The Corporal's Wife (2013) (11 page)

A radio station had received a call from the ‘Coast Guard’ reporting a search initiated off-shore after a man was seen wading into the water. An on-line newspaper had taken an alert from the police concerning a missing person last seen on the beach and starting to wade out; they had initiated a search after a radio station had been told that an unidentified male, believed Iranian, was missing, last noticed on the shoreline. The Coast Guard had been tipped off by an on-line newspaper that a body had been located in the water near to the beach. The source of the messages, and disinformation, could not be identified.

A conclusion? In Brigadier Reza Joyberi’s office it was already understood that a combination of circumstances had allowed his driver, the corporal, to disappear and that a security investigation was now to begin – almost forty-eight hours after the last sighting. Two bank employees had sworn that the courier who had brought a communication to the bank and taken from them an answer had left them on the street, and they had gone home. They could help no further.

Who was responsible? What would be the consequences? The brigadier didn’t know. His life, he realised, had turned a half-circle, from confidence to hesitation, from sureness to uncertainty.

‘At the entry to the Isfahan secure area, which is Zone 3C? What authorisation is needed, and whose signature is required? Go through the procedure, Mehrak.’

Sidney had just come into the room and heard the question. He wore sneakers and moved soundlessly; they seemed hardly to notice him. The corporal was still at the table, but Petroc Kenning circled the room slowly. Sidney had known of Mr Hector’s nephew since the kid had first been packed off to boarding-school: the old man had displayed a photo of him, framed, as captain of a junior rugby team. He thought Petroc Kenning was losing his man. Not stupid, Sidney had been
there
, done
that
, seen
it
.

He wouldn’t have survived in Vienna, a man whose services were in demand, unless he’d had the nose, the eye and the ear. He wouldn’t have had the contacts book that listed the industrialist – on hard times and facing a tax inquiry – who’d take anything, cash in hand, for the rental of the villa on the hill outside Spitz. PK had complimented him on finding the place. He’d answered: ‘The owner thinks it’s for a porn-movie shoot over the next couple of weeks. Just a joke, my sense of humour.’

And, just a little thing but a trademark, he and Anneliese had looked up Iranian recipes on the web, and she’d do the man proud that evening when a break was called.

He had been retired by the Service on his fifth-fifth birthday but hadn’t considered going back to London and grafting for a living there. He had all the contacts in the old espionage capital that anyone needed. He had been mentioned in despatches for fighting off an ambush in Aden, with the REME, and awarded a Military Medal: a hotel had been evacuated in Lisnaskea, Northern Ireland, a primed bomb at the reception desk, and a disabled guest had been left behind; an officer had bellowed that Sidney was not to go back inside but he’d told him to go fuck himself and had brought the guy out.

From slipping in to empty the ashtray and replace the tea glasses Sidney had learned that the Joe was wising up. He didn’t answer straight off as he had in the morning and through the early afternoon, but took his time. Tired? Sidney didn’t think so. He reckoned the Joe was back-sliding on the good stuff and needed to think about what he was saying. He himself didn’t say anything – it wasn’t his place.

‘At 3C we did not have a pass or a signature. The major who commanded the guard detachment took us through and our ID cards were given to the gate, noted, then handed back to us. I don’t know what would have happened if I had not been with the brigadier.’

‘Zach?’

‘Yes, Dad.’

His father had come onto the site as the daylight was failing, had joshed with the guys, then stood on the track Zach used for getting concrete, slopping in a wheelbarrow, into the ground floor.

‘Is it a good time?’

‘You’re the boss. Of course it’s a good time.’

‘Let’s walk a bit.’

His father seemed distracted and ill at ease.

‘Problems, Dad?’

‘Something I’d rather not be doing.’

‘Spit it out.’

He sucked in his breath, then sighed. ‘I’m letting you go, Zach.’

‘
Sorry, what?
’

‘You heard – it was clear enough. The job at the school, the Education Committee’s cancelled it. The surgery up in Spa Lane’s on hold for a year. I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel for work, spinning this one out for another couple of months. I’m sorry.’

‘But I’m your
son
.’ He hadn’t anticipated this.

‘Didn’t expect you to make it easy – and your mother said you wouldn’t. Pete and Danny are going too. The rest of the guys I’ll keep as long as I can. Everyone who’s staying has kids, a mortgage, and doing what they do is all they know. I owe it them.’

‘What about me?’

A finger was jabbed at his chest. ‘It’s time you looked after yourself. It’s been too long since you made your own decisions. You always used to. You insisted on going to London on that course – wouldn’t change tack and do something useful. And it was your decision to cop out in the middle of exams so the money went down the drain. Bored with the course, I think you told your mother. I sorted you out, put you on the payroll. Couldn’t have it said that my son was work-shy. No one in our family ever has been. What else did you decide? Looking to take over from me and run the business better than I can? Don’t think so. Going to be one of the boys? No. Sorry, Zach, but last night clinched it, Shane’s session in the pub. You decided it didn’t matter to you. They’re my people and they matter to me, so I’ll move mountains to find other work for Pete and Danny. That’s how it is. What I’m saying, Zach, is that you should get yourself something that stretches you.’

Neither his mother, his father, nor his sister had ever talked straight to him before. There had never been an inquest around the breakfast table. If they had felt his decision to quit his course was rubbish, they had never said so. Now he realised that a dam of pent-up feelings had been breached. For years they had skirted round the subject of his future, where he was going.

‘Yes, Dad.’

‘You’ll get a month’s wages and you’ll finish on Friday. The men I’m keeping need the money and know nothing except the building trade. You’re better than that. Go for something that tests you.’

‘Thanks for telling it like it is, Dad.’

They hugged, and he fancied his father’s eye might have been damp – for the first time: he was a hard old beggar.

