The Corporal's Wife (2013) (17 page)

He didn’t know about the officers of the Central Intelligence Agency, two men and a woman, who had squashed them with their bags into the Humvee and driven at speed from the airport, past the buses and cars of civilian traffic, then through the military block beyond the terminal buildings. There had been a curt wave from the driver to the guards, as if this was a piece of territory the American had bought. They went out onto a highway and left the tall buildings of the city behind. Mikey had asked how long. The woman had said an hour. Mikey had poked Zach’s rib, had his attention.

Mikey had said, ‘Haven’t talked before because I don’t rate drip-feeding information. Listen and concentrate. I don’t do it twice. One lesson is paramount: we all have a job to do and we all rely on that job being done. You rely on our professionalism, and we rely on yours – except we don’t know whether you have the necessary skills. Don’t ever forget that we’re a team and we’ll behave like one. We’re as good as the weakest among us. Don’t let that be you.’

Mikey had talked, filling the hour.

They had gone past fields and farmers’ compounds, had seen cattle in sheds and old tractors on the roads, herds of goats and sheep. Thick smoke climbed from chimneys and kids were at the side of the road, waving as the Humvee sped past. While Mikey talked, Zach gazed past the driver’s shoulder. The ground climbed and there was snow on the summits of hills. He heard what was expected of him: language and urban driving, the approach and the talk. He was told their territory: security, tactics, safety. They wouldn’t second-guess him, and he wouldn’t question their decisions. At the end of the briefing he had asked one question.

‘Have any of your guys been inside Iran before?’

‘No. Have you?’

Zach had said he had been in Iran for two weeks, five years before, on a student visa. He had heard the woman snort in the passenger seat and had seen a little shake in the driver’s shoulders, as if he chuckled. The American in the jump seat, who had the rifle across his knees, had turned his head sharply.

‘Well, we’ll live with it,’ Mikey had said, with a wintry smile.

‘“ In the land of the blind, the one-eyed is king,” ’ Zach responded.

He wondered why they had sent with him guys who’d do security, tactics and safety yet had never been on the ground and couldn’t order a glass of tea at a roadside. The road was desolate and high, traces of snow were on the yellowed grass. The occasional trees were stunted and bent. He saw a woman burdened with firewood. She would have had to search hard for it.

They climbed and the road surface deteriorated. They came to a small quarry and the driver swung into it. Mikey said it was a good time to put the boots on so they all crouched to fiddle with laces and hooks. The shoes went into Zach’s sack, which had space for them. They were parked beside a heap of burned-out vehicles – some were peppered with bullet holes, crisp little marks on the fraying rust. The Americans were quiet now and their radio was turned off. The woman had a cell phone on her lap and watched it, waiting for it to ring or vibrate. Zach remembered the snort, the chuckle and the turned head.

‘And you go across most nights, do you? You’re regulars? You all speak the language well?’ Zach used Farsi, challenging – and won. They looked blankly at him, the woman and the two men. Zach said, in English, ‘I was wondering if you go across regularly, and speak the language.’

‘We don’t,’ the woman said. ‘And we don’t have more than basic Farsi. But we settle the bills and keep the show on the road. I hope that sounds adequate . . . We have friends, and when the friends call we’ll walk you to them. Do I like all of the world in which I live? I don’t, and learn to exist alongside it. I don’t go in, none of us does, and I don’t lie awake at night and shed tears. I don’t want to read about you in the
New York Times
or in the Kurdish local rag. If I don’t see your picture or hear about you I’ll be thankful. We don’t have a church here, but there are some good Mid-West Americans who run a school on Christian principles in the city and sometimes we have a little prayer meeting. I value that when it happens. Next time I go, I’ll think of you.’

Her phone warbled. She read a message.

The one in the jump seat leaned forward and was shown the screen. He said to Mikey, ‘We’ll walk you forward, like we said, and pass you on. Let’s get it done.’

The woman passed him a sheet from a notepad. He read the handwriting and raised an eyebrow, then returned it. The paper, screwed up, went into her pocket. She said, ‘We’re told the way’s clear. Good luck, stay safe.’

