The Language of Secrets (33 page)

Rachel was the one who found herself thinking along the same lines as Mohsin Dar. She didn't want these kids to be swept up in the plot. She wanted to get Paula and Din out; and if not Din—if he was too deeply implicated, if he had killed Mohsin Dar at Ashkouri's command—then at least Grace.

Was it wrong of Rachel to see the innocence in Grace, the injured spirit? Was it wrong to want to rescue her?

Would she always be partial to the young and dispossessed, because of Zach?

Wasn't that the very quality that made her so good at her job?

Wasn't that the one aspect of her approach to policing that Khattak had never asked her to moderate?

She had disobeyed a direct order from Ciprian Coale not just for Ruksh's sake, but also because of Grace. And maybe Paula.

She didn't believe that these women had no agency of their own. They had made foolish choices, each for the same reason—Paula's infatuation with Ashkouri, Ruksh's dubious relationship with the same man, and Grace clinging to Din like he was the only thing that connected her to the world. Because without him, the world was cruel and uncaring.

Rachel didn't know what that felt like.

The most intense love she'd known in her life had been for her brother Zachary.

But she was possessed of a fertile imagination.

And all that poetry at the mosque—passionate, dramatic—had to spring from somewhere, something.

A very real depth of feeling.

And then a thought struck Rachel.

Paula Kyriakou was the only one who hadn't mentioned poetry or recited it.

Paula, the pragmatic one.

Hassan Ashkouri's faithful admirer.

On cue, the woman bustled out of the nearest cabin, trudging her way through the snow to their SUV.

“Give me the firewood, Jamshed. You have no idea how cold it is.”

Paula had changed her comfortably loose robe for a full-length down parka with a furry white hood that framed her round face. Without the scarf pulled tight around her forehead and chin, and with the crispness of winter bathing her cheeks, she looked lively and pretty.

If still of the same sour disposition.

Jamshed unloaded the firewood from the back of the car. He carried it into the clearing.

“Where's Hassan?”

“He's taken Ruksh for a walk.” Paula firmed her lips as she shared the news. “They shouldn't be alone together.”

Jamshed broke off an icicle from the branch of a spruce tree. He held it up to Paula.

“What can they get up to in this weather, Paula? They're grown-ups. You don't need to police them.”

His eyes slid to Rachel.

Din smirked at Grace, perhaps in recollection of his last trip to the park. The night that Mohsin Dar had died, when the two of them had been alone in the woods of Algonquin.

And from the slight emphasis that Jamshed had placed on the word “police,” Rachel understood that Jamshed Ali knew exactly who she was.

And if he did, there was no reason that Rachel shouldn't make a bolder move.

“This clearing is so pretty,” she said. “Hassan said you intend to hold a memorial for your friend. The one who was killed in the park. Is this where he died?”

Paula stared at Rachel with distaste. Grace answered before Jamshed Ali could speak.

“No. He was up beyond the rise, near the river. That's why no one heard him cry out after the gunshots. If he did cry out, that is.”

Her voice began to shake.

“When someone has returned to God, we do not mourn his passing.”

It was an indictment. Delivered by Jamshed with no regard for the fact of a young girl's sense of loss. Rachel had witnessed Islamic funeral rites before. She knew they could be gentle, a comfort to the bereaved, in the hands of a capable preacher.

There was a sternness and rigidity to Jamshed Ali's construal of his faith that was consistent with the nihilism of his worldview. If he wished that for himself, Rachel wouldn't have faulted him. But she suspected the real power and pleasure of his orthodoxy lay in his ability to constrain the happiness of others.

Including Grace, however little she may have been wanted at the mosque, or on this trip.

The tears formed muddy tracks on Grace's face, her eyeliner and mascara streaming down her cheeks in two ragged trails.

“Whatever,” she said, trekking off in the direction of the cabins. She glanced back at Din. “Coming?”

He caught Jamshed's eye, shook his head.

His refusal made Grace angry. She swore loudly enough for them all to hear, Paula clucking her tongue behind Grace's back. Rachel started after her.

