Chapter 33
University Park, Maryland
September 10
2200 hours
His cell phone lingered in a puddle of light, a circle falling from Dan’s bucket lights hanging over the breakfast bar. The house was dark, eerily silent, other than the kitchen.
Silence, from the CIA. From the FBI. From Dan.
No breaking news alert, no police shootings reported on the news. No press release of a wanted terrorist arrested in DC, a plot foiled.
Was there nothing to report? Had they discovered nothing?
Or were they keeping everything under wraps? Had Dawood been shot dead somewhere in the street already? Or taken alive, brought in for interrogation?
Was the mole real?
Had Dan uncovered their trail?
Had the mole slipped up?
He’d said he’d stay at Dan’s, stay out of the way. Not interfere. Again.
But a phone call was okay, right? Just to check in. Just to see how the investigation was going. If Dawood was…
If he called Dan, Dan would take it as him checking up on him. Could he call Dan and ask about his husband, the wanted terrorist? Ask if Dawood was okay? If he was right or wrong, if there was a mole or if Dawood was a master manipulator.
How would Dan react to him asking about his husband?
He tried to care. He really did. But—
Maybe he and Dan needed some time apart, after this. Or maybe he needed time apart from the world, away from everybody.
Where was Dawood? Was he alive still?
Had everything he’d told Kris been a lie?
Damn it, his mind was racing in circles, going around and around and around, over and under itself, tying his soul in knots.
He grabbed his cell, dialed Dan’s number.
He had to know.
Dan’s phone rang and rang. Kris waited, one foot swinging off the barstool, his toes tapping out a too-fast rhythm. Surely Dan was busy. He couldn’t just drop everything for Kris.
But he always had before.
Kris hung up when Dan’s phone rolled over to voicemail, his calm voice politely asking the caller to leave a message.
He’d wait a few minutes, then call again. Or Dan would call back.
Five minutes later, he dialed Dan’s number a second time.
Again, no answer.
He called the CIA switchboard next, asked to be patched to Dan’s office. Ringing, endless, endless ringing. That drone, that buzz, would live in his brain, he thought, a drill bit behind his eyes. Where the fuck was Dan?
“Hello?” Finally—
But, that wasn’t Dan’s voice. His deputy answered, her voice ragged and fraying at the edges.
“Shannon? Where’s Dan?”
“I don’t know,” she sighed. “I haven’t seen him since this afternoon. He said he had to go talk to Ryan.”
No. Dread crawled up Kris’s soul, slithered around his bones like ice creeping out of the ground. “Have you spoken to him at all? Been able to get a hold of him?”
“No, no one has. I can’t find him. We need him, though. We’re getting nowhere in this investigation!”
“What about the mission logs?”
“What mission logs?”
Oh God. Kris crumpled, both elbows on the countertop as he held his forehead in one hand. The mole, he must have gotten to Dan. He’d stopped him before he could do anything. Jesus, was Dan even alive, still?
Who had Dan told? Who had he called?
Ryan, right in front of him.
And he said he’d brief George after.
It had to be one of them, Wallace or Ryan or George.
Wallace hated his guts, blamed him for the Hamid op and wanted him out of SAD. The guy was an asshole, was no doubt begging Ryan to fire him—
Memories snapped through his mind, shotgun blasts of time smearing behind his eyelids. Ryan, watching Zahawi die in a puddle of water and blood, frozen immobile. Ryan, always on the edge in Afghanistan. The rage he’d nurtured, the darkness that hovered around him. How he’d hated Kris, always. The way he seemed two steps from flying apart.
And, the Hamid op. He’d pinned everything on Kris, had let Kris take the entire fall, all on his own. Had he known, even then, that Dawood was alive? Had he killed Al Jabal to tie up loose ends, keep his secret safe?
How long had Ryan known Dawood was alive?
Had looked Kris in the face and lied to him?
How long had he been planning this?
What had Ryan done with Dan?
“Shannon, have you heard from Ryan at all?”
“No, he’s not at Langley. He left earlier today.”
“I gotta go.” Kris hung up on her confused questions. His trembling fingers hesitated over his phone.
He knew who he had to call. They always called each other when it came down to the wire. That was what they did, wasn’t it?
He thought he’d never call him again, not after everything, but…
History was a cruel predictor of the future.
Kris pulled up George’s cell number, pressed the call button before he could hesitate.
George picked up on the second ring. Dead air hovered over the line before he spoke. “Caldera?”
“George, did Dan call you today? Did he brief you on a cell phone number you had to track? On a possible mole within the agency?”
“Kris, slow down. What are you talking about? Did Dan do what?”
If Dan had briefed George, George would have known exactly what he was talking about. Goddamnit, Ryan had gotten to Dan, somehow.
Trust me, Kris, Dan had said. I trust him.
“George, Dawood came to me this morning, again.” And damn it, you were right. You were right, Dawood. And I pointed a gun at your face.
“What?”
“He said there is a mole in the CIA that he is trying to uncover. Someone passing along information to al-Qaeda. That he’s still with us, and is working against the mole, trying to uncover their identity. This mole has been feeding information to al-Qaeda, in Kandahar City, for over two years. They arranged for Dawood to come to the US and be the front man for this attack. It’s the mole’s false flag attack. He’s pinning everything on Dawood, but this is coming from a mole. Someone who has been working against us for over two years. He’s why we’ve lost those officers this year. Why everything’s gone to hell in Afghanistan.”
Speechless, George sputtered on the other end of the line.
