No Place of Refuge

by Ausma Zehanat Khan

  ‘Just collect the e-mails in a folder: all correspondence between Nate and Audrey since December. We’ll get consent.’ She bit her lip, seeing the pitfalls ahead. ‘Or we’ll get a warrant.’

  5

  Ottawa, Canada

  Esa’s meeting at the prime minister’s office ended up taking place with a senior advisor who clearly had better things to do. A dynamic young Quebecois who introduced himself as Jean Cordeau and responded to Khattak with an air of inattention, he paged through several folders on a delicate desk as he spoke. He ushered Khattak to a seat, finally allowing his eyes to come to rest on Khattak’s face. Khattak waited to speak until Cordeau passed him the folder in his hands.

  ‘Is this everything I need?’

  ‘Everything: names, dates, contact information for all relevant authorities. I’m sure I don’t need to impress upon you the need for discretion in this matter. There are so many potential pitfalls, I’m not sure we shouldn’t leave the matter alone.’

  ‘I doubt that would be possible, M Cordeau. Better to face Interpol on their ground than ours, if discretion is our priority.’ He glanced at the light breaking over the Ottawa River through the windows behind the golden desk. The desk was so delicately sculpted, so graceful in its lines, he catalogued it as an antique. He wondered who’d chosen it. ‘And of course, there’s the question of Audrey Clare. Even if Interpol wasn’t involved, Nathan Clare would raise the issue of his sister’s disappearance.’

  ‘Of course.’ Cordeau took a sharp breath. ‘Which is why the prime minister has extended himself.’ He gestured at the folder. ‘It’s all there. The PM said to make it very clear that you aren’t on your own in this. Should Interpol cut up rough, there will be contact at the highest levels.’

  Khattak tried to set the other man at ease with his assurances. Cordeau looked down at Khattak with a frown. ‘My father was a police officer,’ he said. ‘In the Sûreté. I know these investigations tend to be unpredictable – a double homicide, good God. I don’t think the prime minister understands what he’s setting loose.’

  Khattak had the sense that Cordeau was sizing him up, and wasn’t entirely pleased by the conclusion he’d reached. ‘You’ve made quite a name for yourself, Inspector.’ Cordeau flicked a hand at the stately stretch of parliament buildings that blocked the view of the river. ‘The way you handled Mr Manning at the Drayton inquiry.’ He gave Khattak a sudden, shrewd look. ‘You don’t brush anything under the rug, do you?’

  Esa rose to his feet. ‘I didn’t think the prime minister would want me to.’

  Cordeau shrugged, a blithe, dismissive gesture. ‘That’s how you look at things in law enforcement – this is politics, Inspector.’

  He was beginning to sound as if he regretted handing over the folder that contained Khattak’s authorization. Khattak moved it to one side.

  Cordeau was hailed by someone at the door. He raised a hand in welcome.

  ‘Madame Ambassador, come in, he’s all yours.’ He gave Khattak an envious glance. ‘I was just leaving.’

  But he wasn’t quite finished. To Khattak, he said, ‘I won’t pretend I’m glad you’re looking into this. Everything about our Syria policy has been political; its ramifications are political as well. It was never about that little boy who washed up dead in Turkey.’

  Khattak flinched at this unnecessary candour. Cordeau closed the door behind him.

  ‘Always the drama queen, that one.’ The new arrival shared Khattak’s disapproval. Canada’s ambassador to Lebanon, Camille Mansur, was a dashing woman in her sixties, dressed in a navy blue skirt suit, her Avon blouse pinned at the throat with a fine-spun filigree brooch. She advanced on Esa with a smile of welcome, kissing him on both cheeks.

  He held her by the elbows, smiling down at her. ‘Madame Ambassador. It’s been too long.’

  ‘Don’t you dare call me anything but Camille. Shame on you, you devil. You haven’t been to visit us in ages. Michel misses you.’

