The Corporal's Wife (2013) (56 page)

The horses were gone, and so was the boy.

Far away, light nuzzled the ridge that was the border over which,
perhaps
, that day they would come. There was a faint flick of colour high up there, and he strained to recognise the red of the Turkish flag against the sky’s blue. If the horses were gone and the boy, there was a chance that the border was porous, that smugglers at least believed they could avoid the patrols – but only a chance. He should have been there, and was not. He threw on his clothes, didn’t wash or shave, and didn’t need her to echo, as he scurried to the car, that it was ‘unprofessional behaviour’ on her watch and his. Mandy was still zipping her jeans when he drove away, and the house door was wide open behind him. His shirt was unbuttoned to the waist.

He had forgotten about the four men, and shame curled in him.

‘Are you sure, Brigadier?’

‘Yes.’

He stared out from the place he had chosen, a low eyrie. He was on a rock slab. Millennia before, it had fallen from a higher cliff, come to rest and now made a flat, level surface. He sat cross-legged in the sun, the wind blustering around him. He could see her.

‘Do you not need me, Brigadier, to stay and guide you back?’

‘I do not.’

He was on the north side of the valley. If he looked to the right, to the west, he could see the twin, separated, flags and the ridge. Beyond it was an abyss, then a vague view of open ground, finally blocked by the bulk of the mountain. If his gaze switched to the east, the expanse of the valley floor stretched away. Beyond it there were more mountains, and far beyond what he could see, the towns of Khvoy, Maku and the city of Tabriz, all inside the country of his birth. He carried a small monocular, convenient enough to fit into a tunic pocket. Up here, exposed, the cold raked him, and the young man deputed as his driver and guide flung his arms around himself. When Reza Joyberi held up the lens and focused it, he had a good sight of her.

The young soldier persisted: ‘Shall I sit further away, not disturb you but be here?’

‘Go back to the transport.’

The boy, pleasant enough, no more than twenty-one, would fear a verbal attack from his commanding officer if he returned to the jeep – three miles back, left where the track they’d used had petered out – and abandoned the senior man, then couldn’t answer a barrage of questions: what happened to him? Where did he go? What did he say? The brigadier felt composed as he watched her. He could see her face, and most of her hair brushed like a veil on the man’s chest. He gorged on what he saw.

The boy was standing, still unwilling to leave, confused. ‘Should I go to the vehicle, then come back for you? I don’t think it will be long.’

‘It won’t be long.’

‘Those two are walking into the block . . . But, Brigadier, we were told that there were three others with them, foreign terrorists. I haven’t seen them.’

‘You should go back to the jeep and wait for me there. Young man.’

‘Yes, Brigadier.’

‘Consider. Did I reach such a senior rank in our armed forces, in the al-Qods division, by fearing – in daylight – my own shadow? Must I explain my intentions to a private, second class, then act only if he approves? Go back to the jeep, and wait for me as long as is necessary.’

He hadn’t raised his voice. He believed he had spoken kindly to his guide.

‘Yes, Brigadier, if you’re certain.’

‘I am.’

He smiled. He heard the kid scramble away, dislodging a few pebbles, and he was alone. His faithful Mehrak had destroyed him. His own man’s wife had killed him. He didn’t doubt that if he had stayed in Tehran and attempted to face out an investigation by that cold-faced bastard, the interrogator, he would have ended on his knees in a garrison camp yard, waiting for the cocking of a pistol behind him and the firing of a bullet into his neck. Or they would have hanged him in the Evin. Who would have spoken up for him? No one. In his mind he saw the many faces of officers and officials he had worked with. None would have risked their own necks and their families’ futures by standing with him.

He could have taken his pleasure with any number of girls. They would have been available easily and cheaply at the bazaar and brought to any hotel room he had chosen. He had not used his position for that purpose. He had sex only with his wife: he was fond of her, and of his son. He had had to see the corporal’s wife. He couldn’t escape from her and watched her. Would she have slept with him? Would Mehrak have driven his wife to the Laleh International, five stars, or the back entrance of the Firouzeh?

