No Place of Refuge

by Ausma Zehanat Khan

  Nate had never seen her dressed in evening wear. She didn’t kid herself that she was a heart-stopping beauty, but even her younger brother Zachary had taken a look at her trying on her dress and whistled his appreciation. She hadn’t expected to see Nate tonight, but she thought he might have noticed the difference in her appearance.

  She swallowed her disappointment. It was only right he was thinking of his sister.

  ‘You’ve been away,’ Khattak said. ‘Searching for Audrey?’

  ‘I should have shut down that NGO months ago,’ Nate said. ‘Part of this is Ruksh’s fault.’

  Rukhshanda Khattak was Esa’s sister. Their younger sisters were as close as Nate and Esa were.

  Khattak didn’t react. The panic beneath Nate’s accusation was palpable.

  ‘Start at the beginning. What can you tell us about Audrey’s disappearance?’

  ‘You’ve been away,’ Nate said impatiently. ‘Audrey got herself involved in the government’s push to bring refugees from Syria to Canada. She wanted Woman to Woman to play a leading role in resettlement work. She went to Greece last December, to facilitate the intake process. There was a lot of pressure to meet the government’s end-of-year deadline.’

  ‘I remember. Why are you so sure she’s missing?’

  ‘Let me tell it, then you’ll know,’ Nate snapped.

  Rachel poured him a cup of coffee and passed it across the table. He took a sip.

  ‘Her e-mails and phone calls stopped. Lesvos was her last known location. No one has seen her or talked to her. No one knows where she is.’

  Khattak asked a blunt question. ‘How does this fit with Community Policing’s mandate?’

  Nate swore out loud. ‘You can’t possibly be thinking of your jurisdiction, this is Audrey we’re talking about.’

  ‘Nate.’ Esa laid a hand over Nathan’s. ‘There’s more to this, isn’t there? That’s all I’m trying to get at. There’s a reason you have the prime minister’s backing.’

  The same thought had occurred to Rachel. Their handsome young prime minister had his own reasons for asking them to the dinner.

  Nate took a shallow breath. ‘Two people were found dead at Woman to Woman headquarters on the island of Lesvos. One was a French Interpol agent. The other was a young man from Syria whose case Audrey was supervising. Their bodies were discovered the same day she went missing. The Greek police believe there’s a connection.’

  Rachel looked up from scribbling in her notebook. ‘So Audrey’s implicated. They think she’s responsible.’

  Nate’s hands clenched around his coffee mug. He spoke to Khattak. ‘You and I know that’s not possible. She’s been taken. And I don’t know what to do.’

  Rachel swallowed. There were tears in Nate’s hazel eyes, and fine lines etched on either side of his mouth. He was drawing dire conclusions based on minimal evidence.

  She knew this moment, this feeling – her brother Zachary had been missing for seven years. His absence had hollowed out her life, an agonizing period of dislocation between the stages of missing and returned.

  She was overcome by a powerful surge of emotion. She wished she were alone with Nate. She wanted to show him she understood, in a way that Khattak couldn’t.

  Instead, she cleared her throat and said with forced cheer, ‘It’s important not to give up hope.’ She meant to infuse him with her strength of belief, but he turned on her at once.

  ‘Is it? This isn’t like Zachary going missing on the streets of Toronto by choice. This is Audrey in a camp on the islands, or dead somewhere in Izmir, or God forbid, taken hostage at the Syrian border. There’s no reason for your optimism.’

  ‘Nate, stop.’

  Khattak cut across this catechism. Rachel swallowed back her hurt. Nate’s attack wasn’t personal. He was thinking of his sister, just as she’d spent years thinking first and foremost of Zach. She focused her attention on her notebook, letting Khattak take Nate through his story.

  Audrey had visited the island of Lesvos in her capacity as chief operating officer of an NGO called Woman to Woman, funded by the Clare Foundation. The NGO had been operating on Lesvos for a year, staffed by a young Canadian named Shukri Danner, herself a former refugee.

