by Tal Bauer
Don’t let this be true. Don’t let any of this be true.
George swallowed hard. It was easier, far easier, to think Haddad was the bad guy, to pour all his anxieties, all his nerves, all his fear and his hate and his terror, into the specter of Dawood Haddad.
Do you trust me? Kris had asked.
I don’t know, he should have said. I’ve never known. Half the time, I don’t know what I’m doing. I just try to hold on as tight as I can and close my eyes before we all crash face-first into the brick wall.
“Sir!” Shannon jogged to him, a Bluetooth earpiece in her hand. “The FBI, they’ve found Ryan!”
He snatched the earpiece out of her hands, shoved it into his ear. “Talk to me. Where is Ryan?”
“Sir? What the fuck?” Ryan, pissed as hell and loaded for bear, growled over the connection. “I was taking a fucking nap and an entire squad of FBI agents turned the fucking cot over, dumped me out. They’re circling me with flashlights and their weapons drawn, and I need to know what the fuck is going on, right Goddamn now!”
George blinked. His eyes slipped closed.
No. Please, no.
It’s supposed to be Haddad.
“Ryan. Did Dan call you today about tracing a phone number Caldera uncovered?”
“Dan? I haven’t talked to him since yesterday.”
Deanwood
Washington DC
2300 hours
Feet crunched over gravel, over the broken glass of the warehouse’s shattered windows. Two years of agonizing waiting, trying to string clues out of breadcrumbs, trying to track a ghost whispering through Kandahar City, trying to find out who was slitting the throat of the CIA from within. Once he knew about the mole, he couldn’t leave Kandahar City, not until he could prove, beyond all doubt, who it was. Not until he could do something about it, stop the killings, the betrayal.
He would finally have his answers.
True patience comes from complete trust in you, Oh Allah, when the trials and calamities are at the highest.
Footsteps, closer, closer.
There is no God but God.
Dawood rose, slowly. One hand reached behind his back, gripping the handle of a pistol he’d bought from a twelve-year-old in Brentwood the first day he’d arrived back in the States. It had been easy to acquire weapons in Afghanistan. Easier still in the United States.
The mole thought he was on their side. He had the element of surprise.
Kris. Ya rouhi, my love. Forever.
“Hands up, Haddad.”
He knew that voice.
No…
“I said, hands up. I can see you. And I have my weapon trained on the center of your forehead, so if you don’t want to die, this very moment, put your fucking hands up.”
Slowly, Dawood let go of his weapon. Lifted his hands until they were next to his head. He stared at the darkness, the blackness from where the voice had come. “Show yourself.”
The barrel of a handgun appeared first, then hands clutching the grip. Arms, legs, a face cast in shadow. And—
Kris, I am so sorry.
“Finally, you can follow instructions,” Dan purred. “Let’s see how well that continues. On your knees.”
Dawood didn’t move.
“Now.” Dan stepped closer and took aim, right between his eyes. “Don’t make me tell you again.”
He kneeled, his knees digging into the cold, broken cement of the warehouse’s cracked floor. “Why, Dan? Why did you do this?”
Dan circled him slowly, weapon aimed for the center of his head. Dawood’s breath shook, trembling over his lips as Dan’s boots crunched against the dirty ground. Bam. Blinding pain streaked through his skull, made his vision streak and smear. A boot slammed into the center of his back, shoving him forward, face-first. All the air in his chest whooshed out, and he gasped, struggling to breathe. Hands grabbed his arms, wrenched them backward.
The cold steel of handcuffs closed around his wrists.
“Quiet. You don’t get to ask questions. Not after the trouble you caused. Just keep your mouth shut while I fix your mess.” Dan pushed hard off his back and moved away, holstering his weapon.
Dawood struggled to his knees. “Why are you turning against the CIA? Why have you betrayed everyone?”
“I am a fucking patriot!” Dan snapped. “I care about this country! About the world! I’m going to wake everyone up again! Wake them up to your fucking barbarism again. Of you and your kind.”
“My kind?”
