No Place of Refuge Page 21

  The color drained from Ali’s face. He gasped out Israa’s name.

  Esa was aghast. Twice in ten minutes, his thoughtlessness had injured the boy.

  Israa had slipped his mind. What he’d said applied equally to Israa, and Israa had been missing longer than Audrey Clare.

  The boy’s heart was in his eyes. It was clear that Esa’s assessment carried weight. And he’d just heard Esa confirm his deepest fears. Israa wouldn’t be found; Israa was lost forever. A fresh set of tears rolled down his cheeks, this time in total silence.

  ‘I thought this was about the life vests. I didn’t know what it would cost me.’

  28

  Izmir, Turkey

  ‘How do we know what we’re looking for?’ Rachel asked Khattak. He nodded at Ali, but he was also looking at something on his phone.

  He showed it to Rachel. It was the list he’d made of places where Audrey had used her credit card; they fell within a discrete circle.

  They reached Izmir without incident, renting a car in Cesme, and now Rachel had the opportunity to see what Roux had meant. The city was overdeveloped with ranks of repetitive apartment blocks, but what Rachel couldn’t take her eyes from was the boulevard that swept the curve of Izmir Bay. It was lined with palm trees whose blade-like leaves slashed the mirage of the sea. She hadn’t been expecting palm trees.

  It was an exciting, vibrant city, the coastline gorgeously sectioned into parks and colorful marinas. It bustled with all the business of a port – container ships, cargo holds, cruisers sailing into the harbor. The clouds had passed and the air had become mild and balmy, little plumes of mist stroking feathery green palms. Rachel felt a thrill of discovery: she hadn’t expected to end up in Turkey as an outcome of Community Policing. In the course of a single year, her life had turned inside out.

  Some of her euphoria left her as Ali directed them to his point of arrival. A helicopter swung low and Ali looked up. ‘If this was Syria, it would be dropping cluster bombs.’

  He was from a place where children heard planes and thought of bombs.

  They passed a circular park reached by two thoroughfares, the Gazi Boulevard and the Fezvi Pasha. They found parking in the Basmane neighborhood, popular with Kurds and Syrians. Ali led them along an alley between shop fronts, two-story buildings whose upper floors were residential, in contrast to the activity on the street. The alleyway was formed of paving stones. Single cement blocks mounted up to each shop. Patches of green turf on the blocks lent a dash of color to the street.

  Internet cafés were a common sight. Shop windows carried notices in multiple languages: Turkish, English, and Arabic were prevalent. Chalkboard signs were set up on the street, offering money-changing services. There was a raft of plastic chairs on little patios for those seeking the refreshment of Turkish coffee or the apple tea served to tourists.

  Rachel noticed the life jackets. Along the crowded pavement, bundles of jackets were wrapped in plastic. As they moved up the street and crossed the thoroughfare, fancier stores featured mannequins dressed in men’s suits on one side, and in life jackets on the other.

  ‘It’s deserted here,’ Ali said. ‘After the deal to seal the border, it no longer makes sense for people to come. Before, you could hardly walk down this street – people were sleeping in the alleys, in the parks, waiting for smugglers to call them to the boats. There was so much life packed in here.’ A smile drifted across his lips. ‘We made so many friends.’ He told the story of his little group, and how they’d agreed to make the crossing. He’d admitted his friendship with Sami: they’d met in Basmane, and the four of them had grown close.

  Ali’s head was turning from side to side. He was staring down each blind alley, craning his neck to peer into shops. Then Rachel noticed something else. Wherever there was a signpost or a free spot on a wall or shop window, a flyer with a photograph on it was posted. It was a picture of the girl Israa, and underneath it the words ‘HAVE YOU SEEN HER?’ were printed in three languages above a phone number. A substantial reward was offered for information.

  Rachel frowned at it. ‘Sir.’ She drew Khattak’s attention to the flyer. ‘That number.’

  Khattak recognized it at once. ‘Audrey’s satellite phone.’

  They stopped to look at the boy.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘She helped me. She was serious about the search for Israa.’

  ‘Did you get any calls on that phone?’

