The Language of Secrets

by Ausma Zehanat Khan

  She couldn’t see Grace. She couldn’t see the way up.

  She kicked out, searching for Grace’s body, scrabbling for a break in the surface of the creek.

  Nothing.

  Ice-cold pressure squeezed her lungs.

  She spun around with difficulty, struggling back in the opposite direction. Something soft brushed against her hands. She grabbed it.

  A light bobbed against the blackness above her head. She scissor-kicked her feet, propelling her body toward the light. She was weighted down, heavy with cold and fatigue.

  Two strong arms reached down to grab her shoulders, hefting her from the water. Coughing up brackish liquid, she was dragged off the creek to the side.

  Her soaking coat was stripped from her body. She was gathered close against Khattak’s chest, his hands pounding her back.

  “Rachel,” he said. “Rachel, come on.”

  She forced her eyes open, coughing harder.

  “I’m fine, I’m all right. What about Grace?”

  He shook his head.

  She struggled against him. “I have to find her! There’s still time!”

  He held her until her struggles subsided, then he said, “Rachel.”

  He closed one hand over hers.

  She looked down at it.

  Grace’s Maple Leafs toque was in her hand.

  28

  It was Rachel’s first time meeting Superintendent Martine Killiam of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. One look at the other woman’s strong, square face and her instinctive habit of command, and Rachel could see how the superintendent had risen to her rank in the RCMP.

  Rachel made her handshake as firm as she could, given that her wrist had been fractured in the struggle for Din Abdi’s gun. The cold from her dousing in the creek had prevented her from feeling the pain at the time. And since then, she hadn’t felt much of anything at all.

  She’d skated in her all-star game on New Year’s Day because she hadn’t felt she could let her team down. Her heart wasn’t in it. Her wrist heavily bandaged inside her glove, she’d watched as one of her teammates—a good friend—had won the MVP trophy for scoring five times. Rachel hadn’t even managed an assist.

  Khattak and Nate had come to cheer Rachel on from the stands. They had met Zach at the game, and there had been nothing in that meeting for Rachel to dread. She was coming to accept that the people who mattered to her could get to know each other, and it wouldn’t cause her world to collapse. As she had feared with her father, Don Getty.

  Rachel’s mother hadn’t come to the game.

  She also hadn’t called to ask Rachel about her injury.

  It didn’t matter, Rachel thought. She had failed to save a teenage girl from a terrible death, so what did any of it matter?

  Martine Killiam was reading from a folder.

  “You disobeyed a direct order from the ranking officer, Sergeant Getty.”

  Rachel nodded. She had nothing to say to this.

  Khattak spoke for her, somber and formally dressed at her side.

  “She knew civilians were in danger from Ashkouri and his cell. Sergeant Getty put her own life at risk to save them. Inspector Coale should have listened to her. Just as he should have listened to me. Perhaps then a teenage girl wouldn’t be dead.”

  The superintendent consulted the file again, before closing it.

  “Grace Kaspernak. The girl who murdered Mohsin Dar.”

  “Yes.”

  “And we have six people who witnessed her confession. One of them is dead. Din is under the protection of a lawyer. Still, the confession will stand. A good day’s work. And we took Ashkouri’s strike team before they got to Nathan Phillips Square. Thanks to your work, we averted the New Year’s plot.”

  Khattak had attended the press conference, watched Martine Killiam lay out the operation in clear, concise phrases. She had taken particular care to recognize the role of Community Policing, and to enter a commendation into Rachel’s personnel file.

  “May I ask, ma’am, what will happen to Dinaase Abdi? What his role was?”

  Killiam studied him gravely.

  “Inspector Coale should have taken a different approach. He should have let you know about the gun; he should have told you more about the operation. Perhaps then the outcome would have been different. Din Abdi was a courier—he transported the cassettes, and he transported the weapon. He knew every detail of the plot. He’s been charged, and he will be tried. And if there’s any justice, he’ll serve a maximum sentence.”