“Leave her,” Paula said to Rachel. “She liked Mohsin the least of all of us. I don't know why she bothers to pretend. Help me build the fire instead.”

Rachel shuffled over to Paula's side. As they busied themselves over the fire pit, Din and Jamshed retreated under the cover of the trees.

Paula issued a series of instructions that Rachel, who was an excellent camper, chose to ignore. She had the fire roaring at the center of the clearing in short order, casting a professional glance over their stores of firewood.

“That won't be enough,” she warned Paula.

“We can drive back to Two Rivers for more in the evening.”

“When's the memorial?” Rachel asked.

“Tonight. Over the bonfire. Hassan will lead us in a halaqa. He says it won't be like anything we've experienced before. He says we should think of death as a celebration.”

Rachel found a stick in the snow to prod the fire.

“Don't you find that a little creepy?” Rachel asked. “Or disrespectful?” But she saw that she had taken the wrong tack with Paula by criticizing the man she idolized.

“How did you get into this?” Rachel waved a hand at the campsite. “Your exploration of Islam. You never said.”

Paula began to unload the rest of the supplies from the car.

“Work,” she said to Rachel. “Don't talk.”

“Can't I do both? I'm curious to know if your experience has been anything like mine.”

Paula paused by the SUV's rear door, one mittened hand on her hip.

“I didn't run away from home like Grace, if that's what you're thinking.”

Rachel pawed at her toque, pushing it back on her head.

“Neither did I,” she said. “I was just in pain. From not having answers.”

Rachel found it interesting that Paula didn't question her further. The other woman couldn't seem to summon up an interest in any subject other than Hassan Ashkouri.

Paula carried the heaviest pack to the closest cabin.

“You can share with me,” Paula said. “I don't want to room with Ruksh.”

Rachel expressed her thanks, though truthfully, she'd hoped to find herself with Grace. She had no desire to spend the night in either Ruksh's or Paula's company. On the other hand, she didn't know how else she was going to get Ruksh away on her own.

She grabbed her gear from the car and stowed it inside the cabin, under the nearest bed, after a momentary dilemma. She needed it close at hand, in case she had to run. But that also meant that anyone who slipped into her cabin would find it at once.

Then again, she'd left her gun back in her car, parked at Masjid un-Nur. Her cell phone—the other object that could have given her away—was on her person.

Paula didn't answer Rachel's question about her past, so she tried another.

“You don't like Ruksh very much, do you?”

Paula spread her sleeping bag over the bed farthest from the door. She sank down on top of it, the bag deflating with a quiet sigh. The cabin was ice cold.

“Hassan brought heaters,” Paula told her. “He thinks of everything. He thinks of everyone. That's why he shouldn't be with Ruksh. She thinks only of herself.”

Rachel sat down on her own bed, feeling its chill through the layers of her coat.

“You think he should be with someone like you instead? Someone who shares his vision?”

Paula seemed flattered by the comparison.

“I had a boyfriend once,” she confided. “He was Turkish, which wasn't an easy choice for me. He expected all kinds of things from me in terms of more conservative behavior—he wanted me to change how I look and behave and speak. I did those things for him—all those things. I mean, look at me. And then he left me to go clubbing with a twenty-year-old in a miniskirt. A girl not that different from Ruksh.”

“But Ruksh is an observant Muslim, isn't she?”

Paula's rejoinder was sad.

“It's not what you eat or don't eat. It's not what you drink or how short you wear your skirts—it's not just being born to something. It's committing yourself—your inner self. Maybe I didn't understand that before, but I do now. I don't think Ruksh is committed to God. I do know that I am.”

Paula's blue eyes were candid.

She was telling the truth.

She had taken a step beyond Hassan Ashkouri.

And Rachel saw a way out.

She leaned across and patted Paula on the knee.

“Maybe I can help you,” she said. “I've been wanting to talk to Ruksh—you know, about being a newcomer at the mosque, and not fitting in. Maybe if I ask her those questions, she'll realize that she's not committed, as you say. Not in the way that she should be.”

Paula snorted.

