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The first time Saul met Carrie Mathison, she was telling someone in authority he was wrong. And if he had a nickel for every time that had happened since, he’d be a rich man now.
The man in question that first time was Deputy Station Chief Bradley Michaels. Michaels was big and burly and old school—a Yale grad whose greatest achievements had been on the river, not in the classroom. He’d been passed over for promotion one time too many, and he didn’t take well to being challenged by young women.
Up ‘til then, Saul had known Carrie only on paper, and he hadn’t thought much of her chances in the cauldron of the Middle East. For one thing, she was the whitest slip of a girl he’d ever seen. He was surprised they’d assigned her there—usually they sent agents who could pass for some kind of Semite without heavy makeup and colored contact lenses. The only hope offered by her file was that her language skills would make up for her pallor and her blue eyes. Destined for a desk job, he’d thought, not field work.
Until, that is, he came upon her arguing with Deputy Station Chief Michaels. The argument seemed to be about her own sex appeal.
“I can do this,” she said, staring up at Michaels. She was dressed in flat shoes and khakis topped with a button-down shirt. She looked like a schoolgirl.
Still, it was costing Michaels some effort to face her down. “It’s an option that's already been tried and rejected,” he told her.
“Mr. Berenson,” Carrie—Agent Mathison as he thought of her then—said as soon as she saw him. “I think I’ve found a way to get to Masek.” A thick file lay on the table between her and Michaels. She pushed it towards Saul.
Saul looked at Michaels. Michaels rolled his eyes.
Masek was a known arms dealer; they could’ve picked him up on that any day. They were letting him run because they also suspected he was passing information between Al Qaeda operatives and radical Islamists in the former Eastern bloc.
“She thinks she could be one of his lady friends,” Michaels said, voice dripping with condescension.
Masek didn’t do much while he was in town. Just spent a night or two at the airport hotel, venturing out for a few meetings regarding his legitimate business as a textile dealer. He usually picked up a woman at the hotel bar—or tried to, anyway. Sometimes the women were having none of it. In the course of these meager activities, however, they believed he managed to transmit information about arms shipments and terrorist activities. They hadn’t yet been able to figure out how. If he went out at night, they hadn't been able to catch him at it.
For a while, they’d thought the women were key. They’d checked them out, even interrogated a couple. But the women were clean, or at least the Agency had come up empty handed. Next, they’d tried sending in female agents, thinking they might at least be able to get close to the man, find out more about his methods. Masek had always rebuffed their advances.
And now here was Agent Mathison, telling them she wanted to try. Saul hated to agree with Michaels, but in truth Carrie looked like the most unlikely bait for a honey trap he'd ever seen. As far as he could tell, there were no curves at all under her utilitarian clothes. Her hair was equally flat; without make-up her skin was sallow and drawn.
“Deputy Chief Michaels is right,” Saul said. “We’ve tried to get to him by way of sex. It hasn’t worked.”
“That’s just it,” Carrie replied, her eyes lighting up with something sharper than intelligence. “You been thinking it’s all about sex. But it’s not—or at least not all of it. Read the file, Mr. Berenson—you’ll see I can do it.”
Later, Saul realized he would've saved himself a world of heartbreak if he'd turned away right then.
++++
Sometimes Saul wondered what had hurt his parents more: that he’d married a gentile, or that he hadn’t had children. He was pretty sure they would’ve forgiven the former if they’d been given the latter, so that was probably his answer right there.
“Your mother hates me because I’m not Jewish,” Mira would say, old hurt under her resignation.
“My mother hates everyone,” he’d answer, because that was also true. No good noting that a baby, of whatever creed, would’ve changed everything. Mira’s parents probably felt the same way, though they were better at hiding it.
The decision had been mutual—one of the few things on which they’d always agreed. They both cared very much about the world and very little for domestic particulars. They told themselves it would be unfair to bring children into a family in which both parents were away almost all the time.
Saul didn’t regret it. Certainly not the prospect of babies: squealing bundles of vulnerability that, even on a good day, evoked nothing stronger in him than curiosity.
But grown-up kids? That sometimes gave him a pang. He’d see fathers embracing sons taller than themselves at graduation ceremonies, or mothers and daughters cooking together at the friends’ houses he and Mira visited on the holidays, and a nameless feeling would tug at him.
He’d go to High Holiday services and see families sitting together, the casual intimacy of hands straightening ties and smoothing hair, kisses on cheeks and foreheads. And he’d have to drag his eyes away.
He would be by himself—Mira rarely came with him, and he’d chosen his synagogue precisely to avoid running into people from work. He’d stand with the other mourners to say Kaddish—three years since his mother’s death, twelve since his father’s—and he’d miss his parents sharply.
