The Corporal's Wife (2013) (24 page)

Chapter 8

The traffic was solid.

Murphy’s law, Zach thought. If it could go wrong, it would. The turn he had made, based on the map, had led him into a jam caused by roadworks. Maybe five minutes stationary, in a cascade of horns and shouts, and five more crawling. No one walked if they could ride.

She was Foxtrot. She was in the back of the van with Wally, Ralph and the guns. Last thing before she’d got in, she’d shrugged on the
chador
and fixed the veil.

There’d been a shunt. A scooter had clipped the wing of a black car, government type, and a bawling match filled two lanes. Might have been amusing if she hadn’t been in the back. Police were running forward. If a motorbike had nicked the wing of a town-hall vehicle, and an argument had raged on the ring road in Coventry, then Zach and his mates on the site would have enjoyed it. But she was on board, and Mikey was beside him.

The traffic moved.

Two taxis were in front of him now, shared ones, packed seats. The protests were at a crescendo, arms snaking out of windows, demands for action from the police. Two police turned away from the accident and strode towards the source of the insults. Dangerous . . . One of the police was at the further taxi, the other at the nearest. A taxi driver might be apprehensive of men from the
basij
, would certainly be wary of conflict with any IRGC guy, but probably wouldn’t give a shite about a policeman.

He wondered what else Murphy had ready for him.

Mikey had pale skin: many Iranians did. Mikey had dark hair: most Iranians did. Did he look as if he’d come off the streets of south Tehran and was entitled to sit in a builders’ van? Were his clothes right for his job? Would his eyes betray him, or would he look away and play dumb, if he was ordered to wind down the window? The policeman nearest had a truncheon out and silenced the taxi driver by belting the vehicle bonnet, indicating that the next blow would shatter the windscreen. Now he came forward and Zach saw a man seeking confrontation. He murmured for Mikey to turn away, not to make eye contact. He sensed the movement beside him and realised that Mikey had pulled his beanie further over his head. The guys had no language and no papers – because the Americans at
I
ncirlik or Sulaymaniyah hadn’t had time to produce good fakes. Anyway, what was the use of a bogus ID to a man who couldn’t argue in defence of the identity given him? They had the weapons. Mikey’s pistol, short-barrelled and dark-coloured, was squashed under his inner thigh. Mikey had turned his face, closed his eyes and started a rhythmic snore. The rain poured down and the wipers struggled to clear it.

The weapons were useless while they were stationary.

The policeman came level with them, then kicked the tyre of the taxi. He was drenched. Water ran from his peaked cap and off his shoulders; the truncheon glistened. Zach was next in line. The eyes beaded on him. He wound down the window.

He spoke easily, knew the words: ‘What an arsehole, Officer. Doesn’t deserve your help. Thank you for your efforts.’

He was rewarded with a short smile and a nod, and the policeman went on by.

There was movement. They edged forward, then cleared the black car with the dent in the near wing and the man who had tried to start his scooter and failed. And, always, the miracle. Murphy had taken a back seat. Two more sets of lights, and the flow speeded. He was onto Enghelab, had passed the Saman Bank and taken the turning off the roundabout that put him on Azadi. The signs were for the Jenah road and Route 2. Soon – if Murphy stayed in his box – he’d be making for Karaj and Qazvin.

Mikey punched his arm, jolting his hold on the wheel and they swerved. Laughter broke out between them, and there were murmurs behind him. He thought he’d done well, that he’d started the process of being accepted by the guys as something approaching an equal.

Another hand, slighter, rested for a moment on his shoulder. There was gentle pressure, and then it was gone. She said nothing. He thought she would captivate a man and . . . A new sign indicated the slip road that would take them onto Route 2. He pointed to the fuel gauge and muttered that they might have three hundred kilometres more in the tank. Mikey nodded. Tiredness, hunger and thirst gripped Zach. She had touched him. They called her Foxtrot. Zach knew her as Farideh. He felt a greater fear now than at any time before – worse than when the policeman had walked in the rain towards them with fury on his face.

