Whisper

by Tal Bauer

  A part of him didn’t ever want to see Dawood again. A growing part of him nurtured a searing resentment, a shadow cradling a ball of ice in the depths of his soul. Hatred didn’t burn. Hatred was cold, a frozen heart, a frozen soul. He felt it forming slowly, felt his darkness cradling it close.

  Did you ever think you’d hate the man you married, the man you loved with all your heart and soul? Did you ever, ever think he’d do this?

  Three beeps sounded at the door. Someone badging in. Kris mustered the energy to glance up.

  George strode in. Kris tried to get a read on him. Who had walked in: former friend or the deputy director?

  He stared at Kris, his hands on his hips, and sighed, slowly.

  “He’s all yours,” Ryan grumbled. He pushed past George and ducked out of the interrogation room. George did a double take at his split lip, but said nothing.

  “Hello Kris,” George finally said. “I never thought I’d see you again.”

  Kris’s eyes narrowed. “You know what office I’m in. You could have dropped by anytime.”

  George looked down. “Kris, did you know Haddad was alive?”

  “How can you ask me that?”

  “Answer the question, Kris.”

  “You honestly think I knew he was alive, and I, what, lived like I wanted to die for ten years, lived without him… just because?”

  “Answer the question. This is an official inquiry. You might spend tonight in jail. Or you might go home. It all depends on your answers.”

  “Home to what?” Kris cried. “My apartment is a crime scene! My dead husband abandoned me—”

  “Caldera!”

  “No!” he bellowed. “I did not fucking know he was alive! If I did, I would have gone and rescued him! I would have found him! I would have crawled through the fucking earth to get back to him!”

  Dan looked down, stared at the cheap carpet as George closed his eyes. Exhaled.

  “Have you helped Haddad in any way? Have you given him any CIA material?”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “Did you give him your laptop?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Why did you conceal your contact with Haddad for thirty-six hours? Why did you not report your initial contact with Haddad immediately?”

  Kris shook his head, snorting. “I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t know if I was crazy or not. If he was really there. Or if I’d finally lost it.”

  “Have you seen things that aren’t there before?”

  “Yes, George,” Kris snapped. “I regularly hold seances with the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus. We talk to the ghost of Saddam Hussein all the time.”

  Dan choked back a half laugh. George tilted his head from one side to the other, glaring.

  “No!” Kris snapped. “I’m fucking sane. I don’t see any ghosts or little green men or think black helicopters are following me. I don’t think my microwave is trying to send me hidden messages.”

  “After he approached you in the bar… That’s why you went to the archives, isn’t it?” Dan, finally, asked a question. It wasn’t part of the polygraph, though.

  Kris swallowed. Nodded. “I had to know. I had to know if we missed anything.”

  “Did you find something? Some clue that we overlooked?” George looked like he dreaded the answer. “Did we leave a man behind?”

  “No,” Kris whispered. “I found nothing.”

  “Which, again, means he chose to stay away.” George pinched the bridge of his nose. “Kris before I came in here, I received the forensic report from the FBI. They were able to positively ID the DNA samples they took from your apartment and from the forensic exam at the hospital. I… don’t think I have to tell you this. It’s definitely Haddad. I’m about to brief Director Edwards on everything. Do you have… any idea why he’s back? Now? And why he’d steal your CIA material?”

  Kris closed his eyes. Tried to think. Nothing made sense. Nothing added up. His mind kept jumping, bouncing from Dawood in the moonlight, performing his prayers, to Dawood lying over him, Dawood sliding inside of him, smiling, gazing at him like he was something long lost and beautiful. The way he’d held him, the touch of his rough fingertips against his skin. How his voice had whispered his name right before he came inside Kris’s body, everything within Dawood shuddering and trembling. Hadn’t that been real? Hadn’t that been something?

  “I don’t have any idea why he’s back. Or why he’d steal from me. I thought… I thought he came back for me. To me. But that’s just not true.” Blinking fast, he looked away, staring at the boring walls, the faded paint and the scuff marks as his vision blurred.