“I called it in, George. I told Dan everything. The mole could only be a few people. Ryan, you, Wallace... Dan wanted to try and turn up the heat, flush the mole out. Put pressure on him, see what he’d do. So Dan called Ryan. I watched him call Ryan and tell him to run a search on the cell phone that was texting Dawood information, that the CIA mole was using. He was going to brief you after Ryan. But he’s disappeared. Ryan did something to him. Stopped him, or worse.”
“Dan never called me. I haven’t heard any of this. I’m with Wallace. We’ve been holed up all day. We’re just about to—”
“George, where is Ryan? Where is he?”
“Ryan is coordinating the hunt for Haddad with the FBI. He’s been out of pocket all day, all evening, following up leads.”
“How do you know? Have you seen him? With your own eyes, George? Do you know where he is?”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” George muttered. “When did Dan disappear?”
“He told Shannon he was going to see Ryan. Now no one can get a hold of him. And no one seems to know where Ryan is, either.” Kris sucked in against the stabbing pain in his chest, a knife into his back. All this time, he’d been wondering about Dawood, agonizing over his husband, but Dan had been in danger. Was missing. What if—
Kris heard George moving, heard him tell Wallace to keep trying Dan’s phone. Heard him breathe hard as he jogged down the hallway, started running down stairs. He pictured George running from his executive suite, down to the operations units, down to CTC. Heard him shout orders to people, for someone to call the FBI command center, for someone to find Ryan, now, now.
“I need you to do me a favor, George.”
“Kris, no. We need to let this process work. I’ll call the FBI. They will locate Ryan. He was with them last. They can track him down. We will find him.”
“We need to track the cell phone that Ryan has been using to communicate with Dawood! You need to track it!”
“You know we can’t do that on American soil. To an American citizen. That’s the FBI’s turf. We don’t have jurisdiction.”
“We don’t have time for this! There is an attack planned for September eleventh, right now, in our country! The only one who has the information is Ryan!”
“Are you willing to blow any chance of a criminal prosecution? If we act and we don’t follow the rules, anything we uncover can’t be used as evidence. You know this.”
“I’m not thinking about a trial,” Kris snapped. “We have to stop him. We have to. He’s been playing us for two years. Jesus, he’s known Dawood was alive all this time and he didn’t tell anyone! Didn’t tell me! Trial is the last thing on my mind.”
Silence. “What is it you want me to do?”
“As deputy director of the CIA, I want you to do a geo search on that cell number. You can create a legal justification, I know you can. Since Ryan has been texting Dawood, and Dawood is associated with an Afghanistan al-Qaeda cell, you’ve got jurisdiction right there.”
“I thought you said Haddad was on our side.”
Kris swallowed. “I hope he is. But then that means someone on our side isn’t with us. Ryan.”
George grunted. “I’m walking into CTC now.” He heard the buzz of CTC, the hum of activity. “It’s a fucking beehive in here.”
Kris waited as George shouted for Shannon, explained to her that he needed a number traced, immediately. Shannon walked him to the secured data center, the bridge between the CIA and the NSA, the cluster of data points and network access that gave them backdoor intrusions to cell phone networks and internet service providers. “Give me the number.”
Kris read it off to him. He’d folded and refolded the sticky note a hundred times since that afternoon, staring at the numbers like they were tea leaves to be divined from.
“It’s definitely a burner. No registration data. It’s not logged as being contracted to anyone.”
Keystrokes, the sound of typing. “And, it’s off,” George said. “It’s not sending a signal into the cell network.”
“Wake it up, then.”
“Kris, we’re crossing a big fucking line here. We’re breaking laws specifically put in place to stop this, exactly this. Are you absolutely certain? About Dawood? About the mole?”
“I am one hundred percent certain about my husband. And I regret not believing everything Dawood told me, from the very first moment. If I had, maybe Dan wouldn’t be—”
He should have brought Dawood in, kept him safe. Should have trusted him. Should have worked with him, searched the mission logs with him. Come up with a plan. Together. They should be doing this together.
Now where was Dawood? Facing Ryan alone? Without help, without backup?
He needed to be with him. Needed to help him. Now. They were supposed to be together forever, and he’d left Dawood to face this alone.
“I trust Dawood. I do, George. He is with us. Do you trust me?”
George said nothing. Kris waited.
“Sixteen years, George, we’ve been together. You and me. We’ve had our problems, I know. But I know Dawood is right. I know he’s with us. I know he’s trying to help. We need to help him, too.”
Keyboard keys clicked, George typing on his end. “It’s pinging the network now. Hold on… It’s triangulating…”
Kris held his breath. Almost whimpered.
“Deanwood. Southeast DC.” George rattled off an address, something in the middle of the urban neighborhoods, a tangle of homes and warehouses that bordered Anacostia and the urban waterfront.
“I’m closest.” Kris grabbed Dan’s keys off the counter. Dan’s weapon lay outside the circle of light, on its side. He grabbed that, too. “I’m on my way now.”
“Kris, no. Don’t go. Wait for the FBI. I’ll call them now, get the response teams over there immediately.”
“The FBI takes at least an hour to coordinate a monkey shit fight, George. I’m not waiting for anything or anyone. They’ll be too late. I’m going in. I’m going to my husband.”
“Kris—”
“I will never leave him behind. Not again.” He jogged to Dan’s car, turned the key in the ignition. The electric car spun up silently.
“What about Dan?”
“I hope he’s still alive.” Damn it, Kris’s heart was screaming. But the only thing he could do was run forward. Face his choices head on. Face destiny. Walk the path. “Send the FBI in. But I’m going now.”