  Ali jammed his hands into the pockets of his jeans. ‘They were all dead ends, people wanting money. Sometimes families showed up with girls who looked like Israa. I couldn’t blame them. When you make this journey, you’re pushed into doing things you never imagined were possible.’

  He didn’t make eye contact, scanning the nearby park. He wasn’t wasting a moment in his search. As Khattak and Roux peeled away to speak to store owners who might have interacted with Audrey, Rachel kept her attention on the boy.

  ‘You’re saying it was busier than this when you first arrived in Turkey?’ To Rachel, the streets seemed crowded.

  A few young men were sitting with their backpacks leaning against the wall. Ali pointed to them. ‘The undesirables. As single travelers, we can’t get anywhere. I have an Afghan friend in Moria who made it to Sweden before he was refused.’

  ‘How do you stay in touch?’ Rachel asked.

  Ali held up his cell phone. ‘Everyone uses WhatsApp to stay on top of the routes. But a lot of rumors get spread. One of the worst was that a Swedish ship was coming to collect us. We learned it was a lie at the coast.’ His eyes met Rachel’s. ‘You meet good people during the journey, but you also see the worst.’

  He explained how refugees found their way to the coast. If they came by bus, they were met by smugglers who pressed them into making an immediate decision about crossing to Greece. The smugglers provided boats and some basic guidance on steering. They insisted the journey was safe, even if they didn’t issue life vests.

  ‘They have it worse on the North African side. If you make it to the boat, the smugglers take you out on the open sea, and leave you there to die. One of the men I met said the captain of the boat kicked his son into the sea. He was picked up by the Coast Guard and sent back to Libya, where he tried another route. Usually, by that point they’ve taken all your money. They feed off your desperation.’

  Rachel thought this over. ‘What happens when you get to somewhere like Basmane?’

  ‘You make contact with the smugglers. First you go to the money-changers, then you go to an insurance office where you deposit your payment in cash. At night, you head to a park for further instructions from the smugglers. Everyone is waiting for a call. With any luck, your handler is a Syrian trying to save up funds to get his own family across.’

  Rachel could picture the type. Enterprising young hustlers who moved the machinery along, the last ones to leave because it was more important to move their families to safety.

  She remembered Dania and Ahmed Fakhri, and their claim to have flown from Lebanon. But what if they’d lied and come through Turkey? Had Sami stayed behind in order to ensure their safe passage? Had he tried to desert his bosses and ended up dead? She asked Ali if he’d heard of the Fakhris. He stumbled over a young man in his path. There was a rapid exchange in Arabic, which ended with Ali’s apology. It was followed by the same question. Ali held up a flyer and asked the young man if he knew where Israa had gone.

  His shoulders sagging, he turned back to Rachel. ‘It’s beginning to seem hopeless. This deal with Turkey – if it’s finalized, no one else gets through. I don’t know if I should bring Aya back to Izmir to try and find some work. But who could I leave her with? What kind of future would we have?’ He crumpled the flyer in his hand. ‘Or maybe we should move on and pray that Israa finds us.’

  Rachel didn’t know how to advise him. As a police officer, she believed the law should be obeyed. No one
country could resettle refugees. By that standard, even Canada’s contribution was minimal. There had to be a better solution than choosing between someone like Ali with Aya in his care, or someone like the youth they’d left in the alley. She remembered Suha Obeidi, the paralegal at Sanctuary Syria. Suha had said Sami al-Nuri stood little chance of being accepted on his merits; he needed a family connection that the Fakhris had refused to establish.

  Despite leads from Canada, Turkey, and Greece, Rachel was no closer to untangling the truth.

  ‘Where’s Aya?’ she asked suddenly, following the progress of a little girl across the alley. She had dark hair and eyes that stood out in contrast to her magenta sweater. She was clutching colored pencils in one hand and packs of tissues in the other, a fanny-pack around her tiny waist. Her sunny smile and confident manner stood her in good stead. Strangers were willing to indulge her in the sale of her various goods.

  Her throat constricting in pain, Rachel gave the girl a twenty-euro note for a pack of tissues, refusing to take her change. The little girl danced away. She called to her father, who was watching for her at a stoplight. He led her into a park surrounded by tall, dark trees.

