The Unquiet Dead (17 page)

“That's very common,” she said. “There are dreamers and there are donors. Once they've given their money, they tend to reshape the dream in their own image. In Christopher's case, it was certainly about ego. Does that help?”

It was interesting, he thought, yet not quite the answer he expected.

“There's something you're not telling me,” she said. “Is it a question of trust?”

“No, absolutely not.” The connection between them was a tenuous one. He had no wish to risk it. “Does the name Dra
ž
en Krstić mean anything to you?”

“I feel that it should.” She moved away from the seating area to stand by the turquoise tiles of the fountain. The sound of falling water murmured at them. “I can't quite place it.”

“Did Drayton have an accent of any kind?”

“No,” she said, startled. “His voice was rough, perhaps a little gravelly. I thought it was another sign of a man wishing to impress others with his consequence. Are you saying his real name was Dra
ž
en Krstić? That he was putting on some kind of act? Why would he do that?”

“Often when people take on new identities, they try and retain some trace of the old. The names Christopher Drayton and Dra
ž
en Krstić resemble each other.”

She smiled. “Insomuch as Hebrew ring songs resemble Arabic ones. Who was Dra
ž
en Krstić? Does it really matter if Christopher wanted to leave something in his past behind?”

He didn't answer this. “Did you notice anything unusual about him? Any markings? Did he speak any other languages?”

Each time he asked Mink a question, she undertook some small action before she answered it. Now, she dipped her fingers into the upper tier of the fountain, interrupting its minor cascades. In another witness, he would have seen it as subterfuge.

“He spoke many languages. He was teaching Hadley and Cassidy Italian. As to the others, perhaps French, German? He did have a mark on one hand, a cross I believe. But then many people are attached to symbols of their religion.”

She glanced pointedly at the tasbih on Khattak's wrist, a gesture that struck at him, collapsing his fluid identities inward like a lightning strike: one a symbol of thousands of the unquiet dead, the other the mark of their murderers.

“I'm sorry, Esa,” she said quickly. “What have I said? I don't understand.”

“It's nothing.” He tried a smile and held out his tasbih. “In its proper context, it embodies grace. I know without the logo, the cross does as well.”

He should tell her. There was nothing he should keep from this woman who cherished the complexities of Muslim Spain.

“Logo?”

“Entwined with the cross on his hand. The four
s
symbol: literally, it's translated as ‘Only concord saves a Serb.'”

“But that's a twelfth-century motto, attributed to the Orthodox church.”

“It has a much more contemporary significance.”

She straightened from the fountain abruptly. “Krstić?” she repeated. “I do know that name.”

“He was a commander of the Drina Corps in 1995. You're much too young to remember. As Chief of Security, Dra
ž
en Krstić was one of the men who orchestrated the Srebrenica massacre.”

She froze. “Are you saying that
Christopher Drayton
was that man?”

“The tattoo is suggestive. And he was receiving letters addressed to Dra
ž
en Krstić.”

He studied her closely.

The soft curve of her lower lip trembled. She touched a hand to the back of her neck. “What possible interest could a man like Krstić have had in Ringsong? It doesn't make sense.”

Khattak had thought about this long and hard. “If Drayton was Krstić, there may be two possibilities. First, he had built a new life for himself in a nation where we're so intermixed that difference ceases to matter or points of contestation are immensely civil. Perhaps he saw his contribution to the Andalusia project as a means of atonement.” He watched the play of emotions across Mink's face. “You don't think so. There is a second possibility, though I find it difficult to contemplate.”

“Tell me,” she whispered.

“He wanted you to change the name of Ringsong to the Christopher Drayton Andalusia Museum. He wanted a seat on your board of directors. And you've told me that donors often wish for greater say in how their money is spent—in fact, they ‘reshape the dream.' So I've asked myself, what is the history of Moorish Spain most known for today? Its palaces? Its libraries?” He shook his head. Nothing about the preservation of memory fit with his knowledge of the ideology of Dra
ž
en Krstić.

But Mink, alert and lovely, was with him. “The Reconquista,” she said simply. “The Moor's last sigh.”

“Seven hundred years of the Moorish occupation of Spain brought to an end by the Spanish Reconquest. Expulsions. Forcible conversions. The implosion of a people's blended history of centuries of coexistence. And always the burning of books. Even memory erased.”

Shaken, she said, “He often talked about the Reconquest. He did seem preoccupied more with the end of the period than its achievements.”

“The culture of power versus the power of culture,” he quoted. “One side always loses.”

“I may have viewed the past as a loss, but Christopher saw the expulsion that accompanied the Reconquest as a triumph. And yet, I still can't believe that explains his interest.”

“Then why were you so reluctant to take his money?”

Somehow, some part of Mink must have known that this was not a man to support a multiethnic, multilingual ideal. Her lips flattened in recognition of it.

“I must ask you not to speak of this to anyone,” Khattak said. “If Drayton
was
Krstić, we have a problem of some magnitude on our hands.”

Mink looked at him sharply. “Are you here about his identity or are you here because of his death?”

He couldn't stop himself from saying it. “At this moment, I'm here because of you.”

It was a risk, a venture, spoken to a woman neither of his faith or culture, a line he had not been able to envision himself crossing. In time, he had thought, there would be a woman as dear and familiar to him as his beloved Samina.

He had noticed Laine Stoicheva. No man could be blind to that formidable sex appeal or powerful charisma. But she had touched no part of him the way his wife had. She was electricity without accord, a magnetism that was all outward. Her thoughts, her heart, were brittle, broken. She had wrung Nate dry. Such a woman could not attract him.

Here in this silent, prayerful space, he'd found something that had been missing in all the long years without the wife he'd adored. He'd found Mink and he wanted her. It was that simple.