“Kris… Be careful.”
He put the car in reverse and gunned the engine.
Deanwood
Washington DC
September 10
2300 hours
Dawood kneeled in prayer, his hands held open before him, whispering to Allah. “Make the best of my days the last of my days, Oh Lord. The best of my deeds the last of them, and the best of my days the day upon which I will meet You.”
He was ready.
He waited inside the decrepit remains of a long-abandoned warehouse, one in a string of industrial black holes on the south side of Deanwood. Just to the south, the urban grit of Anacostia and the shipping channel to the southeast of DC began. He was in the forgotten corner of the capital that languished in disrepair and disquiet.
It was the perfect place to hide in plain sight, and the perfect place to stage an attack.
“Oh, you who believe, be persistently standing firm for Allah. Be witnesses for justice, and do not let the hatred of people prevent you from being just. For justice is nearer to righteousness.” He recited verses of the Quran, trying to center his soul. He tried to set his fate in Allah’s hands, tried to quiet his mind, his heart. “He has the keys to the unseen. No one knows but Him. No leaf falls without His knowledge, nor is there a single grain in the darkness of the earth, or anything fresh or withered, that is not written in His heart.”
His thoughts turned, always, to Kris.
You must follow the path Allah has laid out for you.
Even if it broke his heart, shattered his soul, and took him away from Kris.
Even if Kris, in the end, became someone else’s, loved someone else.
For justice is nearer to righteousness.
I will love you forever, ya rouhi. In this life, and the next.
Outside, car tires crunched on gravel, chewed through the silence of the abandoned night. A car door slammed.
Dawood inhaled.
I am ready.
CTC
Langley, Virginia
2300 hours
“I need FBI tactical teams to assemble at the command center immediately,” George barked into his phone. “We have a hot lead on Dawood Haddad, and possible accomplices, and we’re going in. We have to move, now!”
He’d taken over CTC in Dan’s absence, trying to coordinate a response while down two of his best men. Panic simmered beneath the surface of his skin, an itch he couldn’t scratch. Dan, Ryan, where are you guys?
Don’t let this be true. Don’t let any of this be true.
George swallowed hard. It was easier, far easier, to think Haddad was the bad guy, to pour all his anxieties, all his nerves, all his fear and his hate and his terror, into the specter of Dawood Haddad.
Do you trust me? Kris had asked.
I don’t know, he should have said. I’ve never known. Half the time, I don’t know what I’m doing. I just try to hold on as tight as I can and close my eyes before we all crash face-first into the brick wall.
“Sir!” Shannon jogged to him, a Bluetooth earpiece in her hand. “The FBI, they’ve found Ryan!”
He snatched the earpiece out of her hands, shoved it into his ear. “Talk to me. Where is Ryan?”
“Sir? What the fuck?” Ryan, pissed as hell and loaded for bear, growled over the connection. “I was taking a fucking nap and an entire squad of FBI agents turned the fucking cot over, dumped me out. They’re circling me with flashlights and their weapons drawn, and I need to know what the fuck is going on, right Goddamn now!”
George blinked. His eyes slipped closed.
No. Please, no.
It’s supposed to be Haddad.
“Ryan. Did Dan call you today about tracing a phone number Caldera uncovered?”
“Dan? I haven’t talked to him since yesterday.”
Deanwood
Washington DC
2300 hours
Feet crunched over gravel, over the broken glass of the warehouse’s shattered windows. Two years of agonizing waiting, trying to string clues out of breadcrumbs, trying to track a ghost whispering through Kandahar City, trying to find out who was slitting the throat of the CIA from within. Once he knew about the mole, he couldn’t leave Kandahar City, not until he could prove, beyond all doubt, who it was. Not until he could do something about it, stop the killings, the betrayal.
He would finally have his answers.
True patience comes from complete trust in you, Oh Allah, when the trials and calamities are at the highest.
Footsteps, closer, closer.
There is no God but God.
Dawood rose, slowly. One hand reached behind his back, gripping the handle of a pistol he’d bought from a twelve-year-old in Brentwood the first day he’d arrived back in the States. It had been easy to acquire weapons in Afghanistan. Easier still in the United States.
The mole thought he was on their side. He had the element of surprise.
Kris. Ya rouhi, my love. Forever.
“Hands up, Haddad.”
He knew that voice.
No…
“I said, hands up. I can see you. And I have my weapon trained on the center of your forehead, so if you don’t want to die, this very moment, put your fucking hands up.”
Slowly, Dawood let go of his weapon. Lifted his hands until they were next to his head. He stared at the darkness, the blackness from where the voice had come. “Show yourself.”
The barrel of a handgun appeared first, then hands clutching the grip. Arms, legs, a face cast in shadow. And—
Kris, I am so sorry.
“Finally, you can follow instructions,” Dan purred. “Let’s see how well that continues. On your knees.”
Dawood didn’t move.
“Now.” Dan stepped closer and took aim, right between his eyes. “Don’t make me tell you again.”
He kneeled, his knees digging into the cold, broken cement of the warehouse’s cracked floor. “Why, Dan? Why did you do this?”
Dan circled him slowly, weapon aimed for the center of his head. Dawood’s breath shook, trembling over his lips as Dan’s boots crunched against the dirty ground. Bam. Blinding pain streaked through his skull, made his vision streak and smear. A boot slammed into the center of his back, shoving him forward, face-first. All the air in his chest whooshed out, and he gasped, struggling to breathe. Hands grabbed his arms, wrenched them backward.
