The Corporal's Wife (2013) (28 page)

They went inside, and the warmth bounced on him. A pretty girl behind the bar smiled in welcome. The beers came and Petroc Kenning felt a sort of peace. If it worked well, he was a made man. If it didn’t . . . He drank.

It was not the job of the Signals technicians to interpret the messages that the great dishes high in the Troodos mountains sucked into the basement bunkers and projected onto the screens. They fed what was considered relevant, but did not anticipate the reactions it would trigger. From the Dhekelia base on Cyprus, details of transmissions were sent on to dishes that towered over Cornish moorland, then transferred to the analysts at GCHQ in Gloucestershire.

There was abnormal traffic on the secure nets employed by the Iranian police authorities and the security divisions of the Revolutionary Guards Corps. There had been a gradual but steady and measurable increase during the course of the evening, Tehran time. The volume indicated ‘concern’ and was not yet considered to show that ‘crisis’ had been reached. The details, with the preliminary opinion attached, reached Vauxhall Cross, where it was typed, below the synopsis of what had been learned: ‘Manhunt. Setting up a dragnet. Attention of Tadeuz Fenton, Iran Desk.’

The speed of the van had changed suddenly three times, twice with sharp acceleration and once Ralph had jammed on the brakes. Each time it had swerved, and at the last, Zach had bounced across the floor, cannoning into her. She’d yelped.

Until then the drive had been smooth and unremarkable. No sense of danger had filtered into the back where they squatted or lay in semi-darkness. Not now.

Wally knelt in the hatch between the cab’s seats, his bulk blocking any view of what was ahead.

Ralph stamped on the brakes again. Zach heard the tyres shriek and thought he smelled the burned rubber. He couldn’t hear what they were saying above the roar of lorries alongside them. Then there was a noise he hadn’t heard before: a sledgehammer beating on corrugated iron.

‘What the fuck is it?’

The answer, dismissive, from Wally: ‘What the fuck does it sound like?’

Wally shifted to give Zach a view into the cab. He saw the light, high above them. Its source was the origin of the noise. The helicopter nudged along above them, keeping pace. It was, Zach knew, locked on to them.

‘How long?’

‘What does it matter?’ A snarl from Wally. ‘It’s fucking there.’

The jigsaw slotted into place.

Ralph had tried to ease the van’s roof out of the light by using the big lorries as shields. The light wavered; it went between them and a lorry with a trailer, hauling timber, in front of them, then to a long-distance coach in the fast lane. The beam’s focus switched across the coach and the lorry to rest on a truck weighed down with bricks, travelling slowly on the inside.

Had the helicopter crew been briefed to look for that make and colour of van on that road?

He craned to hear Mikey, Wally and Ralph.

‘What they got?’

‘Attack jobs, like the Apache, and they make one that’s the Bell but with their own name on it.’

‘What would the Bell type carry?’

‘Might have a belt-fed, might not, or machine-gun-mounting capability.’

‘Their Apache version?’

‘They do a Hellfire. They have all the missiles.’

‘What’s an estimate?’

Mikey did the summary. ‘If I’m right, a fair shout, they picked up intelligence this evening – where, don’t know, how, not important – and they’ll have scrambled the birds that were fuelled. They’ll have done several roads out of the city and hope one of them strikes lucky. One has. If they were armed I reckon by now they’d have fired on us, done a bit of wasting.’

They were beyond Zanjan. Zach knew that because they had stopped there to buy fuel. She had been escorted to the kiosk and had paid with cash they’d given her. She’d also bought bread, cheese and water. He hadn’t been asked to go with her. She had gone inside – he had seen through the windscreen – Wally hovering behind her. She had worn the scarf over her hair, and her veil, and had taken less than a minute and a half. Wally had stayed outside and kept her in view. Zach had heard him get out of the van, cocking his pistol. They didn’t trust her, and there was no reason why they should. She might have asked for a phone, or spilled a story to the young guy at the cash desk, and she’d have been shot. Trust, Zach thought, came slow to these guys. He’d had some bread, and the cheese was creamy. They’d driven on towards Mianeh, stopping at a lay-by for a piss; the woman had been allowed a dark corner. He didn’t know whether they were past Mianeh or not.