  Audrey’s visit was meant to assist in speeding up the intake process, identifying refugees with documentation from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. Syrian refugees fleeing their country’s civil war could be fast-tracked for resettlement in Canada, if they met certain criteria. Audrey had met with UNHCR representatives, with dozens of local volunteers, and with hundreds of refugees, not all of them Syrian. She’d spent time assessing Woman to Woman’s needs; she had also evaluated Shukri Danner’s effectiveness in her role as lead agent on the ground.

  She’d been in Greece since December, and though she’d called and written her brother regularly, often about some aspect of the NGO’s work, she hadn’t returned to Canada in the months before her disappearance. Nor had Nate found the time to visit Greece. His last contact with Audrey had been two weeks ago.

  ‘You spoke to Shukri yourself?’ Khattak asked.

  ‘To Shukri, to volunteers she passed me on to, to anyone I could get hold of by phone. No one will admit to knowing anything.’

  ‘Was Shukri at headquarters when the bodies were found?’

  Nate gave a bitter laugh. ‘Do you know what headquarters consists of? It’s a white tent with these plastic windows that ridiculously resemble the ones at our house. There’s a logo, there’s communication equipment, there’s a few cots and desks, and a few boxes of paperwork that have nearly been shredded by rain. No, Shukri wasn’t there. She was in Mytilene, the capital.’

  ‘Do you know why?’

  Nate’s expression became sullen. ‘She wouldn’t tell me.’

  Small wonder, Rachel thought – if he’d spoken to Shukri Danner with the same combination of misplaced anger and blame he was using on Rachel, Shukri would have been reluctant to tell him anything. Though Nate had helped with their cases in the past, he wasn’t a trained investigator. She wasn’t sure he could recognize when a suspect was lying, or how to break through layers of defensiveness or fear.

  She could see why the prime minister had given them carte blanche. She was thinking of Shukri as a suspect, and that was the least of their troubles.

  If a prominent Canadian’s sister had disappeared while working to facilitate resettlement, it would bring the entire Syrian refugee program under scrutiny. There were persistent voices in Canada who’d decried the government’s campaign promises from the outset. The prime minister had been accused of rushing the resettlement through without sufficient vetting of prospective refugees. This was the kind of ammunition needed to pressure a shutdown of the program.

  The whole thing made Rachel’s head ache. She had to remind herself that it was a Syrian who had been found dead, not Audrey Clare. It was a lesson in perspective, but she was a seasoned enough officer to comprehend the optics.

  If the program went without a hitch and refugees were resettled in Canada without incident, it would shower the prime minister with glory. But if problems cropped up – a breach of national security, an unexpected drain on resources, the inability of newcomers to find suitable employment – the ensuing outcry could bring the government down.

  The prime minister had staked a great deal on Canada’s global reputation.

  And on Canadian values, Rachel reminded herself. They had started all this with assistance to the Vietnamese in another era.

  The response to the government’s Syria initiative had been overwhelmingly positive. Ordinary Canadians had lined up to organize private sponsorships of refugees, angry at the government for not doing enough to alleviate the refugee crisis.

  It had come to a head with the shattering image of a dead child on a Turkish beach. Aylan Kurdi had drowned attempting to cross the Med
iterranean with his family. When news that the Kurdis had applied for refugee status in Canada and been refused became public, it resulted in a national outpouring of support for the resettlement of refugees in Canada.

  The voices in opposition had been silenced for a time, but their private outrage at the influx of refugees hadn’t dimmed. Wherever possible, they used the term ‘migrant’ instead of ‘refugee.’ And whenever an opening provided itself, they raised the specter of terrorists slipping through the net to wreak havoc on Canadian soil.

  Khattak’s sharp question cut into Rachel’s reflections.

  ‘Where is Shukri now?’

  ‘She’s been detained by Interpol in Greece.’

  Khattak’s eyebrows went up. ‘She’s alone?’

  ‘Not quite. I found a local lawyer and interpreter to represent her.’ That sounded more like the Nate she knew.

  ‘We’ll fly over at once, now that we’ve been asked to speak to Interpol. And we’ll get Gaffney and Byrne to do some digging here.’

  Nate’s gaze had drifted to the glow of lights above the canal. Now it returned to Khattak.

  ‘I’m just wondering –’

  ‘What?’

