The Language of Secrets Read online

  She made her way to the public washrooms, locking herself inside the shed. Close by, she heard the voices of Ruksh and Ashkouri, murmuring in the soft tones of lovers. She peeked her head out of the shed’s tiny window, hoping to catch a glimpse of Khattak’s sister.

  Noon light. Hot bright bursts against the peacock sky.

  The temperature was rising. The air inside the shed was frigid. She stood on tiptoe, following the sound of the voices until she found them. They were on the ridge behind the shed, Ashkouri shaking down snow from the surrounding pines onto Ruksh’s dark hair as she laughed.

  Rachel snapped a picture with her phone, texted it to Khattak.

  Along with the message that she didn’t have her car or her gun.

  When Khattak didn’t answer, she forwarded the message to Sehr Ghilzai. And after a moment’s thought, to Martine Killiam as well.

  Her cell was half-charged, the service spotty.

  Grace knocked on the door.

  “It’s freezing out here, hurry up.”

  It was much colder in the shed than it was outside in the white glare of the sun. Grace was cold because she wasn’t dressed for the weather.

  Rachel tucked her phone deep inside her parka and traded places with the teenager. She offered the extra fleece and thermal leggings she had packed to Grace, who was shorter than Rachel.

  “I’ll take the fleece, thanks.”

  Rachel returned to her cabin to get it, to find that Ruksh and Ashkouri had circled back to the clearing. Ruksh did a double take.

  “Rachel, isn’t it? How did you get here?”

  So Ruksh was still covering for them.

  Ashkouri nodded pleasantly at Rachel.

  “When I didn’t see you at the mosque, I thought you must have changed your mind.”

  She heard the same threat in his voice that she had heard the previous night when he had stopped her by her car.

  It shocked Rachel that only a handful of hours had passed.

  She felt as though she had run a marathon in that time.

  And she thought of Khattak in his hospital bed, the stitches at his temple, how close he had come to fatal injury.

  She couldn’t muster a smile for Ashkouri.

  “I didn’t think you’d leave so early,” she said.

  “I didn’t want to waste the light.”

  It was dark when Ashkouri had driven. Unless he meant he’d been waiting for this moment: sunrise over the trees, a glancing plenitude against the snow. He looked beyond Rachel to Jamshed Ali’s car.

  “You came alone?” he asked.

  “I came with the kids. I was going to teach them how to skate,” Rachel said. “There must be a creek around here. You should come, Ruksh. I have an extra pair of skates with me.”

  No way to convey her sense of urgency to Ruksh without also conveying it to Ashkouri.

  Rachel challenged Ashkouri with a look. And echoed his provocative manner of speech.

  “You can spare the kids for a bit, can’t you?”

  His nod acknowledged it.

  “Grace, yes. Din, no. Grace will show you the way.”

  She could loan the skates to Paula instead. If she could just get hold of the keys.

  Jamshed had left the SUV unlocked rather than giving the keys to Paula.

  And then, by a stroke of luck, Ruksh asked Hassan for his keys so she could grab her bag from his car. Rachel walked to the car beside her, scanning its interior.

  It was a stick shift.

  Rachel could drive stick like a race car driver; that was no problem.

  “The skates?” Ruksh asked with a smile, probably wondering why Rachel was shadowing her so closely.

  “They’re in Jamshed’s car.” Rachel dropped her voice. “A man was murdered here, Ruksh. Why would you come here when your brother warned you off?”

  Ruksh stiffened beside her.

  “I can think for myself,” she hissed. “I know my fiancé better than either of you do.”

  This wasn’t the moment to convince Ruksh. Rachel hung over the car door as Esa’s sister retrieved her bag. Speaking into Ruksh’s hair, Rachel said, “I need you to keep those keys, Ruksh. Whatever you do, don’t hand them back to him. Please.”

  Ruksh froze, half-crouched over the passenger seat, her hands searching in the glove compartment for something Rachel couldn’t see.

  “You’re not dragging me into this,” she muttered. “Hassan has nothing to do with Mohsin’s death.”

