Copyright

Harper

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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2014

Homeland: Saul’s Game. Copyright © 2014 by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved.

Artwork/Photographs © 2014 Showtime Networks, Inc., a CBS Company. All rights reserved.

Designed by Diahann Sturge

Andrew Kaplan asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007546039

Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2014 ISBN: 9780007546046

Version: 2015-09-17

Dedication

For the real Anne,

the love of my life

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Author’s Note

2009: One Year Before The Arab Spring

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Characters

Glossary

About the Author

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

AUTHOR’S NOTE

For readers interested in additional useful information on the characters, CIA acronyms, terminology and slang, organizations, agencies, and other entities portrayed in this novel, a list of characters and a glossary are provided at the back of the book.

TOP SECRET//X1: SPECIAL ACCESS CRITICAL//ORCON/NOFORN/FOR DIRECTOR CIA EYES ONLY/100X1

[Polygraph Transcript: CIA Community Security Center/For Middle East Division/National Clandestine Service/Baghdad Station; Date: 20090621]

SUBJECT: Caroline Anne Mathison aka “Carrie”/Operations Officer/Baghdad Station/MED/NCS

POLYGRAPH EXAMINER: [[Name redacted—see comment at end]]

NOTE: Includes Polygraph Examiner evaluations [[in double brackets]]. Polygraph audio transcript begins here:

EXAMINER: Your name is Caroline Anne Mathison?

MATHISON: Yes.

EXAMINER: You were born April 5, 1979?

MATHISON: Yes.

EXAMINER: You are thirty years old?

MATHISON: Yes.

EXAMINER: You are a CIA operations officer currently assigned to Baghdad Station in Iraq?

MATHISON: Yes.

EXAMINER: Have you had sexual intercourse in the last week?

MATHISON: … Yes.

EXAMINER: Have you ever heard of a CIA operation code-named “Operation Iron Thunder”?

MATHISON: I … Yes.

EXAMINER: Just yes or no. Have you ever heard of a CIA operation code-named “Iron Thunder”?

MATHISON: Yes.

EXAMINER: Were you in fact, the lead operations officer for Operation Iron Thunder?

MATHISON: Yes.

EXAMINER: Did you terminate an Iraqi national named [[redacted]]?

MATHISON: He was going to [[redacted]].

EXAMINER: Did you personally kill him? Yes or no?

MATHISION: Yes.

EXAMINER: What about [[redacted]]? Did you have sexual intercourse with him?

MATHISON: Yes, but it was … [[redacted]].

EXAMINER: Were drugs, including ecstasy and/or Captagon, also known as Zero One, and multiple sexual partners also involved?

MATHISON: No, I didn’t participate. [[False. Subject is lying.]].

EXAMINER: You were acquainted with Warzer Zafir, an Iraqi employee of the United States embassy who also acted as a CIA operative in Baghdad, were you not?

MATHISON: Yes. We worked together.

EXAMINER: You knew him better than that, didn’t you? You lived together and had repeated sexual relations with him. Is that correct?

MATHISON: Yes.

EXAMINER: Nevertheless, despite your relationship, were you also involved in the death of Warzer Zafir?

MATHISON: Are you out of your mind? Absolutely not. No. [[False. Subject is lying]]

EXAMINER: Miss Mathison, were you, as part of Operation Iron Thunder or otherwise, involved in any way, in a [[redacted]] that [[redacted]]?

MATHISON: No. What the [[redacted]]? [[Evaluation redacted]]

EXAMINER: Just to be absolutely clear, you have no knowledge whatsoever about [[redacted]]?

MATHISON: [[Redacted]]

EXAMINER: During Operation Iron Thunder, were you [[redacted]] and [[redacted]]?

MATHISON: Yes.

EXAMINER: And during that [[redacted]], did you reveal intelligence severely damaging to the security of the United States?

MATHISON: I did not. No. [[False. Subject is lying]]

EXAMINER: Are you a traitor to the United States of America?

MATHISON: No, you son of a bitch! No. [[False. Subject is lying]]

Remainder of examination redacted: FOR DIRECTOR CIA EYES ONLY. Examiner and all Human Resources Data/201 File/Aardvark HUMINT/Redacted pursuant DCIA/M–20090624–2.

2009

ONE YEAR BEFORE THE ARAB SPRING

CHAPTER 1

Hart Senate Building, Washington, D.C.

28 July 2009

22:19 hours

“Mr. President. And Vice President William Walden too. I appreciate you both coming at this time of night.”

“What is this place? It’s like a damn cave.”

“Special chamber, Mr. President. We use it for secure meetings with spook types like the vice president back when he was director of the CIA. It’s right under the regular Senate hearing room. From an electronic eavesdropping point of view, it’s probably the most secure location in Washington. And with Marines guarding the tunnel from the Dirksen Building, no one will ever know you were here.”

