The Corporal's Wife (2013) (54 page)

‘Lovely day. My name is John Thomas. My apologies for having disturbed your evening at home. Anyway, in the UK we have tits and chaffinches, sparrows and robins, and we call them songbirds. I believe that, in the Islamic Republic, yours would include the bulbul, the bar-tailed lark, the tawny pipit and the rock bunting. Don’t know about you, but we’ve found that the best singer of all is the canary, which originates from islands in the Atlantic.’

They gazed back at him, impassive, and Petroc held his smile.

‘I’d call your boy a canary. He sang long and he sang loud. He sang till he was hoarse and had no voice left. We didn’t have any more use for him then. For men like me, and I’m a right John Thomas, it’s a grand thing to have a man walk through the door and sing – a lovely voice before he lost it. We call him a “canary”, which is our way of saying that he sang well and did us proud. Gentlemen, it’s been a pleasure meeting you. Oh, yes, he sang in harmony to every tune we played him. Safe back into town . . .’

He went to the car.

Sidney drove away.

He thought Sidney had been offended by his betrayal of Mehrak, who had been deluded enough to reckon repatriation was possible. Sidney had believed in him, had thought friendship existed between them. He said, ‘I thnk that’s how Hector – mean old bastard – would have played it. Never abide by the Queensberry Rules, not if you want to win.’

They drove at funeral pace towards Vienna. It was cruel to have made the canary speech, but he felt good about it.

Sara had made the links for the conference call to the offices of the Friend and the Cousin and had patched in the scrambler. Tadeuz Fenton – ‘bright-eyed and bushy-tailed’, as he liked to say – was effortless with charm and appropriate calm.

‘Don’t get the wrong idea, Gunther, nor you, Ja’acov. We’re not talking about an “escape”, far from it. I had expert people on the ground with him and the impression fed me was that the little man had pretty much exhausted his usefulness. We’d sucked him dry. We left the door open. He may have been under the impression that he had outwitted us, tricked his way back into the arms of Iranian security people, but it was as we intended. He was kicking at an open door.’

Did they believe him? Could an elephant fly? Were they merely polite, and not wishing to exacerbate his discomfort? That would be a first. A few moments of silence, then the beginning of an interrogation.

The American, with what Tadeuz believed to be the pomposity of Agency people, asked, ‘After the co-operation you received from us in logistics, did you consider enquiring of us as to whether we had loose ends to tie, a few outstanding questions, before you opened the door?’

He deflected it.

The Israeli’s query was harder to handle. They usually landed meaningful punches. ‘We helped you to go in, helped you to come out, because you said it was important to get the woman. What is the situation with her, and the men we ferried, and why is this a matter of principal concern one day but not the next?’

He spoke boldly. ‘We evaluate risk constantly and take very seriously the safety of our people. They’ve dropped the woman and she’s free to go home. Unencumbered by a passenger, our people are now striking for the border and should be across it late this afternoon, maybe at dusk. I’m very confident of a successful conclusion. As I’m sure you realise, we’ve supplied our allies with first-class original material, which should be cause for gratitude, not carping. We made an assessment and stand by it. You have been accorded information not previously available to you, and that is where, I suggest, we leave the matter. The Service is a big player and intends to remain one. We’re all busy men, so let us go back to work. But, worth saying, it’s been good to do business with you both.’

He drew a finger across his throat. Sara cut the call.

He murmured, ‘Bastards. Ingrates.’

She told him when his first appointment was and gave him the file. He went to the window, massaged his face with the razor and flicked through the pages of the brief. It was a dreary start to the day and he should have felt elation, but it had been snatched away.

He turned to her as she tidied away the folding bed. ‘If it doesn’t work out, Sara, it won’t be our fault. It’ll be down to failures on the ground.’

‘Yes, Tad. Of course.’

The boy brought the coffee and the paper. Neither wanted the coffee, both wanted the paper. From the time he had woken on the thin mattress under the workbench, Excellency had heard each bulletin on Radio Tehran, and Highness had fiddled with the small set that carried a short-wave channel, trying to connect with the BBC’s Persian Service.

‘Nothing?’

Excellency turned the pages fast. ‘It would be a big story, but it isn’t here.’

‘It would lead the radio bulletin.’

‘It says they’re hunting for terrorists near Khvoy. It would be on the front page if they had her.’

‘And on the radio. Highness, I think she’s still running.’

‘Does he have her photograph?’

A chuckle. ‘Poor boy. I pray not, or he’s condemned.’

They readied themselves for work. They had no picture of her but she was in their minds and always would be.

He had been shown the woman’s abandoned clothing. More junior men had been disgusted that the fugitive running with the foreigners should have abandoned all pretence at modesty. His features had remained impassive. He had been led to see the stolen camper van and had heard where it had been left. He had been told the criminal gang were on foot, had left tracks, were heading towards a cordon. What were the weather conditions? Poor at the moment, but an improvement was imminent.

At the forward command post, the uniform of Brigadier Reza Joyberi carried weight. A major had gathered his staff under a brown tented roof, and there was the clatter of radios’ squelch, the howl of atmospherics, and the softer patter of fingers on laptop keyboards. Instructions were mouthed into chest microphones. A map was pinned to a plywood board and the plastic covering rippled in the wind. He had been fully briefed. He said his role was that of an observer, he would not interfere. He had decided that the operation under way was a fine opportunity for him to study the terrain and topography of this most sensitive border region in the event that . . . The major, young, enthusiastic and perhaps ambitious to be drafted to the al-Qods division, didn’t need warning of the danger of a foreign military incursion. How could the brigadier be helped? As always, with transport. The brigadier said, in confidence to the major, that more was learned from studying a panorama than from maps, computerised simulations and second-hand reports.