Zach remembered a day when he hadn’t crossed the road. It was a winter evening, dark, on a north London street, and a man had been walking along the pavement when some kids had come out of an alley. He’d had on a suit and an overcoat, and was carrying a briefcase. The kids had hit him hard and fast, kneed his groin, then run off with the briefcase after a snatch search for a wallet. The man had struggled to his feet and stumbled away. It had happened two years ago. Zach had gone on twenty paces, then told himself he must play the Samaritan, but the victim was gone and the street was empty. Too late. Zach hadn’t been to a police station and made a statement, had let it lie. He was ashamed, and the chance to redeem himself had never arisen. He held close to his father.

‘Another thing – you’ll never attract a decent woman, like your mother, if you don’t find something worthwhile. For God’s sake, you’re better than this.’

Chapter 4

The smoke seeped from Mehrak’s lips and nostrils.

‘The enrichment plant at Qom, when were you last there?’

‘Two months ago.’

The room was fogged. Condensation ran in streams down the windows. Did the brigadier have responsibility at that location? He did not: he was there to advise. Had they gone inside? They had entered the underground facility. Deep underground? They had not entered the enrichment area. He could see, from the smoke hovering over the table that PK’s eyes were watering, He kept rubbing them, aggravating the irritation. They didn’t tell Mehrak not to smoke.

Undisguised exasperation. ‘You didn’t go far underground, but you went a little way. Correct?’

‘That is right.’ A photograph was pushed across the table. He could see the prominence of the hills, the buildings alongside the road and the great pit in the ground, with the track winding on the outside and descending. He remembered when he had driven there that he had been careful to watch for fallen rocks. It had seemed a half-finished construction site. Laden lorries inching down ahead of him and others stacked up behind. In the photograph, he spotted the place where he had been directed to park the Mercedes. He had been in uniform that day, wearing a sidearm, the brigadier’s escort, so he was entitled to join the group of men welcoming the visitor. They had gone into the access tunnel. He had thought it like an ants’ nest, filled with scrambling activity. There was the noise from the ventilation ducts, the air-conditioning and the generators. It was a labyrinth, and he had been inside.

‘How many entrances, Mehrak?’

‘I only saw one.’

‘Did you come out the same way as you went in?’

He dragged at the last of the cigarette. It was still early in the morning, breakfast hardly digested and the ashtray nearly full. The question was repeated, a snatch of annoyance in the tone.

‘It’s simple enough, Mehrak. Did you leave by the same route?’

A finger pointed to the photograph, and he saw the small shadowy shapes, monochrome images, of the lorries and the few cars allowed into the restricted parking zone. He knew about the power of bombs. In his mind he saw the detonation of the ground-penetration monster that the Americans possessed that caused rock-falls and landslides, and imagined the gaping mouth of that tunnel sealed. He thought of many men and women, alive when he had been there, entombed. He imagined that the lighting and the power would fail and that the air would grow fetid . . .

‘The same way in and out? Yes, Mehrak, or no?’

He had slept poorly. He couldn’t have said that the bed was too hard or too soft or that the room was too warm or too cold. He had tossed, turned and examined each step of the road he had taken: how else he could have responded. He had done the business in the bank, and two men, who had said their job was to ‘look after you, like a brother,’ had bought him a meal that had cost what to him was a fortune. They had drunk alcohol, he had not, and he had heard the suggestion that he was a man of the world. He had thought of his humiliation at lying against Farideh’s cold back, saw the multi-coloured bruise at her eye, and remembered how she had gone to work where her office could see what he had done to her. He could have refused the men’s offer, could have taken a taxi to the airport and presented his ticket at a desk. He had not. Instead he had shrugged – he hadn’t wanted to seem frightened of ‘entertainment’, had thought it would ‘punish’ his wife – and had gone. He could have walked into the brothel, allowed the two Arabs to go off with their girls than have made an excuse and taken a taxi. He had not. Would Farideh have cared if she’d known? He could no longer read his wife’s mind.

‘Mehrak, is there a problem?’ He heard an edge in the voice. ‘Yes or no – entry and exit.’

He stuttered, ‘The same way.’

‘Thank you, Mehrak. Remember, you agreed to co-operate. Please consider your side of the obligations. Do the principal staff live underground or do they come out at the end of their working day? Are they housed above ground?’

He saw the woman. He didn’t know her name. He saw each movement of her fingers as she had slipped off the robe she had worn in the outer area. He hadn’t chosen her, but she had taken his hand and led him through the drawn curtain into the corridor. He could have pulled away, but he had not. He had thought of Farideh, of how she would walk past him, naked, from the bathroom to the bedroom and seem not to see him. She had been in his mind when he had sat on that bed.

The British woman had come into the cubicle, had threatened him with exposure – adultery, disgrace, misuse of public funds – had talked of video and audio tapes. He had imagined the images of himself, crumpled, pitiful, mocked. The brigadier had enemies, as all prominent men did. Those enemies had circled, snatched the brigadier’s driver and used him to hurt a target. Could he have dressed, walked past the woman and her escort to a taxi and faced the consequences? He might have been able to, but had not. And at the aircraft steps, he could have refused to go further, but he had not. He had signed, but he could have torn the paper to shreds. At many moments, he could have resisted and rejected them, but he had not.

‘Mehrak, the scientists and engineers, do they live above ground or below?’

‘They live in compounds at Fordo, go by bus each day to the tunnel.’

‘Thank you, Mehrak. Were the materials brought by lorry checked for sabotage at the tunnel entrance or before they descended to that point?’

He fixed his gaze on PK’s face. He dragged on the cigarette, than stubbed it out and let the smoke blow between them. ‘What is my future?’

‘We’ll talk about that over lunch, perhaps this evening. Now, we’re working.’