  Rachel felt a surge of embarrassment when Ali looked at her.

  ‘I told you,’ he said. ‘There are good people, too.’

  She made a dismissive gesture. She’d tried to salve her conscience by giving the little girl money, but she would have felt worse not doing it. ‘I needed tissues. It wasn’t charity, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

  ‘I was thinking you are kind to have noticed her. Kind like Miss Audrey to be helping me look for Israa.’

  ‘Do you think we’ll find Audrey and Israa together?’ If the boy knew something, his answer to this question would tell her what it was.

  ‘No.’ He shook his head, causing his curls to bounce. ‘They’re not together.’

  Before she could ask him how he knew this, Khattak and Roux rejoined them. Khattak was holding a life vest he’d just purchased.

  ‘We bearded the lion in his den,’ he told Rachel. He explained he’d bought the vest from one of the Turkish vendors. Ali nodded as if he knew what Khattak meant.

  ‘The life jackets weren’t for me and Aya. Audrey wasn’t taking people across, she didn’t want to get her NGO kicked out of Greece. It’s just that I told her what was happening at sea. The day I crossed, for example.’

  Rachel noted Khattak’s grim expression. She studied the logo on the life vest. The logo was misspelled, and suddenly she knew.

  ‘The life jackets are fakes.’

  Now, at last, Amélie Roux ventured to offer information. The little she told them made it clear that in fact, she knew a good deal more. ‘The factories are run by organized crime. They make money by selling knock-offs stuffed with foam. The vests are hydrophilic. They become a weight around the neck. They can cause serious injuries – not just drowning injuries, but also strangulation.’

  Khattak’s head came up. ‘A peculiar injury to occur in a lifeboat,’ he said with strange emphasis. He recounted what he’d learned in Toronto from Emily Banks.

  ‘What are you saying?’ The horror of it was too vast for Rachel to grasp. She tested the life vest in her hands. ‘They deliberately sell jackets that cause refugees to drown?’

  ‘Real vests cost upward of a hundred and fifty euros. The knock-offs are as little as ten. People buy them for the illusion of safety – at least they’ll have something, they think.’

  ‘My God.’ A chill ran down Rachel’s spine. ‘You knew this?’ she asked Ali.

  He shrugged it off like it was nothing. ‘We crossed with vests like these. Our boat sank, we nearly drowned. If Eleni hadn’t found us, I wouldn’t be here now.’

  He looked at their shocked faces and tried a smile.

  ‘By far,’ he said, ‘that wasn’t the worst part of our journey.’

  He took them to Sinbad restaurant; it was popular with refugees because the food was tasty and not too expensive.

  ‘This neighborhood is amazing,’ he told them. ‘Kurds, Turks, Syrians. So many language barriers, yet here we all are. Many of these people have become my friends. They’ve done good things – they’ve helped us when they’re struggling themselves. As a refugee, you learn how people hate, but also about how they love. This neighborhood reminds me of before.’

  Rachel was starving so she let Khattak ask the questions.

  ‘Of your life in Damascus, you mean.’

  Ali nodded, swallowing a bite of his kebab. ‘The most beautiful place on earth. I miss everything about it. The way it smells, the way it looks when the sun sets. The jasmine trees in our courtyards. The closeness of the old city walls.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Khattak said.

  Ali shrugged. ‘How we thought we could take on a regime that began by murdering the schoolchildren of Daraa – we were crazy to think there was hope. Look what’s happened to us now.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘I never thought a Syrian could kill another Syrian, but that’s a mistake we all made.’

  The revolution had begun in the city of Daraa, near the Jordanian border. Schoolboys had painted slogans against the regime – the children were arrested and tortured. When Daraa’s tight-knit community had demanded the boys’ release, the governorate had shunned them. Protests had broken out in Daraa, then across the country. As one young activist had said, ‘Daraa lit the spark. The children’s courage was contagious.’

  Rachel ignored her meal, reflecting on Ali’s story – the Syrian border wasn’t out of reach, but the Syrian catastrophe seemed a world away. On this boisterous street, Turkish pop music blasted through the alleys, with families strolling through the parks, under the leafy cover of the palms. If she didn’t have so much to think about, she would have found it fascinating. The call to prayer sounded all at once, the music fading away.

