Page 205 of Whisper

“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 fuckingplayedwith 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 onhimas 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 hechoseto 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.