The Language of Secrets (22 page)

On the table was a copy of the slim volume of poetry,
The Country Without a Post Office.
It was a book that belonged to Khattak's father, an ardent admirer of the Kashmiri poet, who was also the author of
Rooms Are Never Finished
—the book Ashkouri had given to Ruksh, a book Ruksh had failed to discover on the shelf in her father's library.

Since meeting Ruksh, Ashkouri must have acquainted himself with Agha Shahid Ali's works. But something else intrigued Khattak about Ashkouri's reference to “Muharram in Srinagar.” The poem's principal metaphor for the violence enacted against the people of Kashmir was the historic Battle of Karbala, a paradigmatic moment on the calendar of Islam, dividing forever the houses of Shia and Sunni.

Khattak knew the subtext as well as he knew the poem itself.

Ashkouri viewed himself as a martyr to his cause.

But Khattak didn't think that Ashkouri's own death was a part of his calculations, or his idea of martyrdom. However the Nakba plot was meant to be carried out, there was no evidence that Ashkouri had sought a place on the front lines.

Once introductions to the circle had been made, Khattak gestured for Ashkouri to continue. Like Rachel had before him, he found the style of the halaqa strange and disjointed, while also unable to deny that it possessed a certain hypnotic appeal. The themes were as Rachel had described: Justice for the victims of tyranny. Solidarity with the oppressed. Vengeance upon the unrighteous. And then, out of nowhere, love poetry. And when he quoted it, Ashkouri's black gaze would dwell on Ruksh's face. Whether the feeling was real or simply the means to an end was impossible for Khattak to discern.

Ashkouri selected Din this time from his group of listeners, a test of some kind. Din's face fell. Grace reached for his hand and squeezed it.

“If you subtract the night from the day, the new moon will blossom over the square.”

“Very good.”

Ashkouri continued his own recitation, but the sense of what he said was just out of Khattak's grasp. The poet who would have been most on point for Ashkouri's peroration was Ali Ahmed Said, Adonis himself, but Ashkouri was careful to make no reference to the poet with the most transparent connection to the Rose of Darkness website.

The website was clearly a jihadist construction, promising retribution against the West, fluent in a litany of grievances—some legitimate and nuanced, others the blind outpouring of a blunt, premeditated rage, founded on three central beliefs: Muslims were ubiquitously under attack. Jihadists were the sole defenders of the
ummah
. And those who refused to support the jihadists had taken sides with the oppressors of their community. These oppressors were identified reductively and collectively as the “new Crusaders.”

The third principle allowed for a clear demarcation of “us” and “them.” Under this demarcation of those who belonged and those who had to be excluded and were therefore vulnerable to jihadist retaliation, Khattak was clearly one of “them.”

Esa Khattak and Hassan Ashkouri, members of the same faith, were standing on opposite sides of a door. Each man's understanding of divine justice was antithetical to the other's.

They were enemies.

Seek death in the places you expect to find it.

But for Khattak, it was life that was the most precious of all gifts, all callings.

And looking at Ashkouri, he thought of a different line of poetry.

The criminal law, like the criminals, has not evolved.

 

18

“I wonder if we should discuss my intention of marrying your sister.”

They were standing in the kitchen near the pitcher of rosewater-scented milk prepared for their guests by Ruksh. Ashkouri savored a glass, examining the portrait of Esa and his bride that hung beside the breakfast bar. The cold smile that edged Hassan's lips raised the hair on the back of Esa's neck. Khattak's wife had gone beyond Ashkouri's power to harm, but Ruksh was still at risk.

“I think you'll see that it's best that we not proceed further on the subject of my sister until the investigation into the death of Mohsin Dar has been concluded.”

“And why would that be, Inspector?”

“It's clearly a conflict of interest, given your relationship with Ruksh. I shouldn't be part of this investigation as it is.”

“Then why are you?”

“I'm here at Andy Dar's request.”

Ashkouri's fingers traced the rim of his glass. He spared a smile for Ruksh, who made no secret of listening as she joined them.

