The Corporal's Wife (2013) (42 page)

He saw the logo on the sign, the blurred shape of the pumps and the outline of the military vehicles – armoured cars or lorries – parked on the forecourt.

Only he could do it. He checked each cupboard, but there was no big container. He climbed out. No one spoke to wish him luck. There was nothing from her, except a look into his eyes, which might have been trust. Or not. The wind slapped at his face and he took a line from where they were to what he thought was the fuel station, with the military there. He stepped out, the clock ticked, a hammer in his mind, some goats scattered from his path and a kid waved to him. Zach walked fast towards the distant road.

He had not replied. Asked by the investigator to explain why his driver had been in Dubai, and how the journey could be considered the state’s business, he had stood up, indicated that, as far as he was concerned, the meeting was closed, pushed back the chair and walked towards the door. For the brigadier it was a moment of bluff, which was not called.

He was addressed neither as ‘Brigadier Joyberi’, nor as ‘Joyberi’. He was told that he would be recalled for further questioning and should continue to be available. He had walked out on them because he hadn’t known how to answer. Everyone did it: everyone of importance, stature, influence had an account on the far side of the Gulf, in Istanbul, Beirut or Bucharest. They had the ‘right’ to deal in import and export, the ‘right’ to avoid punitive taxation, the ‘right’ to buy development land at a reasonable price, and then to have an interest in the company bidding for the development. He had done what everyone did. He was to be ‘available’.

He took the bus.

Reza Joyberi wore his uniform, with a double strip of medal ribbons on his chest. Some on the bus would have assumed that a man of such rank travelled with them to demonstrate his credentials as a ‘man of the people’. Most, he realised, were made uncomfortable by his presence. An old man had a seat and rose to offer it. Joyberi saw that he steadied himself on a stick and had lost his right leg – a veteran of the war with Iraq. He declined it. No one talked near him. No one met his eye.

He went to his office. He was saluted at the gate. He walked down the corridor and saw friends, colleagues, rivals in their rooms. None caught his glance. He came to his door and went past it because his name wasn’t there. It should have been on a plastic strip at eye-level on the door. It had gone. He backtracked. The new name was that of a lieutenant colonel.

He didn’t knock, but pushed open the door. ‘You’re sitting in my chair.’

‘I don’t think so.’ The officer stayed put and dropped his head to study some papers.

‘That’s my fucking chair and this is my fucking office.’

The man appeared annoyed at the interruption. ‘I was told you had vacated the space and were about to be transferred.’

‘Untrue. Get out.’

‘I heard either to anti-smuggling operations in the Baluchi desert, or as military attaché in Tajik, Kazakh- or Uzbekistan.’ Raza Joyberi was being laughed at.

‘Get out.’

‘I was told the posting to the wilderness or “nowhere” was the best facing you, but there could be worse. I heard the word “treason” used, and others spoke of “scandal”.’

He came at the man fast, his arms outstretched. He focused on his adversary’s throat, groped and was dragged back. His raised voice had alerted security, the section of the IRGC responsible for the barracks. He was held respectfully but firmly. He was walked out. The door was closed behind him. He was taken down corridors and into an area to which civilians were brought if they had to be questioned but were not in detention. He was shown to a chair and sat on it. A guard stood inside and the other was outside the door.

He couldn’t answer the question put to him: why had his corporal travelled?

His mind was made up, a decision taken. At that moment, confronted by his corporal, he would have put the man on the floor and kicked his head to a pulp. He saw the wife of the corporal in her night clothes, with the blanket fallen from her shoulders. She watched, he kicked – and knew himself destroyed.

Rollo said, ‘It’s become a mess, Petroc, and you want comfort from me but I’m hard put to offer it. My difficulty matters more to me than yours. A herdsman has reported that there’s a bear in the forest, injured or already dead. It’s heartbreaking for Stephie and me, the thought of that fine animal alone and suffering. It will have been butchered by some cruel man who imagines he can protect something as mundane as a few bee hives. That’s for tomorrow. The defector. Your nerves are at breaking point because you’ve invested so much of your credit on getting the woman out. You must make up your own mind. I can nudge you but I can’t tell you.’

