Saul's Game

by Andrew Kaplan

  “What’s going on?” she whispered.

  “Wait,” he said, and went over to a cluster of young men watching, spoke to them for a minute, and came back.

  “Is okay. Not worry. This man,” pointing at the man being whipped. “He drink beer. Haram. Forbidden.”

  Shit, she thought. I’m in the Middle Ages. And I’ve only got four days, Saul.

  After Borazjan, they drove on a narrow blacktop road that snaked its way through the harshest landscape she had ever seen. Stark rock mountains. Behind the mountains, still higher mountains, fading to blue against the sky. There was nothing green anywhere. Not a tree, a bush, a single blade of grass.

  Carrie was sweltering in the black chador that covered her from head to foot. She turned to the man who spoke English.

  “Who is Namir Fahmadi?” she asked.

  “Colonel Fahmadi,” the man who spoke English said, “was in Borazjan in time of shah. Persian peoples don’t like Medes peoples. Hate Lurs. They is hating anyone not Persian.”

  “What did this Colonel Fahmadi do?”

  He looked at her.

  “Not good,” he said, turning away.

  “Tell her,” the driver said.

  “I tell,” the man who spoke English said. “Fahmadi is rounding up young men, Lurs. He is taking from street. No reason. What he do, he make small iron plate. Like this,” holding his hands about a foot apart. “Heats with fire. Hot. Metal is glowing red, all red.

  “His soldiers bring one Lur man. One soldier standing behind prisoner with a sword. When colonel giving signal, the soldier swinging sword. As sword hitting neck of Lur man, Fahmadi yelling, ‘Run!’ Man’s head falling to ground, but colonel pressing red-hot plate on back of neck. Body with no head taking two, three, maybe more steps before falling. Body not knowing is dead.”

  “My God,” Carrie whispered.

  “Is more bad. Fahmadi is bringing another Lur prisoner. Colonel is making bets with soldier men. How many steps each man can go with no head? Record is thirteen steps, dooshizeh. This is Fahmadi.”

  “When he go Tehran, shah is making him General Fahmadi,” the driver said. “Even today, Lur mothers is telling children, ‘Be good or Namir Fahmadi will come,’” the driver said.

  They came up on a road sign in Farsi. Carrie spelled it out. SHIRAZ, 60 KM.

  A few hours later, the men in the SUV dropped her off at a large shopping mall, with gardens and lighted fountains, in one of the most beautiful cities she had ever seen.

  The city of Shiraz had modern streets flanked with trees and gardens at the foot of a long, high mountain. In the mall, she saw young women mostly in rusari head scarves and normal clothes, not chadors. Carrie checked the dead drop, a loose board in the wall of a changing room in a women’s clothing store on the third floor of the vast shiny mall. Behind the board was a gobbledygook message hand-scribbled on a piece of tissue paper. She spent a few minutes on her laptop decrypting the message.

  Robespierre was in Isfahan.

  CHAPTER 27

  Aqrah, Iraq

  28 April 2009

  A family of crows had taken up residence in a date palm in the garden. They gathered like a cloud, their droppings staining that portion of the garden. Their loud squawks woke Brody every morning.

  Abu Nazir’s son, Issa, was afraid of them. He wouldn’t go into the garden when they flocked together on the palm.

  “Why are you so afraid of them?” Brody asked.

  At first, Issa shrank away and wouldn’t answer. But one day, when the boy was standing at the door, afraid, he said to Brody: “They bring bad hadh, Nicholas. Sometimes I think I’m going to die.”

  “Don’t be afraid. You’re young. You won’t die,” Brody said, but he couldn’t convince Issa.

  Brody borrowed a pocketknife—he was trusted enough now for that—and whittled a slingshot like he had used back in Pennsylvania as a boy, playing with Mike. He and Mike had used marbles and small rocks to kill birds and mice and squirrels till something told him, “Don’t.” Because it was too much like Gunner Brody, he thought. That’s exactly what Gunner Brody would do—and the last thing on earth he wanted to be was anything like his father.

  Issa loved his father, Abu Nazir.

