Page 112 of Whisper

When his eyes finally dried, Abu Hussain walked them out. He held David’s hand for a long moment, staring at the ground. “The killings will get worse,” he said softly. “There is no trust, not anymore. Not for the Americans, and not for the Shia. Some in my tribe have formed secret groups. For self-defense, they said. But now, self-defense is also going on the attack. Against American troops.”

“That will not help, Abu Hussain.” David squeezed his hand. “That will not help anyone.”

“There is a Jordanian. He pays the Iraqis who join his movement. He pays lots of money. Far more than the Americans offered.”

“Saqqaf?” Kris’s stomach tied itself in knots, waiting for the answer.

Abu Hussain nodded. “He is building anarmy.”

“It’s Saqqaf.”

Kris crossed his legs and stared at George. The air conditioning in George’s office was still too cold. The marble floors and gleaming columns, holding up the vaulted ceiling, reflected the cool air into the massive office.

George tossed his pen onto his desk and cursed. He sat back in his chair.

“It’s Saqqaf. The man the White House used as a pretense for this war. Who was supposed to be killed in the invasion? But now, thanks to theamazinglyimpressive job you all are doing, he’s become empowered. Thanks to the complete abrogation of the American military to secure the country, he’s found himself a whole new battlefield.” Kris pretended to think, squinting as he tapped his chin. “I believe I predicted something… exactly like this.”

“How do you know it’s Saqqaf?” George looked like Kris was telling him to eat glass, chew nails, go pound sand until Kris got tired of watching him.

“The bombs come from a single entity. A single organization using the same munitions, the same wiring. The intercepts tracked a cell phone to a recently arrested prisoner in Abu Ghraib. We went to talk to him. He came to Iraq from Saudi to fight for the ‘holy warrior’ who would kill all the Americans. He named this inspirational holy warrior: Saqqaf. He started a chant in the prison. Then we drove to Ramadi. Talked to one of the tribal elders outside the city. He said Saqqaf is paying big bucks to anyone who joins him. And that there are cells of fighters forming out there in Anbar Province fighting with him. You invaded, and you swore it would be better, you swore to the world. And now you’ve given an actual terrorist the means to build an army.”

“Why these targets? Why these three?”

“Saqqaf hates Jordan. His homeland. He hates everything about Jordan, the monarchy, the royal family, the Mukhabarat. He wants to destroy Jordan. Jordan was the first Arab nation to open an embassy in Baghdad. He could take out two birds with one stone. Foment unrest and suspicion and attack his most hated government. The UN? Destroy any hope of NGOs and aid organizations that wanted to enter the reconstruction space. How many have pulled out since the UN was bombed? How many won’t come now? How much hurt will the Iraqis feel now that humanitarian aid, the most critical piece of reconstruction, isn’t coming?”

“And the mosque?”

“He planted a bomb inside the cracks that were already splintering in the sectarian divide. He’s trying to divide the country, George. Put the US in the center of a three-way civil war. Us against the Sunni and the Shia, and against Saqqaf and his army. And it’s working. He’s succeeding.”

George leaned forward, hunching over his desk as he scrubbed his face with his hands. His hair, graying, stuck up at every angle.

“The White House is going to shit. Actually shit,” George breathed.

“This isn’t a victory, George. This isn’tMission Accomplished. This is the start of a fucking nightmare.”

Chapter 18

Baghdad, Iraq

March 2004

The walls shook, windows rattling. Glass tinkled. Everyone looked up. Froze.

Beyond the Green Zone, a column of black smoke rose above a pillar of flame, a billowing fireball that stretched for the dusty sky. Three more columns of dark smoke, not yet put out from earlier conflagrations, dotted the horizon, just to the north.

“Another one.” The duty officer in the joint intelligence command center, inside Saddam’s Republican Palace in the heart of the Green Zone, called. “Mark it.”

One of the junior enlisted soldiers scurried to the main whiteboard front and center in the cavernous ballroom converted for the intel cell’s use. He dutifully ticked off another attack in the running daily tally, then marked the time in a separate grid. He waited, pen poised, for the radio to announce the target, the location, the victims. Facts, numbers, points on a map. Quantifiable costs in the insurgency.

David looked down. His fists clenched. Every column of smoke, every roaring fireball, was another broken life. Broken US soldiers and broken Iraqis, trying to keep going in the day-by-day hellscape the country had fallen into. Forty-three attacks, on average, every day, by the command center’s official ticker. Forty-three attacks, killing dozens, sometimes hundreds, wounding thousands.

Baghdad was a city of widows and orphans, of tears and shrieks and lamentations. The smell of death and rot hovered over the city, a festering, fetid miasma. The city, the country, was dying, day by day.

The White House pushed for the removal of the CIA station chief in Baghdad after Kris’s report. George took over running the CIA in Iraq, and his first act was to beg Kris to stay, beg him to lead the hunt for Saqqaf.

“You’re the expert in hunting these guys. You captured Zahawi. You wrote the book on how to hunt these guys. Everyone copies what you did there, in Pakistan. But this is Iraq. And you’re the one who predicted all this shit, predicted Saqqaf. We need you again. We need you, Kris.”

It was praise Kris hadn’t wanted, and David watched him seethe as he accepted it, and accepted the assignment.