Chapter 20
July 2006
A different sun and a different sand filled their days.
David took Kris to Hawaii, where they rented a beach house and spent their days lying in the waves, or lying in bed. Lying in each other’s arms, never separating.
David drank Kris in like he was nectar from God, manna from heaven. Kris felt their breaths sync, felt their hearts beat as one when they lay beneath the stars, when they watched the heavens unfold, endless stretches of eternity and radiance.
A thousand million stars in the sky would not be enough to count the ways I love you. Or grains of sand on the beach, even if you split every grain in half.
They kept the TV off and never looked at a newspaper. Didn’t read email or download cables to check on. Nothing existed, for two perfect weeks, except for them and their love. If there was a heaven, each moment could have been an eternity spent in perfection. Lying on the beach, facing each other, David laced his hand through Kris’s.
He didn’t have to say anything. Kris already knew.
Kris’s cell phone rang on the thirteenth day.
“Mr. Caldera.” Director Edwards called him, personally. “You did a hell of a job in Iraq. One hell of a job. I have to say, I’m incredibly impressed with your analytical expertise, and your ability to target and neutralize two of our most wanted targets in the War on Terror. You’re the real deal, Mr. Caldera. The president wanted me to pass along his personal thanks to you, and to tell you he’s incredibly impressed. And proud. Very proud.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“I have to say… I’m also impressed by the moral stance you took early on with the detainee program. We’re cleaning that program up now. Mistakes were made, but they won’t be again. Not on my watch.”
He didn’t know what to say.
Director Edwards sighed. Kris heard leather creak over the line, like Edwards was in his office, sitting back at his desk. “Kris, the reason I’m calling is that I want to talk to you about your future. I realize that you may have a lot of opportunities coming your way soon. But I want you to stay. And, more than that, I want you back on the hunt for Bin Laden. In Afghanistan. Your country needs you, Mr. Caldera. The world needs you. What do you say?”
Never, in the history of ever, in his whole life, had he imagined the director of the CIA would tell him he was impressive. That he was amazing. A hero, even.
That the president thought he was something special.
That was a world that didn’t exist for him, he’d thought. Sissy gays and men with too much attitude didn’t get noticed like that. They got noticed for their clothes or their voice or the way that straight people always made a spectacle out of their existence. They got noticed for being bothersome, or outside the norm.
He cried when he hung up, chest-wracking sobs as he buried his face in David’s hip. For a moment, he wanted to call his papi, scream in blistering Spanish at him, throw the president’s praise in his face. I did become something, you son of a bitch. Other people see me. Why could you never?
The impulse faded as soon as it had sparked. He’d given up on his papi when he was sixteen. Instead of a father’s approval, he sought the approval of dozens of lovers, mixed with college professors and the thrill of proving people wrong. How that led to the CIA, and then to the president being proud of him…
Dan’s voice came back to him, replaying a night years and years before in Pakistan, drinking cheap white wine on the roof. You blew the door open, Kris. You blew the door for all us gays open.
Where was Dan now? He’d lost track of everyone and everything while he and David were mired in Iraq. For two years, it had been as if nothing else existed outside Iraq’s borders, that the rest of the world was some far-off place, totally removed from the horrors of the day to day.
“What are you going to do?” David stroked his back, broad, rough palms sliding over his smooth skin. “Do you want to stay?”
I have to stay, he’d said once to David, in an abandoned embassy in a ravaged country on the other side of the world. They’d been younger, and the war had only just begun. I have to stay and make sure this never happens again. He’d been so idealistic, so certain that he was where all the failures had originated, that he’d been the weakest link in the chain of American national security.
After five years and two wars, and horrors he’d never imagined could be real, was any of that true?
He’d still been a child when he watched those planes slam into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. A college graduate and a junior CIA officer, but still a child where it counted. His world would forever be shaped by that morning, ripples translating in both directions, forward and backward in his life. Was there a life he could live, somewhere, that wasn’t impacted, saturated, with the War on Terror? With September 11 and the day’s aftershocks? Would he ever be able to live with himself if he walked away, knowing what the world was capable of?
The only thing as monumental to his life as September 11 was David.
“What do you want?” he whispered.
