Damascus Station Read online

  A moped puttered through the square cutting toward the river. Sam could not see the driver’s face, but the woman’s clothes seemed familiar, maybe. A ghost?

  There was no way he was going to be the one to fuck up the op to kill Ali Hassan. The bastard had killed Val, he had to pay. Sam had to be sure he was black before he entered the safe house. He did not know if a team was out there surrounding him, but he had to find out. He had to break the bubble. Sam stood up and began to walk north at a quick clip. The sunset call to prayer rang from the muezzins around the Old City. He wasn’t listening, though. The tradecraft had taken over, he was running hot and feeling the street.

  He walked north on Port Said and hailed a cab bound in the same direction.

  “Where to?” the cabbie said in English.

  Sam tried to think of a good stop. “Head north,” he replied in Arabic. He closed his eyes. His heart was racing, and he was sweating. He began to breath very slowly. He had spent hours memorizing maps of the city, and after a minute of slow breathing, eyes still closed, he managed to call them to mind. Dahdah Cemetery. It was directly north, and made no sense based on his route’s currents. But it was a tourist stop. He could explain it. Inside the cab he told the driver to head into the circle near the city hall, then turn east on Baghdad Street.

  The cemetery was rimmed by a thin pine grove. Sam entered as the sun began to dip below the horizon. He walked between the tombstones, taking slipshod pictures along the way. He was twelve hours in. A wave of fatigue roiled him. Nearing the cemetery’s opposite end, he heard the screech of car brakes, then the antsy, hushed voices of two men and one woman.

  Two mortars soared overhead. He didn’t hear them land. He saw, heard, felt no one in the cemetery.

  He walked toward the voices. A young woman walked past. She had the same height and build as the Hijaz Square moped driver. Her shoes, now black flats, were different from the leather riding boots. Then two young men strolled past, holding hands like family. Sam glanced at the shorter one’s shoes. Brown, scuffed. The same pair had been outside Abu George during his drink with Stapp. He was positive. Then, the young man had worn an Adidas T-shirt. Now, he wore a gray blazer and matching slacks. Sam was covered in ticks.

  He took a seat on a bench outside the cemetery. The sun had set. He sat for thirty minutes, replaying everything, questioning every decision, until he decided he had enough to face Procter. He could sense the hunters out there, probably wondering now if they’d been made or if he was waiting for his agent. He just sat, drawing it out for them, pissing them off, agitating their commanders with each passing minute. They’d wasted more than twelve hours of his time. He would try to return the favor.

  ALI AND VOLKOV WATCHED A live video feed of CIA officer Samuel Joseph sitting on the bench outside the cemetery. Ali sensed they’d been spotted somewhere around the train station, but he wanted to learn more about Joseph’s behavior, and he stood glued to the feed with Volkov. He hated to admit it, but he was impressed.

  Ali lit a cigarette for Volkov, then one for himself. They’d been on full war tilt since lunchtime. Ali had argued on a hunch that Samuel Joseph was operational. The day seems too casual, he’d told Volkov, when the Russian asked if today was the day. It feels wrong. Volkov said why the hell not, let’s trap him. They’d surrounded him with the seven teams and bubbled him into his route across the Old City. The fixed positions had been perfect, Ali thought, a credit to Volkov. Watchers embedded artfully around the American, each sending word to the mobiles as he moved farther downroute. A Syrian team, one of Ali’s, had nudged the American a bit too close near the train station. Then they’d panicked and shown themselves at the cemetery. And the damn American had just kept walking around town with his wits up.

  The video feed went out. The team in the Security Office command center listened to the radio chatter updating them on the operation.

  “This is Team Three, he’s gotten into a cab, so we’ve taken down the televideo. We’re following.”

  When Team Five reported that the cab stopped at Samuel’s apartment, Volkov smashed a stapler onto the floor.

  Ali nodded to Volkov and went to his office, closing the door behind. He looked at his watch: ten-thirty. He had not seen Layla and the boys in five days.

  He lit a cigarette and started writing the report.

  40

  THE MORNING WAS HOT AND HUMID. EVEN WORSE than the heat, thought Rami, was being stuck in traffic driving a Mitsubishi Pajero with a busted passenger-side speaker and what he suspected was a hidden cache of military-grade explosives. He did not want to know, he kept telling himself.

