The Language of Secrets

by Ausma Zehanat Khan

  You don’t know what’s loaded up and waiting on the tarmac.

  It was like a dangerous forecasting of future events. But Rachel had thought that the would-be bomb materials were being delivered by truck. Trucks on the tarmac? Had the ammonium nitrate been switched out for the inert material yet? She wished that Coale would put them out of their misery and keep them apprised of developments with the INSET operation.

  New year’s rain is night black/call this one a death hack.

  She swallowed the lump in her throat.

  What rained down from the sky in this context wasn’t a remotely detonated bomb brought in on a truck.

  The lyrics suggested a missile attack.

  And surely to God that wasn’t possible.

  Because that was the first thing Mohsin Dar would have told his RCMP handlers.

  Who hadn’t understood Mohsin’s objectives at all.

  But where would the missiles have come from? How could they possibly have entered the country? Did INSET know? Why hadn’t they acted to confiscate the missiles? And if they didn’t know—because they still didn’t know how the two cells were communicating—wasn’t there a possibility of not just the plot INSET thought they had neutralized, but of a real Nakba?

  Rachel wiped a hand across her perspiring forehead.

  There was another connection there—a connection between the insistence on poetry and the use of the public stage. Maybe something to do with the Dixon City Bloods, maybe not. She’d swept the club with her cell phone and sent the video to Khattak. Maybe the open mic night was the method of communication. A coded message in a public gathering picked up by members of the second splinter cell.

  But if Ashkouri and Din were under surveillance, surely INSET would have tumbled to that long ago. The poetry wasn’t difficult to decode.

  In Junnah we’ll meet.

  Junnah was the Arabic word for “paradise.” The end goal of a suicide bomber, the language plain as day.

  Her questions were mounting up.

  She needed to tell Khattak. He would tell her if she was on the right track or not, and whether they needed to consult with Ciprian Coale and his team.

  Unlocking her car door, she tried Khattak’s number. Once. Twice. It took her a third try to remember that Khattak had been heading to the offices of CBC News. If Andy Dar’s interview was live, Khattak would have shut off his phone.

  Maybe she should drive down there and meet him in person. She’d have to cut across the downtown core, through a tangle of traffic and construction, but this couldn’t wait.

  She left a message on Khattak’s answering machine, keeping it brief.

  “I need to talk to you urgently. There’s something you need to know.”

  She threw her bag onto the passenger seat and tossed the cell phone down beside it.

  A firm hand gripped her wrist before she could climb into the driver’s seat.

  Hassan Ashkouri had followed her to her car. The car she had parked on a dimly lit side street instead of the public parking lot across the street from the club.

  His smile was bland.

  “I wonder what could be so urgent, Miss Ellison.” He’d dropped the pretense of calling her Sister Rachel. “And I hope that you’ll take a moment to tell me.”

  22

  Khattak stood in the shadow of the CN Tower, catching its reflection in the glass building that housed the Canadian Broadcast Corporation’s headquarters. The red gem of the CBC logo leapt out from a field of blue, branded in Khattak’s memory as it was in most Canadians’, along with the theme music of Hockey Night in Canada. Rachel’s tirade about the loss of the rights to the beloved classic and the ridiculous contest for a new theme song still rang in Khattak’s ears.

  Grinning at the memory, Khattak showed his ID to a South Asian girl with a laissez-faire attitude, who handed him a visitor’s badge and directed him to the newsroom. He hoped he wasn’t too late to deter Andy Dar from his course of action, a course of action he didn’t understand.

  Yes, it would put Dar in the spotlight again, a spotlight the man craved—but the exposure would come at considerable cost. A cost he had warned Dar about. And he questioned whether Sehr’s advice would be useful in this context—would it silence Dar, or even slow him down? The man was an enigma to Khattak. His actions couldn’t be written off as a means of ingratiating himself with members of the right.

