Page 106 of Whisper
David shifted, muting the TV. “Who is it?”
“George.” Kris stared. His phone kept ringing. Should he answer? Or should he just toss his phone behind the couch?
He squeezed his eyes shut as he answered. “Caldera.”
“Took you long enough. Hope I didn’t interrupt anything.”
Kris snorted. “Should I tell you what you interrupted? Detail it out for you?”
“No thanks.” George’s voice was thin, strained.
“Why do you guys always think the gays are hosting sex parties in dungeons, or about to blow a clown car of dick? Why do you straights always think it’s some wild insanity? Can’t we just be eating dinner? I mean, fabulously, of course—”
“I’m regretting I called.”
“Whydidyou call?”
“’Cause nowIneed a favor.”
“I really don’t understand why you think I’d even be willing to take your call, much less give you a favor.”
“You’re still on the line, aren’t you?”
Kris smiled. Was this friendship? George was an asshole who played politics with Langley, with Capitol Hill, but he’d come through for Kris more than once. He’d turned a blind eye in Afghanistan, in Pakistan. He’d hooked David up with his new job. David was finally finished with his Blackcreek training and was assigned to Langley, helping on the range with weapons qualifications and special training for advanced tactics. He spent a lot of time with the junior CIA analysts getting shuttled off to Iraq. Every night, he came home to Kris. Kris’s apartment had becometheirs. Cramped and too small, buttheirs. George had helped make that happen.
“What do you need, George?”
“You have an inescapable talent for slicing through any and all bullshit that comes at you, Caldera. It’s one of the reasons you’re so popular.Especiallywith the vice president.”
“So we’re acknowledging now that everything was bullshit?”
“It’s always been bullshit. We just all knew to keep our mouths shut.”
“Well… you know me. That’salwaysbeen my problem.” He put as much sass into his voice as he could and turned the whole thing around, knowing George would go straight to what he was suggesting.
George coughed. “Jesus, Caldera. I thought you were with Haddad now. Together forever, or isn’t that why you wanted him at Langley?”
He stayed quiet. George was still George. He didn’t need to hand deliver his weaknesses to George. Not gift wrapped like that.
“How soon can you be in Baghdad?”
“Baghdad?”
“The White House is shitting bricks over the situation on the ground. The chief of station in Baghdad wrote a report, and he used the word ‘insurgency’. The White House went nuclear. Pushed back. No one has used the insurgency word, not yet.”
“It’s fucking obvious, isn’t it?”
“Someone is pumping the National Security Council up with stories of renegade Baathist loyalists and scattered pockets of violence. But our soldiers are being picked off. We’re up to ten dead a week now, from snipers and IEDs. The White House is petrified this is turning into Vietnam.”
“I believe I tried to warn them that could happen.”
“In fact, you did.” George read the title of Kris’s prewar analysis.“‘Security Challenges in a Post-Saddam Iraq—Navigating the Political Battlefield.’ I fished this out of the agency’s black hole.”
“Glad it was taken seriously.”
“I need you here. I need your eyes, and your brain. I need your analysis. I need you to find out exactly what’s going on. This is your specialty. Putting the pieces together like no one else can. Getting into their minds. Understanding the world from every dimension.” He sniffed. “I need yourhelp, Caldera.”
“And then what?”