“Good, because this meeting never happened. Tim, my Secret Service guy isn’t thrilled about this.”

“You have my word, Mr. President. Speaking of which …”

“Let’s cut to the chase, Senator. You can’t hold your hearing.”

“Hang on, Mr. President. We’re a coequal branch of government. The American people have a right to—”

“Bullshit. This is politics, pure and simple. Only I’m not a candidate anymore, Senator. I’m the president—and I’m telling you, you can’t do this.”

“Of course it’s politics. What the hell did you expect? This thing stinks to high heaven. You can’t cover this up.”

“We sent you everything you asked for, Senator.”

“You jumping in here, Bill? You sent us what my daddy used to call a giant wagonload of horse manure. The polygraph for this female agent, Mathison, for instance. You redacted damn near everything except her name. Surprised you didn’t do that. This ain’t gonna fly, gentlemen. We’re going to have this hearing—in public. Full media, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, the whole circus. And if it embarrasses you, Mr. President, or you, Bill … well, tough shit.”

“Senator … Warren, let’s not pretend we like each other. I know you want to make political hay and see yourself on all the Sunday talk shows and maybe a stepping-stone to something bigger, but trust me, this is one hearing that isn’t going to happen.”

“You try to shut this down, sir, and as an old prosecutor, I warn you. Both you and the vice president are skating very close to articles of impeachment. I take this very seriously.”

“So do I, Senator. That’s why I’m here. But this hearing cannot go forward.”

“With all due respect, Mr. President, I’m the committee chair. How the hell are you gonna stop me?”

“Because I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt, that under all the bullshit—and yeah, we’re guilty of it too, there are no virgins here—there’s a patriot. Somebody who actually gives a damn about this country. Listen to me, Warren. This isn’t politics. I am the president of the United States of America and I came here tonight for one reason only. This is critical for our national security. You can’t do this.”

“You’re gonna have to give me a helluva lot more than that.”

“That’s why I brought Vice President Walden. Bill?”

“Senator, the president has ordered me to tell you everything. The whole truth and nothing but. Then you decide. I approved this operation. It was on my watch.”

“What about this female agent? Mathison. Is she a traitor? I’m thinking seriously about dragging her in front of a FISA court, locking her up, and throwing away the key.”

“We’ll let you decide. But you’re looking in the wrong direction. She’s not the story.”

“Then in the name of sweet Jesus, Bill, what is the story?”

“Funny you should say that. He isn’t even a Christian. He’s an Orthodox Jew. An Orthodox Jew who doesn’t wear one of those yarmulkes on his head or follow any Orthodox Jewish practices. Go figure that one out, for starters. Let’s call him Saul.”

“What about this Saul?”

“You saw the docs we sent. It’s in there. Now that the president’s sitting here, I’ll admit it’s not full disclosure. We didn’t send even a third—I’m sorry, Mr. President, but I couldn’t—and maybe we fudged on what we did send, but, so help me, it’s there.”

“What? This … operation? Iron Thunder? Looks like a damn train wreck to me.”

“Wow, you really don’t get it. You are listening to Beethoven’s Ninth. You’re looking at the Mona Lisa, the Sistine Chapel, and you don’t have a clue. Senator, this was maybe the most brilliant and successful operation in the history of the CIA—a work of genius—and you don’t see it. This saved the Iraq War. Maybe the whole Middle East. If we hadn’t done this, we were projecting more than ten thousand American casualties and a gigantic loss of American prestige around the world, and that was just for starters. We’re talking about a worse disaster than 9/11. You should be handing out medals.”

“Stop right there, Bill. Since you and the president want to make me one of the bad guys, why don’t you walk me through it? Only let’s be clear, I’m not making any promises.Where do we start? With this operation?”

“Well, since you brought her up, let’s begin with the girl.”

CHAPTER 2

Eastern Syrian Desert

12 April 2009

01:32 hours

The pair of Black Hawk helicopters flew low and fast over the desert. Skimming over sand and rock, less than seventy feet above the ground, barely forty meters apart in the darkness. The night sky was clouded over; only a single star and no horizon. For the pilots it was like flying blindfolded at nearly 160 knots and the only reason they didn’t crash was the AN/ASN-128 Doppler radar that gave them the elevations of ground features: rock outcroppings, sand dunes, or buildings, although in theory, there weren’t supposed to be any habitations in this part of the desert. It would have been safer to fly at a higher altitude, but that would have been suicide. Within minutes, seconds even, they’d be picked up on antiaircraft radar. Once the Syrian fighter jets scrambled, they wouldn’t stand a chance.

Strapped into the hatch seat, Carrie Mathison tried to control her hands from shaking. It had been two days since she’d taken her meds. Clozapine for her bipolar disorder. She got them from the little pharmacy on Haifa Street in Baghdad’s Green Zone, where if the owner, Samal, knew you, you could get any drug on the planet, no questions asked so long as you paid for it in cash. “American dollars, please, shokran very much, madam.”

