The Corporal's Wife (2013) (48 page)

Dunc said they were hoping the night clouds would lift and the moon would be full – when last seen it was a sickle – so they’d see Ararat in its glory. He was laughed at. Mandy said they’d needed to stock up in case heavy snow blocked them into the house. He said there was a security alert across the border, inside Iran, and wished them well. She drove away. Dunc thought, a nightmare, of men and women brought across the frontier, at heavy cost, enduring the terror, lying in ditches while patrols crossed close, being taken by the Turkish military and handed to the Iranian guards. Worse than a nightmare – a vision of hell. They left the town, the chanting, the sirens and the explosions. The snow had settled, but the road was slush-covered and lorries were on it. They turned off where they had been told to, and bumped along. She hadn’t thanked him for treating her eyes, but when he had finished, she had touched his arm lightly. They came round a bend and saw parked vehicles beside a low stone shelter, such as a shepherd might use in summer. A man came towards them, a chain of beads flicking in his hands. He spoke.

Mandy translated. The man finished, shrugged, then left them.

She said, ‘They aren’t coming. They were late at the pick-up point. The driver waited, then had to leave. There’s big military activity across there. I don’t think there’s a fall-back. Another pick-up in twenty-four hours? No.’

The motion of the camper was violent. He broke the quiet: ‘What’s the dream?’

The shivering had stopped, and the rug had warmed him.

A question answered with a question: ‘Must there be one?’

‘I think so. If you break from a culture, from family, from what you know, then, yes, there must be a dream.’

Another question, faintly asked. He had to crane to hear. ‘Is it conceit to dream?’

‘What do you want me to say?’

‘Is it selfish to dream, to say how past life was intolerable? Is that arrogant?’

He whispered, ‘No. I had everything. I was fed, housed, had work and a mind of sorts. I wanted to be challenged. That was my dream. I could have done it at home, but didn’t know how to find something that would stretch me. My dream was to find myself. I suppose I have, at a cost.’

‘What am I allowed to dream of?’

‘Anything.’

‘There was a boy and he loved me. They hanged him. He dreamed of a free country, elections, speech, opportunities. He dreamed of loving me. While he waited for them to hang him, I think he would have thought it was good to dream.’

‘I dream of living with someone worthwhile and of finding that person.’

‘There was an army captain who dreamed of fast bikes and fast cars. He dreamed of the excitement of fighting and combat. He dreamed of me.’

There was quiet in the front, except for Ralph’s grunts of frustration when he failed to swerve round a deeper hole or wider rut. The rain had stopped and the wipers now shifted the mix of sleet and snow. They climbed, and it was cold in the wagon. Mikey didn’t call on her because there were no turnings off the route to confuse him, and no signs. They were blind but they had to hope.

She said, ‘I dream of swimming in the sea, feeling water on my skin, sunshine touching my arms and face. I dream of being my own person. To dream is free.’

‘They can’t stop you.’

‘I dream of living, not of death.’

The vehicle coughed.

A moment later the wheels locked and skidded. Zach leaned forward and tapped Mikey’s shoulder. The small torch came on and a finger jabbed at the map. They were north of the town of Maku and must have crossed the main road from Tabriz, Marand and Khvoy to the border, but he hadn’t registered it.

There was another splutter from the engine. Zach thought a lesser driver than Ralph would have lost it and they’d have slipped into a ditch. The guys had gone silent, concentrating, and he had been prattling about a dream. He wondered whether to say, ‘Sorry, guys, that was so pompous.’ He said nothing. He had believed in all of the dreams, and in hers, and owed no one an apology.

The headlights showed only the snowstorm as it gathered strength.

It was bald and bare, but bad messages always were. Tadeuz Fenton gazed at the screen as if added scrutiny might scramble the original text and replace it with something more palatable.

‘TF. They missed the pick-up – have a good evening. SR.’