  She had one move left, Rachel realized. And Ruksh’s reaction to it would be unpredictable.

  “Don’t react to what I’m about to say. Your brother is in the hospital with a head injury. He was attacked last night by someone from this camp.”

  Ruksh’s gloved hands clutched at her handbag.

  “He’s all right,” Rachel whispered. “But you have to come back with me.”

  A knock on the driver’s window made Rachel’s skin flinch. She controlled her reaction just in time. Ruksh wasn’t as lucky. She banged her head against the roof of the car. It was Grace, not Ashkouri.

  “Should I show you the creek?” Grace asked.

  Rachel made a subtle gesture with her hands at Ruksh.

  Keep the keys, she mouthed. Bring your phone.

  “Absolutely,” she said to Grace. “Ruksh wants to come too.”

  If she could get the two of them alone by the creek, maybe she could convince them of what needed to be done, get into the car and drive off. It wouldn’t work if they didn’t cooperate; the cars were too close to the clearing, where Ashkouri and Jamshed were now seeing to the fire.

  Ruksh dropped her bag at the cabin.

  Rachel couldn’t tell if Ruksh had done as she’d asked or not.

  Each of the women grabbed skates from the back of Jamshed’s SUV. Rachel looked around for Paula, stopping at the cabin, which was empty. No sign of her. This couldn’t wait.

  “Lead the way,” she said to Grace.

  They trekked over flat, crunchy snow up the rise, using branches to haul themselves over the slippery portions, trampling pine needles beneath their feet. The roar of the Madawaska became louder as they approached, water rushing against stones and lichen and ice.

  Rachel palmed her phone from her pocket.

  No cell service. She sent the text to Martine Killiam anyway.

  Activate strike team. My cover is blown.

  They were climbing higher than she’d expected, nearing the side of a drumlin.

  “Isn’t this where you said Mohsin’s body was found?” she asked Grace.

  “On the other side of the rise. The creek is on this side.”

  “Can I see it?” Rachel asked. “Will you take us there first?”

  “Why?” Grace scowled. “Why would you want to see it? Isn’t that kind of morbid?”

  Ruksh intervened, though why she was trying to help, Rachel didn’t understand.

  “I’d like to see it too, Grace. Just to pay my respects.”

  Grace’s steps slowed, sliding on the slippery surface of the forest floor.

  “I don’t want to go back there.”

  “Will you point it out then? Just the tree?”

  Grace shrugged. “And they say I’m the weird one.”

  They climbed the drumlin at an angle, moving sideways to minimize the risk of tumbling toward the river. Small stones and pebbles moved under their feet as the covering of snow and ice thinned. They reached a secluded grove of trees, a mix of maples and birch and ash. The largest of these was a sugar maple, its branches cracked like the mast of a ship veering into a storm. Rachel looked down from the summit. The cabins were far away, screened from her view by the quivering trees.

  Closer to where she stood, a mixture of rain and snow had washed the blood off the ground. But there was a telltale reddish bruising around the trunk of the maple.

  Grace stalked away. “I’ll wait for you by the creek. I want to try on my skates.”

  A moment later, they heard a whoosh as Gra
ce slid down the side of the drumlin.

  Ruksh asked about Esa the moment the two women were alone.

  “He was attacked near his car, leaving from my place. He has a couple of fractured ribs and a headache he won’t soon forget.”

  “But why do you say someone from the camp must have done it?”

  “It’s where the investigation has led us. You know I can’t tell you more than that.”

  Rachel trudged through the small clearing, her eyes searching for overlooked clues, for things the INSET team wouldn’t have found important at the time. The ground was well trodden, the maple tree wordless.

  She turned and surprised Ruksh in the act of murmuring a prayer for Mohsin, her eyes closed, her hands clasped. When Ruksh was finished, Rachel held out her hand.

  “The keys, please. We have to get out of here now.”

  Ruksh took a step back. “Not until you tell me why. Because I know that Hassan didn’t kill Mohsin.”

  “Do you also know that he didn’t attack your brother? Where was he this morning at two a.m.? Was he with you?”