L’dor vador, the Rabbi would say during every service—from generation to generation—and something bitter and yearning would rise in Saul's throat.
+++
Carrie was right, Saul realized, as he read the file she’d assembled. They’d investigated the women only to see if they had ties to terrorist groups. Carrie had compared the women to each other, looking to see if they shared something that drew Masek to them. They did. All were married or separated, with children, professionals traveling for work. Carrie had spoken to them, though a few had tried to shut the door in her face after the way the Agency had treated them. But one way or another, she’d persuaded them all to talk.
And discovered one more thing. They all had a seriously ill loved one at home.
She’d cross-checked that with what they knew about Masek’s life in the Czech Republic. And sure enough, his youngest daughter had been battling Lymphoma for the past two years.
Saul called Michaels. “Let’s send her in,” he said.
+++
“How does he know?” Carrie asked Saul at the final briefing. “It’s like we’re going in on the assumption he can smell—I don’t know what—fellow sufferers. I mean, I know he does it, I just don’t know how.”
She had transformed herself. She wore tight jeans and a loose-fitting, sleeveless silk top that made an asset of her small breasts. She’d swapped the flat shoes for heels, and done something to her hair that rendered it lustrous and full. The only trace remaining of the school girl was the earnest furrow between her brows.
“He probably thinks he has a sixth sense,” Saul told her. “But it’s really just a bunch of cues he’s picked up over the years. I’m sure he makes mistakes sometimes. Just play your cover. And use your props.”
Carrie smoothed out the photo she’d been holding. In it, the blond son of another analyst smiled up at the camera, proudly displaying two missing front teeth. Ryan, he was called. The photo had been chosen solely for his resemblance to Carrie.
“Props, right.” Carrie brushed her fingers over Ryan’s smile.
Saul wondered what measures his mother would’ve taken against the evil eye for a stunt like this: pretending that grievous things had happened to a perfectly healthy child. A child not one’s own. She would've recognized it as an act that begged for the evil eye to strike back hard. She probably would’ve thrown up her hands. No amount of spitting or verbal deflection could redeem this one.
As if she’d read his mind, Carrie said, “It doesn’t seem right, does it? Pretending such a horrible thing is happening to Gallagher’s little boy.”
“It’s make believe,” Saul reassured her. “Ryan is perfectly safe back in Bethesda.”
He decided it was time for the speech he always gave new agents going into missions like this. It wasn’t as much a speech as a warning.
“You know the implications of this operation,” he said, looking hard at Carrie. She nodded. “You know it may involve intimate contact with the object of the operation.” She nodded again. “If you do not feel confident that you can proceed with such contact I need to know now.” She made a movement with her mouth that might’ve meant anything. “I need to hear you say it.”
“I feel confident, Mr. Berenson,” she said, and she reminded him of Esther, or Judith.
+++
They’d tapped into the surveillance feed of the hotel bar, and Carrie had chosen a seat in the eye of the camera.
Not leaving anything to chance, she’d placed Ryan’s picture on the bar in front of her, and was looking at it mournfully while she sipped her drink.
“Think she’s up to it?” Michaels said, hovering near Saul's shoulder in their operations room.
Saul shrugged. “Hope so.” He honestly didn’t know whether the kind of smarts Carrie had displayed in putting the file together would translate into competent field work. Agents were usually good at one or the other; they had patience or quick instincts, rarely both. You never knew until push came to shove. “She’s a fresh face, at least, no paper trail.”
Whatever Carrie was doing, however, worked fast. Soon, Masek leaned a thick forearm on the bar next to her and said, “Handsome boy.”
Carrie looked up, and even through the grainy feed of the surveillance camera, Saul could see that she was putting just the right amount of sadness into her smile.
“Thank you,” she said. “He was. I mean, he still is, it’s just—the treatments—“ She seemed to rein herself in. “I’m sorry.”
“No, no.” The granite-hewn planes of Masek’s face softened. “I think I might know how you feel. Can I buy you another one of those?”
Carrie hesitated, then nodded shyly, fingers twisting the gold ring she’d donned for the occasion.
Things moved quickly from there. Carrie laid out the cover story they’d devised for her, adding appropriate embellishments now and then. Marek responded with the narrative of his own daughter’s illness. Their voices grew softer and their heads drew closer together over their drinks as they compared hospital stays and the side effects of chemotherapy. Masek’s bulky frame curled closer to Carrie, almost protectively.
“It hurts us, their suffering,” Masek said. “If we could give them our souls to make them better, we would do it.”
