No Place of Refuge

by Ausma Zehanat Khan

  Khattak considered her gravely. ‘Do you know the license plate number of your van?’

  She told them. Khattak’s gaze flicked to Rachel, who looked as tense as he felt.

  ‘Do you keep a record of who borrows it?’

  ‘Why would I need to?’ Perplexed, she said, ‘Esa, Rachel. Why are you asking about my van? What’s going on?’

  ‘Eleni.’ Rachel said her name, drawing out the syllables. ‘Does anyone call you Lenny? Maybe it’s your nickname?’

  ‘What? Of course not. Everyone calls me Eleni.’

  ‘Did Audrey ask to meet with you the day she disappeared?’ Bewildered, Eleni admitted that she had.

  Watching for signs of deception, Khattak said, ‘You didn’t tell me this the other night.’

  He caught it – the telltale glance away, the hand that rubbed her shoulder.

  ‘There’s nothing to tell. One of the volunteers told me Audrey was looking for me. I was at a training session on Chios. I didn’t see Audrey. In fact, I stayed in Chios because I had another meeting.’

  ‘Where did you stay?’ asked Rachel.

  ‘The Hotel Athena.’

  Khattak made the connection. ‘Can anyone prove this?’

  Eleni nodded. ‘There were twenty trainees at the session. And I suppose Nikos could confirm it as well – he runs the Athena.’ Nervous now, she asked, ‘Why are you treating me like a suspect? What is it you think I’ve done?’

  ‘Your van was seen the night Audrey disappeared. She was forced into it and driven off.’

  Eleni clutched one of the pillars. ‘My van was here when I returned from Chios. The next night it was borrowed again.’

  ‘Who borrowed it?’

  ‘They all do. It’s impossible to keep track. Shukri, Freja, Hans. Even Peter did once, and Vincenzo when he’s helping out.’

  Khattak seized on the name. Was it possible Ruksh had heard ‘Vinny,’ not ‘Lenny’?

  ‘Vincenzo’s often here on Lesvos. He’s with the Guardia Costiera.’

  Urgently, Khattak asked, ‘Did he borrow your van tonight?’

  Her fingers pressed to her lips, Eleni said, ‘He may have. It was gone when I got home.’

  ‘Where would he have taken it?’

  She sank down on the sofa. ‘To Eftalou Beach, where else?’

  ‘Eleni.’ She looked up at Khattak, trying to collect herself. ‘Can you think of anywhere on the island, anywhere near the beach, where someone could be hidden without attracting notice – if they screamed for help, for example, or were able to bang on the walls?’

  Her face white, Eleni said, ‘You think Audrey is still on the island?’

  ‘Please,’ he said. ‘Is there anywhere that you know of ?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Sir,’ Rachel interrupted, ‘let’s get down to Eftalou. Let’s get on this right away.’

  ‘Call the local police, Rachel. Have them meet us there.’

  He turned back to Eleni. ‘Don’t tell anyone we were here, don’t tell anyone we asked these questions. It’s critical to your safety. And please – lock your doors and windows.’

  ‘What’s happening?’ she asked in the same bewildered tone. ‘What’s happening on this island?’

  He shook his head. ‘I can’t tell you yet.’

  They were at the door when Eleni’s voice followed after them. She had chased them to the drive.

  ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing near the beaches. But up in the hills, the farmers have sheds they use when the nights are cold and livestock have gone missing. They’re storage sheds. There’s no proper road by which they can be reached, the tracks get muddy in the rain.’

  But traversable for a vehicle with four-wheel drive.

  ‘Which ones are near the beach road?’

  Eleni shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I’m sorry, I wish I could help.’ The police knew the local roads better than they did, but Khattak was dismayed to find Sehr and Nate at the station. Nate drove his own car; he couldn’t be dissuaded from joining in the search. Captain Nicolaides, Sehr’s contact with the IPCD, had already invited Sehr into his car. When Khattak objected, Nicolaides advised him that Sehr had been on the islands for weeks: she’d been the one running point on the search.

  Rachel slid into the backseat with Sehr. ‘Let’s go, sir. We’re losing time.’

