The driver gave him a dirty look.
“Go!” said Ferguson. He pulled his gun up, the small one, though the driver probably didn’t appreciate the difference.
“Listen to what Ferguson says,” Corrine yelled.
“Left, quick right,” said Ferguson, struggling to get his bearings straight as the car lurched into gear. They made it over to Abou Ali Square and headed south.
“All right, there’s a place we can get to beyond the town and get a helicopter in,” said Ferguson. “It’s scoped out.”
“I’m not leaving,” said Corrine.
“Bullshit you’re not leaving. Somebody just tried to kidnap you. Or assassinate you.”
“So I’m supposed to run away?”
“I don’t necessarily disagree with your attitude,” said Ferguson, turning around. “But given that you’re not here for any real reason except to kick in my teeth, I think you ought to get out while the getting out is good. You’re just a target now.”
Corrine, seated between two marines, realized Ferguson was right. But leaving town felt too much like running away.
“Hell, you were going tomorrow anyway,” said Ferguson, pulling out his phone. “Besides, it’ll get you out of another one of those tours.”
Corrine laughed, more out of relief than anything else.
One of the Delta boys had been shot in the arm; one of the marine boys had sprained or possibly broken his ankle in the escape. Otherwise they were unharmed. Ferguson told Corrigan to hustle in the MH-6 helo they had stationed offshore for an emergency bailout. It was sitting on a barge about ten minutes’ flying time away; they made it to the rendezvous point three minutes before the helo did.
“Who do you think did this?” Corrine asked as they waited for the chopper.
“Ordinarily I’d say the Syrians, but they looked a little surprised.”
“There were Syrians in the club?”
“They followed you in. Second bet would be some of the people you had dinner with.”
“They were government people and businessmen.”
“Is that supposed to rule them out?”
“Was it Khazaal?”
“If blaming him will get me permission to kill him, then sure.”
“Ferg.”
“No, I doubt it was Khazaal. He’s not here. Probably it was some group of local crazies trying to score big who heard that you were around.” He could hear the helicopter in the distance. He pointed at two of the bodyguards. “You two guys are on the ground with me. Everybody else goes home.”
One of the men started to object.
“No, listen to what he says,” said Corrine. “He’s with the CIA.”
“Well, don’t tell everybody.” Ferguson smiled. The helicopter had already started to glide in. “There’s not enough room for everybody in the chopper. It’s all right. You’re safe with me. I’ve had my rabies shots.”
Corrine started for the helicopter, then turned back. “Thanks,” she told Ferguson.
“For what?”
“For saving my life.”
“I was saving my own. You just got in I lie: way.”
“You don’t give up, do you?”
“Not unless I’m out of ammo.”
“I wanted to tell you something. I saw a man in the hotel whom I saw with Mossad.”
“Probably an officer,” said Ferguson. “Maybe he runs some agents up here.”
“He denounced me.”
“What?”
“He denounced me.” Corrine had to yell to make herself heard over the chopper. “He said his name was Fazel al-Qiam and he’d been a rep to the UN, an Arab. He denounced me.”
“Did he spell that?”
“No.”
“I’m just kidding. Thanks, I’ll check it out.”
“Can the helicopter get me down to Beirut?”
“Why?”
“I’m supposed to be there tomorrow.”
“It’ll take you to Oz if you want. Go.”
“Thanks, Ferg.”
“Yeah. I’ll hate myself in the morning.” Ferguson turned to the marine and Delta bodyguard staying behind. “Beer’s on me boys. But let’s find a place with a calmer floor show.”
2
The CIA and American intelligence in general were often faulted for not knowing much of what was going on in the world, but to Thomas Ciello, the criticism was not only unfair; it was wrong-headed. The CIA and its brother and sister agencies knew a great deal, so much, in fact, that it was impossible to know exactly what they knew.
Which was the real problem. Even someone like Thomas, who had made a career of knowing what the Agency knew, couldn’t possibly know everything. All he could do was skim and skim and skim, use search tools that made Google look like a disorganized orangutan, and occasionally — only occasionally — take wild guesses.
The wild guesses usually led nowhere. The search engines, however, helped him match the name of a Russian weapons expert with a place he didn’t expect to find him: Syria. Northwestern Syria, as a matter of fact, where Jurg Vassenka had booked a ticket on a rare flight to Latakia from Cairo via Damascus.
Vassenka was an expert in several weapons systems. The one that was most interesting in this case, given the Iraqi connection, was the Russian R-11/SS-1B, more popularly known as the Scud.
Thomas soon realized that Vassenka’s arrival in Latakia would not actually be all that unusual; the Syrian resort on the Mediterranean was a popular place for arms dealers, one of the many facts that the CIA knew that he didn’t. But by then Thomas had found more data on Latakia, including intercepted e-mails from several months before between Khazaal’s Iraqi group and a mosque in the city.
As he started to type the information into a brief report, he glanced at Professor Ragguzi’s manuscript on his desk. After he spoke to Corrigan, he promised himself, he would write an e-mail to the professor and point out his error on the UFOs. Surely a man as great as Ragguzi would appreciate knowing that he had made a mistake… as impossible as that was to contemplate.
3
Even if he hadn’t already made up his mind that Lebanon was a wrong turn, the kidnapping would have cinched it for Ferguson. Had it been successful, the attempt would have brought down the wrath of the local authorities on the radicals in town, something Khazaal wouldn’t have been foolish enough to want.
Figuring out precisely who had made the attempt on Corrine was a problem for smother day, if not an entirely different agency. Ferguson’s goal at the moment was to get out of the country without expending any more