“To stay with you. Forever. Wherever that is.” David kissed the back of his hand. “This is your career. You’re admired. Respected. I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth to support that. And you.”
Shit, he was going to cry again. “David—”
David swallowed. Turned fifty shades of magenta, every hue of flushed unease. “There’s just— There is something that I do want.”
“What? Anything.” Whatever David wanted, needed, he’d give him. “Is there something I’m not doing for you? Something I need to change?”
“No, no.” David kissed the back of his hand again, lips lingering on Kris’s skin.
He dropped to his knees, both of them. Cradled Kris’s hand in his palms. “I want to marry you,” David whispered. “I want you to pick me. I want you to keep me, forever.”
Kris’s jaw dropped. He was definitely going to fucking cry again. His heart was pounding, tears were erupting, and something was bursting in the center of his chest. “David—”
“The Quran says all souls were created in pairs. One soul, one life, that was meant for two people. In this world, we’re supposed to find the other half of our souls and join together with them. Rejoin, and find the house of peace that we once knew before time.” David moved closer. “I feel that with you. I always have. From the moment we met, it’s been like I’ve known you for forever. Like everything in me is supposed to belong to everything in you.”
Tears poured down Kris’s face. He couldn’t breathe. “David…”
“I was incomplete without you. I never want to be that way again. I want us to be together for all eternity.” David kissed Kris’s hands, the backs, his fingers, and turned his hands over. Kissed his palms, the very center of each. “Will you allow me to marry you? Will you let our souls join together? Forever?”
He pitched forward, falling into David’s arms as he nodded, sobbed, gasped, tried to speak, all at the same time. “Yes, yes—” He could only repeat the word between hiccupping sobs as he clung to David, as he buried his face in David’s neck, his shoulders. Kris poured into him, folded into his arms, into his hold.
David carried him to their bed and stripped Kris’s bathing suit, tears in his eyes as he kissed his way up Kris’s body. He took his time, savoring Kris like they were marrying that moment, like Kris’s yes was all it took for them to be wed, their souls joined together. He made love to him, joining their bodies as if making love were a prayer, an act of devotion to Kris’s soul. A promise for all time in the curve of skin on skin, the thrust and hold, palms sliding up thighs and ribs, and in their curled toes.
Kris was a bonfire, a firework, dynamite that kept erupting, a nuclear warhead that kept expanding along every one of his nerves. There was no end to the moment, to the lightning, to the blaze. And he didn’t want it to ever end.
Late the next day, when Kris finally raised the white flags, completely spent and physically unable to endure another moment of David’s lovemaking, they discussed how to make it all work. How to turn the spiritual into the legal in the world of men.
“I’ve been researching.” David flushed as he ate slices of mango. “I think we should go to Canada. We can get a license and get married right away. No residency requirement, no verification. We can just be married.”
Kris sipped his mimosa, his third. The world was soft on the edges, the roar of the ocean an ever-present hum in his veins. “Let’s do it. Let’s do it right now. I don’t want to wait.”
“Really? You’re sure? About this, and us?”
“It’s been five years. I’ve been sure for a long time.”
“I can arrange everything.” David had a small smile, a look of expectant wonder on his face. “I’ll see how fast we can actually get it done.”
Kris beamed. “I will take care of the clothes. I’m only marrying once. So we’re going to look phenomenal.” He savored his mimosa, visions of white suits with black satin finishes, black bow ties and magenta cummerbunds flitting through his mind. “Phenomenal,” he repeated.
David smiled. Their laptop had been abandoned on the kitchen table, but he spun it toward them and turned it on, plugged it into the ethernet cable. “I also want to buy you a house.”
That stopped Kris’s fantasies. “What?” They still, supposedly, lived in Kris’s tiny studio, even though they hadn’t been there in over a year. The rent had been auto paid. Hopefully everything was still there.
“I made way over three hundred thousand while we were in Iraq. And I have savings from before, when I was in the Army. I want to buy you, us, a home. A palace, just for us.”
“A palace?”
“Figuratively speaking.” David grinned. “I want us to have everything. I want to give you everything you’ve ever wanted.”