The cold steel of handcuffs closed around his wrists.
“Quiet. You don’t get to ask questions. Not after the trouble you caused. Just keep your mouth shut while I fix your mess.” Dan pushed hard off his back and moved away, holstering his weapon.
Dawood struggled to his knees. “Why are you turning against the CIA? Why have you betrayed everyone?”
“I am a fucking patriot!” Dan snapped. “I care about this country! About the world! I’m going to wake everyone up again! Wake them up to your fucking barbarism again. Of you and your kind.”
“My kind?”
“Fucking Islamists. You and your brothers who bow to your Allah, who worship a camel fucker from the seventh century and want to return the world to the backward bullshit of the medieval times. Who think that the only laws worth following are Sharia laws, which, by the way, would see you stoned to death for being a fucking sodomite.”
“That is not true Islam, or the true love of Allah—”
“Spare me the preaching. I’ve heard enough preaching, in the gutters of Islamabad, from the mouths of Zahawi and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and all the other al-Qaeda fucks we threw in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. I’ve heard enough about your fucking death cult to last the rest of my life.”
Nothing made sense. Nothing added up. “And you decided to help al-Qaeda? Decided to betray the CIA?”
“I’m helping the CIA! I’m reminding everyone—the CIA, the president, the American people, everyone—just how dangerous your kind truly is. The world has slacked off, let the fucking Islamists regain ground. ISIS making land grabs in Iraq and Syria, in Egypt, in Africa, and back in Afghanistan. The world has taken their eyes off the ball, and it’s time they realized how wrong that is. It’s time to remind everyone that this is a war for the soul of humanity. Against you, and your death cult, your God of murder. It’s time that everyone remembers that we have to destroy every last one of your kind.”
He couldn’t breathe. Dan spun in and out of focus, Dawood’s vision fracturing into a billion shards, the world collapsing all around him as he struggled to hold on to reality. What had happened to the world? To the man he’d known, the soft-spoken, gentle analyst, Kris’s friend… and lover? Dan was supposed to be the happy ending he couldn’t give Kris. The safe harbor for Kris’s heart, the arms that cradled him close after.
Dawood blinked. Tried to inhale. Tried to form a thought, a prayer. Allah, what is this? What path is this? He’d put his faith in Allah, in the path he had to walk, had clung to his determination in the face of everything. In the face of Kris, the other half of his soul. His jihad had always been about the soul, about keeping to the path of his life, holding fast to Allah, like his father had begged him to so many years ago.
Was this what clinging to the path led to? What faith delivered? Was this, in the end, all that was left? He’d run his race, fought his wars, lived more lives packed into one lifetime than any man had any right to feel in his heart. And for what? What did the end of the path lead to? Where had his faith brought him?
Like father, like son, the proverbs always said. The apple does not fall far from the tree. His father had been murdered for his faith.
So too, it seemed, would he.
What did he have to show for this life, this dedication to his faith? His father had, at least, had him, his mother, a happy home, a life of love and light and peace, submission to a loving God who breathed radiance into all things.
Dawood had a pit in his soul, a hole carved in his heart in the shape of Kris’s smile. A void, dead space within him that hummed, that threatened to overtake his mind, his soul.
And he had a husband who had thrown him aside, who had lain in the arms of another man. A traitor.
Allah, what am I supposed to do? I thought this was your path.
Endure patiently, the Quran said. With beautiful patience.
Endure.
His heart folded inward, collapsed on itself like a star surrendering to the last shudders of its inevitable descent into darkness. Shame pulsed from him, waves and waves of shame thrown off like a dying star shedding its corona. Shame warred with rage, wrestled with the sting of failure, of self-recrimination. Self-wrath. He hadn’t done enough, he hadn’t. Not if this was the end. Not if Kris was still in danger.
Dan was right about one thing.
He did not fear death.
He welcomed it. Welcomed the release, the shedding of this terrible life.
Every moment that passes from this one is dedicated to stopping you. To ending you. I am already dead. I only await my reunion with Allah.
His soul settled heavy around his heart, squeezing like chains against the broken shards he’d cobbled together, had tried to coax life out of. But it was impossible. He’d died that day, ten years ago, the moment he’d realized he wouldn’t see Kris again. He’d died, the best part of his existence carved out of him, and nothing could replace that.
He breathed for one purpose, now.
One purpose alone.
Dawood stared into Dan’s gaze. “What have you planned?”
Dan finally lowered his weapon. He glared at Haddad. “You know, you were supposed to be my golden goose. The gift that keeps on giving. A perfect patsy. A perfect fall guy. Who wouldn’t believe that David Haddad, lost to time and Afghanistan, wouldn’t come back to America bitter, enraged, and hostile? After ten years with al-Qaeda?”
“You knew it was me? For two years?”
“Of course I knew it was you. As soon as Abu Dujana bragged about ‘the stranger from Khorasan’ who used to know everything about the CIA and was al-Qaeda’s secret weapon. Of course I knew it was you.”
“And you never told Kris?”
Dan laughed, his head tipping back. “Why would I do that? I finally had him right where I wanted him for so long. In my bed. In my arms.”
Dawood flinched.
Dan grinned. “Hurts, doesn’t it? Seeing the man you love in the arms of someone else? You have no idea how much joy I got making love to him, knowing you were living on dust and the trash of American bombs in the wastes of Afghanistan.”