  George murmured for the polygrapher and Dan to join him outside. Kris waited, blinking back his tears. He wouldn’t give George the satisfaction of his agony. Wouldn’t give the cameras, the permanent record, or Ryan, who was probably still watching, the joy of his anguish. Watch the gay boy suffer. Yeah, Ryan would get off on that shit. No. He’d hold his chin high. He’d get through this. Somehow. No matter what.

  Eventually, Dan came back with the polygrapher, who unhooked him from the machines, freeing him from the cables and the monitors. He’d dislodged the pupil monitor when he’d head-butted Ryan, but apparently that didn’t matter.

  “You flunked the polygraph,” Dan said, leaning back against the wall and folding his arms. “But it’s pretty clear why.”

  “No shit.” Kris shook the pulse monitor off his finger. “Whose fucking brilliant idea was it to polygraph me today?”

  “Ryan.” Dan shrugged. “You know how he is.”

  Kris glared Dan down, as if he could murder with his stare alone. “What’s the verdict?”

  Dan took a deep breath. “Well, Wallace has benched you. You’re off SAD. And Ryan wants to start termination processing. He wants you out of the CIA.”

  “He always has. Polygraphing me today, for fuck’s sake. This is a Goddamn gift for him.”

  “George has held him off from that, for now.”

  “Does anyone care that my husband is back? He’s back? And we don’t know why? Or where he is?”

  Dan blinked. “Yes, Kris. Yes, we care. I care. I care very much.”

  Fuck. Kris deflated, his heart taking the punch straight from Dan. “I’m sorry.” Two days ago, wasn’t he thinking about building a life with Dan? Wasn’t he planning on waking up in Dan’s arms, making him breakfast, falling asleep with him again? Building an us, he’d said.

  Now what were they?

  Why was Dan even in the same room with him? He had every right to be as furious with him as Ryan was. More so, even. Ryan didn’t want anything to do with him.

  Dan wanted everything.

  And Kris had shit all over his hopes and dreams.

  But it wasn’t like Kris wanted this. Damn it, he was saying goodbye to David when Dawood just waltzed in and sat down, exploding Kris’s life with his resurrection exactly like he’d done with his death, a decade before.

  “I convinced them to let me watch over you,” Dan said carefully. “Ryan wants to throw you in jail. George wants to send you to protective custody. I said I’d take responsibility for you.” Dan hesitated. “If you’re okay with that. If you’d rather do something else, I understand.”

  Something broke inside Kris, something wound too tight for far too long, twisted and twisted and twisted until he couldn’t take it any longer. He didn’t deserve Dan’s kindness. He didn’t, and he never had. Shame rose within him, tides of it, waves and swells that made him dizzy, made him want to surrender to the depths, fall backward into the abyss.

  Fall into Dan, and let him fix the world, and everything that had gone wrong.

  Let him fix Kris.

  After Dawood’s death, Dan had been an anchor for Kris within the storms of his soul. Why should his dead husband’s resurrection be any different?

  He wanted to surrender. He wanted to just surrender this life, surrender to everyone. Raise his hands, his white flags, and let the game en
d.

  Why had it all turned out this way?

  How could it all stop?

  He held his hand out to Dan, a lifeline, a surrender, a capitulation. A plea. Rescue me.

  “I’d like that,” Kris whispered. “Thank you.”

  “Come on,” Dan said, the hint of a smile quirking up one corner of his lips. “Let’s try and think this through together.”

  Brentwood

  Washington DC

  September 9

  1440 hours

  “Oh Allah,” Dawood whispered. His voice cracked, splintered apart. Tears spilled like diamonds, his breath catching on his prayers. “I seek refuge in you from an anguish that eats me alive.” He gasped, tried to breathe through his closed throat. A sob raked through him, and he pressed his forehead harder against his prayer rug. “With your name, I die and live. To Allah we belong, and to Him we shall return.”

  You must follow the path Allah has laid out for you.

