The Corporal's Wife (2013) (46 page)

What loyalty did he feel now towards the revolution? None. In the hall, where no one could see them, he kissed her and clung to his son, then prised them off him. He told them to smile and laugh on the doorstep. She checked her bag for the passports and airline tickets. She would explain to the child either on the aircraft or when it had landed. He had not known how to.

‘Have a good game. Play well. Make sure you win. God go with you.’

The dusk was falling and it was a foul night. With luck, the car at the end of the road would have steamed windows and a fug of cigarette smoke, which would give them a poor view of his wife taking the boy to play tennis. He waved, stood under the light in front of the door so that he couldn’t be missed, then went back inside. They were booked on the direct flight, mid-evening, from Imam Khomeini International to Istanbul. They waved back. His wife drove past the watchers to the end of their road and was gone. He went back inside the house, moving from room to room, noting everything that was familiar – their bedroom, her wardrobes, the one with his uniforms, the boy’s room, everything that was precious to them. It was because she was intelligent that she hadn’t questioned him, had known they lived on shifting sands. He saw everything, then pulled down the blinds. He started to fill a rucksack, took a weapon from the back of the safe and food from the refrigerator. He played music loudly in the kitchen, and switched the TV on too. He was destroyed – not only by the corporal, but by the corporal’s wife.

‘She’ll be over tonight, PK, won’t she?’

‘That’s what I’m hoping, Sidney.’

‘I think he’s making an effort now.’

‘Seems to be.’

‘Not that anyone shares my opinion.’

‘We all have the same aim, Sidney – to suck the little beggar dry.’

‘You’re talking like your uncle would have – they were some scrapes we had. Did I tell you about the party at the Russian embassy when Mr Hector supposedly went off for a leak and managed to get into the naval attaché’s office? He had his Minox in his pocket, but was caught and thrown out. All he had was a snap of their annual-leave chart. God, we laughed, and there was the time—’

‘Thank you, Sidney.’

‘I always say, and so did Mr Hector, that if you can’t laugh . . ’

He betrayed himself: ‘Sidney, I’m not that bothered by what you and my uncle achieved here. What’s going on there exercises me. It’s not easy, and it’s unpredictable. It’ll be a waiting game here, so I’m happy for you, him and the boys to be clambering over the rocks. Don’t hurry back.’

Sidney said it would be light for another hour, and the weather had eased. Quite pleasant out there. By now they would have done the pick-up in Khvoy – wherever that was. They had, of course, all the communications gear they needed for a link, but each time the machines were switched on they left footprints, as clear as those on a wet beach, and signatures. They always said in Ceauçescu Towers, that bad news beat good news by a mile. He imagined that, up there on the fourth floor, Tadeuz Fenton was by now in a well-practised mode of damage limitation and the buck would have been passed. Where would it end up? He flexed his hands, cracked the joints of his fingers. It would be in his palms, if bad news beat good to the tape. And the corporal wanted to go and look at a castle. So be it.

He went up the stairs. Down the corridor, the door of Mehrak’s room was closed and he heard low music playing inside. He had been in the room set aside as the ‘command post’ for most of the afternoon: he had spoken four times to Tadeuz and Sara Rogers, and had had the intercepts force-fed to him. Petroc Kenning was frustrated: he couldn’t picture Khvoy, or visualise where the pick-up would have been done. He couldn’t imagine the hills, mountains, roads over which the first part of the flight would be made . . . but the silence from there was golden.

Only when he was clear of the outskirts of Khvoy did the driver rummage in a pocket for his mobile phone. He called a nephew who lived in Tabriz.

The Azerbaijani driver who dealt with people was surprised that an arrangement made under the umbrella of the Jews had not worked out. His nephew would call a business colleague who operated from Shahpur.

The Israelis were always reliable and organised so he did much business with them. They paid poorly but were regular and provided him with a good income overall, most of which could be paid into the Bank Respublika on Baku’s Jafar Jabbali Street. They demanded complete discretion and total punctuality to set schedules. He delivered.

His nephew’s colleague would call a travel agent across the border in Van, and the message would have travelled nearly to its destination.

He couldn’t have waited any longer. He owed it to himself – his ultimate health and his neck – to be gone, and to the two clients who were already inside the people-carrier. One was a student activist, plainly frightened – he never stopped smoking; the other was a middle-aged man of the Baha’ faith. The Azerbaijani didn’t involve himself in politics or religion, and didn’t understand why those of the Baha’ faith were persecuted. His concern was money-making. Activists and heretics were a good source, but the Jews were the best. There should have been five more passengers to fill the people-carrier, but he could have waited no longer – there were police and military patrols in Khvoy.

The travel agent in Van would call the trader in
Dogubeyazit
to tell him how many mules were needed that night, and why the number was reduced. There were many traders in the Kurdish town, but this was cheapest: he used mules, which were uncomfortable, slow and stubborn, not horses. He gave his message: ‘They did not come, I could not wait longer, they were not here. There should be no blame for me.’

It was done. He drove to the north-west on a side road towards Maku. Ahead there would be a four-wheel-drive Daihatsu, then a scramble across the open hillside in the snow. There would be times when patrols came close and the fugitives would lie in terror in the darkness, barely daring to breathe. Then there would be the mules to ride, and last there would be the Turkish Army, which had units out each night, hunting smugglers. Its men could not be bought and would hand back to the Iranian authorities anyone they caught in flight. One day, he dreamed, he would return to Baku and live without the stresses of working the border. He drove on.

What would they do, those he had left behind, if they were not already in custody, not already dead? He would have said, based on many years’ experience, that it was impossible to go into the hills and the mountains and cross the frontier without guides.

They did not come
. . .