  Dar had to have some personal feeling for his son, some spark of compassion for his daughter-in-law. A diatribe against Community Policing, and law enforcement in general, wouldn’t bring about a swift conclusion of the investigation into his son’s murder. It would have the opposite effect: hardening the attitude of those investigating Mohsin’s death, ensuring a lack of cooperation with the family, slowing the entire law enforcement apparatus down. While at the same time, whoever had murdered Mohsin would be buttressed by a feeling of safety—of the spotlight turning elsewhere, to a secondary sideshow.

  Khattak exited the elevator and headed in the direction of the CBC set. A bank of television screens glowed red and blue against a dark backdrop. Two swivel chairs had been placed at either end of the curvilinear desk. The news anchor was on the floor, speaking to his producer through a headset. Andy Dar was nowhere to be seen. A young reporter whose name tag read “Vicky D’Souza” pointed Khattak to the green room.

  “His daughter-in-law is with him,” Vicky said. And then proved how clever she was, by asking, “You’re not planning to say anything to him that would derail our big interview, are you? That would be interfering with freedom of the press. And it wouldn’t look good for the police.”

  Khattak’s response was weary. “At the moment, my only concern is the continuing freedom of the person or persons who murdered Mr. Dar’s son.”

  Vicky seized on that with alacrity. “‘Persons’? Can I quote you on that, Inspector?”

  “It’s a general description. And no, you cannot quote me.”

  * * *

  The green room was neither green nor a room. A small space had been eked out behind the rows of cubicles where news was collected and collated. It consisted of a beige love seat, two club chairs, and a coffee station beside a lighted mirror.

  Alia Dar was seated in one of the chairs. Andy Dar had taken the other and repositioned it in front of the makeup counter. A white napkin was tucked into his collar as a makeup artist dusted his face with powder. Khattak asked the young man to leave them alone.

  Nervous and agitated, Alia Dar jumped to her feet.

  “What is it? Do you know something? Did you find out anything? Did you believe me?”

  The questions came at Khattak one after the other, a rapid-fire series of words.

  Khattak was about to do something he despised himself for. Yet he could see no other way. Andy Dar had to be contained.

  “Sit down, Alia,” Esa said. “I’m here to talk to your father-in-law. Your questions will have to wait.”

  Andy Dar snatched the napkin from his throat and dropped it on the makeup counter. He stood toe-to-toe with Khattak.

  “You can’t intimidate me, Khattak. I intend to say whatever is on my mind, and there’s nothing you can say that will influence me otherwise.”

  “What happened?” Khattak asked him. “You were supposed to arrange a memorial for Mohsin at the Nur mosque. You said you would assist with the investigation.”

  “What investigation?” Andy Dar roared back. “What exactly have you accomplished in terms of finding the murderer of my son?”

  Reporters at the surrounding stations looked up at the sound of his raised voice.

  Khattak examined the fleshy face that must once have been handsome. There was no real rage in it, just a studied calculation. He was hoping to provoke Khattak into some kind of revelation, though Dar had no true idea of what that disclosure might be.

  “I promised that you would be able to announce the arrest on your program before anyone else did. I didn’t offer you anything else, and surely you don’t
expect me to discuss the investigation while it’s still ongoing. That would be a violation of professional ethics.” Esa’s tone was dry. “And I understand that a lack of professionalism is one of your main criticisms of CPS.”

  “You won’t get me that way, Khattak. I have a platform and I intend to use it.”

  Alia moved closer to both men. She took hold of her father-in-law by the elbow.

  Dar shook off her touch. “Don’t. I don’t know why this man bewitches you, but there’s no place for you in this discussion.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” Khattak said. “There’s a lot about Alia’s role in this that you don’t know. That you should know.”

  Shocked, Alia took a step back.

  “What is this, Khattak? Some game? What could Alia possibly know? She doesn’t do anything. She doesn’t go anywhere. She’s not capable of thinking an independent thought.”

  “Tell him,” Khattak said to her. “Before he makes a fool of himself on national television. Before he destroys Mohsin’s reputation. Tell him what you know. Tell him what you think Mohsin was doing at Nur.”

