Among the Ruins Read online

  He thought of Rachel’s eyes, her pragmatic, casual strength.

  And hoped this time he’d be stronger.

  * * *

  The pavements were dry. There was no construction on the streets around the ROM. Rachel found a parking spot beside a two-hour meter off Queen’s Park, an easy walk to the ROM’s front entrance.

  She stood beside Zach, feeling a lift of pleasure at the hungry light of morning, the breath of spring on the air and the secret joy of her brother’s shoulder bumping along beside hers. He was staring at the ROM’s giant glass façade with the starstruck wonder of a child.

  An American architect had won the international competition to design the ROM’s gravity-defying extension. Daniel Libeskind’s design featured five intersecting crystal-edged blocks meant to represent prisms, a tribute to the ROM’s mineralogy galleries. To Rachel, it seemed as though the pavement had been heaved up by a luminous slanting glass that cut through the heart of the city. At night the ROM sparkled like a Tiffany diamond.

  She paid for the tickets, waving her brother off with a smile. They’d agreed to meet at the cafeteria in an hour. Rachel had opened a bank account for Zach. She could have given him money in a lump sum, but she thought the monthly deposit a wiser arrangement until she could get a better sense of the young man Zach had become. She was housing him, feeding him—she didn’t want to undercut his hard-won independence. She knew he had a difficult road ahead pursuing a career as an artist. She wanted him to have the grit to stay on that road.

  Zach gave her a thumbs-up at the sign for the dinosaur exhibit. A child’s enthusiasm had turned into an amateur passion. He mouthed the name of the new exhibit with exaggerated movements that made Rachel laugh.

  Wendiceratops pinhornensis.

  “Named after a woman, Ray,” he called out across the atrium.

  Heads turned to look at Rachel. Blushing, she pulled up her collar, crossing the spectacular atrium that showcased the museum’s dual themes of nature and culture. You could find a dinosaur exhibit at the ROM alongside an Indian sand painting, or a commemoration of a First Nations artist’s life, speaking to a moment in history.

  Rachel crossed the main space of the Crystal, headed to the staff offices. Charlotte Rafferty had sounded suspicious on the phone, like a woman with too much to do, or a woman who believed every interaction with the police was destined to be a bad one.

  It took a few wrong turns before she found Charlotte’s office on the second floor. The cramped office had a low ceiling and a narrow window that jutted over Queen’s Park. Every available bit of space in the office was piled high with metal-edged storage boxes and long, cardboard cylinders. The withered leaves of a dried-out fern escaped down one side of a cabinet. A gold-trimmed mug of Klimt’s The Kiss hovered at the edge of the desk. Rachel slid it closer to the center, her hands brushing a giant personal calendar strafed with neon pink reminders. A pine-scented air freshener failed to mask an odor of damp animal fur.

  The office connected to a second office through a door. A dry-erase board hung to one side of this door, marked with a series of appointments. Rachel tried to read it, but Charlotte Rafferty stood unhelpfully in the way.

  Rachel had assumed that an archivist or records manager would be the ROM’s equivalent of a librarian. Charlotte Rafferty’s deportment dovetailed neatly with her assumption.

  She was a red-haired woman in her late forties, her hair worn in a knot that listed to one side of her neck, a pencil holding it in place. Her face was narrow and pinched behind wire-rimmed glasses perched low enough on her nose to be in danger of falling off. She was wearing a white silk blouse over a black skirt, a cameo brooch pinned at her throat.

  She didn’t offer Rachel a seat. Rachel took one anyway, urging Charlotte to take her own overstuffed chair.

  “I really don’t have time for this,” she told Rachel in a querulous voice.

  “I did make an appointment, Ms. Rafferty.”

  When Charlotte finally sat down and crossed her legs, Rachel was able to read the calendar on the wall.

  “What is it you think I can help you with?”

  “I’m inquiring into the death of Zahra Sobhani. Her son says she recently made an appointment to meet with you. I’d like to know what that was about.”

  “Recently?” Charlotte sounded dubious. “I don’t remember.”

  “I can see her name on your calendar, Ms. Rafferty.”

