The Language of Secrets (6 page)

“I wouldn't know. We're not meant to know. We're meant to give the appearance of investigating Dar's death.”

“Which means we're really investigating it,” Rachel cut in.

“Of course.” He looked surprised that she'd felt the need to say it. “What's the point of going in at all, if we don't care that an innocent man is dead? A man who chose a dangerous means of serving his country?”

Rachel ducked the question. Like most Canadians, she found overt displays of patriotism embarrassing, unless it came in the form of rooting for Team Canada. She took her vacation days during the World Hockey Championships, and demonstrated her national pride by painting a maple leaf on her face. This was something else, it was deeper. Rachel, who was an agnostic about everything except crime, found herself uncomfortable.

“Going in?”

She knew it was the right question when Khattak's hands relaxed on his knees.

“My task is to recite the Community Policing mantra at the mosque; you'll appear a day or so ahead of me with a cover story. You won't be Rachel Getty, police officer. And we won't know each other.”

Rachel eyed him, suspicious. “Then who will I be?”

“A new recruit. Not to the active cell,” he corrected, when he saw her reaction. “To the Masjid un-Nur. You're there because you live in the area and you're thinking about a conversion to Islam.”

“I don't live in the area,” Rachel said, panicking.

Khattak was patient in response. “That's why it's a cover. And you'll talk to these people.” He nodded at the file. “About Mohsin and the mosque, nothing more. But somehow or other, you've got to get yourself invited to one of Hassan Ashkouri's halaqas.”

“Without tipping him off? What if I blow the whole thing? Isn't that just what we need with everything that's happened at Justice? They'll crucify you, sir.”

A clumsy choice of words to direct at a practicing Muslim. She realized as much as soon as the words left her mouth.

Khattak didn't notice. He reached across the table for the folder, gathered up the photographs to place them inside.

“You don't have to do this, Rachel; of course I can't compel you. It's just—I owe Mohsin Dar something more than what he'll get from our colleagues at INSET.”

“You don't trust them?”

“I trust they have the right priorities. I understand that Mohsin can't be one of them.”

Rachel watched the heaviness settle back upon Khattak's shoulders, much like the light edging from the room, leaving the shadow of loss behind. Khattak was upset, and it wasn't just over the death of Mohsin Dar, a man he had known. Or the terrorist plot, as much as it had jolted her, as fantastic as it seemed.

She switched on the lamp beside her brother's photograph.

Things had changed; they were better. She was seeing Zach again, though much more infrequently than she wanted, and always on his terms. He wasn't ready to trust her with everything—his address, his friends, the girl he'd been dating for the past two years. They talked, but never about their parents, and Rachel was careful not to push him too hard.

But when she'd bought the condo, she'd made sure it had an extra bedroom, in case Zach ever felt like he needed a home—or needed her. She hadn't said it, but Zach had known. And for a fleeting moment, she'd glimpsed the young Zach again, the unmitigated faith in his eyes. Then he'd ducked his head and it was gone.

Always be as happy, Zach,
she had thought, gazing at her brother's face in the photograph. She'd forgotten to wish the same for herself.

She'd backed Khattak all the way in the aftermath of what had happened with Drayton. She wouldn't do less now. Not when Ciprian Coale had left him isolated.

She thought of Khattak's friend, Nathan Clare, the famous writer. She had met him during the Drayton investigation. He was someone Khattak could talk to—and then from Nathan, her thoughts made a lightning connection.

“Who did you speak to at INSET, sir? Who briefed you?”

“We won't be working with her, Rachel. And if you do see her at the Nur mosque, you're not to engage with her. Keep your cover intact.”

He meant Laine Stoicheva, his terrifying ex-colleague.

Not so much a relic of the past as an unexploded ordnance. Still waiting to go off.

No wonder Khattak was wearied by the day. First Drayton, now this. And to have known the murdered man …

With an effort, Rachel kept her face from showing her sympathy.

“You said I'm to go in first, right away. Why is that, sir?”

“I'll be dealing with Andy Dar.” He made a dismissive gesture with his left hand, but Rachel caught the flare of hope in his eyes. “And I've some things I need to manage at home.”