  Andy Dar took a step toward Alia. Khattak immediately pushed him back.

  “You’re going to listen. And that’s all you’re going to do. You think your son was killed by radicals at Nur? You think they killed him for some reason of their own? You want to go on CBC and tell the whole country that extremists murdered your son, when you don’t have any proof? And that you’re the Muslim who’ll stand against them all, calling them out for their barbarism? Because that’s what you were planning to do, wasn’t it? That’s why you couldn’t be bothered to arrange a memorial for your only child.”

  Spittle gathered in the corners of Dar’s mouth.

  “You expect me to protect those bastards? My son was an idiot to fall for their rubbish. His big beard and phony religious language, his wife with her stupid pieties and homespun headscarf—is that what my son had to look forward to in life? Did you think I would let that pass? They took him, they corrupted him, they killed him. And now they have to pay for it.”

  “I’m afraid you have it wrong,” Khattak said softly. He waited until he had Dar’s full attention. The older man watched Esa with hatred in his face.

  “Tell him, Alia. Mohsin wasn’t at the Nur mosque because he’d fallen under the spell of extremists, which is how you refer to all mosque-attending Muslims. He was there because of a woman, a woman Alia knows about.”

  Alia’s eyes were wide and blank. She crushed the long tail of her headscarf in her hands.

  “No,” she whispered. “That’s not true.”

  “Isn’t that why you drove up north to the park?”

  “I didn’t.” Her reddened eyes beseeched him. “You know that I didn’t.”

  Dar interrupted them. “What is all this? What the hell are you talking about, Khattak? Alia, tell me at once.”

  Vicky D’Souza approached them. A glance from Khattak sent her away again.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what he means, Baba.”

  “What about the fact that Mohsin didn’t want you at the mosque? What about the fact that he insisted you wear the niqab? What about the fact that Paula Kyriakou is much stricter than you in her observance of dress code?” The questions landed in Alia’s face like small grenades. In the face of her hurt and confusion, Khattak was relentless. “And what about the fact that you were so jealous of Paula Kyriakou that you were spying on your own husband? You drove to the camp that night to confront him about his affair.”

  Alia floundered, the backs of her knees knocking against the club chair. She mouthed at the two of them soundlessly, her breath coming in little gasps. She stumbled to the elevators.

  A knot in his chest, Khattak said nothing to stop her. Now he simply waited.

  Dar’s knees buckled. He collapsed into his chair. Khattak took Alia’s seat and turned it to face Dar.

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying you have it wrong. You were planning to give this interview for one reason only, and it has nothing to do with bringing Mohsin’s killer to justice. I’ve listened to your show. I’m well aware that denunciation is your platform. You’re not troubled by the need to provide evidence of your claims—your pseudo-outrage is a law unto itself. But if you do that in this case, you’ll find that the tables will be very quickly turned. This has nothing to do with the efficacy of CPS.” Khattak’s voice was level, calm. “It has everything to do with Mohsin and his wife. And it will turn out to be just another ugly domestic squabble, with nothing grand or impressive about it. You’ll end up looking like a fool; your enemies will go to town.”

  He let Andy Dar think about this for several long moments.

  “Mohsin will be a hypocrite who couldn’t stay true to his terrorist calling. An Abu Nidal or Mohammed Atta getting drunk at a strip club.”

  “My son never touched alcohol.” Dar looked shattered at the thought of it. “Don’t you dare say that about him.”

  Khattak shrugged. There was always that line that even the person most distant from his faith was unwilling to cross.

  “You didn’t know that he was unfaithful to his wife, did you? Who knows what else will come to light when you start spinning your wheels? It won’t stop with you. Every journalist in the country will be at the Nur mosque, digging around. Do you know where Mohsin spent his nights? Are you prepared for what they might find?”