  Khattak held out a chair for her. She sank into it in a single fluid movement, not troubling to look at its placement. Her natural elegance reflected the mannerisms of a dying generation, the foreign-born sons and daughters of diplomats who were equally at ease among the elite of Canadian society as they were in their families’ olive groves.

  Camille came from a well-respected Lebanese family that had settled in Canada four generations ago without losing touch with their Lebanese Christian heritage. Camille had trained in the diplomatic corps to arrive at her present posting. Khattak couldn’t think of a better choice for Canada’s ambassador to Lebanon: she spoke five languages fluently, having studied at the Sorbonne and the Kennedy School of Government; she had come home to Canada declaring her fatigue with the French and Americans alike.

  ‘The one too self-important, the other far too earnest. I’ll leave you to sort out which is which, darling,’ she often said. In anyone else, such a comment would have ruffled diplomatic feathers, but Camille was a grande dame of the old school. Her wit was received in the spirit intended, and with the desire to curry her influence.

  She laughed a great deal at everyone, yet always in a spirit of kindness.

  ‘Habibi.’ Her voice had dropped into a lower, more roguish register from a diet of cigarettes and cognac. ‘Tell me everything.’

  Khattak smiled again and she fluttered a hand at her heart. ‘Spare me such debonair glances, mon cher, and tell me why you travel to Greece.’

  She was as wily and well informed as ever.

  ‘It’s rather for you to tell me, I think. This wasn’t an accidental meeting, I take it?’

  She patted his arm with a comfortable familiarity. He curled his fingers around her little claw.

  ‘The young one asked me to step in, given my work in Lebanon.’ Her shrug was classically French, an elegant displacement of her shoulders. ‘I could hardly refuse, could I? His father asked me to keep an eye on him.’

  The current prime minister’s father had been a former beau of Camille’s, a lion of the old guard. Canadian politics had never seen such a personality. Khattak doubted they would again.

  She leaned forward, patting his knee. The nearly transparent skin at her neck tightened, throwing the tendons into high relief. In the jewel-like glow of sunlight through the windows, the ambassador looked her age.

  ‘I wouldn’t have refused in any case, you are without a doubt my favorite policeman. So what is it you need to know?’

  ‘Anything you can tell me. You know Nathan and Audrey Clare, of course. Do you have any idea what Audrey was doing on the islands that would see her linked with these deaths?’

  ‘I knew Aude Bertin, as well. She was the most tenacious Frenchwoman one was likely to meet. She had a way of collecting names. And quite a long list of favours.’

  In addition to her accomplishments, Camille had a memory like a strongbox: nothing ever escaped from it.

  ‘Are you suggesting an impropriety? Was Aude Bertin corrupt in some way, is that what you mean when you mention favours?’

  ‘Au contraire. She was, in fact, the most incorruptible person I’ve ever met. She used her contacts to one end, and that was her work as a police agent. She bullied no one except those who deserved to be bullied – her mission was to represent the weak. If Aude considered you to be in the business of exploitation, then look out! Once she caught the scent – quelle tigresse. She never let anything go. Her connection to the boy, I cannot say, but she was involved in tracking the progress of refugees to France. Perhaps that was the link.’ She hesitated, miming a familiar gesture with her fingers. ‘A cigarette, habibi?’

  Khattak feigned a note of severity. ‘In a parliamentary office, madame? I think not. And besides, think of your health.’

  ‘I assure you I am not going anywhere. The Syrian people need me back in Lebanon as soon as it can be arranged. I have promised them I will live forever, so
I must. I’m home for a few days at the temptation of seeing my grandchildren. So many sticky fingers, but how they adore Grand-mère, and the pretty things I bring them.’

  Khattak smiled, as he was meant to. A moment’s thought made him ask, ‘Why was Agent Bertin tracking refugees to France?’

  Again, the ambassador shrugged. ‘She was French, after all. France was her bailiwick, as you would say. But you know about that dreadful Jungle, Esa, yes? I think Aude viewed it as reprehensible. It was a dead end. No one moved on from Calais, she didn’t want others to risk their lives on a futile journey to the north. They are cruel there, n’est-ce pas? They don’t want outsiders in their country – they barely tolerate the native-born.’

