The Corporal's Wife (2013) (21 page)

There were glass doors onto a patio. The aspect showed Ararat, where Noah
might
have been and where his Ark
might
have beached. Smoke from damp wood belched in the grate. Ararat, snow-capped, the winter probing lower now on its slopes, was the backdrop. He assimilated what was close. Beyond the patio there was rough ground, with a mix of goats and sturdy, short-legged sheep grazing on yellowed grass. There was a rough post-and-rail fence, which enclosed a compound of worn, churned earth where the vegetation had long been trampled out. A cluster of horses gathered around a broken hay bale. Dunc thought them fine-looking, and they had a ruggedness that suited the bleakness of the landscape. Strange that the horses hadn’t been there when they’d reached the house, or in the closed field when they had gone into the town to shop. Dunc thought them bred to work. He knew nothing about horses, but now he felt a part of something timeless. Mandy was behind him, and he hadn’t heard her come in. ‘Timeless’ meant biblical.

‘It beats Bognor,’ she said.

He struggled for words. ‘The vista sort of puts things into proportion. Take out the corporation rubbish tip, and what’s changed in the last few millennia? It’s extraordinary.’

She passed him his mug. He gazed at the horses and should have understood but did not. He should have realised what had funded such a fine building.

The thought came to him, a shock. The face of Zach filled his mind. His hand shook, slopping the tea, and he heard her disapproving tut. Beyond the horses was the road. Far up the road, where the heavy trucks ran, was the junction, and past the junction were the hills and the frontier. He could see a little of the line and over it, but the young man he had bearded on the building site was invisible. He thought God might damn him for the plausibility of what he had said to him. It didn’t matter that Zach Becket had seemed to welcome him and his proposition. That was why he had spilled his tea. God might damn him.

He was given orders and obeyed them.

She led.

‘Slippery as an eel,’ Mikey murmured.

‘No idea where, but she’s learned it.’

The goons couldn’t match her counter-surveillance skills.

Had it not been for Mikey’s commentary, Zach would have grasped only half of what she was doing. Ralph made the calls, his head wedged between Zach and Mikey’s shoulders, although Mikey had first shout on speed. She was causing havoc with the goons. Twice their car had gone too fast and picked on the wrong black
chador
. It had tucked into the slow lane and idled behind a woman, discovered the error, had to brake – and she had lost them. More than once the motorcycle had turned in the traffic, chancing a limb on the respect given to an ID card. The goons on foot had run, stood on pavements and traffic islands, then pirouetted, their phones to their ears and sprinted to catch up with the wheels.

She did cut-outs. She did double-backs. She did shop doorways. In through one entrance of a supermarket and out of a side door. They’d have lost her themselves but for Ralph’s eye. They had forgotten they were thirsty. Mikey said it wasn’t that the goons were piss-poor but that she was quality.

They ignored their tiredness.

North of Enghelab and west of Belavar, Ralph rapped an order and Zach braked. Ralph was out of the van and walking after her. Zach didn’t have to be told – it was easier for him to follow Ralph’s head bobbing among the men on the pavement.

He had lost the woman. And
they
had, too. Mikey confirmed it.

Zach couldn’t remember the last time he had carried out instructions to the letter without arguing. It was apparent to him that a pattern was in place. Mikey was their leader, Ralph was expert in surveillance, and he didn’t yet know Wally’s talent but expected to learn it.

A time would come when Ralph would lead them to where she had gone and they would confront her. Zach would talk. He wouldn’t have Mikey on his back or suggestions in English from Ralph or Wally. His turn in the spotlight would come.

He swung off the avenue into a narrow street. There were small businesses on either side, and he could smell food cooking. Sheets hung from upper windows and dripped damp, music played, and he was drawn back to when he had last been in the city, its sounds, tastes, scents. He slowed to a crawl.

Mikey’s hand was on his arm, squeezed, and he stopped. A woman pushed a pram past him. He could hear a man and a woman shouting at each other on a floor above. Kids kicked a ball in the road, one wearing a Real Madrid shirt, the other Inter Milan.

‘She was good,’ Mikey said. ‘Too good for the goons. But Ralph instructs on the courses.’ He chuckled.

Wally’s hands were on Zach’s shoulders, pressing down for encouragement.

Ralph stood by a set of half-open gates into a yard. He pushed them wider and backoned. Zach saw Mikey ease a pistol from his belt, check the magazine and the ammunition in the breach. His finger was tight on the trigger guard.

‘You good, kid?’ Mikey asked him.

Zach nudged the van through the gates and into the yard. Ralph closed them behind him. They all had a job to do, and now it was his turn. He swung his legs out of the cab, stretched and cleared his throat, then walked towards a door. He thought he was alone.

They heard the gate scrape open and Highness went to deal with the customer.

‘What shall I do?’ She was sitting on the rug, facing the long couch where she had lain with Johnny and the Captain. She cradled the glass of tea that Excellency had brought to her. She had told them what had happened, and Excellency had squeezed his eyes shut and shaken his head. Highness had clucked as he always did when his nerves were stretched. They didn’t have to tell her that they were in danger now because of her.

A voice at the door, speaking Farsi: ‘My name is Zach. Farideh, I came to find you.’

Chapter 7

All eyes were on him. There were two older men – late seventies or even eighties – and one had reached to his belt. Zach assumed a pistol had once hung there. The expression flitting across their faces was of fear.

‘I’ve come to bring you out.’

Perhaps someone in one of the great agencies of the state had written a procedure for moments like this – what to say, and how to say it. He had been unable to rehearse – the guy on the doorstep selling encyclopedias when he was a kid would have made a better job of it – but he had good Farsi.

‘Bring you out and take you to your husband.’