Petroc regretted making the call – but he had no one else to turn to for reassurance.

‘Please, Rollo, keep going.’

‘He’ll be trying to read you. You tell me that the mission faces catastrophe. Keep the mood bright, show confidence and bleed him. Work the hours that God gives you, and get everything out of him that you can. If, then, you need to dump him, there’s no harm done. What I always say of these people – they’re vain, unpleasant and deceitful. More advice: believe nothing he tells you unless you can verify at least some of it. Petroc, can we finish this? I’m anxious to keep the line free.’

‘Of course, Rollo. Difficult hours ahead for all of us.’

She called him. As Dunc Whitcombe had predicted, it had never happened. She was in the kitchen and he was making his bed. It had never happened in his bed. She was at the sink, clearing up their breakfast, and when he had done the hoovering he would lay the fire. She whistled for his attention and pointed through the window. She hadn’t asked if he’d slept well. Neither had he asked her. Their eyes had met frequently over the meal but neither had shown that a differing relationship existed between them. Would it last? He didn’t know.

He switched off the Hoover, went into the kitchen and stood beside her. She pointed to the track that led off the road and down to the house. Two open jeeps were splashing fast through the puddles. The first carried an officer of rank and his driver; the second bristled with weapons and would have been the big man’s escort. She wiped her hands on the towel and he had spun on his heel.

They were together in the living room. The maps were swept off the low table, and the file that had the photographs and biographies was snatched up. He took them into his bedroom, reached for his bag and tripped the padlock. She was beside him with another file, the Contego material, from her room. Everything went into the bag; the padlock was fastened. She gazed into his face – a good-looking woman, too good for him. Then she was up and searched fast around his bed, pulling open the drawers and slamming them shut. The cover story was sacrosanct. Her finger jabbed at him. He would propagate the legend. Gravel scattered close to the house.

They were in the living area, facing the front door. They were kept waiting.

Through the window beside the door they saw him roll on his feet, in polished boots, slap his hands together behind his back and strut a little. He took in their view. He would have seen the main road leading away, the lorry traffic on it and the bend that took it out of sight as it climbed. The hills in the distance were faint in the wet mist. There had been a dusting of snow during the night. It would come on again in the late afternoon, and then – Mandy had predicted – they would be unlikely to see anything of the border and the higher ground from a vantage-point at the rendezvous. The officer moved.

They saw him from Mandy’s room and she had left her pyjamas on the bed – they would be a distraction. He admired her for it and wondered if it had been an instructor’s suggestion at the Fort one weekend. The officer came around the house and paused by Dunc’s window, kept going, did the full circuit and ended up back on the patio again.

There, with the rain falling on his uniform, he paused again. He looked across the scrub. The boy struggled to move a bale of fodder and the horses jostled, trying to hurry him. Ararat was truncated by the clouds, but the officer stared long and hard at the boy – then spun.

He faced them. He had a pistol at his belt, fastened to a lanyard that was looped at his neck and held in a holster of well-buffed leather. Two sergeants or corporals stood behind him: same age, middle forties, experienced. None had smiled or gestured a greeting.

He murmured, ‘Best foot forward, Mandy.’

‘Just stick with being an idiot and hold the legend.’

Dunc smiled through the windows, as did Mandy. It was not returned, and there was mud on the uppers of those cared-for boots. She opened the doors, letting in the cold and the officer. The others stayed outside.

There had been holidays when Dunc and his wife had stayed in converted barns in farmyards in south Devon or west Wales. They had gone for walks along byways, read the books they had brought with them, and there would have been a pub within easy reach. The farmer would call on them out of courtesy and curiosity. The trick was, Dunc remembered, to stop him sitting down and thinking himself their new best friend or they’d have him for an hour. Not now, not this officer. Their smiles were not reciprocated. They’d proffered hands but the officer’s stayed behind his back.

