Page 90 of Whisper

Shouts rose outside the cell, boots running through the bunker. He heard Ryan’s voice, and then David’s voice. He screamed, “In here, David!”

David flew into the cell, Ryan and Naveen on his heels. Both Naveen and David came up short, their heads swiveling from left to right. The last time they’d seen Zahawi had been with Kris, when Zahawi was resting, healing in his hospital bed with a view of the jungle, listening to monkey calls. But David had been banned from interrogations and Naveen had been disinvited, pending CIA review, Dennis had said.

Now, Zahawi was naked, covered in his own urine, stinking of the shit from his confinement in the coffin box earlier, and not breathing. Water and urine and blood soaked the dirt floor of the cell, and Zahawi.

Naveen froze at the door.

“Hold his head,” David growled at Ryan. He kneeled across from Kris taking Zahawi in, from head to toe. Shock, sheer disbelief, bled from him. Kris had never seen him so raw, so open. Not ever.

“Halt compressions,” David choked out. He tilted Zahawi’s head back and dropped his chin. Leaned forward and closed his mouth over Zahawi’s. Pinched his nose. Breathed into Zahawi, twice.

“Resume compressions.”

Kris kept going, counting under his breath. Ryan stared at Zahawi’s wet hair as he held his head, stared at the way his ribs puffed out, his body shook, limp and unresponsive. Had they killed him? Had the CIA killed their first detainee?

Sputtering, Zahawi coughed, hacking up water mixed with vomit, bits of rice and beans and bile falling from his lips and across his face. He gasped, struggling to inhale, to exhale, and coughed up more water. David rolled him on his side, facing Kris.

Zahawi’s eyes were glazed, unfocused, but slowly, they tracked up Kris’s hands, up his arms, until Zahawi’s gaze landed on Kris’s face. He started to shake, to tremble, and he curled toward Kris, wrapping himself up into a ball as close as he could get to Kris’s knee.

Kris leaned his forehead against the metal door of his and David’s hut. Rainwater soaked his skin, spilled down his hair, his face. He closed his eyes. What would he find on the other side of the door?

After Zahawi had started breathing again, time had seemed to snap forward, every moment Kris had spent frozen in horror watching suddenly zipping ahead, fast-forwarding reality. David had started shouting, hollering at the top of his lungs, shouting at Paul, at Dennis, at everyone in the room. Ryan had manhandled David out of the cell before David could get his hands on Paul and rip him in half. David had bellowed, calling Paul a fucking murderer, a torturer, a disgusting human being.

Kris had helped Zahawi up, cleaned him, dried him off, and got him a blanket and his clothes. Zahawi slumped against the wall, huddled in his blanket, and tried to cling to Kris.

Naveen had disappeared. Dan and Ryan huddled off to one side, talking amongst themselves softly. Paul and Dennis locked themselves in the command center.

Now, there was no sense prolonging the inevitable. If David wanted to throw Paul in jail, what must he think of Kris, who had stood by and watched it happen, frozen, unable to stop the torture that went too far? Taking a breath, Kris pushed open the door.

David sat on the floor, leaning against their bed, his head in both hands. His legs were spread before him, as if he’d collapsed, fallen to the ground when they gave out. He didn’t look up.

“David,” Kris whispered. “I—”

David’s red-rimmed eyes lifted, found Kris’s. Dried tear tracks stained his rage-ruby cheeks, twisted over his clenched jaw. The air burst from Kris’s lungs, punched out by the depth of anguish in David’s gaze, the bottomless abyss of agony he saw in the black of David’s eyes.

He didn’t know what to say. What to do. He stood immobile, stunned, as frozen as he’d been before, watching Paul slowly kill Zahawi.

“When I was a kid,” David said slowly. His words ground out of him, halting, as if physically ripped from the center of his soul, or deeper, from a place where he’d buried them forever. He stopped, and started again. “When I was a kid… in Libya…”

Kris felt like he was on the edge of the abyss inside of David, about to tip forward and fall into something he wasn’t ready for. He wasn’t ready for this, wasn’t ready for the secrets David kept buried.

“Qaddafi’s men arrested my father. They said his faith was turning him against Qaddafi. Against the state. Because he believed in Allah too strongly.”

The more David spoke, the more his voice seemed to fall from his body, to come from somewhere else. As if he wasn’t speaking any longer, but something else was. Something that lived inside him, and he’d tried to bury. To forget.

“My father was taken. To Qaddafi’s secret prison.” David shuddered, his whole body spasming, like Zahawi’s had spasmed. Kris felt rain falling on his skin, felt it splash on his face. No, not rain. Tears.

“My father…was tortured…” David tried to breathe. His mouth was open, and Kris saw his throat work, saw him gape like a fish out of water. “He was tortured, and then executed,” he whispered. “We fled.” He gasped, as if he’d been given permission to breathe, as if he was coming up from being held underwater. As if he was taking his first breath after drowning.

Finally, Kris moved, breaking free from the force that held him immobile. He couldn’t save Zahawi, not in time, but he’d go to David. He wouldn’t leave him to drown in the memories, the horror, the torrents of hate and fear and water that flooded them all, united them. He crouched beside David, curled into him. Wrapped his arms and legs around David, as close as he could get. David folded into him, like a child would, like a ten-year-old boy would in his father’s lap.

“I try never to think about what happened to him,” David whispered. Tears poured from his eyes, landed on Kris’s skin. He could drown in David’s tears. “If I imagine it, if I think about what he went through—”

“Don’t. Don’t do that to yourself.”

“We tortured him. I don’t even fucking like him. Zahawi. He ruined his Islam, made his faith ugly. He destroyed the best of what he had. A life. A family. Afather.”

Kris tried to swallow. He couldn’t, not past the shame, the bile.