with Damascus. There could be only one possible explanation.

  “I’m thinking maybe it was an animal.” Come on, Saul. I’m all alone and we’re getting killed out here. What the hell do you think it is? Because I’m thinking a mole. A small furry animal that likes to dig, doesn’t he, the miserable worm-eating son of a bitch?

  “I’m thinking the same. You’d better get going,” he said.

  She was right, she thought, exhaling, not realizing she’d been holding her breath. Saul agreed with her. They had a mole. And he was also telling her to get the hell out of Syria. Now.

  “I will. Just have to check on something,” she said. Orhan.

  “Take care,” he said, and hung up.

  She checked her watch. Four minutes. Too damn long. The GSD would be onto her. They would be closing in on her taxi any minute. She opened the cell phone and, with her fingers fumbling and sweating, took three tries to take the stupid SIM card out of the cell phone. Come on, Carrie. Come on, she told herself.

  The taxi’s back window was half open. She checked the driver’s eyes in the rearview mirror. He was watching her.

  “Keep your eyes on the road, please,” she told him, and waited to see that he did. She looked to see where she was. All around were the older buildings of the Old City, TV satellite dishes sprouting on the roofs like mushrooms. Still plenty of traffic despite the hour. When she was sure the driver wasn’t watching, she tossed the SIM card out the window. Ahead, she could see the dome and minarets of the Umayyad mosque.

  “I changed my mind,” she told the taxi driver. “I want to go to Naranj, not Leila’s.”

  “Naranj, madam? On Straight Street?” Naranj was a famous restaurant. As for Straight Street, it was the oldest street in Damascus, maybe in the world. It was mentioned in the Bible.

  “Yes,” she said. “Go around the mosque.”

  “It’s better if I turn around and go back, madam,” he said.

  Yes, and get stopped by the GSD, she thought, her nerves drawing tight as violin strings. God, was her bipolar kicking in? Not now, please, feeling her heart rate skyrocket. Take it easy, Carrie. She had taken a clozapine. It just had to kick in.

  “I’m not in a hurry. Go the back way,” she said, waiting till they had gone four or five blocks before she dropped the empty cell phone—minus its SIM card—out the window, hearing the faint plastic click as it hit the cobblestone street.

  Now there was nothing to connect her to the call except the driver, she thought as they drove behind the Umayyad mosque, which supposedly contained the head of John the Baptist, as well as the tomb of Saladin, the great Muslim warrior who defeated the Crusaders. They zigzagged around the outside of the mosque to Al Sagha Street, then over to Straight Street. Somewhere behind them, she heard the sound of police sirens.

  She didn’t like the way the taxi driver looked at her when he dropped her off in front of Naranj, a platoon of Mercedes and Porsches parked in front of its high arched windows. If questioned, that taxi driver would remember her. Maybe because of Cadillac’s body. Not good. She had to get away from here as quickly as possible, she thought as Naranj’s doorman bowed and opened the door and she went inside.

  Damascus was becoming too dangerous. But she had to find out if Cadillac ever made it to the drop. And if he had left something for her. And what had happened to Orhan. Because if the GSD had finished with Cadillac, there was a good chance that Orhan was next. And the clock was ticking.

  As always, Naranj was crowded and noisy, the two-story, high-ceilinged restaurant filled with the most important people in Syria, from political leaders to TV stars. At first, the maître d’ looked at her oddly, a woman alone, just standing there, but then, taking a good look: an attractive American woman, long blond hair, not wearing evening clothes, but still, borderline, perhaps somebody important’s mistress, best not to offend till one was sure.

  “Are you meeting someone, miss?”

  “Yes, but I just saw his wife’s Mercedes, that lying son of a whore! Is there a back way out?” Carrie whispered, slipping him a twenty-dollar bill.

  “Of course.” The maître d’ smiled, pocketing the bill smoothly as he motioned to a waiter and whispered instructions. He gestured for Carrie to follow the waiter, who led her to a corner of the crowded atrium toward the back of the dining room, the thick smell of kebabs wafting from the kitchen. The waiter led her to a side door and outside to a sidewalk terrace and the street. She had gotten turned around, but now she realized where she was. They were on a side street opposite the big St. Mary’s Greek Orthodox Church, lit up a bright white in the night behind an arched facade.

  She tried to tip the waiter, but he refused any money. He stepped out into the middle of the street and refused to leave until he had waved down a yellow taxi. The waiter opened the taxi door for her.

  “God willing, all will be good, madam,” he said, as if he knew she was in trouble.

  “God willing,” she murmured back.

  “Where to, madam?” the drive
r asked.

  Time to decide, she thought, her throat dry, unable to swallow. It was incredibly high risk. Every second she stayed in Syria, the danger increased exponentially. By now the Syrians had to know about the Black Hawk incursion into their airspace. Plus Cadillac had been tortured and killed. There was a damn good chance he had told them about the drop location, in which case the GSD would be sitting there, waiting for whoever showed up.

  A female CIA agent would be an unbelievable catch for them. What was in her head could blow everything Langley had going in the Middle East wide open. The downside risk was enormous. If they got their hands on her, the GSD would open her like a can of tuna.

  What a coup it would be—not just for them, but also for their patrons: the Iranians and the Russians. And what a disaster for the CIA, for the United States, for Saul.

  On the other hand, there was a chance that before he was picked up, Cadillac left something for her at the drop. If she could do a quick in and out before the GSD got to Orhan’s shop, she might be able to salvage some intel out of this whole mess. And what about Orhan? If Cadillac hadn’t revealed the location of the drop under torture before he died, she could warn Orhan, maybe save him.

  Time to bet. Only the stakes weren’t just her life, she was risking her country too.

  “Where to, madam?” the driver asked again, his finger tapping impatiently on the wheel.

  “The Al-Hamidiya Souk. Hurry,” she said.

  CHAPTER 5

  Al-Hamidiya Souk, Damascus, Syria

  12 April 2009

  19:14 hours

  “This amber necklace is made for you, madam. It brings out the gold of your hair, the blue-green of your eyes, like the sea,” the merchant said, his hand tracing the curve of Carrie’s hair in the air. He was the same mustached businessman in sunglasses she had seen playing tawla with Orhan earlier in the day. There was a good chance he had just saved her life.