Sepetmeber 7th, 2001.

Washington D.C

Chapter 1

I was awakened by the sound of my phone ringing. I carefully untangled myself from the sleeping figure next to me and took a quick look at the time. 6:30 am.

"Damn it, Carrie." I hissed at myself. For the third time in a week, I had broken my golden one-night-stand rule: Never, ever sleep over. And never, ever cuddle.

I looked at the caller ID and picked up, hoping I wouldn't sound as hung over as I felt.

"What's going on, Saul?"

"Damn, how many drinks did you have last night?" he asked.

"It's 6 am on a Saturday morning, Saul. I'm asumming the whole purpose of this call wasn´t to inquire about my drinking."

"Right, right."

He sounded tired. He must have been up all night. "I can't tell you now. We're on an open line. We need you at Langley as soon as possible"

My heart skipped a beat.

"Is it about…?"

I didn't have to finish the sentence. He knew me well enough to figure out the words within my silences.

"Just get your ass down here. Sue's already on her way."

I brushed the hair out of my face and started looking around the room for my clothes.

"I'm on it."

"And get some coffee on the way, please."

The phone call ended as I began to get dressed. Could this be it? It had to be…right? What else would justify summoning me to an emergency meeting in the middle of the night?

I thought about Sue, and if she had though the same thing when she got the call. I could almost see the dark sparkle of her coffe-bean-coloured eyes, the sparkle that was there the whole time as we conducted our research. A glint of anticipation.

With my high heels on my hand, I tiptoed to the door, which was a relief to find unlocked. It made sense that it was, but with a guy who cuddles… you never know.

I thanked God I kept an extra work outfit in the trunk of my car and climbed into the back seat to change out of the dress that smelled like club and cigarettes. Flashbacks of the previous night rushed in to my mind. There was jazz. There was always jazz. And scotch. And flirting. And its evident consequences.

The blue pill felt hard against my dry throat when I swallowed it. My magic little blue pills. It's scary how much you can depend on something that small.

I parked in my usual spot at Langley and sat behind the wheel for a few seconds, soaking in the quiet. I knew that as soon as I walked in to the conference room, all the quiet would be gone. But I liked that about it. I liked the rush, the fast-paced discussions, the feeling that I was always needed somewhere. And I liked the unexpected.

I did then.

I took a deep breath and tried to gather my thoughts before going in. Maybe it was what I though it was. But maybe it wasn't. And if it wasn't, I couldn't let it drag me down…not like last time.

Sue was waiting for me in the lobby. "

"Hey you." she said in a thick Latin accent.

"Hey."

I smiled through my nervousness, as if it would fool her. There was no one in the world who knew me better than Sue, not even Saul. Not in the way she did, at least. And not in the way I knew her. We'd met in college when I was a smart but wild 19-year-old, still fantasizing about getting a music degree and coming to terms with an unsettling psychiatric diagnosis, and she was still Susana Lopez, a scholarship student from Colombia majoring in Political Sciences, with a smile and poise that made every rich kid in Harvard feel like she was way out of their league. She was still that girl to me, even though she had a steady 4-year-relationship with our colleague Emily and everyone had gotten used to calling her by the Americanized version of her name.

I chewed on my lip nervously and stood next to her as we waited for the elevator.

"Do you think this is about the terrorist safe house we might have found in Bagdad?" She asked bluntly, no hints of anxiety in her voice.

"I hope it is. I mean, we have found a significant amount of evidence."

"Yeah, but Carrie, we presented that file weeks ago. Why would they be deciding this just now?"

I bit a little harder. I hadn't thought about that. I guess anyone else would have feel annoyed when someone finds the logic in something faster than you do, but that was one of the reasons why we had become best friends: when I met her, I knew I'd finally found my match.

"Maybe they found the last piece. The tiny connection our thousands of dots were missing." I said.

We got in to the elevator and Sue stood in front of mirrored walls to comb her shiny black hair with her fingers. "Well, whatever this is, it'd better be important."

"My, my, who are we trying to make jealous today?" She wiggled her eyebrows at my fake engagement ring, although she knew its purposes perfectly well.

I snorted at her and took the ring of my finger.

"I just forgot to take it off after last night"

"Sure you did."

As I'd expected, the room was full of people running around, making phone calls or staring at the screens. David Estes was pacing around with his usual unhappy look. I avoided eye contact, as I'd been doing the past few weeks, and prayed he wouldn't be the one to explain the situation.

To my relief, it was not him but Saul who hurried towards us as soon as he saw us.

"There you are! We need you to look into these people."

He handed us each a long list of names.

"All the information you can get. Friends, family, place of origin, address, recent trips, anything you can get your hands on."

I looked at the names. I recognized some of the names from the keep-an-eye-on wall of our office, but they had little or nothing to do with our safe house research. Sue and I shared a look of disappointment.

"May I ask what this is about?" she asked.

"An asset in Kabul has sent an encrypted message that helped us discover the possibility of an attack in Washington. Just the name of the city and a name: Mohammed Afzar. Estes has a group on him now, but we only have a few hours to find our asset before he gets discovered. These are our friends who might help us get to him."

He nodded at the list.

"Asset's name?" I asked, my mind already going on full speed.

"Farid Ahmmed. I recruited him if Afghanistan a few months ago. We believe he's reliable."

I raised my eyebrows.

"You believe?"

"Not the time to question. Get working."

And on that friendly note, he turned around and it was Galvez's turn to get bossed around. My throat felt even drier than before and I wondered if I had really gone too heavy on the drinking.

Sue dramatically sat down in front of our shared desk and winked at me over the mess.

"Looks like we're in for a fun day."