“Fucking Islamists. You and your brothers who bow to your Allah, who worship a camel fucker from the seventh century and want to return the world to the backward bullshit of the medieval times. Who think that the only laws worth following are Sharia laws, which, by the way, would see you stoned to death for being a fucking sodomite.”
“That is not true Islam, or the true love of Allah—”
“Spare me the preaching. I’ve heard enough preaching, in the gutters of Islamabad, from the mouths of Zahawi and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and all the other al-Qaeda fucks we threw in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. I’ve heard enough about your fucking death cult to last the rest of my life.”
Nothing made sense. Nothing added up. “And you decided to help al-Qaeda? Decided to betray the CIA?”
“I’m helping the CIA! I’m reminding everyone—the CIA, the president, the American people, everyone—just how dangerous your kind truly is. The world has slacked off, let the fucking Islamists regain ground. ISIS making land grabs in Iraq and Syria, in Egypt, in Africa, and back in Afghanistan. The world has taken their eyes off the ball, and it’s time they realized how wrong that is. It’s time to remind everyone that this is a war for the soul of humanity. Against you, and your death cult, your God of murder. It’s time that everyone remembers that we have to destroy every last one of your kind.”
He couldn’t breathe. Dan spun in and out of focus, Dawood’s vision fracturing into a billion shards, the world collapsing all around him as he struggled to hold on to reality. What had happened to the world? To the man he’d known, the soft-spoken, gentle analyst, Kris’s friend… and lover? Dan was supposed to be the happy ending he couldn’t give Kris. The safe harbor for Kris’s heart, the arms that cradled him close after.
Dawood blinked. Tried to inhale. Tried to form a thought, a prayer. Allah, what is this? What path is this? He’d put his faith in Allah, in the path he had to walk, had clung to his determination in the face of everything. In the face of Kris, the other half of his soul. His jihad had always been about the soul, about keeping to the path of his life, holding fast to Allah, like his father had begged him to so many years ago.
Was this what clinging to the path led to? What faith delivered? Was this, in the end, all that was left? He’d run his race, fought his wars, lived more lives packed into one lifetime than any man had any right to feel in his heart. And for what? What did the end of the path lead to? Where had his faith brought him?
Like father, like son, the proverbs always said. The apple does not fall far from the tree. His father had been murdered for his faith.
So too, it seemed, would he.
What did he have to show for this life, this dedication to his faith? His father had, at least, had him, his mother, a happy home, a life of love and light and peace, submission to a loving God who breathed radiance into all things.
Dawood had a pit in his soul, a hole carved in his heart in the shape of Kris’s smile. A void, dead space within him that hummed, that threatened to overtake his mind, his soul.
And he had a husband who had thrown him aside, who had lain in the arms of another man. A traitor.
Allah, what am I supposed to do? I thought this was your path.
Endure patiently, the Quran said. With beautiful patience.
Endure.
His heart folded inward, collapsed on itself like a star surrendering to the last shudders of its inevitable descent into darkness. Shame pulsed from him, waves and waves of shame thrown off like a dying sta
r shedding its corona. Shame warred with rage, wrestled with the sting of failure, of self-recrimination. Self-wrath. He hadn’t done enough, he hadn’t. Not if this was the end. Not if Kris was still in danger.
Dan was right about one thing.
He did not fear death.
He welcomed it. Welcomed the release, the shedding of this terrible life.
Every moment that passes from this one is dedicated to stopping you. To ending you. I am already dead. I only await my reunion with Allah.
His soul settled heavy around his heart, squeezing like chains against the broken shards he’d cobbled together, had tried to coax life out of. But it was impossible. He’d died that day, ten years ago, the moment he’d realized he wouldn’t see Kris again. He’d died, the best part of his existence carved out of him, and nothing could replace that.
He breathed for one purpose, now.
One purpose alone.
Dawood stared into Dan’s gaze. “What have you planned?”