“You weren’t like this before, Dan. Something changed in you.” Dawood ached for Kris, for the love Kris had thought he’d had. Kris, ya rouhi, I wanted it to be anyone else. I wanted you to have an ever after. “What happened? Why are you doing this?”
“Sixteen years of war changed me!” Dan bellowed. “Made me into this! Sixteen years of facing your kind, and your hate, and your fucked-up God! Sixteen years of staring into the worst of humanity, fighting them every tooth and fucking nail.” He grinned. It was a dark thing, like a knife glinting in moonlight. “But I broke them, all of your brothers before you. I broke Zahawi after you left Site Green.”
“What?”
Dan snorted, shaking his head. “You know, Kris could have been something amazing if he hadn’t been tied to you. You fucked up his mind, filled him full of bullshit, until he didn’t know who the enemy was anymore. You fucked him for life when he pulled out of the Zahawi interrogation. You fucked his whole career. He and I could be running the CIA now, if it weren’t for you.”
“You didn’t stop the Zahawi interrogation…” God, Kris had clung to that, to the knowledge that he’d left Zahawi in the hands of his trusted friend. That Dan had picked up where he’d left off, doing what was right, what was just. That Dan had been a good man in a miasma of moral failings.
“Of course I didn’t. I took over. Paul was a heavy-handed oaf. He didn’t know what he was doing. I did. I broke Zahawi in twenty days.”
“Ryan—”
“Ryan couldn’t stomach it. He always thought he was some big badass, but when it came down to the wire, he bailed. He’s had to live with his shame, knowing how weak a man he really is. I kept his secret. How he couldn’t take it, couldn’t watch the interrogations. Couldn’t watch me.”
“You’re a monster,” Dawood breathed. “You’ve become a monster.”
“Look in the mirror!” Dan shouted. “You’re talking about yourself! I hunted the monsters! For years! I am the one who built the detainee program! I am the one who built Guantanamo! Who trained everyone at Abu Ghraib! I was the nightmare to your brothers, your jihadi fucks! I was the end of the line for the real monsters, the animals like you.” He inhaled, a ragged breath. “Until the world started to forget. And lost its nerve. And look what happened. The monsters hid in their rat holes and regrouped. ISIS,” he snarled. “Left to your own devices, you and your kind will always choose barbarism. It’s in your nature.”
Dizzy, he was dizzy, the world was spinning, upending. Everything he and Kris thought they knew was wrong. The knowledge they’d built their world on, their reality. That Dan was a good man. That he’d stopped the torture, had worked in the grinding bureaucracy to put an end to dark things, to evil.
Instead, Dan had stoked his own evil, burned his own rage until his soul collapsed, until everything he had been was lost to the purity of his hatred.
When had Dan tipped over the edge? How long had he been living without a soul? There was nothing left of the Dan he’d once known.
What was he truly capable of, without any of his morals, any ethics, and driven purely by hate?
“What is it you have planned? ‘Something bigger than nine-eleven’, you said to Abu Dujana. Something so big you wanted me to pull it off. You specifically asked for me, Al-Khorasani, to come to America to execute your attack. I’m just your convenient terrorist, is that it? Pin the crime on the Muslim?”
“Your ignoble death was supposed to drive Kris into my arms for good. The shattering of your legend, of your mystique, your final hold on his heart. God, I hated you so much. Even in death, you had a stronger power over Kris’s heart and soul than I ever could dream of.”
“We were made for each other and you couldn’t come between that. You could never compete, not when our souls were paired by Allah before space and time began.”
Dan laughed. “Don’t think that highly of yourself, Haddad. Before you fucked up, he was finally mine. He’d finally let you go.”
You have a key?
My personal life is none of your business.
Dawood swallowed, and it felt like a thousand knives of betrayal, a thousand days and nights of longing, of yearning for Kris with every breath in his body. “You’ve twisted him around so badly he doesn’t know up from down, left from right.”
“He was following the script perfectly,” Dan snapped again. “But you had to reach out. Had to make contact. Had to confess everything. Don’t tell me you weren’t all in on this, Haddad. That you didn’t want to make America suffer, make Americans bleed. Make them taste the death and the stink of terror and horror you’ve lived with every day, for ten years.”
He closed his eyes. Swayed, smelling diesel fumes and burning mudbrick homes, heard the sounds of children screaming. Heard Behroze wailing, kicking and clawing in the middle of the night. Felt the heat of an incandescent fire blazing off the rubble left behind from a drone strike, so hot they had to let the flames burn themselves out while they listened to the screams of the dying within the shimmering flames. Do not kill with fire, the Quran said. For that is of Allah, and you shall not take the power of Allah for yourselves.
Stay close to justice, for justice is nearer to righteousness.
There were moments, in the darkness, when he’d felt something close to hatred. When he’d stared at the hand Ihsan always held out for him, a silent offer to join his brothers. When he stood at the cliff edge and looked over the abyss of American foreign policy and felt the anguish of a billion Muslims cry out in rage. He’d wondered if it was possible to go too far. Where the line was. Where his rage tipped him over the edge.
Where he risked turning into what Dan had become.
The thought of Kris, the memory of their love, of everything Kris was, kept his soul from spinning off, splintering into the winds and withering to dust and ash. Kris, and his love, his commitment to justice.
Stay close to justice, for justice is nearer to righteousness.
For Dawood, that meant staying close to Kris, and to his memory.
“My path has always been to expose you. To destroy you.”
Dan laughed again, gesturing between them with his handgun. Dawood was still on his knees. “Working out well for you, huh? How did it feel when Kris threw you out of my house? When he didn’t believe you?”