“Good luck with that. Hassan doesn't let her out of his sight.”

Another reason for Rachel to worry.

“Maybe you could distract him. Keep him busy with something so I can get Ruksh alone.”

But Paula wasn't convinced.

“Why would you do that?”

Rachel thought about her reasons—what she could share, what she couldn't.

“I think that you and I are a little bit alike. Both of us are on the outside, when maybe we don't deserve to be.”

Paula stood up, brushing her hands down her coat, her eyes not quite meeting Rachel's.

“Most of the women at Nur don't like me.”

And Rachel heard in Paula's voice the same lost note she'd heard when Grace had spoken of Jamshed and Din.

She gave Paula a tentative smile.

“There are deeper things than popularity. They haven't had to learn that, I guess.”

*   *   *

Grace, Ruksh, and Paula. Rachel needed to get the three of them out.

She made her way to the public washrooms, locking herself inside the shed. Close by, she heard the voices of Ruksh and Ashkouri, murmuring in the soft tones of lovers. She peeked her head out of the shed's tiny window, hoping to catch a glimpse of Khattak's sister.

Noon light. Hot bright bursts against the peacock sky.

The temperature was rising. The air inside the shed was frigid. She stood on tiptoe, following the sound of the voices until she found them. They were on the ridge behind the shed, Ashkouri shaking down snow from the surrounding pines onto Ruksh's dark hair as she laughed.

Rachel snapped a picture with her phone, texted it to Khattak.

Along with the message that she didn't have her car or her gun.

When Khattak didn't answer, she forwarded the message to Sehr Ghilzai. And after a moment's thought, to Martine Killiam as well.

Her cell was half-charged, the service spotty.

Grace knocked on the door.

“It's freezing out here, hurry up.”

It was much colder in the shed than it was outside in the white glare of the sun. Grace was cold because she wasn't dressed for the weather.

Rachel tucked her phone deep inside her parka and traded places with the teenager. She offered the extra fleece and thermal leggings she had packed to Grace, who was shorter than Rachel.

“I'll take the fleece, thanks.”

Rachel returned to her cabin to get it, to find that Ruksh and Ashkouri had circled back to the clearing. Ruksh did a double take.

“Rachel, isn't it? How did you get here?”

So Ruksh was still covering for them.

Ashkouri nodded pleasantly at Rachel.

“When I didn't see you at the mosque, I thought you must have changed your mind.”

She heard the same threat in his voice that she had heard the previous night when he had stopped her by her car.

It shocked Rachel that only a handful of hours had passed.

She felt as though she had run a marathon in that time.

And she thought of Khattak in his hospital bed, the stitches at his temple, how close he had come to fatal injury.

She couldn't muster a smile for Ashkouri.

“I didn't think you'd leave so early,” she said.

“I didn't want to waste the light.”

It was dark when Ashkouri had driven. Unless he meant he'd been waiting for this moment: sunrise over the trees, a glancing plenitude against the snow. He looked beyond Rachel to Jamshed Ali's car.

“You came alone?” he asked.

“I came with the kids. I was going to teach them how to skate,” Rachel said. “There must be a creek around here. You should come, Ruksh. I have an extra pair of skates with me.”

No way to convey her sense of urgency to Ruksh without also conveying it to Ashkouri.

Rachel challenged Ashkouri with a look. And echoed his provocative manner of speech.

“You can spare the kids for a bit, can't you?”

His nod acknowledged it.

“Grace, yes. Din, no. Grace will show you the way.”

She could loan the skates to Paula instead. If she could just get hold of the keys.

Jamshed had left the SUV unlocked rather than giving the keys to Paula.

And then, by a stroke of luck, Ruksh asked Hassan for his keys so she could grab her bag from his car. Rachel walked to the car beside her, scanning its interior.

It was a stick shift.

Rachel could drive stick like a race car driver; that was no problem.

“The skates?” Ruksh asked with a smile, probably wondering why Rachel was shadowing her so closely.

“They're in Jamshed's car.” Rachel dropped her voice. “A man was murdered here, Ruksh. Why would you come here when your brother warned you off?”