In the red glow of the helicopter’s interior combat lighting, she could just make out the silhouettes of the Special Ops Group team in full combat gear, humped with packs, cradling M4A1 carbines with sound suppressors. Ten of them plus her made up the Black Hawk’s normal complement of eleven. The distance to the target was inside the helicopter’s 368-mile combat radius and the plan was to be back inside Iraq before daybreak. Through the window next to the hatch, where the door gunner stood manning his 7.62mm machine gun, there was only darkness and the roar of the helicopter’s rotor.

They had crossed the border into Syrian airspace some fifteen minutes ago, taking off from Forward Operating Base Delta, a sandbagged slab of concrete in the middle of nowhere desert outside Rutba in western Iraq. Except for the occasional stop along Highway 10, much of the desert between Rutba and Otaibah was uninhabited but for a few smugglers’ camps.

There had been smuggler routes in the region since before the Roman legions came tramping through these sands. When they had planned this mission, they’d figured that in theory, the local tribesmen were the last people on earth who would make a cell-phone call to Syrian Security Forces. If the smugglers heard helicopters, they would assume they were Syrian army helicopters and hide. In theory.

She couldn’t stop her hands from trembling. Shit. She had stopped taking her meds because she needed to be super-sharp for this operation. Already she was starting to feel strange, like an early warning. Focus, Carrie, she told herself.

How many years had she been chasing Abu Nazir, the leader of the IPLA, the Islamic People’s Liberation Army, an affiliate of al-Qaeda in Iraq and the CIA’s most wanted man after Osama bin Laden? It had become very personal. Ever since U.S. Marine captain Ryan Dempsey was killed outside Fallujah three years ago. Someone she had cared about very much.

She’d almost caught Abu Nazir back then, in Haditha, but he’d slipped away like some conjurer’s trick. The man was a ghost. Still, they worked it. Her, Perry Dryer, the CIA Baghdad Station chief, and Warzer Zafir, presumably a translator for the U.S. embassy, actually her operative, and of course, back in Langley, her boss, Saul Berenson, the CIA’s Middle East Division chief.

A year and a half after Dempsey died, Warzer left his wife. He showed up with a single suitcase at Carrie’s apartment in the Green Zone. A tiny second-floor flat with a window overlooking the traffic on Nasir Street: black-market stalls under the palm trees on the street’s center divider selling car parts, plastic jugs of gasoline, guns, even condoms to passing cars.

“I’m not Dempsey,” Warzer told her that first night, the smell of someone cooking masgouf, fried fish, coming through the open window of her apartment. Standing there, hands in his pockets, looking like a boy on his first date.

“I don’t want you to be,” she said. She hadn’t been with a man since Dempsey. She knew then she didn’t love Warzer. But there was a gentleness in him, something she needed.

“I’m Iraqi. Of the Dulaimi from Ramadi. What I’m doing is haram, you understand? Forbidden. My mother cried. She turned her back on me. My own mother. My wife said, ‘First finish with your American sharmuta. Even after, don’t speak to me. I don’t know if I can forgive. I don’t know if I want to.’ You understand, Carrie?”

She nodded. Sharmuta. Arabic for whore.

“All I know is I had to have you,” grabbing her in his arms, the first time he’d ever done that. “The two of us. Alone in this war. This insanity. And Abu Nazir, who shames me as a Muslim, sick at what he makes of us.”

And then there was only the two of them, Warzer with her, inside her, the first man she’d been with in so long, because that’s what the hunt for Abu Nazir had done to them. The two of them like lost children in a storm, the sounds and smells of Baghdad coming through the open window of her apartment.

“Up and over,” the pilot said, and the helicopter rose to clear an obstacle. They were flying dangerously low to the ground, but then, everything about this mission, three months in the making, was insanely dangerous. It was all on her. She was the one who had insisted on it, had forced the issue.

Putting together a CIA Special Operation like this had required approvals all the way up to the vice president and the national security advisor to the president. When it got to his desk, Vice President William Walden himself had yanked her back to Washington from Baghdad. She had gone into Walden’s office in the West Wing with her boss, her mentor, the one person in the CIA she totally counted on, Saul Berenson; the first time she had ever been in the White House.

“Are you out of your mind?” Walden had said. “This is the riskiest thing anyone’s ever brought to me. You realize if there’s a screw-up, a single mistake, a helicopter malfunction, a barking dog, a neighbor calls the cops, some asshole fires a shot at the wrong time, we’re toast. The country, the Agency, everything. We’d be invading another country. What the hell, Saul, you don’t think anyone would notice?”

“It’s Abu Nazir. It’s him. We’ve been chasing him for years. We got him,” she said.

“How do you know? This Cadillac? I don’t trust it, Saul. I can’t go to Higgins with something this risky.” Mike Higgins was the president’s national security advisor.