“My path is mine to walk alone.”
“He didn’t believe you. No one is coming for you, and no one is going to help you. You’re on your own, Haddad. And you’re mine.”
“Whatever it is you’re planning, I won’t help. I won’t participate in the slaughter of Americans. Or push your twisted evil, your intolerance, your justifications for hate, in any way.”
“Yes. You will.”
Kris ducked beneath a broken window outside the decrepit warehouse at the address George had given him. Voices murmured from within, rising and falling on the still night. Above, a crescent moon carved through the clouds, casting a faint glow over the dead end of the capital.
Dawood’s deep tones carried in the moonlight. “You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you?”
Dawood. Kris closed his eyes against the crash of his heart, the scream in his soul begging him to throw caution and everything else to the side, to just leap through the window and go to Dawood, be with him. Be by his side, like they were supposed to be, for all time.
He was here now. For Dawood.
He’d parked two blocks away, out of sight on a dark residential block abutting the abandoned industrial park. He’d zigzagged through back lots and alleys, Dan’s gun in his hands as he jogged low and fast. His skinny jeans, long-sleeved pullover and his trench coat flapping behind him were not the tactical uniform he would have preferred. But nothing would stop him, not now. Not ever again.
At the warehouse, he’d circled twice, taking in emptiness, the urban destitution, the way the night seemed to collapse around the neighborhood. Collapse like the warehouse was some fulcrum of evil, the pivot point of destiny.
Outside the warehouse, a dark older model SUV was parked in the shadows by the warehouse’s side freight doors. Two silhouettes within were carved in the light of the SUV’s headlights.
One standing, a holstered gun on his hip, gesturing as he spoke. Ryan. He gritted his teeth, tried to breathe through the surge of rage.
One kneeling, his hands behind his back, like he was cuffed. Dawood?
Another figure lay on the ground, still, unmoving. His throat clenched. Dan? Was he too late?
Muffled voices carried on a soft conversation, punctuated by harsh laughter that grated down Kris’s spine.
Time to end this. Time to confront Ryan. He eyeballed the inside of the warehouse over the edge of the broken window. Ryan had his back to the SUV, to the freight doors. That was his breach point, keeping to the shadows as he slipped in.
Kris moved, and then waited at the edge of the doors, listening to Dawood’s voice.
“The death toll will be astronomical. This will ignite a fury that cannot be contained, that cannot be controlled. You will unleash hatred and wrath on the world, and all for what? A lie?”
“It’s not a lie. It’s a revelation. It’s showing the world exactly what you truly are. Your Quran, your hadith. Your jihadi brothers, your ISIS fighters, they beg for this, for the apocalypse, for the end of the world. They beg to meet their God.”
Kris’s blood turned to ice, freezing solid in his veins. A thousand spiders tap danced down his spine, the pitter patter of pure terror.
That wasn’t Ryan’s voice.
“I’m just giving your kind exactly what they want. A holy war, and the apocalypse. The end times. It just won’t turn out the way they want.”
“You have become what you hate,” Dawood said. “You have become exactly what you hate.”
Kris felt every beat of his heart, heard the rush of blood in his veins. His thoughts tumbled, swirled, coalesced.
Truth stared him in the face, at last.
He didn’t call Ryan. Everything he said, it was a lie.
I gave up Dawood, right into his hands.
He covered his tracks, threw suspicion off him, from the moment I brought Dawood’s confession to him.
Straight to him, the mole.
“And you don’t understand. We will always win. I will always win.” Laughter, suddenly so familiar to Kris, a laugh he’d heard hundreds of times over the years, a laugh he’d come to rely on, a sound he’d set the compass of his heart to when all his moorings had come undone. “I already have won. Especially where it really matters.”
“You’re going to break his heart.”
“I’m going to hold him close and kiss away his tears when he mourns the memory of who you were. When he rages against what you became, and what atrocities you are about to commit. He’s going to give his heart to me.”
Fury crackled through Kris. How long had he been played? How long had this been going on? How blind had he been? His vision swam, narrowing until all he saw was the dark silhouette before him, the shape of a man, a shadow outlined in headlights. The back of a head, the very center.
Where he’d put his bullet.
He pushed forward, striding out of the shadows as he raised his weapon. “Dan. Freeze, you son of a bitch! Hands up!”
Dan gasped. He could hear it, in the stillness of the warehouse, Dan’s quick little inhale. He kept his back to Kris and raised his hands, slowly.
Beyond Dan, Dawood kneeled on the ground, hands behind his back. A trail of tears glittered off his cheeks. “Habibi—” he started.
“Shut up!” Dan growled. “Suspects don’t get to speak!”
Kris advanced, digging the barrel of his gun into the back of Dan’s head. “Take your own advice, Dan. I will pull this fucking trigger if you move one single muscle.”
“Kris—”
“Try me. Please. Give me an excuse.”
“You’re confused, Kris. You don’t know what you’re seeing. You walked in on something that can’t be understood, not like this. Let me help you.”
“Shut the fuck up!” Kris bellowed. “Keep your fucking mouth closed! You’ve spread enough lies!”
“Kris, you’re wrong. You don’t understand—”
“Habibi, it’s him. It is.” Dawood sighed. Fresh tears poured from his eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“Who the fuck is that?” Kris jerked his chin to the body on the ground, a man lying on his side, his back to the headlights, to Kris. His burnished skin suggested Arab, and his unnatural stillness, the way his limbs lay loose and unmoving, clawed at Kris’s guts.