  Rachel flinched at the news. It didn’t sound like the RCMP intended to take into account Din’s age, any more than their youthfulness would shield Zakaria or Sami. Din was a kid, a stupid kid, snared by Ashkouri’s rhetoric, caught up in the make-believe world of the Rose of Darkness website. The world that had just become real for him. He’d lost Mohsin, he’d lost Grace—both of whom had risked everything to save him—and now, he would lose his freedom.

  Could anything be worth that? Any dream of paradise?

  She couldn’t block that night from her mind, Din’s lament reverberating through the black branches of the forest.

  Gracie, Gracie—she can’t be gone. Tell me she’s all right. Tell me she’ll be okay.

  His body had heaved convulsively, until the tactical team had arrived to take him away.

  Din hadn’t looked back for Ashkouri, cold and dead on the ice, brought down by Khattak’s gun.

  And Khattak himself, his face after he had pulled Rachel from the water. Pale with terror.

  He had saved Ruksh first, and she didn’t begrudge him the choice.

  He had also saved Rachel, his breathing torn as he’d tried to revive her.

  She wouldn’t ever forget that.

  Recognizing something in Khattak’s face, Martine Killiam said, “It wasn’t personal, Esa. It wasn’t ever aimed at you.”

  Khattak couldn’t quite keep the anger out of his reply.

  “With all due respect, Superintendent, my phone was tapped, my house was under surveillance, and my sister was dangled before Ashkouri as bait. Even then, Inspector Coale missed the evidence that Mohsin pointed him to.”

  “Which is why your perspective was so necessary.” Killiam signaled Rachel. “Thank you, Sergeant, that will be all.”

  Worried, Rachel looked over at Khattak. He nodded at her, rose from his seat to get the door for her.

  “Wait for me outside.”

  Rachel left him, finding her way to the vending machine down the hall.

  What more did Killiam have to say to him? And why couldn’t Rachel hear it?

  * * *

  Khattak knew what was coming. No matter Killiam’s recognition at the press conference, no matter what he and Rachel had achieved despite being kept in the dark, there was no way around it. He’d been grossly insubordinate. And he knew how the RCMP worked.

  “You were under my command,” Killiam said to him.

  “Yes.” And then, more than a little angry, he said, “Yet I couldn’t reach you when it was critical to do so.”

  “Ciprian was the officer in the field. You were to report to him.”

  “We had different objectives. Mine was to understand how your operation affected Mohsin’s murder. Coale’s was simply to bring me down.”

  Martine Killiam sighed.

  “He’s succeeded in part, I’m afraid. And not just with you. Sehr Ghilzai has been relieved of her responsibilities as senior counsel.”

  “That was my doing,” Khattak said quickly. “Not Sehr’s. She wouldn’t have advised me about confidential matters if I hadn’t pressed her. If Coale wants my head he can have it.” His voice was bitter. “Though you said yourself, he should have told me about the gun.”

  “I can’t do anything about that. And it’s not just the fact that you met with Sehr, or the message she left for you. It’s on the record; it can’t be wiped away or made to disappear. Sehr has to face the consequences of her actions. I am sorry about that.”

&nbs
p; “What else, then?”

  “Your phone was tapped. You asked your friend Nathan Clare to remove your sister from the investigation.”

  “I didn’t tell him why.”

  “It was still a breach, Esa. It endangered the operation.”

  “The operation endangered my sister.”

  Killiam looked him dead in the eye.

  “There was also the call to Laine Stoicheva. You did the same thing with her—asked her to get your sister out.”

  “That’s what she told you?”

  “Actually, she told me she was the one to go beyond the parameters of her security clearance—that she offered you more help and information than you had asked for. But I can’t ignore the phone calls, Esa. We have a strict chain of command, and an equally strict protocol. Then there’s also the fact that the Drayton inquiry is moving ahead. I did what I could for you in the press conference, whatever I could do for Community Policing, but the fact is that heads will have to roll. I’ve made my report to the commissioner. And to the Minister of Justice.”

