“Don’t pretend,” he said, with the last vestiges of a desire to hurt. “I know why you’ve come.”
He caught the shimmer of tears on her lashes. It didn’t check his anger. He cast her hand away.
Sehr pressed her palms to her eyes. “So what’s my crime, Esa? What are you punishing me for?”
“Do you need me to say it? Are you really so lacking in shame?”
“I didn’t realize loving you was something to be ashamed of.”
After that, he didn’t see her at the cemetery. But when he came on Fridays, there were flowers at Samina’s grave. They lasted a day or two, then a new arrangement would be laid.
Sehr was still coming. She was just avoiding him, the way he avoided her at his parents’ house. A casual word in his mother’s ear resulted in a plea that he treat Sehr with kindness, with something approaching the gratitude she deserved.
“I’m trying to be kind,” he said.
There he’d left it, until matters had come to a head.
* * *
Doubting whether he should, he passed the information on to Sehr: the details of the storage unit in Delft, and the word written on the back of the receipt. CIJA. Or was it Cija, a person’s name? A Greek name? If so, who was Cija?
The smell of smoke reached his nostrils, accompanied by a noise that sounded like a log being split. The windows of his room led to a tiny balcony, and through these the smoke drifted up in a curl of black cloud. There was a sudden silence, like a breath being sucked in. The exhale came like a hammer blow: a full-throated, heavy chant, shouts of alarm and cries of fear, the unmistakable crackle of fire. The smell of burning plastic singed the air. Something was thrown down hard into the ground. Khattak raced to his window to see.
It was Souda. Souda was on fire, its entrance ringed by two dozen men in black, wearing the same insignia as the men in the restaurant. They’d struck their red flag, and on its banner was a Greek meander, a design with a clear resemblance to a swastika.
Khattak threw on his clothes. He pounded down the stairs to Rachel’s room at ground level. Papadakis met him in the lobby.
“Call the police,” Khattak shouted, hammering on Rachel’s door.
She appeared fully dressed, her gun holstered, her bright, brown eyes alert, responding to Khattak’s alarm.
Papadakis didn’t move to the phone.
“What are you waiting for?”
He shook his head. “They won’t come. These men are connected to police.”
“Call them,” Khattak demanded. “I’ll speak to them.”
The call was put through as Rachel scouted the street.
“They have torches, sir,” she called. “They’re not armed.”
Khattak spoke curtly into the phone, relaying who he was and what he was witnessing. He promised a call to his country’s prime minister was next.
“Let’s go, sir.”
He told Papadakis to bar the front entrance, following Rachel up the road to the camp. They heard the wail of a siren in the distance. If not police, at least the fire brigade was on its way. But they were too late, whoever they were. The tents were burning, families were scrambling to find safe exit from the trench. Hundreds of people had fled to the perimeter, blocked by men who formed a human chain.
If the chain wasn’t broken, the camp’s inhabitants would burn.
From the corner of his eye, Khattak caught sight of Peter Conroy, shepherding families through the trench. He was joined by a dozen volunteers, each working to clear the tents.
He could see the fire truck hurtling down the road, but there was still no sign of the police. Like Rachel, he had his gun, and after motioning to her to take shelter behind a concrete block, he fired over the rise.
The gunshot so close at hand startled the men who formed the chain. The attackers wheeled, threatening Khattak with their fists. Rachel stepped out into the street, her gun poised and sighted. Abruptly, the men fell back.
“The police are on their way,” Khattak warned.
Conroy caught sight of him and shouted at the men in Greek. They moved against the barricade; Khattak raised his arm to fire again.
A second siren joined the first—this time it was the police. Khattak murmured a prayer of thanks. The men began to disperse as a whooshing sound came from the hill. Khattak looked up at the ruins. A handful of men were stationed on the hill, hurling stones down at the camp’s panicked residents. A man lay bleeding from his head.
Khattak made for the hill. Conroy followed his movements, calling up the hill.