  Charlotte read the calendar on the wall, her fingers unlatching from her brooch.

  “Do you mean the filmmaker?”

  Rachel sat up straight.

  “Yes. Do you remember why she asked for the meeting?”

  “I don’t. I don’t know what she would want at the ROM.”

  “Had she asked if the ROM might carry a documentary called The Lion of Persia? Or did she ask for any other records you may have had of the Shah of Iran’s coronation in 1968?”

  Charlotte tapped her fingers on the edge of her gold-rimmed mug. Her bracelet caught on the mug’s handle and tipped it over. Thankfully, it was empty.

  “The Shah of Iran?” she echoed. “The ROM doesn’t house anything like that in its archives. You must be thinking of the Film Reference Library.”

  There was a sudden gleam in the eyes behind the wire-rimmed glasses.

  Rachel began to wonder if the whole thing—fuzzy librarian, fuzzy memory—wasn’t a performance of some kind.

  “Maybe,” she said. “But then why did Ms. Sobhani make an appointment to see you?” She nodded at the overflowing appointment book. “Perhaps you made a note of your discussion.”

  She reached out a hand to the book.

  Charlotte jerked it out of Rachel’s reach.

  “You shouldn’t be prying into my personal affairs, you need a warrant for that.”

  Rachel looked at her with interest. With the sharp snap of her voice, Charlotte had just dropped ten years. And Rachel noticed beneath her pencil skirt, she was wearing an expensive pair of designer boots with four-inch heels. A Prada purse and matching briefcase were parked on the cabinet behind her head.

  “I was going to pass it to you,” Rachel said mildly. “So you could check for yourself. Would you be so kind?”

  Charlotte flapped her hands.

  “I don’t take minutes of my meetings in my agenda. I wouldn’t have time.”

  “It must have been important if Zahra made an appointment.” And this time when Charlotte didn’t answer, Rachel said, “You do realize Ms. Sobhani was murdered? A terrible crime was committed against her, so please try to remember.”

  Charlotte deflected the question again.

  “Shouldn’t this be a diplomatic matter? The ROM has several patrons in government circles, I wonder if I should ask for advice.”

  “If you can’t remember why you met with Zahra, why would you need advice?”

  But Rachel knew the answer. Charlotte Rafferty wasn’t skittish or absentminded. She was hiding something. She’d mentioned her government contacts like a threat.

  “Go ahead and call them. In fact, you can do it from our offices. Why don’t you grab your things? We’re at College Street, it won’t take up too much of your time.”

  Rachel came to her feet. She removed her phone from her pocket and snapped a close-up photograph of the calendar on the wall. She didn’t know what the woman was trying to hide, but it wouldn’t have taken much forethought to wipe off the reminder of Zahra’s appointment.

  Most of the appointments were block-printed in tiny, legible writing. The appointment with Zahra at the beginning of the month—on a Friday afternoon at four o’clock—was written across the calendar square in a messy hand, the letters smeared.

  Zahra S. 4:00 P.M. Urgent.

  “What was so urgent? Why don’t you want to tell me?” Rachel remembered another piece of information passed to her by Vicky. “Does the name Vic Mean ring any bells? Did Zahra ask you to help her find him?” Her thoughts flashed to the brash young reporter. “Or her, i
f Vic Mean is a woman?”

  Charlotte was staring at her calendar, mesmerized.

  “Yes, all right,” she said. “There’s no need to take me to the station. Zahra came here to ask about Vic Mean.” Charlotte shook her head, the knot at the nape of her neck swinging free, red curls unfurling down her back. “But we don’t have anyone on our payroll by that name, you can ask around. Everyone will tell you the same thing.”

  Rachel was suspicious of this sudden cooperation.

  “Did she tell you why she was looking for Vic Mean?”

  “She was ridiculously tight-lipped.” Charlotte glared at the memory. “She wouldn’t tell me why she wanted to know. I would have liked to help, that’s part of my job here—finding things others can’t find, but I do need some direction.”

  Charlotte Rafferty had just described Rachel’s experience questioning her without a trace of self-awareness.

  “Why wouldn’t you want to tell me that?”

