Page 217 of Whisper

Kris snatched the phone. The screen was on, texts from a DC number displayed.

[ You were supposed to keep your head down. ]

I thought it might help. I was trying to gather intelligence. But he doesn’t work for CT anymore. His laptop was useless.

[ There’s absolutely nothing that we need from him. He’s not important. He’s a distraction from our mission. And you’re fucking up. ]

The time stamp for the first message was hours after Dawood had fled his apartment. From when he was locked in the polygraph room, being interrogated about Dawood’s resurrection, his reappearance at his home.

Who had known, truly known, that Dawood had come to see him? Had stolen his laptop? Who knewexactlywhat Dawood was talking about, without mentioning it at all?

“Who fucking sent these to you?” Fury crested within him. He blinked, hoping the words would rearrange themselves, that something different would be on the screen. That he’d hallucinated the messages, somehow.

“I don’t know,” Dawood whispered. “That’s what I’m trying to find out. Please,” he begged. “Can we talk?”

They ended up walking the trails through the woods branching off their old neighborhood.This is how I end up fucking murdered,Kris thought.This is how I end up in a ditch, strangled. Nine times out of ten, the murderer is someone the victim knows.

Dawood kept his hands in his pockets as they shuffled through the trees, through the autumn brush and the dense undergrowth. Pine needles crackled beneath their shoes, the soft carpet of the forest shushing all sounds, drawing everything inward.

“You’re Al Dakhil Al-Khorasani.”

“Yes,” Dawood whispered. “I am.”

“You’re the enemy, then. You’re against us.”

“No. Notme. There’s a mole in the CIA,” Dawood said. “Helping al-Qaeda. And they recruited me to join their attack.”

“That’s fucking ridiculous. No one in the CIA would help al-Qaeda.”

“Just like no one would spy for Russia in the Cold War, or for China today?” Dawood swallowed. “It’s what you think of me. That I’m one of them. That I’m working for al-Qaeda.”

“You fit the profile. And you just admitted you’re Al-Khorasani.” Kris’s heart burned. “You’re not CIA anymore. Ten years in the grave means you’re not.”

“I’m not against you,” Dawood insisted. “I’m trying to tell you that.”

“You had ten years to tell us. Why should I trust you now?”

Dawood took a deep breath. He kicked a fallen branch, tumbling it end over end through the woods. “Three years ago, the mountain where I was living was bombed. Do you remember the Pakistani-US sweeps of the FATA? The Tribal Agencies?”

Kris nodded, once.

“I was deep in Bajaur. Weeks away from any civilization, Western or otherwise. There were no drones. It was a part of the country we’d never covered in a surveillance net. To get to the base of the mountain, it was a four-day journey. And I was a broken man when I got there. It took months to heal. A year before I was walking right. Another year before I finally shook off the last of the infections. After a while, I made a kind of life there.”

“Talking to me through the moon, yes, you said.”

“I thought you were dead,” Dawood whispered. “And I was too afraid to come out of the mountains and find your grave.”

“So you made me live with yours.”

Dawood flinched, stayed silent. He stared at the ground. “Allah opens paths before us, guides our lives. We have the choice to follow His path or turn our backs on Him. I spent my whole life, from when I was ten years old until I was dumped on that mountain, with my back to Him.” He squinted. “But on the mountain, Allah opened a path before me. I thought I was doing the right thing, walking it. For my sins, for being away from Allah for so long, I had to pay somehow. I had a father again, but I’d lost you. I thought that was my path.”

“How does this lead to a CIA mole? To you becoming Al-Khorasani? Get to the point.”

“Three years ago, during the campaign to rid the provinces of al-Qaeda, of jihadi fighters, the Pakistanis carpet-bombed the mountains. They obliterated everything. Our homes. Our farms. We lost everything in the bombs, in the fire. And we had to run.” Dawood bit his lip. “That’s when I lost ’Bu Adnan.”

“Where did you go?”

“Down the mountain. We met up with a group of fighters fleeing as well. We were defenseless, helpless. I was in charge, and I didn’t know what else to do to protect my people. I joined the fighters.”