They were out and the crisp air wafted on Zach’s face. Mikey, Ralph and Wally had their weapons bags, and Wally had the trauma kit. Zach hitched his rucksack onto his back.

A track led out of the quarry and went up between rocks, skirting a small torrent. The driver was pointing at it. The woman waved. They were not twenty metres out of the quarry, on an exposed slope, without cover, before the Humvee had done a three-pointer, grit flying from under the big tyres. They were not fifty metres up the hill, with a ridge far above them, before the Humvee was at a bend and accelerating, and not a hundred metres before the Humvee was gone, no more than a fading memory.

‘Fuck them,’ Ralph said.

‘Ditto,’ Wally said.

‘Easy, boys,’ Mikey said. ‘Stay with me, Zach, right up close.’

They pushed on. Ralph led, Mikey following, Zach hard to him, and Wally had the rear. An eagle flew high above them, circling wide, and Zach wondered if there were rabbits or a fox for it to swoop on. The light caught the beauty of its wings and he tripped. He’d been gazing up, paying no attention to his next footfall. A hand caught him from behind and Mikey looked daggers at him. He could have kicked himself. Each time his boot landed on the ground it left behind little specks of dried mud from a building site a dozen miles from the city of Coventry. He noted that the guys in front and Wally didn’t dislodge stones or kick up grit.

He didn’t think of home, the men he had worked with, or the guys around him. He didn’t think of the woman who was in an apartment on a side-street in central Tehran. He thought only of where his boots landed. The eagle called, reedy and thin, but he didn’t lift his head.

He cannoned into Mikey, who had stopped. The path, near the top of the ridge, curved at a thorn bush. A man sat there. He wore the long shirt of a peasant and baggy trousers that were pulled in at the ankle. His feet were bare but for heavy leather sandals. He had on an old jacket that would have been expensive a quarter of a century ago when it was new. He was unshaven but not bearded, had sallow skin and wore an old beanie.

Good English, educated: ‘You Brits are always late. Be late for your own funerals. Which of you is the star?’

Mikey gestured at Zach.

The man said, Farsi now, ‘If I could just do my little check, the one I always do for visitors from Mary Ellen, fine girl. The mullah says to the street sweeper who cleans, each day, the pavement outside the mullah’s villa, ‘‘Ali, why are you so fat?’’ How does the street sweeper reply?’

Zach answered, ‘The street sweeper says to the mullah: ‘‘I’m fat, Excellency, because each time I screw your wife she gives me a biscuit. Then I go and screw your daughter and she gives me a biscuit too. I eat too many biscuits, which is why I’m fat.’’ The old ones are the best.’

The man came forward and kissed Zach’s cheeks. ‘Very good. From now we’ll speak Farsi. What’s your name?’

They were at the ridge and stepped over it. The track went on down.

‘I’m Zach, and—’

‘You’re one metre inside Iran and already you’ve made a mistake. I tricked you. Your name is no business of mine. I can be Moshe or Ali, David or Mahmoud. I have a name for wherever I sleep. For me, for your friends, be wary. Come.’

The man led and they went fast. Far below there was a rusty old lorry, and the sun glinted on its load of a few old cookers and fridges. Zach felt chastised for his error. He wondered why he had stepped forward on the building site. The border was behind him, receding fast. When the fear came his legs weakened and his stomach seemed loose, but there was no stopping and no turning back and the eagle called again but Zach did not look for it.

They had taken the flight up to Van, where they were met. He was young, introduced himself as from the embassy in Ankara, passed them a bulky envelope and led them to the car-hire desk. He completed the forms with them, translated and scarpered. He could have been in the Service, first posting abroad, or perhaps had been press-ganged from Consular or Trade by the station chief. He’d wanted less than nothing to do with them. Mandy had driven – inappropriate, probably, in these parts, but she’d swung a headscarf over her hair and had settled behind the wheel. He had navigated. An awful road skirted the lake, and there was a worse one after Agri, playing chicken with lorries driving from the border, frustrated by a lengthy Customs hold-up.