“From what I understand, Mohsin's father singled you out for his rather … extreme displeasure.”

“He was speaking from the emotion of the moment. He thinks there's been a lack of justice for his son. I'm sure that's something you can understand.”

Ashkouri's eyes narrowed.

“Why? Because I am from Baghdad, a city so continuously under threat? Our liberators are coming.” He downed the rest of his drink, while inwardly Khattak shuddered. Could Ashkouri possibly mean the besieging forces of ISIS? What kind of liberation did he imagine lay in store for the people of his city?

“Those with power think their power is unassailable,” Ashkouri continued. “Let them douse the moon, if they can. Then I might come to believe in their power.”

Khattak had no difficulty interpreting Ashkouri's referential manner of speaking.

To douse the moon, to snuff out the crescent—Ashkouri had taken a metaphor used by the poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz and twisted it. Ashkouri's subtext was jihadist—the point being that the new Crusaders could not subdue the defenders of Islam. And the insult was doubled by using a poet of Khattak's ancestral homeland.

Did Ashkouri not know—or did he simply not care—that in this instance the poet's dire critique had been of his own society?

It was like very bad theater, poorly scripted and just as poorly received.

Except that the Nakba plot was real.

Of all the men his sister could have chosen, why had God placed her with Ashkouri?

This time Khattak took his father's chair, motioning Ashkouri to a different seat. Esa wasted no time. He asked for an account of Ashkouri's actions on the night of Mohsin Dar's murder. It tallied in every respect except one with the statement Jamshed Ali had given. Ashkouri had shared a cabin with Din Abdi. He'd been alone, asleep. He'd heard the gunshots and rushed outside. The others were all there, including Din and Grace.

Which was not how Jamshed had remembered things. And not what Din himself had confided. Khattak went over that part of Ashkouri's statement again.

But Ashkouri would only repeat that when he had gone outside, Din and Grace had joined the others in the circle. Whether they had taken some time to appear, he couldn't say. And whether Din had left sometime earlier for a private rendezvous with Grace, he didn't know. He knew nothing about the gun. He wasn't a marksman. He had no personal experience with small arms. He didn't have a permit. And he wasn't a hunter.

Khattak looked down at his notebook.

The line was there. Esa wanted to cross it. But his position was perilous enough as it was. He'd been told to leave questioning that related to the training aspect of the camp alone, and that included the bolt-action rifles. He was meant to say nothing that would alert Ashkouri to INSET's knowledge of the Nakba plot.

And yet Esa wondered. Ashkouri's unnatural calm, his baiting of Khattak, his willingness to appear in Khattak's own home—his entanglement with Khattak's sister. It didn't add up.

Did Ashkouri truly believe himself invincible? Or was his composure due to the fact that he was a step or two ahead of the INSET team at all times? Had he known Mohsin was feeding them information? Did he know about the plan to switch out the ammonium nitrate with inert material?

There was something about the evening that festered under the surface, something that had been said at the halaqa. Esa concentrated, trying to remember. And then he had it. It was the singling out of Din Abdi.

What had Din said?

If you subtract the night from the day, the new moon will blossom over the square.

But what did it mean? Tahrir Square in Cairo? The movement that had launched the Arab Spring?

It reminded him of the article Mohsin Dar had written for the student paper when Esa and Mohsin had been young men.

When the Russians rolled into Afghanistan, they imagined it would be as effortless as their conquest of Czechoslovakia. And now their empire lies buried in Afghan lands. By rocket launchers and Stingers.

If I had a rocket launcher.

The song on the Rose of Darkness website.

But Czechoslovakia? The Prague Spring? Was there a connection to the Arab Spring? A connection he had missed? Because he couldn't shake the feeling that Ashkouri's cryptic halaqas were delivered in some kind of code.

And Esa asked himself a necessary question. Did Ashkouri lay the blame for the deaths of his family at the doorstep of the country that had taken him in? He doubted Ashkouri would separate Iraq's sectarian violence from the invasion that had preceded it, the invasion that many blamed for the destabilization of Iraq, despite the horrors of Saddam Hussein's rule.

