The Corporal's Wife (2013) (55 page)

What of me?

They would be together if the home they shared was a cardboard box. He would live with her in a shop doorway, on a pavement.

She must have realised she couldn’t win. She was draped over him, and they went on, as the mist edged back.

Zach didn’t know whether, any more, he dared to hope.

They had landed. Mehrak had not been told how long they would be on the ground or where they had come down. They had not taxied to a main terminal and seemed to have gone towards cargo sheds.

It was Baku. There was a moment when the angle of the blind at the porthole in front of his seat allowed him to see out briefly. The hoarding was for import-export, into and out of the Azerbaijani capital.

The engines were off. Mehrak knew little of light aircraft, nothing about an American-built Cessna 380. There was a brochure, with the edges creased, in the pouch in front of him. He had turned the few pages on the flight. He had read the speed, the altitude it would reach, and its range. He had needed the diversion. Mehrak had never before been on an aircraft that had been so comprehensively thrown around by a storm. He had not wanted to seem fearful. There had been moments when it had heaved up, and others when it had dropped, as a hawk did, and the engines had screamed.

But they were down. He stretched in his seat, then flicked open the belt clasp. He stood up. He wasn’t hungry but his throat was dry. He hadn’t been offered anything to eat or drink. The co-pilot had come into the cabin after the worst of the storm and had talked to his escorts but said nothing to him. The door was opened and gusts of wind blasted into the cabin. A ladder was against the hatch and the same crewman went down it. Mehrak gave it no thought.

He went towards the door. The way was blocked.

A reflex statement, ‘I want to walk.’

A shaken head.

‘Then I want to stand and take the air.’

Again the refusal.

Mehrak pushed. A hand clamped on his arm from behind. First one hand, then the other: they were brought together, the feel of metal and the click of the cuffs.

He began to speak, voice rising: ‘I am the driver and assistant to Brigadier Reza Joyberi. I was kidnapped by British agents and escaped. I demand that—’

He was pushed down. No respect. He sprawled in his seat. A nightmare broke in his mind. They towered over him. He was helpless, and certainties were lost.

They moved discreetly and well. For Wally it was the best stuff he’d done since leaving the regular crowd. He’d experienced nothing like it since he’d gone into the contractor industry. It was the way they would have progressed if they’d been in a Red force on the Brecons or on the Plain, and were fleeing from the cordon of a Blue crowd. They jogged, they did forced march, and four times they had dropped down on their elbows and knees for crawl drills when they were near their enemy – an enemy with live rounds and instructions to kill. Twice the safeties had been off on the weapons.

Wally reckoned they needed the drive of an officer, who would have done good ‘talk’. Wally wanted an officer – any who had been in his old regiment in Iraq or Helmand.

Each step they took brought them closer to the border, a table of cold beers, a shuttle flight and a welcome for him from Leanne, good girl. It brought him nearer to the flat in Tyneside above the shops – there’d be a wedge of post behind the door, half of it in brown envelopes with red type – and nearer to her demanding he take the kids for the coming weekend. Near the border: each step was taking him further from the guy behind them, who hadn’t caught up with them, and now would not.

An officer – a proper one, not like Mikey – would have squared it. He would have told him that their charge for freedom was justified: people ‘made their own beds’. An officer would have dressed it prettily. There was no officer, though, and no way did it feel right to have left them behind.

Mikey called the halt. He took them onto a hump where the rock formation was clumsily strewn and there was cover. Were they going to lie up? Mikey said they were. Did Mikey realise the mist was clearing? He had fucking eyes in his head. How long did Mikey think they’d lie up? No answer.

He’d only get one night with Leanne because guys on the Contego books were always coming back from shit places. He thought he read Mikey, who likely felt as uncomfortable as he did that they’d left the guy and the girl. He strained to see deeper into the mist until his eyes ached. He prayed he’d spot them, but he didn’t.

A crow flew from behind him. Zach saw it against the sky’s blue. The shadow brushed past his feet and was lost in the mist. Her weight buckled him. He was following a track and didn’t know whether it had been flattened by troops of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, by herdsmen or the guys. He remembered when he had first seen her, in the room over the repair shop, and she had worn the tent-like ‘good
hijab
’. Even so, he had known immediately that she was slight-built, light-muscled, tight-waisted.

Her head was on his shoulder and her face was turned away. He trudged on, his sole aim to beat the steadily thinning mist. The flight of the crow and the distance its shadow had travelled had shown him that time was against him, maybe laughed in his face.

For strength . . .

. . . he could use the hand of the arm that supported her on his back to worm into a pocket.

To cling to what strength remained . . .

. . . he could put those fingers further into his pocket. He felt the edge of the card and the laminated surface. He took it out, jolting her. She moaned softly. He lifted his hand. His eyes were glazed with tiredness. Her face, tiny on the card, was blurred . . . He didn’t know how much further he had to travel, or how much longer he could support her. The card went back into his pocket. Her ankle hung useless beside his thigh, but she didn’t cry out.

He could see the sides of the valley. The mist was shallower and had no ceiling. The valley walls were tumbled rocks. Great boulders had careered down from the upper slopes, and far to the front there was a great mass of grey stone, a pyramid, with a white dunce’s cap. He thought it was Ararat.

They came towards him. Zach hadn’t the energy to step aside or to cower in any cover he could find.

First he saw the heads. The ears were up – they were alert to him – and eyed him. They were good strong beasts and had panniers strapped to their backs. They were roped so that they came in single file, and the leading horse had a coat against the cold of thick black hair. He counted six. The bags were empty and the animals fresh. They were sure-footed and didn’t slip. A boy was at the head of the second horse. The horses’ heads were higher than the mist, but the boy’s was lower and he came out of the wall, a hand on the harness.

