Whisper

by Tal Bauer

  But faced with his dead husband, he hadn’t thought about national security, or any darker possibilities of why Dawood was back in his life seemingly out of thin air.

  “All your access has been revoked. Anyone logs into the network with your card, or tries to access the internet from your laptop, we’ll be alerted. Your laptop has been flagged, and if he tries anything, its ID will pop up at CIA headquarters. We’ll send out a response team. We’ll bring him in.”

  “He’s former CIA, Dan. He knows all this. It took, what, thirty minutes to notify tech? He got everything he wanted off the laptop in under twenty.” Kris sank against the counter, laying his head on his folded arms.

  Hadn’t he failed in all the ways a person could fail? Hadn’t he fallen as far as a man could fall? Wasn’t he already the scum of the CIA? Out of all the ways he’d failed, he’d never let classified material into enemy hands. Was that what he’d done now? Was Dawood one of them, still? Or one of them?

  Dan inched forward, leaning his hips against the counter a few feet down from Kris. He folded his arms, pursed his lips. He still wouldn’t look at Kris.

  The lead FBI agent, a woman wearing a blue suit and sporting a brisk blonde bob, marched to Kris. Set her notebook on the counter, a perfect right angle to the edge. “Sir, I’m Agent Spalding. I have a few questions for you, as part of the investigation.”

  “The CIA will handle the investigation. We just need the FBI to process the evidence.” Dan jumped in before Kris could speak.

  Agent Spalding cast Dan a cold glare. “We will be conducting a thorough investigation without CIA interference. National security information may have been compromised. This is no time for a turf war.”

  Dan snorted. “Your boss will be calling you soon. Just a heads-up. This is staying within the CIA. Just process the evidence, Agent Spalding. The CIA will take Mr. Caldera’s statement back at Langley.”

  She blinked once at Dan. Turned back to Kris. “You engaged in sexual intercourse with the suspect, correct?”

  Dan flinched and turned away. Kris saw his hands grip the counter’s edge, his knuckles go white. “I did.”

  “We haven’t recovered any used condoms in the trash. Were they flushed, or did you not use any?”

  “We didn’t use any.”

  Dan exhaled, slowly. Kris felt his exhale like a sword slicing up his spine. He’d never let Dan touch him without wearing a condom. He’d never let anyone else, ever, touch him without a condom. Dawood had been the first, the only, in his entire life.

  “We’re going to need to take you to Fairfax, to the medical center—”

  “Why?” Dan was suddenly there, suddenly right at Kris’s side. “Why do you need to do that? Is he hurt?” He turned to Kris, finally looked at him. “Did he hurt you?” Dan looked like he wanted to puke, then wanted to rip Kris’s kitchen apart with his bare hands.

  “Mr. Caldera needs a sexual assault forensic exam. We can collect the evidence at Fairfax medical or at Quantico, the choice is yours. But we need to do this.”

  “I’m going to be sick.” Kris pushed Dan away and ran to his sink, emptying his stomach of bile and shame. What had he eaten last? Lemon chicken, with Dan. And Dawood’s—

  Closing his eyes, he rubbed the back of his hand over his lips. Spit dribbled from his mouth.

  Dan’s hand tentatively rested on his back. A gentle, barely there spread of his fingers. As if Dan didn’t want to touch him.

  “Why is this required?” Dan’s voice could cut diamonds.

  “We need to definitively identify the assailant—”

  “It wasn’t an assault.” Kris rinsed his mouth, spat tap water into the sink. “And I know who he was.”

  “I was under the impression that there was some confusion about who this man was. The CIA asked the FBI to provide a definitive ID. We need DNA to do that. The fingerprints we’re pulling are mostly partials. If a definitive identity is what the CIA is after, this is how it’s done.” Agent Spalding’s gaze bounced from Kris to Dan and back. “But now you say you know who he is? If that’s the case, then what are we doing here? Wasting time?”

  Dan squeezed Kris’s shoulder, hard enough to tell Kris to keep his mouth shut. “We do need a definitive ID, yes.”

  Agent Spalding’s eyebrows arched high. She waited.

