The Corporal's Wife (2013) (20 page)

She was handed a sheet of paper. She didn’t bother to read the close-printed terms of her dismissal, just scrawled her name on a dotted line. Then she opened the drawer and dumped the contents into her shopping bag. She didn’t acknowledge anyone at the desks behind Reception. She adjusted her veil and walked to the glass door. She went out into the street. The drizzle had indeed turned to sleet and the wind blustered across the pavement. The cigarettes were thrown down.

Johnny had taught her, the Captain had added to what she had learned, and Kourosh had refined it. On the street, she felt true fear. She didn’t notice the fumes kick from the exhaust of a builder’s van on the far side of the road, or an artisan slip out of a flapping rear door. She saw a man swing his leg astride the pillion of a motorbike and others hurrying towards the open doors of a Paykan.

She would use what she had learned from Johnny, the Captain and Kourosh, and go to the one place that might be a haven, and the only two men she could trust.

Her face was projected on the screen. Kourosh, alone, knew the image did her no justice. A small room on the fourth floor was filled with men. The day’s duties were handed to the teams by a briefing officer. They were star performers, the best, and they considered themselves at the cutting edge of the war against covert infiltration of the state. They reckoned they could sniff out the agents of the Zionists and the Great Satan. Each time a bomb exploded in the capital, and a chemist or physicist died in the wreckage of his car, it was a personal insult to such men. All but one had worked as a team leader in either south Lebanon, Damascus, or Baghdad and Basra. That evening they would arrest her.

Authorisation was needed and was guaranteed, the briefer had said, but because of certain elements connected to the investigation – and the seniority of a person close to it – a signature must be obtained. All would be in place by the evening. And for that day? There was the ongoing watch on the man who had a hire-car business in the Gholak district in north-east Tehran, and some would spend time there. There was a travel agent on a street south of the central bazaar: he often – too often? – travelled abroad to tourist fairs specialising in Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian and Romanian resorts; his phones were monitored and so were his computers. He was watched. At the end of the day, they would take the stairs to the first-floor apartment on Rafah Street.

Kourosh’s gut twisted. He was married, his wife was seven months pregnant, and he was in danger. He shuddered. There would be no interference from a senior official. Whoever might have an interest in the investigations would not be tolerated. It would be a long day until the time for her arrest . . . she might name him.

He was in his office, had been there since leaving Rafah Street. The Mercedes had been driven by one of the team accompanying him. Brigadier Reza Joyberi had seen two of them smirk when the blanket had slipped off her shoulders. He might have flushed. He thought word would have spread among the men that she hadn’t cringed from him. He was vulnerable.

He had gone to his office in the barracks. In a rare moment of weakness, he had walked past the glass-fronted annexe, where the guards waited for their officers, and peered into the corner where his corporal should have been. Another man had been there, a colonel’s driver. He had gone to his office. He had not been brought the day’s newspapers or a piece of cake. He realised he didn’t know where cigarettes were sold in the barracks. He hadn’t needed to know. He felt in his pocket, took out a packet, opened it and counted how many were left.

Surprises confronted Brigadier Reza Joyberi.

His telephone crackled in his ear. Twice he shouted at a man to speak more slowly and clearly.

His desk-top computer refused to link him into the secure site where he worked. An engineer had flicked the keyboard and been evasive as to a solution. A colleague was in a meeting that was not to be interrupted. An inspection that afternoon of security procedures at an arsenal fifteen kilometres from the capital – arrangements made three months before – was postponed. He was not told who had given the order or supplied with a new date.

He recognised what he was experiencing. In his career, he had seen men who were ‘isolated’. Each ‘success’ gained allies but every ‘failure’ lost them. Sinking men had tried to call him and he had either not replied, not called back or forgotten them.

