Page 109 of Whisper

George gave them a bulletproof SUV and boxes of intelligence. Evidence reports from the FBI and military police, NSA intercepts, CIA and military intelligence analyses of the bombings.

George had hooked David up with a decent room, at least. Once, the hotel might have been something. Fifties art deco style seemed out of place in Baghdad. The hotel felt uncomfortably close to one Kris had spent Spring Break in one year on Miami Beach, sleeping his way through what seemed like an entire fraternity.

Instead of frat boys in popped collars, contractors swarmed the hotel, hanging out in the hallways and the lobby and in their jeeps and SUVs. They wore baseball caps and had weapons strapped to their thighs and under their arms, and their polos all had some security company emblem emblazoned on the chest. Every single one stared Kris up and down as he walked in, with his man bag and his linen suit, his pale-pink button-down, and his spiked hair.

It would be one ofthoseplaces, one ofthosedeployments.

David shouldered close to him, walking inside his shadow. Kris watched him glower back at the contractors, hold their stares until they were forced to look away. He put one hand on Kris’s back, low, protective, possessing.

He smiled. Maybe it wouldn’t be so terrible after all. Not this time.

Even though David was exhausted, he helped Kris set up the intel. The Jordanian Embassy bombing, the UN bombing, and the mosque bombing, each on a different wall. Kris pinned and taped evidence in clusters. Bomb fragments and wiring diagrams. Witness statements. Victim profiles. NSA intercepts and a copy of the phone web went on another wall.

As Kris started working through the intel, mumbling to himself, David lay down and started to snore.

Hours later, David woke, jet-lagged and out of sequence. A helicopter was rumbling by, flying low and rattling windows. Darkness stretched outside the Green Zone, spreading over Baghdad. Electricity was still off, except for the generators the Americans kept running to light up the highways and overpasses. Dots of illumination flickered throughout the city, a mix of generators and fires that built a paint-by-numbers canvas of post-invasion depression.

Inside the Green Zone, floodlights kept night at bay, lighting up the central roads and gardens in fluorescent daylight. Neon spilled into their hotel room.

Kris was on his fourth cup of hotel coffee, brewed from the bathroom coffeemaker, a relic of the seventies. David came up behind him, wrapping his arms around his waist and burying his face in his neck. “What have you found?”

“The bombs are the same. Old aircraft munitions, probably raided from one of Iraq’s military bases during the invasion. The wiring fragments recovered are the same at each location.”

“It’s one person?”

“One bomb maker, or one organization being taught by a single bomb maker, yes. All three blasts were the work of a single entity.”

“Any thoughts on who?”

“I have an idea. I want to connect more dots, though. Like these.” Kris took David to the NSA intercepts. “We’re seeing more of the relay messages. These callers are definitely using a code. ‘Praises were given to Allah today.’ And the calls are going to the same numbers they went to after each of the other two bombings.”

“We need to break into this cell. Find someone who is making or receiving these calls.”

“There might be someone.” Kris grabbed a folder, stamped with the Army’s military police emblem.800th MP Brigadewas emblazoned in bold, all caps. “This Saudi was picked up in a nightly sweep two days ago. His cell phone was confiscated. The Army just uploaded his cell number to the database.”

“A match?”

“For one call. He called another number after the mosque bombing. He was recorded saying ‘eighty-five pomegranates have fallen’.”

“Eighty-five people killed.”

“His cell number doesn’t show up after the other bombings, though. Could be unconnected. Could be something.”

“We have to go talk to him. Where’s he being held?”

“Abu Ghraib Prison.”

Abu Ghraib stank like death, like terror.

Mass graves from Saddam’s era were being dug up outside the walls, filled with bodies of political prisoners rounded up in sweeps during his reign. Hundreds had been executed at a time. Old bloodstains marred the dingy concrete, the brown sandy walls.

Silence, heavy and filled with secrets, surrounded Kris and David as they followed a young Army MP soldier through the prison wards. Kris felt a weight on his chest, like something was trying to get out, claw its way free. He felt eyeballs on him, prisoners watching him and David. Men in filthy orange jumpsuits sat with their backs against their cell walls.

He heard every squeak of his boots against the old linoleum.

“In here.” The MP guiding them spoke for the first time. “Prisoner number seven-nine-three-tango.” He gestured to a locked cell, and a man inside. “Tango for suspected terrorist.”

Kris nodded. “We’ll take it from here.”