Rachel ordered pizza. It was her way of saying yes. And of getting Khattak to prepare her. She'd learned a great deal at CPS, from Khattak and the Muslim communities they'd worked with, but there were still a million things she could get wrong, a million ways she could land them both in further trouble.

“Do I need a headscarf, sir?”

Khattak gave her the glimmer of a smile.

The folder between them, they talked late into the night.

 

7

Khattak met Andy Dar at his home in Rosedale, an old and affluent neighborhood situated between three ravines. Its charm lay in the abundance of roses that grew at the edges of the Jarvis estate, the historic homestead that had given rise to the neighborhood more than a century ago.

The silent weight of snow gave a sameness to the landscape, bearing down upon the spruce and pine trees, snaking over the branches of elms. Khattak drove south from the railway tracks that formed the neighborhood's northern boundary, navigating the slick roads with care, until he found Dar's house across from the old stone church. The windows of a beautifully crafted brick house fronted the small triangle of Whitney Park.

Khattak parked in the driveway and rang the doorbell.

The heavy bronze door was opened by a woman in her thirties wearing a loosely bound headscarf. Her face was bare of makeup, except for smudges of eyeliner that had leaked over the edges of her lower lids, darkening the circles beneath her tired eyes. She ignored the identification he presented, both her arms full of bulging file folders. When Khattak offered to take them from her, she seemed surprised at the attention.

“I'm Alia,” she said. “My father-in-law is in the study.”

So this was Alia Dar, Mohsin Dar's wife—Mohsin Dar's widow now. As he followed her through the house, he took note of the fact that she was wearing slacks and a baggy tunic, instead of
shalwar kameez
, traditional Pakistani clothing. Her headscarf was worn casually, the way a woman of the subcontinent would wear it, with the long tail of her dark braid escaping from the bottom.

Khattak felt the automatic respect for a hijab-wearing woman that most men of his background and generation did, moderated by the analytical training of a police officer. A headscarf didn't make him stop thinking, or evaluating or wondering. It was simply something he was comfortable with, just as he was comfortable with its absence. His wife had not worn one, except at the mosque and religious gatherings, and he had always respected her choice.

A wry smile twisted Khattak's mouth. As with his sisters, his views on the matter had not been consulted, nor had there been any expectation that they would be, a lesson he had learned from his mild-mannered father. He wondered if the same had been true of Mohsin Dar.

He knew Andy Dar was an outspoken advocate of assimilation. A vociferous critic of practices he considered outmoded, Dar had sundered his ties with the city's Muslim communities years ago, reinventing himself in ever more disturbing incarnations, most recently that of broadcast journalist, a go-to source for scathing commentary on Islam.

Alia Dar knocked on the French doors that led the way into Andy Dar's study. The knock was hesitant, deferential, at odds with the expression on her face, a fleeting glimpse of her true feelings for her father-in-law, who waved them in.

Alia motioned Khattak to a chair, setting the heavy stack of folders down. Khattak waited. Dar was on the phone, giving Khattak time to study the photographs that cluttered the walls, a comprehensive list of dignitaries on personal terms with Dar. There was no photo of Nathan Clare, the writer and public intellectual, Khattak's closest friend.

The politics of Clare and Dar had never been aligned, even when Dar had been a welcome spokesperson in Toronto's Muslim communities. There was still a touch of charlatanism that hung about the man, along with the sense of relentless self-promotion. Perhaps reading Khattak's reluctance to engage with Andy Dar, Clare had kept his distance from Dar, a choice extenuated by time.

Andy Dar ended his call. The handshake he offered Khattak was brusque to the point of offense, and characteristic of his manner. He faced Khattak with a smirk, ignoring rank and every other indication of Esa Khattak's success.

“Well? What have you got for me, Khattak?” He noticed his daughter-in-law, sorting through the folders on his desk, moving between the desk and a set of black filing cabinets. “What are you still doing here? Go and bring us some tea. Unless Khattak wants coffee.”