  Brody gave Issa the slingshot and taught him how to use it. The first time, using a small stone, with his third shot, Brody killed one of the crows. The boy was afraid to touch it. Brody picked up the carcass and he and Issa walked to the edge of the slope and tossed it into the wadi.

  They stood at the top of the slope to watch.

  At first, the other crows gathered around, cawing loudly, touching the dead crow as if trying to nudge it awake. The next day, they began to eat it.

  Brody stood by the boy’s side when he killed his first crow with the slingshot.

  “Subhanallah!” Issa cried in joy. Praise Allah! They hugged, a moment that bonded them forever. But Issa wouldn’t touch the crow’s carcass, so Brody threw it into the wadi.

  “Are you still afraid of them?” Brody asked. “You can kill them.”

  “Yes, Nicholas, now I can kill them. But I still don’t like them,” Issa said. His English was getting better all the time. Much better than Brody’s Arabic, which sometimes caused both of them to laugh at his mistakes.

  “No, a line of things, like cars, is saff, Nicholas. A line between two points on a paper is khatt.” Issa laughed, making Brody laugh with him. “English is difficult, one word can mean many things. In Arabic, each thing has its own word.”

  Issa was going to the madrassa on the Baradash road that led from Aqrah south to Baradash and, if one continued far enough, to Mosul. Akjemal, the Turkmen girl, had told him there were American troops in Mosul. The U.S. Army First Cav. He tried not to think about that.

  Every day Brody walked with Issa to the madrassa and waited outside the stone fence to walk him home. While waiting, he noticed a Jewish star carved over the door of the old stone building.

  “This was a place of Jews, wasn’t it?” he asked Issa as they walked along the road that paralleled the wadi, green with trees and brush.

  “Once, long ago, they say,” Issa said. “Now it is ours. Besides, our teacher says the Holy Quran talks of the Tawrat of the Jews, given by Allah into the hands of the prophet Musa. The book of the Jews is also holy.”

  They talked every day this way. If Brody was his teacher for English and about the Western world, Issa taught him Arabic and about Islam. In a way, Issa was the best friend he’d had since Mike. In this world, so far from home, his only friend.

  Sometimes they played soccer in a flat space in the compound, Afsal and his AK-47 never far away. Issa was good, quick with the ball for his age, and the two of them sometimes laughed at Brody’s clumsiness.

  “We didn’t play soccer so much in America when I was a kid,” Brody explained.

  “You make no sense, Nicholas. The whole world plays football,” Issa said.

  “What are you learning?” Brody asked him one day. They walked in the hot afternoon sun till they found a tree stump in the shade and sat, drinking Fanta juice drinks. A flock of tiny birds flew in a line, a saff, toward the green mountainside. They were so pretty against the blue of the sky, it hurt to look at them. Paradise. This is Paradise. But I’m a prisoner. The Jean Valjean of Islam, remembering something from high school. No, he’d read the CliffsNotes in high school. I’m the CliffsNotes Jean Valjean, he thought.

  “We learn Quran. We try to understand. To be a good Muslim, you have to memorize a lot, Nicholas.”

  “And what did you learn today?”

  “Of jihad. It is the best thing a man can do, Nicholas.”

  “What do you mean?” Brody asked, feeling a little uneasy. Was this how people became indoctrinated?

  Issa nodded. “To die fighting for Islam is the most wonderful thing you can do. Our teacher said the Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him, said that he wished he could die over and over in battle for Allah. This is how good is jihad, Nichola
s.”

  “So killing is good? I can’t believe that.”

  “No, killing is haram. Forbidden, Nicholas. But killing infidels in battle, this is very good. I want to be brave enough when I am grown.”

  “I was a soldier, a Marine. But I didn’t like killing,” Brody said. “And you! You can’t even touch a dead crow.”

  “You’re right, I must be braver, Nicholas. You must help me,” Issa said.

  That night, lying in bed, the window open, Brody heard the sound of Abu Nazir’s men outside. Daleel, Mahdi, Afsal, some of the others. Earlier, he had seen them preparing their weapons. AK-47s, RPGs, explosives for IEDs. Something was about to happen.