“It’s actionable, Bill. Ninety percent probability. You know she’s right,” Saul said.

Cadillac was the code name they’d assigned to Lieutenant General Mosab Sabagh, second-in-command of the Syrian Army’s elite Presidential Guard Armored Division. Sabagh was a trusted Alawite clan relative of President Assad and a member of the ruling military inner circle in Damascus.

Reeling him in had been Saul’s op. He had long ago identified Sabagh as a potential CIA asset. So when a watcher tracking Sabagh at the London Club in the Ramses Hilton in Cairo signaled that the Syrian had gotten in over his head at the tables, Saul made his move. Sabagh had gone to Cairo while his wife, Aminah, was off with President Assad’s wife, Asma, shopping on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris. Her trip was something a lieutenant-general’s salary could never afford, so Sabagh had tried to win the money. “A dubious idea even in Las Vegas, much less at Egyptian tables,” Saul had remarked.

When the watcher reported how much money Sabagh was losing, Saul needed someone to close him fast. He sent an emergency Flash Critical message via JWICS, ordering Carrie to grab the next flight from Baghdad to Cairo to make the approach. JWICS was the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System, the CIA’s special Internet network designed for highly secure encrypted Top Secret communications.

Carrie had walked into the private high-stakes salon in a skintight dress, with eyes only for Sabagh, now Cadillac. She made brief eye contact with the target, Cadillac, in the gambling salon, then tracked him to his hotel room, where he tried to solve his money problems with a bottle of Russian vodka, a pretty Ukrainian prostitute, who later had to be whisked out of the country, and a Beretta 9mm pistol, that Carrie had to pry out of his hand, finger by finger, never knowing till the last second which of them he was going to shoot, her or himself.

She packed Cadillac off back to Damascus the next day with his debts taken care of and $10,000 in American taxpayer money in his briefcase. In the six months since then, with his wife, Aminah, happy in Dior and, more importantly, in Asma, President Assad’s wife’s good graces, everything Cadillac had given them, every piece of intelligence, had been twenty-four karat. He had become the CIA’s most important asset in Syria.

Walden studied the file again, although he’d already read it.

“Okay, so Cadillac says blah-blah and the satellite shows a compound in Otaibah, a suburb east of Damascus. Could be Hezbollah? PFLP? Hamas? Could be President Assad’s grandmother? Could be anybody.”

“We’ve been watching it for two months by satellite and a local team,” Carrie jumped in. “I was there two weeks ago myself at the makhbaz, the local bakery, pretending to be a Circassian. You’d be surprised what you can learn just standing there in an abaya, listening to other women buying bread. There are approximately fifteen to twenty men with families in that compound. Police don’t go on that street. Assad’s security goons never come by. This, in the most paranoid, security-conscious dictatorship in the Middle East. Are you kidding me? Why is that?” she said.

“Satellite infrared confirms the number of people inside,” Saul said.

“Only nobody ever comes out of the compound except to go to the market or the mosque. There’s no telephone landline, no Internet, and they never make cell-phone calls. Just whatever contacts they might have at the mosque or the market,” she said.

“Still doesn’t make sense. Why would Assad, an Alawite allied with Hezbollah and Iran, give sanctuary to Abu Nazir? Head of IPLA. It’s Shiites versus Sunnis? They’re deadly enemies. They hate each other,” Walden said.

“Abu Nazir’s doing it because it’s next to Iraq yet it’s the one place he knew we wouldn’t look for him—and he had to get out of Anbar because we were getting too close. We suspect Assad’s doing it, because in exchange, Abu Nazir’s willing to keep the Sunnis in Syria from what they’re dying to do, which is assassinate him,” Carrie said.

“How do you know this? Cadillac?”

She nodded.

“So forget the raid. Instead we go in with a drone. Low risk. Flatten the place. Complete deniability. End of Abu Nazir. Period,” Walden said.

Saul leaned in on Walden’s desk.

“We’ve had this conversation before, Bill. We can’t get intel from a corpse,” he said. “We need an SOG.” He meant a Special Operations Group. Only ever used for the highest-risk missions.

“If you blast him to smithereens with a drone, they’ll say he’s still alive. He could become more dangerous dead than alive. Last week he had a suicide bomber in Haditha lure children on their way to school with candy and then blow them up into a million pieces,” Carrie said. “Little children! We need an SOG to make sure it’s him and to get the intel to finish this filthy war. So do it, dammit. Before the son of a bitch moves and we lose him again.”

“Twenty-seven minutes to touchdown,” Chris Glenn, the SOG team commander said over the helicopter’s roar.

They were going in light and tight, he thought. Possibly outnumbered by hostiles in the compound. Two UH-60M helicopters with ten SOG team members each. Total twenty men plus the CIA woman, Carrie. The only advantage, the element of surprise, and after thirty seconds, that would be gone and all hell could break loose, unless they were able to eliminate the guards silently and take out the rest before they woke up. The key was planning. And Carrie being right about Abu Nazir and where he’d be in the compound.