That brought Carrie’s head up. “Do you think so? Sometimes I think if I see any more pain I might crack. I might run out into the street and never stop running. Do you wish that? Do you sometimes wish you could be really free?”
She was looking up at him, chin trembling and mouth contorting as she tried to hold back tears. Her voice held a tone of desperation that was either Oscar-worthy or far more honest than anything that should have transpired that night.
Saul hunched closer to his computer, willing the screen to give him the truth of the situation. Agents tended to be control freaks. They hid behind their eyes, waiting for you to come to them. They took risks, sure, but the kind of risks they could calibrate for minimal emotional exposure. He knew because he was like that himself. But he didn’t think that was what he was seeing. Carrie was playing a far riskier game: hoping to get results by giving something of herself away. It was a kind of emotional brinksmanship of which Saul sincerely disapproved. But she was compelling; he could feel his own heart twisting in his chest at her vulnerability.
He glanced at Michaels, but Michaels didn’t seem to have noticed the shift in the conversation’s tone, the upping of the ante. “She’s not bad,” Michaels said, tilting his head in amused appreciation.
Masek, in contrast, seemed instantly aware that the stakes had changed. “Come upstairs with me,” he said, standing and offering her his hand. His voice was low and urgent.
Carrie hesitated, managing to look both eager and demure. “I’m married.”
“Nothing’s going to happen. We’ll just have another drink. Talk more. It’s good to be with someone who understands.”
+++
Saul had long ago made it a policy never to remember the things he heard when operations reached this stage. It made for fewer awkward encounters by the water cooler back at Langley. He listened to the feed from the transmitter inside Agent Mathison’s purse long enough to make sure that she was displaying no first time jitters, then let his mind switch to autopilot. Michaels and the junior analyst in the room, Cardoza, appeared to adopt the same strategy, leaning back in their chairs, arms crossed, faces like masks.
In any case, the proceedings didn’t last long. The room soon subsided into a quiet broken only by an intermittent snuffle. It took Saul a few minutes to realize that it might be the sound of masculine tears. Then that too faded away.
There was nothing to do but wait. Agents were stationed around the outside of the hotel, and Carrie was keeping watch inside the room. If Masek left, or tried to transmit information via phone or radio, they would know.
It was three hours before anything happened. Sounds of rustling filtered through the feed, and then Carrie’s voice, asking sleepily, “Where’re you going?”
“Business, darling,” Masek reassured her. “Nothing important. I’ll be back soon.”
“But it’s three am,” Carrie protested.
“Ach, clients? What can you do? It’s nothing. Stay here, my sweet, try to sleep. We’ll have breakfast in the morning.”
There were a few stomps and clunks—Masek putting on his shoes, perhaps—and then a door closing.
“This is it,” Saul told Michaels. “Tell our people to look sharp.”
Michaels and Cardoza immediately started murmuring into their mouthpieces.
Then Carrie’s voice came through the feed, strained and almost shrill. “He’s on the move. I’m going after him.”
Saul exchanged looks with the two other men in the control room. He hit the keys on his computer that would enable him to answer. “Agent Mathison, those are not your orders. The other agents will take it from here. I repeat, stay there. Keep your cover.”
“They’ll lose him again, you know they will. I’m going after him.” They heard the door shut again, and then the silence that meant she’d left the communication device behind.
“Fucking newbies,” Michaels said. “Always after the glory.”
Saul gave him a withering look. “Who’s on the ground?” he asked.
“Davis is in charge of our guys on the west side of the hotel, Pinsky’s riding herd on the ones on the east.”
“Tell them to keep an eye out for Agent Mathison. Get the feed from the hotel’s outside cameras up, too.”
Saul listened to the familiar muttered exchange of code signs and affirmations and denials as Cardoza and Michaels ran their men. Time slowed to a crawl around him, as it always did at this point in an op. The muscles along his spine tightened one after another, like the teeth of a zipper.
“Anything?” he asked Michaels. Michaels shook his head.
Saul’s phone rang in his pocket, startling him. There was an unfamiliar number on the screen, but he had given Carrie his contact info for emergencies.
“Where are you?” he demanded, without waiting to see if it was her.
She rattled off a street and cross street—no codes, no safety protocols. She was at least half a mile from the hotel already. He scribbled the address on a slip of paper and pushed it at Michaels, who nodded and started speaking to his men.
No time now to reprimand Carrie, Saul decided. “Do you have Masek? How did he slip by our people?”
“Laundry room, then the sewers. Like something out of Edgar Allan Poe.” She sounded a little out of breath.
“Well, I’ll be damned. You did good. Now stay put. Pinsky’s guys have got it.” He looked at Michaels to make sure what he was saying was true. Michaels gave him a thumbs up.