You already have.” Happiness, security. A man who loved him, and who he loved in return. Stability. Confidence. Empowerment. “I never had a house. I grew up in Manhattan. We had a two-bedroom block, stacked on top of other blocks. Low income housing.”
“I loved the house I grew up in in Libya. In Benghazi. There was so much light. You could see the ocean from the roof, and the beach. The sand. When I came to America, I fell in love with trees.” He chuckled. “Forests. I always loved field exercises when we were buried in the woods. Everyone thought I was insane.”
“What kind of house do you want now?”
“Something quiet. Maybe a bit farther from Langley. Something with land, and trees. Privacy. But most of all, peaceful. Someplace you and I can relax.”
“That sounds perfect.” He slipped around the table and perched on David’s lap. He took another sip of his mimosa. “Okay. I accept your wedding gift.”
David laughed. One hand landed on Kris’s briefs-covered ass. “This is not how you take a break.”
Kris shrugged. One eyebrow arched.
David’s laptop chimed. The website he’d clicked finally loaded. An advertisement and a service for gay couples eloping to Canada scrawled across the top. “Elope in Canada for US$200! Call today! Next Day Services Available!”
Their eyes met.
“Want to go to the airport?”
On the way to the airport, Kris called Director Edwards back. He was owed two full months of vacation after working nonstop in Iraq, hunting Saqqaf, and he was going to take every single day of it. He told the director he accepted the assignment in Afghanistan and that he’d report back in six weeks.
They flew to Toronto on a red-eye and checked into a hotel downtown. Kris dragged David from store to store, looking for the perfect pair of suits. David picked out a pair of fitted smoking jackets, and he looked so perfect in the dark brocade that Kris gave up the hunt and bought two, along with matching dark slacks, French cuff shirts, and bow ties.
David disappeared to buy rings while Kris window-shopped, promising to be back to meet Kris at an art gallery for the evening.
The elopement agency had a small assortment of locations where they could get married. They chose Gibraltar Point, a stretch of sandy beach near a park, for the next day.
They couldn’t stop giggling the next morning. From making love with huge smiles to getting dressed in their pants and shirts, to tying their bow ties, they kept devolving into smiles and handholds, nervous and delighted laughs that turned into tiny and lingering kisses. They held hands in the taxi the whole drive to Gibraltar Point, stealing looks until they just stared into each other’s eyes. Kris could see the outline of a ring box in David’s pants.
A tall man, slender and wiry and dressed in a blue suit, met them. He was geeky and affable, and kept grinning at the two of them, obviously amused by their lovesick adoration of each other.
And then they stepped to the edge of the sand. Waves lapped at the shore. Seagulls cried overhead. Summer sun warmed the early afternoon, turned the sand golden, the sky a perfect azure.
David took Kris’s hands. Kris’s breath shuddered.
Kris hadn’t known what David was going to arrange. He half expected an Islamic ceremony, if there were any Islamic imams who would have wed them, two men, and one not a Muslim.
Though, was David a Muslim? What did he consider himself? David’s pain was too raw, too poignant, to wade into those waters. Kris would be his lighthouse out of those memories, out of the anguish, his life preserver back to safer shores.
The officiant kept the ceremony short and simple, a standard exhortation on the beauty of marriage and then the exchange of vows, first David and then Kris promising to have and to hold, to love and to cherish, from that day ever forward. David slipped a gold ring, with a channel of diamonds in the center, onto Kris’s finger. Kris did the same for David, biting his lip as he beamed.
Kris’s breath kept coming faster, his smile kept getting wider. He thought he’d faint, or launch into space. He held David’s hand in both of his own.
“Before we conclude,” the officiant smiled at Kris. “I understand your groom has something he’d like to recite?”
Kris paled. David chuckled. “I do, yes. It’s a poem of Rumi’s.” He cleared his throat and looked deep into Kris’s gaze.
“Oh Beloved,
take me.
Liberate my soul.
Fill me with your love and
release me from the two worlds.
If I set my heart on anything but you
let fire burn me from inside.
Oh Beloved,
take away what I want.
Take away what I do.
Take away what I need.
Take away everything
that takes me from you.”
