The Language of Secrets

by Ausma Zehanat Khan

  Killiam’s eyes narrowed at Khattak’s implication.

  “We’ve put two years into this investigation, so you can trust that it’s not a hoax. These people may be amateurs, but they have know-how and materials, and they’ve coordinated a plan. We’ve been detailed and thorough. It’s just as well that you don’t know how thorough.”

  The words gave Khattak pause. Killiam was hinting at the broad net cast by the Anti-Terrorism Act, known at its controversial inception as Bill C-36. It wasn’t a subject he intended to debate with her. His reservations at the time of the introduction of the legislation had been noted in his personnel file. And he’d participated in debates about the recent, far more serious encroachment on civil liberties—the hammering home of Bill C-51, the new legislation with its unchecked surveillance powers and lack of civilian oversight.

  He feared what they were becoming.

  Killiam knew all this.

  “And the takedown?” he asked.

  Killiam’s eyes narrowed. “Sometime between Christmas and New Year’s Day. That will be my call. What I need to know is whether you can handle Andy Dar, Mohsin’s father.”

  Khattak spread his hands helplessly.

  “Do they have the bombs?” he asked.

  “If Mohsin hadn’t warned us in time, they’d have had everything they need to detonate four fertilizer bombs on location. We’ll be taking over the delivery, switching out the fertilizer with inert material. We’re in the setup phase of that operation now.”

  Khattak didn’t ask for details about the plan. Martine Killiam was Officer in Charge of a critical national security operation. She wasn’t about to tell him anything that didn’t directly relate to Mohsin Dar’s murder. But he did worry that the takedown had yet to occur.

  “You said you’ve run this operation for two years now. You don’t have to answer, but by that I presume you mean surveillance. Do your intercepts indicate premeditation? Had the group in the woods planned to kill Mohsin at the camp?”

  “There’s no evidence that anyone in the group had uncovered Mohsin’s agenda.”

  “What about the second cell you mentioned? Is it possible they know their communications are being monitored?”

  “It’s quite clear that they don’t.”

  “So the tactical strike is on schedule.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then isn’t it possible that Mohsin was murdered for reasons unrelated to his work as an RCMP agent?”

  Killiam gave him a quick nod. “That’s exactly the line I want you to pursue with Mohsin’s father. No one is to know anything about Mohsin’s work with us. Not his father, not his wife. You’re to treat this as a routine homicide investigation. You’ll work your way through a list of suspects without tipping either your hand or mine.”

  “Do you know who these suspects are?”

  “There were seven people at Algonquin with Mohsin. Two of them are women who may or may not have been involved in the activities of the cell. They may be hangers-on or partners; we can’t be certain. It would help if you tackle them first. Ask questions, dig around, but stay away from the camp itself. Don’t do anything that would compromise the operation.”

  “I can’t work undercover,” he pointed out. “Not after the press coverage I’ve received.”

  Martine Killiam shrugged. If she had bowed before the weight of ridicule directed at women when she was coming up in the Force, she’d still be deferring to men with half her abilities and none of her insight. She had very little patience for self-doubt. But given what she was asking of Esa, she seemed prepared to unbend a little.

  She pushed the buff-colored folder back at Khattak. “You won’t be undercover. You’ll be there in your very well-known capacity as head of CPS, ‘transparently and fully representing the rights of minority communities.’”

  She quoted the CPS mandate back at Khattak with a scorn he knew was not directed at his work, but at the political maneuvering behind it. She was well aware of the risks inherent in Khattak’s position. He would always be accused of failing some constituency or mandate—either the minority communities he’d been tasked to represent or the law he was meant to uphold. Only in rare cases would these objectives run together.

  “I don’t know that my history with Mohsin will make any difference to his father.”

  The words sounded strange on his tongue, as if he was distancing himself from his friend. Their lives had brushed up against each other without touching anything that truly mattered, at the end.