Why was Zach there? He supposed it was the same with mountains: men and women climbed them for the challenge. They were in traffic, locked in tight among vans, fast-travelling cars and lorries with trailers. The Israelis had a useful mechanic: the van’s exterior was battered and rusty, right for small-time builders, but the engine was well tuned and they cruised comfortably at eighty klicks an hour. He judged that to be the right speed – wouldn’t draw attention to them. He stayed in the middle lane and did not overtake. He held the wheel tightly, his knuckles showing white. That way, he had control of the tremor.

He asked, ‘When the cop came, if he’d made trouble, what would you have done? Would you have used the guns?’

An easy smile. ‘Doesn’t matter what I
might
have done. It didn’t happen.’

He was bolder. ‘We’ve made a good start, yes?’

‘It hasn’t started, good or bad. It’s all in front of us. Keep your eyes on the road, please.’

He thought he’d been put down when he should have been praised. The men with the guns excluded him; the circle of their relationship was closed to him. Something to resent, maybe, on another day – but he’d no friends among the men he’d worked alongside on the site either, seldom ate with them, rarely drank with them and didn’t share their laughter. He was apart from the guns, and it didn’t hurt. He could still feel where her fingers had touched his shoulder.

More material was handed to them, a full copy of the transcripts. Some regarded Tadeuz Fenton’s delight in moving sheets of paper as eccentric, others as showboating. The Friend and the Cousin, or Gideon and Gunther, as Sara called them, collected the documents, handed in their thoughts and any remarks that had been fed back to them from Tel Aviv and Langley. He liked the personal touch in paperwork being offered, accepted and slid into briefcases, and was rewarded with a moment of gratitude from both men. How long would the warmth last? Maybe as far as the steps outside Vauxhall Cross, or as far as the Underground station.

He was a poor relation. He escorted them to the security gate. His phone warbled.

He murmured an excuse, turned away and answered it. Sara told him the text of the transmitted message. Strange – an oversight by Human Resources: he’d never served a full attachment overseas. He had her repeat it, not that there was much for her to say. He’d done short-notice reliefs as cover for illness, mental collapse and scandal, but never a four-year posting. He snapped off the phone and scurried after them. He caught them by the gates. ‘They have her. They’re on their way.’

They chorused: ‘The wife?’

‘They’re on their way. Nothing more. Instructions were to keep call-time to a minimum.’

‘Are alarms ringing?’ the American asked.

‘Not that we’ve heard.’ He hadn’t expected interrogation – more to have his hand gripped and be congratulated.

It was easier to draw blood from a stone than a smile from the Israeli. A grim response: ‘You’ll hear and they’ll ring.’

He smarted. ‘Not necessarily. They may come through without bangs, bleeps and chaos.’

The American said, ‘The best-laid plans are just as likely to end in terror.’

‘For a man-hunt to be launched a mistake has to trigger it. Plain sailing otherwise.’

The Israeli said, ‘It’s not a model boat, Tad, floating on the Serpentine. There are always mistakes. Always . . . Keep the stuff coming. I’m getting interest.’

‘Yes,’ said the American. ‘A good response from our people so far. It’s always a seat-of-your-pants job, getting people out. You’ll see, Tad.’

He waved stiffly, then headed for a lift. When the Soviets and the UK people were in each other’s faces, men of his seniority in the Service had known their opponents. There had been files on pretty much any individual who ranked above half-colonel and had a desk in intelligence-gathering. They’d had photographs of them, had known where they went for their summer holiday and what languages they spoke; they’d met them at cocktail bashes thrown by the Indian, Yugoslav or Swiss mission; some were charming, others brutish, and most were worthy opposition. He welcomed and respected the new kid on the block, whether it was the VEVAK people, the men from the Ministry of Intelligence and Security, the shadowy Oghab-2, or the group answerable only to the Supreme Leader. He didn’t know the principals. He had seen faces of glowering, malevolent clerics but they weren’t alive to him. The targets of espionage were rewarding, but the sense of being under their skin had always evaded him. Now he had his fingernails under the skin of a brigadier general in the al-Qods, which was classified as an able, highly disciplined arm of the enemy. He hoped to create infection there and, by the end, to have flayed it off and caused serious grief.

He was back in his office. Sara said that the director would see him for updates at six.

‘Anything from Dunc?’

He brushed against her hip – he often did, and did more than that in the flat high over Chelsea Harbour, but they didn’t parade it. He felt confident in the mission and its outcome.