  Dan didn’t give her anything more. “This is a national security matter. We won’t be sharing anything further. All evidence recovered needs to be rush processed and forwarded immediately to Deputy Director George Haugen.”

  Agent Spalding snapped her notebook closed. “Then the only thing left is the forensic exam. Fairfax or Quantico, Mr. Caldera. The choice is yours.”

  Kris rested his forehead on the edge of his sink. The world was spinning, had spun since Dawood had disappeared, since he’d seen the plate of eggs and the empty studio and his missing laptop. He couldn’t drag in enough air through the way his heart had caved in, crushing his chest. “Fairfax.”

  “I’ll meet you there, Mr. Caldera. Go to the emergency room. I’ll have a nurse waiting to collect the samples.”

  Collect the samples. He’d showered, but there could still be traces of Dawood on him, under his fingernails.

  There absolutely still was Dawood inside of him. Absolutely.

  His stomach lurched again. He clutched the edges of his sink, bile racing up his throat.

  “I’ll drive,” Dan said softly.

  The drive to the hospital was the quietest ride of Kris’s life. Not even the flight home from Afghanistan with four bodies in the same plane had been so silent. Dan’s electric car, his Bolt, barely hummed, barely made a single noise. Kris picked at the sleeves of his sweater.

  Dan sat ramrod straight, driving like he was an instructor at The Farm, solid, definitive motions to every turn, every lane change. Kris finally gathered the shards of his courage and glanced his way.

  Dan looked like shit. Like he’d been up all night, maybe drinking. Dark circles hung beneath his red-rimmed eyes. His knuckles were white where his hands clenched the steering wheel. He breathed slowly, in and out, like controlling his breath was the only thing holding him together.

  Finally, they arrived, and Dan pulled up to the front of the ER, set out his CIA placard, his ‘don’t fucking tow this car’ sign. Sighed, and sat back in his seat.

  “I thought, last night, you’d just picked someone up,” Dan breathed. “I thought everything you told me two days ago was bullshit. I thought you were just playing me.” He looked down. Toyed with his key ring. Inhaled brokenly. “I thought you’d finally ripped my heart out enough for me to move on.”

  “Dan—” Tears bubbled up from within Kris, from the ragged parts that remained. “I meant it. I did. I wanted—” He couldn’t do this. God, he couldn’t do this. Pitching forward, Kris howled into his hands, sobbed into the tear-soaked wrists of his sweater. “I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t understand anything. Any of this.”

  “I don’t either.” Dan reached for the door handle. “They’re waiting for you inside. And we’ve got to get back to Langley. Ryan is waiting for us.”

  He tried to be brave, walking into the ER. Agent Spalding was there, texting someone and waiting with a nurse. They motioned for him to follow them down a long hallway to a closed room in the back.

  Kris hesitated. “Dan,” he mumbled. “I don’t have any right to ask you for anything. Not anything, I know that. But…” Tears streamed down his face, a river rushing over his cheeks, down his jawline. “Will you stay with me?” His hands twisted in front of him, destroying his sweater’s wrists.

  Dan’s eyes slid closed. For a moment, he didn’t breathe. It might have been easier if Kris had asked him to carve his heart out with a spoon, offer it up to Kris on a golden platter. “Yes,” Dan sighed. “You know I will.”

  They made the long walk to the exam room together. Dan pulled out his phone and turned it off.

  Inside, the nurse asked Kris a lengthy health history, includin
g a list of his recent sexual partners. In front of Dan, he detailed his and Dawood’s four orgasms, his blow job from the Marine over the Atlantic, and a one-night stand in Estonia with a drunk British soldier. Dan sat, stone-faced.

  The nurse asked him to strip, and then took photos of bruises on his wrists. A bruise blooming on his hip, the shape of a palm, squeezing.

  “All of these were consensual,” he whispered. “I thought—” He sniffed.

  “I need to swab for DNA,” the nurse finally said. She passed over a hospital gown, open in the back. “Please take off your briefs and lie facedown. I’ll be back soon.”

  He shook as he undressed, almost fell over. Dan steadied him. Held him up. Guided Kris to the exam bed and helped him lie on his stomach. Grabbed a blanket from a stack on the shelves and spread it over Kris when Kris couldn’t stop trembling.

