The Corporal's Wife (2013) (52 page)

He had used the vacuum cleaner, and now Auntie had taken it upstairs. Every washing-up bowl and plastic bucket was in use and Sidney’s wife kept the kettle on so that near boiling water was constantly available. Each surface was cleaned, the fingerprints erased, DNA traces eradicated. Any sign that they had been there was conscientiously removed. Cheerful music spilled from the kitchen, a late-night station that seemed appropriate. Later he’d get Rollo Hawkins out of bed, regardless of the hour and whether the bloody bear had been found. The music dwarfed the drone of the vacuum-cleaner but couldn’t lift the gloom. Trust had failed.

Because the trust hadn’t bound them, they were cleaning the safe house. He couldn’t have said whether there had been much more to be extracted from the corporal or whether they had squeezed him dry. He had been looking forward to meeting the wife, gazing into those captivating eyes and evaluating whether she was worth the sweat of the extraction. He had heard that Tadeuz Fenton, breaking radio silence, had told the boys behind the lines not to entertain delay by bringing her. He had swallowed and continued cleaning. Upset? Hardly. Troubled? Not really. If he dusted, dried and wiped, his mind was diverted from the situation of the men and the linguist – it didn’t bear close examination.

The table where he had sat with Mehrak. The view through an open curtain was of the lights of the village, a couple of communications towers with red lights and the sheen of the river. The roses were still there. He stopped, let the cloth drop, gazed at them: still perfect. It was such a ‘nice’ place, the village, with the house and the view of the river but it was flawed. Hard to make the connection between men running for their lives up some mountainside, hunted like a fox with hounds in full cry. Another connection, as difficult, with a young woman set loose: people who had done the Balkans had said the hardest thing was when villagers fled before the arrival of a paramilitary murder squad leaving their family dogs behind. They had driven off in their cars and the dogs had run after them till they dropped. He was trapped by the roses.

Sidney was by the door. He recited, ‘ “My love is like a red red rose, That’s newly sprung in June . . .” ’

Petroc murmured, ‘ “So fair art thou, my bonnie lass, So deep in love am I; And I will love thee still, my dear, Till a’ the seas gang dry.” ’

And, beside Sidney, Father William held the picture. ‘If there wasn’t an objection, PK, I’d like to have this. Just to put in a drawer somewhere for when I’m old and my memory needs a jolt. “To see her is to love her, and love but her for ever”. All right?’

Petroc said, ‘No problem. “For Nature made her what she is, And never made anither!” Absolutely.’

Nobby hovered. Petroc took the roses from the vase. He slid one into the button hole of his jacket and gave the other to Sidney.

A small, bright moment.

Nobby spoke. ‘He went because we told him it was fouling up. All the stuff we said to his face meant nothing because he could hear you, Petroc, and your end of the communications with London. He knew it was bad, and the cordon was closing on them. He knew they’d missed the pick-up. The carpet in his room’s all scuffed in the corner where the pipes come in for the radiator. There’s no dust on them and I reckon his ear wiped it clean. Heard everything. Sorry to be the bearer of that news and don’t shoot me. A lesson for the future, I’d say.’

Petroc nodded briskly. Work to be done and then they’d be gone.

‘I’d call that a very serious mistake,’ Rollo Hawkins said. ‘He’ll maintain he was drugged and coerced into going with our people, but the first problem will be the blood and toxicology tests. No incapacitating chemicals in the system. He won’t have thought of that but it’ll blow him out of the water. There may be a warm welcome waiting for him wherever his flight lands, but then he’ll be taken somewhere quiet and the chances of him being seen again are virtually nil. Many have done this . . . Russians, Koreans, Iraqis and Iranians. They believe they can talk their way out of a sack with the neck tied, but they can’t. From the moment his foot touches the apron, he’ll be the walking dead. They’ll believe nothing he says – neither would you, Petroc. If he prevaricates they’ll torture him. I hope, Petroc, you didn’t get to like him.

