Page 117 of Whisper

He’d hadsomuch hope, flying cross the ocean to a land that seemed almost mythical. If it was true, if he could really live a free life in America, then he’d give everything back to America, he’d promised as the plane slowly descended into New York City.

Thirty-four years old and a lifetime later, it was next to impossible to resurrect that same hope he’d once felt. His soul felt dirty, tarnished with the buildup of things he’d done, the things he’d seen. Things he’d condoned, for being a part of the silence.

He froze the video, staring at the image of the hooded man on the crate.

Could his father be under that hood?

Couldhe?

What was the difference between that man and him?

Was he—were they—on the wrong side of history?

Where hadeverythinggone wrong?

Abu Ghraib was the chip in the dam, the first domino to fall.

George, ashen and shaking, called them to his office nearly every day.

They didn’t like each other, not really. David looked at George the way he looked at most spineless bureaucrats. Medical marvels, humans capable of existing without spines or the guts to do anything meaningful at all. Afghanistan, all they’d been through there, was a distant memory, Pakistan and Thailand far more vivid.

“There’s been a leak,” George told them. His voice shook. “Director Thatcher called. Said it’s going to hit tomorrow’s papers.”

“There are a thousand leaks, George.” Kris smoked inside George’s office, blowing his cigarette smoke over George’s desk. “What are you talking about now?”

“I’m talking about what doesn’t exist!” George snapped. “The detainee program! I’m talking about Zahawi.”

Kris’s chuckle was dark, the kind of laugh the devil made when he came for Faust. “Out of everything that is leaked,thatdeserves to be made public. It deserves a Congressional inquiry and a fucking indictment.”

“Are you so Goddamn naive that you think it was just a handful of people? Some cabal of evil that needs to be taken down? It fucking went to the top!” George trembled, from his fingers to his toes. He tried to clench his hands, ball them up. His fists shook on his desktop. “Andyouwere there. You both were.”

Kris blew smoke in George’s face.

Washington DC

May 2004

The president admitted the detainee program existed.

He admitted to enhanced interrogation techniques.

He admitted to waterboarding detainees in the CIA’s detainee program.

Director Thatcher resigned from the CIA, in the outcry that followed.

But it was the vice president who came out swinging, insisting that the United States did not torture anyone. “Look, waterboarding is not torture. Based on the legal definition of torture, we do not torture anyone.”

“The legal definition as defined by this administration?” the interviewer asked.

The vice president ignored him. “We use aggressive interrogation techniques.And I do not apologize for that. Not ever.”

Baghdad, Iraq

May 2004

The video was five minutes and thirty-seven seconds long. It was uploaded to a jihadi website that had been a clearinghouse of Saqqaf’s. They watched it together in George’s office.

The video opened on a man dressed all in black, his face covered in a balaclava, standing over a pale man in an orange jumpsuit, his arms and legs bound.