Officially, Canada had refused to join the U.S.-led coalition without the proper United Nations sanction. Unofficially, the waters were murky.

“Can you think of anyone who would have reason to murder Mohsin Dar?”

“No one at all. He is one of the few people I know who can claim to have been beloved by everyone he met.”

“Was Mohsin alive when you found him?”

“His eyes were open, but his body was cold.”

“Did you notice anything unusual at the scene?”

Ashkouri shook his head. “The only thing I noticed was my friend dead alone in the woods.”

“Mr. Ali said there was a blood trail. That Mohsin must have dragged his body to rest against the tree.”

“Perhaps. I do not recall. Why does it matter?”

“I don't know that it does,” Khattak said slowly. “But I thought perhaps you might have noticed something else. Footprints in the snow. Or blood on someone's shoes.”

“I noticed nothing of the kind. You think that one of us did this to our friend, but isn't the more likely explanation that a hunter escaped your grasp? That the provincial police forces weren't quick enough to cast their net and seek this man out? Mohsin had a beard, wore a kufi. Perhaps his murder was an act of prejudice as his father says.”

Khattak noted the gleam in the other man's eyes. He was pushing Khattak's buttons, much as Coale had done at the INSET meeting.

And just as Coale had learned, Khattak couldn't be rattled so easily. He pushed back. “So you don't feel responsible for not finding Mohsin sooner? If you had, he might still be alive.”

“What can the wound do when the knife is already drawn, Inspector? You ask me to predict the unpredictable. To assume my knowledge and capability are greater than His.” He pointed a finger upward. “God has His plan for all things and all beings. So it was with Mohsin.”

A spasm of anger shook Khattak.

To blame God for a man-made death. To invoke what was good as a cover for evil—the bile rose in Khattak's throat.

He didn't know if Ashkouri was a murderer, or if he'd somehow determined that Mohsin was in the employ of the RCMP. What he did know was that Ashkouri intended murder on a devastating scale, something that a team of dozens of police officers was working to prevent.

He answered in as offhand a manner as he could. “If God has any plan at all, surely it favors life rather than death.”

Hassan Ashkouri leaned forward. “Sometimes we must destroy in order to rebuild. Do you not know your scripture, Inspector Khattak? The iniquitous must be destroyed to make way for the righteous. Isn't that what they say happened to my country?”

Ashkouri was describing the Iraq wars. But there were other truths he wasn't prepared to accept. Iraq's hundred thousand civilian dead had been caught in the cross fire of a sectarian slaughter, the violence prefaced by those who claimed a divine right to power and the equally divine monopoly of a shared, multifarious faith.

Bombs in one neighborhood, then the next, in a cycle of endless reprisals, until blood and devastation were all that remained of the birthplace of a civilization, in a disastrous mirroring of the Mongol sack of the city in 1258.

Their eyes met and held. And in those fathomless dark eyes, Khattak recognized a priest of the culture of death. Ashkouri had just made his first mistake.

“Are you saying that Mohsin Dar was unrighteous? That he deserved to die? Why would that be?”

Ashkouri recovered swiftly.

“I don't believe I said that, Inspector. I would appreciate it if you wouldn't put words in my mouth. Mohsin was my friend. I grieve his loss as much as anyone else.”

“Yet you've held no memorial at the mosque that I'm aware of.”

“That decision must be taken by the imam. Or by Mohsin's father. It seems precipitate when Mohsin's body has yet to be released. But I understand the police are at a loss.” He gave Khattak a cold smile. “And that the secular law must precede the demands of the congregation.”

“Even if Mohsin's funeral prayer is delayed, there's no reason not to observe a ceremony for the man you claim is your friend.”

Ashkouri stood up. He brushed his hands against his narrow trousers.

“An interesting choice of words. I'm not certain why it is that you would doubt my claim, but I hope to be on more cordial terms with you when I am a member of your family. Separating Rukshanda from her family wouldn't be an act of my choosing.”

Khattak rose as well. He could see the shadows pressing against the door to the room, hear the raised voices in the kitchen.