The Language of Secrets (2 page)

Martine Killiam had asked him to meet at the Toronto base of operations for INSET, the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team. Khattak had once served as core personnel with INSET, before he'd been asked to head up CPS. Many of the men and women in the room were former colleagues.

“You're working something big,” he said. “Is it terrorist activity? Cross-border?”

He'd noted the presence of officers from the Canada Border Services Agency.

“Sit down, won't you? What you see out there—we're at the tail end of an operation that's been running for two years. We simply didn't foresee this turn of events.”

“The murdered man was part of your operation? Is that where you need my assistance?”

If Killiam was asking for Khattak's help despite what had happened with the Drayton investigation, the INSET operation would have to be at a critical point.

“I need you to investigate the murder. The victim's father is well-known, both in the national media and in your community. He plans to use his platform to obtain justice for his son. If we don't stop him, we'll lose everything we've achieved to this point.” She rubbed her forehead, easing the deeply etched line between her brows. “It's much worse than you can imagine. To be frank, you're the only person I could think of who stands the slightest chance of shutting him down.”

“Who is he? Who are you talking about? What happened to his son?”

“His son infiltrated a terrorist group that runs a training camp in the woods. He was found at Algonquin Park. He'd been shot twice, and left to bleed to death.”

She surprised Khattak by reaching across the desk to take his hand.

“Esa,” she said. “I'm sorry. The man they killed is Mohsin Dar.”

*   *   *

He shrank away from the words, recoiled from her touch, flattening his hands against her desk.

“No,” he said. “No, it's not Mohsin.”

Her face crinkled with a sympathy he couldn't bear.

He made his own face a blank in response.

There was supposed to be time to work things out with Mohsin, to meet at the mosque again, to embrace like long-lost brothers, to admit they missed each other.

Instead of Mo pointing the finger when Esa had been recruited to INSET.

You're making a mistake, brother. You can't come back from this.

Think what it means for the community.

You think about it. Every mosque in the city will shut its doors to you. You'll become a pariah, a resident spy. Is that what you want? To be the house Arab? To see your face in the papers as the inside man?

It's not what you're making it out to be.

You don't spy on those you call your own, brother. You work with them, for them.

They'd had many similar conversations during the volatile period after the September 11 attacks.

With the obstinacy of a younger man still uneasy with his Pashtun roots, Esa had answered,
You should be careful who you claim as your own.

The
ummah,
man, the
ummah
. We belong to it. You don't remember the paper?

This had been Mohsin's favorite refrain. He believed in the Islamic nation, a supranational community whose faith transcended language, sect, ethnicity, and borders, tied together by a spiritual commonality.

For a brief time, Esa and Mohsin had been contributors to the newspaper at their university. Khattak's inclination had been for poetry, Mohsin's a highly emotional form of reportage. He'd taken the global Muslim community as his subject.

An article Mohsin had written to honor Afghan warriors in the aftermath of the Soviet withdrawal praised the simplicity of mujahideen worship, evoking the image of a solitary figure praying at the summit of a mountain fastness.

This was the weapon that won the war.

So Mohsin had believed.

The article had revealed a gaping ignorance of global politics. Of the future prospects of an illiterate society flush with weapons and drugs and rife with the divisions the Soviet occupation had suppressed, Mohsin had had little to say.

Khattak had found no fault with Mohsin's critique of the Russian invasion, but he'd wondered at his friend's refusal to see beyond that singular moment in history. Afghanistan's tribal past, its uncertain future, with decades of war still to come. The oft-named graveyard of empires, with many of its dead yet to be counted.

Mohsin's view of the world had been naive: friends versus enemies,
ummah
versus outsiders, the pain of the now measured against the sweet reward of the afterlife, though he'd never flung the word “infidel” as an accusation. When he looked for common ground, he usually found it. But as with other members of their community, Mohsin's grievances had multiplied with time.

*   *   *

Khattak's eyes searched Killiam's face.

“He was an agent of the RCMP? When did that happen?”

And what did it mean that Mohsin had made such a choice when he'd broken with Esa for doing the same?

Killiam cleared her throat. “Mohsin came to us through the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. We developed him as an agent. I'm not at liberty to say for how long.”

“But this camp you mentioned in the woods—that was your operation?”

Martine regarded him gravely.

“The operation is not over, Esa. It's moving to the tactical stage soon.” She passed him a folder across the desk. “We've penetrated two cells that are working together on a bomb plot. They've designated four targets.” She counted them off on her fingers. “Union Station, the CN Tower, Queen's Park, the SkyDome. They're calling their attack the ‘New Year Nakba.'”

Khattak's head came up from his perusal of the file.

“Nakba” was a word freighted with history.

It was the Arabic word for “catastrophe.”

A catastrophe taken to heart by an undivided Muslim world—a match to light a tinderbox.

Yawm an-Nakba
, the Day of Catastrophe, commemorated the day after Israel's Independence Day. It linked the founding of the state of Israel to the loss of the Palestinian homeland, when 700,000 Palestinians had fled or been expelled during the 1948 war. Settlement construction, home demolitions, and state-sanctioned violence in the West Bank were only superseded by the desperate human rights crisis in Gaza. They kept the memory of Palestinian suffering fresh in the minds of the
ummah
.

The men behind the Nakba plot would have chosen the name for its symbolic value as a Lydian stone of defeat.

The mighty against the weak.

The occupier against the indigenous.

The colonizer against the lost and defenseless.

But was Palestine still a touchstone after so many years? After Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq?

Khattak closed the file with a snap. He couldn't bring himself to look at the photographs of Mohsin. Just as he couldn't bring himself to imagine that any of this was real.

“Is this serious, Superintendent? Are you telling me that Canadians are training at a camp in Algonquin, with the intention of carrying out a terrorist attack?” He pushed the folder back across the desk. “How are they coordinating it? Where are they getting the weapons? Is there any operational legitimacy to this?”

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.

 

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