  “I won’t apologize for saying this, Esa. Use whatever you can with Andy Dar. Make a religious appeal, make a personal appeal—try anything that might work. You know his radio program. We can’t have him using it to raise questions about the camp. His grandstanding could scuttle the entire operation. You have to be seen as committed to solving Mohsin’s murder.”

  With a sense of genuine sadness, Khattak replied, “I am committed.”

  Killiam looked at him for a moment, but she left the comment alone.

  “If you find you’re not getting anywhere on the public front, send Rachel Getty in. You’ve been wise enough to keep her under wraps, but I’ve heard your partner is quite talented.”

  Khattak smiled. “More than talented,” he said. “She’s been a tremendous asset to CPS, and to me.”

  He watched Martine Killiam take note of this on a writing pad at her elbow.

  “Then you’ve done well to protect her from the spotlight, which in turn serves my operation now. Get her in if you can, but no one—and I can’t emphasize this enough—breathes a word about Nakba.”

  Khattak frowned. “Is there any chance the attack could succeed?”

  She avoided a direct answer.

  “I’ll leave the Outreach Coordinator to brief you on the details. You’ll work with her, and report to the Special Assistant, as I believe you’ve done in the past. Anything you find out, you convey to me through him.”

  But Khattak didn’t know anyone with that rank in the RCMP.

  “Inspector Ciprian Coale was promoted two years ago,” she told Khattak. “And you already know the Outreach Coordinator.”

  Khattak turned around in his chair. Two people were waiting outside Killiam’s office, one with a nasty smile playing about his mouth. As their eyes met, Ciprian Coale sketched a salute, the gesture just short of offensive. A dark-haired woman in a navy-blue suit raised her hand to knock at Killiam’s door.

  It was Laine Stoicheva, Khattak’s former partner.

  3

  Rachel Getty was gripped by a glorious sense of freedom. She was in the basement of her parents’ house in Etobicoke, Ontario, on the west side of the Greater Toronto Area, or the GTA. Her dark brown hair was cinched high in a ponytail at the top of her head. She squinted with furious concentration over the task of tending to her black leather hockey skates. She was a throwback in that way. The newer composite materials allowed for less moisture inside the boot, and less cracking, but Rachel’s skate boots fit her like a sleek second skin. They knew which way she would pivot on the ice even before she did, and were steadfast and sturdy around the ankles, much like Rachel herself.

  She was sharpening the blades of her skates with a manual sharpener, taking a quiet pride in the task. The diamond-coated tusk smoothed out the rough spot on the skate with the bad edge, an imperfection fittingly labeled a trauma, and one that had cost her a goal in the previous night’s game. A broad grin crossed Rachel’s face, making her brown eyes spark with glints of gold. A missed opportunity here and there didn’t matter. She’d still been selected as a forward for the all-star game that would take place just after New Year’s.

  And that was her Christmas present right there. She ran her fingers over both toe caps for one last check. Everything looked good, felt right. She wrapped the skates in a purple terry-cloth towel—a superstitious practice that carried over from her first days in house league.

  Keep your skates dry. Always protect the blades.

  Advice tha
t had served Rachel Getty well throughout her hockey career. That and the lessons in bluster and forechecking that Don Getty, her equally blusterous father, had taught her. Good lessons at the right time, when Don Getty was sober, but it didn’t mean she would miss him now. She probably wouldn’t miss him at all. Her boxes were packed and neatly labeled; the U-Haul van she had rented was parked on the curb outside her father’s house. Her skates were the last thing on her list. Perhaps because they were the first things in her heart.

  Twenty-eight years in Don Getty’s house and now Sergeant Rachel Getty was striking out on her own. She trudged upstairs, cradling her skates as tenderly as a newborn. Don Getty was out at the pub, sparing her the necessity of a final good-bye. Rachel’s mother waited dry-eyed on the porch, bundled into a white down jacket that had seen better days. The color made Lillian’s pale skin seem ever paler, her lipstick the faintest remark on her lips. Lillian kneaded her unprotected hands together as Rachel loaded her skates into the van.

  “You should go inside, Mum. It’s too cold to be out here without a scarf and gloves.”

