The Corporal's Wife (2013) (37 page)

Father William watched.

Petroc said, ‘I’m trying to be patient, Mehrak. Help me, please. I repeat, did you travel with Brigadier Joyberi to the Parchin military complex?’

‘I have nothing to say.’

Father William saw Petroc Kenning’s fists tighten. The knuckles glowed.

‘I’ll ignore this stubborn response. I’ve told you that we’re in the process of extracting your wife from Iran. If you went to Parchin, did you hear discussion on ‘‘implosion explosives’’?’

‘You lie to me.’

A mirthless smile played on Father William’s face: if the interrogator beat the daylights from a valued defector it would be a first. He intervened. ‘Forgive me, Petroc, if this is out of court, but I feel the need of a break. A day out, or what’s left of it. Change of place and a change of mood. A word, Petroc?’

He was through the door and Petroc Kenning followed him. There was whispering and the voices wouldn’t have reached inside the room where Nobby and Auntie watched over the sullen little man. Later PK would go into Vienna to receive detailed questioning angles and the demands of ‘customers’. Father William explained his idea, and its implications.

He said, ‘It’s the story an aged aunt, a matriarch in the family, told. I think it’ll go down well.’

‘I’d be depending on you – the back-stabbers will be queuing as they always do.’

‘Let me tell it. You have her photo up in the communications area. Pixelled, but still special. His actions have put her at risk, and he knows it. I think he loves her.’

‘Whatever that means.’

‘Imagine the love – and the guilt. You brought the rose back. Try another of Burns’s work.

‘ To see her is to love her,

And love but her, and love for ever;

For Nature made her what she is,

And never made anither!

‘You read a picture, Petroc, and see a face, gaze at a distorted blown-up photograph. “
To see her is to love her, ?And love but her, and love, for ever
.” Powerful stuff.’

‘I’ll buy it.’

‘It’ll shake the wind out of him.’

Father William went back into the big room and said they were going for a drive, time away from the house above the village on a bend in the Danube. ‘Very interesting, it will be, Mehrak. It’ll put perspective on what we’re doing and where our people are.’

His joints cracked. Petroc forced two fists together. They had reached a crucial moment. He thought of many brave words offered up, hostages tossed towards Fortune, and his knuckles whitened.

‘Excuse me, it’s Len, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, I’m Len Gibbons.’

‘I’m Tadeuz.’

‘Tadeuz who?’

‘Tadeuz Fenton. I do the Iran Desk.’

‘Do you?’

‘Most people know that. You did a show out of Iraq and into Iran a few years back.’

‘If you say so.’

He stared into the face of the man he had trapped in the fourth-floor corridor of the Vauxhall Cross building. Nothing handsome, but careworn features. A poor shave that morning had left a fleck of blood on a collar. Pale complexion, and eyes without warmth. The tweed suit was nowhere close to the style today’s men and women would have chosen but he had the aloofness that came from success. There was no swagger in the man, who was over sixty and likely closing on retirement. As Tadeuz understood it, Len Gibbons had been given the bureaucratic role on a mission that had been executed with the active co-operation of Friends and Cousins. It had not seemed necessary, before that moment, to consult him. Why, then, had Tadeuz backed him against a corridor wall, and been close enough to smell the pipe tobacco on his breath? The loneliness of running a show explained much.

‘Please don’t piss me about.’

‘Would I?’

‘It seemed easy when we were setting it up on a gale of optimism, but it’s harder to cope with as each hour passes, and original necessities become fogged.’

‘I’d concur.’

‘If you don’t mind me asking, what kept you upright?’

‘Lack of imagination or sentiment, immersion in detail. You have people inside?’

‘I do, yes.’

The eyes had dulled and the breath came a little faster. He said quietly, ‘You forget the mission and its aim, whether it went well or not. You think of recovering the boys inside. It’s what saps the soul. I made a mistake, a bad one, and am not ashamed to admit it. There were two and one survived. I once saw the survivor across a street. I saw him, my mistake, because allowing that opportunity to arise merely accentuated my sense of personal responsiblity. He looked to have gone to hell and back. As I said, it saps the soul. If you get them out, your people, don’t ever go afterwards to find them.’

