The Corporal's Wife (2013) (59 page)

The tears on their faces were not from emotion. There were odd pockets in which smoke from the grenades had been trapped or held in narrow spirals by the wind. It was still strong enough to get into the eyes and do its job. The explosives, the bullets and the bodies left a sickly smell among the stones.

The crows could be patient. Their time would come.

Many of those young troops would have wondered why it had been considered so important to lead the woman towards the frontier, on foot and in danger, why other men had gone ahead, then come back and given their lives. Their NCOs could give them no answers. They smoked. They cursed the crows, always above them, watching. An eagle came but was high and would also have noted the probability of carrion. They waited.

They needed orders from superiors: what should be done, what would happen. A fire was lit. Coarse coffee was heated.

None seemed triumphant in the time of victory. They did not go close to the dead.

It was a habit that military men enjoyed when facing each other across disputed, volatile frontiers, and the habit went far beyond the strip of land on the border where the nearest centres of habitation were Dogubeyazit and Maku. Officers talked. It was behaviour from eras long before the hot lines and ‘red telephones’ of the Cold War and times of ‘mutually assured destruction’. In other theatres and different times, the officers might have enjoyed a slug of brandy, a bowl of rice or a pair of well-hung game birds, or they might have looked at snapshots of family while ironing out potential creases in their professional relationships. They would attempt to avoid the unexpected. There was a major of mechanised infantry in an old granite quarry below a Turkish flag and an officer of similar rank, another major, in a forward field-command post back from his own flag, Iran’s. They talked.

There was urgency. The call had been initiated on the Iranian side. That major knew that a helicopter, back at the garrison camp at Khvoy, was being refuelled, would soon lift off and fly into the valley. At the back of the command tent there was a young driver who had acted as a guide to a brigadier in the al-Qods and the kid’s teeth chattered nervously because his man had dismissed him, and the reason now was clear to see.

A radio frequency linked the two majors. If business were to be done it should be completed before the helicopter came and before the combat area bristled with officers of higher rank.

His name meant ‘Struggle’, but Khebat’s success was based also on cunning.

He was in touch with his small caravan by text messages. He knew of the gun fight on the plateau and of the casualties, and also that his own people had taken delivery of some seventy packages. Now, they hugged the southern wall of the valley and were deep in shadow, winding along a trail that would have been unseen by any who had not grown up in that place. Great stones had fallen over centuries from the upper reaches of the walls and landed in the valley. They hid the horses, the escort and his son, Egid, as they made their way back to Turkish territory.

Khebat could not bribe Major Terim, and his fall-back position was a determination not to tease or belittle him. The caravan carrying heroin resin worth close to a million American dollars would enter Turkey on a route well to the south of where the major had positioned himself.

He hung back in the quarry and watched, but was barely noticed. He thought the presence of the brigadier, in the passenger seat of the jeep, was interesting.

Away from eavesdroppers, at the extremity of the quarry, Major Emre Terim paced. A small radio was slung from his shoulder and he talked into a handset, listened, shrugged and nodded vigorously.

He cut the call. His lips pursed.

His eyes alighted briefly on the Iranian brigadier, shorn now of confidence and watched closely. He saw, too, the pair of Britons, who affected to be archaeologists but played their parts poorly. He walked towards them.

Because he had been at Staff College and had attended lectures given by their intelligence officers, Major Terim believed he understood British people: he evaluated them as ‘company creatures’, aloof, wedded to a cold, pragmatic answer to all situations. He thought he knew the answer he would receive. Why, in fact, would he even ask the question? Why not simply act and field any difficulties if, when, they arose? He declined the obvious.
I tell you, they were lions
. Why? He had witnessed the admiration of his opposite.
The bravest men I have heard of – yes, lions
. A compromise was suggested but he felt the decision must be made by the couple, the purveyors of blatant, ill-disguised deceits.

His finger flicked. He had their attention and beckoned them. He lit a small cheroot. He faced his jeep. The brigadier sat motionless.

It was a liberty and his behaviour was no longer that of a major of mechanised infantry. He looped one arm around the woman’s shoulders and another around the man’s. The smoke from his cheroot was in their faces when he put the proposition.

‘It comes at a price,’ the major said.

‘Whatever,’ Mandy answered.

‘You would pay a great price?’

‘Whatever.’

She took comfort from Dunc’s response, no hesitation.

‘You are certain?’

‘Yes,’ Mandy said.

‘Certain,’ Dunc said.

‘It is nothing to me . . .’ The major allowed the smoke to waft at them again. His arms came off their shoulders. He was no longer their friend but again a professional soldier. He left them and strode to his sergeant. He waved imperiously to a group of soldiers: they jack-knifed straight and hurried towards him. He spoke to his sergeant. An eyebrow was raised, sufficient to indicate surprise. Mandy Ross knew enough of small units – she’d seen them on exercise on Salisbury Plain or up on the Brecon Beacons – to realise that a middle-ranking army officer operating far from his seniors had the autonomy and authority of a feudal baron in a castle on the Welsh Marches. The major called the order and it would be obeyed.

Mandy thought the brigadier didn’t need to be told. The body language of the major and his summons for muscle would have confirmed what the man already knew. He should, otherwise, have been transferred to a chauffeur-driven car, taken to an airport, and would have waited in a secluded suite for an executive jet to fly him into the hands of the Agency. He sat on the passenger seat of a jeep. There were no handcuffs.

He would have been watching them through all the time he had sat in the jeep, would have known their trade and would have realised they were there to meet the fugitives, to welcome her and the boy who carried her. Mandy had barely glanced in a mirror that day. She was not at her best – pretty haggard, somewhat gaunt, no colour in her cheeks. He would have seen that they were waiting for a delayed arrival – probably had input to radio traffic. They could have ambled over to him, talked about the weather, offered the deal, which would have been a million in sterling up front and more to follow from the Agency. They hadn’t.

