Homeland: Carrie's Run: A Homeland Novel by Kaplan Andrew

Author:Kaplan, Andrew [Kaplan, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2013-09-02T21:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 22

Bashoura, Beirut, Lebanon

Carrie watched Rana open her eyes. They were in a basement storage room of the safe house building near the Bashoura Cemetery that Beirut Station had code-named Iroquois. The room was empty, lit by a single lightbulb; its walls were soundproofed and the door locked. The actress had been tied to a chair with plastic ties. The only other furniture was the chair that Carrie sat in, a stool and a wooden bench on which they’d put a bucket of water and a towel. On a stool next to her, Carrie had put her Glock 26 with a sound suppressor attached.

“You can scream your head off, no one will hear,” Carrie told her in Arabic.

“Not my style,” Rana said. “Not unless they pay me. I did a great scream in a horror movie once. Evil Cannibal Streets. As opposed to Good Cannibal Streets, I suppose. Do you want to hear?”

“I don’t care about your credits. This isn’t an audition,” Carrie said.

“Do you want money? I’m not rich,” Rana said.

“You’re famous.”

“Not the same thing.”

“It’s not money. Let’s talk about Taha al-Douni.”

“Who?”

Carrie looked down at the floor, then up at Rana.

“I need you to tell me the truth. If you do, you’ll be back to your old life in a few hours. If not, you’ll never leave this room,” she said.

For a long moment, neither spoke. Rana looked around, as if seeking a way out.

“What is this about?” she asked, only a slight tremor in her voice betraying her nervousness. She’s an actress, Carrie reminded herself. She lies for a living. Like the rest of us.

“Listen, there’s already a lot you don’t have to tell us. We know about you. And about Dima and Marielle and that you’re Davis Fielding’s, the CIA station chief in Beirut’s, little whore. We’ll get to that in a minute.” She could see that Rana was shocked by what she had said, that she knew all that.

Interrogation 101, she thought. Let the subject think you know about him and what he’s doing and he’ll assume you know more than you are letting on. Amazing the things he’ll let slip because he thinks you already know them. “You met with Taha al-Douni in Baalbek. What was the meeting about?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Rana said.

“Yes, you do.” Carrie frowned and took out the video camera and showed her the playback of her and Nightingale talking in the ruins. “Min fathleki, let’s not make this unpleasant. Actually, even before we get to that, I’ve a better question. What’s a nice Sunni Muslim girl from Tripoli doing with a Shiite spy for the GSD and Hezbollah?”

Rana stared at her, wide-eyed.

“Who are you? What do you want from me?” she whispered.

“The truth. The Christian Bible says it’ll set you free. In this case, that’s the literal truth. But if you lie to me”—she looked at the bench and the bucket of water—“trust me, you won’t like it.”

“How do you know about me? About Tripoli? Was it Dima, that bitch? She couldn’t keep her mouth closed any more than she could keep her legs together.

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