Page 58 of Whisper

They spent the first night setting up operations again. Jim and Phillip spent hours with the generator and the communications equipment. Ryan seemed to be in a thousand places at once, hauling gear, setting up workstations, poring over maps of the country and the capital. George had walked in with the satellite phone glued to his skull, given Kris a one-armed bear hug, and then spent the next six hours talking to everyone from Langley, to CENTCOM, to CIA station in Islamabad, and the White House.

Jim, Phillip, and George had seemed happy to see Kris, shaking his hand and smiling. Ryan studiously avoided him, even avoided looking at him. His eyes slid away whenever Kris neared.

By morning, after a solid night of work, the station was up and running. George called a break and gathered everyone—CIA officers and Special Forces teammates—together for breakfast.

Thirty people squeezed in, scooping fried eggs and strips of goat, yogurt, flatbreads, and apples onto their plates, and grabbing instant coffee. For the first time, since nine in the morning on September 11, everyone seemed content, and confident in their work, their mission. Laughter broke over the group, jokes flying back and forth. Smiles stretched everyone’s faces.

David’s smile, the way it crinkled his eyes, carved furrows into his face, made Kris’s bones weak. Out of everyone in the room, David burned the brightest, laughed the loudest, transfixed Kris in ways he couldn’t describe. He almost couldn’t breathe, watching David. The thin air of Kabul seemed too weak, too light, to contain all that David was. He was exhausted—they all were, worn through from six weeks of war—but there David was, hamming it up with his team.

Kris fled before breakfast was through. He couldn’t take it, couldn’t take David’s effect on his heart.

George found him a few hours later. “We’re going to head over to the US Embassy. Want to come?”

George, Kris, Jim, and Phillip hopped into one of the trucks they’d driven from Bagram. Ryan drove, and they wound their way through Kabul’s bustling streets to the boarded-up embassy.

The embassy had been locked up for fifteen years, closed and abandoned after the bloody civil war started tearing Afghanistan to shreds following Soviet withdrawal. Ryan cut the chains off the front door and broke through with an axe.

The seal of the United States lay under a thick carpet of dust, welcoming them into the gloom. Pictures of President Reagan and Vice President George Bush hung on the walls, and rotary telephones still sat on desks. Broken picture frames and glass covered the marble floors.

Kris stooped to pick up one photo, half buried in dirt and the dust of decay. President Jimmy Carter watched over a casket, his head bowed.

“Ambassador Dubs’s funeral.” George spoke over Kris’s shoulder. “He was murdered in Kabul. Kidnapped under suspicious circumstances, supposedly by terrorists. The Soviets forced their Afghan puppet government into a rescue mission, despite the US wanting to negotiate. Dubs was executed when the rescuers stormed their hideout. His death, and his kidnapping, was never fully explained. But his murder poisoned our relations with Afghanistan for decades. We withdrew completely.” George sighed. “He was murdered in February of ’79. By that autumn, the communist government of Afghanistan was in shambles, the country was in open revolt. In December, the Soviets invaded Kabul to prop up their communist allies. We, naturally, wanted to fight communism and avenge the death of our ambassador, and provided covert aid to the enemies of communism: the Muslim fundamentalists.”

“Bin Laden came to Afghanistan in 1980.” Kris felt his stomach turn, felt it knot. “All this—” He nodded to the photo, the time capsule of the embassy, perfectly preserving 1979. “—was part of why he set off down this path. He was so enraged by the Soviet invasion of Muslim lands, and the signing of the Egypt-Israel peace treaty. He was furious, lashing out. He wanted to fight the enemies of Islam, and we helped him. And then we dropped Bin Laden once the Soviets pulled out. And we became the enemies. It’s all a vicious cycle, isn’t it?”

“‘What a tangled web we weave…’” George smiled sadly. “But we’re not the arbiters of the world, Kris. We’re just here to gather intelligence. Our job is to see, to listen, and to know. It’s not up to us to shape the world.”

“But here we are, fighting a war.” Kris brushed the dust off Dubs’s funeral photo. He set it on the edge of the ambassador’s desk, propped up against the rotary telephone and next to an old cigarette ashtray. “And everything we’ve done here? What you just told me? We absolutely shape the world. We’ve made all of this, everything, happen.”

“Is that a bad thing? Would the world be better if it were more American?”

He thought of Khan by firelight, asking for American help yet convinced it would all end in betrayal, the same end to the same song replayed a thousand times in the Arab world. And of the Shomali, the dusty, blood-soaked drive to the capital. Corpses blown apart, mangled body parts strewn across cratered roads. The women whose hands had shaken under their burqas, walking outside unaccompanied for the first time. The thousands who had been murdered by the Taliban, and the village of bones he and David had found. The shape of a child’s rib bone in David’s palm.

“War is hell, George. No matter what.”

“Some things are worth fighting for.”

“That’s what everyone says.”

Footsteps echoed on the marble, drawing close. “War makes men.” Ryan, his hands propped on his hips, glared at Kris. “It defines a man. He’s at his most connected with himself. And of course this is worth fighting. There’s nothing more just and right than exterminating these murderers. They deserve everything that they get. And more.”

“Ryan, did you cut your way into the old CIA station?” George ignored Ryan’s outburst. The old CIA station was housed in the basement of the embassy, and it had been abandoned at the same time as the withdrawal.

“It’s empty. Some old cash in the safe, but they burned everything before pulling out.”

“Good. Then there’s nothing for us here. State will take over the embassy when they arrive.”

“We’re suddenly the most popular people on the planet.” George smiled ruefully at the team, back at their new station. “Everyone is coming to visit. CENTCOM is sending a huge deployment of humanitarian aid. We’re keeping the lead in the Bin Laden hunt. Islamabad station says their sources claim they have a credible lead on Bin Laden. We need to see if it pans out. If they’re right, we have to strike.

“Ryan, I want you and Jim to head east. You can’t go alone, though. East is al-Qaeda country. This morning, a group of armed fighters slaughtered a village where the men had decided to shave their Taliban-mandated beards. We may feel safe in Kabul now, but you step one toe to the east, and you’re in a world of hurt without the right kind of support.”

He turned to Kris. “What do you know about the eastern provinces? Are there any warlords affiliated with Khan that we can turn to? Whose loyalty we can buy?”

Kris blew out a long breath. “I’ll ask Khan for an introduction. You’re deep intoPashtunwaliin those regions, though. No matter how much you pay, you’re going to run smack into their tribal code. If Bin Laden is hiding in the tribal areas, he’s going to rely onPashtunwalito shield him, especially from infidels such as us.”

“We have to try. See what you can do.”

Kris nodded.