And one odd thing he wanted to check out himself. Something opaque that had shown itself in the spy satellite infrared images. An underground cave or vault. They were hiding something.

Or someone. Or several someones, he thought.

“Keep it tight, guys. Nothing gets out. No light, no sound. Not even a fart,” Glenn said, moving over to Carrie. “You good to go, Mingus?” Per her request, they’d code-named her after jazz bassist Charles Mingus. Carrie and jazz. Everybody knew it was her passion. Back at FOB Delta, it became a team joke.

“Hey, Mingus, what’s wrong with Chris Brown?”

“Lil Wayne, yo.”

“Katy Perry, dog!”

“I’m fine. You watch your own ass, Jaybird,” she said to Glenn. His code name.

She clenched her hands on her knees so no one could see them trembling. Just being off her meds for two days was doing it. The only reason she wasn’t flying either on a high or a low with her bipolar disorder was that her system was probably so hopped up on adrenaline from the mission, she decided, shaking her head to clear it.

Glenn and the machine gunner opened the cabin door to a roar of wind. Through the open door, with the night-vision goggles, she could make out scrub on the desert floor speeding beneath them; it looked almost close enough to touch with her feet.

They were supposed to be in Syria one hour flying time in, maximum forty-five minutes on the ground, one hour back to the Iraqi border. Total: two hours and forty-five minutes. Hopefully finished before daybreak and before the Syrian Army knew they were in-country and could react. Once they were back in Iraq, the administration in Washington could deny they had anything to do with it—and nothing left behind but some dead bodies to prove otherwise.

And they’d either have Abu Nazir in custody once and for all or he would be dead. If Cadillac’s intel was solid. And till now, he’d been a hundred percent.

“Ten minutes. Everybody on night vision,” Glenn announced.

One by one, the team members put on their night-vision goggles and adjusted their helmets and communication gear. There was little talking among them.

For weeks, they had trained on a mock-up of the Otaibah compound in the desert near FOB Delta. Each team member had his specific assignment and every man had trained to back up the others in case they were hit. The keys to success were speed and silence in the middle of the night. Every one of them was a combat veteran, the elite of the elite, in incredible physical condition; hair-trigger-trained volunteers who had pushed themselves beyond what they ever thought they could do in order to do exactly this kind of mission.

“Five minutes to target,” the pilot called back over the sound of the rotor.

“Selectors to burst,” Glenn said as everyone moved their carbine safety selectors into firing position. Men started stretching their legs, getting ready to get up and move.

Carrie leaned over to look out the open door. Through the greenish field of night vision, she could see scattered structures on the outskirts of Otaibah. Small farms and shacks. These were poor people. Tribesmen who minded their own business. People who didn’t make it in the wider Syrian society, who didn’t want visits from the GSD, the brutal Syrian secret internal Security Forces. If this was where Abu Nazir really was, he had chosen well. She checked her watch one last time: 1:56 A.M. local time.

“Three minutes. Everybody ready for landing.”

The men in the helicopter got ready to get up. They were seated in the order they would exit from each side of the chopper. Carrie peered intently into the darkness.

And then she saw it. A pair of yellowish lights from a house on a street about a mile or two ahead. Was that the compound? What the hell were lights doing on at two in the morning? Then more lights. It looked like the compound was lit up. Oh God, she had led them into a trap! They were going in hot.

And streetlights too. Oh no! The satellites had shown no streetlights at night in this part of Otaibah. As if the government had deliberately neglected this part of the city.

The intel was bad. Cadillac must’ve lied. Or someone. It was all her fault. They would die because of her. She looked around wildly, trying to think of how to get the pilot to pull them out, to find some way out. But they were too low.

They were coming in fast now. Too late to think about it as they passed over a fence topped with barbed wire and over the compound’s courtyard, bumping down in a cloud of dust.

“Go! Go!” Glenn hissed, slapping her on the back as she stumbled out of the helicopter.

Jumping out, she felt the team moving around her. Every nerve in her body was screaming, anticipating an IED going off or men wearing kaffiyehs letting loose with automatic rifles any second. Everything was a swirling green haze in the night goggles, the lights over the courtyard like something in a van Gogh painting.

She ran behind Glenn, his M4A1 in firing position, toward the main building.

CHAPTER 3

Otaibah, Syria

11 April 2009

23:31 hours (two hours earlier)

Brody was dreaming of Bethlehem. That first time with Jessica. They were in high school; she a sophomore, he a junior on the football team. He was a jock. Never a choice about that. Because the son of Marine chief warrant officer 02 Marion Brody aka Gunner Brody was going to damn well be a tough-as-a-mother-son of a bitch jock or he’d beat the shit out of the little knobhead prick until he was.

