The Corporal's Wife (2013) (45 page)

His driver, he said, expected to take longer on the journey and would not be at the transfer point on the frontier that evening. He would spend a night edging close, then lie up at a remote farmstead for the daylight hours and move forward again at dusk. The packages would be delayed by some twenty-four hours.

It was not a small matter. He knew that his associate, a man with a reputation to uphold, would have to pass messages along a tenuous chain that ran the breadth of Turkey, then to the haulage contractors crossing to mainland Europe, who would receive and conceal the two-kilo packages. The delay would have to be factored into a timetable drawn up by men living between Rotterdam in the Netherlands and the Kurdish heartland of Turkey, some 4,600 kilometres. The continuity of supply was uppermost in the Azerbaijani’s mind.

That day an additional matter nagged. He had never been close to his cousin but they met every few days to discuss the tactics of working the border and exchange information on new officials who had moved into those sectors. They talked about the major who now had charge of
Dogubeyazit
but he was not their prime concern: they were focused on the Iranian side of the border. There was chaos. Some said a full battalion of Revolutionary Guard Corps troops was in the town and working through the villages to the east, west, north and south of Khvoy. They had come from as far away as Tabriz, and no one knew their officers or senior NCOs. Bribes could not be paid. Difficulties faced him and his cousin. They had talked, and disagreed. He would delay by twenty-four hours with the packages; his cousin would go for the border that night. The Azerbaijani had wished his cousin well, and assumed the money was good. What else mattered? Money ruled on the border. It always had.

He could picture the make of the vehicle and its colour. He was late for the rendezvous. In his mind’s eye he saw the Jew and heard the man’s emphasis on punctuality. The vehicle would not wait for them. Zach ran.

He was past the avenue where the bare trees dripped rain, had crossed another main road and was in the small park. Men and women hurried past him, desperate to be out of the weather, but some kids were still playing football and splashing in puddles. Ahead of him was the square, then the pedestrian area and the tomb of Shams Tabrizi.

He thought he saw it.

The vehicle would be blue. How many shades of blue were there? Bright blue, dark or light? There was a people-carrier on the far side of the square and traffic streamed past it. He tried to stretch his stride. A glance at his watch, as the rain trickled off his forehead into his eyes. His view of the hands was blurred. He thought he was twelve minutes late, and still had half of the park to cross, a road, then the centre of the square where there was a bust on a plinth, more traffic and a blue people-carrier on the far side.

He hobbled forward, lurching. He was stared at. He kept on, didn’t make eye contact. He was late, and the Israeli had said that the transport wouldn’t wait. It had.

He ran through the rain.

Exhaust fumes came from the back of the vehicle. The driver was impatient to be gone. More military trucks were entangled in the traffic passing the people-carrier. There were police in the square, two pairs of them, and they carried automatic weapons. Zach didn’t think it was safe to run, to make an exhibition of himself: few people, an old law of life, had good reason to run.

There was a driver alone in the front, two passengers behind him. Zach saw that clearly. Then a lorry came with a long load. One of the pairs of police was near but they talked and smoked, didn’t seem interested in him. The military trucks, open to the elements at the back, cruised by. The lorry with the long load went slowly. Only the pavement and two lanes remained, and then he would reach the vehicle. Hope surged.

He was panting, about to step off the pavement, when he heard the scream of a horn. A whistle blew. A stream of cars came past him and his foot wavered on the kerb, inching towards the gutter. The whistle came again. Zach looked for the source, had to turn, and one of the policemen, in the nearest pair, had the whistle to his mouth. Their eyes met. The policeman gestured to him – he should step back, the traffic had right of way on the road. He did so meekly and waited on the pavement. The lorry with the long load had moved on in the clogged mass of cars, vans and pick-ups, and was gone.

The gap yawned. The space was empty. Another car, a black Paykan with a dented bumper, jockeyed with a delivery van. Horns were hit. More whistles from the police, and whether Zach crossed the traffic, took his life or did not, was off the policemen’s agenda. He ran forward.

His legs were weak, and he needed to dance round the backs of vehicles and skip past the front bumpers. He felt one car in the outer lane touch his knee. He tried to follow the people-carrier. It and the lorry with the long load went faster. The road, going away from the pedestrian area in front of the tomb, was straight and the lights ahead were green. The gap opened.

Zach tried to suck air into his lungs. He remembered, long ago, a teacher for year ten had demanded cross-country running from the kids. They’d all start together, then the fit ones would pull away. Zach Becket was always in the second group. He would see the gap between the front of the field and the also-rans widening but could never close it.

He couldn’t shout – he wouldn’t have been heard and, in any case, he hadn’t the breath. Far down the road, past many bare trees, there was another set of lights. As best he could, Zach sprinted. He saw the back of the people-carrier. A glimpse of hope: the traffic had spurted and now slowed. Brakelights flashed at the rear of the people-carrier.

Two jeeps, close together, went in the other direction on the far side of the road. Zach lost his balance and thought he was going to fall: he had trodden on wet leaves and skidded. He didn’t go down.

He kept running. There were moments when he thought he was closing on the people-carrier, when he believed he would reel in the gap. Far up the street, the lights were his last chance.

Men gazed at him and stood aside, women gave him room, kids backed away from him.

A feeder road came into the main route. He hadn’t seen it so he was in full stride and halfway over it, vehicles going both sides of him, horns blaring, and he saw where he was. He heard another whistle, and a policeman yelled at him, but he kept running. He could barely see. Nothing ahead was clear.

The fumes from the exhaust of the people-carrier merged with those of two lorries in a different lane and with what other cars pumped out. The gap didn’t lessen.

When to give up? He could no longer see the people-carrier.

