Page 119 of Whisper

“You are your own worst enemy. I swear to God,” George finally choked out.

“I didn’t invade Iraq and fuck up the entire Middle East. I didn’t fulfill the hopes and dreams of al-Qaeda, and a prophecy they cling to.”

“Caldera, I swear—”

The door to the Situation Room opened. The new director of the CIA, Christopher Edwards, stepped out. His gaze bounced from George to Kris.

“You must be Kris Caldera.” Hand outstretched, Edwards smiled broadly.

Kris shook his hand, coy smile on his face. Just what had the new director, ushered in after Thatcher’s fall and the conflagration of the prisoner abuse scandal, heard about him? His head tilted. “My reputation precedes me? Or my fashion?”

To really stick it to everyone, just everyone, he’d bought a new suit for this, a charcoal Brunello Cucinelli, on a layover in Rome. A fuchsia pocket square puffed out of his chest. David had helped him pick it out, and had nearly torn the suit off him in the dressing room, fire in his eyes as he dropped to his knees.

That was a memory to carry while wearing the suit. While meeting the new CIA director. Briefing the president.

Instant swagger.

Edwards chuckled, and, not missing a beat, said, “A bit of both. Director Thatcher warned me about you on his way out.”

“Warned you about me?”

An aide poked her head out of the Situation Room. “The president and the national security council are ready for you.”

Edwards led them into the president’s Situation Room, the storied command center of presidents waging war.

Thought it would be bigger.The room was cramped, dominated by the conference table and a bank of monitors along one wall. Kris recognized everyone in the room, all the big names and faces of the administration. Secretaries of state and defense, the national security advisor, the joint chiefs. Other generals and admirals. Military aides and officers squeezed beside their generals, and civilians in suits juggled calls and emails on Blackberries and bulky laptops balanced on their knees.

They were given three seats near the head of the table. George sat along the wall as David and Kris settled next to Edwards. Dim lights hummed above while the wall monitors were on, illuminating the table but keeping the occupants’ faces bathed in shadow.

The president stood behind his chair, talking fast and furiously with someone who looked like they wanted all of their bones to liquefy and to drop to the ground, and then slink out of the room.

The seat across from Kris pulled away from the table. Hands appeared in the light, holding a coffee cup, and then arms, a body, sitting down. A face.

Kris stared as the vice president sat across from him.

It took a moment for the vice president to recognize Kris. He frowned, like he was sifting through his memories. The frown shifted, turned to a scowl. His lip curled. He looked away.

George sighed, just loud enough for Kris to hear. Edwards, next to Kris, turned and gave him a slight—very slight—grin. The ghost of a smile.

David squeezed Kris’s hand beneath the table.

“We all here? What are we waiting for?” The president settled into his leather seat at the head of the table. “Let’s talk about Saqqaf.”

Edwards guided the room through Saqqaf’s biography, a report Kris had written the month before. He stopped, though, just after Saqqaf’s move to Afghanistan. “I brought the agency's Saqqaf targeteer here today. He’s the CIA’s expert on Saqqaf. I look for his reports first, every day.” Edwards looked at Kris. “Mr. Caldera.”

All eyes were on him. No pressure. Kris’s eyes flicked from the president to the vice president. Did the president remember him, smelly and sweaty and unwashed after September 11?

David laced their fingers beneath the table.

“Mr. President.” Kris nodded his hello.

“Go on, Mr. Caldera. If Christopher here thinks you’re all right, then we want to hear what you have to say.”

Kris walked everyone through the timeline of Saqqaf’s rise, from his backward days in Jordan to his sideshow days in Afghanistan, kept at arm’s reach from al-Qaeda, a curiosity more than an asset. His flight to Iraq, and the administration's use of him to help justify the invasion. His subsequent rise, following the invasion, in the lawless, hopeless wasteland that Occupied Iraq had become.

His savage butchery since, and his stirring of a sectarian civil war that was pushing Iraq to the brink of collapse.

David spoke next. “Mr. President, my name is David Haddad. I work with Mr. Caldera on the ground in Iraq. Saqqaf has taken over the global jihadist movement where Bin Laden has fallen short. Bin Laden has been relegated to near obscurity, issuing dry pronouncements from caves and spending his days in hiding. His claim to fame, after nine-eleven, is that he’s evaded us. Saqqaf, on the other hand, is captivating the world with his brand of jihad. Where Bin Laden looks old and dreary, Saqqaf is seen in videos as a young man, actually fighting. He looks like a John Wayne jihadi, and his violent rhetoric, his promises of freedom and revenge, and his slick propaganda are pulling the disenfranchised to him.”