They’d arrived in
Dogubeyazit
and felt shredded. They’d bought bread, cheese, tea bags, unrecognisable coffee, milk, and old, bruised fruit from a petrol station. Dunc had started a list for the morning. The property rented for them was marked boldly on one of the maps provided by the embassy, and they’d found it. They hadn’t taken in their surroundings, which were a confused wilderness. The key was in the door. They’d stumbled inside and switched on every light and every heater.

Dunc Whitcomb looked at his watch, cradled the mug of tea. ‘Where should they be?’

Her eyes were closed, as if the strain had caught up with her. ‘Should be across, if the Israelis have done their bit. Makes you shiver, the thought of an Israeli on the ground there. Beyond any call of duty that I’d know.’

‘And our boy . . . God, should I have dragged him into this?’

‘Bit bloody late to go soft, Dunc.’

The Cousin said, ‘I hear, Tadeuz, that we handed them over in good shape, sent them on their way. There’ll be a big pay-back. You owe us.’

The Friend said, ‘We did the pick-up, and we’re ferrying your team, Tadeuz. But when they’re dropped off they’re on their own. The extraction we’ve suggested is a commercial arrangement, not linked to us. You owe us, too.’

Out of the corner of his eye, Tadeuz Fenton saw that Sara Rogers was seething. He said, ‘You helped because of the quality of the intelligence we’ve already provided, so can we skip the shit and behave like civilised intelligence-gatherers?’

The Agency, Tadeuz knew, would not have provided the transport unless their analysts had recognised the worth of the material already submitted by Petroc Kenning. The Mossad, notorious for their secrecy, independence and usual refusal to hold hands with another Service, would have summoned one of their stars only if what they had already heard had taken their knowledge beyond old boundaries. The corporal was a jewel, and belonged to Tadeuz. He said, ‘But we’re grateful for your help. When this is over, we’ll deserve a drink or three.’

There was a map on the table. The Cousin reached forward and gestured at a point on the red frontier line that was due west of Sulaymaniyah. The Friend eased him aside and traced a route along a winding Iranian road that ended in Tehran. Sara Rogers leaned across and indicated a range of high mountains, the border separating Iran from Turkey, where they would come out, Zach, the team and the wife.

Tadeuz Fenton was no longer a good Catholic, but he crossed himself.

‘What do you know?’ They had come with the dawn.

She had had warning – she had been at the window from before the first light had spread from the east, where the great deserts were. She had seen their cars. She hadn’t dressed. The vehicles had stopped level with the doorway from which the men had watched the entrance to her block through the night. She had lain sleepless on the wide bed, but had gone often to the window, with a blanket round her shoulders. She had seen the brigadier get out of his car, the Mercedes that was Mehrak’s pride and joy. It blocked the street.

‘I promise you, Farideh, that it may go badly for you. The judge may consider it impossible that a man can defect to the enemy of the Iranian people without the knowledge of his wife. He might feel that the duty of a wife is first to the state, and second to her husband. He would expect her to know of his intended flight and go to the authorities to denounce him.’

She had heard heavy feet on the stairs, then fists beating at the door. She had opened it. They had pushed past her. She knew so much about the brigadier – her husband spoke of him often. She hadn’t seen him since her wedding. Now his eyes flickered. She wondered if he felt awkward to be close to her when she was wrapped only in a blanket. He would have seen her hair, throat, wrists and legs below the knee, the curve of the blanket at her breasts and hips. She stared at him. He had chosen her. Her parents had thought it an honour that their daughter should marry a man in the al-Qods division. They hadn’t realised that the limit of his ambition was to serve his officer. The brigadier stood in front of her, his eyes glazed. He had lost the dynamism his rank gave him. His hand snaked out and grasped her chin.

‘They’re difficult times and we face great dangers. The threats to the state are many. In such times, for the crime of waging war against God – which you would face – there would be no mercy. I couldn’t help you, Farideh. What did you know?’

Her hands had held the blanket. Now she used them to pull his hand off her face. It was a gesture of defiance. He didn’t slap or punch her, which surprised her, but the blanket slid off her shoulders.