The officiant wilted. Kris, frozen, tried to come up with something, anything to say that could come near David’s love, near his intensity. He scraped his brain, but David’s vows kept repeating on an infinite loop, his love drowning everything else out.
Kris grabbed him and pulled them together, capturing David’s lips, kissing him with everything he had, every part of his being. David wrapped him up, held him close, and somewhere, they both heard the officiant exclaim, “I pronounce you married! Congratulations!”
There were claps from passersby who had stopped to watch, three walkers and a pair of old ladies. David buried his face in Kris’s neck as Kris waved, thanking them. The officiant shook their hands and snapped a few pictures, part of the package, and promised he’d email them as soon as he could.
“Husband,” Kris said, squeezing David’s hand.
“Husband,” David repeated. “Beloved.”
After two more days in Toronto, they flew back to DC. David had already started looking online at houses to buy, and he had a long list of homes ready to check out with a realtor. Buying a house seemed all the better after they returned to their cramped studio, which, shut in for a year without air or light, was covered in dust and musty with disuse.
On the third day, they found their home. Older, with a North Eastern style, it sat on a couple of acres within a dense woodland outside of Leesburg, Virginia. It was pure Americana, the kind of home from sitcoms and television shows. The backyard had a porch and a grill and a patio set, and miles of uninterrupted woodland views. From the moment they walked through the door, it was home. They both felt it, immediately.
“We’ll take it.”
The seller balked, at first, at a gay married couple purchasing their house. But when David offered to pay cash, they accepted. The house was already vacated, the previous couple already moved on to their new home on the West Coast.
Kris and David moved in ten days later.
For a month, they lived a dreamscape, a fantasy life their childhood selves might have once imagined, but pushed away as unattainable, too far-fetched. Happiness that pure, that distilled, wasn’t possible in their lives, they’d thought. Nowhere was there a future with a husband, a home, professional respect. Not for scrappy gay brown boys from the Lower East side, or for an exile separated from everything he’d once known. His home, his country, his family, his faith.
But how life curved and turned and twisted.
Happiness was waking up in their bed together, making love with the windows open and hearing the birds in the trees. David, baking breakfast, cinnamon rolls and French toast and mimosas. Eating together on the porch, walking hand in hand through the trees. David grilling as the sun set. Curling together in front of the fireplace until they were kissing, making love, flickering flames casting glowing light against their sweat-warmed skin. Day after day of perfection.
Kris called his mother, the first time he’d called her not on Christmas or Easter in almost a decade. She immediately, of course thought he was dying, that he had cancer and was in the hospital. “Mi chico, Dios mío, what is wrong? You’re in the hospital, you’re dying? You have cancer? Dios mío, what is it?”
“Mamá, Mamá!” He’d laughed at her. “Mamá, no. Mamá, I have a surprise for you.”
“Ay, I cannot take surprises. You know I do not like them. You know!”
“Mamá, I got married!”
Silence. “Ahhhh!” She’d cried, a blubber of Spanish and English and exclamations, happiness that blurred into noise over the scratchy call to Puerto Rico. “But, mi chico….” His mother had hesitated. “Mi chico, I thought you…”
“His name is David, Mamá. We have been together for five years. He’s the love of my life.” He couldn’t stop the happy sigh in his voice, the joy in his words.
“Cinco años? Ay, ay, mi chico! You are happy? This man, he makes you happy?”
“The happiest I’ve ever been, Mamá.”
She’d clucked at him, telling him she was happy for him, that she kept praying for him every night, always praying for his happiness, his safety. She was happy her prayers had been answered, she said. “I just want you to be happy, mi chico. I love you so much. I couldn’t make you happy when you were little. I’m so sorry, mi cariño.”
“Mamá, you were great. I love you. I’ll always love you.”
“I love you, mi cariño. Tell David hello.”
For not seeing each other in over a decade, and for only talking twice a year, it went better than he’d expected.
David spent a week gearing up to call his mother. Kris caught him pacing in front of the phone, staring at it and mentally composing what he was going to say. When he finally decided to call, they sat outside on their porch, David’s favorite spot, and Kris held his hand.
“Mama, as-salaam-alaikum. It’s me.”
