p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"strongChapter 8/strong/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"strongA/N: Sorry sorry it took so long!/strong/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"strongThank you for reading! LOVE YOU! Don't forget to vote and review 3/strong/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"emSeptember 28supth/sup, 2001./em/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"emNew York City./em/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"New York was in mourning for weeks. People gathered in the streets, to look up at the spot where the towers used to be. Flowers were pilled up and letters were written and tears were shed. America cried while the whole world watched. It was like an eternal fucking funeral, for all the funerals that would never happen, because there was nothing to bury. For all the names that never got crossed off the Missing list./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;" From Germany, from England, from Mexico, from Argentina, presidents sent their condolences. Politicians gave speeches, singers sang sad ballads on TV. The victims families' received comfort and money, the American flag was everywhere. They started repairs on the Pentagon, plans were made for the new One World Center and the 9/11 Memorial Museum, and for some people, that was actually enough./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"But the gray was still alive inside me, long after the wind had taken away the dust, the tears had dried, and the smoke from the world's longest funeral had cleared. The gray made me cynical. The gray made me laugh humorlessly at the plans and the repairs, thinking that they could rebuild and fix buildings, but there was little they could do to fix what had broken inside of the people. The gray made me hate the doctors that kept opening me up and trying to make me well. Somedays, the gray even made me wish that the firemen had never found me./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"In my defense, it wasn't easy to fight the gray while lying in a hospital bed with nothing to do. To this day I still don't know what made start to fight it. What made me accept that someday, somehow I would have to recover. I just did. /p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"Maybe the last smile she gave me had something to do. I don't know. But one day, I accepted the food trays I had been refusing since my first surgery. I took the flowers Maggie and my Dad and, who would've said, David Estes were sending me. I started answering when Saul came to visit me and tried to talk to me. I stopped losing weight and became slightly annoyed at how pale I looked. I knew a little bit of that gray would stay with me forever, in the contours of the scars in my leg and my side, but I was learning to live with it./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"Needless to say, Sue was one of those people who couldn't get a proper funeral. But that's okay, I guess. She would have hated if the last memory we had of her was that of her loved ones getting together to wear black and cry for her. I know that's not what she would have wanted./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"Her family held a small memorial for her in Colombia, which I couldn't attend because I was still too fucked up to get up from bed, let alone get on a plane to Bogotá. I hated Saul and my family and hated my doctors even more for forbidding me to go. I made a promise to myself that as soon as I could, I would fly down to her home town and I would tell her mother and her sisters and her brothers that I had never met anyone quite like her. That she was beautiful, not only in looks, but in the way she moved and laughed and talked, in everything she was. That she was so smart it hurt. That the girl had some balls. That she was loved./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I was writing all of that down in my messy notebook (I had ripped off the page about Julia Lancester and Ommar Ahmmed) when Saul busted in to my room./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""Knock, knock, who is it? Well, it's not fucking Saul, because he doesn't knoc," I joked, but I didn't laugh at my own joke like I usually did. A shiver ran down my spine. What if Sue had taken my laugh with her, and now I had to find a whole new one?/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""Change out of that depressing gown," he said. "I'm getting you out."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I closed my notebook and almost jumped up from my bed./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""What? For real?"/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"He was already jamming my stuff in to a suitcase. "You will never get better if you keep staring at these 4 walls. If you don't go crazy, then I will."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I bit my lower lip. emGo crazy. /emIf only he knew./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""So they're actually discharging me? How on Earth did you get them to do that?"/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I tumbled towards him, dragging my casted leg./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""Just as long as you promise to continue with your follow up treatment with the best orthopedic and cardio-thoracic surgeons in Washington, yeah, they're discharging you."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I rolled my eyes and slapped his hands away from my stuff as I started packing by myself./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""I'm sick of surgeons. All kinds of them."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""Well, that's too bad, cause you're going to see these doctors, and I'll make sure you don't set a foot in Langley until you are doing all the rehab and physical therapy they tell you."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"My hand froze over the drawings my nieces had sent me. Since the attack, none of us had mentioned Langley or the CIA or what this would mean for us./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""We need you back there, Carrie."