His eyes were on her and he saw the pain in her face each time the boy stumbled. Her ankle hung loosely and he thought it was broken.

He might have done – his corporal might have driven her to a hotel in the centre of the capital. As for himself, he might have sat in a chair, fully dressed, and made her sit on the bed, also clothed. He
might
simply have gazed at her, not spoken, let silence drift around them. Jealousy burned in him. He saw how the man carried her, with an arm under her thigh. He looked ahead of them . . . A fantasy ran its course, and his life jolted forward. She was behind him. It had been a powerful fantasy, but it was past.

On the route to the distant twin flags there were two clusters of stones, dumped there in some massive earthquake, and the private had said that men from a commando force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were hidden in the shadows and gullies of the one nearest to the fugitives. His face had glowed with pride when he had spoken of them. Then there was a second mass of stones and flat ground, empty, to the flags. He had watched the boy and his driver’s wife long enough to estimate that they would blunder close to the rocks where men waited for them in twenty-five to thirty minutes. Why did they not go faster? Why did they not lie up, now that the mist had lifted, and wait for the cover of darkness? Why did they go up the centre of the valley and not take a route at the side where there were rocks and scrub they might have flitted between? He saw her . . .

. . . and saw her in the small, cramped room of the apartment when men had stripped open her drawers and cupboards, had rifled through her clothing and the blanket had fallen from her shoulders. She had gazed back at him, challenging him. He pushed himself up. The brigadier would not be seen. He was skilled in making broken ground. His friend had done it in Iraq and Lebanon, and had survived. He slipped away. He wouldn’t look back, search for her: his eyes would lock on the flags, distant Ararat and his future.

Mikey watched them, Zach and her. He was high in the rocks of their vantage-point and could see over the top of the jagged formation ahead. They were beyond it. He thought it was like watching a death. He’d done that. He’d seen men, colleagues in arms, slip from life in the sand of Iraq, and others go when a leg was taken off by a bomb in an irrigation ditch of Helmand. He had seen his mother go down slowly in the hospice near Worcester. There was a weakening, an acceptance of inevitability, then a leaking of fear. There had been a young squaddie in Helmand, who hadn’t lasted long enough for the casevac helicopter to arrive – he’d bubbled a request for the photograph of his girl to be taken from the breast pocket of his tunic. Mikey’s mother had asked – a last smile – for a final cigarette. He thought they faced it, and understood it.

Wally covered the side approach to their covert lie-up and Ralph had responsibility for the rear. The distance from Ralph to the flags was around two thousand yards and they hadn’t seen troops manoeuvre into position where they would be cut off from the last dash to the border. Truth was, Mikey was uncertain about the implications of them being where they were, without food or water, other than what they could scoop into their hands from the rain deposits. No bloody cigarettes either.

If they hadn’t hunkered down among those stones, they could have been over whatever the border was and scampering down the reverse slope. They could have been banging into the airwaves and demanding transport. They could have been starting on the drive to the airport. There would have been no high-fives. They would have been unresponsive and evasive.

So instead they had stopped, and taken positions among the stones. They had their firepower and . . . They had seen the short convoy of horses going through, led by a boy, followed by guys with Kalashnikovs. Mikey had also seen a man edging through rocks and bushes on the north side; he had rank because Mikey’s binoculars had picked up the brightness of his medal ribbons.

He watched them. They came so slowly. He didn’t feel good – neither did the others. His imagined outcome had not materialised.

They came at a pitiful speed, as if death faced them. He heard a drone far above, saw the silver flash in the sky and ignored it. He watched them come closer to the ambush point. Ralph and Wally wouldn’t help him because he had command.

