Page 31 of Whisper

But that was just one more thing to bury.

Sixteen hours, they’d been in Afghanistan. He’d kept his mind occupied from the moment they’d entered Afghan airspace. Running through the mission, over and over. What would happen when they landed, who would take the lead. Palmer’s orders, his mission plan. Their contingencies. Their contingencies’ contingencies.

Kris.

Palmer had told them all, before the CIA showed up, that they would have to take the lead in securing the CIA officers with whom they were partnering. They had to make sure none of them got shot, kidnapped, or executed. Who knew what the circumstances were on the ground? It was up to them to keep everyone alive, keep the mission going. So far, the situation seemed far better than their most dire predictions, back in Tashkent, had imagined.

But still, he’d kept close to Kris. Shielded him in the helo. Watched over him on the journey to the compound. Delayed and delayed, until there was only one choice left for a roommate and a sleeping room.

Kris was both the mission and a distraction, a man David was obligated to protect, to defend, and a man who called to him. He could feel his blood stirring, his body turning, waking in ways he’d forbidden, other than the briefest, most fleeting encounter.

That, and Kris, were distractions. But not just from their mission.

Afghanistan, as a land, as a people, had been mythic, larger than life. During the run-up to the mission, Palmer and the rest of the operations staff had spoken in cold, clinical terms, briefing the team on the landscape, the environment, expected hostilities. He’d been awash in preparations, reeling, like everyone had been, and consumed with a sense of purpose.

Go. Do. Act. Revenge.

Purpose had drowned the hidden shadows that lingered in his soul, slid between his bones, caressed the spaces between his ribs. Twenty-one years ago, he’d fled Libya hand in hand with his mother. Fled the sand and the sun and the Arabic, the daily rhythms of Islam. The calls to prayer, and the way the sun slanted through the morning windows, bursting the prayer rugs he and his father kept side by side to vibrant, vivacious life. There were worn spots on their prayer rugs at the knees and where their foreheads hit the rug together. His father’s prayer rug, older, more used, had a bald spot where his forehead rested, five times every day, for the length of David’s memories.

Twenty-one years and twelve days. That was how long it had been since he’d thought of Islam, thought of his father. Thought of the words of the Quran, the prayers that used to slip over his lips in time with his father’s voice.

Memories lived in shadow, buried in his bones, pushed down so deep he was a smuggler of his own existence, his own past.

Until twelve days ago.

September 11.

To be Arab, to be Muslim, after September 11, especially in America, was to be full of questions. Confusion. Horror. Rage.

To have the words of the Quran inside of him, the rhythms of Islam in his soul, so long dead and buried he’d thought they’d atrophied and atomized into a billion pieces of sand and had blown away, was a slowly opening abyss.

“We’re going to go over there, and we’re going to kill all those towel-headed motherfuckers that think they can get away with this. We are going to avenge the deaths of our countrymen. Hoorah!”

Palmer’s commander, their unit colonel, had led them all in a raging speech shortly before they’d taken off for Tashkent.“We’re going to kill every one of them. Every single one.”

Twenty-one years ago, David had left it all behind. He wasn’t a Muslim. He wasn’t an Arab. Not anymore.

The muezzin’s call to isha prayer, the nightly prayer, after the sun had set and the stars unfurled above, their first night in Afghanistan, had struck his soul like lightning. His memories were a weathervane, a lightning rod. Images flickered in the dark as he lay in their new compound, surrounded by his team and with Kris sleeping two feet away.

Images of his father, praying, the night beforeithappened. Their bodies moving as one, folding, bending, kneeling. In his mind, he wasn’t thirty-one, he was ten, suddenly, from the first note of the muezzin’s wail until sometime late in the night, when his soul was released and he floated back through space and time, back to the man he’d become.

Kris, with his fiery eyes, his flashing smile, sharp enough to cut, to hurt, was like an oasis in the Sahara.Take me from these memories, he thought in a small voice, his ten-year-old voice, whispered.I’m not Muslim. I’m not Libyan. I’m American. I’m here to do my job, serve my country. Complete my mission.

His gaze drifted back to Kris.

Twenty-one years agoandtwelve days ago—simultaneously—his world had been ripped apart. Certainty became a chasm. Truths he’d stood on for years had vanished, leaving only questions. A boy after hisafter, and an Arab after September 11. As a child, he’d nurtured a love of silence, especiallyafter. Stillness. The thought that if he didn’t move, didn’t change, nothing would happen. Nothing would move on from that moment. As a man, he charged ahead. The only way through was forward. The way back was lost, gone forever. Answers, if there were any, belonged to someone else.

But now a man had walked into his life, a slender young man, barbed and pointed and fighting tooth and nail. In Kris’s life, there were no questions. How could there be, when he was so vividly alive? A man like Kris, who lived life out loud but who had joined the CIA to work in secrets and silence, and who concealed nothing of himself except everything that mattered. Whowashe?

Why did David want to crawl to him? Stay by his side until his heart stopped beating?

Like a wave trying to curl up the sandy shore, beating against the earth ceaselessly, always trying again, parts of David reached for Kris.

Foolish,his mind whispered.So foolish.

But he had questions. So many questions.

And maybe Kris had answers.