  “No, of course not. He was at Nur. Jamshed will tell you.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t rely on Mr. Ali, any more than I can rely on Mr. Ashkouri. You have to trust me. You have to know that I’m acting as your brother would have wished.”

  “Why don’t you just tell Hassan who you are? Have it out with him? Tell him whatever it is you suspect him of?”

  Rachel’s face paled.

  “That would be the worst thing I could do. Please listen to me, Ruksh. I think he already knows, but you cannot confirm it, do you understand? Just come with me in the car, and I’ll explain to both of you on the way.”

  Ruksh ignored her. She pointed to the tree at Rachel’s back.

  “Rachel, do you see that?”

  Rachel moved closer to the maple and squatted down upon her haunches.

  At the bottom of the reddish bruise, and filtering off to the side of the tree, three letters had been carved.

  FAF.

  They might have been there forever. They might have been carved by a dying man. Rachel tried to remember if a pocketknife had been found on Mohsin Dar’s body.

  “I don’t know what that means,” she muttered to Ruksh, quickly snapping a photograph. She texted it to Khattak. Once she made it back to the outdoor shed, the photograph would transmit. Along with her text to Killiam.

  “FAF,” Ruksh said. “It’s the name of a poet. Faiz Ahmad Faiz. Mohsin must have carved it into the tree. To send someone a message.”

  Rachel saw the realization creep into the other woman’s face.

  “Poetry,” Ruksh whispered. “The main theme of the halaqas.”

  “We have to leave now.” Rachel tried to cover her panic by being firm. “Without delay.”

  They heard the sound of loose gravel and crunching snow. Both women moved to look over the edge of the snow-ridged drumlin.

  Grace looked up at them, her skates tied together around her neck, her cheeks red with exertion.

  “The creek’s frozen through,” Grace said. “I tested it to make sure, just like Jamshed showed us the last time we were here.”

  She held up a small metal object in one hand, ten inches long with a crank handle at the top and a rounded strike node at the bottom.

  It was a ninety-millimeter-thick Omega Pacific ice screw.

  It was normally used for belaying, or testing the thickness of ice for mountain climbing. It could also be used on a lake or creek surface, provided the lake wasn’t deep. When depressed into the ice, it left behind a circular indentation. Like the one in Esa’s forehead.

  “Where did you get that?” Rachel breathed.

  Grace gave them a quizzical look.

  “It belongs to Jamshed,” Grace said. “I grabbed it from his car.”

  26

  Khattak met Ciprian Coale on his own ground, at the downtown offices of Community Policing. CPS occupied half of the fourth floor of the imaginatively designed police headquarters on College Street, where blue glass met pale pink stone in a flurry of right angles and triangles.

  The offices commanded an impressive view of the downtown core, the deep mauves of the skyline edging toward night.

  Khattak’s hospital discharge had taken the better part of a day.

  He’d woken from his sleep to find Nate in his room, and listened to a concise recital of the steps Rachel had been forced to take in his absence. As he read Rachel’s texts, he fought back panic at the thought of his sister’s being ensnared by Hassan Ashkouri, in the remote spot where Ashkouri had deliberately placed her.

  There was no answer from Rachel when he called her. Or from Ruksh. Or from Killiam.

  Coale, the next best thing, had deigned to meet Esa downtown, likely because Coale was liaising with officers at headquarters. On the phone, Khattak had demanded that backup be sent to Algonquin, or that local police from Huntsville be sent to locate Rachel and Ruksh.

  His sister was in danger. And Khattak had been attacked beside his car for a reason.

  “You take your orders from me,” Coale had said. “Not the other way around.”

  There were messages on Khattak’s desk from the Department of Justice, and some from his personal contacts as well. Coale had taken Esa’s chair, the gesture symbolic, premeditated. A reckoning of what he thought had always been his due.

  Laine hovered behind him at the window, her face watchful and serious.

  What now? Esa thought.

  A dozen members of the INSET team were assembled in the outer offices, outside Khattak’s door.

  “Did you send agents to the park?” he asked Coale, without preamble.

