The Corporal's Wife (2013) (2 page)

He heard the other men’s teeth chattering, and forced himself not to shiver in the early-morning cold: ‘Be brave,’ he muttered from the side of his mouth.

They were hurried forward now and hands gripped his arms. There were three nooses, and three metal-framed chairs with plastic seats, perhaps from the guards’ canteen.

He remembered how it had been with her when they had made love – some afternoons the scratches on his back were deep and bled.

If he shivered they would think he was frightened and would have won. He would give them nothing.

He carried her face in his mind. The second time he had met her Johnny had taken her clothes off gently, eased them away. At first she had been nervous, then hesitant – then she had defied her upbringing.

After arrest some talked of attempting to negotiate with an interrogator. Give him something in exchange for mercy. Johnny hadn’t. If he had given names, there would have been more boys alongside him, guilty of disputing barricades with the
basij
and countering the gas with petrol bombs and stones. If he had broken, the woman’s name might have slipped from him. He would have gone through fire to save her, and would dangle at the end of a rope to ensure her safety.

He could feel the tiny paper ball of her picture, clenched in his fist. They let him choose: he went to the centre chair, feeling the chilly wind on his cheeks. Beside each there were men who wore dull olive uniforms and black balaclavas to mask their faces. Why did it matter if those who were moments from death should see the features of their killers? He considered it a sign of cowardice.

Men crowded around him and he saw confusion in their expressions. He realised they didn’t understand why he was smiling. It was the dry smile he shared with others of his age who lived on the north side of the city, in the foothills, and demonstrated his contempt for them. Hands clutched at him, but Johnny made a sharp movement, and their grip loosened. They would have lifted him but he stepped up on to the chair. The noose was level with his face. They allowed for no drop so he would die by choking. He didn’t know if his name was on an Amnesty list, if telegrams requesting mercy had been sent from abroad to the Supreme Leader, or if anyone cared.

The photograph was a squashed pellet in his hand but her image lived with him. The others were at either side of him now, and a hooded man used a short stepladder to climb behind each one and put the noose in place. Johnny could feel the rope against his chin.

He clenched his hand, saw her, felt her and heard her laughter.

The stepladder had gone.

The sun was a little higher and lit him, as it had lit her through the windows of the room above the garage . . . He felt a hand on the chair back.

Johnny said clearly to those at either side of him, ‘Fuck them, guys – fuck them.’

The chair was pulled away. He kicked in the air and pain billowed in his throat. His breath came harder and his fists loosened. Johnny saw her face and, with the last of his strength, he tried to tighten his left hand. He saw and heard her . . . Would she remember him?

He didn’t know. He was losing the fight to live. His fist slackened and the paper pellet fell to the ground. Her picture would be among the rivers of urine that always gathered under the gallows on a hanging morning. A trusty would swill it towards the drain, with the photograph, and the sun would dry the ground. His last words, audible only to himself: ‘Fuck them.’

He felt himself slowly circling, and death was close.

Chapter 1

He was sitting on the bed and the girl, in front of him, knelt on the floor. His head was down and he did not look into her face.

The image on the screen in front of a woman in a locked room a floor below was monochrome, and the audio effects were good: she could hear him panting. The watcher and the occupants of the other room were quite different in origin and background but the sex trade had brought them together on that autumn evening. The madam of the brothel, which was above a small hotel on a poorly lit street, set back from the prime property overlooking the Gulf shore, was a Lebanese Christian from the port city of Jounieh. On her screen, fiddling with the man’s shoelaces, was a girl from the west of Ukraine; the low-wattage bulbs beside the bed hid the blemishes on her face and the dark roots of her dyed-blonde hair. The man was Iranian, which ensured that he had been allocated the room with the best camera and microphone.

The woman seldom commented on the punters who visited her eight-room establishment. It had a waiting area with a pretence at a cocktail bar, where temporarily unemployed girls waited, and a bathroom with two showers. There was a small curtained-off area, where the maid waited to change sheets, if necessary, and there was the room with the screens. The woman, large, her face caked with makeup, kept her eyes on the screen. She had already sized him up: he was pathetic.

The girl from Ukraine, a veteran of Paris, Berlin, Naples and Beirut – where she and the madam had met – was the best. In that light, any healthy male, the woman thought, would have been fighting to set his hands on her. He wasn’t. He sat slumped, head down, breathing fast. His shoes and socks were off, and now she removed his trousers. His hands rested on his belly.

Two Arabs had brought him to her premises. They had been with the Romanian girls, had paid, and left after the madam had told them their colleague required a ‘longer service’. The client with the Ukrainian girl was to be kept in the cubicle: the images and sounds were being recorded. The madam was not political, but the money she was paid each week came in dollar bills, and was substantial. She had been waiting for an Iranian, as had those who paid her each Thursday afternoon.

The girl folded the trousers and laid them on the chair against the wall where his jacket hung. The picture above the chair was of a couple copulating but the man seemed not to have looked at it.

Now the girl edged his legs aside and wriggled between them. She took his arms, prised open his fists, laid his fingers on her shoulders and began to undo his shirt. He was shaking and the his eyes were closed, as if he was unwilling to look at her breasts. The madam thought that if the Ukrainian couldn’t arouse the man, no one could. The shirt came off, was folded and laid on top of the trousers. The vest was next.

A bell rang. Annoyed at the interruption, the madam licked her lips, slipped out of her office, locked the door and went into the waiting area. Two Norwegian sailors, officers: they’d have taken a tender ashore and were here before they hit the hotel bars. A quick exchange of money, and two of her girls were chosen at random. She went back, locked the door, peered at the screen and turned up the sound.