  Twenty minutes later he found a parking spot halfway on the sidewalk down the road from the Security Office along Ali’s smoking path. He parked the car directly parallel to the concrete wall. He exited the vehicle, walking away from the Security Office and its surveillance cameras.

  AT THE SAME TIME, HIS brother Yusuf sat inside the safe house arranging the video equipment. He needed to witness two events to send the message to Sam. One, his brother had to park the Pajero. Two, he needed to observe Ali entering the Security Office.

  He sat waiting for the second event. The last month sitting in the damn safe house had been soul-crushing.

  One hour later he saw Ali’s car drive through the gate, even caught a glimpse of him on video entering the building. He sent an encrypted text to Sam: Here.

  “DENIED-AREA RULES,” PROCTER HAD DECREED as she slammed down yet another cable from Langley asking for a status update on the operation to kill Ali Hassan. “As of now.”

  Denied-area rules: You got black, you disappeared, then you’d reappear. You’d do it aggressively if you had to, Sam knew. Just up and vanish in front of the watchers. The mukhabarat would eventually retaliate, but Sam had no choice. The pressure from Washington had increased, and the Station couldn’t be passive. They had to take out Ali.

  Wrapping the morning meeting in Procter’s office, he went to his computer to check the ATHENA traffic. The in-box was still empty. He clicked violently on the computer mouse as he closed the database. It had been more than a week of silence. What was going on? Had they found her? The host government typically didn’t tell you when they’d rolled up one of your assets. Hell, it had taken more than a month for CIA to learn that Val had died in custody. Maybe Atiyah had caught her with the bag. Maybe they’d found the program on the iPad. Maybe her father had died in Aleppo. Or maybe she was just anxious around the device. Locking his computer, he went into the bathroom and sat for minute on the toilet, fully dressed, head in his hands. Then he went outside the Station to the cell phone cubbies to check for a message from the BANDITOs, his new daily ritual. He opened his burner phone and saw: Here.

  Sam texted back: Vacate.

  Procter fist-bumped him on the way out and told him she’d send a NIACT—night action—cable to Langley. They’d call in Bradley, the other suits on the Seventh Floor, the facial recognition experts, and OGC, the Office of General Counsel.

  Everything, again, depended on him getting black in a city turning sideways on Damascus Station.

  SAM WENT TO HIS APARTMENT, showered, and changed into dark jeans, a checkered blue dress shirt, and a powder-blue linen sport coat, which he hated. He sent Zelda a text message from his phone confirming drinks at ten in Sha’alan. He mentioned he was going to do some shopping beforehand.

  Sam left the apartment carrying his messenger bag loaded with a phone and a variety of disguises. He noticed immediately the surveillance van and the man smoking on the sidewalk, looking right at him. It would not matter. He just needed a few seconds in the gap.

  He walked toward Umayyad then north toward the embassy as the distance widened with the trailing mukhabarat. He saw the street, his pulse quickened, and he cut right, scanning for a fixed position. Nothing. Then he ran. He made another right, then a left, sprinting.

  The road was empty, save for one car: a black BMW 5 Series, engine running, trunk ajar, Elias at the whe
el. He dashed for it, swung the trunk open, scanned the alleyway for witnesses—none—and hopped inside the trunk. Scrunched in the compartment, he felt the vehicle accelerate smoothly and then bank right. He managed to remove the sport coat and his dress shirt, and fumbled around in the bag to find the fake gut and a fresh T-shirt. He got his arm twisted in the T-shirt. Elias hit a bump and it felt like the arm would snap off. Then he inserted the fake foam stomach under the T-shirt. He placed a shaggy brown wig over his head along with an itchy mustache. Elias hit another bump and he swore. He rearranged the mustache.

  Sam lay back and prayed they wouldn’t hit any surprise checkpoints. If the militia stopped Elias and found a tall American inside, wig on his head and a glorified pillow jammed up his shirt, they would all be royally fucked.

  IT WAS KANAAN WHO TOOK the call from the winded corporal and made out, through the labored breathing and cursing, that they had lost Samuel.