  It seemed to Rachel that Nate was consciously turning away from her. He hunched up his shoulders, shifting his long limbs in his armchair. ‘Before you take that step, there may be something worth pursuing in Toronto.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  The warmth in Khattak’s voice would encourage the most reluctant witness to come clean, Rachel thought. Nate was his dearest friend – there was no reason for him not to speak.

  ‘Audrey wrote me about this boy from Syria, the one who was killed,’ Nate said.

  ‘I thought a man was found dead at Woman to Woman.’

  ‘He’s young so it’s hard to say. It’s sometimes difficult for refugees to collect the necessary documents. Audrey thought of him as a boy. She was hoping to establish he had family in Canada, otherwise his chances of getting through were slim.’

  ‘Were they difficult to find?’ Rachel asked, wanting Nate to involve her. He directed his answer at Khattak.

  ‘That’s just it. When I tracked the family down, they denied knowing the boy.’

  ‘Couldn’t that be true?’

  There was a faint aura of tension in the café – Rachel knew it was due to how Nate was interacting with her. He was uncomfortable, even a little angry, as if he didn’t want her there; maybe he’d speak more freely if she left.

  She contemplated getting up and offering him some privacy. But there was a dogged persistence about Rachel: she’d worked hard at her relationship with Nate. She wasn’t going to abandon it at the first hurdle. She cared about Audrey and she had expertise to offer, both as a police officer and as a sister who knew what it meant to search for a loved one.

  Khattak intervened. ‘I’ll need to see your correspondence with Audrey. And I’ll need you to take me through everything you remember from her phone calls.’ He addressed Rachel. ‘Could you make the arrangements for our travel to Lesvos?’

  Nate scowled at Esa. ‘You’re not going to interview the family?’

  ‘I know it’s not easy, but try to look at it clearly. We’ll follow every lead, but we need to prioritize the prime minister’s request. We should speak to the Greek police and to Interpol as soon as possible. We’ll also need to interview Shukri Danner.’

  Nate straightened up in his chair. ‘I’ll give you everything I have. And I’ll make arrangements for you, you don’t need to trouble Rachel.’

  Startled, Khattak answered, ‘I’ll need Rachel’s help.’

  Nate flicked a shamefaced glance at Rachel. ‘There’s someone else on Lesvos who’ll be able to help you.’ He pushed his coffee cup away. ‘I sent Sehr to Mytilene to find Shukri a lawyer, she’ll meet you when you get there.’

  Khattak should have been glad, Rachel thought. Sehr Ghilzai was a friend of his, and she was Woman to Woman’s legal counsel. She’d cut through any red tape they might face, sort the jurisdictional issues. But a faint reserve settled in Khattak’s eyes.

  ‘You sent Sehr to the islands?’

  ‘She speaks Arabic, Esa. She’s indispensable to our work.’

  Was he wondering if Nate was trying his hand at matchmaking? Nate’s explanation was reasonable, and Rachel, for one, would be glad of Sehr’s help. She was smart and insightful without being intrusive. She was also in love with Khattak.

  ‘That’s great.’ Rachel hurried past Khattak’s reluctance. ‘Why was an Interpol agent found with a kid from Syria? Do you know how they were killed?’

  Nate stumbled over the answer.

  ‘Audrey took a firearm to the islands, I bought it for her protection. Both the Interpol agent and the boy were shot with Audrey’s gun.’

  3

  Ottawa, Canada

  Esa walked along the canal, Rachel and Nate at his side. They approached the Chateau Laurier, where Nate was staying. He and Rachel were booked in more humble accommodations, but given his friend’s state of worry and preoccupation, he thought it best to walk with him to the Chateau. He was glad Nate was flying back to Toronto in the morning; he’d appeared at the state dinner as a courtesy to the prime minister, but his thoughts were frantic with worry for his sister, just as Esa’s were preoccupied by Ruksh. Esa’s sister was a doctor, specializing in infectious diseases. He couldn’t see how she would be involved in Audrey’s disappearance.