There was nothing from Dunc Whitcombe: he had only a satellite photograph of a desolate house, miles from civilisation, to show him where he and Mandy Ross were. They’d be waiting, as he was.

Dunc Whitcombe went outside. He felt the need to brood. The message had come through on her phone, which meant that she was higher-ranked than himself. Some would have bitched or moaned about the slight.

He stood on the patio outside the living room. The smoke eddied from the chimney and was blasted towards the mountains, where the border was. There were scudding clouds, some pregnant with snow or hail, and islands of blue sky. He didn’t look at Ararat, but watched the field where the horses were corralled. A boy came with a bucket.

Zach Becket was in his mind, and the mud of the site where they had met. He saw the pub in which the band had played: the guys had come in from work, with no idea where the boss’s son was headed. There had been a car journey south, the snoring of a man tired after a day’s work and a drink. Dunc didn’t know how Zach would respond when the pressure was bowstring taut. Mandy had told him of the message, ‘Foxtrot on the run’. Responsibility weighed heavily on him, with Mandy, too. They would do their damnedest to keep it to themselves.

The horses were cantering from the far corner of the field to meet the boy.

At Vauxhall Cross it was said, and he’d heard it from offices with their doors open, or when he’d turned a corner and surprised colleagues talking about him, that he was called ‘Fulcrum’. He had not done Latin at school, and it was the first time he’d needed to sneak to a dictionary. It had come up with ‘something that supports or sustains’. Good enough. It was said, whispers carried on the wind, that his contribution to the desk – organisation, analysis, common-sense reasoning – kept it afloat and prominent. He was the marine commando – ‘first in and last out’ – and it had become second nature to Tadeuz and Sara, Mandy and others to dump work on him.

The horses jostled for space in front of the boy, the better to take from his hand the dried cake or whatever he’d bought.

He was forty-two and his divorce from Alice had been finalised at the end of the previous year. No kids. He lived in a Battersea studio, a ten-minute walk from work. It was still half filled with packing cases of clothes, books, precious odds and ends. Long ago he had taken first-class honours in archaeology at Bristol, and he was good at groping about in mud with a spatula, brush or trowel. He had thought Ararat would be interesting, and any bits of rotten wood, three or four thousand years old, might be fun – if they had time for an Ark hunt. Now it didn’t seem important that he had gained little of the craft of gathering intelligence from his academic discipline. He worked Monday through Friday, and usually came in, dressed down, on Saturday. Sundays were for his mother: he pushed her supermarket trolley round the aisles and made a poor job of losing the cares of Iran.

Sunday evenings were his own: unknown to all at Vauxhall Cross, and to his mother, he played clarinet in a trad-jazz sixsome in a back room at the Red Lion off the main drag in Stoke Newington. He had a following, and a few fans – the evenings when he played his solo pieces he was applauded.

The boy had no more cake and fondled the horses’ necks.

Was the defector worth the effort? He had to suppose so. He and Mandy would not be told. Anyway, they had no wish for telephone calls, sat-links or mobiles-in-clear, because
Dogubeyazit
was a garrison town and would have El-Int people – they, would rely on electronic intelligence in their guerrilla war against the Kurdish separatists – so it wasn’t sensible to plaster the airwaves with overseas transmissions. Perhaps the defector was worth the effort, and perhaps he wasn’t. Sad if the man turned out to be valueless.

The sun broke through. He saw the movement of a crow’s shadow flying fast towards the boy and the horses. Dunc thought the bird might be familiar with them and was hunting for anything that had dropped from the bucket. It was close to the boy now and shrieked loudly. Dunc heard it clearly, and the horses scattered, but the boy didn’t move or flinch. He was unaware of the bird until it was past him. Profoundly deaf. The boy’s lips moved and he called the horses back to him. They came, but Dunc hadn’t heard his voice. Profoundly deaf and dumb. He was a good-looking boy. He wore a pair of faded jeans that were ripped at both knees, a dun-coloured T-shirt with a shirt and a woollen cardigan over it. He had lightweight trainers on his feet, and he couldn’t have felt the cold that cut at Dunc Whitcombe. The horses stayed close to him and there was love between animals and boy. Dunc was an interloper. He went back to the windows. He felt the love and trust keenly – he himself was short of them.