“I doubt it,” Muhammad answered honestly. “In case you didn’t notice, the CIA tends to operate all on its own.”
His poor wife looked as relieved as she was sad and angry. “I still don’t understand how you factor into all of this. I admit I never paid much attention to the intel that crossed my desk, but you’ve been the topic of more than one debriefing at headquarters. There’s a bounty on your head.”
“That story made it easier for al-Baghdadi to trust me.”
“So that was a lie too? You are not Daesh?”
Muhammad couldn’t help but frown. “Would we be drinking wine together if I was Daesh? Would you be permitted to ask me questions or walk around not dressed like a bloody beekeeper if I was Daesh?”
Viviana must have remembered the hijab she’d had to don when changing planes. She reached up and tugged it off. “I understand why you must loathe al-Baghdadi. Most Muslims do…”
“But?”
She sighed. “Surely you don’t need the United States to get rid of him. Why haven’t the Arab nations taken him out?”
“Getting them to agree on anything is as fruitless and disgruntling as waiting for your Democrats and Republicans to hold hands and skip through a meadow together.”
“Point taken,” she muttered.
“I took matters into my own hands. Nobody besides you realizes this.”
Her eyes widened. “Aaliyah?”
“Laa.”No. “She knows bits and pieces, but not much.”
Silence engulfed the room. Muhammad stood up, suddenly desperate to be alone for a while. He walked toward the doors, pausing as he reached them. He spoke without looking back at her. “You can never leave me without being exterminated by your own people. You being freed of me is a risk they will not take.”
“There’s something you’re not telling me,” Viviana said quietly. “I can feel it.”
Every muscle in Muhammad’s body corded and tensed. Still, he didn’t look back. “I haven’t given you enough?”
“Not if it isn’t everything.”
He was uncommunicative for a drawn out moment, not wanting to “go there” as his wife would call it. In the end, he acquiesced. He turned around to face her.
“I lied to you once. Only once, but still I lied.”
Viviana said nothing, only listened. Muhammad continued.
“I am not a fan or champion of your country’s interfering ways,” he said simply. “I do not trust your government any more than I trust al-Baghdadi’s.”
“Go on,” she murmured.
“I helped them for one reason and one reason only—revenge.”
She gently shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“When my family was murdered in the drone strike, al-Baghdadi blamed it on the United States in order to gain my loyalty and financial backing. Later, I found out the man who calls himself caliph had ordered the air raid.”
Viviana’s eyes widened. Her jaw dropped open a bit.
“I lied when I said you must give me six children to make up for the three your people killed,” Muhammad admitted. “al-Baghdadi murdered them for the same reason your government thought to murder you.”
“Collateral damage,” she whispered, her eyes unblinking.
“Collateral damage,” Muhammad softly confirmed.
Her heart was in her downcast gaze. Unable to bear not knowing what she now thought of him, Muhammad turned and exited their apartments.