  “This is some kind of trap.” A flicker of rebellion crossed Dar’s face. “You think you’re clever enough to silence me, that I won’t choose to sabotage my son’s reputation.”

  And Khattak wondered at a man who didn’t mind painting his son as an extremist, but who drew the line at adultery.

  “Don’t take my word for it, talk to your daughter-in-law. Why do you think she went running from here? Because she knows it’s true.”

  “You don’t have any proof.”

  Khattak withdrew the copy of Alia Dar’s speeding ticket from his breast pocket.

  “Take a look at where she was when she got that ticket, and the time of night.”

  Dar read the ticket in silence. His well-preserved face began to sag.

  “The woman’s name is Paula Kyriakou. She’s a recent convert your son was courting. That’s why he was at Nur. And it’s why he didn’t take Alia to Algonquin. What you do with this information is up to you.”

  He reached across and took the ticket from Dar’s nerveless hands.

  He didn’t know if his stratagem had worked. He only knew that it was the worst thing he had ever done in the name of a greater good: betraying a woman who thought of him as a friend, and putting her in Dar’s power.

  Dar looked up, his eyes empty of emotion.

  “Did Alia kill my son?”

  “She says not. Have you ever seen her with a firearm?”

  “No,” Dar whispered. For a man who gave every indication of despising his daughter-in-law, he seemed gutted by Khattak’s revelations. “I haven’t. She loved Mohsin. I would have said she worshipped my son, if the stupid girl didn’t find that blasphemous.”

  “We haven’t concluded our investigation, so I can’t answer your question, not yet.” He gestured at the row of television screens. “You need to give me more time. If it’s not Alia, I need a clear field at Nur. I can’t have you muddying the ground.”

  He checked his watch. The interview was due to begin in five minutes. Just out of earshot, Vicky D’Souza hovered, her young face anxious.

  “What have you decided?” he pressed Dar. “What are you going to do?”

  Dar lifted his chin. “You don’t intimidate me. You don’t frighten me. And you won’t silence me. I’ll do exactly what I planned to do.”

  Khattak nodded. It was what he had expected from the beginning.

  “Then I’ll ask your hosts for a chance at rebuttal. And I’ll explain the line of inquiry that we’ve been pursuing.”

  “That’s blackmail,” Dar hissed. “You disgust m
e, Khattak. Look at the depths you’re prepared to sink to to protect your manufactured career. And in any case, I think you’re bluffing.”

  Khattak’s eyes were diamond-hard.

  “Try me and see,” he said. “Because I don’t think you understand me at all. I’ve never given a damn about what you have to say about Community Policing. I think your rhetoric is dangerous and deceitful, and that it does a huge disservice to the community you purport to represent, but that’s not within my purview, nor is it my primary concern. What I want is justice for Mohsin. And I’ll do anything I have to to get it. I’m just surprised you don’t share my commitment.”

  “Don’t you dare say that about me. Don’t you ever suggest that I didn’t love my son.”

  Dar rose from his chair, his movements quiet and dignified.

  The anger in his face was replaced by a much more human sorrow.

  Khattak looked away.

  He had let things go too far. And he understood that whatever Dar thought of him from this point on would be something he deserved.

  * * *

  He watched the interview from Vicky D’Souza’s station, the young reporter eyeing him with a mixture of wonder and speculation behind the frames of her glasses.

  When Dar had finished, she said, “You killed it. I don’t know how you did it, but somehow you killed the story.” She flicked a hand at the set that Dar had just vacated. “I don’t know what that was, except a lot more of Andy Dar’s bluster. He didn’t target you like he said he would. He took the story in a totally different direction. Why? What do you have on him?”

  “I don’t have anything, Ms. D’Souza. That’s not how Community Policing works.”

  She chewed on the tip of her pen. “Uh-huh, so you say. You made his daughter-in-law skedaddle from here in tears. And you shut up a man I’ve never known to keep quiet. He spent the better part of the interview asking the public to do what they could to help. He didn’t mention you, he didn’t mention the mosque.”