The Corporal's Wife (2013) (26 page)

The crowd, at fever pitch, clapped, and the show played well. On this street, in this district, the votes in the last election for the president hadn’t been stolen. Support for the regime was total. No one from Rafah Street or the bazaar district had fought the
basij
in the main squares: many of their sons, cousins or nephews had enlisted. Ali led Jamali into the building and up the stairs, then asked the man at the door if he could speak to a responsible official. It was treason and it was
moharebeh
and the duty of all to help the authorities. The story of the builders’ van was told again, and the man who drove it was described.

He didn’t have a driver, was dependent on the pool. His neighbours in the complex, homes for the wealthy and well connected, had been collected as usual that morning by their chauffeurs, and some had an additional car tucked behind, ferrying the bodyguards. The brigadier had paced in the cold, waiting. He had called the pool’s manager twice to demand a faster reaction. He had been late at Rafah Street and at his desk.

He had known of the planned arrest. A junior officer, from a security section, had come to his room in the late morning. He had been given the co-ordinates of time and location, when the hit would be made on the apartment. He could not have sworn to it, but thought a fleeting smirk had crossed the officer’s face: men died in the Evin gaol on accusations that were perceived but could not have been sworn to; men and women were held in the city’s prisons when evidence could not be guaranteed. In different circumstances, the junior might have faced a reprimand, demotion or dismissal. The circumstances were not
different
. The word was that his driver had defected. By now, the investigators would be swarming over Mehrak’s apartment. He remembered the man’s wife.

His own wife was a good woman, dutiful, and had given him a fine son. She looked after him, was cheerful when he wanted to laugh in the privacy of their home, and could be silent when grave matters of state pressed hard on him. She cooked well for him, but her ankles and waist had thickened. Often she was in bed and asleep by the time Mehrak dropped him at the door and slipped away into the night. He undressed quietly. He remembered the driver’s wife – remembered her when the blanket had dropped to the floor and he had seen the curves of her body – flaunted shamelessly. He would never forget her – and the defiance with which she had flung back his questions. He felt empty as his sense of catastrophe grew. Now, having worked all morning and afternoon, he was waiting again. He had called the organiser of the car pool three times.

He missed the bastard. He was always waiting at the appointed time, ready with the coffee in the car for the drive to work, the valeting done, and the brigadier’s cigarettes in the pocket at the back.

He was nervous.

A bank account existed, privacy guaranteed by a password and a six-figure number, in Dubai. The bank was linked to others that held different denominations of his investments. He had no cigarettes, which fuelled his anger and anxieties. He had bought some yesterday, two packets, and had smoked them. Mehrak had stowed cigarettes in the car where he could reach them, and had kept his lighter filled with gas. He wondered if the Mercedes had already been allocated to someone else. It had been available the night before, had brought him home, but the driver hadn’t known the way and had had to be directed.

The junior found him standing beneath the porch over the side door of his office block. In front of him was the wide area where the drivers could bring the vehicles close to the steps so that an important man did not get wet in the rain. No car had arrived. Behind him were the doors and the security desk. The junior came close to him. He might have saluted and stood to attention, and might not.

‘Brigadier Joyberi, I have to tell you—’

‘What?’ he snapped. It was a custom, from birth to the grave, to observe
tarof
– civility, politeness – and begin any conversation with compliments. Neither he nor the junior officer used it now.

‘It concerns the situation involving the planned arrest of your driver’s wife. Your driver, missing, and assumed to be a defector, while on unexplained business in the Emirates, has a wife, Farideh, and lives in Rafah Street. This afternoon a security team—’

‘I know where my driver lives.’ He was a brigadier, as high as it was possible to climb inside the al-Qods, one of a group of five. The junior might be a captain, or a lieutenant.

‘Of course you know the street, Brigadier. You were there this morning, I understand.’

He was expressionless. A tide had turned. The brigadier understood little of the sea, but he knew from visits to the Gulf that a tidal flow at Bandar Abbas could rise and fall by up to two metres, and that the movement could not be reversed.

With confidence, the junior said, ‘She’s gone, Brigadier. She walked out of her office – dismissed as unsuitable – then employed tactics to throw off a surveillance team. They lost her. She didn’t return to her home. She’s considered a fugitive. It’s assumed she’ll attempt to join her husband, nominated now as a traitor, and guilty of
moharabeh
. I am instructed to say, Brigadier, that you may be required to help the investigation concerning them. I’m told that your car will come soon, sir.’

The brigadier didn’t wait. He walked out into the rain. He went towards the main street running along the side of the barracks. He didn’t know which buses went towards the north of the city, his home, but he would ask. The rain soaked him. He remembered his driver, the jokes, and remembered his driver’s wife, the fallen blanket. He thought it likely that British agencies had tried to extract her. Would they succeed? He doubted it. He shook his shoulders and the rain fell off them.

Zach woke up. He seemed to be lying on a cushion. He smelt coffee.

Whenever he’d slept deeply, totally crashed out, he didn’t know where he was when he woke. He tilted his body and the cushion seemed softer – then, abruptly, harder. Someone gasped.

He mouthed, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know, I—’

She said, ‘It’s where you slept.’

It was dark. She shifted, and he realised he must have turned over in his sleep, and rested against her, his head on her chest or stomach. He didn’t know how to apologise.

He could see the hands on his watch and yawned, then struggled to calculate – he’d been asleep for at least three hours.