He saw her. Zach was past the arcade, then around the corner and walking fast towards the loading bays.

She gazed at him. He knew her from the trainers that protruded beneath the hem of the
chador
. They would have belonged to the girl from New Zealand and were white with three red stripes on the sides and the Adidas mark. He knew her, she knew him, seemed to take half a pace forward, then backed away.

Just before she tracked behind the building, she looked beyond him. Zach turned. A crunch under his feet. He had stood on a syringe. There was another at his feet and more against a wall. He saw used condoms abandoned among rubbish. Everywhere else had been so tidy and clean, but now he was in a junkies’ corner. Maybe it was a place where boys brought girls or other boys. There was a door, closed, and three heads peered at him. A policeman appeared. She had seen the man follow him. He was young and wore a well-laundered uniform, what Zach could see of it under the wet-weather anorak. He was called.

He would have appeared to a policeman as a dealer who lived rough, was likely an addict himself, and sold to kids who could pay for what went into a syringe. The policeman followed him, had not yet reached for his pistol.

Zach didn’t know whether to go forward or back. He could see now into the bay where the wagon had been and it was empty. There was a scurry of movement at the edge of his eyeline, and three boys, teenagers, running. The policeman didn’t bother to chase or try to block. Bigger fish: a dealer, an adult addict.

This was where it ended.

The policeman called Zach forward. He was a good-sized man and looked fit. Zach doubted he would have trekked across boggy, sodden ground to a petrol station, then lugged fuel in a can back the way he’d come. The policeman told him to come forward and put his hands on top of his head. He had his back to her.

The policeman was tasked to patrol, with his partner, that part of Khvoy, with particular attention to the loading bays where druggies came. Mikey and the other guys had found themselves too close to attention and driven away, but had sent her back to lead the pick-up car to the camper.

He was called again. His hands were on top of his head now, clenched. He had no weapon and could not outrun the policeman. He didn’t know where she was, assumed she had edged back, unnoticed, would get to a corner, hitch up the hem of the
chador
and run. What would happen? The policeman called louder, sharper, for him to advance. He would be patted down, then told to produce his ID. He wouldn’t be able to. He had no ID, and his cover story would flake in less than an hour.

The policeman’s impatience was growing – annoyance in his voice, the first realisation that all was not straightforward. He would do the noble thing. What she needed most, and the guys, was time. He would buy time for them. Years ago he hadn’t crossed a road to help a poor bastard against his muggers. He hadn’t even gone to a police station to make a statement. But he had changed. The guys needed time. He couldn’t see her.

The policeman’s impatience grew, and his suspicion.

He should produce his ID. Play helpless and act the idiot. A fist was on the truncheon, and the other fingers flicked to the radio on his upper chest. Where was his ID? He did an idiot smile. The truncheon was up and smacked his shoulder. It hurt – and the weapon was raised again. Zach was on his knees. He could think only of time and the price he paid for it.

She came from the edge of his vision.

The policeman seemed unaware of her approach, fast, catlike in the stolen trainers.

She had the pistol, huge in a small hand. The policeman was about to hit him again, the truncheon raised, demanding the ID.

She brought the barrel of the pistol down hard on the bridge of the policeman’s nose. He squealed, an animal sound, shrill. His truncheon fell and his hands went to his eyes. She was between him and Zach, reached forward, with the pistol in her fist, and toppled him. He had crumpled, now moaned, and was sprawled on the ground, his thighs apart. She kicked. Zach winced – and she did it again. Then she grabbed Zach, dragged him upright.

They ran together.

He gasped, ‘I thought you were going to kill him.’

‘I couldn’t.’

They crossed a small park and then were by a river, heading towards a tower block of apartments.

‘Because to kill him I would have had to shoot him.’ There was no emotion in her voice. ‘There’s no silencer on the gun. If I had killed him, the shot would have been heard.’

They ran, her leading, him trailing. The dusk was closing and the rain fell on them.

Chapter 16

An inquest of sorts. What else?

From Mikey: ‘Where is it?’ An answer about the delays with the fuel, the hike across the fields, the traffic coming into Khvoy. Their faces fell.

From Wally: ‘How much did you miss them by? Did you see them?’ Zach said he had seen a people-carrier, right colour, right place, a driver in it, the engine going and two other passengers. He had started across the street but it had pulled away and he’d lost it.

From Ralph: ‘Didn’t you leg it after him? Didn’t you get up alongside?’ He tried to explain that he had run himself into the ground, lost it and latched onto the wrong one.

The brutal response: ‘God, what a wanker . . .’

Zach said, ‘It gets worse.’

A ribald and overplayed snort from Wally. Zach said he had been bounced by a policeman and Farideh had intervened. They had a few minutes’ grace, no longer.

Mikey told Ralph to drive.

They were in the van, and the engine kicked into life. Mikey was crouched in his seat, peering at the maps. He called back to Farideh that he wanted her to read signs that would take them towards Maku, or north of that town, by back roads. Zach felt like a schoolkid. Should he have shouted back at them? He reckoned fear fuelled the abuse.

She intervened, soft voice: ‘I expect he did what he could, what was possible.’

They went fast. As Zach saw it, if they hit a road block they would shoot their way through it. They were away from the centre of Khvoy in straggling suburbs where the houses were built of breeze blocks and mud bricks, with vegetable patches and tethered goats grazing on the autumn grass. Black-tented women walked along the roads with heavy plastic bags and the children braved the rain for games, football and chasing. They waved at the camper van and were splattered with water from the puddles. She made the calls at junctions. The anger was on a back-burner now. Sometimes they were off the tarmac road, on chippings or tracks with potholes, and Zach realised that Ralph drove supremely well. The light failed.

The needle on the dial showed the tank at low.