  His soul burned for Kris, to the very center of himself, the center of his heart. Desperation had fueled him. He’d had to see Kris, once he’d known he was alive. See his face, just from afar. Then, up close. Just once.

  Like a drug, he couldn’t keep away. He could never keep away from Kris, not ever. Not when Kris carried a part of him within his soul. How could he run from his own soul, half of his being? Memories of their love, their life together spilled through his mind. Kris’s hand on his cheek, the glow in his gaze when he stared at Dawood. How his eyes were full of love, always, for Dawood.

  Kris had been the moon that rose in the darkness of his soul, reflecting the light of the sun into his pitch-black corners. He’d been half alive before Kris, caught eternally between the boy he’d been and a man he hadn’t yet embraced, living in hiding behind a mask of his own creation. His soul had been built on shifting sands, but Kris had helped him form a foundation. Bring order to the chaos within.

  Until Kris had been taken from him by this horrible, twisted life. This path.

  Why? he wanted to scream. Why, why?

  Why had their lives diverged? Why had they endured this separation? What point, what purpose?

  Why was he to know his love, his soul, lived, only to lose him again in the end?

  Endure patiently, the Quran said. The promise of Allah is truth.

  He squeezed his eyes closed, pressing his face harder against his rug. His fingers gripped the edges so hard his bones hurt. He could still smell Kris, still feel his body against his skin, molding to him in all the ways that had always been so perfect, so exquisite to his existence.

  Rushes of anguish crested, self-loathing and bitterness warring within him. He clung to his prayers, reciting the first surah of the Quran, the Al-Fatiha, the devotion. “In the name of God, the infinitely Compassionate and Merciful. Praise be to God, Lord of all the worlds. The Compassionate, the Merciful. Ruler on the Day of Reckoning. You alone do we worship, and You alone do we ask for help. Guide us on the right path—”

  His voice choked, died.

  Everything had shattered when he saw Kris, alive. Everything he’d planned, everything he’d meticulously laid out, for two years. Suddenly he was adrift, a castaway in an ocean of uncertainty. The man he loved, to the depths of his soul, who had defined his existence, who had given him the strength to face the world, and then face his destiny with the promise of their reunion in the beyond, was alive.

  You must follow the path Allah has laid out for you.

  He’d panicked, watching an egg sizzle in Kris’s studio, listening to the sounds of his love showering. What was he doing? He was off the path. He was ruining everything, everything he’d sacrificed for. Everything he’d poured his new life into. Could he really just walk away, give up on his plan?

  Every prayer felt like his heart was being sliced, divided between his love and his devotion. Uncertainty was a cancer, a poison consuming him from within.

  Agony poured through him, filling his heart, circling his mind. His lungs shuddered, his breath quaked, faltering. His chest seemed concave, as if someone had scooped out his heart, ripped it out of him, and he was left with the hollow emptiness.

  He couldn’t breathe. Gasping, he clawed at his rug, snot and tears and choked breaths pushing against the dusty threads where he’d given so much devotion to Allah. Why, why?

  Ten years in Afghanistan had changed him in ways he couldn’t fully count. The sands of his soul had shifted, resettled. He’d thought his love for Kris had been buried, lost like the ancient cities of old in the sands of history. Something deep within him, and for another time.

  Kissing Kris, making love to him, brought everything back. Nothing had ever been lost, ever been buried. He’d never stopped loving Kris, not once. Not ever.

  Love wasn’t something he’d expected from his life. Not when he was ten years old, staring down a cold, heartless world. Not when he was fifteen, and he’d realized with a dread that filled his entire being, that he was different, he was broken, that he craved the love of another man. His entire world had screamed that he was wrong, oh-so-wrong, and he’d buried that truth next to the memories of his father. He’d never love. Never.

  David, stoic, dependable, predictable David, had been formed out of reactions. Reactions against himself, a careful mirage of everything he’d hated covered by something new, something different. Reactions formed by the world, reactions that shaped his identity until he was nothing but a kaleidoscope, shifting and ever changing under different people’s gazes.