It would be a grand dinner. He was halfway up the steps into the main entrance of the Royal College of Surgeons, black tie – sadly dry – hosted by Foreign and Commonwealth for an emir up from the Gulf. Nothing altered on his screen.

A line of hosts were at the top of the steps, and the guests for whom the thrash had been arranged were arriving in a Roller behind him. He could either go up the steps, hand in his visitor’s card, be filtered to the coat kiosk, then the museum to wander around cases of preserved anatomical samples, or he could back away and head for the open, dark spaces of Lincoln’s Inn Fields to circle the floodlit netball courts.

He did that, hugged shadows, and called Sara Rogers back. ‘There’s no mistake?’

‘It’s the good old “two sources”, Tad. The Jerusalem Friends had it about three minutes before Dunc. He and Mandy are up some bloody mountain at the drop-off point. It was early, but they were there, and the locals had already learned it from the driver. They didn’t show at the pick-up. Not good.’

‘What can I usefully do?’ He relied on Sara Rogers. She was the best thing to have come into his professional orbit. She was, in all senses, his gate-keeper.

‘Try a couple of glasses of
citron pressé
. Offer a couple of Hail Marys and, between chatting up your neighbour, consider some strategies.’

He told her when he would be back at Vauxhall Cross and did two circuits of the courts at the extreme edge of the light pools. Tadeuz Fenton’s reputation was as a ‘safe pair of hands’, but its maintenance, as he recognised, depended on an absence of controversy, embarrassment, cock-up and fuck-up. Poor bastards – and that pretty girl. It happened often enough. So-called ‘incidents’ on the way out of Iran were frequent. It was not an easy place. Truth was, and he didn’t need Sara Rogers to do him a memo, it was bloody near impossible to get out without reliable guides. The necessary people had been arranged, but they had missed the pick-up.

He pondered. Total denial.

Their loathsome TV stations would be doing full coverage of the men; they’d be in jumpsuits and chains as they parroted their confessions. There would be total denial and covert briefings to chosen sources, murmuring about men from a fourth-rate private contractor, the Israelis’ desperation for information. Stories of a brigadier’s driver, and a brothel in Dubai, would be dismissed as an Iranian fantasy: Her Majesty’s Government ‘simply is not engaged in such fanciful games’. That would be about the best he could do – and was probably adequate. Back in the office he would call Petroc, urge him to put a rod across the wretch’s back and extract what they could – fast.

He retraced his steps. After dinner, he would go back to his office – he was a lucky man. He had the best war in the building, and it was a privilege to be a part of it. Events like tonight’s – and casualties – were what made the intelligence-gathering combat so exceptional. He skipped up the steps into the college and headed for the museum. He felt good.

He and Mehrak had climbed. Near to where the outer gate would have been, they’d had to come off the track as a party of schoolchildren, mostly American and likely from the international school in Vienna, came rampaging down. That was when he had looked behind him and seen Auntie and Nobby settled on a bench at the side of the track, swilling water. At that point the trees pressed close to them, giving shade, and it was a warm evening, exceptional for late October. In his opinion, a man allowing himself to be called ‘Auntie’, was pathetic – his main source of conversation was a dog left behind in Northern Ireland with his sister. No love there. In Northern Ireland, Sidney had abandoned bits of his sanity in a Lisnaskea hotel when a bomb had ticked, and a client had been left behind after general evacuation, with a bit of Sidney’s muscle, and bone splinters from a high-velocity round in his leg. He reckoned he did a better job than Auntie. The kids passed, raucous. He thought Nobby pleasant enough, all right to meet on a train, but without the ability to take the initiative with the defector or the world of discounts, favours and debts-called-in – which Sidney lived off. When they loaded up the cars to quit the safe house, with Mehrak and Mehrak’s wife, he might just tell the three of them what they were worth – fuck all of nothing – for all their superiority. Anyway . . . They walked on up.