The men, dressed in mechanics’ overalls, seemed hardly to hear him. Their eyes were locked on the guys behind him: all three had come with him through the workshop and up the stairs. There had been the soft voices to guide them and they had come light-footed across a landing and paused by the door. Mikey had laid a hand on his shoulder, propelled him into the room – and he had seen her.

Who did he represent, Zach wondered? In his mind he saw Dunc, who had the charisma of a building-regulations inspector but had effortlessly hooked him. And there was Mandy, with the brisk efficiency of a manager at any wholesaler’s supplying breeze blocks. He realised now that the seniors had kept their distance. Zach might have appeared on a screen for scrutiny, but then the lesser stars had been called out, Dunc and Mandy. Mikey, Wally and Ralph were not from the pedigree Special Forces . . . He was
expendable
. The word clattered in his skull. They all were. He should have found out where their loyalties lay and where he stood on their priority list. He had not analysed their job. She looked at him from the floor.

‘Your husband’s in Europe, in a place of safety.’

He had no idea what she was thinking, whether she believed a word he’d said – did she understand what he’d said?

Briefly he was back at the School, in a group of second and third years. The lecturer was Iranian-born and so were the other five students. They spoke Farsi at home and couldn’t understand his love of their language. He knew he spoke it well, but
they
had said he was ‘remarkable’. They had played games at the table, – a shopping expedition in the bazaar, or an argument over a newspaper column at a bus stop. Sometimes they wheedled and at others they argued. He had survived alongside them, had never been the passenger: she had understood everything he’d said.

‘. . . and we’ve come to take you out and reunite you with him. This morning we saw you were followed and we understand the danger facing you.’

The old men looked past him and would have seen the pistols Mikey and Wally were holding. Ralph had brought a bigger weapon. They didn’t speak. Neither did she.

‘Your husband gave himself up to the British mission in Dubai, and is safe. He wasn’t kidnapped or coerced. He volunteered to leave the region and the responsible British agencies are tasked to protect him. We’re here to take you out so that you can join him.’

The photograph he had seen did her justice. She wasn’t film-star beautiful, but something about her captivated him.

What was it? Her simplicity, for a start – and vulnerability. Her skin was clear and she wore a touch of lipstick, but that was all. There was, as he read it, innocence in her gaze. The gate to the yard creaked.

Because she didn’t answer him, he ploughed on. He pulled the photograph out of his pocket and held it close to her face. ‘That’s all I have to say. We’re here in secret, of course. Your husband is well taken care of. He wants you beside him. A new life, a new start. The offer is just for you, not your family. It’s clear that you’re already under surveillance and your arrest is probably imminent. We need to go.’

The old men were close to her. He couldn’t gauge the relationship, only their love for her. He looked away and took in the room. Below, they’d walked through a workshop where mechanics fixed motorbikes amid engine oil, grease and dirt. This room presented a sharp contrast. She was sitting on a clean rug from a craftsman’s stall in the bazaar. In front of her, against a wall, there was a small double bed, silk cushions at the head. He assumed it was her bolt-hole. Why did Farideh, wife of the corporal, need it? The answer shouted itself at him. There was a table to the side with two photographs on it, both in silver-plate frames. He heard Mikey’s fingers snap with impatience.

‘We were sent to bring you out. My colleagues say you used good techniques to lose the surveillance, but we haven’t much time. So that you know, we’ll be going north-west, via Qazvin and Zanjan, Mianeh and Tabriz. We’ll meet men who will take us over the mountains and into Turkey. For now you’ve lost the tail, but that just increases the danger you’re in. They’ll be searching hard. We have to go – now.’

One photograph showed a young man smiling, with a confidence that bordered on arrogance. Zach recognised a lover. In the other frame, the second man wore combat fatigues and a
fedayeen
scarf, a holster was slung against his thigh, the handle of a pistol protruding from it. There were tribesmen in a clutch behind him, like the ones Zach saw on the television news. Afghanistan. Another lover.

‘No goodbyes. We have to go – now.’

No response. If she was thinking about what he’d said, she gave no sign of it. Time to reflect on his own motivation. He’d been set a challenge, trusted to go where only idiots went. At the School they had tried to talk about the post-election riots and on the television news there had been video images of the
basij
rampaging. It had shown the brutal suppression of the demonstrations – and the newsreaders had reported on the trials and hangings. Few in the School had accepted the wrongness of a stolen election . . .

‘I say it again,
please
, you have to come with us or we’ll turn our backs on you, leaving you to hope the surveillance never catches up with you.’

She gave Zach a small smile, and frowned. Now she would answer.

‘I loathe him.’

She said it clearly. She might have slapped his face: he had looked at the photographs of Johnny, hanged in Evin, and the Captain, killed by a sniper. He had looked at the bed. She had a little English, which might have carried her into a university course, but she had married. He translated for those behind him – his protection. Rain pattered on the window panes.

She said, ‘I detest him.’

Excellency whispered in Highness’s ear.

‘I have done nothing. I am innocent of any crime.’

The wind blustered against the gates into the yard.

‘I hate him. Why would I go with you?’

He heard an oath and imagined their faces falling. His mind churned. ‘Did I hear you right? No problem. We’ll just catch a bus home, and tell our boss she didn’t like her old man and was happy where she was. Win some, lose some. A wasted trip. Laugh or cry?’ Zach had nothing to say.

The wet was in his face. The counter-intelligence officer, Kourosh, had lurched into the main street and was clear of the alleyway that led from the repair yard. He was shaken and confused. He should never have been there. It had been, he had thought, his last chance.

He had come through the gates – had needed to push them only slightly to get through. The lights had been bright in the workshop. A scooter lay on its side with the engine parts on the bench. He had heard the voice at the top of the stairs and the door into the room was ajar.