Page 46 of Whisper

Silence.

Afghanistan was an unnaturally quiet place. The snowcapped mountains, the icy peaks, all seemed to encase the valley in a stillness, a separation from the real world. Without the static of the phone, without the rustle and bustle of the rest of the team working in the nerve center, the quiet of Afghanistan seemed to seep into the room, fill up the corners, swim down their throats until Kris was drowning in thick, weighted silence. He could hear his own breath, his own heart beating.

“I owe you an apology,” George finally said. His voice was low, almost grinding in his throat. He flicked a pen against his palm, over and over. “You have done exceptional work here, Kris.”

“You’re not sending me back to Langley.”

“No.” George grimaced. “I want to. But I want to send you back for the wrong reasons.”

Kris waited.

“My first team lead was on counterterrorism operations in Greece. When it was bad. Greece was a nexus for all flavors of terrorism, from the rising Islamic terror to right-wing fascist neo-Nazis to extreme left anarchists. It was a violent, unstable place. And I lost someone. Someone young, and new, and brilliant. We all thought we had a handle on the risks. We all thought we knew how bad it was. But… we lost her. A neo-Nazi countersurveillance operation discovered she was working for the CIA. They lured her into a trap, and—” The pen kept slapping his palm, faster. “I promised myself,” he said carefully. “That I would never, ever sit in an officer’s house and tell their family that one of my people had been killed. On my watch. It is… the worst feeling anyone can ever feel. That you let someone else down like that.”

Something grabbed Kris’s heart and squeezed, kept squeezing. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. The echoing roar of an airplane filled his soul, the too-low whine of a jet engine accelerating over Manhattan.

George finally met Kris’s stare. “You are a good officer, Kris. Averygood officer.”

Kris said nothing.

“You are. Which is why you and Sergeant Haddad are headed to the northern front. I radioed Khan this evening, told him we wanted to expand operations, and that you would be there to map out the lines. He was overjoyed. You both leave tomorrow. Get it done and come back safely.” George nodded and turned away, done with the conversation. He tossed his pen onto their makeshift work table, into the clutter of papers and floppy disks and old coffee gone cold. “Keep up the good work.”

Kris escaped to the roof to watch the stars wink over the Panjshir, appear in a flood of scattered paint across the arc of the sky. To the south, faint echoes of artillery sounded, like the roar of a subway rumbling beneath the Upper East Side after midnight.

He finally headed down late, after the rest of the team had turned in. Days were long, frigid, and rough. Everyone went to bed early. He hoped David was already sleeping.

No such luck. David was awake, propped against the cold cinder block walls of their tiny room, reading by the light of his headlamp. He looked up when Kris slipped around their dingy curtain, blinding Kris.

“Sorry.” David set his headlamp on the floor. The light cast long shadows up the walls, claws that curled over and reached for Kris, trying to drag him down, tear him apart. “Everything okay?”

“I’m not leaving. But I guess you already knew that.”

David nodded.

“Why? Why did you say anything?”

David took his time answering, closing his book and tucking it back into his pack. Kris watched him, searching for something, anything. An opening, an answer.

“Never let anyone else define your life, Kris. Never let anyone else define who you are. They will always get it wrong. Never settle for that.”

Kris shook his head. He’d learned to give up, long ago. Give in. Sniffing, he grabbed another jacket, tried to wrap up in it.

David watched him. “We’re going to the northern front tomorrow. It’s going to be cold.”

“It already is cold.” Kris had slipped on another sweater earlier and was bundled in his thick jacket. He’d pulled on his gloves, wool and leather, and wrapped one of the black-and-white scarves Khan had gifted to him at the front around his neck and head.

“You can sleep next to me. If you want.” There was an empty space beside David, his gear shoved away, cleared out to the other side of their room. “For warmth.”

Kris had seen porn movies that started this way, probably a dozen. If he hadn’t been so exhausted, so bone-weary, his heart so shredded, he might have mustered a flirtation in response to the invite. Or at least a joke. Something to blunt the choking tension, the cloying hesitation, the stink of anxiety that permeated their room.

But he was too tired.

He dragged his mat and sleeping bag next to David’s and crawled inside, bundled in all of his clothes. David waited, hovering, propped up on his elbow as Kris settled in. As his head hit the bundled sweater he used for a pillow, Kris felt David settle in behind him, felt his body through his sleeping bag when he curled into Kris’s back.

As he fell asleep, the weight of David’s arm settled over his waist.

He was choking on smoke and bone dust, jet fuel and atomized concrete. A billion pieces of burned paper falling on him, smothering him. Massoud’s body, broken and bloody and bombed, the leader of a parade of ghosts led by Mohamed Atta, with his box cutter and his black flag and his empty, evil eyes.

This time, George was there, watching it all, along with Clint Williams.We thought you were good, they said, though their lips didn’t move.We thought you were the good guy.