‘I was looking for guidance on what I could do, anything to smooth the way.’

‘They’re running. If they weren’t running you wouldn’t have corralled me. Fuck all you can do for them, except have transport on the safe side of the frontier, with a filled hip flask. Do excuse me. I’m meeting someone for lunch.’

The shoulder dropped, and Len Gibbons was off down the corridor.

They had climbed until they were wheezing. The snowline was still far above. They had driven through the village and had found a lay-by that looked like a parking point for expeditions that went all the way, sixteen thousand feet above sea level, to the peak. It had majesty. She had served in the Ankara embassy, in the Vauxhall Cross secure area, but Mandy Ross had hardly been out of the building in working hours, and only a couple of times as far as the Mediterranean beaches, never anywhere remotely close to Mount Ararat.

They were killing time, and it diverted their minds from the messages coming in on the secure mobiles about the dragnets – ‘Always bloody tightening, aren’t they?’ Dunc had said – and security cordons. They expected no communication. To activate a call now would have been tantamount to hoisting a Union flag because the pride of Iranian geeks would be searching for messages on the airwaves that gave locations and . . . The team, the woman and young Zach were running, were out there and over the ridges of hills to the east. Mandy didn’t know him. Dunc had met him on the site and had shared the ride to London with him.

It was not the tourist season, and the snow would come soon enough to coat the foothills. There were no other vehicles in the lay-by except one battered tractor attached to an antique trailer. She hadn’t noticed it when they’d parked and started out on a worn path that climbed to the summit. A peasant was coming down. He wore wellington boots, baggy trousers, a wide belt, the moustache of a Mexican revolutionary, a long raincoat and a beanie hat with the logo of Queens Park Rangers from west London. He was bent under the weight of old timbers tied together with baling twine.

She had Turkish and Kurdish in the dialect of
Dogubeyazit
. ‘From the Ark?’

‘Of course – genuine.’ The laugh split his face.

‘A lucky find for you.’

‘Very lucky because very genuine.’

He went on, still laughing. Dunc Whitcombe had a useful grin: it reeked of scepticism. She said it would be a good conversation piece in the office if she could show off a bit of timber certified as having come from Noah’s Ark. They talked a little as they walked about the myth of the Deluge, the supposed sunken cities of the Black Sea, the earthquake that had unblocked it at the Dardanelles, and
The Epic of Gilgamesh
, written around two thousand years before Christ, which spoke of a great flood. The talked also of an expedition made only thirty years ago, which had discovered ‘a boat-shaped stone formation’. For a little while Dunc Whitcombe and Mandy Ross were the same as any other couple introduced after they’d paid a fee to a dating agency: they worked at making each other smile and finding common ground. She rather liked him. Once she had rather liked her husband. Time ebbed. He broke away from her and ran down the hill. When had Dunc Whitcombe last run? Might have been for a bus, if he was late for a brain-stormer called by Tadeuz Fenton at seven or a little after.

She gazed at the mountain, captivated. They shouldn’t have been there because there had been warnings at the tourist centre in the town that the slopes were used as safe havens by Kurdish fighters and by the gangsters who smuggled contraband into and out of Iran. She hadn’t rung her husband but he wouldn’t have expected her to. They would have had little to talk about, and if the washing-machine had broken down it was of no interest to her – it wouldn’t register against the mountain, the dawn of history, and her sense that she was but a feeble witness.

He came back, panting from the exertion of running down, then stumbling up, and gave her a piece of wood. It was nearly six inches long, two or three inches wide, and a couple of inches deep; it was rotten, and had suffered from exposure and age. ‘I think it came from the rudder,’ he said.

‘Steered by Noah?’ she asked.

‘Not necessarily. Might have been one of the sons.’

‘And the dove sat on it?’

‘Absolutely. The old boy assured me that there was bird poo on it but it washed off yesterday. We were lucky to find him.’

‘Very.’