‘What’re they going to do?’

‘Shepherd us.’

‘And we just wait for the big bang?’

‘They’re hearing about us on the radios. There’s a fix. Where we are, to the last metre, so they’ve scrambled.’

‘Getting a block in place, sealing it tight.’

‘Do we just wait for some ugly fucker to get his hands on us?’

‘Who’s going to do the business?’

‘You Mikey. Get the zero right and hit it.’

‘Your shout, Mikey.’

The helicopter was above them, the sound of the rotors bludgeoning the roof. Where would he rather be? A fool had said, ‘Nowhere.’ Her teeth were chattering.

He spoke: ‘What can I do?’

‘You can shut the fuck up.’

Wally was into the kit and scrabbled to undo a zip, then a Velcro restraint. He took out the rifle and fastened in a magazine. His movements let the light flood them. The pace stayed constant. He understood: for the people in the helicopter it was as if they already had them in handcuffs. They were boxed in, traffic on either side, in front and behind. The other drivers would have realised they were all under the control of the bird above. Zach thought it like a sparrow hawk, monitoring them. The rifle was passed to Mikey, who armed it. She was frightened – Zach reached out to her. She might or might not have seen his hand, but she didn’t take it, even though earlier she’d touched his neck.

Wally was the biggest of the three guys. Ralph drove on. The roar around and above them burst inside the van. Wally had the door open and, with his other hand, held on to Mikey’s belt. The guys didn’t trust Zach or the woman, but they trusted each other. Trusted Ralph to hold the speed steady, trusted Wally to keep the door open against the thrust of the slipstream and hang onto the belt, and trusted Mikey with the rifle.

Mikey had the aim. Wally grunted at the weight in his hand. Mikey held the aim and Zach couldn’t imagine how it was possible to be so still yet leaning half out of a van door. Two shots. There was the tinkle of cartridge cases hitting the metal floor. Zach didn’t know how far above them the helicopter was. Mikey was back inside and the door slammed.

The light had been killed.

‘Given the fucker something to think about.’

‘He’s away.’

‘Hammer it, Ralph.’

‘Great shot, Mikey.’

The helicopter had veered off. Wally said the pilot wouldn’t hang around to hunt for medals.

They were into the fast lane. The lorry with the trailer of timber was behind them, and the long-distance coach. Ralph had killed his own headlights, used those of other vehicles, was driving fast and close to the central crash barrier. It had been going well – no longer. There had been a morning the previous summer when work on a site was progressing and a man had chucked down his spade – why not? Except that the spade’s blade had carved into a buried wasps’ nest, and they came out. Everything had been fine while the wasps were undisturbed, but now there was mayhem. Three men were stung and one collapsed because their territory had been invaded. He wished she had taken his hand.

Wally said, ‘I’m thinking, Mikey, that they’re in a shambles. They may not have crack guys at any block they’ve put together. At least, that’s what I’m hoping.’

Zach shivered. He knew nothing of fighting men, but he was depending on them, now, as was she. They depended on a man who could – from a moving vehicle – hit a helicopter’s searchlight. Mikey hadn’t made any song and dance about it. It had been the guys’ moment. His liberty, his life, rested in their hands.

He had been Lieutenant Ralph Cotton, then aged twenty-four, and was just back from running a platoon with a Rifles battalion in Helmand. The feeling in the mess, apparently, was that the major and his wife could patch up their marriage but not while he was so obviously the injured party. Not that it mattered, but she had bloody seduced Ralph and made the running. It would have passed off without notice, had not a packet of his cigarettes fallen out of his tunic pocket and been pushed half under the bed on the major’s side. That might have been explained away, but a lance-corporal who had been paid to mow the grass in front of the major’s quarters had snapped a picture on his mobile of Lieutenant Cotton beating his retreat.