“Astynomia!” he shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Astynomia, astynomia!”
A man flung a block at Conroy, who ducked in time. The men on the hill vanished into the darkness, their chants echoing behind them.
They’d left one of their flags behind in the pandemonium created by ambulances, fire trucks, and the police car that had finally appeared on the scene.
The Greek police officer who took his time disembarking approached Khattak with his handcuffs in his hand. Conroy clambered over the barricade to meet him, speaking at a furious pace, gesturing at Khattak. The police officer spit at his feet, but he put the handcuffs away. He signaled to the fire crew to proceed.
For the next hour, Souda burned. Refugees huddled in clusters along the edges of the camp, bewildered that the world had more cruelty to offer. The sight of children lost and scared, their faces grimy with smoke, was captured on camera by a furious volunteer who looked little older than the children, but who had the tenacity of a bulldog.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she kept saying as she snapped her photographs. “It’s to make them see.” She was talking to herself; the children didn’t understand. Firefighters barked at her to get out of the way, and she clambered up the hill for a better view.
Khattak called a warning after her. “There are others up there, be careful.”
“Just let them try anything,” she shouted back.
Khattak, Rachel, and Conroy gave what assistance they could. At the end of the night, when the clamor had died down, Papadakis showed up at the entrance to the trench. He took a look at the children who hadn’t found anywhere to rest. He offered beds to women and children, taking down names on a pad.
When the police officer tried to interfere, Papadakis waved him off.
“Give them our rooms too,” Khattak said. “We’re heading out. We’ll be there in a minute to get our things.”
Rachel picked up the abandoned flag and held it up. “What in the holy hell was that, sir? A sea of fucking swastikas?”
Catching herself, Rachel apologized for her language. She wasn’t just upset. He could see that she was shocked.
“What were they chanting?” he asked Conroy. “Who were they?”
Conroy brushed back his hair, leaving a black mark on his forehead. “That was Golden Dawn, the local neo-Nazi variant. They were chanting something along the lines of ‘People! Army! Nationalism!’ There’s been a lot of unrest in Greece because of the economic situation. The flow of refugees onto the islands has exacerbated tensions, but I didn’t know they were so close to boiling over.”
The coordination and volunteer effort went on around them as they followed Conroy to the W2W service tent on the far side of the alley. Most of the refugees’ tents had burned to the ground, the scant possessions within destroyed, the smoke hanging low and heavy over their heads, leaving traces of grit on their faces, acrid and painful to the throat.
On the service side, the tents had escaped damage—a matter more of luck than anything else. Had the sirens not sounded, the whole camp would have been destroyed.
Khattak came to a halt in front of the Woman to Woman tent.
It was the only tent on the service side to lie in ruins. He’d told Conroy he’d return to the tent in the morning to collect Audrey’s package.
But everything in the tent had burned; Khattak couldn’t find any sign of the jackets among the wreckage. Either they had burned, which
he thought unlikely given the flame-retardant material used on life vests—or someone had stolen the package from the tent.
Someone had taken advantage of the destruction of Souda, someone close at hand, who’d been monitoring his activities.
He looked over at the Australian volunteer, a single question on his mind.
Was that someone Peter Conroy?
26
Port of Chios
They met Nate at the ferry. He was arriving on Chios just as they were leaving, the silver-gray of the sky overshadowed by livid clouds.
“I hope this means no crossings today,” Rachel said. “The waves will overturn any dinghies that set out.”
She studied Nate’s face for some sign of his mood. His private investigators hadn’t turned up anything new. He’d sent them into Moria, Kara Tepe, and Souda, where they’d frightened the camps’ inhabitants, who were so often at the mercy of the authorities that they’d closed their ranks in silence. Nor were the islanders much help—some had their own reasons for refusing to cooperate. Rachel guessed that those reasons were tied to the Golden Dawn raid.