His boots shed mud on the carpet. He spoke quality English. He was, he volunteered, Major Emre Terim.

Dunc held the smile, forced it, and nodded to show interest.

The major had attended the joint-services training command in Oxfordshire, had had experience of the British military from war-games. He commanded a mechanised infantry unit in the town. He had two problems.

‘I’m sorry to hear that, Major. What would they be?’ Dunc asked.

‘The problems are from the murderous fucking bastards, the Kurdish terrorists, who operate in this area.’

Dunc thought the obscenity was designed to shock. He didn’t react. ‘Very difficult, I’m sure.’

‘My second problem is with those fucking scum the smugglers. They move back and forth across the Iran frontier with class-A drugs, people, and kids from Asia for sex perverts in Europe. I detest and despise them.’

‘Another extremely difficult problem, I’m sure.’

Would he like tea or coffee? Mandy asked. It was an interruption, might have been from an overzealous housekeeper. He flashed a glance at her, then beaded on Dunc.

‘I would not wish to have a third problem added to my professional life.’

‘Of course not.’

‘It would irritate me to learn that foreign intelligence officers were using my territory for their affairs, pissing on me, shitting on me, as it would annoy you, should I be found pissing or shitting in Oxford. You understand me, sir?’

‘I’m Dunc Whitcombe and my friend is Mandy Ross. We seem to be, Major, at cross-purposes. I am, of course, interested in your problems, but we are here to study the environs of Ararat and to see—’

‘For intelligence officers to be in this location, staying on these premises and allowing themselves to be linked closely with what I call
fucking scum
is offensive to me.’

He persisted, saw no other route: ‘I’m an archaeologist, Major. That is my academic discipline. The chance arose of seeing where the Ark might have been, where Alexander marched, to be on a route travelled by Marco Polo and—’

‘You are staying on a criminal’s property. You and your
friend
are agents of the British services. Don’t treat me as a fool. There is an unpleasant gaol in Diyarbakir and a worse one in Van, but the worst would be the cell block in my garrison camp. Do you wish to experience them? You should be gone tomorrow.’

‘I think, with respect, you’re in error. Already we’re finding fascinating sites to visit—’

‘Don’t waste my time. Be gone by tomorrow. I don’t understand you people, the arrogance. At the college they talked much of ‘‘punching above our weight’’, not of interfering where they were not wanted. It is extraordinary, the conceit. What did you do in Iraq, except fail? What was your success in Afghanistan? Too small to measure. And now you are involved in the affairs of my neighbour, Iran, not your neighbour. Who gives you the right? You stay in the house of a criminal, a smuggler, and at my convenience I will deal with him. Your talk about the mountain is the poorest cover I have heard. Learn some humility, but first you should fuck off by tomorrow. Good day.’

He was gone.

She closed the doors. She saw him walk away and thought the rain might be heavier by the evening.

Two cars came down the main road heading north and towards Khvoy. The rain had eased. He didn’t have the luxury of time to slow down as he came closer. A fine drizzle settled on his face.

He had no training and his experience of stress was minimal. Three pumps. A small fast-food outlet at the side of a mini-mart where the cash desk was. A sign pointing to the toilets. A workshop at the back where a car was jacked up. Half a dozen Guard Corps men that he could see, dark olive uniforms. Some had rifles and others had snub-barrelled machine-guns, and were lounging near their transport. Zach felt they were used to being astride their world. Two wandered towards the road and one went into the centre, where the white line was painted; the other stayed close to the drive-in for the fuel station. They paraded their superiority, waved for the drivers to slow, then stop. They were bawled at. A sergeant, a small barrel-shaped man with a straggling beard, a pistol holster flapping against his thigh and a rifle in his hand, came from behind a truck and yelled abuse at the two men.