  “Thanks.” Slowly, Kris reached out with his fingers, spreading them across the cheap plastic of the exam bed, inch by inch, until his index finger grazed the side of Dan’s hand.

  For a moment, it seemed like Dan was going to break down, was going to split in half and sob, let out every ounce of agony Kris knew he was holding on to. Agony Kris had given him, had dropped into his lap, a giant ball of twisted anguish straight through the heart. He tried to pull his fingers back. What right did he have, reaching for Dan and his care? What right did he have asking for help, for comfort, when all he did was hurt Dan in return?

  Dan grabbed his fingers, linked two of his through two of Kris’s, holding on like their fingers held the universe together. Kris could feel Dan shaking, trembling, his entire soul quaking within him.

  Knocks sounded at the door. The nurse slipped back in. “All right, I’m going to make this as quick and painless as possible. Three swabs, and then we’re done.”

  Kris buried his face in his and Dan’s linked hands.

  Dan wrapped his other hand over Kris’s head and pressed his lips to Kris’s temple.

  “Ryan is waiting for us.”

  “Fuck.” Kris wilted in Dan’s passenger seat. “This day just gets worse and worse.”

  Dan drove to Langley’s executive parking lot, closest to headquarters. He had a spot right up front with his name on it. Why did Dan even give him the time of day?

  “Ryan has set up a counterintelligence polygraph interview—”

  Kris groaned. He thunked his head against Dan’s passenger window.

  “You know we have to do this. We have to know everything, Kris. And we have to be certain.”

  “Today? Right now? You know polygraphs are junk science, right? And you know us SAD guys are trained to beat them?”

  “I’d advise you don’t advertise that to the polygrapher. You’re in enough shit as it is right now.”

  They walked in through the front doors, and as they crossed the CIA seal, Kris stared at the wall of stars, the Memorial Wall to fallen officers. Each star was carved out of the marble, chunks pulled out, each star representing something—someone—missing from the CIA. Dawood’s star was up there. He’d spent hours in front of it, feeling the edges, running his fingers through the darkness, the hollow spaces.

  But Dawood was alive. He was back. How did a fallen star get put back up?

  Dawood was stealing CIA property. Was he working against the CIA?

  How did a good man go bad?

  Allah detests violence against the innocent, Dawood had said. Wickedness. Jihad is only to be waged against the evildoers.

  There are objective evils in the world.

  The truth is complicated.

  Kris’s heart, his soul, trembled.

  His access to headquarters was restricted to being under armed guard and escort. Dan waited in the lobby with him while a retinue of internal guards arrived, each carrying an MP5 in a neck holster and glaring at him like he was a filthy traitor to the stars and stripes, to apple pie and the American way.

  I was first on the ground in Afghanistan, he wanted to scream at the hulking guards. I built this agency’s terrorist hunting program. I have more kills than you’ll ever know.

  But the only thing he’d be remembered for, inside the halls of Langley, was Camp Carson. And now, for breaching national security, for having his CIA files stolen by a ghost, a man who didn’t believe enough in them, in their love and in what they were, to reach out to him for a decade.

  It was Ryan’s first question, once he was in the polygraph room and hooked up to the reader. “Why now? Why is Haddad back now?”

  “I don’t know.” The polygrapher stared at her monitor, displaying readouts of Kris’s heart rate, the speed of his breathing, his skin temperature, his sweat. A dozen cables wrapped around his chest, EKG pads were stuck beneath his collarbones, and a pulse monitor squeezed his fingertip. A camera stared at his right eye, watching for pupil dilation.

  “How long have you known Haddad was back in the United States?”

  “Two days. September seventh. I was on my way home—” I was on my way to Dan’s. “—and I stopped for a drink. He showed up at the bar.”

  “He showed up?” Ryan’s eyebrows shot sky high. “He just… showed up. Out of the blue.”

  “He said he was following me.” Kris shifted. The cable across his chest stretched.

  “Following you. Outstanding countersurveillance work there, Caldera.” Ryan pushed off the wall and started pacing. “What did he say about where he’d been?”