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I sighed and took the drawings. "We have a big fucking mess to clean up, haven't we?" I asked./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""We'll talk more on the way home." He said./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"He patted my head before leaving the room. When he was gone, I sat in my bed and closed my eyes. I had to go back to work. Sue's last smile flashed through my mind./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"emHow am I going to do this without you?/em/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"(***)/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""I assume there's not much I can tell you that you haven't figured out already."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"Saul leaned back on the plane sit next to mine. We were half an hour away from Washington. I reluctantly took off my headphones, knowing I couldn't avoid that conversation any longer./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""I'm sorry, I've been kinda busy trying, you know, not to die."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""Come on, you of all people can't tell me that you haven't put the pieces together."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I had. I'd tried and failed not to put anything together, to stop myself from thinking about it, because it would hurt me. And it did./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""Fine, you want to know what I figured out? Here's what I figured out: It was all trap. The message from Kabul, the assassination video, Abu Nazir, even Ommar Ahmmed's actions, if he even existed: everything was bullshit. It was all a fucking act, designed to lead us in the wrong direction. Abu Nazir's job was to be the distraction, to make us believe they were planning something solely in Washington, while his good friend Bin Laden got away with exploding the heart of America." I laughed coldly. "And we all bought it. You wanna know what else I figured out? That me, and you, and every single fucking person in that Agency is a good-for-nothing idiot!"/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I'd raised my voice enough to make almost the whole plane give me weird looks, and I didn't give a shit. I wanted to stand and storm angrily towards the ladies´ toilet and lock myself there until I was sure Saul had gotten off the plane, but I couldn't do that with a broken leg and crouches. So I just put on my headphones and turned up the jazz so loud it made my ears hurt./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"Saul didn't say anything. I could tell he was hurt, but I didn't want to care. I wanted to be furious. I wanted the anger to last until I went back to Langley, so I could yell at them and make everyone understand what fools we'd been./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"For the rest of the flight, not a word was spoken. For a second, when I was slowly walking down the stairs of the plane, I forgot, and I looked over my shoulder expecting to see someone else coming with us. But there was no one there./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"Saul stayed with me until I'd found my luggage and insisted on driving me home. When he dropped me off at my house, he even opened the front door for me and took my suitcase inside. I hated him for being so nice./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""Thanks." I muttered under my breath./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""No problem."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I couldn't wait for him to be gone, but he rolled down his window and called for me before driving away./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""Carrie." He said. "We're having a small ceremony for Sue at Langley today. A sort of memorial. People are expecting you to say something. Show up if you want to."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I raised my eyebrows. "After my little scene in the plane, you still wanna push me to say shit?"/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"He shrugged./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""I happen to believe they could all take something from the shit you say."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"(***)/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I passed the security checks at Langley. Nothing had changed there, either. I don't know what I was expecting…I felt so different, and for some reason I believed it would make my home look different, too. But it didn't. I'd walked in to my house to find my living room with the pinboard untouched. The sheets in my bed were the same as the last time I'd slept in it all those weeks ago. My suits and clothes were hanging from my closet in the exact position where I'd left them. Everything was the same. It felt like the world was trying to make fun of me, because I would never be the same again./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I'd decided to come just to escape the mocking same-ness of my apartment. I was beginning to feel disappointed when I entered the space where the ceremony was being held. Chairs had been arranged in rows and some people were talking quietly to each other. Otherwise, the silence sounded respectful. And sad. It would be a long time since silences in America stopped meaning both of those things./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"Almost the whole agency was there. I felt a knot in my throat when I noticed the little altar on the stage. The large photograph of Sue, the one they had taken when she was receiving her college diploma. I'd been there, standing just behind the photographer as I waited for my name to be called. But I'd never looked as pretty, as happy as she looked in that moment./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"Under the photograph my colleagues had left letters and messages, some of them in Spanish. Candles burned surrounded by flowers. White jasmines. Boys had been giving her roses her whole life, and she would always roll her eyes at me and say she liked white jasmines best. Emily was the first person who ever got the right flowers for her. She was still taking care that she got the right flowers in her death, like she did in her