‘Anyway, good news at our end. What was identified as a bear’s carcass is now known to be a cow’s, fallen off a cliff. The vultures had messed it about, hence the error. Better than good news, we think there’s been a sighting of our old boy. Great excitement. As we like to say, all’s well that ends well . . . if not for your defector, who – by going back – has made a terminal error. Goodnight, Petroc, sleep well, and move on.’

Tadeuz Fenton slept. Another day would dawn and new horizons beckon: a morning meeting with the Germans, and he was hosting a lunch for the senior trio of French officials – same trade – in London; in the afternoon he had a session pencilled in with the Service’s man in Oman, and they’d talk about running assets across the Strait of Hormuz – there was an exciting prospect of getting a bright young fellow, Iranian, into a position on an uncle’s fishing boat. Always useful, fishing boats. They could go anywhere, weave among naval formations. Their skippers the world over had a reputation for single-minded obstinacy when told, in any language, to bugger off. The Revolutionary Guard Corps had fast missile-patrol boats, Kaman class and home-built or the Chinese-made Houdong class, and kept them in creeks off the islands where the Strait funnelled international oil transport. He sounded a useful boy.

There was always another day and his thoughts before sleeping had been that the fresh horizons promised well. Sara watched over him. They’d talked a little of the spin that would be appropriate for the following day and had options open whatever the outcome. The old Cousin and the old Friend had seemed pleased enough with the last load of material sent on to them from Vienna. Sara would fix a lunch for a digest of the mission. He slept well – and why not?

His hand was over her mouth.

She had said, ‘Across there, what are we going to do? What’s next?’

He hadn’t been sure of what he’d heard. ‘Don’t talk, just imagine.’

‘Imagine?’

‘Don’t talk.’

‘Why?’

He didn’t know if he had heard the voices. ‘It’s a waste of breath.’

The clouds scudded over the moon. The rain had gone, and the sleet: the snow had turned to a slush and he knew she was struggling with the blister. He heard voices. Zach didn’t have the torch on but they could sometimes make out in the light of the moon the tracks the three guys had left. At others the snow cover had been whipped away by the wind and he’d lose the trail, but the general direction of their route was clear. He had not known at first whether he heard voices or the wind on the bare branches of the few trees as they climbed. When he had identified the sounds as voices, he had assumed that the guys had sat down to rest – maybe not as fit as they’d thought, or they’d felt they’d made their a point and bivouacked, expecting him to catch them up alone. He thought she was talking either to keep herself awake or because the blister hurt too much for her to struggle on in silence.

Now the voices were clear.

His hand was over her mouth and she tried to bite his fingers, then must have heard them. Talk in Farsi with the Tehran accent. She stiffened against him. He crouched and eased her down beside him.

Zach heard what was said.

One of them wanted to shit, but if he dropped his trousers he’d lose his bits to frostbite – and he’d be dead if the sergeant found him with his trousers down. He had no paper. He would have all the paper in the world if he shot the terrorists who had already killed two good boys. But shooting was too good for them. He had heard from the sergeant that a whore was with them. Maybe they’d fuck her before they shot her. The sergeant had said that the man who shot the terrorists would be well rewarded – not rials but dollars.

Zach thought they were like the men on the building site.

There were stone outcrops between where he hid with Farideh and where the soldiers were. The boy who needed privacy would come to the far side of the heap of rock, and when he did, he would be beside them.

They went on their hands and knees.

The snow was between their fingers, under their nails and in their sleeves. He imagined a shout, a torchbeam, the arming of a rifle and another shout. No shot yet because the reward for a prisoner would be greater than that for a corpse. Maybe, afterwards, a trophy photograph of themselves standing close to the wretched Zachariah Becket, twenty-six, and . . . She would shoot, and then all hell would break loose. A half-dozen automatic rifles. Now they were on their stomachs. He tried to force his backside lower and bury his belly in the snow, then the rough grass, and make no noise. She moved like a cat.