  At dinner, with Abu Nazir, Issa, and Nassrin, even though no one spoke of the pending action, Brody could sense the tension. He looked at Issa, whose eyes indicated not to say anything.

  He couldn’t sleep. So much time with Issa made him think of Dana and his own son, whom he barely knew, Chris. Did Chris even remember him? He was so young when Brody left Virginia. Or was Brody now just a photo on a wall or dresser. That’s my father. He was a Marine, MIA. Never came back from Iraq.

  Maybe now there was another man in his life. Someone who took him to ball games, read to him before he went to bed. Someone who didn’t treat him like shit—like Gunner Brody—or ignore him altogether, like I did, Brody thought.

  Why not? Jessica was a gorgeous woman, even more beautiful as an adult than in high school.

  Oh God, high school. Was that you, Allah? Did you intervene that night and me too stupid to know it?

  Junior year. The night of the game against Allentown Central Catholic. He dropped a pass in the end zone. One second it was dancing on his fingers—he had it—and the next it was on the ground. In the end zone! And it was as if something forced him to turn his head, some power outside himself, forced him to turn and look up into the stands. To look for the one person in the world he didn’t want to see, and sure enough, there he was in the crowd. He had been smiling before when Brody had caught a nineteen-yard pass for a first down and pride surged through Brody. But Gunner Brody wasn’t smiling now.

  He could see the look in Gunner Brody’s eyes. The disgust. The rage. And he knew, with every fiber of his being, if he came home, he wouldn’t live through the night. If he didn’t come home, there was a chance his mother, Sibeal, wouldn’t live through it either.

  After the game, he sat in front of his locker, not wanting to get dressed. Only one player, Demaine, punched him on the shoulder as if to say, It happens, bro’, but no one else. Everyone feeling crappy after the loss to their rivals—and that touchdown would’ve made the difference. He had lost the game for them.

  Finally, Mike came over.

  “Jessica’s outside, man. She’s waiting.” And then he knew what he had to do. He hurriedly got dressed and came out into the cold with Mike. He pulled Jessica aside.

  “Will you come with me?”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. Anywhere. Away. Tonight.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Jess, I saw his face after I dropped the pass. I can’t ever go home again. He’ll kill me.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Jess, listen to me. I love you, but it’s now or never. I know him like I know nobody else on earth, and trust me, if I go home tonight or anytime, one of us is going to die. It’s murder. So either you leave with me now, or I’m gone. You’ll never see me again.”

  “Brody! What are you saying? I’m a sophomore. I can’t go. My mom and dad would kill me. I can’t.”

  “Oh, Jess. I love you, but I can’t stay here. Bethlehem’s dying anyway. This city’s done. Everybody knows it,” he said, turning away.

  “Brody, stop, for God sakes. I’ll come home with you. I’ll stay with you every second. He can’t kill you with me there.”

  “I’ll come too,” Mike said. “He’ll have to kill all three of us.”

  In Mike’s car, Jessica ran her fingers through his hair.

  “I’m sorry you dropped the pass, Brody. I thought you had it. I was screaming, but you know what? I don’t care. I’m going to face your father. He doesn’t appreciate you,” she said.

  “You don’t get it, either of you.” Brody shook his head. “You think he’s a dad like your dads. He isn’t.”

  “What is he?” she asked.

  “He’s a son-of-a-bitch Marine. He’s a killer,” he said.

  But when they got back to the house, his mother, who never came to any of the games as if she had a premonition, something Irish, of what would happen, was outside, waving at them.

  “Nicky, we have to go to the hospital.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  “Your father’s been in a car accident,” was all she would say.

  Later, they found out Gunner Brody had smashed into another car while speeding around to the back of the football stadium toward the team locker room, his fourth DUI, and he’d shot himself in the knee with his own service .45 pistol, which he’d been holding on his thigh.

  As they drove to the hospital, Jessica looked at Brody, stunned, finally realizing that he hadn’t been exaggerating. His father—his father!—had been on his way to kill her boyfriend and God knows who else, maybe even her. She was trembling. Except a minute later, there was Brody, putting his arm around her shoulder and grinning like he had just won the lottery.

  “What is it?” she whispered.