She knew Nate was casting about for a lead, for anything that could make him feel like he was doing something useful. Khattak tried to reassure him. Nate had brought word of Sehr’s discussions with the Greek police. They hadn’t issued an arrest warrant, though Sehr believed it was coming. They needed to push ahead; they needed answers before the Greek police decided what those answers were.
What had Audrey meant when she’d said she was going to “beard the lion in his den”? Who was the lion? All they knew was that Audrey had gone to Izmir for this purpose. They’d have to find out why. They were hoping Amélie Roux would help them. She was meeting them on the ferry. She’d agreed to come along, but Rachel wondered if her reason for doing so was to keep abreast of their discoveries. She might not trust them to share information that implicated Audrey. Funny, given that she wasn’t all that forthcoming herself. But fair enough. Cooperation on both ends would need to be earned. She could only hope that Audrey didn’t pay the price of their discretion.
She didn’t say this to Nate, who took her by the arm and led her away from the ramp. Cars were being loaded; the process would take some time.
“Go ahead,” she said to Khattak. “I’ll catch up.”
Rachel looked up into Nate’s worn face and felt a familiar stab of compassion. She was attracted to Nate in a way she couldn’t explain. A frank examination of her feelings told her it wouldn’t end well. The minute she’d stepped out of place, Nate had spurned her closeness.
Nate thrust a hand through his hair, a nervous habit Rachel recognized.
“Look, I get it,” she said. “Audrey is your sister and you have the right to call the shots. I was talking like a cop before, not being a friend the way you’ve been to me.”
Nate dropped his hand. He stared at Rachel searchingly. “Don’t say that, Rachel, it makes me feel terrible. What I said to you was uncalled-for. You faced something much worse, yet you didn’t fall apart. That should be a lesson to me.”
Rachel’s reply was quiet. “There’s no right way to handle this.”
They looked at each other without speaking, though it was obvious there was more to be said. Nate locked their fingers together. “I don’t know how you kept the faith. When I think of you looking for Zach on your own … I’m ashamed of how I behaved.”
He tugged her closer. Rachel let him, her stern lecture to herself swept aside by Nate’s desire to be forgiven—more than that, by his ability to empathize with the suffering she’d never described, the time she thought of as the lost years.
“You don’t need to apologize. Believe me, I understand.”
She remembered how she’d turned on Khattak when they’d met, how insubordinate she’d been, which Khattak had taken in stride. He’d handled her rudeness with such careful consideration—he’d learned about Zachary, something she hadn’t known then.
Nate released her hands, slipping his own around her waist. Rachel froze in the circle of his arms. He was crossing that line—that careful dance between them where they could fall back upon friendship as an excuse.
He was taking a risk. Rachel didn’t know if she was ready.
What if he was turning to her because he felt abandoned without Audrey? What if this had nothing to do with her? She didn’t belong in Nate’s world. She couldn’t picture herself in his life. But that didn’t necessarily mean she wanted to push him away.
“Nate, are you sure—”
“Rachel.” His gold eyes gleamed. “I wish you’d stay with me. Let Esa handle Izmir, I could use your help. You’re a lot less clumsy than I am when it comes to asking questions.”
So it was about Audrey—and how could she blame him, even if she’d hoped for something else? She sighed to herself, chancing a glance at Khattak. He was leaning against the rail, deep in conversation with Roux, whose change in manner suggested that she was succumbing to Khattak’s pervasive charm. Why was everything so easy for him? A little angry at the contrast, Rachel freed herself from Nate’s arms. She promised him she’d be back before he had a chance to miss her. She didn’t ask herself whether he would miss her, doubtful of her own attraction. When she’d told her father that there was a man in her life, her mother had said, “Rachel has to take what she can get.” The words had burrowed inside her, wounding places she couldn’t protect.
Nate needed to focus his efforts, and she was about to tell him how.
