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.
“No they won’t. I won’t talk to anyone else. They’ll have to send you back.”
“You have to listen,” Carrie said. “They won’t do that.”
“Then, inshallah”—God willing—“they’ll never get another word from me.”
“If there’s an emergency, use the cemetery. I’ll have someone monitor the dead drop,” she whispered.
“There is something I have to tell you.” She looked around to make sure they weren’t overheard and pulled Carrie close. “There’s going to be an attack against America. A big one.”
“How do you know?”
Fatima’s eyes darted around like a trapped animal’s. She took a few steps and motioned for Carrie to follow. She glanced around the corner of the aisle to make sure there was no one near.
“I overheard Abbas talking on his special cell phone. The one he only uses when it is important,” she whispered.
“Who was he talking to?”
“I don’t know. But the way he stood and listened, someone of importance.”
“What about the attack?” Carrie whispered. “Any details? Time? Place? Method?”
“I don’t think they told him. I’m not even sure it’s Hezbollah. But it’s soon.”
“How soon?”
“I don’t know. But he said ‘khaliban zhada,’ you understand?”
“I understand,” Carrie said. Very soon. She leaned close to Fatima’s ear. “Any idea how big or where?”
She shook her head. “But when he heard, Abbas said something. Allahu akbar.” God is great, Carrie translated automatically. “We say this all the time.” She shrugged. “But it was the way he said it. I can’t explain, but it scared me. I wish I could help you more. Something very bad is going to happen.”
“This helps a lot. Truly. Are you okay?”
“No.” She looked around again. “I can’t stay. Someone might see us.”
“I know. Shokran.” Thank you. Carrie squeezed her hand. “I have to go too. Be careful.”
“Carrie,” Fatima said. “You’re my only friend. Think of me. Otherwise, I think I’m lost forever.”
A horn honked outside. Virgil. Carrie took Fatima’s hand and put it to her own cheek.
“Me too,” she said.
CHAPTER 3
Langley, Virginia
After four years in Beirut, plus time in Iraq, it felt strange driving the woodsy George Washington Memorial Parkway, handing the badge she’d gotten out of her safe-deposit box to the guard at the gate like an everyday commuter. Coming into the George Bush headquarters building, she was struck by how many people she didn’t know. No one gave her a second glance in the elevator. In a skirt, blouse, jacket and makeup for the office, she felt like she was wearing a disguise. I don’t belong here, she thought. Maybe I never did.
She’d been up all night, unable to sleep. When she closed her eyes to try to sleep she saw her father, Frank Mathison. Not as he was now, but how he was when she was a child back in Michigan. He’d lost his job at Ford Motor Company when she was six. She remembered her mother coming into her sister’s and her room to sleep with them, the three of them huddled under the covers while her father paced the house all night, saying nonstop that there was a miracle coming; he had seen the sign in computer code.
She remembered her father driving them up to New Baltimore on Lake St. Clair when she was in first