“Wa alaikum as-salaam! Dawood!” Her voice, warm and rich, erupted from the phone. “How are you, my son? Where are you? It’s been so long since we spoke.” Her voice held a gentle reprimand.
“I’m sorry, Mama. I’m outside Washington DC now. I’ve left the Army. I work for a contractor.”
“Oh.” She didn’t say much about that. Contractors’ reputations had been hit hard, especially in Arab communities. Most Americans called contractors mercenaries. Most Arab communities called them murderers.
“Mama...” David took a deep breath. “Mama, you’ve always wanted me to be happy, right?”
“In shaa Allah, it is what I pray for, Dawood. That you find your way to happiness, and to Allah, again. They are one and the same, habibi.”
David flinched. “Mama… Why did you not remarry? After…”
She didn’t speak, not for a moment. “Because I married your Baba for this life and the next. We were two souls meant to be together, habibi.” She paused. “Why do you ask me this now? In shaa Allah, is there a reason…”
“There is, Mama.” David’s voice shook. “I’ve met someone. Someone who, I believe, is the same for me. Part of my soul is theirs. And I am so happy, Mama. So happy.”
“Allahu Akbar! Dawood! This is a blessing from Allah! Bismillah, I have prayed for you to find a loving wife, a woman who can calm your soul! Dawood! Allahu Akbar!”
David squeezed his eyes closed and clenched Kris’s hands. “His name is Kris.” He held his breath.
His mother stopped. Stopped everything. Stopped cheering. Stopped praying, praising Allah. Stopped celebrating. Stopped breathing. “You mean… you have found a friend? Not a wife? This is like the friendship of the Prophet, salla Allahu alayhi wa sallam, and Abu Bakr?”
Abu Bakr, the Prophet Muhammad’s best and closest friend, and the father of Aisha, Muhammad’s most influential wife. The two men had been inseparable, brothers in arms and in faith, a model of friendship for over a millennium to Muslims.
Kris bowed his head. She wasn’t getting it. She was choosing not to get it.
Cringing, David trembled in Kris’s handhold. His expression crumpled, and he curled forward, dragging one hand over his face. “My best friend, Mama. My best and closest friend. Kris will be with me forever. In this life and the next.”
Silence.
“Do you understand what I’m telling you, Mama?”
“Dawood, I am grateful you have found such a deep friendship. I am. But, habibi, do not let this friendship take the place of what you need. The love of a wife, and a family. I will continue to pray for your heart to find its match in a wife. In shaa Allah, your wife is waiting for you. It will happen, habibi. I know it. You will find your love.”
“Mama…”
“I can ask my friends about their daughters. If you would like help? I thought you wanted to do things the Western way, but I can help you, habibi.”
“No, Mama.” Tears trickled down David’s cheeks, rivers that turned to waterfalls at his jawline. Kris squeezed his hand until it hurt, until he thought all his bones would break. “No, Mama. In shaa Allah, I will find my soul mate.” David squeezed back.
“Ana bahibak, habibi.” His mother’s love flowed over the phone line. “I pray for you every day.”
“Mama. Ana bahibak.”
He hung up before she could say anything else, cutting the line and dropping the cordless phone on the porch. He pitched forward, burying his face in both hands as sobs tore through him. Kris kneeled, holding him as David’s tears soaked his shirt. “I’m sorry.”
“She’ll never accept it. She’ll never understand. Even if I brought you to her, showed her how much I love you…” He sniffed, tried to wipe his tears away. More fell. “I wish I could introduce you to my father.”
Kris shook his head, unable to speak, and his tears joined David’s in a puddle on the porch beneath them. David clung to him, crying as the sun set and the stars peeked through, as the day turned to night, until Kris guided him to their bed and held him for the rest of the night.
CIA Headquarters
Langley, Virginia
September 2006
“Where do I submit paperwork to update my personnel status to married?”
Eight weeks after leaving Iraq, Kris strutted into CIA headquarters and into George’s new office. George had been promoted again, now the deputy director of operations, in charge of clandestine field operations around the world. Time had been kind to George; rank advancement even kinder.
Kris couldn’t begrudge him too much. George had carried them all alongside him with his rise through the agency. Kris was off to head up a base hunting Bin Laden in Afghanistan again, and Ryan was the chief of station in Afghanistan, just beneath George.