“We’re going on to Hatay from Izmir. We need to know why Audrey went there. If it’s dangerous, I need to be there to help.” She filled him in on Camp Apaydin. “I don’t think the people you’ve hired are going to have much luck at Souda. The people in the camp won’t know your investigators or have any reason to trust them. You, on the other hand, are less threatening.” She signaled to Khattak that she was about to board. He waved back, unconcerned. “If you have a photograph of you and Audrey together, that’s what I would show around. Find a translator to help you.”
Nate accepted this, just as he accepted her withdrawal. Rachel wished he wouldn’t. She wished he would demand something or tell her where she stood, though she was no less impaired when it came to expressing herself. She turned the conversation back to Audrey.
“I don’t mean to scare you, but you need to ask your people to check on last night’s raid. See if they can find out more about who organized the attack. Usually, there’s a ringleader. And he might not have been kindly disposed to Audrey or her work.”
Nate recoiled from her words, though he didn’t quarrel with her conclusions. He reached for her hand again, eager to make up for his behavior.
“Thank you, Rachel,” he said. “For telling me the truth when you know I don’t want to hear it.”
He turned up her palm and kissed it, an inherently romantic gesture. Rachel was too bemused by his tenderness to panic, or to fully accept it.
“Don’t give up on me, Rachel. Don’t let this come between us. I wanted to show you—I want to show you … well, I think you know what I want.”
He tilted up her chin and kissed her mouth.
Rachel was still for a moment. Then, eagerly, she kissed him back. His technique was impressive. She tried to match it from her scant experience.
Raising his head, Nate said, “What about Esa? Is there something I shouldn’t get in the middle of?” His tone was a little embarrassed. “We’ve been down that road before.”
“Esa?” she echoed in a daze, the name completely unfamiliar.
Nate smiled, his gold eyes crinkling at the corners. “Good,” he said. “Good. That’s just what I was hoping.”
Rachel’s eyes widened. She’d never heard a man express himself in quite that way before. Nate’s warm smile was self-deprecating and sweet, but his use of the word hope … she felt a tremulous flutter of happiness. No one had ever hoped for anything from her.
“You spend so much time with Esa,” he said thoughtfully. He was stud
ying Esa’s body language, his earnest conversation with Roux.
Rachel suppressed a smile. “That’s why I’m immune.”
When he kissed her again, he muttered his fears against her lips. “This trip away won’t change that?”
Rachel surprised herself by laughing out loud. “Just how irresistible do you find my boss?”
He laughed too, and suddenly everything between them was easy.
He saw Rachel off to the ferry with a wave, a relaxed set to his shoulders that told her more than she’d hoped to learn.
Now all she had to do was try not to ruin something good.
27
Ferry crossing
Chios, Greece to Cesme, Turkey
The ferry crossing was so choppy that a sickly green color invaded Rachel’s skin. When Khattak expressed his concern, Amélie Roux suggested Rachel take up a spot where she couldn’t see the motion of the water. Rachel hastily agreed, so Khattak turned back to Roux. They were retracing Audrey’s steps as best as they could with the limited information at hand. Her activities in Turkey puzzled them: they raised questions that required immediate answers. How did Audrey’s activities connect her to Sami al-Nuri? And what was it about her trips to Izmir that might have placed her in danger? Retracing her steps, talking to the people she’d spoken to, might provide those answers. It might also give them more background on Sami.
Esa put a question to Roux. “What else can you tell me about Audrey’s activities?” They had progressed to first names. Esa found much to admire in Amélie’s assessment of their operations. She’d kept an eye on their work, and her insights were invaluable.
She was serious about her work, committed to bringing Aude Bertin’s killer to justice. To further her cooperation, he told her about the life vests he’d found at Souda, and she offered a theory of her own.
“This is about organized crime. I think this impressionable young woman thought she could push back against forces more powerful than she realized. Perhaps because that’s how things work in Canada. And in France, as well.”
A Dangerous Crossing--A Novel Page 19