  Khattak looked over at Ali. ‘Shall we go to the local mosque?’ They excused themselves, Khattak with his hand on the boy’s shoulder, the gesture of an older brother. Amélie Roux watched them go.

  She turned to Rachel with a speculative look. ‘A handsome devil, that one.’

  Rachel forbore to answer, focusing on her food.

  Inspecteur Roux prodded her again. ‘So you two – is that something?’

  Rachel swallowed hard. ‘I have a boyfriend,’ she said weakly. She was thinking of Nate. Nate had kissed her, but he wasn’t her boyfriend – a word she wasn’t sure was grown-up enough to use. She felt that same little flutter of happiness as she contemplated whether that would change. When, not whether, a small voice insisted. She told herself to have a little faith.

  Roux shrugged. ‘A lot of temptation to resist.’

  Rachel changed the subject. ‘What did Inspector Khattak mean? When he said you bearded the lion in his den?’

  Roux swept a hand in the direction of the shops. ‘We learned something from our tour of Basmane. Your friend Audrey visited nearly every store and sidewalk operator selling life jackets. She tracked down the main purveyor plagiarizing the Yamaha logo.’

  ‘So the life jackets on Woman to Woman’s inventory…’

  ‘Were ordered for the purpose of comparison. She had to make her case. She told the Coast Guard, who’d had similar suspicions. The Coast Guard confirmed the bodies in the water were wearing counterfeit jackets; they notified the Turkish police.’ Sounding impressed, she continued, ‘Eventually, because of the police operation, two of the factories were shut down.’ She grimaced. ‘It turned out the children of refugees were being employed to make the fakes.’

  She rubbed the back of her neck, signaling the waiter she wanted another coffee.

  ‘I shouldn’t say “employed,”’ Roux went on. ‘In fact, these children were indentured. The police put an end to that.’

  Rachel listened to this recital with growing suspicion. This was more than Khattak a
nd Roux could have learned in their interviews with shop owners. It sounded like the kind of background available to an Interpol agent.

  ‘You already knew this.’ She gestured at the busy restaurant and the streets beyond. ‘So why didn’t you just tell us on the ferry? Or on Lesvos? You could have saved us a lot of time.’

  Unperturbed by Rachel’s accusations, Roux leaned forward in her seat. ‘I wanted to see where your leads would take you. You might have found something I missed. After all, it was your partner who discovered the life vests at Souda.’

  Rachel didn’t buy the explanation. Either Roux didn’t trust them, or this was Interpol’s version of a power play. Interpol was in charge – Roux’s job was to make sure it stayed that way.

  Assessing Roux’s expression, she asked, ‘What else do you know about the factories? What exactly was Audrey’s role in uncovering this operation?’ Her tone left no doubt that she knew Roux was holding back.

  The sharp edge of Roux’s smile acknowledged Rachel’s suspicion. ‘You think your friend did all this on her own, putting herself at risk?’

  ‘I know she put herself at risk.’

  ‘So did my agent, Aude Bertin. Your friend was clever enough to contact us, so Aude was sent to investigate.’

  Rachel considered this explanation. It didn’t take her long to find the gaps in it. Horns sounded from the street beyond the little park, but she kept her attention on Roux.

  ‘You sent an Interpol agent to do the job of the Turkish police? I don’t think so, Inspecteur Roux.’

  The other woman’s face closed up. Beneath the slash of emphatic black brows, her shrewd eyes studied Rachel. Rachel was being weighed. But whether as an adversary or a confidante, she couldn’t tell.

  ‘Audrey’s tip-off was enough to lead us to something bigger. It’s not just the factories, there’s the whole operation, how it’s all connected – the smugglers, the Syrians who slip into their nets. She was tenacious, your friend. She wanted answers to dangerous questions.’

  Rachel nodded to herself. Quietly, she said, ‘She would have been a thorn in the smugglers’ side. Doesn’t that suggest to you Audrey was taken? And she hasn’t run away.’