He heard the boy call that he might lose his dick but had to shit.

Zach considered what sort of trail they were leaving, slithering about on the snow. It was colder without the rain, and at dawn their track would be better preserved. They had barely begun. They stood up when they came to a riverbed. There were stones of all shapes and sizes, smooth, and just a trickle of water. She let him slot her arm into the bend of his elbow and he took part of her weight. If the blister beat her, they were dead. He wouldn’t leave her. Never would.
Across there, what are we going to do?
An answer, but not spoken.

Chapter 18

Zach couldn’t know how the day would end. Where might he be?

He took as much of her weight as he could over the rough ground. Put one foot in front of another and didn’t linger.

A weak light grew round him. He could see some twenty feet ahead, and then the mist made a curtain in front of him, opaque, defying his efforts to see where he was going.

The day might end with him lying on a bed in a hostel, or sitting in an economy-class seat on a feeder flight, heading for a hub with a beer in his hand. He’d have her beside him. It was possible. As it was also possible that a rope would be tied to his ankle and he would be dragged down the hill to where the military had their vehicles. His head would be battered to a pulp on the stones. She would be beside him on another rope. The clothing she had taken from the New Zealanders’ cupboards would be mud-smeared and blood-drenched. They would have been slaughtered. It was also possible, probable, that by the end of the day they would be huddled beside each other, their hands tied and their ankles manacled. They would be blindfolded and lying on a concrete floor, waiting to be interrogated, tortured and sentenced to death.

She had little spare flesh on her, but she weighed more than he’d have dreamed. It was one thing to have a woman draped over him in his bed, but with each yard they went she seemed heavier.

He had no footsteps to follow in the snow. They were long gone.

The mist had thickened. In the dawn he had been able to register features of the ground. They were in a shallow valley, perhaps half a mile across. Then the sides rose in a gentle gradient. The ground they crossed was ragged, and some of the stones were glacier-smoothed, but others were sharp and hurt him when he stumbled on them. He had been able to absorb an impression of the valley before the mist had closed again. He could have said to her, with confidence, that it would lift and that they needed to press on hard while they had it to cloak them. Would it lift? He had no idea.

He thought it important to be decisive.

He paused and the wall was close around him. A track that might have been from goats or sheep went right and left. Ahead – at the limit of his vision – there was more difficult ground: the stones were larger, the rocks sharper. He had no light to tell him that they were heading west and that the sun would rise behind him. To cross the larger stones would have further slowed them. He reckoned the blister had opened again – he had heard several gasps of pain and knew she was trying to hide them. He hesitated.

But he must be decisive. ‘We go to the left.’

‘Are we lost?’

‘Of course not. We go to the left.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘I hope – no, I’m sure.’

He looked into her face, searching for reassurance. He couldn’t read in her eyes whether she believed him or not. She tapped his arm with her hand: they must move. She had one arm looped over his back, and was clutching his anorak; he had an arm across her back, his fingers gripping the clothing above her hip. He could feel her bones and her softness.

Who were they sharing this place with? The guys who had walked out on them, border guards, professional military, and men from the Revolutionary Guard Corps. He thought they had blundered through an armed camp, their only protection the pistol she had and the grenades he was carrying. To the soldiers in the camp, the one magazine in the pistol, the grenades, two of flash and bang and two of gas and smoke, would amount to a mosquito swarm.

He was slower and she was heavier.

They hadn’t rested in more than five hours. He didn’t know how far it was to the frontier or what the frontier was. It might be a ditch, or a strand of wire or a collapsed watch tower whose stilt legs had crumpled. It might be nothing. They might have to walk for four more hours, six, or to the end of the daylight. He tried to follow the path and didn’t know what direction they were heading in. It would have been good to talk. The kids at the School used to gather to chat about optimism, the disasters in their lives or the hopes that carried them forward.