  So what he and Rachel had achieved didn’t matter. And what Coale had done to him would be set aside. The neatly dug trap, the noose he had felt tightening around his neck. He’d been reckless, careless, blinded by the danger to his sister. And Ciprian Coale had won.

  “Is the Minister shutting us down?”

  “No. Not yet. You’ve been placed on administrative leave, pending your post-shooting evaluation. The Minister will reconsider that decision once the Drayton inquiry is closed.”

  “I could fight back,” he said, after he had considered. “Go to the press, file a lawsuit, claim reckless endangerment by the police. Or negligence based on discrimination.”

  “Will you?” Martine asked him. “That sounds more like something Andy Dar would do.”

  Khattak thought of his final meeting with the family. Neither Alia nor her father-in-law had been satisfied by his explanations.

  Alia Dar had looked at him with her haunted eyes and said, “You lied to me. You made me believe that Mohsin didn’t love me. How could you do that? Why would you do that?”

  She’d had no forgiveness to offer him.

  And he knew her forgiveness was something he didn’t deserve, even if he hadn’t been able to rule her out as a suspect. The INSET operation had taken priority over every other consideration.

  Ruksh’s reaction had been little better.

  “You should have told me the truth about him. You risked my life for the sake of your career.”

  She wouldn’t accept Esa’s explanation about the constraints he’d been working under, or the impossible choices he’d had to make. And she’d rewritten the history of that night to satisfy her sense of thwarted love.

  Ashkouri had stared at Khattak from the ice, his face losing color, his voice still hypnotic.

  “You’re a traitor, Khattak,” he’d whispered, wiping the blood from his lip, studying the discoloration of his hand. “But I’m not worried. Others are coming.”

  Khattak’s response was Qur’anic.

  “This cult you’re in is destined for ruin.”

  Ashkouri’s eyes had closed, enigmatic and impenetrable to the end.

  And Khattak didn’t say to Ruksh as he could have, Ashkouri would have murdered you without a second thought. He nearly killed my partner.

  He felt again the sickening panic he’d experienced when Rachel’s dark head had slipped under the waves. The rising commotion of water that had seemed to pull Esa down with her.

  Ruksh needed someone to blame for her ill-advised judgments. As her brother, Esa didn’t care if that someone was him. Ruksh was safe. Rachel was safe. Nothing else mattered.

  He came to a decision. He reached across the desk to shake Martine Killiam’s hand.

  “I won’t do anything of the kind. And I appreciate the fact that you’ve kept Rachel out of this. If there’s anything at all that you can do for Sehr Ghilzai, I promise I won’t forget it.”

  * * *

  In the hall, Rachel offered him a Cherry Coke. He cracked the tab and took a long sip.

  “Now I know why you like these, Rachel.”

  “What happened in there?”

  Khattak summarized the outcome of his discussion with Killiam. A smile flickered across his face at Rachel’s outraged response. Her voice trailed off as they let themselves out into the new year quiet that had blossomed over the city.

  Rachel stopped him with a hand on his arm.

  “Sir,” she said. “I never thanked you for saving my life.”

  Khattak studied his partner’s face. In that moment of extremis, Rachel hadn’t once considered the value of her own life. She’d flung herself at Grace’s gun to protect Ruksh. She’d given him a way to save his sister. And she’d thrown herself under the ice in hopes of saving Grace, the girl she’d always seen as lost and abandoned.

  Rachel’s heart ran as wide and deep as a continent.

  He shook his head.

  “I never thanked you, Rachel. I just didn’t know how.”

  He bent his head and kissed Rachel’s cheek.

  Author’s Note

  THE TORONTO 18

  In the summer of 2006, Canadian law enforcement carried out a major anti-terrorism operation that resulted in the arrest of eighteen suspects on terrorism charges. This group would later become known as the Toronto 18. Radicalized by jihadist Web sites, and influenced by a charismatic ideologue, members of the group participated in training camps in the woods, and attempted to secure the materials necessary to detonate fertilizer bombs in the city of Toronto. The Toronto 18 plotted to attack Parliament Hill and to behead parliamentarians, as part of a plan to force the recall of Canadian troops from Afghanistan.