He would see little, he was told, before the mist lifted. The major, more confident, expanded: ‘The mist is a robe that a woman wears. The mist lifts and it is as if the robe falls, revealing all.’ He remembered the blanket slipping from her shoulders, the nightgown and the shape of her body. He wanted transport, needed only a driver. He would see for himself, from close to the frontier with Turkish territory, the flight of the fugitives and the blocks set up to intercept them. He felt a chill because deceit didn’t sit easily with him. In recent years he had had little call for it. He might see her, perhaps see her taken, then would walk on towards the horizon and the highest part of the ridge where, on the maps, a line was drawn.

A driver was allocated him, and a jeep. He was saluted by a fresh-faced boy who showed his appreciation to be so honoured. The brigadier thanked the major for his courtesy and assured him that his co-operation would be reflected in a confidential report. He was driven away on a savage track that climbed in the mist to the plateau.

An investigator owned great powers, but limits existed. He faced them. Could he name a suspected fugitive when that individual had rank and status in an organisation with the prestige of the al-Qods division, then issue a general warrant for arrest-on-sight, or should he pass responsibility for such an edict to a higher level of authority? He pondered. A general warrant would mean that every member of the IRGC, the gendarmerie and the
basij
had the right to make Brigadier Reza Joyberi his prisoner. It was a daunting decision that faced the investigator.

Predictably, in his office where suspects usually sat stone-faced or jabbering, he dithered. Already many hours had passed.

There had been surveillance men at the end of the road where the brigadier and his family lived. They had watched, at a distance, a house where lights burned and a radio played. They had seen the wife and children leave with sports kit. A new detail had taken over and the lights had burned through the night, the radio had continued to play, dawn had come and suspicion had grown. But it was hard, so early in the day, for the team to gain permission to approach the house. It had been achieved, but only when the morning had worn on. More time lost. Then further permission was granted. The door was broken down. The house was empty.

Perhaps a dozen hours had been lost.

The interrogator’s superior reported only to the Supreme Leader, and was in Qom on spiritual retreat. His aides suggested that matters outstanding should be settled without disturbing the director of intelligence.

He hesitated. No order had been issued. He would be at the extreme limits of his power, where it was dangerous to stand in the Islamic Republic. He teetered when confronted with that limit. A telephone was on his desk, and his juniors pressed him to use it, but he smoked, drank coffee and weighed the implications. Always, in the Islamic Republic, it was a risk – which could be of life and of death – for a man to climb too high, walk too far, from his power base.

The mist thinned. Zach saw continents of cloud and lakes of blue. When he dropped his eyes he was in the midst of the mist, but with each minute the area of sky above him grew and the distance to the edge of his vision extended. The advantage of the mist clearing was that he could see milky sunshine. He trudged on towards where he believed the border would be, confident of being on the correct line now.

There were no trees. They passed outcrops of rock with deep clefts and bushes growing in them – and heard more voices.

Matches were asked for and given. Gruff thanks were expressed and silence fell. Zach couldn’t have said whether the voices were twenty feet from him, at the limit of the mist wall or behind it. He thought the troops were spread out in a line of small groups.

Zach had become used to her weight, as though she was a rucksack on his back, filled with stones. They had not talked for half an hour. Their last conversation had been premature and dangerous.

‘What is there?’

For Zach or for her?

‘What is there for you and what is there for me?’

For him there would be the search for a job, no idea where – he might be labouring again on a site, but not his father’s, or perhaps doing something else. For her, he didn’t know.

‘When we cross the border?’

When
.

‘When we cross the border, I suppose you are met, but what of me?’

What to say? The rucksack on his back had a sort of damp warmth, precious. He knew old people said, ‘be careful what you wish for’. Perhaps to ‘wish’ was to tempt fate. He didn’t tell her. Instead he was distant: it would be sorted. A pitiful answer, but he hadn’t dared to offer a better one.

‘You don’t want to tell me?’

Zach didn’t tell her that he wouldn’t let her out of his sight in daylight or beyond the reach of his fingers through a night. That he treasured the warmth. She mustn’t speak.

More voices.

A man in authority cursed the speed of his men and demanded they move faster. They were behind and closing. Zach dragged her to the side, made calculations of the route they took. Her weight, always, was on one foot. He hadn’t looked down.

They were on rough ground. Stones were embedded in tufts of dead grass, and they had a sheen on them. He hadn’t looked but she had snagged. Impatience from Zach, a flush of panic. He had tugged harder. She squealed, a tiny sound in his ear but buried in the mist. He looked. She was caught. The foot that took her weight was wedged between two stones that in turn were held fast in the ground. Her ankle was angled oddly. He did not know whether, in hurrying her, she had broken, had torn, had twisted her ankle. She did not cry out.

The voices passed.

She shook clear of him.

She was Foxtrot, baggage – no longer wanted. She should have been abandoned. He had brought her on and wrecked her. The mist was lifting, and the pace had to be kept.

He could have lifted his head and screamed up into ‘that little tent of blue/Which prisoners call the sky.’ A teacher had read
The Ballad of Reading Gaol
aloud to them, tried to introduce a class of Philistines to the poetry of Wilde. He had read well and his eyes were damp as the verses told of a condemned man taking exercise each day before his execution, peering up from the gaol’s yard. He had destroyed her.

He felt her courage. Foxtrot convulsed against him. He hitched her up.

She scratched his face. He understood. She wanted to be put down. If he laid her on the grass, she would turn her back to him and wave him away. She would babble about burdens, and about him going on. She would invent nonsense about having seen the guys’ footprints. He could feel the blood her nails had drawn on his cold skin. He hung on to her. Now her small fists battered at his face. Zach stumbled, almost lost his balance, regained it. One arm held her thigh and the other gripped her upper arm on his chest.