The Language of Secrets (10 page)

It was the enigmatic face of a poet anchored by something richer and deeper—a thorough and certain knowledge of himself.

No wonder Paula was starstruck.

Rachel cleared her throat. “Wa alaikum salam,” she said, trying the words out. She had practiced with Khattak. From the warm smiles all around, her pronunciation seemed to hold up.

She waited to see if the man would offer his hand, because she knew that handshakes between the sexes could be political. They pegged you to a specific place on the spectrum of conservatism. A man who refused to shake a woman's hand would have strict views about gender segregation and the place of women in the mosque.

Ashkouri shook her hand, his handshake cool and firm.

“Hassan Ashkouri,” he said. “Am I right in thinking I haven't seen you here before?”

“It's my first time,” she said, then introduced herself. He was still holding her hand. She was appalled to feel herself blushing a little. She looked down at the floor, thinking that this might be some approximation of how a modest Muslim woman would behave under these circumstances.

Paula Kyriakou stepped right between Rachel and Hassan, edging close into his space, latching on to his arm.

Wrong again, Rachel thought. Modesty wasn't what it used to be.

“You missed prayer, Hassan.”

There was a possessiveness about Paula's manner that she didn't trouble to disguise. If her grip was painful, Hassan Ashkouri gave no sign of it. His face was even more beautiful when he smiled.

“You remembered me in your
duas
, I hope.”

“You know that I never forget you.” She went on to list the precise nature of the supplications she had made on Ashkouri's behalf.

As tiresome as Rachel may have found Paula's recital, there was a genuine warmth in the way that Ashkouri attended to it. His eyes flicked to Rachel.

“I hope you remembered Mohsin as well.”

Someone in the group of people drifting through the kitchen went still.

An eerie, listening stillness.

Rachel tried to pinpoint the source without giving away her reaction.

It was Rachel whom Ashkouri had meant to test.

But someone else had fallen into the trap.

Rachel contrived an expression of mild puzzlement, waiting for someone to speak. Paula hurried to fill the silence, bustling about to make Ashkouri a cup of tea. A tall man in his sixties with a full beard and a woven kufi came to stand on the other side of the island. He snapped his fingers at Paula, who passed him the first cup of tea.

“I prayed for Mohsin. Imam Zikri made the supplication, and I recited the prayer of Yasin afterward.”

When? Rachel wondered. Paula had missed the prayer altogether. She now suspected that what had drawn Paula away was Ashkouri's absence. Paula must have gone to search for him.

With that face, small wonder.

But would the woman dare to tell such a bald-faced lie in the mosque? When either Rachel or Grace could expose the lie for what it was?

Rachel caught Grace's eye. Grace had splayed her hands at the bottom of her shirt, her fingers pointing upward.

Bad religion, Rachel read again. She almost laughed out loud.

“You are always dutiful, Paula. No one could fault you. But Grace here—” Ashkouri bestowed his bone-melting smile on the girl, who still held the glass in its saucer. “When there's a woman to make qahwe for me, the way Gracie does for Din, I'll know that Allah has answered my prayers.”

Grace didn't protest at Ashkouri's use of her nickname, as she had done with Paula. She gave the glass to Dinaase Abdi, who took it without thanking her. Like two of the other young men on Rachel's list of members of the training camp, his attention was on Ashkouri.

Rachel would have found the whole thing cultlike were it not for Ashkouri's remarkable face. The INSET photographs had not done him justice.

And then another thought occurred to her.

If Ashkouri was the leader of a terror cell whose base was the Nur mosque—why was he clean-shaven? Was his vanity a greater calling than religion? Or was she generalizing her idea of what a Muslim male should look like? Khattak was clean-shaven too, for that matter. But Khattak wasn't a violent extremist masterminding a lethal attack on New Year's Day.

Rachel helped herself to a small piece of baklava from one of the snack plates. She could feel Ashkouri's eyes on her back. She ignored the man who had snapped his fingers at Paula. The man's name was Jamshed Ali. He was another of Ashkouri's proven confederates. Instead, she asked one of the older women if she could help herself to a cup of tea.