What to say? Zach said, in Farsi, quietly, that he wished him well and that God should go with him. The boy looked hard into his face, and at the woman he carried. His lips moved but Zach didn’t hear the response. Then they were gone. Four men followed, each with an automatic rifle. They ignored Zach.

He went on. He thought of survival, and was deep in the reservoirs of his strength, draining them. The mist was clearing. Then they would be seen.

Chapter 19

Zach had his head down. He feared he would trip and looked for each step. She was so heavy now.

Two moments.

The first: half a dozen crows were above him and shrieked.

The second: a scrap of warmth on his cheeks. It went into the scratches and played on his forehead.

The birds, ebony black, with wide wing spans, spun, dived and soared over him and he realised they had a view of the ground, and that they could begin to hunt because the mist roof had now blown away. They were fine birds. Zach had never paused when he was on a ladder or on scaffolding to watch crows, kestrels, buzzards or magpies. Birds gave him no pleasure and animals were outside his orbit. Now they hunted high above him, looking for carrion.

The sun made a clearer shadow of his body and hers. He couldn’t have said when he had last felt the sun on his face. He didn’t sit on beaches: the guys on the sites yearned from Christmas onwards to be in Greece or on a Costa shore. The sunlight tickled him.

He lifted his head and tried not to break his stride. He could have wept.

The sides of the valley were clear to him. From the angle at which the plateau began its climb he saw the tumbled rocks, the clefts in the crags and the few scrub bushes that had a hold there. He looked ahead.

He could have sworn at the unfairness of it. He was on the path that the horses would have made. It stretched in front of him, the gradient shallow. The ground was a mix of scree, on which rainwater glistened, yellowed grass and the bigger boulders. He could see each patch of scree, grass – where the last flowers of summer still showed faint pink or violet petals – and where the rocks were. Clear and precise. He knew now that he would be watched.

He sucked air into his lungs, heaved her higher and took the next step and the step after that.

There was a target. The path that the horses had made, the indents of their shoes, went to the west past the scree and skirted the humps of boulders where the crevices threw big shadows. It went on until he lost sight of it at a ridge. Beyond it there were no more horizons until Ararat. The ridge, Zach thought, was the border. He couldn’t evaluate whether it was one mile, two or five, but there were pinpricks of colour at the limit of his vision. There would be flags at the border . . .

As he saw it, he was a third of the way to the horizon. There were other boulders that were nearer, and more that were further and higher. One had his attention: the sunlight caught a surface and the reflection was crystal bright. It might have been from the shaft of a bottle thrown aside by one of the men on firearms escort for the horses with the panniers – or the lens on the telescopic sight of a sniper’s rifle.

He felt bare. He assumed that many had a good view of him.

Zach went on. The sun’s line would have changed, and the reflection was gone. In its place were the rocks, the grass and the scree, and far in the distance the colours of what he thought were flags at the ridge that would be the border.

He didn’t know if she had seen the reflection. He didn’t tell her. He didn’t dare to stop for rest in the shadow of a boulder. He went on, the sun warming him and the crows keeping him company.

He stirred. Mandy’s head was in the crook of his arm. The sunlight came through the window and its force slapped cruelly on her face. She wore no makeup to mask the lines at her eyes and those starting at her throat. He believed she made a virtue of eschewing glamour. The light swamped the room, rested on the lower part of the bed where the covering had slid away and was on one of her legs and one of his feet, the rugs and clothing scattered on the floor. He saw his bag near the wardrobe, but never unpacked.

He tilted the arm on which her head rested. Her only jewellery – put on the previous evening for the first time . . . why? No explanations – was a pair of stud ear-rings and a fine chain, with a small crucifix. It was permitted at work, too discreet to offend the Islamic brothers and sisters who’d joined the Service. More than the sunlight, the jewellery disturbed him. Who had given the items to her – or had she slipped down to the high street and bought them for herself? He almost hoped she had. It cut at him that her husband might have handed to her two little gift-wrapped boxes. He swallowed it, looked at his watch and jerked up.

Her head bounced and her eyes opened.

She wore nothing. Neither did he. Mandy caught Dunc’s eye, had that moment of confusion – ‘Who the hell are you?’ – might have quizzed him but didn’t. Then her eyes squeezed shut.

She said, ‘Oh, my God. I don’t believe it.’

He didn’t hold her. Dunc Whitcombe didn’t tell Mandy Ross – fellow struggler in the middle ranks of personnel assigned to the Iran Desk – that she had been the best he had known in pretty much all of his adult life. She was good news, and he was
fond
of her.

She kicked off the rest of the bedding and was on her way to the bathroom. He heard the toilet flush, then the shower start up, and imagined she’d be lathering herself in the hope of getting rid of the traces. He lay on his back.

When she came back in she had a towel round her. She bent over him, the towel fell, her breasts sagged down and she kissed him lightly on the mouth – as if it was the office party and someone had tracked down some mistletoe.

Dunc said limply, ‘I didn’t know what time it was.’

Mandy said, matter-of-fact, ‘I’m blaming you. I reckon this marks the most unprofessional behaviour of my working life. I’m ashamed. But I’m not bothered that we shagged, Dunc, or that I cheated on my husband. I’m ashamed because I’ve been in bed on my watch.’

‘I think I hear you.’ He was off the bed, passing her.

‘I’ll never forgive myself. God . . .’

He was at the window. A brilliant light bathed Ararat, and the myth of the Ark was in his mind. He shared her shame at having treated the trip as if they were on vacation. It was the biggest mission of their lives, and they had pushed it into second place, giving priority to personal gratification. He could hardly believe it of himself, let alone her. He was at the window.