  The ambassador had seen a great deal in her time: the civil war in Lebanon, the Israeli strike on the south, the destruction of Beirut, the attack at the UN base in Qana, the devastating collapse of first Iraq then Syria – and the present refugee crisis, unparalleled in her lifetime, though Lebanon knew more than its share about hosting a refugee population. The Calais Jungle in northern France was one of the flashpoints of the crisis. It served as a point of departure for the UK via the port of Calais, through the Eurotunnel, or through the dangerous practice of stowing away on transport headed to the UK.

  Though the camp at Calais had been in existence in some form since the 1990s, the Syrian refugee crisis had swollen the numbers of those who transited through the camp. Not all who ended up in the ‘Jungle’ were refugees fleeing war and persecution. Some had fled dire economic circumstances in pursuit of a more hopeful future, either for themselves or for the families they’d left behind. Both groups were referred to as ‘migrants’ by the European press, a shift away from the possibility of legitimate need.

  Khattak privately believed both groups represented different kinds of necessity, just as he knew that the Convention on Refugees defined refugees stringently for well-considered reasons. The sixtieth anniversary of the treaty couldn’t have fallen at a darker moment: an unprecedented 62.5 million people around the globe had been displaced from their homes, 21.3 million of whom qualified as refugees.

  So if Camille Mansur found the Calais Jungle problematic, he trusted her judgment. But he asked himself what Agent Bertin’s perspective had been, and whether any of this touched on Audrey Clare’s disappearance.

  He was trying to think within the analytical framework of a police officer because if he made it personal, he wouldn’t be able to focus. Audrey was as much a sister to him as Ruksh or Misbah.

  ‘This young man who was found dead alongside Agent Bertin.’ He checked the name in the folder Cordeau had given him. ‘There’s very little information about him. Is it possible Sami al-Nuri was trying to get to France?’

  Camille took the folder from him. Khattak didn’t protest. Whatever the prime minister had told Esa, he would have confided more openly in Camille. The ambassador to Lebanon had worked night and day to fast-track refugees to Canada. She had very little patience for bureaucracy. If something didn’t make sense to Camille, she cut through it like deadwood. That included personnel. She was more popular with the new people she’d brought on board than with staff who’d become entrenched in their way of doing things. She’d hired new blood who knew how to streamline the process in time to meet the deadline.

  She leafed through the folder and closed it.

  ‘I don’t recognize this young man’s name. Or his application.’

  ‘Is it likely you would remember him?’ Thousands of applications for asylum would have crossed Camille’s desk.

  ‘Probably not. But no one wants to end up in France. Austria, Germany, Scandinavia, the UK – these are the destinations of choice. They have a kinder refugee policy, and better institutional support. Not to mention the more pressing concerns facing France.’

  Khattak didn’t pursue this. He knew well enough what she meant, but the rise of the far right in Europe was irrelevant to his investigation. He would visit Michel and Camille soon – they were old and dear friends of his parents – and when he did, he would unburden himself. There was so much he wanted to share – things he hadn’t talked about since the death of his father, things he couldn’t say to his mother for fear of causing her pain. His relationship with Camille was a close one. Though she teased him no end, she treated him like a son.

  ‘So where would you suggest I begin? Nathan did mention this young man might have a Toronto connection.’

  Camille’s exquisitely made-up face looked sorrowful for a moment. ‘He seems more like a boy than a man, but how quickly these boys have had to grow up. A third of their lives have been war.’ She twisted the heavy gold rings on her fingers. ‘This Sami was a boy, no different than Aylan Kurdi, but because of his age, he would be among those least likely to be granted asylum. Families with children, yes. Women on their own, of course. A boy on the verge of manhood fleeing Syria – a boy like you were at one time…’ Here she smiled a nostalgic smile at Esa. ‘Why, he’s the most dangerous creature in the world. There is no refuge for these boys.’ Now she spoke briskly, raising her chin. ‘But if he was going to meet his death on an unforgiving shore, this is not how I would expect it to happen.’