She could do worse. Mandy Ross slipped her free hand under Dunc Whitcombe’s elbow. He had made her laugh, which she liked, and seemed to enjoy her company, being close. He didn’t pull away.

She could do worse . . . They had killed time, and the light was slipping. Tomorrow . . . She might not do a bit better. Tomorrow was another day.

Zach was told the schedule ahead. He had noted a big bird, an eagle maybe, about the size of the buzzard he knew from home, over the yellowed grass clear of the lake’s shore. He had pointed it out to Mikey, but Mikey had kept his gaze, unwavering, to the right of the bird as it wheeled, hunted. Zach reckoned he had good eyesight but Mikey’s was superior. Unless he had been shown, Zach wouldn’t have seen the helicopter. It flew high, a speck in the skies. He had asked what to do if it veered towards them, and had been told to get out, stand in clear view and wave. It hadn’t turned towards them.

The schedule was simple.

They would have skirted Tabriz, using the back roads, by dark. Away from the lake they were likely to find a river and trees. They would get into cover and sleep. They would make an early departure from the lie-up, so they had time to backtrack if they approached road blocks, but the goal was to get into Khvoy, the rendezvous town, an hour before the pick-up. There was enough slack in the schedule to cope with handicaps, delays and detours.

He would go forward alone, scout and make the contact, then bring the transport to wherever they had stopped. They’d be on the road and heading for the border by three in the afternoon. Simple. Zach imagined that the Israeli planning would be of high quality, likewise the guys they employed. Mikey had told him the make of the vehicle, a Nissan Pathfinder, and the location of the square in Khvoy.

Simple enough.

The guys talked among themselves – alert but calm – and ignored Foxtrot. In running away from them she had broken their trust. He saw her in the rear-view mirror, sitting beside Ralph at the extremity of the bench seat. She was the reason they were there, the cause of the danger around them, which she shared with them. Her head was down and most of the time her eyes were fastened on her knees. Her future? Too early to say. He drove along a rough road, passing men who drove tractors, men who herded goats, and small homes from which smoke belched and behind which washing hung. He had seen nothing threatening since the helicopter.

If the pieces of the jigsaw were in place, it was a good schedule.

‘You have it all worked out?’ Auntie had asked.

‘Yes, and it’ll shaft the bastard,’ Father William had answered.

Nobby drove and had the front to himself. He’d heard the response. A brief explanation had been offered and Father William had seemed set in his mind. The others hadn’t argued, and Nobby supposed PK had sanctioned it. Sidney had overheard the name of the destination but hadn’t registered the significance; he had prattled on about the historic castles they’d see on the way.

The route was south from St Polten, across the Danube, then through valleys flanked by mountains already snow-capped. They crossed picture postcard scenery, and the last of the cattle were still grazing but most were in the barns for winter.

Nobby revelled in the chance to drive along a near-open road. He didn’t know when Father William would start to do the business, or how it would be done, and had no clear idea of exactly what had happened in Judenburg, their destination. He might, if there was time, get a decent view of the place on his phone and send it to the girl in Kazakhstan. It might or might not prompt a reply. After Bruck an der Mur, a railway junction below steep hills, they’d joined the S36, and were nearing the end of the journey, 150 kilometres almost, and a ninety-minute run. He anticipated the event eagerly: watching over defectors was usually little more exciting than seeing the proverbial paint drying.

Father William was behind him with the Iranian, and Auntie was in the back row. He didn’t know how it was to be handled but sensed that a tipping point had been reached – in fact, two of them. There was one point at which the mission was teetering, like a guy walking with a pole on a high wire: the people doing the run from Tehran with the woman. The increasingly fractious PK had handed over bulletins on their progress and Nobby understood the pressure on the boss; he hoped the woman deserved it. The second tipping point was the open disbelief the little bastard harboured for the effort that was being made on his behalf. His clamming up and the frequent call-backs from London had ratcheted the tensions in the safe house. Only so many bloody hours that any of them could stay sane, peering out at the vineyards and watching the gulls circle the church tower.