“Haddad’s partner,” Dan snapped. “Like I said, you don’t understand what is happening here—”
“Habibi!” Dawood shouted, panic shredding his voice. He tried to stand, his eyes wide, crazed. “Look out—”
A pinch, a hot prick, stabbed Kris in the neck. He whirled, but the world smeared, and shadows turned to darkness as everything tipped sideways.
He felt hands on his arms, catching him as he fell, and the last thing he heard was Dawood’s voice bellowing his name.
Dan lowered Kris’s unconscious body to the warehouse floor, cradling his head before it hit the cold ground. “You were supposed to keep a lookout.”
“I was working on the timer.” Noam glared at Dan as he yanked the syringe from Kris’s neck. “He appeared out of nowhere. I barely had time to duck so he wouldn’t see me.”
“He’s SAD. You’re Mossad. Aren’t you supposed to be better than SAD? Isn’t that your point of pride?” Dan cursed. “He may have seen too much. Why the fuck is he even here?”
Noam wagged the empty syringe over Kris’s body. “This beauty will wipe his recent memory. He won’t remember anything. He won’t even remember how he got here.”
“You better be fucking sure.”
“I am. I use this all the time.”
Dan glared. “Is everything ready?”
“Almost. Converting from a switch to a timer takes a while.” Noam glowered at Haddad, cuffed and kneeling. “Would have been better if he hadn’t fucking turned on us. I thought he was the anchor of our plan?”
Dan grinned, all teeth and raw hatred, his fury pouring from him, crackling off his being, the very center of his soul finally unleashed. “Haddad has always fucked everything up. It’s his legacy. I shouldn’t be surprised about this.”
“I need a few more minutes on the timer.”
“Get back to it. And don’t worry about Haddad. He’s still going to fucking help us.”
“I won’t.” Haddad swayed on his knees, as if he were about to pitch forward. Everything in him screamed, reaching for Kris. Dan could see his straining restraint, how he barely held himself back from crawling across the dirt to go to his husband. “I won’t murder for you. Ever.”
Dan cradled Kris’s still face in one hand. Kris was so stunningly beautiful. He’d always been gorgeous, from the day he’d walked into CTC nearly twenty years ago and had pressed pause on Dan’s life the first moment he’d seen him. How he’d stolen Dan’s breath, had captivated Dan’s mind. He’d nurtured long fantasies of their lives enjoined, the happiness they could have, as soon as he worked up the courage to ask him out. How he’d craved Kris, nurturing his desire in the silence of CTC, watching Kris in his formative years.
Nearly twenty years ago. How long their lives had been entwined, had been shared.
They were destined to be together, in every way.
Until Haddad. Until Haddad had fucked everything up.
Dan pulled his gun from Kris’s limp fingers. He rolled Kris’s head, turning Kris’s face to Haddad. Dirt and grit dug into Kris’s cheek as he pressed the barrel of his gun against Kris’s temple.
“No! Yallah, no, no. Astaghfirullah, no. No, please. Please…” Haddad’s voice, his breath, trembled. “Please…”
He begged beautifully. His tears glistened, each a drop of joy in Dan’s soul. Naked terror danced in Haddad’s gaze.
“Please… Don’t do this. Don’t…”
“You want him to live?”
Haddad’s eyes closed. “Don’t do this,” he whispered. “Don’t make me choose.”
“I thought I would have to spell it out for you but you jumped the gun, Haddad. Good boy. So. Do you want to see Kris’s beautiful, beautiful brains all over the ground? Or do you want him to live a long, long, happy life?”
Haddad doubled over, screaming through gritted teeth. He pressed his forehead to the ground, anguished sobs crashing through his chest.
“All your paths lead here, Dawood Haddad! Every choice you made in your life, every pitiful, desperate, stupid choice you made, built your road to this! It’s always been your destiny! You’re nothing but a filthy Muslim!” Dan’s bellows bounced off the warehouse walls, echoed in the darkness. “You were always, always going to go out like this. Worthless. Meaningless. But I have given your death meaning, Haddad. You should fucking thank me. You should thank me in your prayers for delivering the end times that your fucking psychotic God and all his followers begged for. Because this will be the end. And you’re all going to fall. You’re all going to die. You will always fall to us. To me!” Dan hissed.
Haddad’s sobs seemed to tear him two, seemed to rip his soul into tatters.
“It’s so fucking poetic, don’t you think? I will beat you, and I will kill you, and I will take everything that is yours. Exactly like history is supposed to go.”
Haddad rolled his face against the ground. Dan saw a puddle of snot and spit, the ocean of his tears. “Allah,” he moaned. “I cry out for you in the darkness…”
“Your God is dead, just like your people will be. And you will be remembered as the man who brought about the end. Who ushered in the end of days and woke the might of the American people.” His thumb dragged over Kris’s lips. “Because you’re going to do this. You will never, ever let him die.”
Haddad’s shoulders shook. His prayers turned to a low keen, a wail that sounded like a soul dying.
“If you care about him, at all, then you’re going to make this right for him.” Dan pushed off Kris, standing and tucking Kris’s gun into the small of his back. Kris rolled, limp and boneless as a rag doll, his cheek dusted with grime, but still perfect. Still utterly perfect. He was wonderful like this, pliant, limp, open to Dan in all the ways he never was. Why had Kris sealed off the deepest part of himself from Dan? Why hadn’t he ever let Dan into his heart, his soul?
Fucking Haddad. It was always, always Haddad. “You’re going to write him a confession. You’re going to confess everything.”