life./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"Emily. I caught a glimpse of her red hair in the front rows. I dreaded the moment I would have to talk to her./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I took a deep breath, taking it all in. What they'd put up for Sue had no precedents. It had nothing to do with the formality and impersonality of the CIA. Good. She deserved that much./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"Saul spotted me standing in the back of the room and waved at me to come forward. I moved over there as fast as my cast and crouches would allow me, feeling everyone's eyes on me. Particularly David Estes', who was staring at me from behind the podium. I was careful not to return any looks. I didn't want their pity. I didn't deserve it./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I sat down in the chair Saul had saved for me and concentrated on keeping a straight face./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""I'm glad you made it," he said. "I didn't think you would come."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""I like not doing what you think I will do."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"He smiled and patted my healthy leg. David Estes tapped the microphone. Evidently they'd been waiting for me./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""Since we're all here now, I suppose we can start." He cleared his throat./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""I do not need to remind you of the fatal attacks our homeland suffered 17 days ago, on September 11supth/sup. The Islamic extremist group known as Al Qaeda launched a series of suicide missions against the United States of America, including the bombing of the Washington Pentagon and the hijacking of two planes that caused the complete the destruction of the Twin Towers. We had two agents on the field that day. One of them survived with severe injuries. The other one, I regret to inform you, did not survive the attack. That agent was Susana Lopez Duarte. Her death represents a tremendous loss to the intelligence community. It is a wound in the soul of our nation. We have been robbed of one of the brightest young minds that could have lead us to a promising future. We would now like to ask her colleague Carrie Mathison to help us bade farewell to our fallen partner."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"Saul had to help me to get to the stage. The mere act of climbing up the two steps was so exhausting I ended up leaning against the podium. Embarrassed, I looked up at my audience. For a second I wished I had never agreed to do it. But then I saw Danny Galvez, wiping a tear from his cheek. I saw Emily, staring at Sue's smiling face. I saw all those people who had probably never talked to her but who had still shown up to pay their respects. I breathed in the smell of white jasmines, and I started./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""For the past 5 years, I've had the pleasure of getting to know Susana Lopez Duarte better than anyone. She wasn't just my colleague, she was my friend. I can't talk about the way she died, or about how I'm going to live the rest of my life without her, because it hurts too much. But I will tell you this: Susana didn't deserve to die the way she did./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I had the blessing of watching her become the person she was in her last moments, and I had a pretty clear view of the person she would have been, if this tragedy hadn't taken her away. She could have transformed our line of work completely. She could have changed the relationships between our countries and the global community for good. She had more courage than all of us gathered here together. And a bigger heart than I'll ever have./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"One of the changes she dreamed about was a better attention to the innocent families of confessed terrorists. She came from Colombia, a country racked by civil wars, guerillas, internal refugees and drug dealing among other conflicts. She used to say she chose this line of work because she knew what is like to be scared of your own family. She dedicated her life to our nation's security, because she knew what it was like to feel unsafe. Yes, she dedicated her life to our cause. And she didn't get to live half of it./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;" She will never get to see all those things she dreamed about. She dreamed about a Counter Terrorism system that tried to comprehend Islam before condemning it. She dreamed about a system built on the desire to prevent conflict, not on the desire to destroy. She dreamed about negotiations, diplomacy and co-operation. She dreamed about understanding. She dreamed about compassion. And these weren't the fantasies of a little girl, these were the views of an educated, brilliant young woman, who was willing to do whatever it'd take to get there. And she would have. But now she is dead. That is the definition of injustice. An injustice we must promise ourselves will never happen again, as long as we can avoid it. Which doesn't change the fact that no one here has the potential to become what Susana Lopez could have become./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"In years to come, we will remember dead agents as brave men and women who died in service of their country. But Susana Lopez was different. She was special. She wasn't an American, but it my opinion, that only makes her braver. She didn't fight for the flag, she fought for the people. She didn't fight for a country, she fought for an idea. She fought because she believed the world could be better than this, it emshould /embe better than this. She fought for the daughters, the sons, the fathers, the mothers who have to pay the highest price for crimes they didn't commit. She believed that no human being, no matter their race, origin or religion, deserved to be a victim of terror. She fought because she believed the war against terror could be won./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"Every accomplishment I achieve in my career will be in the name of Susana Lopez Duarte. She lost her life in a battle. We owe it to her, and it is our duty, to win the war."