They were to meet outside the Brew on the corner of Broad and Main, the trees draped with lights for Christmas, the snowy streets toward Woolworth’s crowding up with people, everyone waiting for the lighting of the big electric Christmas star on South Mountain that could be seen across the Lehigh Valley.

Jessica was the prettiest girl in school. The prettiest girl he had ever seen. But it was more than that. There was something about her. He wasn’t sure what it was—he didn’t even know how to explain it or express it to himself because she wasn’t a slut or anything like that. Willing to explore. Curious. Willing. That was the word.

He knew she liked him and somehow he knew that it was more than sex. Although all they’d ever done was kiss. She really liked to kiss, closing her eyes and sticking out her chest just that little bit that made you want to grab her breasts, but he didn’t. He held back, knowing somehow that although she wanted him to touch them, it was part of whatever high school Catholic girl thing it was for her that he not be like the other boys.

So he waited. But that wasn’t the willing part. What he sensed was that she was the kind of crazy girl that if she loved you enough she would drive off a cliff in a car with you, which was something he thought about. A lot.

Because there was one thing he knew above everything else in the world. Surer than God, surer than money, surer than anything. He’d have to leave home as soon as he could, because either he’d kill Gunner Brody or Gunner Brody would kill him.

And then he saw her crunching through the dirt-webbed snow on Broad Street with her friends Emma and Olivia. She wore a red scarf, her cheeks rosy with the December cold, everyone’s breath coming out in clouds, and the girls started grinning and nudging each other when they saw him and Mike. Yeah, Mike was there. His best friend, Mike Faber, had always been there since the day the Brody family had moved into the upper half of a duplex on Goepp Street.

They had come to Bethlehem from California when he was seven, because his father had gotten a job at the steel mill; Gunner Brody apparently being the last man in the state of Pennsylvania who didn’t know that it was only a matter of another year or two before the plant closed and those jobs were gone forever. Except ex-Marine lifer Marion Brody didn’t have that many choices after an official inquiry into the accidental death of an eighteen-year-old private at the Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, California, involving an M224 mortar, revealed Gunner Brody with a blood alcohol level of 0.29. The finding put the Corps in the questionable position of either a highly visible court-martial of a Marine chief warrant officer with a chestful of medals or the Marine gunner’s early honorable discharge, but without the full pension he’d been banking on. So they had moved from the Mohave Desert, where Nick had been born, to Pennsylvania.

But if nothing else, Marines know reconnaissance. From the minute they moved in, it took Gunner Brody less than twelve minutes to scope out the liquor store on the corner of Goepp and Linden. An hour later, Mike found Nick Brody squatting under the wooden stairs in the backyard of the duplex, his nose broken, lip split, ribs aching, and said, “I’m Mike. I live across the street. You want to come over, man? I got a Nintendo. You play Super Mario Brothers?”

Nick Brody looked at him like he was from another planet.

“Your lip’s bleeding,” Mike said.

“I fell.”

“Sure.” Mike nodded, tapping him on the shoulder with his fist, and just like that they were friends. “There’s this girl,” Mike had said that first day as they headed across the street. “Her name’s Roxanne, but everyone calls her Rio Rita. Sometimes she leaves the curtains open. When she turns around to put her bra on, you can see her ass.”

“Gosh, I can’t believe it’s almost Christmas,” Jessica’s friend Olivia said, the girls joining them at the corner for the Christmas star lighting.

They wound up at Olivia’s house. Olivia produced a bottle of her parent’s J&B scotch, the music was Whitney Houston and Janet Jackson, and somehow it was just the two of them, Jessica and Brody, in Olivia’s sister’s bedroom, on a tiny single bed, kissing so hard it was as if kissing was the only known form of sexual expression, and then she pulled off her skirt, telling him: “I’m not wearing any panties.” She handed him a Trojan still in its wrapper from her purse. And all he could think was, she had thought it all out, this was her idea.

He remembered how excited they had been on that narrow bed, how beautiful she was in the slanting light coming through the venetian blinds from the streetlight outside, the exquisite feel of her—when suddenly blinding light and someone shaking him hard.

For an instant, he thought he was back in the house on Goepp Street and it was Gunner Brody, shaking him awake, shouting at him, “Thought you could sneak your report card past me, you little maggot jarhead.” But it was his guard, Afsal Hamid, shaking him awake, hissing, “Wake up, you American piece of shit! Do you know what’s happened? Of course you know. Because of you we have to go. Because of you, you motherless bastard.”

“What’s going on?” Brody asked.

“You know why, you dog. We have to leave because of you,” unchaining Brody and throwing clothes at him.

“You pig-faced son of a whore!” Afsal kept saying. For a minute it was like six years ago when they first captured him. That time they kept beating him until they nearly killed him. And Brody remembered at one point in those first weeks screaming back at Afsal through bloody teeth, “You think you hit hard, you raghead prick? The Marine gunner used to hit me harder with his service belt every freaking time he got drunk, just because he wanted to make sure I didn’t grow up to be a pussy. Harder than that every day, you son of a bitch. I’m immune to you, you bastard. So hit me harder! Harder! Harder! Harder!”