He was walked from the jeep and the soldiers ringed him. He went past them, and Mandy would have sworn that a slow, lost smile crossed his face. He ducked his head to her in acknowledgement, then was gone. He walked away briskly and the soldiers in front of him had to skip to keep up. He went out of the old quarry, never glanced at the major, and began to climb the slope leading to the ridge.

Mandy Ross watched him go. He went up the slope easily.

Her chin trembled and her voice was faint. ‘They’d kill us, everyone we know.’

Dunc said, clipped, his feelings guarded, ‘They weren’t here, those who would kill us. They’re in offices, wearing fucking white shirts, a world away.’

‘It’s about as off message as anyone in Six could get.’

‘Their problem, not ours. I wouldn’t want it different.’

‘To have had him in our camp, down at the Fort, spilling to us . . . I mean, he knows every secret that exists in that country. He would have been gold.’

‘Irrelevant because it won’t happen.’

Mandy said, ‘I’ve never played God before, and I hope I never will again. It’s a death sentence.’

Dunc said, ‘We owed it to our people. It’s the way it is.’

The brigadier climbed steadily and at an even pace, with correct poise.

She felt the spit of rain, and the cloud had come lower. There were many at Vauxhall Cross who would have shaken their heads in disbelief at the deal she had made, and Dunc had said:
They weren’t here, those who would kill us
. The flag was against the cloud. The brigadier never looked back. He might, she thought, turn at the ridge and face her a last time, look down and maybe wave as a gesture of contempt. He would have no doubt as to what faced him. He went into the cloud, was blurred and lost.

Half of a deal was done; half was outstanding.

The major was called on the radio link.

Then he waved Khebat forward, not a request but an instruction.

The old smuggler sent the text, and thought of it as another element in trading, as there had always been on the frontier.

A cairn of stones was built. It was placed a metre, no more than two, on the Turkish side of the collapsed barbed wire. Men from each side of the wire struggled with the heaviest stones they could shift. Three bodies lay beneath them. They used the biggest stones they could manoeuvre so that the wild predators of the valley – when winter came and they were famished – couldn’t shift them. Too heavy for a fox, even a healthy dog. They wrapped them individually in canvas so that the rats would not be able to infiltrate and feast. The biggest stones were at the bottom of the cairn and those above were smaller and balanced better. If the cairn was not vandalised by humans it would remain intact for many years, decades, a century. Rumour of the place would spread and a myth would be born.

The men moving the stones paused briefly to watch the hand-over of a prisoner. He passed the flag of his country and the rain beat hard on him. The helicopter came in low and wouldn’t linger: the pilot would have feared that the visibility he needed was fast disappearing. They paused again, and watched as the helicopter feathered, hands reached down from the hatch, grabbed a prisoner’s arms and heaved him up. The hatch slid shut. They heard the lessening pitch of the engine, and went back to their work.

It would be a safe haven, and the men had the respect of those who built the cairn high over them. The rain stung the soldiers’ faces and dripped off them. Two laden horses came towards the cairn, led by a child.

When Dunc Whitcombe first saw him, the boy was a blurred shape. He had not been anywhere before where weather changes were so rapid, so extreme. With the cloud had come driven snow.

It was the second part of the deal, and had been honoured.

The boy sat hunched on the back of a light-coated horse. Behind his saddle there were flapping pannier bags and beyond them – over the horse’s haunches – a body. Dunc recognised the shape as that of a woman: her hair trailed stringily in the snow wet below her head and the legs flapped loosely on the other side. The boy and the body were not part of the deal Dunc had struck, and held little interest for him.

The second horse was stocky, squat and black. Dunc’s view if it was obscured because the boy shielded part of the head and body of the second horse from the weather. The snow came thicker, more persistent. The boy held a rope that looped from his hands to the harness of the second horse. Both animals, coming down the slope, were sure-footed and neither showed any sign of slipping, but Dunc reckoned the ground beneath them was mud and wet stones, and soon ice would form. On the second horse, there was an awkward, bulging shape. He must have tutted, uncertain as to what he was looking at, because the major passed him his binoculars. Snow flaked onto the lenses but through them he saw the burden that the second horse had brought down the hillside. A body was wedged onto the saddle and twine was knotted to each ankle to pass under the animal’s belly. He knew what he saw. The trunk lay forward, so the head hung against the mane, the chest was balanced at the top of the horse’s neck and the arms hung down, secured, like the ankles, with a length of twine.

The deal was met. He hadn’t doubted it would be. An understanding had been reached and honour was intact.

They came lower. The snow now made a white layer on the head lolling against the mane and settled on the body’s back. It settled but didn’t yet cover the clean white dressings. He jabbed Mandy’s ribs, pointed and said it. She took the glasses, gazed into them, changed the focus and latched on to what he had seen, then passed them back.

They negotiated the steepest part of the track. The rest was more gradual. Dunc reflected. The deal could not have been brokered between London and Tehran. If politicians and assistant secretaries had been involved, or generals and mullahs, it would immediately have been bogged down in quicksand and the moment lost. He thought it was what happened in the field, where men and women worked out what was best for them and kept their word. There would have been a man in an office in Tehran who had equivalent rank to the head of Iran Desk, in London: neither would have dared, without going higher, to agree to it. He thought that enmities – which he would now have regarded as posturing and artificial – meant little at the level of men who faced each other and had the power of a satrap over small parcels of remote land. They looked after each other, had mutual respect. He would not be able to offer thanks to an unseen man who exercised his power from a command post, beyond a ridge and beyond the playthings that were national flags. It was almost treasonous to harbour such thoughts.