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"strongA/N: Sorry sorry it took so long!/strong/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"strongThank you for reading! LOVE YOU! Don't forget to vote and review 3/strong/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"emSeptember 28supth/sup, 2001./em/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"emNew York City./em/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"New York was in mourning for weeks. People gathered in the streets, to look up at the spot where the towers used to be. Flowers were pilled up and letters were written and tears were shed. America cried while the whole world watched. It was like an eternal fucking funeral, for all the funerals that would never happen, because there was nothing to bury. For all the names that never got crossed off the Missing list./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;" From Germany, from England, from Mexico, from Argentina, presidents sent their condolences. Politicians gave speeches, singers sang sad ballads on TV. The victims families' received comfort and money, the American flag was everywhere. They started repairs on the Pentagon, plans were made for the new One World Center and the 9/11 Memorial Museum, and for some people, that was actually enough./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"But the gray was still alive inside me, long after the wind had taken away the dust, the tears had dried, and the smoke from the world's longest funeral had cleared. The gray made me cynical. The gray made me laugh humorlessly at the plans and the repairs, thinking that they could rebuild and fix buildings, but there was little they could do to fix what had broken inside of the people. The gray made me hate the doctors that kept opening me up and trying to make me well. Somedays, the gray even made me wish that the firemen had never found me./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"In my defense, it wasn't easy to fight the gray while lying in a hospital bed with nothing to do. To this day I still don't know what made start to fight it. What made me accept that someday, somehow I would have to recover. I just did. /p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"Maybe the last smile she gave me had something to do. I don't know. But one day, I accepted the food trays I had been refusing since my first surgery. I took the flowers Maggie and my Dad and, who would've said, David Estes were sending me. I started answering when Saul came to visit me and tried to talk to me. I stopped losing weight and became slightly annoyed at how pale I looked. I knew a little bit of that gray would stay with me forever, in the contours of the scars in my leg and my side, but I was learning to live with it./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"Needless to say, Sue was one of those people who couldn't get a proper funeral. But that's okay, I guess. She would have hated if the last memory we had of her was that of her loved ones getting together to wear black and cry for her. I know that's not what she would have wanted./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"Her family held a small memorial for her in Colombia, which I couldn't attend because I was still too fucked up to get up from bed, let alone get on a plane to Bogotá. I hated Saul and my family and hated my doctors even more for forbidding me to go. I made a promise to myself that as soon as I could, I would fly down to her home town and I would tell her mother and her sisters and her brothers that I had never met anyone quite like her. That she was beautiful, not only in looks, but in the way she moved and laughed and talked, in everything she was. That she was so smart it hurt. That the girl had some balls. That she was loved./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I was writing all of that down in my messy notebook (I had ripped off the page about Julia Lancester and Ommar Ahmmed) when Saul busted in to my room./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""Knock, knock, who is it? Well, it's not fucking Saul, because he doesn't knoc," I joked, but I didn't laugh at my own joke like I usually did. A shiver ran down my spine. What if Sue had taken my laugh with her, and now I had to find a whole new one?/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""Change out of that depressing gown," he said. "I'm getting you out."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I closed my notebook and almost jumped up from my bed./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""What? For real?"/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"He was already jamming my stuff in to a suitcase. "You will never get better if you keep staring at these 4 walls. If you don't go crazy, then I will."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I bit my lower lip. emGo crazy. /emIf only he knew./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""So they're actually discharging me? How on Earth did you get them to do that?"/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I tumbled towards him, dragging my casted leg./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""Just as long as you promise to continue with your follow up treatment with the best orthopedic and cardio-thoracic surgeons in Washington, yeah, they're discharging you."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I rolled my eyes and slapped his hands away from my stuff as I started packing by myself./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""I'm sick of surgeons. All kinds of them."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""Well, that's too bad, cause you're going to see these doctors, and I'll make sure you don't set a foot in Langley until you are doing all the rehab and physical therapy they tell you."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"My hand froze over the drawings my nieces had sent me. Since the attack, none of us had mentioned Langley or the CIA or what this would mean for us./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""We need you back there, Carrie."