Dan finally lowered his weapon. He glared at Haddad. “You know, you were supposed to be my golden goose. The gift that keeps on giving. A perfect patsy. A perfect fall guy. Who wouldn’t believe that David Haddad, lost to time and Afghanistan, wouldn’t come back to America bitter, enraged, and hostile? After ten years with al-Qaeda?”
“You knew it was me? For two years?”
“Of course I knew it was you. As soon as Abu Dujana bragged about ‘the stranger from Khorasan’ who used to know everything about the CIA and was al-Qaeda’s secret weapon. Of course I knew it was you.”
“And you never told Kris?”
Dan laughed, his head tipping back. “Why would I do that? I finally had him right where I wanted him for so long. In my bed. In my arms.”
Dawood flinched.
Dan grinned. “Hurts, doesn’t it? Seeing the man you love in the arms of someone else? You have no idea how much joy I got making love to him, knowing you were living on dust and the trash of American bombs in the wastes of Afghanistan.”
“You weren’t like this before, Dan. Something changed in you.” Dawood ached for Kris, for the love Kris had thought he’d had. Kris, ya rouhi, I wanted it to be anyone else. I wanted you to have an ever after. “What happened? Why are you doing this?”
“Sixteen years of war changed me!” Dan bellowed. “Made me into this! Sixteen years of facing your kind, and your hate, and your fucked-up God! Sixteen years of staring into the worst of humanity, fighting them every tooth and fucking nail.” He grinned. It was a dark thing, like a knife glinting in moonlight. “But I broke them, all of your brothers before you. I broke Zahawi after you left Site Green.”
“What?”
Dan snorted, shaking his head. “You know, Kris could have been something amazing if he hadn’t been tied to you. You fucked up his mind, filled him full of bullshit, until he didn’t know who the enemy was anymore. You fucked him for life when he pulled out of the Zahawi interrogation. You fucked his whole career. He and I could be running the CIA now, if it weren’t for you.”
“You didn’t stop the Zahawi interrogation…” God, Kris had clung to that, to the knowledge that he’d left Zahawi in the hands of his trusted friend. That Dan had picked up where he’d left off, doing what was right, what was just. That Dan had been a good man in a miasma of moral failings.
“Of course I didn’t. I took over. Paul was a heavy-handed oaf. He didn’t know what he was doing. I did. I broke Zahawi in twenty days.”
“Ryan—”
“Ryan couldn’t stomach it. He always thought he was some big badass, but when it came down to the wire, he bailed. He’s had to live with his shame, knowing how weak a man he really is. I kept his secret. How he couldn’t take it, couldn’t watch the interrogations. Couldn’t watch me.”
“You’re a monster,” Dawood breathed. “You’ve become a monster.”
“Look in the mirror!” Dan shouted. “You’re talking about yourself! I hunted the monsters! For years! I am the one who built the detainee program! I am the one who built Guantanamo! Who trained everyone at Abu Ghraib! I was the nightmare to your brothers, your jihadi fucks! I was the end of the line for the real monsters, the animals like you.” He inhaled, a ragged breath. “Until the world started to forget. And lost its nerve. And look what happened. The monsters hid in their rat holes and regrouped. ISIS,” he snarled. “Left to your own devices, you and your kind will always choose barbarism. It’s in your nature.”
Dizzy, he was dizzy, the world was spinning, upending. Everything he and Kris thought they knew was wrong. The knowledge they’d built their world on, their reality. That Dan was a good man. That he’d stopped the torture, had worked in the grinding bureaucracy to put an end to dark things, to evil.
Instead, Dan had stoked his own evil, burned his own rage until his soul collapsed, until everything he had been was lost to the purity of his hatred.
When had Dan tipped over the edge? How long had he been living without a soul? There was nothing left of the Dan he’d once known.
What was he truly capable of, without any of his morals, any ethics, and driven purely by hate?
“What is it you have planned? ‘Something bigger than nine-eleven’, you said to Abu Dujana. Something so big you wanted me to pull it off. You specifically asked for me, Al-Khorasani, to come to America to execute your attack. I’m just your convenient terrorist, is that it? Pin the crime on the Muslim?”