First things first. Kris wasn’t going back to Afghanistan without official endorsement of his marriage to David. During the Saqqaf hunt, David had been transferred from contractor status to employee status, a way to bring him on board without having to send him to The Farm, interrupt the Saqqaf hunt. Which meant he was now a CIA employee. Which meant Kris and David could be deployed together to Afghanistan as a married couple.
He held up his marriage certificate, sent from Toronto, like a warrant. He arched one eyebrow.
George’s fingers hovered over his keyboard. He blinked. “Married?”
“Last month. In Canada. We’re married now. I expect we’ll be treated like every other married CIA couple.”
George blinked again. “I… don’t know how that will work. There are no gay married couples.”
“Yes there are. We’re married. And it doesn’t matter if we’re gay. We will get the same treatment.”
George cringed. “But… gay marriage isn’t legal here, Kris. Only a few states recognize it, and the federal government explicitly stands against it. The DOMA—” George frowned.
The Defense of Marriage Act. Kris’s blood boiled. In 1996, the same year it was finally legal for homosexuals to hold security clearances, Congress passed the DOMA, defining federal law to recognize marriage as between one man and one woman only. No federal agency recognized same sex marriage or civil unions. “You’re the deputy director of operations. You can make this happen.”
“I cannot change federal law.”
“You can get us stationed together. He’s coming with me to Afghanistan. And this time, none of the bullshit about not being able to share housing. We’re fucking married. And I don’t give a shit what some ridiculous law says. You want me to find Bin Laden? This is my price.”
“You’re an employee of the CIA, not a mafia boss. You don’t have a price we’ll pay. You do the assignment or you’re out of a job.” George’s voice turned sharp, his face sour.
“You called me in Iraq. You begged for my help, and I came through for you,” Kris snapped. “You going to show up for me?”
George’s jaw clenched. Kris watched him lick his teeth, purse his lips. “You need to go to HR if you want to update your marital status,” he growled. “I’m not the person to talk to.”
“Mr. Caldera, there’s no option in the system to list you as married to Mr. Haddad.” The frazzled HR tech threw up her hands. “If I change your status to married, it asks for the wife’s name. If I say that the spouse is also in the CIA, in order to give you the joint assignments that you want, it gives me a list of female employees to select. Mr. Haddad isn’t on the list of people you can be married to.”
Kris blinked. He counted to five, slowly, in his head. He held up his left hand. “Do you see this ring? It’s identical to the one on David’s hand. My husband’s hand. We are married.” He tapped their marriage license, laid out on the desk between him and the HR tech, repeatedly. “We’re married, legally.”
“In Canada.” The tech sat back, sighing. “I’m not even supposed to try to help you. The law in the US is clear. The federal government does not recognize marriages between same sex partners. It’s not allowed. It doesn’t exist in the United States. There’s nothing I can do.”
“I’m married. Crossing a border doesn’t invalidate that,” Kris snapped.
“Mr. Caldera, it just can’t happen here. Gay marriage isn’t legal.”
“So you’re saying I can’t get assigned to the same stations as my husband? Can’t put my husband on my health plan? Can’t file our taxes together? Can’t put him as my inheritor and designated spouse survivor?”
The HR tech shook her head. “No. You can’t. Not until the law is changed. And…” She shrugged. “It doesn’t seem like that is going to happen anytime soon.” She sighed. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t fucking care about your sorrys!” Kris’s gaze fell on her diamond ring, glittering from her left hand. “You’re married?”
“I am.”
“To a man?”
She nodded, once. Her expression closed down. Gates fell behind her eyes. She lifted her chin, staring at him.
“How would you feel if you couldn’t call him your husband? If you were told your marriage wasn’t legal? That it didn’t exist?”
“I wouldn’t have bothered getting married if I knew I couldn’t. I wouldn’t try to cause problems.” She laced her hands in her lap and glared. “I cannot help you, Mr. Caldera. In the eyes of the federal government and the CIA, your marriage isn’t valid and doesn’t exist. If the law changes, you can come back. Until then.”
She held her hand out to her doorway.