  “In the mountains, he said. He said he was cared for by a man named Abu Adnan. The father of Al Jabal.”

  “The father of the man who tortured him? Who was planning on murdering him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ.” Ryan kept pacing, wall to wall in the cramped room. “What does he want from you, Caldera?”

  “I don’t know.” Kris’s voice shook. He felt his heart beat faster, felt his breath speed up. “I don’t fucking know. If I knew that, I’d know what to do.”

  “What the fuck do you mean?” Ryan glared.

  “I’d know why he’s here!” Kris screamed. “I’d know if I should love him or hate him! I’d know if what happened last night was real or if he was just fucking playing with me!”

  “Oh, he fucking played with you, all right. All night long, I heard.”

  “Fuck you!” Kris tried to lunge for Ryan. The cables, the sensors, kept him tied to the chair.

  Alarms on the polygraph machine wailed.

  “Calm down,” the polygrapher snapped. “None of this is helping.”

  “He’s just lost his husband. Again.” Dan tried to interject, softly. “Can we be a little more conscious of that? This is a hard time for him.”

  “He hasn’t just lost his husband!” Ryan roared. “Haddad was declared dead a decade ago! If Haddad is alive, then it’s on him as to why he’s been hiding for a decade! What kept him from the US?” He whirled on Kris. “Was he held against his will?”

  “No.”

  “Was he a prisoner?”

  “No.”

  “Was he wounded? Was there any reason he couldn’t physically get to a US Embassy or military base?”

  “No.”

  “Then he chose to stay,” Ryan hissed. “He chose to fucking stay with al-Qaeda. He chose to become one of them. Which makes him a fucking enemy combatant! A Goddamn terrorist jihadi!”

  “We don’t know that—” Dan tried.

  “I told you he was unstable! I told you he was bad news!”

  “He’s not fucking al-Qaeda!” Kris shrieked. “He’s not a fucking terrorist!”

  “Then why didn’t he come back?” Ryan roared. “Why didn’t he come back to you? If you were so fucking in love, so fucking in love that you had to change CIA policy to accommodate you both, why didn’t he come back to that?” Ryan pushed into Kris’s face. Blood vessels had burst in his eyes, turned his gaze red.

  Kris slammed his head forward. He was too far away to break Ryan’s nose, but his forehead connected with Ryan’s chin, hard.


  Ryan flew back, licking a trail of blood from his split lip. In the corner, Dan smothered a tiny smile.

  “Fuck you, Caldera,” Ryan hissed. “Fuck you. You should have come to us with this right away. But you hid it. You hid Haddad’s return, and that makes you complicit in everything he fucking does, from that moment on. Are you ready? For whatever that is? For the love of your life to unleash the next September eleventh on American soil? Because you didn’t act when you had the chance?”

  Again, Kris tried to lunge for Ryan, tried to rip off the monitors and cables, tried to get his hands around Ryan’s throat. Never, ever again, he’d sworn. Never again. Dawood had sworn with him. They’d sworn together that they would dedicate their lives to preserving life, to saving people. To never letting hatred and violence take control of the world again. Their whole lives, they’d fought against the forces of evil, of blind hatred, of crazed vengeances and bloodthirst. No matter who was guilty.

  But were they still on the same side in that struggle?

  The truth is complicated.

  No, it’s not, Dawood. It’s us, together forever. It’s us, always us. It’s us against evil. That’s how it always was. That’s what we did, together.

  There are objective evils in the world.

  Do you think I’m evil now, Dawood? Have I become your monster? The Great Satan, the evil CIA?

  Is that why you never came back to me?

  The polygraph machine’s alarms wailed in the silence as Ryan nursed his split lip and Kris wilted, no longer struggling against the cables.

  He was going to flunk the polygraph. His emotions were careening, veering wildly left to right, up and down, too much for any reliable reading. He wanted to murder Ryan, strangle him with his bare hands. He wanted to rip the cables off and run, just run. He wanted to stand in the middle of DC and scream until his throat bled, scream and scream for Dawood to come back, just come back to him.

  When Dawood did come back—if he came back—he wanted to slap him until his head spun around on the top of his spine. Nail his balls to the ground until he got his answers.