Page 79 of Whisper

“Thank you, George.”

Chapter 14

CIA Black Site

Detention Site Green

Thailand

April 2002

Rain poured from the sky, soaking the detention facility. Steam rose from the concrete pad, the facility’s attempt at an outdoor pavilion. Heat smothered them, like a sauna Kris couldn’t escape.

Zahawi slept fitfully in his makeshift medical suite, hooked to machines and monitors, bandaged like a mummy halfway through his mummification.

Kris’s shot had been perfect. He’d shattered coins in Zahawi’s pocket, sending shrapnel throughout his hip and stomach. The bullet had also torn apart bone, and shards were lodged in the organs of his pelvis, along with fractured coins and bullet fragments. The Johns Hopkins surgeon had spent thirteen hours in surgery with the Pakistani doctors. Zahawi had bled out more than twice the blood he’d been given before he was finally stabilized.

Kris had stayed with him the entire time. He’d watched the surgeons, had followed Zahawi into the recovery ward. Sat by his side, his hand wrapped around Zahawi’s wrist when he fell asleep.

David had gone back to Islamabad to meet with George and returned with both their bags packed, nearly all of their possessions, and a crate of intelligence. Dozens of Zahawi’s journals had been picked up in the arrest. Kris pored through them as he watched Zahawi sleep.

The first time Zahawi woke, in Pakistan, he’d opened his eyes and saw Kris staring down at him. His gaze had wandered from Kris’s face, down past his sweat-stained undershirt from the raid to his black combat fatigues.

Kris saw the moment recognition had settled into Zahawi that the United Stateshadhim. That Kris was his enemy. His heart rate had spiked, climbing from one hundred beats per minute to one-fifty to one-eighty, to over two-hundred. He’d pushed back in his hospital bed, trying to escape, gasping, trying to scream. Stitches had torn, and blood had poured from his side. Nurses had rushed in, screaming at Kris to back off, to get out of the room.

He’d stayed, holding Zahawi’s glare until Zahawi passed out from shock.

The next time he’d awoken, he’d stared at Kris for a long moment, not speaking. Kris spoke first, leaning in and saying, in Arabic, “Abu Zahawi. I know who you are. And you know who I am. We found you and we’ve captured you. You were wounded when we arrested you. But we’re taking care of you.” Kris had held Zahawi’s stare. “I will be right here, the whole time. I won’t ever leave your side.”

Zahawi had answered in English. “Don’t desecrate God’s language with your infidel tongue.”

“Rest. You need your strength.”

“Please… Let me die.”

“No. I want to know you, Abu Zahawi. We have so much to talk about.”

“I’llnevertalk with you.”

Zahawi had passed out again shortly after, weak and barely able to stay awake. He’d waxed and waned in and out of delirium, sometimes reaching for Kris and clasping his hands, other times praying in Arabic as he sobbed. Kris fed him sips of water and read his diary, seized after the arrest, and held his hand when Zahawi flailed, reaching out for someone nearby.

David camped on a cot at the foot of Zahawi’s bed, out of sight. When Zahawi slept, David and Kris passed his diaries back and forth, sharing thoughts and ideas. David had a perspective Kris couldn’t have, and needed: an Arab view from an Arab mind, and an Arab experience of Zahawi’s childhood, his years growing up as a Palestinian refugee and part of the diaspora in Saudi Arabia.

“Funny, isn’t it. He and I are the same age. Thirty-one. His family life was better than mine. But here I am. And there he is.”

“A better family life?” Zahawi’s father had been a teacher in Saudi Arabia, a Palestinian expat, and his mother had taken care of Zahawi and his brothers. He’d had a middle-class upbringing, far better than many other Palestinian refugees.

David didn’t answer.

David spent long hours in the dead of night watching Zahawi. Once, Kris woke and saw him staring at Zahawi, hunched in a bedside chair, contemplating the man as if he wanted to climb into Zahawi’s skin, possess his mind, his eyes, and understand him like he could breathe in his soul and devour his memories.

When Zahawi finally wasn’t in danger of shattering into a million pieces, he was brought to the base’s airfield and loaded onto a private jet. He was hooded and shackled to his gurney, sedated for the flight.

He woke up in Thailand, in the steamy heat of the jungle and in the remote clutches of the black site.

He was the CIA’s detainee number one.

Everyonein DC wanted in on Zahawi’s interrogation, it seemed. When Kris, David, and Zahawi arrived, the facility was already crawling with suits from DC. CIA analysts, paramilitary officers, and a host of brand-new interrogators, fresh from a three-week training course. Even the FBI was there, in a joint-agency information sharing capacity, they said. Kris recognized one of the FBI agents.