  When he was finished yelling at the man, Kanaan walked to Ali’s office to deliver the news. His heart dropped when he saw General Volkov, drinking vodka out of a coffee cup, and realized he’d have to confess their failure in front of this master. “What do you mean, lost?” Ali said, nearly choking on the words. As Kanaan relayed the colonel’s pitiful explanation, Ali saw Volkov’s face go strangely blank, except for his eyebrows, which lifted ever so slightly.

  “The bastard burned us,” Volkov said to Ali, as soon as Kanaan had finished.

  Ali nodded. “They know we almost had them last time. Do you think he’ll meet his colleague for drinks later, as the text message said?”

  Volkov took another drink and looked at the map. He shrugged. “It’s been fifteen minutes. He has four hours. Plenty of time for an op and then a nightcap with his lady friend.”

  “Kanaan, I assume the street team has no idea what the car looks like?” Ali said.

  “None. They never saw one.”

  “We could get lucky,” Volkov said. “Maybe a checkpoint picks them up.”

  “Maybe,” said Ali. He lit a cigarette and opened his shirt another button. The room had suddenly become unbearably hot. “Maybe I meet him for drinks.”

  “An excellent idea,” Volkov said. “You know, sometimes when they’d go black in Moscow we’d just snatch them up afterward and beat the shit out of them.”

  THE CAR MADE A SERIES of turns before weaving back into the city toward the safe house. Ninety minutes later Elias opened the trunk and grinned at his passenger, now scratching his mustache.

  Sam walked the lamplit streets through Kafr Sousa and neighboring Al-Lawan, incorporating a series of bubble-busting techniques, but it was all unnecessary. He was black. At eight p.m., he arrived at the safe house to find it empty. The BANDITOS were already gone. He stood the video camera on a tripod facing the Pajero below. He checked to make sure the encrypted satellite link was active. Then he removed his phone from his pocket and called a very long, very strange phone number.

  “Hey, Sam, can you hear us?” It was Bradley.

  “I can. Do you have video?”

  “We do. We’re looking at an empty street and a lonely Pajero.”

  “Copy that; me, too. Procter, you here?”

  “Yes. Damascus Station online.”

  “We have the facial recognition team here with us in the Director’s conference room as well,” Bradley said. “Both MOLLY, the AI program, and the real person. Her name is Susan Crawley, by the way.”

  “Hi, Susan,” everyone said.

  “All right, team,” Bradley said. “The Director’s given me button-pushing authority on this one. Once Ali leaves the office, Susan and the AI program will independently render judgment. When that’s done, I’ll arm the device and enable the infrared sensor. Sam will maintain visual on the target and blast zone throughout, and we’ll abort if any pedestrians get in the way. Everyone understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now we wait.”

  Sam sat watching the video feed, wondering what Ali was doing inside and in what room of this godforsaken place they’d taken Val’s scalp.

  DOWN THE STREET, ALI HAD followed Volkov to the Russian’s makeshift command center, where he assessed the hunt for Samuel Joseph to be progressing poorly. No sign of the American anywhere.

  His plan was beginning to bear fruit, but he was running out of time. Still, he had enough leash from Assad to give the American one warning. Then, on to Rustum’s plan to bring him in for an interrogation. He did not want the investigation deteriorating into such thuggery. But he was running out of options. The Americans were running operations, thumbing their noses at him, as he tried to play the game civilly.

  At any rate, there was no news about Rustum’s operation to provide false information on the backup production site to Bouthaina and the others. If the information didn’t come through in the next batch of SVR reporting, his window would expire and they’d arrest Samuel Joseph to extract the name from him. Given the young man’s street antics, Ali was beginning to sympathize with that view. But not quite yet.

  He needed to clear his head. He grabbed his cigarettes and went out for a walk.

  FROM THE SAFE HOUSE, SAM saw a familiar figure weave through the concrete berms outside the Security Office. Sam turned the video feed toward the figure and zoomed in.

  “It’s him. It’s Ali.”

  He just had to walk on the right side of the road. Surveillance logs said he almost always did, but there was still a chance he’d change up the routine. “Come on, you bastard. Right side,” Sam muttered under his breath.