  Lillian Getty shrugged, the thin cloud of her hair bobbing with the movement.

  Everything about her mother was inconclusive, Rachel thought. Like an unfinished painting where the painter had daubed the outline in a hurry, forgetting to furnish the details. Blurry and smudged. Just as life had smudged out Lillian Getty.

  Rachel felt the customary pang of sorrow for her mother, but this time it was unaccompanied by that pervasive feeling of guilt. There had been years of guilt, long slow months of worry and anguish, a constant state of turbulent existence for Rachel, who had floated along on the sea of her mother’s emotions without once thinking to fight the tide.

  Rachel slammed the door of the U-Haul.

  Those days were in the past. She had found her peace, found her way forward, despite the difficulties facing her team at work, including her boss, Esa Khattak, a man she had come to value and respect. Even the tension at work didn’t diminish the sunlight that felt as if it were flooding from Rachel’s veins to her heart.

  She had just bought her first home, a brand-new condominium off Bloor West Village, not close enough to the popular neighborhood to be out of her financial grasp, though its maintenance fees were considerable. Rachel had been saving her money since her first day in the police force. The promotion to Community Policing had included a sizable salary bump. And without her younger brother Zachary in her life for so many years, she’d had nothing to spend her money on.

  Moving day had been a long time coming.

  The condo was small, but it was finished with discriminating taste and a decided eye for luxury. To Rachel, who had spent every winter of her life in cold and colder places, surrounded by dreariness, the new condominium was a breath of perpetual springtime. Nothing could dim her spirits today.

  Her packing finished, she came to stand before her mother, forcing herself to meet Lillian Getty’s eyes.

  “You’ll be okay, Mum. You won’t even notice that I’m gone.”

  Which was a kinder way of saying Lillian wouldn’t miss her at all.

  Unlike Zach, who’d been mourned from the first moment to the last.

  Or so Rachel had thought, unaware of the secret Lillian had kept until Rachel had discovered it for herself.

  She touched a tentative hand to Lillian’s down-clad shoulder. A touch without contact, either given or received.

  “Can I do anything for you before I go?”

  She was eager to leave, afraid that Lillian would ask her to stay. In the last few weeks, Rachel had put her anxiety over her decision to move out to good use. Repainting and weatherproofing the front porch, the stairs. Organizing and dropping off years of hoarded materials to various local charities: old clothes, old books, bits and pieces of broken-down furniture. She had replaced the ceiling mounts in the house with contemporary light fixtures, insulated the windows against the coming winter, and resealed her parents’ cracked driveway.

  It was Rachel’s way of absolving herself for the unspoken sin of moving on with her life. For being excited about her job. For having made friends and allegiances that gave her a sense of worth. And for having found her brother.

  Lillian answered her daughter after a lengthy silence, as if she had been picking over the words to use, wanting to set each one in the right place, like the shells of small creatures gathered on family trips to the lake, lined up with care on the sill of the kitchen window. Shells Rachel had left untouched during her exhaustive purge of her parents’ house, along with Lillian’s records and magazines. And the gramophone with the missing needle.

  “You’ve done more than enough, Rachel.” She dragged the words out, her hands fastened together in a grip that left her knuckles white. It wasn’t the reproof Rachel took it for at first, because Lillian went on to add, “More than I thought you would do. More than either of us could expect.”

  Lillian took a deep breath, and Rachel sensed that her mother had chosen this final moment of interaction with her daughter to bring up that terrible betrayal—the secret of Zachary’s whereabouts. Rachel didn’t want to hear it. Not now, at this moment of unlooked-for happiness.

  “You have a right to expect things of me, Mum,” she said quietly. “Because I will come back. I will come back to see you.”

  Lillian Getty nodded, letting Rachel prise her stiff hands apart and smooth them out. The winter chill bit at them both, the sound of the streetcar at the corner an intrusion into the moment.

  “Think about coming to the all-star game,” Rachel offered. “I might make MVP this year.”

  Lillian dropped her eyes. Rachel knew her mother wouldn’t come. She hadn’t come in years. But Lillian surprised her. She reached out and brushed her lips against Rachel’s cheek, her thin lips dry and cold.