  She’d looked over at Nate to see if he wanted her company, torn between her duty as Khattak’s partner and her concern for Nate – her longing to be needed. He didn’t sense her concern or notice her glance, he was laser-focused on the search.

  Nate followed the second police car in the opposite direction. Nicolaides drove in the direction of the village of Xidera, where several store houses were located. Khattak didn’t attempt to dissuade Sehr again, but Rachel could see he wasn’t happy.

  They’d been assured there were no hiding places near the beach that weren’t subject to the daily traffic of fishermen loading and stowing gear, but that three or four store houses were dotted above the olive groves on the hill. Nicolaides explained that these storehouses were locked for the winter. Most of the farming on Lesvos was done by hobby farmers who kept a few sheep or a handful of goats. Grazing practices had changed over the years, the land becoming more arid. Milk and cheeses were produced locally, to be sold in the villages.

  Rachel paid no attention to this, though Khattak asked questions at intervals. She was following their progress up the hill. Most of the landscape was bare, but now and again she saw stone-wall enclosures that served to mark off grazing areas, or boulders that had fallen from the top of the hill. At one point, they passed a flock of sheep herded under a clump of Valonia oaks. There were no other cars on the road. Rachel questioned how effective Nate’s private investigators had been if they hadn’t uncovered the van or thought to search the storage sheds on the hills.

  Then she reminded herself she’d only learned about the van through Aya’s direct confession. Sami hadn’t trusted them enough to tell them until they’d made their own roundabout discoveries.

  Rachel didn’t have to imagine Sami’s anguish at Israa’s disappearance: she knew it first-hand. She’d thought Israa had been abandoned until Sehr made it clear that Roux’s focus was on the children who were slipping through the cracks of the crisis.

  She spied the flash of moonlight on tin and called a warning to the others. The car came to a halt. Rachel scrambled up the hill. What she found was a cobbled-together tin shack, partially demolished by the weather, corroded sheets of tin listing in the wind. The smell of dried manure rose from the other side of a ramshackle wooden fence.

  The shed was open to their view. There were no signs of recent occupation. They climbed back into the police car as a call came through from Nicolaides’s partner. Rachel held her breath. Nicolaides frowned – there was no news of Audrey.

  Rachel looked at Nicolaides’s map. The island was bigger than she’d realized – too large for their search party to cover. It was cross-hatched by pastures, though Nicolaides assured them the villages were no more than twenty minutes from the beach. It seemed reasonable to begin by searching the area closest to Kara Tepe.

  They drove a little longer, occasionally stopping to question villagers. After a while, Rachel leaned forward to tap Khattak’s shoulder.

  ‘Sir,’ she said, ‘we’re not going to have any luck like this. We need to coordinate a search-and-rescue team. What say we head back to the pub and get our hands on Vincenzo?’

  Khattak turned in his seat. ‘Let’s give it some time. Someone will spot the van – it’s the best lead we have.’

  The radio squawked at them and Nicolaides picked it up, speaking into the transmitter.

  A flurry of remarks were exchanged at high volume, then Nicolaides locked the car into a three-point turn, reversing at speed down the road.

>   ‘We have something.’

  ‘The van?’ Rachel asked with a sense of premonition.

  ‘There’s a lead in Xidera. The villagers say they’ve seen the van go up the road behind their village. There’s a store house there, an old one. It hasn’t been in use for years, no one from the village goes up there. I think it’s worth checking out.’

  They completed the drive in silence, the road increasingly rugged as it climbed the north face of the mountain. A vehicle approached from the rear. Rachel urged Nicolaides to allow the other car to pass, but her warning came too late. The vehicle hit them broadside, then accelerated and drove past. She caught a fleeting glimpse of the taillights of a van before the police car flew over a massive piece of stone that tore through the car’s undercarriage. It spun on the slippery road, careened off the path, and plunged wildly down the hill.

  It came to a halt fifty feet from the road, at an angle facing the sea. Rachel hadn’t been wearing her seat belt. Her head received a thump against the partition between the front seat and the rear. Sehr had been more responsible. She unsnapped her belt and staggered out of the car to the driver’s side door, unharmed like Esa, who she’d checked on first.

  Nicolaides was unconscious in the driver’s seat. Sehr tried to tug him loose.