Saul allowed himself a tiny smile. It seemed possible that the chance they’d taken on Carrie Mathison’s scheme was going to pay off.
“Got it,” Carrie said, and he thought she was smiling too.
But before she could disconnect, Saul heard a hoarse shout on the other end of the line. It wasn’t Carrie’s voice.
“Following me, you little cunt? I should’ve known,” he heard Masek say distinctly, before the phone was obviously knocked out of Carrie’s hand and thrown against something hard.
“Goddamn it,” Saul said, staring at the darkening screen of his phone. “Where the fuck is Pinsky?” He was close to shouting himself.
“Almost there.” That was Cardoza; his hand pressing his earpiece into his skull like he wanted to merge with it. “He’s there now.” He listened for another few moments, then looked up at Saul. “They’ve got him. They’ve got Masek in custody.”
That wasn’t a bad thing, but the fact that they’d taken Masek instead of continuing to shadow him had disturbing implications.
“And Carrie?” Saul hissed. To his surprise, he was as close to losing control as he ever came. “Agent Mathison?”
But it was Michaels who spoke first. He’d opened another line, presumably to the station’s paramedics. “Agent down,” he was saying. “Repeat, we have an agent down.”
+++
Sometimes Saul suspected he was less than honest with himself about why he'd chosen not to have children. A denial, perhaps, of the element of fear. You could lose kids in a million ways. He had friends whose son had converted to a strain of Orthodoxy so devout he barely spoke to his confused, liberal parents. Others whose children had simply drifted to the opposite coast and only called home on holidays. One girl, the daughter of his cousins, had been killed in a burglary-gone-wrong before her twenty-first birthday. He’d attended the funeral, given his condolences to her parents, and told Mira on the way home he’d never be able to survive that pain.
“You send agents into life-or-death situations all the time,” Mira had said, with the cut-to-the-bone directness he so loved about her. “They’re all someone’s son or daughter. How can you do it if you feel that way?”
“It’s my job,” he’d said. "It's different."
"Not that different. Unless you're a very myopic or a very callous man. You're neither. Someday you may lose someone you love."
+++
It wasn’t the first time he’d kept bedside vigil for an agent. In drafty safehouses and underequipped hospitals, he'd watched agents sweat their way through illnesses and injuries, listened to them curse their friends and call for their mothers. He’d mopped their faces, rigged IVs, and held the bucket while they puked. It was part of the job they never trained you for at Langley. He did it well.
He hardly ever held their hands.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he said, when Carrie finally opened her eyes.
“Like what?” she whispered. Her lips were dry and chapped and it looked like it hurt her head to speak. He let go of her hand and held the straw of a cup of water to her lips.
“Like I’m your father about to ream you out for coming home late from the prom.”
That wrung a rueful laugh from her, and a grimace. “You’re nothing like my father,” she said.
“Yeah, what would he have done?” He was curious now, in a way he usually refused to be about his agents' personal lives.
She shrugged, looking very pale against the hospital pillows. “He would’ve run after Marek with me, laughing the whole time. If he’d even noticed what was going on.”
He narrowed his eyes, intrigued. Somewhere in that statement was the key to her risky exchange with Masek. But it didn't seem the time to press, not while she was lying there, concussed and bruised. Besides, in his experience, rocky upbringings often made the best agents.
Carrie, meanwhile, had moved on to something else. “Masek?” she asked.
“In custody—we’re letting him stew. I’ll send the interrogation team in soon.”
She nodded, and her mouth worked as if, once again, she was holding back tears. “He was for real, you know, just looking for some comfort about his daughter.”
“He’s a terrorist, Carrie," Saul told her firmly, covering her hand with his own again for emphasis. "He’s selling the arms that kill other people’s babies.”
She looked down and nodded jerkily, like a chastised child. “I fucked up, Mr. Berenson. We could’ve gotten so much more out of him.”
Saul shrugged. It was a rare op that produced exactly the results it intended. “We were going to take him in at some point,” he said. “You just gave us a good reason. He’ll tell us plenty now. And, hey, look at me." she did. "I think it's time you start calling me Saul. Everyone does.”
Her eyes opened wide, as if this request for informality was the most serious offer anyone had ever made her. “Really?”
He nodded.
“Saul,” she said, smiling around the word.
He smiled back.
+++
Perhaps there came a time in one’s life when one turned one’s mind away from the future and towards commemorating what had been lost. When one concentrated on preserving the fragments of what remained instead of nurturing the seeds of what was to come.
As many times as he said Kaddish for the dead, Saul didn’t think he’d reached that point yet.
the end