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I sighed and took the drawings. "We have a big fucking mess to clean up, haven't we?" I asked./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""We'll talk more on the way home." He said./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"He patted my head before leaving the room. When he was gone, I sat in my bed and closed my eyes. I had to go back to work. Sue's last smile flashed through my mind./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"emHow am I going to do this without you?/em/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"(***)/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""I assume there's not much I can tell you that you haven't figured out already."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"Saul leaned back on the plane sit next to mine. We were half an hour away from Washington. I reluctantly took off my headphones, knowing I couldn't avoid that conversation any longer./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""I'm sorry, I've been kinda busy trying, you know, not to die."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""Come on, you of all people can't tell me that you haven't put the pieces together."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I had. I'd tried and failed not to put anything together, to stop myself from thinking about it, because it would hurt me. And it did./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""Fine, you want to know what I figured out? Here's what I figured out: It was all trap. The message from Kabul, the assassination video, Abu Nazir, even Ommar Ahmmed's actions, if he even existed: everything was bullshit. It was all a fucking act, designed to lead us in the wrong direction. Abu Nazir's job was to be the distraction, to make us believe they were planning something solely in Washington, while his good friend Bin Laden got away with exploding the heart of America." I laughed coldly. "And we all bought it. You wanna know what else I figured out? That me, and you, and every single fucking person in that Agency is a good-for-nothing idiot!"/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I'd raised my voice enough to make almost the whole plane give me weird looks, and I didn't give a shit. I wanted to stand and storm angrily towards the ladies´ toilet and lock myself there until I was sure Saul had gotten off the plane, but I couldn't do that with a broken leg and crouches. So I just put on my headphones and turned up the jazz so loud it made my ears hurt./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"Saul didn't say anything. I could tell he was hurt, but I didn't want to care. I wanted to be furious. I wanted the anger to last until I went back to Langley, so I could yell at them and make everyone understand what fools we'd been./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"For the rest of the flight, not a word was spoken. For a second, when I was slowly walking down the stairs of the plane, I forgot, and I looked over my shoulder expecting to see someone else coming with us. But there was no one there./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"Saul stayed with me until I'd found my luggage and insisted on driving me home. When he dropped me off at my house, he even opened the front door for me and took my suitcase inside. I hated him for being so nice./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""Thanks." I muttered under my breath./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""No problem."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I couldn't wait for him to be gone, but he rolled down his window and called for me before driving away./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""Carrie." He said. "We're having a small ceremony for Sue at Langley today. A sort of memorial. People are expecting you to say something. Show up if you want to."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I raised my eyebrows. "After my little scene in the plane, you still wanna push me to say shit?"/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"He shrugged./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""I happen to believe they could all take something from the shit you say."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"(***)/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I passed the security checks at Langley. Nothing had changed there, either. I don't know what I was expecting…I felt so different, and for some reason I believed it would make my home look different, too. But it didn't. I'd walked in to my house to find my living room with the pinboard untouched. The sheets in my bed were the same as the last time I'd slept in it all those weeks ago. My suits and clothes were hanging from my closet in the exact position where I'd left them. Everything was the same. It felt like the world was trying to make fun of me, because I would never be the same again./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I'd decided to come just to escape the mocking same-ness of my apartment. I was beginning to feel disappointed when I entered the space where the ceremony was being held. Chairs had been arranged in rows and some people were talking quietly to each other. Otherwise, the silence sounded respectful. And sad. It would be a long time since silences in America stopped meaning both of those things./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"Almost the whole agency was there. I felt a knot in my throat when I noticed the little altar on the stage. The large photograph of Sue, the one they had taken when she was receiving her college diploma. I'd been there, standing just behind the photographer as I waited for my name to be called. But I'd never looked as pretty, as happy as she looked in that moment./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"Under the photograph my colleagues had left letters and messages, some of them in Spanish. Candles burned surrounded by flowers. White jasmines. Boys had been giving her roses her whole life, and she would always roll her eyes at me and say she liked white jasmines best. Emily was the first person who ever got the right flowers for her. She was still taking care that she got the right flowers in her death, like she did in her life./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"Emily. I