  Khattak helped Rachel from the car, then gently pushed Sehr aside. Rachel hurried to help, though her vision felt impaired.

  ‘I can manage,’ he said. ‘Sit down, Rachel, before you fall.’ Rachel fell back, feeling sick. She stumbled over to the oak tree she had missed, leaving Khattak to extricate Nicolaides from the car she now recognized was steaming.

  ‘Sir!’ she shouted. ‘Get away from the car!’

  She scrambled back to it, diving into the front seat to yank out the portable radio.

  Nicolaides was almost loose. Khattak pulled his body from the car to the road, then adjusted his weight over his shoulder and carried him to the nearest tree.

  Freed from their weight, the car dipped toward the sea. It skidded close to Sehr. Khattak yanked her out of the way. He lost control, shouting at Sehr. ‘You could have gotten yourself killed!’

  ‘Sir!’ Rachel interrupted, diverting them both. ‘Look there!’

  She’d moved to the opposite side of the road, and just above the ridge, the outline of the store house was visible. It was bigger than she’d expected – a gray stone shed edged with broken terracotta tiles. The window to the side of a solid wooden door was blacked out.

  Rachel had seen something more. A white glint of steel around the corner – the back of a van. Was it the van that had clipped them?

  ‘We need to get up there.’ She glanced over at Sehr, puzzled by her stillness. ‘Radio in for help.’ She’d grabbed the map with the radio, and now she passed them both to Sehr.

  ‘Rachel.’ Sehr was looking at Khattak. A red stain marred the front of his shirt. He put his hand to it, surprised. It came away damp and discolored.

  ‘Christ.’

  Rachel stumbled to his side, her head aching from the blow she’d sustained in the crash.

  ‘It’s not deep,’ he said. ‘It’s nothing.’

  Rachel didn’t respond. She stripped away his shirt, checking the wound herself. He was right, it wasn’t deep, but it was bleeding freely. She ripped a sleeve from his shirt, trying not to react to the sight of the scar that bisected his torso.

  ‘Sehr. Come hold this.’

  Rachel ran to the car. Smoke was escaping from the back.

  ‘Rachel, don’t!’ Khattak’s voice was urgent with fear.

  Rachel didn’t listen. She had a minute, maybe two. She wrested the trunk open and grabbed for the first-aid kit. The car gave a mighty jerk, nearly ripping her arm from its socket. She braced herself, holding on. The bumper slipped out of her grasp. The car jerked down the hill, meeting its inevitable fate. Flames licked up its side in an orange fury. But by the time the car caught fire, Rachel had the kit in her hand.

  ‘Sorry, sir.’ She hurried over to Khattak. ‘You know I don’t follow orders all that well.’ She flashed him a reassuring smile.

  Sehr was applying pressure to the wound, using Khattak’s sleeve as a bandage. She gave him a tremulous smile. If it was meant to be encouraging, she wasn’t doing it right. Rachel found the disinfectant and managed a passable field dressing. She didn’t mention the scar, though the sight of it shocked her. How on earth had Khattak gotten a scar like that?

  ‘You radio in, sir. We need backup and Nicolaides needs attention. I’ll head up to the shed.’ She jerked her head in the direction the van had gone.

  ‘No!’ Khattak said sharply. ‘Not alone, Rachel. You can’t risk it on your own.’

  ‘Sir, I think we were run off the road. Audrey could be in that shed. If she is, we have to get to her before that van comes back. Someone tipped them off.’

  ‘Then I’m coming with you. Sehr can stay with Nicolaides.’

  Esa tried to rise but couldn’t. He sank to the ground with a muffled curse, his back against the tree. Rachel didn’t wait.

  ‘Stay with him,’ she said to Sehr. ‘I don’t know how bad that wound is. Get him something to wear.’

  She didn’t stick around to listen to more from Khattak.

  Sehr gave him Nicolaides’s jacket and radioed in to Mytilene. She hunched beside Esa on the ground. He opened his eyes to find her watching him.

  ‘I’m fine, Sehr.’

  ‘Esa.’ She touched a hand to his scar in horror, her touch lingering on his skin.

  ‘Don’t,’ he said, placing his hand over hers. ‘I’m not hurt, I’ve just lost a little blood. Did you radio in?’