Ashkouri interrupted her.

“What brings you to the mosque, sister?”

Paula answered for her, unexpectedly helpful. “She's like Gracie, Hassan. She's trying to find herself.”

Ashkouri pinned Rachel with his boundless, dark eyes.

“The Masjid un-Nur is a difficult place to locate, even for those who know what they are searching for. How did you stumble upon it?”

Rachel felt that stillness seize the room again. And again she failed to identify its source. She kept her eyes from Jamshed Ali and Dinaase Abdi with an effort. Standing behind them were Zakaria Aboud and Sami Dardas, also on the list. This was her moment to convince Ashkouri of her status as a hapless outsider—or to blow the operation sky-high.

She took another bite of the baklava.

“One of the sisters at Middlefield mentioned this place, said it was much quieter for someone who was new. She said you conduct proper study sessions here. I don't live far, so I thought I'd give it a try.” She pushed her hair under her scarf, the movement clumsy. “If it's not—is it open to the public? Did I just barge my way in?”

When no one answered her, she set her plate down on the counter and brushed her hands against her trousers. “Shoot, I'm sorry.” She swept crumbs from her scarf. “When you're new, you don't get anything right. I'd better go.”

She shouldered her way past Grace and Paula, feeling the tension in the hall dissipate a little. From the corner of her eye, she saw Ashkouri's quick glance at Jamshed.

Ashkouri placed a graceful hand on Rachel's arm, halting her progress.

“Sister Rachel,” he said. “In God's house, everyone is welcome. There are no gatekeepers to keep you from whatever it is you seek to learn here.” Paula's hand was still fastened onto his arm. “Isn't that so, Paula?”

Paula struggled to disguise her displeasure at his unwanted invitation.

“As you wish, Hassan. Whatever you wish.”

Rachel caught Ashkouri's discreet nod at Jamshed.

“If you'd like, you may join our halaqa tonight. You won't find it as didactic as in other mosques, perhaps.” Ashkouri said this with a mildly tempered smile. “We speak of poetry as much as of anything else, but what is poetry if not another path to God? Don't you think so, Rachel Ellison?”

Rachel's answering smile was hesitant.

“If you're sure I won't be in the way.”

Ashkouri shook his head, disarranging his dark curls.

“Just as you seek to learn about us, there is much we'd like to learn about you. About any new member who crosses our threshold.”

Rachel's smile faltered on her lips. She glanced quickly at the four men who had been at the training camp with Mohsin.

Unlike the group of worshippers basking in the glow of Hassan Ashkouri's mystique, she knew he meant the words as a threat.

 

10

Khattak turned his key in the lock and let himself in. The family home was in Forest Hill, not far from the boys' college where he had spent his youth with Nathan Clare. The girls' school his sisters had attended was also within walking distance, hallmarks of a privileged childhood. His mother spent the winters in Peshawar. His sisters lived in the family home, a space he shared when his mother was away, a fact that Ruksh sometimes quarreled with. Misbah, on the other hand, would look at him with compassion, and whisper to Ruksh that Esa was lonely.

It was late afternoon, and the house was cold.

He could hear his sisters' voices in one of the upstairs bedrooms. He took the stairs two at a time, not pausing to reflect upon how to approach Rukshanda, the older of his two sisters, the one guaranteed to disagree with any suggestion he offered.

Ciprian Coale's words still rankled, as did the easy superiority behind them suggesting that Coale knew Khattak's family better than Esa did. Coale had wanted to get under his skin—Esa would be a fool to let him. But the questions remained: Had Esa been so immersed in the Drayton scandal that he hadn't noticed his sister was wearing an engagement ring? Would Ruksh have taken such a step without consulting him?

He knew it couldn't be coincidence. If Ashkouri had found a way to ensnare Esa's sister, knowing who Esa was, it would be part of his design, somehow connected to the Nakba plot.

He knocked on the door of their mother's room. His sisters didn't notice him at first. Ruksh and Misbah were bent over the king-size bed, removing colorful fabrics from their plastic sheeting. On one side of the bed, books and magazines were stacked in a haphazard pile. A dozen of these were wedding magazines:
Modern Bride, The Knot, Kismet, Asiana
. And one peeking out of the stack that Khattak had never heard of:
Lavish Dulhan.