  But Kris had cut through all of that. Kris had found his soul, had delivered his soul back to him.

  Afghanistan, the land of ghosts, drenched in death and regret, had to be the center of the universe.

  He’d met Kris there.

  Fell in love with him there.

  And lost him there.

  All under Allah’s gaze.

  His cell phone buzzed, rattling on the table. Dawood inhaled slowly. Rose, and grabbed it.

  A text appeared from his contact. [ You were supposed to keep your head down. ]

  He swallowed. His throat stuck. I thought it might help. I was trying to gather intelligence. But he doesn’t work for CT anymore. His laptop was useless.

  Kris’s laptop was in his bathtub, soaking until it was utterly worthless. He’d swiped what he could in under twenty minutes, enough to see that Kris wasn’t a part of the counterterrorism world anymore. He didn’t have anything for Dawood, nothing that he could use. Nineteen minutes after he’d grabbed Kris’s laptop, he’d ripped out the battery. When he got back to his motel, he’d dumped the laptop immediately into the tub.

  [ There’s absolutely nothing that we need from him. He’s not important. He’s a distraction from our mission. And you’re fucking up. ]

  Astaghfirullah.

  [ Are you still in? Still committed? ]

  Yallah, of course. Maa shaa Allah.

  [ Then call Yemen. It’s time. We cannot be distracted, brother. ]

  In shaa Allah.

  The phone was silent. His contact stopped texting.

  Slowly, Dawood kneeled on his prayer rug again. Tears dried like paint on his face, a new mask. He turned his head up, took a shaky breath. He was nothing but raw wounds, holes in his soul that had been flayed open. He should never have wondered what Kris looked like now, never have dreamed of the taste of his kiss again.

  Stay? Kris had whispered. Please?

  Something fractured inside him, a wall that had held everything back cracking. He’d walled everything off, a lifetime of mourning, a lifetime of agony. He’d always fought it, always fought against his pain.

  His darkness, something that had lived within him since he was a boy. At ten years old, he’d been witness to the cruelty of the world, the madness that was to consume everyone, that had slipped into everyone’s soul like black oil. He’d tried to fight back his whole life, tried to do the right thing, tried to be one of the good guys, but—

  What was the right thing, anymore? What was tr
ue? Where was truth in a world full of Qaddafis and planes that slammed into buildings, full of torture and a hatred that lived in the bones, so deep and dark and twisted it poisoned the world. Where was truth in the graves of the innocents, in drone strikes, in car bombs and IEDs that left lives shattered, holes in families around the whole world?

  What was true, between the bonds of brotherhood and the bonds of true love? The bonds of Allah and the promise of faith?

  Or was truth a cold reality, the promise of retribution? Of justice? Of death?

  What was the price of justice?

  You must follow the path Allah has laid out for you.

  Had Allah given him this test, this cruelest of tests, as the bitter finale to this life? His heart screamed, the labyrinth of his soul caving in, the sands of his world collapsing, drowning him.

  He closed his eyes. He’d done what he could. His whole life had been lived at the mercy of others’ whims, their twisted fates. From watching his father struggle at the end of a rope to feeling the press of an American soldier’s boot on the back of his neck. From loving Kris to losing Kris. From finding a father’s love again to losing it all, all over again.

  The truth is complicated.

  Was there any truth between the taste of Kris’s kiss and the path he had to walk? Was there any outcome, any choice for a future? Any hope, anywhere, at all?

  “Oh Allah,” he whispered, prostrating himself again. “I seek refuge from the evil of darkness when it settles.”

  It was evening in Yemen. His brothers would be in the middle of their isha prayer. He’d wait, for a moment, to call.

  His mind spun on, possibilities and dreams colliding with reality. Was there any way—

  The sands of his life kept tumbling, kept pouring in on him.

  You must follow the path Allah has laid out for you.

  This was always his fate.

  But, he had a couple of days, still.

  A few more days to watch, at least. Gaze upon Kris, the moon in his darkness, the reflection of all the light in the world, trying to shine into his soul.