“What are you doing?” Daleel, one of the others, said to Afsal. “We have to leave. Get him ready.” By now, Brody had learned enough Arabic to understand some of what was said, though not all the nuances.

“This isn’t over,” Afsal hissed, pulling Brody close. “First we leave. But today, I promise. Today is the day you die, American.”

He quickly dressed and washed, hurried along every minute by Afsal saying, “You fool the others, pretending to be a Muslim, Nicholas Brody. But you don’t fool me. This will be the last time you will be a problem for us.”

What had gone wrong? he wondered. All around him, everyone was moving, stripping away everything they owned down to the walls—clothes, furniture, pots, bedding, laptop computers, weapons, explosives—and packing them away into a caravan of pickup trucks and SUVs lined up in the street outside the compound. All the lights were on and Brody didn’t know why they were leaving so suddenly and in the middle of the night.

“Ahjilah! Ahjilah!” Hurry! Hurry! Everyone kept telling each other; all of them, men, women, even the children, moving with purpose.

At the last minute, Abu Nazir himself came in and everyone had a quick communal breakfast. Only hot tea and pita bread. When someone started to clear the breakfast dishes, Abu Nazir told them to leave it and headed out to the lead SUV. Afsal and Daleel stayed with Brody.

When they got to the SUV, its engine running, Afsal took out a pistol and put it to Brody’s head. He ordered Brody to turn around so Daleel could tie his hands with plastic cuffs. Although it was the middle of the night, the street was bright from the headlights of the vehicles lined up and Brody could see the heads of people watching from the windows of nearby buildings.

“Is this really necessary, Afsal? I don’t even know where I am,” Brody said over his shoulder.

Afsal didn’t answer, but instead pulled a black hood over his head so he couldn’t see.

“Somebody help me with this infidel,” Afsal said, and Brody felt himself being heaved up and shoved on his side. They squeezed him into the back of the SUV, the compressed air pressing the hood against his face as they slammed the hatchback shut, banging his skull.

It made his ears ring and he was felt dizzy, maybe concussed. And blind inside the hood. For a second or two, he might have blacked out. Then the SUV started up. He could smell the exhaust. They were moving through the streets. Through it all, something told him, this time they weren’t going to hold Afsal back. Why? What had changed? Why did they have to leave? Wherever they were going, he had the sudden realization that he was extra baggage, deadweight they could no longer afford to carry. This time, they would kill him. But it had always been that way with him.

Living on a bayonet edge with Gunner Brody, the worst of it, knowing he was a coward. He had known that ever since one night when he was twelve. Something he had never told anyone except Jessica—and she couldn’t see it. But he could. And nothing could fix it. Not becoming a Marine, not Parris Island and Iraq. Not combat. Nothing.

That night. The night he learned who he was. It was three days after his twelfth birthday. Gunner Brody had bought him a BMX bike, and for a few minutes, it was almost like they were a real family.

“Who’s the best dad in the world?” Gunner Brody had said when he gave him the bike.

“You are, Dad,” Nick had said, wanting it to be true. Then, seeing a sudden dangerous glint in his father’s eyes because his father always insisted on being treated like a Marine officer, added, “Sir.”

Three nights later, Gunner Brody had fallen dead drunk asleep, his .45 service automatic just sitting there on the kitchen table next to the cleaning kit he hadn’t even started to use before he’d fallen asleep, head on the table, mouth open, spittle drooling from the corner of his mouth. Brody’s mother, Sibeal, was doing what she always did; keeping the bedroom door closed. She slept curled to make herself tiny as a snail in a corner of the bed, as far away from her husband as she could get.

Gunner Brody had been celebrating the six-week anniversary of his unemployment benefit checks running out after he got his pink slip from the steel mill. (“They promised me I’d have a job no matter what,” he roared to his best friend, one hundred-proof Old Grand-Dad. “I got the Silver Star. What’d they ever do, those jerk-offs? They promised me!”) Before he’d passed out, he’d used Sibeal for a punching bag, telling her if she hadn’t gotten pregnant with the little jarhead shit, he wouldn’t be in this stupid fix.

And Nick finally couldn’t take any more. He grabbed his Little League bat from the closet and, coming from behind, swung it at his father, hitting him across the shoulder. Gunner Brody staggered, howling in pain. He turned around and rushed Nick, kicking him in the groin, followed by an elbow jab to the face and a leg takedown.

“Hit your father, you little maggot!” he screamed. “Hit an officer, you little jarhead prick! I’ll teach you!” Banging Brody’s head by his hair against the floor, again and again.