  “Look for me there,” she said. “Be happy, Rachel.”

  Rachel hugged her once, quickly. As she turned to go, she said gruffly over her shoulder, “The gramophone, Mum. In case you wanted to use it, I replaced the needle.”

  4

  Martine Killiam yielded her private office to the man and woman who waited to brief Khattak on Mohsin Dar’s murder. Now Ciprian Coale sat behind Killiam’s desk, ramrod-straight, and without the calm measure of welcome that Martine had offered in exchange for Khattak’s help. Laine Stoicheva sat in the chair angled off to Khattak’s right. Neither of them looked at the other.

  Khattak focused his attention on Coale. He knew Coale would want to establish the parameters of the homicide investigation, while making it clear that he remained the man in charge, the man Killiam trusted to keep all the parts moving and perfectly oiled.

  Two years ago Khattak and Coale had been colleagues of equal rank and equal status, though seconded to INSET from different law enforcement agencies. Coale was used to the military-like hierarchy and protocols of the RCMP. His elevation in rank had been long sought. He’d made no secret of the fact that he thought his credentials and experience were superior to Esa’s. When Khattak’s promotion to head of CPS had been announced, Coale had considered it a snub—one maneuvered by Khattak in secret.

  If Coale was coordinating the RCMP operation with CPS, it would be because he was bearing a professional grudge.

  A sharp-featured, imperious man in his late forties, Coale dressed the part of a senior RCMP officer, with the added bonus of a privately moneyed background. He’d attended the best schools, was known to golf at the most exclusive clubs, and was owed favors by everyone of note in the upper tiers of federal policing. He wore a Burberry suit in crisp black, a gray scarf arranged at his throat, presenting a carefully crafted image of sophistication that matched his austere, not-quite-good looks. Khattak couldn’t help but notice that the platinum Bulgari pen Coale was tapping against Killiam’s desk matched the heavy watch on the wrist that peeked out from snowy cuffs.

  The nasty smile was still on Coale’s mouth.

  “You’re back,” he said to Khattak, with no s
mall measure of satisfaction.

  “At the superintendent’s request.” If Coale felt the need to establish his dominance, it was best that it be brought out into the open at once. “Congratulations, Ciprian,” he said.

  The other man’s smile vanished. His nod was brusque. He did not congratulate Khattak on his CPS mandate in turn.

  Khattak had never been able to tell if Coale was genuinely prejudiced against him, or if he’d spent too much time in the antiterrorism milieu. They’d worked numerous investigations together, and always Coale had found a moment to remind Khattak of the background he shared with many of those who were under INSET surveillance. Coale had referred to it as Khattak’s “special insight.” His tone now implied the inevitability of Khattak’s return, given the nature of INSET’s work.

  “You’re not here to do anything, Khattak—let me make that clear right now. Your only task is to babysit Andy Dar and keep him out of the spotlight. If you can handle that for the next two weeks, we’ll have no further use for you.”

  Khattak ignored the insult.

  “That’s not what I understood from the superintendent, Ciprian. I understand Mohsin Dar’s murder has come under your jurisdiction only for national security reasons. Is Andy Dar aware of this?”

  “If he was, there wouldn’t be any need for a Community Policing presence, would there? I thought you were sharper than that.” Khattak had just provided Coale with the perfect opportunity to raise the debacle at the Department of Justice. But Coale’s use of it was restrained, perhaps because he saw the hint of danger in Khattak’s face. “You’re already under the microscope. If you do anything to blow up my operation, finding yourself without a peg to hang your kufi on will be the least of your worries.”

  Early in his career, Khattak had made the mistake of using the on-site chaplaincy office for personal prayer. Despite the fact that the chapel was nondenominational, unpleasant rumors had surfaced, slowing Khattak’s progress to promotion. He knew his background had been thoroughly vetted before he’d joined INSET; what he hadn’t understood as well was the impact it would have on his colleagues’ perception of his loyalties.