He talked of the techniques of the craftsmen and the defensive needs of the day. Why the walls at the gatehouse had been state-of-the-art for that century, and the arrow slits in the walls, used by cross-bow mercenaries before the arrival of gunpowder and cannon. They were approaching the keep, ruined but recognisable, and Sidney could show off the remnant of the tower where the English king had been held. They were alone and other visitors had gone.

He said, ‘A tragedy that the castle was destroyed, such a wealth of history here. If it had survived it would be a wonder of the world. It was 1645 when the Swedes came. Their commander was Field Marshal Lennart Torstenson. Took the place from the successors to the Kuenringer family, killed them, sacked it and blew it up. It’s never been reconstructed. Then, of course, they came on towards Spitz, our village, and attacked by the Red Gate. He was the most scientifically minded artillery officer of his day, and these wonderful walls were simply toppled over. He would have gone all the way to Vienna but he suffered terrible gout and had to go home. You remember, Mehrak, I told you about the Red of the Gate when the Swedes came?’

He wasn’t answered.

‘Oh, and the English paid up. Well, not all of it. They said after a third had been handed over, fifty thousand marks’ worth of silver coinage, that the rest was on the way. The locals believed them and let the king go back to England – which would have been flat on its back after raising that sort of wealth. They never did get paid the rest. You could say that today the folk here are still owed a hundred thousand marks by my lot. Their fault for believing what they were told. Fabulous, isn’t it?’

Still no answer.

He turned. He gazed around him.

Three different areas had become viewing platforms. He had to check them all. There was an angle that looked towards Spitz, the great abbey at Melk and the bend in the river; another had the view of Dürnstein, the church by the water and the great nineteenth-century villa; a third looked towards the next line of hills, the dense trees and their golden foliage. He peered up the river – no sign.

He strode quickly into the ruined room – for entertaining or torture – with view of the village, the villa and the river’s bend. It was deserted. He licked his lower lip. His arthritis twinged in his hip, but the old wound in his thigh hurt move.

There was the third area. It had a room where the outer wall had collapsed and gaped out on the trees that grew up from the crag on which the foundations were set. Nothing.

He went down the main steps from the keep to a wide area where the kids had left rubbish. It was abandoned. He was panting. It was reasonable that Mehrak might have wandered a few feet, even yards, from him while he was rabbiting on about the history. It was not reasonable that he would have gone past where Sidney now stood. His world caved in.

The defector had been there, was not now.

Gone for a pee?

At the start he kept his voice down. ‘Mehrak? – Where are you?’

He listened. He heard nothing but a radio played far below in Dürnstein, a train going down the track alongside the river, and traffic murmuring on the main road.

‘Mehrak! Over here, Mehrak!’

His voice echoed off the stones but silence lapped him. The enormity grew, and his understanding.

He yelled, ‘Mehrak! Where the fuck are you?’

The last group of the day was approaching steadily, like infantry up the track. They were elderly and many of the half-dozen men and women wore shorts. They all had walking boots, poles and rucksacks on their backs. They advanced, had heard his shout and some understood.

‘Bloody hell, Mehrak! Don’t piss me about! What the fuck have you done? Mehrak, get your arse back to me – now.’

The anger bounced back at him. What had frightened Sidney was that so many paths led off the main track. Two dropped in a scrambled descent to the village, steeper than the slog up which he had come, and many more wound off into the trees where the foliage was dense.

They had gaunt faces, wide hips and ugly knees. They looked at him as if he were demented.

A last time. ‘Fuck you, you bastard. Come back.’

Face flushed, heart pounding, he went down through the walkers, who parted, did a Red Sea job, staring at him in astonishment – that a man should come to such an interesting relic and bawl as if a wasp had stung his arse. He careered down the slope.

They were round the bend. How many? There had to be three. His eyes were blurred. Only two. They looked up at him – they must have seen his panic, and heard it. Auntie was standing, Nobby beside him: the question was frozen on their lips. They didn’t have to ask.