He ran into Dan after lunch, outside CTC. Dan looked worn and tired, thinner than before, pale.
“Kris!” Dan beamed and wrapped him up, hugging him for a long moment. “I heard all about Iraq, what you did. Taking out Saqqaf. Amazing, as per usual.” He laughed, held onto Kris’s arms, as if he didn’t want to let go. “How are you?”
“Good!” Kris waggled his left hand. “We did it. We ran away to Canada!”
Dan’s jaw dropped as he stared at Kris’s ring. He froze. Blinked. Inhaled sharply. “You and David? You got married?”
“We did!” Kris pulled a face. “Not that the CIA or the United States government are recognizing it, but I’m not giving up the fight.”
Dan chuckled, the sound wan, thin. “You never do. But they’re going to have to give in to you. They don’t know what they’re facing.” He stared at Kris, slowly smiling. “David is a very, very lucky man, Kris. A very lucky man.”
“I’m the lucky one.”
“No. He is,” Dan said softly.
“What’s been going on with you? You look like shit. Are they overworking you?”
Dan snorted, half laughing and turning away. “Thanks. That’s what I’ve always wanted to hear from you.” He shook his head. “I was at Gitmo.” He shrugged. “After everything, though, I came back to headquarters. I’ve been working with George. In operations.”
“Ooh, on management track.” Kris wagged his eyebrows. His voice turned serious. “How was Gitmo? I heard it was bad. Real bad. Lots of abuse, lots of crossing the line.”
Dan sighed. He stared at the wall as his eyes narrowed. “It’s in the past now. It’s all over and done with.”
“You okay? I mean, really okay?” Kris reached for his elbow and squeezed.
Dan covered his hand with his own. “I’m all right.”
“Seeing anyone?”
“Nah. All the best guys are taken.” He winked.
“We’ll find you someone, Dan. Someone wonderful, just like you.”
Dan blushed. “I’m good. I’m really happy for you, Kris. I’m happy you’re happy. Keep in touch?”
“Of course. You too!”
At three in the afternoon, Kris barged into Director Edwards’s office, fired up and ready for a fight. He fumed, thoughts racing through his mind, a bitter diatribe against the CIA, against their policies, against the federal government, against DOMA, against George and the entire world that seemed pitted against him and David. He kept circling back to the same thing, over and over.
If he was good enough to find the United States’ enemies, why wasn’t he good enough to be recognized by the CIA or the federal government? Why was his marriage such an abhorrent thing? Was the government that tortured detainees, that had enabled the decisions that allowed Abu Ghraib to happen, actually going to say his love was worse?
Fuck that.
He stormed in, fire in his wake. If he could have killed a man with the force of his glare, headquarters would have been littered with corpses. “Director—”
“Ahh, Mr. Caldera.” Director Edwards smiled and nodded to the leather club chairs across from his desk. George sat in one, scowling. “Please, join us.”
“Sir, first of all, I have to say—”
“You got what you wanted, Caldera,” George interrupted. He held up a manila folder. “It’s all in here. Your orders to Afghanistan. And his.”
Director Edwards smiled again. “Please take a seat, Mr. Caldera. We need to go over the details of your assignment.”
Slowly, he sat, taking the folder from George and perusing the orders. He and David were assigned to the mission. David was to be one of the senior security specialists, and he was being given command of a remote CIA base in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.
The orders were addressed to Ryan. He’d be reporting directly to him, in Kabul. Kris couldn’t hold back his snort, his eye-roll.
George sighed, comically loudly.
There was a handwritten note, signed by George, at the bottom of the orders. *Assign CALDERA and HADDAD joint living space. CALDERA and HADDAD in committed civil partnership, attested to the CIA on this day.
Conspicuously absent was the word married.
It was a start, though. More than what he had that morning, less than what he wanted. Way, way less.
There’d be time to fight for more. He’d chip away at this, until he and David were recognized. Until their marriage was recognized.
With the grace of a princess, he closed the folder and nodded to the director. “This is acceptable,” he said. “Barely acceptable.”
Director Edwards asked for the folder and countersigned George’s note. “We’ll get these sent to Kabul station right away. Now, let’s talk about your mission.”