No Place of Refuge Read online

  Perhaps this was also the reason for Audrey’s itinerant activity, and the absolute absence of written communication as to what she’d been pursuing. If Audrey was acting as a courier for CIJA, she must have had a contact at CIJA. Whoever that contact was, they needed to hand over the boxes. Sehr frowned, a delicate knitting of her eyebrows.

  That still didn’t explain Audrey’s trip to Calais or her detour to Brussels. How could Sehr find the links between the stops on Audrey’s route? Like the answer to a prayer, her phone rang. It was Rachel. She had two numbers for Sehr that she’d pulled from the records collected by Paul Gaffney in Toronto. Though the numbers were unattributed, both were local to Delft.

  Sehr decided not to wait for Esa. Whatever was taking him so long in the vault, she was grateful for the reprieve. She called the first of the two numbers and heard a busy signal. The second number rang through, to be answered by a young man.

  ‘I’m calling on behalf of Audrey Clare,’ Sehr said. ‘I think I have something you want.’

  There was a pause on the line. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ the man said.

  Sehr decided to take the risk. ‘I’m calling about Caesar.’

  A longer pause this time.

  Then the man said, ‘I think you’re looking for my boss.’

  33

  Delft, the Netherlands

  The photographs on the table were terrible to study. Esa felt a surge of wretchedness at this evidence of Assad’s crimes. The nightmare reality he’d plumbed during his case in Iran was exponentially worse in Syria. How many thousands of Syrians had been processed through these centers to face these unspeakable acts? These violations had taken place at the instigation of the four main intelligence agencies that made up the Mukhabarat: the Department of Military Intelligence, the Political Security Directorate, the General Intelligence Directorate, and the Air Force Intelligence Directorate. The Crisis Management Cell coordinated these four bodies, reporting directly to Assad. Each of the four agencies had a central branch in Damascus, as well as regional and municipal branches with separate detention facilities. Once a detention center became too crowded, prisoners would be transferred to new locations, while retaining their original affiliation.

  In Arabic, the transferees were called ida, a word that meant ‘deposits.’ The majority of these cases represented enforced disappearances, a process whereby agents of the state detained ordinary citizens on trumped-up charges of sedition or terrorism or threats to national security, and then refused to acknowledge the detention or the detainee’s location. Nothing could change their fates – not the extortionate bribes demanded for information, not highly placed connections within the regime, not the offer of cooperation or collusion.

  He remembered Ahmed Fakhri’s desperate offer.

  I can give you all of their names.

  Fakhri had fallen back on lessons he must have learned in detention – his terror at being questioned now fully explained. He’d assumed that Khattak had wanted him to inform on other Syrians – anyone who disagreed with Assad’s butchery – and he’d snatched at an imaginary list – his cellmates? his friends? – to stave off the further possibility of torture.

  The war crimes trials would come too late to deliver those in Assad’s hands. Khattak forced himself to look at the photographs, to observe the forensic details. Each photograph had three numbers assigned, but Esa couldn’t tell what the numbers meant. Going back through the documentation didn’t make it clearer. Which meant that the need to get these photographs into the hands of experts was exigent: they urgently required a thorough forensic analysis.

  Paging through the evidence, he realized he’d seen at least some of these numbers before. When Suha Obeidi had shown him Sami al-Nuri’s application in Toronto, a list of numbers had been appended that weren’t connected to Sanctuary Syria’s protocols.

  A sick feeling in his stomach, Khattak realized the numbers referred to detention centers: 215, 216, 220, 227, 235, 248. The numbers linked Sami al-Nuri to Syria’s detention system, his tortured corpse prima facie evidence. Audrey had stumbled onto something terrible, something she’d never discussed with Nate. And he didn’t think she’d told Ruksh either, though when he was done in this room, he would call his sister to find out.

  The pictures provided testimony of the methods the Mukhabarat had used to kill, a design of overarching evil, a word Khattak used advisedly. The pictures were of boys and young men. Their emaciated bodies had sharply defined pelvic bones and ribcages; their faces were deeply sunken. There was ample evidence of trauma, suffocation, starvation, gunshot wounds to the head, open head wounds, dried blood in body cavities, and other forms of torture.