Khattak looked at Andy Dar steadily. However unpleasant Dar's attitude toward Khattak, his manner of speaking to his daughter-in-law was much more offensive.

He declined the offer of tea with a circumspect glance at Alia.

“I expect Mrs. Dar would like to stay and hear about her husband.”

Andy Dar ignored him. Flipping through his letters, he spoke with the modified British accent prevalent among his generation of well-educated South Asians.

“What is it you have to report to me?”

“I wanted to let you know that I've taken over the investigation. I'll be doing everything in my power to bring the person who killed your son to justice.”

Dar let out a short, sharp bark. “What power do you have? None at all. What you're best known for is incompetence and inaction. You are letting yourself be used, Khattak. I warned you that this would happen. A Muslim inspector, to head up a
faltu
unit, and you fell for it.” His voice became a sneer. “You wanted it, I'm sure. A little plume in your cap, a sign of acceptance that even white skin doesn't buy you. A chance to pass, to play at being
angrez
. Were it not for the fact of your rather difficult Pashtun name.”

Khattak considered this. The Urdu word
faltu
meant “worthless,” or “extra.” It was borrowed from Portuguese, brought by the Portuguese colonization of Goa, India. As was
angrez
, a word that meant “Englishman,” a loanword derived from “inglés.”

Khattak marveled at the irony of Dar's choice of language, an irony that Dar little suspected, cultures bleeding into each other, leaving graceful, irretrievable traces of themselves.

“You're not being fair, Baba.” Alia's voice from the corner of the room was plain and unaccented. Like Khattak, she was Canadian-born. She brushed at the curls on her forehead, pulling her headscarf forward. “Mohsin knew Inspector Khattak. He would have been glad to know that someone he respected was working on his behalf.”

“Did he mention me to you recently?”

Both Khattak's voice and glance at Alia were gentle. He considered the contrast between Andy Dar and his daughter-in-law, etched more sharply by Dar's not-unexpected invective. There was much in Dar's outburst to consider, not least its contradictions. It was Adnan Dar who had spent his life in pursuit of acceptance, and “Andy” Dar who had chosen the straightforward path of assimilation. Except that assimilation was never quite as straightforward as an immigrant expected or hoped for. The accent, the dark skin, the unfamiliar ways—the distinctive and oft-feared religious practices. Much of this, Andy Dar had discarded. What he could not discard was his sense of being uprooted from himself, in search of a new mooring place. No matter how loudly he disparaged his personal heritage, he wasn't able to divorce himself from it—either in his own eyes, or in the eyes of others.

Khattak with his difficult name and Alia with her headscarf were both more comfortable and familiar with themselves than Andy Dar could hope to be, shouting blindly into the void.

Alia came away from the filing cabinet, leaning one hip against the desk.

“You don't visit the Nur mosque, I think. The mosque in old Unionville.”

“I haven't yet. Did Mohsin spend time there?”

Alia appeared uneasy. She reached for the mail that Andy Dar had been shuffling in his hands, and set it upon the desk. Khattak sensed that as with everything else, responsibility for Dar's mail would ultimately fall to her.

“A lot of time. He met—new people there. He was always at the mosque.”

“Wasting his time with idiots,” Andy Dar cut in. His voice was filled with outrage. And beneath the outrage, the pain that waited to encroach at his first quiet moment. “And one of those fanatics killed him. They took him to the woods and murdered him, God knows why.” He darted an angry glance at Khattak. “If you are not wholly incompetent yourself, perhaps you stand a chance of finding out what happened to my son.” He checked the time on his cell phone. “But I will make sure of it myself by asking for answers on my program.”

And now Khattak felt the urgency of what Martine Killiam had shared with him, the need to curtail Dar before his behavior destroyed months of meticulous groundwork. The exigent need to find Dar another outlet for his pain, since Dar could not be thwarted, and had to be managed.

“I wonder if there's a way to make your intervention more effective.”

The innocence of Esa's suggestion masked a calculation.

“I don't see your broadcast as a onetime opportunity,” he continued. “Your program could play a critical role, if it's handled with discretion.”