  A glimmer of sympathy in Khattak’s eyes indicated how well he understood her.

  ‘You must speak to the director at Sanctuary Syria. Sanctuary helps process these cases. If there was a family connection in Toronto, the case will have crossed their desk.’

  Khattak knew the organization. His mother had worked with Sanctuary to sponsor a family from Damascus. The ambassador gave him further details, which he noted in his phone.

  ‘A warning, if you’ll hear it. Whatever you’re going to do, do it quickly. It would be better for you to knock on Interpol’s door, before they knock on ours. And little Miss Audrey – you must find her before she gets herself into any further trouble.’

  He didn’t dare tell her that this wasn’t one of Audrey’s or Ruksh’s adolescent pranks. Audrey hadn’t gotten herself into trouble – trouble had come for her.

  ‘I promise I will, Madame.’

  He placed a hand beneath her elbow to help her rise to her feet, inhaling the delicate scent of her French perfume. She was as divinely feminine as he remembered from boyhood, when he’d been hopeful of her notice. She had always had a sweet for him in an expensively gloved hand; she had also taught him to widen his appreciation of his heritage. Camille had taken his cultural education in hand, improving on a foundation laid by Esa’s father.

  She offered him a mischievous rendering of a qasida of the Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani, as he escorted her to the elevator.

  ‘As long as you love me, my green-eyed boy, God is in the sky.’ He took her hand and kissed it. ‘Chère Camille, always.’

  6

  Toronto, Canada

  Sanctuary Syria was located on the fourth floor of an office building in the downtown core not far from the CBC News building. Each corner of the intersection was accented with a mid-rise glass-fronted office building; there was no view of the harbor.

  The staff was arranged around clusters of desks in an open-concept space, where it was clear that the bulk of the funds allocated by the government had been used to further the non-profit’s work, and not on public perceptions of their enterprise.

  The office staff was an interesting mix. The handful of full-time senior staff was joined by a group of students and retirees who could be called on to work consistent daytime hours.

  The staff reflected the city’s ethnic diversity – Rachel could hear a smattering of languages. The volunteers were of different backgrounds, working toward a common purpose, facilitating the resettlement of Syrian refugees in various parts of Canada.

  Rachel took in the scene with a glance. There was an atmosphere of cheerful cooperation in the office, a buzz of excitement and purpose that made the co-workers seem more like a family. Even the senior staff, wh
o were boxed in by veritable mountains of paper, seemed relaxed and approachable as they chatted with two college-age designers working on a visual presentation. Everyone greeted Rachel as she was ushered through the small reception area to the executive director’s office where Khattak was waiting. He got to his feet, as he always did, to pull out Rachel’s chair. She thanked him with a quick smile, searching his face for signs of strain. He’d known Audrey Clare all her life; it would be natural for him to be worried. If he was, he didn’t show it, and she thought something about his meeting in Ottawa must have improved his spirits, which surprised her. Nearly all their work had political implications, and their last few cases had been trickier than most. Rachel would have guessed that an investigation touching on refugee policy would be exceedingly sensitive, but Khattak couldn’t have seemed more confident and relaxed – almost light-hearted.

  Rachel couldn’t help herself; she wondered if a woman was behind his sudden contentment. His sharp, green eyes probed her face; she realized she’d let the silence drag on too long, he’d be wondering at her preoccupation.

  The organization’s executive director stepped into her office to greet them, and Rachel was glad of the reprieve. If she worked up her courage later, she might venture to tease Khattak about his love life.

  ‘Welcome. I’m Linh Pham. I’m sorry Suha can’t be here, as well. We’re co-chairs of Sanctuary at present as we’re in the middle of reassigning staff.’

  Linh Pham was perhaps five feet tall, with a small, neat build and an inquisitive face, marked by a pair of dimples. Though there was an ageless quality to her skin, Rachel knew she was forty-five. She had been evacuated to Canada with her family during the Vietnamese boat crisis of the 1970s.