  Ali stood talking with the guards, burning down his cigarette and laughing. Sam remembered that Ali had a wife and twin boys. He felt a momentary pang of sadness, some distant sense of Ali’s humanity. He forced himself to remember Val, her mother, the Memorial Ceremony.

  All the while, Ali kept on joking with the guards.

  ONE OF THE RUSSIANS, LISTENING to an FSB team on the radio, heard excitement crackling, then screamed to Volkov: “We found someone matching Sam’s description. Kafr Sousa. An apartment. He’s close.”

  Volkov threw an empty Styrofoam cup toward a garbage can, missing completely. “Show me. Where?”

  The lieutenant walked to the map and asked the mobile team again for the address. He pointed.

  “It’s just down the block,” Volkov said. He turned to Kanaan, currently hustling the Syrian teams in place so they could arrest the American and whoever he was meeting.

  “Colonel, where is Ali?”

  “He went out for a walk, down the block.”

  Volkov rolled his eyes. This Levantine. Soft, probably from the sun. “I’ll go get him and we’ll proceed together on foot. Understand?”

  Kanaan nodded and put the phone back to his mouth, barking at his teams to speed toward the Kafr Sousa apartment.

  “HE’S WALKING NOW,” SAM SAID. “Right side. Our side. I’ve enabled the Frisbee.” The team had adopted the nickname. “Focusing feed for facial recognition.”

  Ali walked slowly for twenty yards, then stopped to put out his cigarette. Still about a hundred yards from the Pajero. The sidewalk around the car was clear.

  Back at Langley, the facial recognition expert was reviewing the live video feed, comparing it to the footage from the BANDITOs’ surveillance operation. Simultaneously, an algorithm called MOLLY sorted through the same information. If MOLLY and Susan agreed it was Ali, they were a go.

  Ali kept walking. Slowly.

  Sam coughed. Thought of the flour mill, for some reason. Then the Tuscan vineyard with Mariam. The SDR where the Russians almost burned him. Then Vegas, getting cleared out. All of it, weirdly, him. He wondered if this made him a murderer. Even if he wasn’t detonating the blast, he would arm the infrared sensor, after all.

  “We’ve got confirmation here at Langley,” an unknown voice said. “This is Paul Gartner, by the way. Chief, OGC. “Susan and MOLLY agree. It’s Ali.”

  “Copy,” Bradley said. “Sam, go ahead and arm it.”
/>   Sam dialed the satellite phone, illuminating the PIR sensor and arming the bomb. “Fifty yards,” Sam said.

  AS ALI STROLLED HE LIT another cigarette and sucked smoke into his lungs, wondering why he was doing this. Pushing the thought out of his mind, he checked his watch. He had wanted to see Layla and the boys, but now it was too late. He closed his eyes and wished, for a moment, that he was wrestling with the twins instead of playing cop for his animal of a brother and this ridiculous President. He stopped and flicked his cigarette. Then he lit another and kept walking.

  “Twenty-five yards,” Sam said.

  “Does this guy have mental problems?” Procter asked. “Because he’s walking like a special.”

  “Shut up,” Bradley said.

  “Fifteen yards. Sidewalk still clear. Just Ali.”

  “Ten yards, five.”

  “Should be about two seconds,” Bradley said.

  ALI HEARD HEAVY STEPS BEHIND him on the sidewalk.

  “General,” Volkov yelled. “We’ve found him. Come back.”

  Ali spun around and saw the Russian sprinting toward him. As Ali turned, he lost his footing, wobbling toward the street, catching himself on the trunk of a parked Pajero. He stood up, embarrassed.

  “What’s happened?” he said.

  “One of the mobile teams spotted him. Here in Kafr Sousa, an apartment just up the block. Kanaan has sent teams to make an arrest. Start running. We’ll catch up.”

  Ali started running.

  SAM HAD FLIPPED OFF THE INFRARED SENSOR when he saw the man running toward Ali. He now sat in silence watching the chaos unfolding on the video feed.

  Bradley broke it. “Okay, folks, Sam has disabled the sensor. Susan, can you make out what that guy said to Ali? He didn’t look Syrian to me. Sam, get out.”