  Although the participants in the plot were ill-equipped and poorly trained, they attempted to make their plot a reality. They were foiled by an extensive CSIS and RCMP investigation: the group was soon infiltrated by a Muslim police agent posing as a fellow jihadist. Along with tens of thousands of intercepts, information provided by two separate Muslim informants assisted in the takedown of the cell before the plot could be actualized. A sting operation resulted in the switching out of inert material for fertilizer, while tactical units swept across the city to arrest the members of the group.

  The arrests in the Toronto 18 case resulted in eleven convictions, including life sentences for two of the ringleaders. Fahim Ahmad, the charismatic ideologue, pleaded guilty to terrorism charges in 2010, and was sentenced to sixteen years in prison. One of the participants in the plot, Ali Mohamed Dirie, served his sentence in Canada, and is reported to have been killed fighting in Syria.

  TERRORISM AND ISLAM

  There is no inherent connection between Islam and terrorism, despite the rash of events that appear to link the two. Like all religions, Islam is multi-vocal, and there are different interpretations of Islam available to its practitioners, including those that are justice-based and ethically grounded. These interpretations are embodied in the writings of contemporary scholars such as Khaled Abou el Fadl, Kecia Ali, Reza Aslan, Laleh Bakhtiar, Nurcholish Madjid, Fatima Mernissi, Fazlur Rahman, Abdolkarim Soroush, and Amina Wudud, among others. Perhaps less well known is the fact that a remarkable diversity of opinion on the interpretation of religion can be found among scholars of the classical Islamic tradition, as well.

  Radical interpretations of Islam do exist, the most prominent of which is Wahhabism, a puritanical doctrine based on an exclusivist reading of Islam, promulgated throughout the Muslim world by Saudi Arabia. The popularity of radical Wahhabism has been boosted by prevailing social conditions in the Arab and Muslim world. Decades of authoritarian rule followed by war, state breakdown, and state collapse have fostered violent extremism in the name of religion, demonstrating how critical political and historical context is to understanding the rise of extremism. Iraq is a case in point.

  The American invasion of 2003 exacerbated Iraq’s already dire social and political conditions. P
rior to the invasion, Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship was characterized by an appalling abuse of human rights, including the extreme persecution of Iraq’s Kurdish and Shia populations. The vacuum created by the collapse of the Iraqi state proved to be an ideal breeding ground for extremism, producing cycles of sectarian violence, and ultimately resulting in the emergence of ISIS.

  ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, has taken the ideology of Wahhabism to extremes, seeking to impose a new Islamic caliphate that transcends the borders of the Middle East. Primarily, ISIS has been waging a war within the house of Islam, marking out for elimination those who do not practice its radical, exclusionary creed. This war is characterized by extreme brutality and horrendous crimes, and has exacerbated existing refugee crises. Its victims include Shias, dissident Sunnis, and members of a vast tapestry of ethnic and religious minorities indigenous to the Middle East. What is even more disturbing in the face of its crimes, is that ISIS’s ideology continues to attract recruits from around the world.

  With the Paris attacks of November 2015, it is evident that ISIS has expanded its strategy to focus on targets in the West. As such, ISIS will persist in dominating headlines—challenging our notion of what Islam is and rendering Islam a contested ground in global affairs for the foreseeable future.

  As I researched the Toronto 18 case, I became aware of how closely jihadist ideology is often linked to other issues to other issues: the conflation of Islam with violence, the perception that the actions of an extremist fringe inescapably taint and implicate an entire faith community, and the necessity of moving beyond reductive notions of “us” and “them” to achieve a deeper understanding of the present moment in history—one that might suggest a way forward.

  Just as the vast majority of the victims of groups such as ISIS and al-Qaeda are and have been Muslims, it’s worth remembering the efforts of those who seldom attract similar news coverage: human rights activists, women’s groups, student groups, religious leaders, journalists, and builders of civil society—whose courageous and critical work on the frontlines reminds us that Islam is not a monolithic force, and that millions of Muslims aspire to universal values.