The sex act held little interest for her. When she went on holiday – the Seychelles or the Maldives – she would buy the services of a teenage boy. It confused and amazed her that men paid so well for a woman. She already had this one’s money, but he was still sitting motionless on the bed.

The girl turned her head, eyebrows raised, towards the corner of the room where the lens was hidden. Then she went on with her job.

Her robe slid from her shoulders. She edged a little to her left and shifted her knees, exposing her breasts and crotch to the camera. Her hair hung down, hiding much of the man’s face as she kissed him. He didn’t hold her tightly; neither did he push her away. It was as if he endured it and didn’t know how to end it. He would not have wanted to opt out in front of the men who had brought him and be seen as a prude. They would have come to her brothel because her rates were competitive. She gave her cards to the bankers who occupied the high-rises near the harbour.

Iranians of interest came to the city to check bank accounts and work out how to counter financial sanctions, authorise transfers and make covert foreign investments. He had followed that route and those who had brought him had been pleasured at a discount. She chuckled. This man had paid the full price.

The Ukrainian girl had his pants off and, although the night was warm, he shivered, as if he were naked in the snow of the mountains above Beirut – the madam had known them as a child.

The girl was the best. She did what she could. She rubbed her nipples against his mouth, nose and cheeks. She did all that could have been expected of her, and failed.

She eased off him. The camera showed he was flaccid.

The Iranian had his head in his hands and sobbed. The girl stood, then went to the chair, reached into an inside jacket pocket and found the client’s wallet. She opened it and held it up. There was money in it, and a picture behind plastic showed the ayatollah who had led the revolution; a pocket contained an identification card. She held the wallet closer to the camera, exposing the card.

The photograph was of the man who held his hands over his face and shook with sobs. The madam could read Farsi. She had a good knowledge of the languages her clients spoke.

The bell rang again. She cursed. The girl was replacing the wallet in the jacket.

It was what the madam was paid for. That was why the tall Englishman had come five months earlier and put to her a proposition. He had spoken of a trap set and sprung, of confidentiality and considerable funding for her business, her holidays and what she referred to as her pension. Now she dialled the number she had been told to ring if a particular scenario was played out. On the client’s identification card she had read his name, ‘al-Qods (Jerusalem) Division’ and ‘Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (Pasdaran-e Inqilab)’. She felt a frisson of excitement: she had played a part in a game that was almost beyond her reach.

The bell rang again.

The madam did not expect to speak to the Englishman himself. When the first payment had been made a young woman had been with him: she would be the contact. She glanced again at the screen. The Ukrainian played her part well, but the man beneath her was still sobbing. The call was answered. She told her contact who she had in the seventh cubicle. The young woman squealed in excitement, said she would be there and cut the call.

It was not exceptional for a man to come to her premises, pay and freeze, but it was unusual. She left her room and went to greet the new clients, apologising for the delay and smiling. She imagined a car with diplomatic plates speeding across the city.

There was a folk duo in one corner of the bar, and a widescreen TV showed a football game in the other.

The pub was Petroc Kenning’s sanctuary. Because of his height he stood at the bar in a place where he could see both attractions and know his scalp was safe between two ceiling beams. Part of the building was four hundred years old, and it stood beside one of the old coaching routes to the West Country from London: travellers to Gloucester or Bristol would have stayed there overnight. He was PK in the Service, Pet to Polly, his wife, and Petroc to her parents – the reason he was in the Black Lion, and had been every evening of the five days he had been on home leave. He knew that Polly had already told them that her husband, little Archie’s dad, wouldn’t share with them any detail of his work as station chief, Dubai. They were awkward around him so he came to the pub. In two more days he would go from Didcot station to Vauxhall Cross for staff assessments and budget reviews, leaving early and returning late, and in nine days’ time, he, Polly and Archie would be heading back to Dubai. It was a good posting, among the best for any foot-soldier of the new generation. It put him firmly on a fault line of conflict. The folk duo’s anthem had ended and his phone buzzed: the double note of an incoming message.

The fault line offered what he craved. He read the text. He wanted accolades, authority and advancement. He wasn’t happy to coast: he pushed himself and looked for his efforts to be rewarded.

‘A wasp in the jam jar’. He understood, he felt cheated. It had been his idea, his baby. He had used his considerable debating skills to force it through the committees that reviewed such a scale of expenditure – and it had bloody happened off his watch. She would be there, and likely have with her a couple of ex-marines from the station who did security for them. He started to elbow his way towards the door.

A man said, ‘You all right, mate?’

‘Never better.’

He was outside, in the darkness, and started to run. He had been an athlete at university; now he worked out in Dubai gyms and on the pavements at dawn before the killing heat came up.

He snapped into his mobile: ‘Me, Polly . . . Yes, I’m running . . . Pack me a bag – don’t forget my passport. I’m going into town, VBX, then I’ll be away . . . Yeah, it’s important – about as important as it gets. Please, just pack and be ready to take me to Didcot . . . Bigger than anything that’s happened to me before.’

He ran on through the darkness. His mind lurched between images of Celeste, the Lebanese woman who ran a good-quality, clean and disease-free whorehouse, and Katie, who would be there on the ground, trying to create control, but he couldn’t see the man who was their target. He thought, as he ran, that he was teetering on the edge of triumph.

Short and not athletic, Katie was rated for her attention to detail and analytical skills. The ex-marines stood behind her. The man would have needed a sledgehammer to get past them.

She was happiest when scrolling through newspapers from Tehran and specialist documents, looking for names and discovering who ran which office and held what responsibility.