  Khattak turned to the accompanying report. He read the description of the most common types of torture used in detention: beatings with an object, electrocution, shabeh, dulab, falaqa, basat al-reeh. He didn’t require a translation of the Arabic: each term was accompanied by a drawing.

  Shabeh: to be hung from the ceiling by the wrists and beaten to force a confession, beatings that continued for hours. Dulab: to have the head, back, and legs forced inside a tire and be beaten with batons and whips. Falaqa: to be beaten on the soles of the feet with whips and batons until the feet were swollen, making it impossible to stand. The basat al-reeh or ‘flying carpet’: to be tied to a board with the head suspended, hands and feet bound, and be beaten with a braided cable. Esa forced himself to keep reading. To read horrors as debased as these was the least one human soul could commit to another, the record an act of witness.

  Phrases stained his mind, corrupting what little of his innocence remained.

  There are places that God never visits.

  My death was near me all the time.

  There were no questions, just accusations.

  But I didn’t do anything.

  Except I screamed.

  Because I couldn’t bear the pain.

  They put electric prongs on my teeth… they kicked me with their boots… every time I called for help, they laughed… my body was blue from the beatings… they made me suck my blood from the floor… they tied me to a metal chair… they used electrodes… they wrapped wires around my genitals…they raped me… they raped me, four, five men at a time…

  I died. I never came back to life.

  Esa took several deep breaths. He closed the file, seeking a moment of respite.

  His thoughts turned to the refugee crisis. The destruction of Syria and the grave suffering of its people were ignored as the root causes of the crisis, absent from the broader political discussion, absent from the news. Would things have been different if instead of printing the word MIGRANT, the headlines had screamed of torture? He didn’t have much faith that they would.

  From the starting point of a refugee’s journey to the end, there wasn’t much kindness on offer. There was the reporter who’d kicked a child at the Hungarian border. Smugglers who robbed and raped along the route. Counterfeit life jackets that pulled bodies into the sea. The raid by Golden Dawn, with blocks of stone pelted from the hills. The detention centers in countries around the world, the makeshift, unsanitary camps. The burning of the Calais Jungle. The fences, the checkpoints, the border controls, despite the promise of safety to those at risk of harm.

  These records documented another vein of suffering, the persecution of a people within their own borders, where home was no longer a place of refuge. Would greater knowledge of the atrocities authorized by Assad make a difference to public perceptions?

  Widespread, systematic torture. Industrial-scale killing.

  Regrettably, he knew the answer. Assad’s politicide had been conducted over a period of years. Chemical warfare, the bombing of civilians, hadn’t altered perceptions at all.

  To Esa, there was no question of what Syrians were fleeing. But he’d heard the range of responses: Why don’t they have any papers? Why don’t they wa
it their turn? Why don’t they stay and fight?

  But he wondered how civilians could fight against explosives dropped by jets, or chemical weapons deployed by their own government. If they took up arms, they were branded jihadists; their neighborhoods suffered the punishment. Over time, jihadist groups had infiltrated the war, adding to the share of killing and destruction, until the Arab Spring was no more than a memory.

  He replaced the photographs, wondering how CIJA’s operatives achieved distance from these realities. Or how the prosecutors did. His fingers rested on a page that had become separated from the others. He glanced down at it. Someone had typed up a translation of two paragraphs in Arabic, a description of a session at Branch 215. He skimmed it, sweat forming on his brow. He tried to avoid the details but his attention was caught by the final sentences, by how well he understood them.

  My cellmate couldn’t last. He screamed for his mother. When that didn’t help, he cried for the Prophet Muhammad. So the guards brought the Muhammad stick, and then they beat him with that.

  The Muhammad stick.

  Named for the messenger of peace. Used in the name of terror. His face gray, his mouth pinched with horror, he put his head in his hands and wept.