It was hard to believe that his chauffeur had been targeted by the Zionists or the Americans. A rumour had seeped back from across the Gulf that investigators there had identified a brothel, now closed. More rumours spread about deception of the Coast Guard, the police, the newspaper and the broadcasting station. That his chauffeur was considered worth an effort on such a scale could at first be dismissed as ridiculous. Then his mind cleared. Conversations with the military or IRGC local commanders in the back of the Mercedes as it purred along major roads, and a driver whose eyes seemed never to leave the road. Evenings in the traffic jams of Tehran, at the end of a long day, when he had vented his frustrations at the neatly cut hair on the back of the head in front of him. A morning when he had put a sealed envelope into the hand of the corporal with a flight ticket, a wad of cash, a number and a password. He had never before doubted Mehrak’s loyalty.

Petroc Kenning had told them that the material gathered that morning had been of real value. A reward was on offer.

Nobby thought of it as a banana thrown to a chimpanzee. The boss, PK, would be transmitting material to London. Sidney was shopping in the village, and Father William was on his bed because he’d be taking the night shift. The banana was a brief walk: Nobby and Auntie would take the corporal up the hill for a breath of fresh air, as recompense for good work. It would give Anneliese a chance to push the vacuum-cleaner round the ground-floor rooms and open the windows to get rid of the smell of stale smoke.

There was another reason to take him out.

The fog had lifted off the river. The village was laid out below them. Nobby would have mutinied at the thought of carrying a firearm. Auntie didn’t mind: he had a pistol in his belt, while Nobby pocketed, reluctantly, a telescopic police baton. He’d done the course.

They wrapped him up well in a heavy coat, a beanie, gloves and boots.

The other reason involved an internal dispute.

Nobby, with the baton, walked a pace ahead. Auntie was a little behind. They sandwiched him. There was a faint rumble of traffic on the road below, a bypass cutting off the village, and the drone of a couple of tractors. A little of the year’s harvest remained to be cut. Nobby knew a bit about wine, but not as much as most of the Service’s officers: many regarded it as a badge of honour to be informed on years, crops, labels and the merits of different vineyards. On the river, which was a surly grey, a tug dragged a snake of barges upstream. There were no tourist boats. The bell in the church tower struck.

The dispute had centred on the corporal.

Trusted or not? Coughing up the real stuff or holding back? What was his idea of a life after his wife had joined him and he’d been squeezed dry? Was he truthful? Nobby’s view: he didn’t know. The boss thought it was manna from heaven, that they were getting the best and the brothel trap was as good as it gets. Auntie and Father William tended towards the boss. Sidney, no pedigree with them but known to an aged relative of PK, wouldn’t vouch for him. The wind came through the gorge, whipping their faces and clothing.

Auntie said, from behind, ‘It’ll be good, Mehrak, when your wife comes, and you’ve a good chance of a new life, a secure one. A start.’

Nobby led, hearing the scrape of feet coming after him.

‘You’re in the hands of generous people. The mistakes you made are in the past.’

They approached an arch built of old stone. In the house there were books on the village – the product of a fledgling tourist agency, Nobby thought. Four hundred years ago, the books said, this had been one of seven gates into the village of Spitz, already an important place for wine; it had been the focal point of an attack by the Swedish Army – the defenders had been massacred. So, this was the Rotes Tor, the Red Gate, from which the Swedes had gone down the hill into the village and done their pillaging and raping on a grand scale.

Nobby had a degree in modern languages: he could read the German guidebook; he spoke Spanish and Italian too.

He’d married while he was at Warwick University, but they’d gone their separate ways within a couple of years and divorced fourteen years ago. He was forty now and would be Nobby for the rest of his life. There was no new wife but he had a girlfriend, Kathy, in FCO, now posted in Kazakhstan, the embassy at Astana. She sent him emails about being on the steppes, horse-riding with a commercial attaché. Nobby lived in her flat but she charged him rent – had put it up a couple of months ago. He knew he was regarded as pleasant, clubbable and unambitious. He did his job, stayed below the radar, and shunned responsibility. Put simply, Nobby didn’t know whether the corporal was intelligent enough to use them as a means of moving on. He had done Irish turncoats and a Libyan interrogator. Each was different. He found the psyche of the defector unfathomable – ‘I mean, what a totally dumb thing to do.’ There was a bench by the old gate and a misty view.