When he'd solved the riddle of Dra
ž
en Krstić, he would leave behind the killing fields of Bosnia for the contradictions and glories of this Andalusian idyll.

“I need to think this over,” she said. “Please leave now, Esa.”

His face fell. He shouldn't rush her. They had known each other a week, no more. “I'm sorry. If you think of anything else, please call me.”

He'd been dismissed. He should go.

“Esa.” Her low voice halted him. “You know you can come back any time you'd like. This—” She gestured at the catalogue that awaited her in the great room. “All of it needs time.”

He accepted that, releasing himself from the perfume of Andalusia. At the door he looked back at her, small and sheltered beneath the palms, her thoughts preoccupied by his revelation. He raised a hand in farewell and she smiled.

*   *   *

He moved quietly through the forecourt, so quietly that he had come upon Hadley and Riv in one of its shadowy corners without giving away his presence. Riv was holding her by the forearms, his expression pleading.

“You have to tell him,” he said urgently.

“Why?” Hadley's voice was clipped and cold.

“Look, if you're worried about Mel—”

“I'm not. She's the last person I worry about. Ever.”

“Then if she's not holding you back, what gives, Had? Why won't you tell?”

The girl's stiff posture unexpectedly crumpled and Riv folded her into his arms. The teenagers clutched at each other as Khattak moved closer, still hidden in the shadows.

“It's too hard,” Hadley whispered. “Everything we've done these past six months has been too hard. Keeping Cass safe. Keeping him away. But it's done now.”

Riv's hands clamped down on her shoulders.

“You should tell your dad, Hadley. He'd understand. He wouldn't want you to cover for him. And he might have seen something—after the fight.”

Hadley swallowed and stepped back. “What fight? I don't know what you're talking about.”

“What? Of course you do. The night Chris fell.”

“No. No, I don't.”

She had seen him, Khattak realized. Her hands were digging into Riv's forearms, warning him off.

Khattak stepped forward.

“Did you want to talk to me?” he asked gravely.

Riv's skin turned white under the pressure of Hadley's fingers.

“No,” she managed on a gasp. “I'm—no. We're fine, aren't we, Riv?”

“Fine,” he agreed, but Khattak read shame in the body angled away from his.

He studied their guarded faces. “If you know anything about the night Christopher Drayton fell, I hope you understand how important it is that you tell us. We're here to listen and to help. Please believe that.”

But he could see the doubt in Hadley's eyes, the underlying panic. Whatever she had debated telling him was locked away again, sealed off by an undeclared darkness. It wasn't something he could demand from her. He would have to wait. And while he was waiting, he would puzzle through Drayton's connection to Ringsong.

“Thanks,” she whispered.

“Peace be with you,” he said, and meant it.

 

17.

I don't have a photograph of my child when he was small … I want to apologize for crying because you cannot compare this with what has happened but this is also something that is important to many people.

The art gallery was housed inside a university building so ugly it seemed like a contradiction in terms. She and Zach would have laughed over it in better times.

“Ray,” he would have said. “Where did they find this architect? In the big-box department at Walmart's?”

After Ringsong and Winterglass, it seemed like a monstrosity: a long, narrow concrete block with ridges of additional concrete arranged at the entrance like a façade. It, too, could have served as a bomb shelter.

The building sat between two other much more decorous arrangements of steel and glass, and the gallery was really a passageway for students in transit between them. There was a fast-food stand in its midst, so she guessed this was an example of art designed as part of a living space. She wasn't impressed. Near the potato chips was a panel of red paintings, delineated by a series of screaming white faces superimposed on each other.

Further down the hall, a second artist had created sculpture from leftover scraps in the recycling bins. The word
recycled
screamed across the bellies of his tortured iron figures. Someone else had bravely attempted a representational field of lilies. Two slender individuals in their twenties dismissed it as derivative.

Discouraged, she muscled her way through the winding coil of students to the exhibit at the end. She had dressed to blend in, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and when she saw the artist, she was glad that she had. He wore a black shirt and black jeans. Otherwise, he was her twin. Square-shouldered, lanky and tall, with shaggy dark hair worn long over his collar and with deep-set eyes, the color of Rachel's own.

It was Zach.

For a moment she couldn't absorb it. The boy had grown into a man, but it was Zach. Her baby brother, Zach.

He was dwarfed on both sides by vertical cityscapes painted in shades of gray, blue, and black. Rachel could see at once that these paintings were different. The buildings crowded together, meeting each other at their pinnacles, suffocating the street dwellers below. They spoke of exclusion and hunger and want, loneliness and isolation.

It was Zachary's work, improved a thousandfold, bespeaking the maturity of a boy who had been on his own for the past seven years.

She waited until a group of admiring young girls had walked away, then touched his sleeve. The smile of welcome on his rugged features died on his lips as he recognized her. The things she had planned to say choked in her throat. She waited for him to speak.

“What are you doing here, Ray? Why have you come?”

The words were clipped, his manner frozen.

“What I am doing here?” She faltered. “What are
you
doing here? Do you have any idea how long I've been searching for you?”

“Not very good at police work then, are you? Or maybe you weren't really trying.”

She stepped back as if she'd been slapped. “
Zach!
” she cried. “How can you say that? Do you know how hard I've tried to find you? Do you know what you've put me through, put us all through?”

Her brother's eyes stared through her. “It's always about you, isn't it, Ray? Well, maybe you didn't give me enough credit. Maybe you were looking in rehab clinics when you should have been trying the local schools.”

“I'm sorry.” She fixed her gaze on the cityscape behind him to prevent herself from crying. “I tried everything I could think of. You made it so hard. There was never the slightest trace of you.”

He shouldered past her to an easel where brochures of his work were arranged. He sorted through them, but she knew it was a delaying tactic, so she reached for his hand.