He took a breath. Ruksh's ring finger was bare. He wasn't the world's most absentminded detective after all. But if Coale had been exaggerating, it wasn't by much. The clothes on the bed were wedding silks—in red, Persian green, and royal blue.

In that moment, he felt the keenness of his sister's peril.

What was Ashkouri's real interest in Ruksh? How was he planning to use her?

Misbah glanced up and saw him, her smile bright and welcoming.

But Ruksh was startled, a guilty thing surprised.

Khattak was never home at this time of day. And both of his sisters should have been out, Ruksh at her residency in epidemiology, Misbah at university, studying for her final exams. Instead, they were ensconced in their mother's room, cheerfully picking out wedding clothes.

Whose wedding? When was it to take place? And most of all, who was Ruksh thinking of marrying?

Khattak's habitual warmth with his sisters was beyond him at this moment.

“Would you leave us please, Misbah?”

An apprehensive glance passed between the sisters.

And in that moment Khattak saw that they were not as dissimilar as he had always supposed. Ruksh was younger than him by a decade, Misbah by an additional five years. Ruksh resembled Khattak in physical appearance, if not in temperament—dark-haired, green-eyed, pale-skinned, her striking features made more dramatic by her volatile personality. Misbah was quiet like Khattak, reserved in judgment and pronouncement, less obviously Pathan in coloring, small, dark, and slight, with an ever-present warmth that brought Khattak's mother to mind. When Misbah was around, he missed his mother less.

Now, in the glance that passed between his sisters, Khattak found a surprising familiarity between them. In the normal course of things, Ruksh had little time for Misbah. Her true sisterly attachment was to Nathan's younger sister, Audrey Clare. Audrey and Ruksh were the same age, they had attended the Bishop Strachan girls' school together, and they still passed most free weekends in each other's company.

Misbah was the afterthought, the late addition to the family, amiable and innocent, indulged and then forgotten by both her older siblings. Left to her own devices, Misbah had chosen to pursue a career in international development studies. Ruksh was the only one of the three siblings to follow the well-traveled family footsteps into medicine. She was bright and impatient, possessed of an overweening ambition.

“Don't dismiss Misbah like a child. She can think for herself.”

As was so often the case, Esa saw that his interaction with Ruksh was destined to be fractious. He nodded at Misbah, knowing which of her siblings Misbah would choose to obey.

She shut the door to their mother's room, unaccustomed to making demands of them.

Khattak moved to the bed, capturing the slippery red silk between his fingers.

“What is this, Ruksh?”

“Why ask if you know the answer?” She was already angry, and Khattak had been in the room less than five minutes.

“Because I'd like to know it from you.”

“I'm not one of your suspects, Esa. You don't get to trick me into a confession.”

Khattak pushed the fabrics aside, making a space for himself on the bed.

Weighing his words, he asked her, “Do you have anything you need to confess?”

A slight smile touched the corner of his mouth. With her arms crossed in front of her, and her hair pulled back in a ponytail, his sister reminded him of the much younger Ruksh who would follow him and Nate around, getting into scrapes that required his intercession without damaging her pride. A wave of tenderness washed over him.

“These look like wedding fabrics,” he said, wishing he could let Ruksh tell him in her own time. “Have you met someone? Are you thinking of getting married?”

“Have you been spying on me?” she asked at once.

And how could he answer that?

I haven't been, but you're caught up in an antiterrorism investigation. Do you know anything about that?

Coale had warned him that Ruksh was under surveillance. Whether that meant electronic surveillance of the Khattak home, or of Ruksh's phone calls and daily routine, he couldn't be certain. And Coale would take a specific perverse pleasure in denying him access to that information on national security grounds.

He wasn't spying on his sister. He had never thought to spy on her. It was Ashkouri he needed to watch, Ashkouri whose motives could only be sinister

But Ruksh would have no idea of this. Her reluctance to confide in Esa was based on her first failed engagement.