‘Set yourself up in a business. Keep to the quiet life, no waves. You’ve a good future.’ He sat down, but the corporal did not. Neither did Auntie. Auntie stayed behind him. Trust did not exist. Did Nobby like the man? Not at all. Was he ever going to like the man? Improbable. He thought the place beautiful, and that he was privileged to be there, high above the Danube and the gorge, but it was wasted on him. And on the man they guarded. ‘I expect you’re tired. That’s natural. It was a tough session, going back so far into your memory. Just concentrate on the future – your wife with you. Any idea what sort of business you might get into? We have people who can help with that.’

All of them lived with the photograph of her. Nobby did, and Auntie and Father William, and PK had pressured for the extraction to happen, and Sidney had had the cheek to stop the car by their embassy and ‘nick’ the red rose bloom growing off their diplomatic territory.

Auntie said, ‘What about your wife, Mehrak? What do you think she’d like to do?’

The man was crying silently, his hands clamped on the back of the bench. His knuckles were white, Nobby saw, and his shoulders were shaking. It was halfway through the first day that the boys had spent over the frontier – poor beggars – and in two and a half more the call would come through of the pick-up, or the phone in Petroc Kenning’s pocket would stay silent. The next two and a half days would be tough. The man cried and made no effort to get a handkerchief from his pocket. Nobby did not intervene but watched the tractor and its trailer below them, and the women lopping the grapes. They’d be tough days, hard to weather. Maybe only the corporal understood quite how tough.

They were back from shopping in Dogubeyazit where there was a
Spar
. Dunc had pushed the trolley and Mandy had filled it. Dunc used to do it with his wife on a Saturday morning, but he’d been divorced now for the last eleven months and separated a year before that. It was what Mandy did with her husband early on Sunday mornings. She’d paid too, and put the receipt into her purse. They’d driven back to the accommodation and parked.

The sun was up and the wind was cold.

She said, ‘I’ve written what you’d put on a postcard, about the place. “Dear Tad, Dog is a dump. As many sheep as locals in the main boulevard. It stinks, is seriously short of regeneration and is Mafia-land, Mandy xxx”. Too long, but bollocks to that.’

‘I reckon you’re selling it short. I’ve put, “Dear Sara, Have settled in and we have excellent views, not only of the corporation rubbish tip. Not mugged yet, but are optimistic our turn will come, Dunc.” Let’s have a cup of tea.’

God alone knew how the Ankara people had come up with this address. They were clear of the town of
Dogubeyazit
, whole population was ethnic Kurdish, and had a garrison of mechanised paratroops who were ethnic Turks. The road from the town ran towards the Iranian border, fifteen miles or less, but there was a track to the left of the road that ducked behind an escarpment where the house was tucked away. From Mandy’s bedroom, it was indeed possible to see the rubbish tip, but the views were excellent. The peak of Ararat was clear from both bedrooms and the living area. It was ten miles away and the cliché-mongers would have said it was ‘iconic.’ He said it was ‘fantastic’ and she thought it ‘awesome’. There was the main mountain, a Little Ararat and more peaks to the east, where the road ran.

She unpacked the plastic bags and he was on his knees at the fire. The town was a ‘dump’. It was shabby and dirty, a proportion of the building work had been abandoned, the cold was brutal, most of the shops were half empty, the cars were ancient and poverty had settled there. The comforts of Europe seemed an age away. The jeeps with the well-wrapped troops of an occupying force cruised past the deprivation.

They’d talked about it the night before, after their picnic meal in the kitchen, and had swapped what they knew of the tensions between a Kurdish population and a Turkish government in this area: ambushes, killings, arrests, gaol, torture, guerrilla bands, army patrols and road checks. They’d talked about the economy of the town – smuggling, corruption, organised crime. The town was a ‘dump’, but the property in which they were housed was spacious, comfortable, well furnished, clean, and had cost money. It was stone-built. It had double glazing and decent rugs on tiled floors. The crockery, utensils and cutlery in the kitchen were new and the fridge worked. So did the cooker. The fire took.