Finally, Haddad sat back. His eyes were vacant, shattered orbs that bled sorrow and hollow acceptance inside every tear. Snot and spit and dirt stained his face. He was a filthy animal, nothing but a filthy animal. How had he ever captured Kris’s love?
“You’re going to tell him this was your plot. That you wanted it, that you dreamed of it, hungered for this. That you planned it, all of it. You’re going to give him a future in my arms.”
Haddad shook his head, like he didn’t understand. A line of spit dribbled from his lips, stretched to the ground.
“Yes, you are. As long as you play along, as long as you do your part, he lives. And he lives with me. In my arms.” Dan pointed his gun at Kris’s face. “Or he dies. Now.”
“Dan.” Noam appeared at his shoulder. “We’re all set.” He nodded to Kris. “We have to move. If he’s here, then reinforcements are likely on the way.”
“He loves to buck the system. And I made him believe I was the only one he could trust. Kris wouldn’t have called anyone. He tries to be the Lone Ranger, always. He probably wanted to save the day on his own.”
“Still. We have to go.” Noam headed for Haddad’s partner, the last component to their plot. The Arab man lying on his side, unnaturally still. “Help me move him.”
Dan caught the latex gloves Noam tossed him. They snapped as he tugged them on. No fingerprints, not on the bodies, and not on the SUV. They’d wiped it down a week before, had driven it to the safe house wearing gloves.
Dan grunted as he hefted the Arab. “He’s heavy.”
“A dead body packed full of shrapnel is.” Noam winked.
The man’s arm flopped down, the back of his hand dragging on the ground. Dan stared at his face, still, expressionless, locked in death. In the moonlight, he looked like wax, like a doll.
Save for the bullet hole in his temple.
He’d been an ISIS fuck, executed by the Israeli military when they caught him planting IEDs on their border. He’d been one of the millions of Middle Eastern ghosts, unknown men who could be Syrian or Iraqi or Palestinian, or Who Gives A Fuck, who had no home and no hope and no future. He’d been a body without an identity, a human who didn’t exist to the multitude of bureaucracies in the world, someone who’d been born and had lived and had slipped through the cracks of everything and everyone.
And that made him valuable.
Noam, at Mossad, had taken ownership of his corpse for research purposes. He’d faked an autopsy, filed a report, and marked the body as disposed.
Mossad would never know just how far off the reservation Noam had wandered.
And then Noam had come to America for his six-month exchange with the CIA, flying diplomatic transport and skirting all checks, all inspections. No one questioned the refrigerated crate he’d brought with him.
Over the months, Dan had built a profile in the system for their mystery man. ISIS, young twenties, an exchange student from Iraq, supposedly here on a student visa, but he’d never shown up for classes. How the American people would rage, demand a change to their open borders. Look at the terrorists pouring into the country, they would scream.
All for an electric ghost and a man who had never existed in the world.
Dan heaved the shrapnel-stuffed body into the rear of the SUV. Noam had packed the vehicle with explosives, built to ISIS specifications, using ISIS blueprints. He’d wiped his own fingerprints, had meticulously spent hours pressing their corpse’s fingers on each block of plastique, each wire. In the end, only fragments and ash would remain, scattered traces of DNA, but the hint of one partial print would be all they needed.
One dead ISIS member, one SUV packed with explosives, and Haddad, detonating the bomb on the anniversary of September 11.
There was no better start to the end of days.
“I’ll pack up.” Noam shut the trunk. “Haddad and I will head to the staging point. What are you going to do with Caldera?”
“I’ll keep him with me. He’s our insurance. If Haddad balks in any way, call me. I’ll send video of Kris eating a bullet to get him back on track.”
Noam snorted. “You’d kill him? You?” Noam stared at him, the edges of his gaze pitch black, as if his eyes were sucking in the moonlight, the starlight, taking the light out of the world.
Dan swallowed. “Is there anything you wouldn’t give for this?”
Noam had spent nine months undercover inside ISIS ranks, had been a part of the migration from Syria to Iraq, the first months of the war. He’d seen the butchery, the bloodlust, the calamity unleashed upon the world. When Dan had met him in Tel Aviv, Noam had been hovering on the edge of eating a bullet or ten, one shot of vodka way from ending it all. He’d dreamed in screams and the roar of gunfire, in crimson blood and bodies burned alive.
He’d seen the future, the end times, the way the world would go if they didn’t act. If they didn’t right this wrong, now, put down those animals once and for all. All of them. Every last one.
Their plan had been born then, in whispers of rage, in drunken bloodlust, in sweat-and-sex-covered delirium, a hundred nights of perfecting their shared wrath, their bitter fury.
And now they were here.
“Haddad still has something to do.” Dan tore out a page of the SUV’s manual from the glove compartment and stalked back into the warehouse.
Haddad hovered over Kris, his lips pressed to Kris’s temple, tears falling like rain on Kris’s smooth skin. “I love you,” he whispered. “Forgive me, ya rouhi. Forgive me my love for you.”
“Get the fuck off him!” Dan kicked Haddad, the flat of his foot slamming into Haddad’s face. Bones crunched in the darkness, Haddad’s nose, his cheek, and he went flying, landing on his cuffed hands in a skid across the ground. “He’s not yours anymore.”
Haddad didn’t move. He lay on the ground, his chest shuddering, face to the dirt.
Dan tossed the torn page and a pen on the ground in front of him. He pulled out his handcuff keys. “Time to write your confession.”