He sat in the seat. The handcuffs were fastened tightly enough to gouge into the skin at his wrists. The co-pilot pushed open the cockpit door, beaming. Current airspeed was 245 knots, and current altitude was fifteen thousand feet above sea level. The border was six thousand feet up so there was a decent view of the ground. They were in contact now with the tower at Tabriz and would land there in twenty-seven minutes. A minute earlier, they had crossed the international frontier.

The two men sat behind him, clapping enthusiastically. He remembered now when he had last been in a small aircraft. The British woman had been correct, civil, and had offered him drinks – coffee, tea, juice. He had not been a criminal. He looked from the porthole. They were over a long, shallow valley, high hills flanking it, and behind him was the huge expanse of a great mountain, snow-covered at the peak. Below he glimpsed bright colours. They flew steadily, the aircraft rocking a little in the winds but not as it had on the previous leg. He was manacled for love of his wife. His safety rested on the word of the brigadier, and he was confident his officer would speak for him. He clung to that. He had nothing else to hold to.

He knew where the door was. He had seen the catch. He had worked out how many paces it would take him to get from his seat to the door, and how long before they reacted. He had thought he could kick them when they grappled with him but they would back away if he had successfully opened the door. Either he would fall alone or with one of them hanging onto him. He had not done it because he had believed the brigadier would defend him. Now they were alert behind him and the chance, small, had gone. He trusted.

Petroc Kenning recognised Tadeuz Fenton’s ability to put a gloss on things. His juniors came away from an audience feeling better, reckoning their efforts were appreciated. He was greeted as he had expected: ‘First class, Petroc. Your efforts have been outstanding.’

He had been sandwiched between the desk head’s session with some Germans and – as Sara Rogers had explained, a lunch with a trio of Frenchmen, who might be fed a little of the operation just completed, enough to stir some admiration. ‘But he wanted to see you, Petroc, because he’s pleased. He has a meeting straight after lunch, then he’s with the DG, but he’ll want to catch up with you this evening. Sixish?’ Sara Rogers might do an inquest report but it was unlikely that Tadeuz Fenton would allow the stain of failure to touch him.

‘Never more serious . . . We’ve left our Friends and Cousins wanting more, which is good. What’s better is that we’ve given them material they were short of. We can seldom say that, but in this case it was true. We’ve created a little hillock of debt, which is always healthy, and there has been collateral.’

She was in the doorway and poised to intervene. It was another little game that Tadeuz Fenton liked to play: she would indicate to him that he was already late for his next appointment when in fact his schedule was intact. Everyone liked to do that – it made their importance bloom.

‘Stands to reason that the corporal’s master is holed below the waterline. We’ve generated in the highest echelons of their military formations a very real sense of chaos and distrust. All down to you, Petroc. I’ll catch you later.’

He was gone.

Half a dozen questions were skipping in Petroc Kenning’s mind: five dealt with the team put in there; one involved the woman.

He said to Sara, ‘Do you know the Burns line, ‘‘
To see her is to love her, And love but her for ever
”?’

‘I don’t think so. Should I?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Is that why you’re wearing the rose, Petroc? Very fetching, even though it’s rather squashed from the journey.’

He smiled, he hoped graciously, then slipped out. The trouble with wearing a rose, already damaged in transit and flattened, was that it cut short its life. The scent was uplifting, but it wouldn’t last beyond the day.

He was at the outer door, then turned. ‘Sara, where are they?’

‘On the last leg, if they can ride their luck.’

They were far from the beginning of their journey and far from its end.

The wrapping on the packages had stood up to the ferrying over the border and into Iran, to the hand-over supervised by officers of the Revolutionary Guards Corps, then into and out of a lock-up garage in Khvoy. They had been brought on by vehicle, over a cross-country route, with more money paid to border police. Then the seventy two-kilo parcels had been transferred to mules. The caravan had now to go half the length of the valley before it met the men who accompanied the horses that always did the last stretch before slipping across the border.