LITMIR.BIZ

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you name it. There was nothing. Not mobile, not on foot, not electronic, not with a telescope from twenty miles away. You better face up to it, Davis. We have a security breach.”

      “The hell we do. You screwed it up and now you’re running for cover. I warned you, Mathison. We play Beirut Rules here. Now, let’s go over it again. First of all, where’s Dima?”

      “You tell me. After the fiasco at the contact and again at the safe house, I spent half the night looking for her. Instead of yelling at me, how about considering that she might be a double? Maybe she set me up. Because if not, when did you become so trusting?”

      “We don’t even know that you were set up. Maybe you panicked because Nightingale got the contact location wrong. Maybe he was on Lebanese time. Maybe he was drunk. Shit, Carrie. This was supposed to be a fly-by, that’s all. Get a look at him; let him get a look at your tits and set up the next one. You panicked. Admit it,” Fielding said, face red as Santa Claus, but his eyes cold and blue as ice.

      “Not true. You weren’t there. I was. He motioned to me,” she said, showing him. “He’s supposed to be a senior intelligence officer and he motions to a contact he’s never met to come right over like we’re housewives in the park? Are you kidding?”

      “Maybe that’s how they do it in the GSD. Maybe he thought you got it wrong. You’re a woman, for crying out loud. No man in the Middle East is going to take you seriously. Based on last night, they’re probably right.”

      She could feel her heart pounding. What was going on here? There’d been a serious screw-up that nearly led to her capture or death. He should have been supporting her; not ripping her a new one. “There were two men in a van and four in a Mercedes. They tried to kidnap me, dammit! They shot at me. Here.” She showed him the scab on her leg where the piece of sidewalk had hit her.

      “Yes—and then you led them right to the safe house, which for all I know was the object of the exercise for them in the first place!” Fielding snapped. “This is going in your 201,” he added, referring to the CIA’s personnel file on each employee. “Don’t think it isn’t.”

      Carrie stood up.

      “Listen, Davis,” she said, trying to control herself. “There’s something bigger going on here. Has it occurred to you to wonder why they wanted a CIA case officer when if Nightingale was a double, they could have fed us garbage for years and we’d have eaten it like pigs at a trough? Ask yourself why.”

      “Sit down,” Fielding snapped. “Where do you think you’re going? I’m not done with you.”

      She sat. Inside, she was shaking with anger. She could have ripped his eyeballs out, she was so furious. She was that strong, that powerful. Oh God, was she going on one of her flights? She could feel control slipping; she was almost on the verge of killing him. Control yourself, Carrie. You can do it.

      “Dima set the contact up. We need to consider her,” she said carefully, trying to hold it in.

      “What about her cell phone?”

      She shook her head. “Nothing in the dead drop either.” For emergency contacts with Dima, she used the hollow of a tree in Sanayeh Park. When she’d gone there in the middle of the night after trawling the clubs, the hollow was empty. She had left a chalk mark on a branch, indicating that Dima should contact her ASAP, but she had a bad feeling about hearing from her.

      “Where else did you look?”

      “Le Gray, Whiskey, the Palais, her place—and you don’t have to say it; I was careful—everywhere. No one’s seen her. I picked the lock in her apartment. She hadn’t been home. It looked like she hadn’t been there for a couple of days.”

      “So she’s shacked up with the latest hunk from Riyadh with cash in his pocket, so what?”

      “Or she’s being tortured or is already dead. There’s been a security breach, Davis. You can’t ignore the possibility.”

      “So you say,” he said, biting his lip. “What else?”

      “There was no one in the safe house,” she said. “What was that about?”

      “Budget. Bean counters in Washington.” He shrugged. “They’re running the universe. We had to cut back. So according to you, you were clean. They chased you. You got away. No one followed you to Achilles? What about this older woman you got the car from?” He steepled his index fingers, his blue eyes lasering into her. “She gives her car to a complete stranger. Why would she do that?”

      She swallowed. “She was a decent person. Woman to woman. She could see I was in trouble.” She could see I was desperate, she thought.

      “Or maybe she was one of theirs and told them where to find you. Either that, or they persuaded her,” he said, making a gesture like pulling out a fingernail.

      Is he crazy? she wondered. Where does he come up with this crap?

      “She had no idea where I was going. I told her I’d leave the car at the Crowne Plaza and I did. She knew nothing about the Achilles location.”

      “No, but like everyone in Beirut, she knew the Crowne was on Rue Hamra, so where you were going couldn’t be far. All they had to do was blanket the area. Fifty watchers in the Friday-night crowd and you didn’t even spot one.” He shook his head disgustedly. “The only amateur in this whole ridiculous fiasco is sitting right across from me.”

      “I don’t believe this. I manage to escape a deadly Hezbollah trap and it’s my fault?” she said, standing again. She felt sick to her stomach. What was happening? Was he firing her? “What are you saying? Would you rather I’d died or been captured?”

      “I’m saying you’re done here. You’re certainly compromised and we’ll have to get a new safe house, thanks to you.”

      “What about my agents? They count on me,” she said, her heartbeat pounding in her head like a drum. She’d never been fired before. It was the most sickening feeling she’d ever experienced.

      “For the time being, I’ll handle Dima and your other Joes. You’re done. Talk to Carol about arrangements and your flight back,” he said. “And I’ll call Berenson. He’s the one who foisted you on me in the first place.”

      “So that’s it. All my work and I’m gone for something that isn’t my fault?”

      “Go pack, Carrie. I’m sending you back to Langley. Maybe they can find something useful for you. Not everybody’s cut out for the field.”

      “You’re wrong, Davis,” she said, her jaw clenched, knowing she was wasting her breath. “I wasn’t followed. There’s a security breach. You need to check it out.”

      “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

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