“Gunner, stop it! You’ll kill him! Stop! You’ll kill him. Your own son!” his mother screamed. “Marion, they’ll put you in prison. Is that what you want? For the love of God, stop. Sweet Mary, Mother of God, stop!”

“You don’t get it, you little maggot,” Gunner Brody said, leaning close and whispering in Nick’s ear as he lay there on the floor, helpless, utterly beaten. “When I hit her, she likes it.”

Later that night, something told him to wake up. Wincing, he tiptoed on bare feet to the kitchen, where he found Gunner Brody dead drunk asleep, the loaded .45 and the cleaning kit on the table in front of him, and for more than nine minutes, as he later told Jessica, he stood there in his underwear, holding the gun with both hands less than three inches from Gunner Brody’s head, trying to get up the guts to squeeze the trigger.

“Because I hate him enough,” he told Jessica years later, the two of them walking together after class, walking down Center Street, in a quiet tree-lined neighborhood once you got away from the high school. “I don’t hate anybody in the whole world like I hate that son of a bitch. I want him dead. It’s the only way out for my mom and me. I came close, Jess. I started to squeeze the trigger. I swear to God. My hand was shaking and I squeezed. Another fraction of an ounce of pressure and it would have gone off. Only I couldn’t do it. And I don’t know why!” he screamed, running down the street as hard as he could toward the river, Jessica running after him, yelling, “Brody, wait! Wait!”

A block or two later, he just stopped, standing on the sidewalk outside somebody’s house. A real house with a lawn and white columns like it had been plunked down there from a different world, but he wouldn’t look at her.

“I’m a coward,” he said, knowing it was true. He should have pulled the trigger. A chance like that wouldn’t come again.

“It’s because you’re a good person, Brody. Because you didn’t want to ruin your life. You were only twelve. A kid,” she said, holding him close.

She took his hand and they walked down toward the tree-lined path beside the Lehigh River. He loved that she thought he was good, but he knew it wasn’t true.

What was true were the nine minutes.

But Afsal Hamid, that al-Qaeda piece of shit, he knew, Brody thought, lying there, his hands tied, head covered with the hood in the back of the SUV. Dizzy from the ride and being hit, for a moment it was as if he had lost all sense of reality because he heard a distant sound of helicopters, and for one crazy second, he could’ve sworn they sounded like U.S. Black Hawks. But that was impossible.

He must be hallucinating, Brody thought inside his hood in the SUV. He tried to think. They’re on the move. Why? Had to get out of Dodge. Must be a long trip, though. It seemed like it was taking forever.

He froze. They were talking about him.

“What about the American, Afsal?”

“Shut up, brother.”

“He’s a Muslim. He prays with us.”

“Your mother! He’s an American. A Christian crusader. He only pretends to be a Muslim.”

“Why’d we keep him so long?”

“He has his reasons,” Afsal said, and Brody knew they meant Abu Nazir. “He always has his reasons.”

Now he understood. Afsal meant what he said. This time they were going to kill him. So why did they take him with them?

Because they didn’t want to leave the body behind. Not with his red hair and pale white skin and Made in America face. Might raise too many questions. Better to bury the body out in the desert where it would never be found. Like Tom Walker. His Marine Corps buddy, his scout sniper teammate. Oh God, Tom. I didn’t mean it. At first, they just said, “Hit him!” Hit him again. And again. And again. Crying as he did it, shouting, “I’m sorry, Tom. I’m sorry. Jesus. Help me, Jesus.” Until his hands felt like they were broken and he couldn’t hit anymore and Tom Walker was dead.

Now finally, they were going to kill him too, Brody thought, lying there in the back of the SUV. Something else he learned on that ride, along with the endless bumping and heat and smell of gasoline. You can doze off, even in your last few precious hours on earth. Because he only woke up when they stopped moving. His last thought as he heard them open the back of the SUV was: I’m sorry, Jess. I tried. Six years a prisoner of war. I really tried.

“Get out!” Afsal barked.

Hands grabbed him and Brody stumbled out. He fell to his knees and they lifted him up and pulled off his hood. He was blinded by the light and had to squint to see.

It was no longer night. The SUV had pulled about two hundred yards off a concrete road through a sandy desert. The convoy was gone; their SUV the only vehicle in sight.

Afsal pushed Brody to his knees and took out his pistol.

“Now we finish. Finally,” he said.

“Can I say the shahadah?” Brody said, looking up. The desert was utterly empty. The early-morning sun was just rising over a distant dune, turning the sand and everything to gold, even the faces of the men who were about to kill him. O Allah, this world is so beautiful, he thought.

“Let him. It is required,” Daleel said as Afsal stepped behind Brody and pointed the pistol at the back of his head.

“Ash-hadu an laa ilaaha illallah.” I bear witness there is no God but Allah. “Wa ash-hadu anna Muhammadan rasulullah,” Brody said. I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.

He braced for the shot, his eyes open, aching to see the beauty of the sunrise till the last instant.

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