Davis knew he was leaving Beirut. Probably forever. That was the other dangling thread that had been nagging at her, threatening her theory about the murder. How was it that the very night he faced ruin and the end of his career, his last night in Beirut, was the night that coincidentally someone just happened to drop by to murder him? Before Saul, who was on his way, showed up? Coincidences like that don’t happen. Not in real life, they don’t.
So Bilal hadn’t just shown up. Davis had called him. Probably told him it was urgent, that he was leaving. If they were lovers, Davis had wanted to say good-bye.
Bilal must have dropped what he was doing and hurried right over. It would have been his last chance to silence Fielding before he spilled everything to the Company, before he, Bilal, was in the CIA’s crosshairs. Nothing coincidental about it. She needed to get Ray Saunders and Saul to check Fielding’s landline and cell phone records.
The pieces finally fit. Once they started digging, she was confident they would find Bilal connected to both Nightingale and Abu Nazir.
“I’ve been away. What’s he do, this Bilal Mohamad?” she asked.
“This and that.” Marielle shrugged. “It’s Beirut,” she said, making a sign for someone sticking cocaine up their nose.
“Where can I find him?”
“Where do you think? Most nights, Wolf,” Marielle said. Of course, Carrie thought. A gay bar. “So I should just leave?”
“The sooner the better. Take a few weeks. Enjoy Paris,” Carrie said, getting up to leave. “Everyone does.”
CHAPTER 37
Minet al-Hosn, Beirut, Lebanon
The gay bar Wolf was on a side street in the Hamra district, close to the American University. By eleven at night, the sidewalk outside was crowded with men in shirts open to their navels with cocktails or bottles of 961 beer in hand. Carrie squeezed through and walked past the bouncer, a big shaved-headed man who stared at her quizzically.
Inside, the club was jammed, hip-hop music blasting, laser lights flashing across a sea of men, some talking, some kissing and groping each other. Along the walls were leatherette benches where slim young men in tight short-shorts gave lap dances to older men with money to spend. Carrie threaded her way through the crowd to the bar. She was the only woman there. Although she spent time looking, she didn’t see Bilal Mohamad anywhere.
“What’ll you have?” the bartender asked her in Arabic. He was a slim, baby-faced thirtysomething who could have passed for twenty, topless except for a pair of red suspenders holding up tight leather pants.
“Tequila, Patrón Silver,” she said, nearly shouting to be heard over the noise.
“Are you lost?” the bartender said when he came back with her drink.
“No, but he is,” she said, showing him the photograph of Bilal Mohamad on her cell phone. “Where I can find him?”
“Haven’t seen him,” the bartender said, moving down the bar to help someone else.
“You looking for Bilal?” a man crowded in next to her said.
“Bilal Mohamad.” She nodded. “Any idea where he might be?”
“Who wants to know?” he asked.
“Benjamin Franklin,” she said, showing him a hundred-dollar bill.
“You’re not Bilal’s type, habibi,” the man said. “Actually, you’re no one’s type around here.”
“Don’t be so sure. There are some really sick sluts in Beirut, habibi. I might even be one of them.” She grinned.
“You are a bad girl,” he said, tapping her shoulder with catty delight. “The key question, my darling habibi, is, does Assayid Franklin have a brother?”
“If he does, how do I know you’ll tell me the truth?” Carrie said, taking out a second hundred-dollar bill and sliding both bills toward him on the bar top.
“He’s in the Marina Tower. Sixteenth floor. You don’t believe me, ask Abdullah Abdullah,” the man said, pocketing the money and flicking his finger at the bartender, who came over.
“Are you really Abdullah Abdullah?” Carrie asked the bartender.
“No, but it’s what they call me.” The bartender shrugged. He motioned her closer. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing, mademoiselle?”
“Does anyone?” she asked.
“Bilal has dangerous friends,” the bartender muttered.
“So do I.”
“No, mademoiselle. There’s dangerous and then there’s Bilal. He’s a psychopath. Trust me, you don’t want to go there. If you want coke, hashish, heroin, let me get it for you. Safer. Better quality. Better price too.”
“Is he at the Marina Tower?”
“You know the saying ‘The only way to get an apartment in Minet al-Hosn is for someone to die’? They’re not just talking about availability and money. They’re talking about what people are willing to do for such wealth-and what they’ll do to protect it,” the bartender said.
“I’m a big girl, sadiqi. Is he there?”
“I haven’t seen him in days. If you’re lucky, you won’t either,” he said, crushing mint leaves for a mojito.
The Marina Tower was a crescent-shaped white high-rise overlooking the waterfront, the lights from the building reflected on the water of the Marina. The lobby was ultramodern and expensive, an advertisement for the tenants who could afford the millions that an apartment here cost. She’d had to argue with Saunders to get him to let her go in on her own.
“We already know that he killed Davis Fielding-and probably others. And that was even before the bartender’s warning. And nobody makes that much money in Beirut without either being very dangerous himself or having very dangerous friends,” Saunders said in the BMW SUV on the way over. With them were two new Beirut Station operatives, Chandler and Boyce, two short-haired hard-as-nails transfers from the CIA’s Special Operations Group, both ex-Navy SEALs, whom Saunders had brought with him from Ankara to help him clean up Beirut Station.
“Chandler and Boyce. They sound like a law firm, don’t they?” Saunders had said, introducing them to Carrie.
“More like antique dealers,” she’d said, shaking their hands. “Look, don’t get me wrong. I’m glad they’re here. But we don’t want a shoot-out. We want to know who sent him to kill Davis.”
“I think we already know. Abu Nazir,” Saunders said.
“No, we think we know. That’s not the same thing,” she said.
“I should do it. Or Chandler or Boyce.”
“Better me. I’m a woman. Less threatening, less likely to escalate. And I speak Arabic better than anyone here.”
“All the same, the only way you’re going in is wired up like crazy. The second I hear something that even smells like trouble, my antique dealers here-and me too-will be blasting in, shooting first and taking names later. That son of a bitch is dead, understood?”
“I get it. I just want to see what I can get out of him first,” she said as they parked the SUV on a side street and walked to the Marina Tower parking lot, the building lit up at night with horizontal lines of white light along the balconies, like a stack of curved neon blades.
“I don’t think you do, Carrie. Get it, I mean,” he said as they approached the parking lot. “If anything happened to you, Saul would crucify me. Possibly literally.”
“I know.” She looked at Chandler and Boyce. “If you think I’m in trouble, guys, come get me, please.” The two men nodded.
Kneeling beside a Mercedes sedan, they did a voice check on her wire setup and readied their weapons and equipment. When they were set, they walked, one at a time, to the back service entrance from the parking lot.