  34

  Delft, the Netherlands

  They met Audrey’s contact from CIJA at the Stads-Koffyhuis, a charming street-side café whose windows were framed in the blue-and-white palette of Delftware. A green arboreal border strung with pinecones and tiny lights hung above the patio. Lise Cloutier, a French-Canadian attorney, had insisted they meet inside and wait in an inconspicuous corner.

  As they waited for Cloutier to arrive, Esa and Sehr sat across from each other in silence. Esa watched as Sehr perused the menu, but in the end all she ordered was coffee. He chose to wait for Lise Cloutier; when she came, he viewed her arrival with relief, taking her briefcase and pulling out her chair.

  When their orders had been placed, he took a moment to study her. He was struck at once by the fierce intelligence in her eyes. He knew not to underestimate her in any case; she was a former prosecutor who’d worked as a special advisor to the high commissioner for human rights at the United Nations. She was one of CIJA’s secret weapons, heavily involved in the training of volunteers, and in collating records smuggled out of Syria.

  She offered them nothing until Esa handed over his police ID and showed her a copy of his authorization. Even then, she took out her phone and verified his name and background through Community Policing’s website. She studied the photograph on the website, compared it to the man sitting across from her, and nodded. Then she frowned at Sehr.

  ‘And you, mademoiselle? What is your stake in this investigation?’ A touch defensively, Sehr explained her position. Lise Cloutier flicked through her phone again, this time confirming that Sehr had worked as a prosecutor in Ontario. Her eyebrows rose as she skimmed Sehr’s background. Sehr didn’t interrupt, a subtle color rising under her skin.

  Cloutier’s résumé and reputation were exceedingly distinguished. She’d diagnosed the reasons for Sehr’s career transition in moments.

  ‘Is this some kind of personal redemption for you? Is that why you’ve accompanied Inspector Khattak?’

  Khattak stayed quiet, knowing his intervention would be unwelcome.

  Sehr gave the older woman a steady glance.

  ‘I was hired by Nathan Clare to assist in the search for his sister. I’m Woman to Woman’s counsel. And Audrey Clare is a friend.’

  ‘I see.’ Lise Cloutier transferred her gaze to Khattak. ‘So then? What do you have for me? Why did you want to see me?’

  ‘We have files that were smuggled out of Syria. We’re here to turn them over.’

  Lise Cloutier’s eyes widened. ‘Where?’

  Khattak nodded at the window. ‘On the street, in the trunk of that parked car. Twenty-five boxes’ worth. Audrey stored them here in Delft. I presume it’s you she came here to meet.’

  ‘Just a moment.’ Lise Cloutier made a call on her phone, speaking rapidly in French. Khattak, who’d followed the general sense of her words, offered, ‘We’d be glad to drive these boxes to your headquarters.’

  Cloutier made a sharp gesture of negation. ‘That won’t be necessary, Inspector Khattak. We’ve been waiting for these boxes for weeks. We didn’t know Audrey was missing until you called us.’

  Khattak had thought about his questions for Cloutier in some detail, and now he asked them, deciding not to wait for Sehr’s input. Whatever had happened between them, they had to remember Audrey was their reason for being here.

  Cloutier gave them a rapid summary of her meetings with Audrey. The purpose of the meetings was as Khattak had surmised. A defector known to CIJA had been in touch with Audrey – his name was Sami al-Nuri. Audrey had used her contacts to channel his message to CIJA. She’d made a visit to Delft to discuss CIJA’s needs in terms of documentation, then returned to Greece to assist Sami with the channeling of that information through contacts at Camp Apaydin. Sehr didn’t know what had delayed Audrey’s delivery of the documents – she’d come to Delft especially for the purpose of the meeting. An unavoidable delay on Cloutier’s part in communicating a rendezvous point had altered things. Audrey had made an abrupt return to Lesvos, but Cloutier didn’t know the reason for Audrey’s sudden change in plans. Nor had Audrey had time to wait to transfer over the documents.

  Khattak observed that it had taken courage for Audrey to embark on her mission, a mission she’d kept a secret.