  “My team had other priorities today.”

  Khattak raised his head. He understood why Coale had agreed to meet him downtown.

  “You’ve acted? You intercepted the delivery? Your takedown was successful?”

  Coale nodded. “We’ve arrested sixteen people, including Zakaria Aboud and Sami Dardas. Team members are going through their homes and offices now.”

  “So you listened to Rachel. You moved your timetable up. Did you get them all—didn’t you say that two dozen people were involved? And what about Ashkouri? If this makes the news—”

  “Did you miss the microphones on your way up, Khattak? The press conference takes place within the hour. We’re waiting on the superintendent.”

  Khattak swallowed hard on a ball of fear.

  “You told me the takedown would be on New Year’s Day.”

  Coale rose from Khattak’s chair. He paced around the desk until they were standing chest to chest. Coale’s narrow gray eyes alighted on the stitches at Khattak’s temple.

  “I couldn’t be sure whose side you were on, Khattak. Given your close association with your sister, I couldn’t be sure how far the knowledge would reach. So I played it close to my chest. And I was right to do so. Besides which—did you really think Ashkouri’s people would strike on a day that the city is empty? A few of them have gone to ground, but we’re confident we’ll get them all in the end.”

  The New Year Nakba.

  It was all that either Killiam or Coale had told Khattak of the terrorism plot.

  And both of them had chosen to lie.

  Because they had never fully trusted him. Because they had always thought his loyalties might be torn.

  Blood thundered in his temples. His face flushed a dark red. But when he spoke, his voice was controlled.

  “What the hell do you mean by that?”

  Coale signaled Laine with a flick of his wrist. She passed him the folder she was holding, her eyes blank and inscrutable on Esa’s face.

  “Do you know what this is, Khattak?”

  Coale stepped from Khattak’s office to the outer environs where his team members were assembled. Laine followed him, her back to Esa.

  Esa stood in the open door, beside the name and title that were stenciled on the glass.

  Esa Khattak, Director of
Community Policing.

  He felt it slipping beyond his reach.

  Yet all he could think of was Rachel and Ruksh, so far from help, at Ashkouri’s mercy.

  Rachel didn’t even have her gun.

  “Whatever it is you have to tell me, say it.” Khattak’s voice was curt. He needed to be on the road to Algonquin.

  As he spoke, his phone buzzed. There was a voice mail from Sehr Ghilzai that he had ignored. And two photographs that Rachel had texted him.

  One was of his sister with Ashkouri.

  The other was a set of initials carved into a tree. FAF. Above the photograph, Rachel had texted him the message, Tree where Dar died. Ruksh says it means Faiz Ahmad Faiz.

  An icy chill ran down Khattak’s spine.

  Mohsin followed your career, Alia had told him. He was proud of you. He called it “a spectacular ascent.”

  Mohsin had understood that he was dying. If he was going to communicate anything, it would have to be in a way that would mean something only to Khattak.

  Still woozy, Khattak braced his hand against the glass doors.

  Laine saw the color leave his face.

  “He needs to sit down,” she said. “He came straight here from the hospital.”

  “Give him a chair then. It doesn’t change what I have to say.”

  Khattak shook his head. “I’m fine. Get on with it, Ciprian.”

  Coale waved the folder at him.

  “These are transcripts of your phone calls, Khattak.”

  “So?”

  Why Faiz Ahmad Faiz? Esa wondered. When Esa and Mohsin had been undergraduates at the University of Toronto, writing for the same newspaper, he’d told Mohsin that Faiz was his favorite poet. He’d explained how Faiz’s poetry spoke both to the elites and the masses, using language that was conversational in tone, but formal in its diction—progressing from themes of idle love and beauty to the more pressing concerns of social justice and the interconnectedness of the human experience.

  The letters FAF had been carved into the frozen bark of the maple tree for Khattak to find. And to decipher.

  But what did it mean? Ashkouri had addressed the poetry of Faiz referentially, not as the main subject of his halaqas. He had spoken of the moon, Faiz wrote of the moon, every poet of the East that Khattak knew of had written about the moon.