Page 28 of Whisper

He was going to vomit.

Kris shoved Haddad away, falling as he twisted, landing on his knees. His stomach flipped, turned itself inside out. Rancid vomit clawed its way up his throat, scalding his insides. Last night’s dinner, prepared by Ghasi’s teen Afghan boys, reappeared, weak broth.

Haddad stroked his back again, his large hand making circles from Kris’s shoulders to his waist. He said nothing.

Kris sat back, trying to block out the memories, the years he’d spent growing up in the shadows of the towers. Years of being a barrio kid, imagining climbing out of the barrio and the tenements and up to those glass-and-steel towers. Every kid on the block had pinned their hopes somewhere on those towers. Every kid had a dream of escaping up the towers like ladders into the sky, all the way to the stars, catch a plane and fly away, disappear to a new life. Once, he’d thought he could climb to the top, to where they disappeared into the clouds, and search for a new home, one where there were people like him and he wasn’t stared at for being brown, or gay, or young, or chided for having an attitude, or told he had to do better, had to be different. Somewhere, that world existed, he’d known it. He just had to find it.

Haddad wrapped an arm around his shoulders and pulled him close. Kris slid on the dirt, boneless, and fell into Haddad’s arms and his chest, face-first.

He let the smoke wash over him, tasted ash on his tongue. Memories played, an endless loop, his childhood under the shadows of the Twin Towers and the morning they came tumbling down. The fire crackled, flames sparking, snapping.

All he could hear were screams.

In the morning, Fazl, who stayed in the village with Ghasi and his family, walked over to the compound as the rest of the team was waking up. Groaning and huddling around the fire, everyone shared pots of hot water for their instant coffee and waited, sullen and tired, for Ghasi’s staff to cook breakfast.

“General Khan will be here to see you at noon.”

They moved into high gear after that. George pulled Kris into his and Ryan’s room, where they had stashed George’s duffel of cash. Together, they counted out $1 million.

“We’ll give this to him to show him we’re not fucking around. We’re here to do business.”

“George, Afghans are very proud people. They won’t just take money from your hands.”

“A million dollars? Yeah, he’ll take it.”

Kris kept his mouth shut.

Ghasi’s staff started preparing lunch immediately after the breakfast of fresh-baked bread and eggs from the chickens that roamed the village and the hillside wherever they wished. Young boys ran everywhere in the morning, collecting eggs from nests hidden in ditches and under scrub brushes and bringing them to Ghasi for an apple or a tomato. Just before noon, Ghasi spread out a large blanket on the dirt in the courtyard and scattered flat, faded cushions along the edges. A breeze flitted through the village, cutting and cold. Most of the team hovered around the fire, still blazing in the courtyard. Phillip and Jim stayed up in the nerve center, trying to crack the Taliban’s radio net.

A cloud of gray dust moving up the valley’s single pocked road signaled the General’s arrival. Kris stood with George and Ryan, the official political delegation from the CIA. Technically, Ryan shouldn’t have been there, but he slid up on the other side of George, and Kris didn’t have the energy to fight.

Haddad hovered behind the group, sitting on the steps leading to their headquarters building in front of an open patio door. He watched Kris, his face blank.

General Khan brought a security detachment of Shura Nazar soldiers, about twenty men. They clambered out of the bullet-riddled trucks in the convoy and positioned themselves around the General’s Russian-made jeep. Palmer and his men stiffened, their hands reaching for the weapons strapped to their thighs.

Khan gazed at the compound. He held both hands cupped to the sky over his head, his eyes closed, before striding across the dirt and passing through the front archway of the stables.

He was shorter than nearly everyone on their team, but burly. Thick black hair spilled down his shoulders, beneath the flat-toppedpakul, the woolen cap all Afghan men wore. He had a large, wiry beard, like a pirate from the days of old, and wore a Russian-made camouflage uniform. He stared at everyone, eyeballing them each for a long moment.

When his gaze landed on Kris, he broke into a wide smile.

“You must beGul Bahar.” He chuckled. “I see why the name stuck.” He spoke in Dari. Fazl, Khan’s translator, hung by his shoulder. “If you wore a turban, you’d be a beautiful Afghan boy.”

George coughed, glancing sidelong at Kris. He knew just enough Farsi, the Iranian version of Dari, to parse out what Khan had said.

Kris smiled. “As-salaam-alaikum, General Khan.” He pulled off his gloves and held out his hand, delicately. “Chutoor haste?”

Khan took his hand, placing his own free hand over his heart. “Wa alaikum as-salaam,tashakor fazle khoda ast.”Thanks to God, I am good.

Kris pressed his hand over his heart with a smile, then cupped Khan’s hands in both of his.

“It has been some time since I was here,” Khan continued in Dari. He looked over Kris and George’s heads, to their headquarters. “This was where I last saw General Massoud. We dined together, in his house.” He pointed to the building they now lived in.

“General Khan… We thank you for your honor. To stay in the General’s home.” Kris smiled, his breath shaky. “You honor us too much.”

General Khan’s eyes narrowed. One corner of his mouth curled up, an almost smile. “We will see if the honor is worth it.”

On the other side of George, Ryan cleared his throat. He didn’t speak a lick of Dari. He had no idea what was going on. His impatience was showing.