  Charlotte shrugged. She turned to look out the window at Queen’s Park.

  “We’ve become a surveillance state,” she said with prim authority. “Zahra’s business was her own. I don’t see why I should disclose it to the police.”

  There was a knock on the connecting door. A young Asian man dressed in a tailored suit interrupted them with a quick nod. He wore a gem gallery pin on one of his lapels.

  “You’re late for the conference call,” he said.

  Rachel checked her watch. Charlotte Rafferty had allotted their appointment fifteen minutes. She didn’t see any buttons glowing on the phone on Charlotte’s desk. She wondered if this was a pre-arranged interruption.

  “And you are?” she asked.

  Charlotte answered for him. “Franklin is my assistant. And he doesn’t have time to waste.” She nodded at the connecting door.

  Franklin turned on his heel with a finicky movement, grimacing at Rachel. When his back was to Charlotte, he mouthed four words quite distinctly.

  The devil wears Prada.

  Charlotte didn’t hear. She picked up her phone, Rachel took that as her cue to leave.

  On her way back to the atrium, she pondered how little she’d learned from the interview, puzzling over Charlotte’s hostility.

  What did she know about Zahra Sobhani?

  Who was Vic Mean, and why had Zahra been looking for him? Why had Zahra thought that Charlotte Rafferty might know him?

  A quick search on her phone turned up nothing on the name. When she typed in Victor Mean, she found dozens of names available through different professional websites. She would have to narrow these down, searching either for a direct connection to Zahra or to the coronation of the Shah. But it could be done.

  She whiled away the rest of the hour in the cafeteria in the atrium, eliminating the first dozen names and moving down the list.

  By the time Zach had joined her, she was halfway through.

  They ordered lunch and ate their meal as Zach talked about the new design exhibit. He was thinking of exploring a new direction in his art. The city landscapes had given way to his Viennese phase—the new design exhibit seemed to suggest a return to simple forms and clarified lines, like the tree within a tree on the wall in Rachel’s condo.

  “Was Rafferty any help?”

  “Quite the opposite,” Rachel said. “She made it clear I was wasting her time.”

  “So this was a dead end? Can I still have dessert?”

  “Whatever you like,” Rachel said with a smile.

  When Zach talked about art, he sounded like he’d lived a thousand lifetimes. When he talked about anything else, he seemed like a half-grown kid.

  He ordered them slices of maple pecan cheesecake.

  “Maybe the ROM can speak for itself,” Zach said after his first bite. “If she came to Charlotte looking for something, that something might be at the ROM.”

  “But Charlotte said the ROM has nothing on the Shah’s coronation.”

  “Huh.” Zach took another huge bite of his dessert. Rachel had a feeling it wouldn’t be long before he moved on to her portion. She ate faster. “That’s funny. Because there are two exhibits that she may have been interested in.”

  Rachel set down her fork. Why hadn’t she thought of that for herself?

  “Which ones?”

  Zach reached for Rachel’s plate.

  “Sorry, one is a gallery. The Wirth Gallery of the Middle East. I think artifacts and documents from Iran are included in the collection.”

  “And the other?”

  Zach cleared Rachel’s plate before answering.

  “The other is a photography exhibit about the Silk Road. It makes a stop in Esfahan. Isn’t that where your boss is now?”

  Rachel’s face went slack.

  “How long has the exhibit been running?”

  Zach pulled a brochure out of his back pocket. He unfolded its pages, his fingers tracing the lines as he read.

  “It’s a first for the ROM,” he said. “It opened two months ago.”

  He passed the brochure to Rachel.

  She read the description carefully. She was looking for the name of the exhibit’s curator. Or the featured photographers.

  But the name Vic Mean appeared nowhere on the list.

  That didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

  “Come on,” she said. “We still have our tickets. I think you could be onto something.”

  Zach looked pleased with himself.

  When she’d paid the bill, he led her up the intertwining staircases to the second floor. Here they wandered down a light-filled aisle to the gallery on the Middle East. Rachel stopped him at the door. She pointed to the plaque beside a set of glass doors that described the nature of the exhibits.