“Your ignoble death was supposed to drive Kris into my arms for good. The shattering of your legend, of your mystique, your final hold on his heart. God, I hated you so much. Even in death, you had a stronger power over Kris’s heart and soul than I ever could dream of.”
“We were made for each other and you couldn’t come between that. You could never compete, not when our souls were paired by Allah before space and time began.”
Dan laughed. “Don’t think that highly of yourself, Haddad. Before you fucked up, he was finally mine. He’d finally let you go.”
You have a key?
My personal life is none of your business.
Dawood swallowed, and it felt like a thousand knives of betrayal, a thousand days and nights of longing, of yearning for Kris with every breath in his body. “You’ve twisted him around so badly he doesn’t know up from down, left from right.”
“He was following the script perfectly,” Dan snapped again. “But you had to reach out. Had to make contact. Had to confess everything. Don’t tell me you weren’t all in on this, Haddad. That you didn’t want to make America suffer, make Americans bleed. Make them taste the death and the stink of terror and horror you’ve lived with every day, for ten years.”
He closed his eyes. Swayed, smelling diesel fumes and burning mudbrick homes, heard the sounds of children screaming. Heard Behroze wailing, kicking and clawing in the middle of the night. Felt the heat of an incandescent fire blazing off the rubble left behind from a drone strike, so hot they had to let the flames burn themselves out while they listened to the screams of the dying within the shimmering flames. Do not kill with fire, the Quran said. For that is of Allah, and you shall not take the power of Allah for yourselves.
Stay close to justice, for justice is nearer to righteousness.
There were moments, in the darkness, when he’d felt something close to hatred. When he’d stared at the hand Ihsan always held out for him, a silent offer to join his brothers. When he stood at the cliff edge and looked over the abyss of American foreign policy and felt the anguish of a billion Muslims cry out in rage. He’d wondered if it was possible to go too far. Where the line was. Where his rage tipped him over the edge.
Where he risked turning into what Dan had become.
The thought of Kris, the memory of their love, of everything Kris was, kept his soul from spinning off, splintering into the winds and withering to dust and ash. Kris, and his love, his commitment to justice.
Stay close to justice, for justice is nearer to righteousness.
For Dawood, that me
ant staying close to Kris, and to his memory.
“My path has always been to expose you. To destroy you.”
Dan laughed again, gesturing between them with his handgun. Dawood was still on his knees. “Working out well for you, huh? How did it feel when Kris threw you out of my house? When he didn’t believe you?”
“My path is mine to walk alone.”
“He didn’t believe you. No one is coming for you, and no one is going to help you. You’re on your own, Haddad. And you’re mine.”
“Whatever it is you’re planning, I won’t help. I won’t participate in the slaughter of Americans. Or push your twisted evil, your intolerance, your justifications for hate, in any way.”
“Yes. You will.”
Kris ducked beneath a broken window outside the decrepit warehouse at the address George had given him. Voices murmured from within, rising and falling on the still night. Above, a crescent moon carved through the clouds, casting a faint glow over the dead end of the capital.
Dawood’s deep tones carried in the moonlight. “You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you?”
Dawood. Kris closed his eyes against the crash of his heart, the scream in his soul begging him to throw caution and everything else to the side, to just leap through the window and go to Dawood, be with him. Be by his side, like they were supposed to be, for all time.
He was here now. For Dawood.
He’d parked two blocks away, out of sight on a dark residential block abutting the abandoned industrial park. He’d zigzagged through back lots and alleys, Dan’s gun in his hands as he jogged low and fast. His skinny jeans, long-sleeved pullover and his trench coat flapping behind him were not the tactical uniform he would have preferred. But nothing would stop him, not now. Not ever again.
At the warehouse, he’d circled twice, taking in emptiness, the urban destitution, the way the night seemed to collapse around the neighborhood. Collapse like the warehouse was some fulcrum of evil, the pivot point of destiny.
Outside the warehouse, a dark older model SUV was parked in the shadows by the warehouse’s side freight doors. Two silhouettes within were carved in the light of the SUV’s headlights.