caught a glimpse of her red hair in the front rows. I dreaded the moment I would have to talk to her./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I took a deep breath, taking it all in. What they'd put up for Sue had no precedents. It had nothing to do with the formality and impersonality of the CIA. Good. She deserved that much./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"Saul spotted me standing in the back of the room and waved at me to come forward. I moved over there as fast as my cast and crouches would allow me, feeling everyone's eyes on me. Particularly David Estes', who was staring at me from behind the podium. I was careful not to return any looks. I didn't want their pity. I didn't deserve it./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I sat down in the chair Saul had saved for me and concentrated on keeping a straight face./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""I'm glad you made it," he said. "I didn't think you would come."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""I like not doing what you think I will do."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"He smiled and patted my healthy leg. David Estes tapped the microphone. Evidently they'd been waiting for me./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""Since we're all here now, I suppose we can start." He cleared his throat./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""I do not need to remind you of the fatal attacks our homeland suffered 17 days ago, on September 11supth/sup. The Islamic extremist group known as Al Qaeda launched a series of suicide missions against the United States of America, including the bombing of the Washington Pentagon and the hijacking of two planes that caused the complete the destruction of the Twin Towers. We had two agents on the field that day. One of them survived with severe injuries. The other one, I regret to inform you, did not survive the attack. That agent was Susana Lopez Duarte. Her death represents a tremendous loss to the intelligence community. It is a wound in the soul of our nation. We have been robbed of one of the brightest young minds that could have lead us to a promising future. We would now like to ask her colleague Carrie Mathison to help us bade farewell to our fallen partner."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"Saul had to help me to get to the stage. The mere act of climbing up the two steps was so exhausting I ended up leaning against the podium. Embarrassed, I looked up at my audience. For a second I wished I had never agreed to do it. But then I saw Danny Galvez, wiping a tear from his cheek. I saw Emily, staring at Sue's smiling face. I saw all those people who had probably never talked to her but who had still shown up to pay their respects. I breathed in the smell of white jasmines, and I started./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;""For the past 5 years, I've had the pleasure of getting to know Susana Lopez Duarte better than anyone. She wasn't just my colleague, she was my friend. I can't talk about the way she died, or about how I'm going to live the rest of my life without her, because it hurts too much. But I will tell you this: Susana didn't deserve to die the way she did./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"I had the blessing of watching her become the person she was in her last moments, and I had a pretty clear view of the person she would have been, if this tragedy hadn't taken her away. She could have transformed our line of work completely. She could have changed the relationships between our countries and the global community for good. She had more courage than all of us gathered here together. And a bigger heart than I'll ever have./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"One of the changes she dreamed about was a better attention to the innocent families of confessed terrorists. She came from Colombia, a country racked by civil wars, guerillas, internal refugees and drug dealing among other conflicts. She used to say she chose this line of work because she knew what is like to be scared of your own family. She dedicated her life to our nation's security, because she knew what it was like to feel unsafe. Yes, she dedicated her life to our cause. And she didn't get to live half of it./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;" She will never get to see all those things she dreamed about. She dreamed about a Counter Terrorism system that tried to comprehend Islam before condemning it. She dreamed about a system built on the desire to prevent conflict, not on the desire to destroy. She dreamed about negotiations, diplomacy and co-operation. She dreamed about understanding. She dreamed about compassion. And these weren't the fantasies of a little girl, these were the views of an educated, brilliant young woman, who was willing to do whatever it'd take to get there. And she would have. But now she is dead. That is the definition of injustice. An injustice we must promise ourselves will never happen again, as long as we can avoid it. Which doesn't change the fact that no one here has the potential to become what Susana Lopez could have become./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"In years to come, we will remember dead agents as brave men and women who died in service of their country. But Susana Lopez was different. She was special. She wasn't an American, but it my opinion, that only makes her braver. She didn't fight for the flag, she fought for the people. She didn't fight for a country, she fought for an idea. She fought because she believed the world could be better than this, it emshould /embe better than this. She fought for the daughters, the sons, the fathers, the mothers who have to pay the highest price for crimes they didn't commit. She believed that no human being, no matter their race, origin or religion, deserved to be a victim of terror. She fought because she believed the war against terror could be won./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; line-height: normal;"Every accomplishment I achieve in my career will be in the name of Susana Lopez Duarte. She lost her life in a battle. We owe it to her, and it is our duty, to win the war."/p