The back door of the van was open. He could smell coffee and hexamine – the tablets were between a pile of stones and a metal canteen. He could see the outline of her face: the veil was off and her scarf had been pushed back so that her hair hung loose. He must have made a gesture, which she interpreted. She shook her head. He made sense of the exchange: she had been offered coffee and had declined it. He heard Wally laugh. Ralph came round the back of the van and used his boot to clear the stones. The tablets bounced away and he bent to retrieve the canteen. He wasn’t going to be given coffee, and it was beneath his dignity to beg for some. He didn’t know them and thought none of them was interested in knowing him. He sat up.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, in Farsi, and rubbed his eyes.

‘For nothing. You kept me warm.’

‘A sin in Iran.’

‘A sin to die for.’

Her voice was soft, no more than a murmur, and he couldn’t judge if she’d been ironic or serious. He had been sent to bring her out and start a process of reuniting her with her husband – and she had come but had said she
loathed
him. She was to be brought across the border – God willing – and put alongside her husband in the interests of the organisation that employed Dunc and Mandy, that paid Ralph, Wally, Mikey – and himself?

His mind rambled. She was coming out with them. He imagined it: men in suits and women greeting them, her shaking hands and thanking them. A plea from her to be excused. A walk to a bus stop, a ride to the nearest town, and her gone . . . He couldn’t see her face but remembered it clearly from the room above the repair yard. He couldn’t remember Chrissie’s – his last short-stay girl — or the face of the one before Chrissie.

‘Thank you for letting me sleep.’

‘And for allowing you to snore?’

‘Did I? God . . . Sorry. You should have—’

‘You slept across me, snored and talked.’

‘In violation of modesty. I was in Alamut five years ago. A student. It was possible then to come for two weeks.’

‘I was there after the earthquake two years ago.’

‘Did you and your husband climb to the top? I did and—’

‘I was with my friend, a captain in the army. You saw his photograph. My husband was away, I don’t know where. We went towards the fortress and then to where there were trees. We had brought a picnic and . . . He was killed in Afghanistan. He taught me something of the ways to lose surveillance, and more. He was a true friend.’

Wally ignored them and talked to Mikey, leaning forward into the cab, as if the three of them were alone. The light had gone.

‘And the man in the other photograph?’

A calm voice: ‘He saved me in the street. The
basij
were beating me, hitting anybody in their way. I was not a part of a demonstration, just there. He saved me. He knew the two old men you saw, and it was his place. From him I learned most of the procedures for avoiding tails – that was what he called them. It was where I went to meet him. With him, I broke my marriage vows and the law of my country. He was arrested a month later. He would have been tortured but he didn’t say my name, or give them the place, that room. He was hanged in the Evin. I think it is not a good death.’

‘One more.’

‘One more, so . . .’ She seemed to shrug and spoke without the passion of pain.

‘The man who listened at the door?’

‘A mistake. I’m not perfect. He followed me there. He could have betrayed me and the old men. I humoured him – I didn’t know how to lose him . . . I didn’t let him make love to me . . . You slept on me, snored and talked.’

‘What did I talk about?’

‘Enemies, in Farsi. “Thousands of friends are too few. One enemy is too many.” And “The wise enemy is better than the ignorant friend.” You said that.’

‘I learned them at university, in my first year. What else?’

‘You said, “The wise enemy lifts you high. The ignorant friend throws you down.” ’

He laughed. ‘Before I snored or after?’

Old words and recitations surged in his memory. He smiled. He remembered how the language had once excited him . . .

‘You snored, you talked, snored again and talked again. Then you did poetry.’

‘What poetry?’

‘From
The Book of Kings
.’

‘The work of Ferdowsi. Was it from ‘‘Chapter Six, The March into Mazinderan’’?’

‘You said it was the speech of Rustem.’

‘We did that in the second year. It’s not important now, but I walked out on my course. When they stole the votes, the poetry seemed irrelevant. And there was the cruelty. I’m not big on causes, but it seemed wrong to want to learn the language of that culture.’

‘They stole the votes and they hanged my friend.’

‘I promise I won’t talk about poetry again.’

‘Are you a fighting man, Zach?’

‘No.’

The engine coughed into life. The lights were on, and Wally had squeezed into the back with them. No explanation or schedule was given. They went down the track and away from the mountain peak with the ruined fortress. She was quiet and so was he. They lurched back onto the slip road.

Mikey spoke: ‘If there’s pursuit, it will have been organised by now. Maximum vigilance. Watch the mirrors and rear-door windows for them following us. Eyes to the front for road blocks.’

Again the weapons were cocked. He shivered, and she was close to him.

He heard Wally ask, ‘Any takers for “Where I would rather be”?’

Chapter 9

Zach heard a bite in Mikey’s voice: it wasn’t the time for ‘Where I would rather be’. They bypassed Qazvin, saw the lights in the distance but stayed on Route 2. At the next major junction they took the right filter. He couldn’t see, even when he knelt up and she edged away to give him space, the road, the smaller towns or the side trails to the villages. He didn’t recognise anything of the drive in with the Jewish guy . . . Difficult to say how many hours had passed since he’d sat in the quiet with the calm Jew beside him. Just a few – but his life had changed. The men he’d worked with had experienced difficulties, setbacks, money problems, girls dumping them and spells in the Job Centre queue, but their lives hadn’t ‘changed’. And his part in this operation was over.

It was safe for Zach to assume that if one of these guys had spoken good Farsi he would never have been hauled off the site. He could have said, actually, that it had been ‘bad luck’ because the evidence pointed now to her having fair English – most kids did in Iran. They studied it through school, and most were computer literate, which was English-based. She understood and absorbed, kept it to herself. She wasn’t just ‘a pretty little thing’. She’d had relationships, and wasn’t the stereotypical corporal’s wife from the bazaar district.