  “Don’t you see?” he said, a big shit-eating grin on his face. “I don’t have to leave.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “His knee’s smashed up. I’m almost as big as he is now. The cops’ll take his gun away for evidence. He won’t be able to move so good. When he gets out of the hospital and jail or whatever, it’ll even the odds, the son of a bitch. And then we’ll go away,” his eyes devouring her.

  She felt as if he were looking right into her soul. She nodded.

  He grinned again.

  “I thought this was the worst day of my life. Turned out to be the best.”

  “This was God’s doing, Brody,” she said, and kissed him.

  “If you say so,” he said.

  Was that you, Allah? Was it? And Jessica. What about her? Six years of waiting for a ghost that wasn’t coming back. Bound to be men hitting on her. Come on, Brody. Tell the truth, she’s human. She thinks you’re dead. Give the girl a break. There’s bound to be someone. Maybe even someone you know.

  What about Mike? Your buddy. The best friend you ever had. Wasn’t there ever a moment . . . Suddenly an image forced itself into his mind. That time at Virginia Beach.

  They were coming from the beach with the kids, tired, sunburned, sandy, and there was Mike, big as life, grinning, bringing toys for the kids, Megan just a step behind him. And just for a second, a fraction of a second, was there a look between him and Jessica?

  Was there? Had he really seen it?

  Jessica and Mike. No, couldn’t be. Not Mike. Besides, he was married to Megan. She was also a good-looking woman. Still, he had to face the fact that it had been six years and Jessica didn’t even know he was alive. It was hard to imagine that there wasn’t someone new in her life.

  Except I’m not dead yet, am I? Not yet, you son of a bitch. Not the same, though. Not the same Nick Brody, son of Gunner Brody, true-blue United States Marine. Semper fi, believing all the bullshit lies. I’m a Muslim. I’ve surrendered myself to Allah.

  What was it Issa had said his teacher told him, some quote from the Quran? “Allah knows, and you know not.” It’s true. None of us knows anything. Only Allah—and he’s not telling, is he? So who are you, Nick Brody?

  I don’t know. Not the old, not the new. I’m some half creature, living in limbo, waiting for light. Bismillah, show me the way, Allah. What I must do. Thy will be done. Amen.

  CHAPTER 28

  Isfahan, Iran

  28 April 2009

  The NSA software locator on her laptop made it
possible for Carrie to track de Bruin (she couldn’t think of him as Robespierre). He was staying at the upscale Abbasi Hotel, which locals claimed was the oldest hotel in the world. It was located across from the Hasht Behesht Palace and gardens in Isfahan.

  But he wouldn’t meet anyone there, she thought. Not de Bruin. He’d keep it clean, away from him. A restaurant, a teahouse, a garden. And she couldn’t afford to let him see her, which made surveillance, never easy in Iran, next to impossible.

  Using a fake Iranian ID that Saul provided, she booked a room for backup at the Dibai House, a small hotel in the Old Quarter. And another room at the Safir Hotel, on the fourth floor, with a window view of the front entrance to the Abbasi, catty-corner across the street.

  Waiting. The penalty box of the intelligence game. That’s the part they don’t show in the movies, the glamorous lifestyle of CIA spies, Carrie thought, sitting beside her hotel window, peeking out from the side. How much time a CIA agent spends waiting. In public restrooms or cars or like now, sitting alone in a hotel room like a character in a Russian novel.

  In the morning, she spotted de Bruin leaving his hotel and getting into a taxi. She raced from her room to the elevator. It was going to be a wait for the elevator, so she ran four floors down the big spiral staircase to the lobby. With any luck, she’d be able to grab a taxi from the stand outside before his disappeared.

  But just before she made it outside, she saw de Bruin through the lobby window, getting out of his taxi in front of her hotel. That son of a bitch had done a quick circle around the Hasht Behesht Palace grounds to spot any tails. He was coming up the steps to the hotel’s front entrance. Another couple of seconds and he’d see her.

  Luckily, there were columns around the circular lobby atrium. She quickly moved behind one and put her cell phone to her ear. With her back to the entrance and wearing a modest black chador and head scarf to cover her blond hair, she hoped he wouldn’t spot her.