  She nodded. ‘They’re on their way. But I don’t know how far away they are.’

  ‘Sehr,’ he said. ‘Help me up. I have to go after Rachel.’

  ‘Absolutely not!’

  ‘I have to. If the van is there, she’s at risk. I can’t let anything happen to her.’

  ‘So you’d risk your life for Rachel?’ Sehr sounded angry. As angry as he’d been earlier.

  ‘Just as she would for me. You saw her grab the kit.’

  Sehr didn’t answer this. ‘Are you sure it’s not worse than you’re telling me? The scar –’

  He leaned his head against the tree, his eyes closing. ‘It’s from the accident with Samina. You remember the surgery.’

  He was seeing it again. The car spinning into flames, Samina trapped inside. He’d been helpless to save his wife, his throat ravaged by her name.

  His side was burning, but he knew Rachel’s bandage would hold.

  There were so many things Rachel did well, he wondered if anyone had ever told her. She didn’t panic in a crisis. She became more certain, more utterly reliable. She had trained herself to be all things to Zachary. And as he’d learned in Algonquin, she was guided by a moral imperative of her own. He needed to go after her now.

  He looked over at Nicolaides. The crash might have been deliberate. For the traffickers to be operating from Lesvos, many different players would have to be involved. Nicolaides could have been trying to delay and simply miscalculated the risk. He didn’t know Rachel’s determination like Esa did. Rachel wouldn’t let anything derail her quest to find Audrey.

  Sehr’s head turned. She thought she’d heard a siren. But when she looked down the road, no vehicles were in sight. What if the police couldn’t find them? What if she’d given the wrong directions?

  Esa tried to rise again. Sehr pushed him back, studying the path Rachel had taken up the hill.

  ‘Fine.’ She placed the radio in Esa’s hand. ‘Wait for the police. I’ll go after Rachel.’

  ‘No!’ His eyes flew open. ‘I won’t allow it, Sehr.’

  She leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth, surprised by her own boldness. In the extremity of the situation, it was warranted. She could h
ave lost him, and the knife-edge certainty of what that would have meant diminished her resentment.

  ‘You’re in no condition to stop me,’ she warned him. ‘And even if you weren’t, I don’t take kindly to being bossed around. Not even by you, Esa Khattak.’

  She gave him a quick smile, infusing more confidence into her voice than she felt. Grabbing the flashlight from the first-aid kit, she followed Rachel up the hill.

  The landscape near the store house was bare, save for a pair of ancient oaks whose branches spread over the door. A gravel path led around the side of the shed. Rachel checked the van first, peering through the tinted windshield. She couldn’t see past the empty front seat. She tested a door handle: it was locked.

  Stealthily, she moved around the side of the shed to the small, square window. She had to stretch to her tiptoes for a look inside. She’d been right in her guess. This window was blacked out, too. She’d check the other side of the building, and as a last resort, the door.

  She could hear a kind of grunting inside – was something being dragged? As quietly as she could, she felt her way around the building, trying not to scatter gravel as she moved. There was another window on the far side. She stretched to her full height. This one wasn’t completely covered; she could see through a strip at the bottom. She pressed her face against the glass, her eyes attempting to penetrate the gloom.

  There was someone inside the shed. A hand was chained to a rusted pipe, the body wrapped in a plastic tarp, the head hooded in black. It wasn’t moving. Rachel tried to clean the glass with her hand. She couldn’t see anything else. A shadow moved across the window. She heard a muffled noise.

  And then, more loudly, footsteps. The shadow froze.

  A knocking on the door was followed by a voice. It was Sehr calling for Rachel.

  The door of the shed was thrown open. Rachel heard a cry of surprise, then another body was dragged into the store house. Sehr was struggling with a figure dressed in black. Rachel thought she recognized something. It moved out of the light too quickly for her to be sure.

  She had to get into the shed before something happened to Sehr. She weighed her options. What if she broke into the van? And sounded the horn – it could serve as a distraction. Or she could break the window and draw Sehr’s assailant outside. Her hand slipped on the outer frame. Suddenly she noticed there was no movement in the shed, no sound. The night was eerily quiet. She heard a faint rustling and froze. Was it the wind through the oaks?