Page 254 of Whisper

“You couldn’t watch what Dan did to Zahawi.”

“But I didn’t try and stop it, either. Not like you.” Ryan’s voice broke. He looked away from Kris, visibly fighting for control.

This war had robbed them all of their empathy, their ability to see reason. Hatred was a smog that hung in the air, that colored the world in shades of blood and fire. That let men be tortured to the brink of death and beyond, that let Dan build an entire program, a machine dedicated to breaking men, to anguish and suffering, all in the name of expediency.

“I was lucky, Ryan. Dawood has always been my rock. My light in the darkness. You once said he compromised me. That being close to him led to me making wrong decisions. You almost called him, and me, traitors to the CIA.”

Finally, Ryan looked up. Met his gaze. “I was wrong,” he whispered. A single tear slipped from his eye. Ryan wiped it away with the back of his hand, turned to the side. Hid his face, his shame. “About… everything. And for far too long.”

Now he recognizes what he’s done.Kris was exhausted, almost too exhausted, for this conversation. But he could see Ryan’s agony, see his pain bleeding out all over the table, flowing across the hospital’s cafeteria. See a soul-weary ache, and a desperation for something that looked like salvation.

Ryan’s wounds went soul-deep, fissures on his heart and his conscience that he’d have to reconcile with. Choices he’d made that had fractured who he was, until he was a man barely hanging on, clinging to rationalities and his rage. George, too, was lost in his own psychic wounds. A lifetime of playing politics and fighting a war, and losing both, forever destined to make sacrifices and compromises for the worst of all sides, did that to a man. He’d been a politician more times than not, trying to please everyone, but when the hard calls had to be made, George had, at least, been able to call people who could get shit done. Kris. Dawood.

And what about them? Dawood was fighting back from choosing to die, choosing to sacrifice himself for everyone, and Kris didn’t know if bringing him back was the right or wrong choice to make. After forty-seven years of an anguished life, did Dawood deserve his peace? Did he deserve to meet Allah face to face, and rest, finally, in the arms of his creator? He was a hero, an undeniable hero. Should he be given the hero’s send-off?

Was it selfish, holding on to him?

He wouldn’t live without Dawood again. He’d come to that simple truth days ago. What happened would happen. But his choice was made.

“We all lost ourselves in this war. Some more than others.”Dan… How did you spin so entirely out of orbit?“Every choice we make, we choose to either cut out a piece of ourselves, sacrificing what we know is right, or we make the choice to be better. But it all comes down to us. How each of us faces the world, and our choices in it. And after that…” Kris sighed. “It’s up to our conscience to make peace with our souls. Because it’s us who will build this future, Ryan. Us. Individuals. Men and women and people who think and feel and make decisions. So are we going to make a world of hatred? Or are we going to look at ourselves, at what we’ve done, and try to make something better?”

There weren’t any answers to that, not yet. Answers didn’t lie in reports or CIA briefings, in Congressional testimony, or in destroyed videotapes.

Answers lay in everyone’s souls, deep inside their hearts. The greatest battle they would endure would be to face the world andfeelit,seeit, through someone else’s eyes. Through someone else’s heart.

“I don’t know if I can live with this,” Ryan grunted. “Dan, he was my direct report. He was my friend. My only real friend. I didn’t see this? I didn’t see what he’d—”

“Don’t take Dan’s sins onto your soul. They’re not yours. Dan duped everyone.Everyone. I was just as close to him as you were.”

Ryan crumpled over his coffee cup, hiding his face again.

“We all have a past. We all made choices. Dan made his. Dawood made his. Those choices set them on a collision course toward each other. Two shooting stars bursting apart on impact.” Kris reached across the table, pried Ryan’s clenched fingers off his coffee cup. He squeezed. “What matters is what we donow. How we live with our past. The choices we made.”

When Ryan met his gaze, Kris saw shades, echoes of Ryan’s decision. A bullet, a gun. A lonely house, and a bottle of whiskey.

“Don’tdothat, Ryan.” He squeezed hard, until Ryan’s bones shifted in his hand. “Don’t take the easy way out. We need you. The world needs you. We need to make this right.”

“I don’t know how…” Ryan breathed.

“Don’t drag your past into your future. Don’t hold on to that pain. Leave your history where it belongs. In the past. Learn from it. Take it out and look at it, turn it over. But put it back where it belongs. Don’t let those ghosts live with you in the present.” He shuddered. Swallowed. “I… carried nine-eleven with me. I’ve carried it all this time. Because I felt responsible. Because the hijackers’ names crossed my desk. Do you remember the Nine-Eleven Commission? When they were done, they recommended thirty-six CIA officers be censured and terminated, because they knew about the hijackers entering the US and they didn’t share the intel with the FBI.Iwas one of those thirty-six.” He licked his lips, swallowed hard. “Director Thatcher said there was enough hurt to go around, enough self-blame and self-castigation. He didn’t fire any of us. But that doesn’t mean we weren’t responsible.”

Ryan frowned.

“Did that give me the drive I had? The fire to live this life? Did my moral failing, at twenty-three years old, shape my ethical certainty for the rest of my life? A commitment to doing the right thing, no matter what? Maybe.” Kris shrugged. “But I also let those ghosts dictate my life. Keep me tied to what I felt was my sacred duty. I couldn’t separate the good from the bad. Couldn’t learn from my past without feeling the shame, spiraling into the agony all over again.

“We’ve done terrible, obscene things. The CIA, and each of us, individually. And in this world, there are appalling things, appalling people whom we’ve fought, darkness that we’ve come up against. But they’re people. Just people, making terrible choices from their own places of darkness and horror. We can slide into the darkness with them, or we can fight them and their horror, their terror. Some days it feels like we’re just killing machines, trying to take out as many bad guys as we can before more crop up. But maybe there’s something different we can try. Maybe there’s a new direction you can lead us through. You and George.”

Ryan nodded slowly. He squeezed Kris’s hand. “You could have gone the other way. Decided the ends justified the means. You’d do anything to stop another nine-eleven.”

“It was a moral failing that caused nine-eleven. More moral failings, more abandoning what’s right? That wouldn’t solve anything.” Kris shook his head. “You’re at a crossroads, Ryan. You’re at the center of fate and destiny, where all paths have converged.”

Paths upon paths, choices made that carved destinies, changed the course of time and reality. What if Dawood hadn’t been lost for ten years? What if there had been no one to stop Dan?

Ryan closed his eyes. Took a deep breath and let it out slowly. When he opened them again, the certainty, the finality, was gone, replaced by someone else. Something that looked almost like hope.

“What you do next, the choices you make, will impact the lives of millions. Billions. Make your choices for them. For everyone else. Walk the path that will save lives, and you will change the world.”

“Like Dawood did?” Ryan, finally, smiled, just faintly.