  ‘That was at our request. We asked her to assist our courier,’ Cloutier said. Reflecting on his words, she added, ‘I’m assuming you looked at what was in those boxes. You must have seen the photographs.’

  Khattak agreed that he had. He’d kept his reaction to his discoveries from Sehr, trying to assume the appearance of neutrality, but he wasn’t finding it easy.

  ‘You’re giving credit to the wrong person. If you saw the men in the photographs, you must know what Sami was risking. This is a Syrian story. It belongs to the Syrian people.’

  Khattak was silent. It was difficult for him to accept that from the moment he’d landed on Lesvos, even with his experience of the camps, he’d seen the case through the lens of his worry for Audrey. To Esa and Rachel both, Audrey had been the priority. She still was.

  In answer to his thoughts, Cloutier said, ‘Audrey is your responsibility, I understand. I was speaking about CIJA: we’ve taken none of the risks, we’ve suffered none of the losses. I was sorry to hear your news of Sami. He was dedicated to this cause. Without him, we wouldn’t have singled out the torturers at Camp Apaydin.’

  The look of sorrow on her face deepened as she told them, ‘We promised to help resettle him in Canada, but Sami kept delaying. He believed he could do more.’

  ‘You spoke to him?’ Khattak asked, a memory ticking over in his mind.

  ‘Many times on the phone. He was exceptionally bright – kind, decent, deeply caring about the plight of his fellow Syrians – he was the brave one, Inspector. Not that Mademoiselle Clare wasn’t helpful, but she didn’t share his risks.’

  Audrey’s disappearance may have suggested otherwise, but Khattak didn’t demur. He felt like a schoolboy who’d been chastised by a teacher. His coffee had grown cold and he signaled for another, including his companions. He looked over to find Sehr watching him as if she knew what he’d been thinking, and he was struck by how easily she seemed to read his mood. She asked Cloutier a question.

  ‘Can you think of anyone who had reason to harm Sami? Was the Interpol agent Aude Bertin tied into CIJA’s work? Perhaps that’s the reason they were targets.’

  Cloutier looked at Sehr with dawning interest. ‘Agent Bertin was not affiliated with CIJA, I have no idea why she was killed. As for your other question, many people had reason to wish Sami al-Nuri dead. He was an enemy to those who run Assad’s detention centers, he wa
s an enemy to some at Apaydin. From my conversations with him, I can tell you one thing. He wasn’t about to give up on Apaydin, any more than he intended to give up his search for Israa.’

  Khattak’s hands jerked together. He looked at Sehr in shock. Sehr shook her head, indicating he should ask.

  ‘Sami was searching for a girl named Israa?’

  Cloutier was surprised. She waved a hand over her coffee cup. ‘Of course. It was why he kept returning to Turkey. He thought the more valuable he was to us – as an interpreter or informer, call him what you like – the more likely it was that we’d be able to assist in resettling his friends. Legally, the Fakhris weren’t eligible to sponsor Sami’s friends; their safe resettlement in Canada was the condition Sami imposed.’

  His nerves on edge, Khattak took out his phone. He found Rachel’s photographs from the morgue. He showed the picture of Aude Bertin to Cloutier. Her mouth folded up in sympathy.

  Then he pulled up the photograph of Sami’s abused body.

  ‘They were shot together at close range. Aude Bertin may have been killed trying to defend Sami.’

  Cloutier gripped the phone. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked. ‘That isn’t Sami al-Nuri.’

  Leaving Sehr to wrap up their meeting, Khattak stepped out into the street to call Rachel. He wandered down to the canal, where he breathed in the scent of freshly budded trees hanging over the river. He passed an unexpected little grove of elms, then found a quiet place to make his call under a thicket of trees bearing their branches to the ground.

  ‘It’s not Sami al-Nuri?’ Rachel repeated, incredulous. ‘Then who the hell is it?’

  ‘Think back to our interview with the Fakhris. What did Dania say when we showed her the photograph of Sami?’

  Wherever Rachel was, it was noisy. She asked him to repeat himself, and he did.