  ‘What did you mean about Ruksh? Why do you say she’s to blame?’ A late night in spring meant the city was still cool, though the trees that lined the canal had begun to bud, their shapely limbs stretching to the stars. He had turned up the collar of his coat, and was careful to accommodate his pace to Rachel’s less practical footwear. He didn’t know why Nate was trying to distance himself from Rachel, but he would find out when they were alone. Their lives were getting tangled up in ways that weren’t confined to the fact that they worked together. Esa supposed it was inevitable. He’d long since concluded that his relationship with Rachel was unlike any other in his life.

  Nate shrugged his shoulders inside his cashmere topcoat. ‘I’m sorry, that was a stupid thing to say.’

  ‘But?’

  Nate shrugged again. He kicked at a stone in his path, watching it sail into a gutter.

  ‘She’s the one who got Audrey worked up about the war. She talked about the refugee crisis until it was the only thing on Audrey’s mind. You didn’t know this?’

  Esa shook his head. He and Ruksh hadn’t spoken since before he’d left on his trip to Iran. He’d called her several times; she’d refused to answer. But he had seen the effect his sister’s engagement with the refugee crisis had on their mother: Angeza Khattak was a member of a private sponsorship group; she dedicated a great deal of her time to working with the family her group had sponsored.

  A bitter note in his voice, Nate added, ‘Audrey was the one who visited the camps, while Ruksh hasn’t left Toronto.’

  Esa didn’t point out that his mother had strenuously discouraged Ruksh from volunteering. She didn’t often impose her will on her children; that she’d been successful in this case surprised him. He knew Ruksh likely held him responsible for their mother’s position, but in this instance he was blameless.

  ‘They’ll have been in touch. I’ll talk to Ruksh and find out.’

  Nate grimaced. ‘You should have Rachel talk to her. She’s more likely to get through.’

  ‘Why? Won’t Ruksh talk to you, either?’

  A fleeting grin crossed Nate’s face. ‘She sees us as one and the same: overbearing older brothers.’

  Esa smiled too. ‘We’ve had to be. They were a pair of nitwits in their teens.’ There was an undercurrent of laughter in his voice.

  He caught Rachel’s sideways glance. She looked a little wistful, but the moment she caught his eyes
on her, she smoothed out her expression. Rachel had never had anyone to watch out for her, but she hated the thought of his feeling sorry for her, something he’d learned the first time they’d met.

  ‘She would talk to you,’ he said to Rachel. ‘She owes you her life, after all.’

  His sister had a knack for making him lose his temper, no matter how he tried to keep his cool. If he did, it would shut down any discussion in a heartbeat. And it had occurred to Esa that despite Nate’s worry, it was possible Audrey had disappeared for reasons of her own.

  Like Ruksh, she was inquisitive, independent and stubbornly insistent on doing things her own way. Suppose the Interpol agent had raised questions about the boy who’d fled Syria as a refugee. If Audrey had formed an attachment to him, she might have been looking for answers. Or she might have found the bodies in the tent, and fled for her own safety.

  There were a limited number of explanations for her disappearance, and though she wouldn’t deliberately cause Nathan to worry over her, it might not have occurred to Audrey that Nate would assume the worst. Nate was ten years older than Audrey; he’d taken care of her since their parents had died in an accident abroad. Nate and Audrey were much closer than Esa and Ruksh were, but there had been times when Audrey had chafed at her brother’s close supervision, particularly as their professional lives were entangled. Woman to Woman was run by Audrey, but it was funded by Nate. It was possible Audrey had wanted to resolve the situation on Lesvos on her own. It was what Ruksh would have done.

  But would Audrey have left Shukri Danner to the mercies of a foreign authority? He didn’t think so. If she had, her reasons must have been compelling.

  ‘I don’t think your sister likes me much, sir,’ Rachel ventured.

  ‘Audrey did.’

  It was the first thing Nate had said to her that contained his usual warmth. Rachel didn’t demur. Nor did she point out that he’d spoken in the past tense.

  ‘Well, in that case, I’ll do my best to talk to Ruksh.’

  The lobby was filled with guests who’d returned from Rideau Hall. A bouquet of exotic perfumes filled the space, echoed by the fragrance of dahlias. The chandeliers and wall sconces were lit; they cast a throbbing light over deep-cushioned velvet chairs.