  “Nothing past 1900. It ends seventy years too soon.”

  They circled back to the Silk Road exhibit, drenched in light from the atrium.

  “What are we looking for?” Zach asked.

  “Try the name Vic or Victor Mean. Or anything to do with the Shah.”

  They took different paths through the photographs, pausing to read the credit panels. Rachel had been expecting black-and-white photography. Instead, the panels showcased a world in color—fabrics, textiles, costumes, rivers, mountains, deserts, markets, train stations, seaports, harbors, and people from every walk of life. They were photographs of the modern phase of cities that had been essential stops for commerce along the Silk Road.

  Rachel transited swiftly through China and the five “Stans” before ending up in Iran, skipping the southern routes through India and Afghanistan. She learned of Esfahan’s importance as a city on the Silk Road during the reign of Shah Abbas I, but she could see little to interest Zahra. She found no connection to the coronation of the Shah.

  In her second perambulation, she encountered Zach again. He was scrutinizing photographs of life at the Caspian Sea, north of Tehran. One of the photographs captured a scene at a seaport. A group of capable-looking men with thick, springy hair and handsome, woolly mustaches were gathered at a dock, laughing and smoking.

  Zach pointed a paint-stained fingertip at a mid-sized yacht in the background.

  The photographer had caught the yacht broadside.

  Its name was stenciled below the pilothouse.

  Rachel couldn’t read the elegant Farsi script.

  But she could read the English beneath it.

  Zahra.

  And floating above the name like a tiny balloon, the image of a film reel.

  A flurry of excitement whipped along her nerve endings.

  She checked the panel for additional clues.

  The photograph had been taken by a Polish photographer in the early 1970s. It was from the collection of a man named Mehran Najafi.

  Rachel thought she could guess who that was.

  28

  Interrogation

  “Confess, confess, confess, confess. Call your whore of a mother, your whore of a sister, tell her you’re fine, tell her to stop looking for you,
or you won’t like what happens next.” “Where shall I say I am that no one can find me, no one can reach me?” “Tell them you’ve gone to the mountains.” I flash them the smile of a corpse as their blows land. “I have no mother, I have no sister. I’m alone in the world, a ribbon of smoke over the land, a child of paradise and terror.” They’re so busy with their boots, they don’t hear Roxana’s song.

  Respite

  Alone in the cell now. Alone with the shit and the bloodstains. I don’t know if anyone makes it out of Kahrizak. Twice when I was released from Evin, I thought it was possible the world would take me back. I could move and breathe and think like a human being, free of torture and pain. The fist that hammered the door wasn’t for me, but it was, it always was. Some made it out of Evin, others disappeared. There’s a secret graveyard, but the executions aren’t secret. They hang you from a crane after Friday prayers, and you begin to think, Is this all God is—an executioner with a noose in his hands? And you wonder if you blame the God of paradise for the savagery of the Republic. Ahmed is gone, Piss-Pants is gone, the son of the cleric is gone, the thirty-nine in the container are gone, the nineteen from the cell are gone—and I’m left. Alone with the shit and the bloodstains.

  Interrogation

  “Tell us what you know about Zahra Sobhani, she was a traitor, like you.” Blow. “She was a filmmaker, like me. I was her student.” Blow. “That’s all she wanted, to tell the stories of this beautiful nation, Iran.” Blow. Scent of cologne. “She was a foreigner, like you. She didn’t belong to Iran, neither do you, Kurd. Or are you Baha’i, even worse?” Blow. “I’m a son of Iran, she’s a daughter of Iran.” Blow. “So you did know her, you worked with her, you conspired against the Republic.” Blow. Blow. Blow. “Please, I can’t—” “She’s dead, did you know that? Your precious filmmaker is dead, the whore of Iran is dead, did you know?”

  No, God, no—

  Zahra, I didn’t know.

  29

  It was a bitingly clear Tuesday morning. Khattak finished his breakfast and bade Nasih farewell. He had asked Nasih to turn away gifts or letters that arrived for him, fearing for Nasih’s safety. Whatever happened with the Green Birds, he didn’t want Nasih to pay the price.