The mess had ruled against him, and the padre had handed him the loaded pistol: Ralph’s typed resignation from the unit, with immediate effect. He’d signed it. He was from mid-Wales, privately educated, good with people, and had had the wit not to set his sights at the summit but towards the foothills.

He had gone to Contego Security.

They liked former officers, were short of them. They had a full book of men out of the army – regulars, given the boot for indiscipline, or classified as steroid addicts. He wasn’t a thug and was likely to charm a client. Open arms welcomed him at the offices off Ealing High Street. He’d had two years of good money on the British embassy detail, Afghanistan, and two years of rubbish money with an agricultural aid organisation, also in Afghanistan. The market there was contracting, restrictions on movement were more limited, immunity had been downgraded, and the Western governments’ commitment was waning.

This time, he’d needed the work.

His address, on the Contego files, was a house set back from the Llangurig to Ponterwyd road: nine bedrooms and a bit more than two hundred acres, which were mostly woodland, hillside or bog. The roof needed repairing, which would cost. His mother was there, with his father and sister. Ralph was not a businessman or a farmer, and should have been a half-decent professional soldier. He had hoped private military contracting might bring in the cash for the roof. Life could be cruel. His age and lack of prospects caused conflict at home, so when the phone had rung, echoing in that bloody great draughty hallway, he had almost run to the car for the drive to Worcester railway station.

He was stockily built, with dark hair and a pale complexion. Since the major’s wife, other women had considered him handsome, but none had had any money. Now there was Minnie. She ran a livery stable and they did hunt balls together and Christmas parties. She was cheerfully broke, and overdrawn from January to December. At the best thrashes she’d wear her mother’s old evening gowns. Everyone said that, in her ancent finery, she looked fantastic. They’d fall into bed when they were drunk, and didn’t talk about marriage when they were sober. He’d called her from the station to tell her he’d be away for a few days. She had advised, ‘Don’t get your arse shot off, darling. See you.’ To their friends on the circuit, he was the Brat and she was the Bitch.

Each time he was far away, he worried about how to fund the roof and how to keep the place when his father and mother could no longer cope.

A natural hero? Not really.

A good man to have on the team? Probably.

Honourable? Possibly. Devious? No.

Reaction if the shit went up? Unknown. But he was a quality driver, and had toned down the accent that had been appropriate in the Rifles battalion but wasn’t in Contego work. There was little else about him that anyone needed to know.

He drove fast, ignoring horn blasts when he overtook on the inside or made the chicken-run past on the outside, coming up like a shadow in a mirror. The Bitch didn’t have a photograph of her Brat, had never asked for one. He didn’t have one of her . . . Silly, but he’d have liked one – of her in boots, jodhpurs, a hunt jacket and astride a big horse. She would have laughed if he’d asked for it.

His wife was asleep. They were lucky in their apartment to have two bedrooms.

Kourosh sat on the floor of the second bedroom and wallowed in his misery. It was infatuation and he thought it destroyed him. His head was against the side of the bed in which his child slept. The boy’s breathing was laboured – he had respiratory problems. The doctors said he’d be better off if they left the city, where the smog was so pervasive, and moved to the Gulf coast, anywhere from Bushehr to Bandar Abbas. He hadn’t followed their advice. He had lied to his wife. He had told her that he was closely involved in investigations of the greatest sensitivity: it was impossible for him to move south, away from his team. Maybe in the future. He hadn’t told his commander about the child’s difficulties and requested a transfer. It would have meant leaving
her
.

He knew the contours of her body, dreamed of possessing her. He knew each wrinkle and flaw in the faces of the two men whose photographs stood in the room over the garage. It was as if she mocked him. Today had been bad for his child. It was always worse for him when it rained. Now his boy tossed and turned, and Kourosh’s mind churned. If he denounced her anonymously from a call box or an Internet café, described the men with her, and the route they would take to the northern town of Khvoy, she would be taken.