Zach didn’t do surrender. He hadn’t at home in family arguments, or the School, or on the building sites when, as the son of the boss, he was ripe for being smacked down. He kept running – which was pointless because he had lost sight of the blue people-carrier, and he no longer knew how great the gap was. The lights were in front of him. If he had given up, he would have had to turn, retrace his route, head for the pedestrian area in front of the tomb and the shopping arcade, where there would be the smell of kebabs and music belting from the barber’s. He would have to go round the back and do the honesty bit with the guys and her. The guys would swear, and he thought she would challenge him. Not verbally, but with her eyes. She would tell him with them that he was inadequate.

Zach ran on. He went slower. Then he realised he had started to keep level with the vehicles and was passing them. A queue had built.

The traffic lights were in front of him. He reeled forward on the pavement, was either a drunk or at the end of a long-distance race. He staggered towards the bright traffic lights that were slung on a cable across the road, showing red.

Zach saw the blue. Saw the shape. Could have said a prayer.

He willed the lights not to change. He lurched the last steps and came closer to the back of the blue people-carrier. He passed two cars, and the strength left his legs. Tears welled. He banged on the front passenger window, then snatched at the door handle. The lights were changing. The door opened. He heard screams.

A woman cowered away from him. It was the children behind her who were screaming. The man who drove, bearded, turbaned, aged, thrust out a gnarled hand, caught the handle on the inside of the door and heaved it shut. Zach’s hand was caught in it outside. His arm was wrenched, the pain came and he let go. The people-carrier pulled away.

He stood on the pavement. Now his view was clear.

It was black, barely similar, except in outline, to the one he had seen parked and waiting before the lorry had obscured it. He couldn’t have said how long he’d been chasing the wrong vehicle.

He started on the journey back and went slowly. He had to force himself forward at each step, the rain in his eyes and the wind beating into his face.

They had no vehicle to drive them to the route out, and no guide to lead them.

There was a clear answer, a plausible one, to the business of the horses and their work.

The boy, Egid, had come for them two hours before and now led them back. They had found the sight emotional because of the extraordinary backdrop against which it was played. Mandy had asked Dunc how she could go back to her suburban home now. He had said he had no idea.

Then he said, ‘They had the call. The cargo’s not coming.’

She said, ‘But plenty already through and plenty in the pipeline, so a hitch over a delivery won’t break the bank.’

‘Had the call and turned round.’

‘Not an option we’re looking at.’

She imagined that her team, on the far side, would be pressing on. Straightforward for a cache of class-A narcotics to be delayed, but not for people to be held back. Their phones had flickered often enough with the updates that spoke of the net that was tightening.

‘I want to go.’

The murk of early evening would soon close in. She supposed the tension of the business in hand had bitten into her. Her stomach was knotted and she felt sick. She looked at her watch every three or four minutes. She was concerned that the toad-like major, who spoke such fluent English, might show.

‘I’m not disagreeing, Mandy.’

‘This place is like a bloody gaol. They should be on their way.’

‘Should be.’

‘Give me five minutes. I’d prefer to be out there – snow, sleet, whatever – waiting in the right place rather than pacing around here. Five minutes.’

She left him. He was looking out across the patio beyond the rough ground. The horses and the boy would have been dwarfed by Ararat. Mandy Ross, experienced counter-intelligence officer, supreme analyst of information coming into Vauxhall Cross, had never felt so feeble. They would go up the road and follow it to a junction, then turn onto a track, as they had been told, and wait. She would be there for as long as it took.

‘No bag, no suitcase of your own,’ Reza Joyberi had told his wife.

Another bus ride home, and more veterans of the war with Iraq wanting to stand and give their seats to him in recognition of his rank. His mind was in turmoil and he’d waved them away.

‘The child’s sports bags are what you take, the Nike ones I brought from Beirut. Fill one for yourself.’

She had been surprised to see him home again at that hour. She was trained as a doctor but no longer practised because her mother had died young and she had remained at home to look after her child. She had no financial need to work, and her husband was more of a visitor than a resident. A car stood at the bottom of the road, four men in it. He had seen a mobile lifted as he had passed it.

‘Fill one bag for him. Nothing else. He should wear tennis clothes, and have his racquets.’

He had been to the safe and taken out cash in bank notes: several million rials, and several thousand American dollars. His wife, of course, had jewellery. What else was there to buy at Damascus International, and at Beirut’s airport? The pieces of real value, rings and necklaces, earrings and brooches, were wrapped in a handkerchief at the bottom of her handbag. She would wear modest
hijab
. Also in her handbag there were two passports, hers and the boy’s, with altered names. She didn’t question him, never had and wouldn’t start now. She was Noor, meaning ‘Light’, and their marriage was based on respect for each other. Her father was retired, in good health, and had commanded a unit of the
basij
. He could not, with any honesty, tell her she would see her parents again, or return to Tehran.

‘When we go out of the door we will all be laughing – we don’t have a care in the world – and we’re a family. You don’t look back because you have no reason to. This is hard but necessary. When you get there, you’ll text me. Ring no one else till I’m with you, perhaps in two days or a week. Ring
nobody
and don’t use the mobile after the text. Lose it.’

She was an intelligent woman: she would understand that the security of the Iranian élite was as precarious as it had been for the Shah’s people, and for those who had led the revolution in the early days after the return of the Imam. She had not asked why, and had not asked what had destroyed them. She had not asked him when the world she knew would collapse. She would have noted that his driver, a man of limited importance, was no longer outside the door at dawn or late in the evening. She didn’t need to ask questions and would understand that they faced personal catastrophe, the likelihood of arrest and conviction, the possibility of execution. It would hurt her to leave her parents. Many had, many more would have to.