The Corporal's Wife (2013) Read Free Page A

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.
    Now she confronted him. He was dressed. He wore polished shoes, trousers with a crease, a clean shirt and an old but cared-for jacket. She had no office diplomats with her, ready with advice. Her boss was in the UK, and by now would be on his way into Central London. She had not been able to raise the head of Iran Desk, and the dogsbody was waiting for a train and hadn’t a secure link with him. So far she had spoken only to a duty officer: ‘Sorry and all that. ’Fraid I’ve never been where you are. We’re trying to put together some sort of task-force. Best I can do is suggest you dominate him. Pretty obvious. Keep him unsettled and off balance, and wait for the cavalry to get there. Apologies for being so inadequate, but good luck.’
    She sensed the Iranian was broken. His eyes were red, his fingers worked continuously and his breathing was erratic. He had been in the cubicle with the Slav woman when they’d arrived. He’d sat on the bed, with her on a chair, smoking. One of the marines had taken the man’s wallet from his pocket and passed it to Katie. He was Mehrak, al-Qods, a corporal. He was thirty-four a driver. He was stationed in Tehran and his card gave him access to a barracks in the centre of the city. He was . . . What? A corporal ? She remembered her grandfather exploding when he was fishing on a Lancashire river. A fly had been taken and a rod arched. Not a salmon or a sea trout, just a ‘bloody vermin pike’! He’d calmed down, taken the fly from its jaws, slipped the fish back into the current, swigged from his hip flask and remarked that it had made his day.
    How to make hers?
    ‘Dominate him.’ She stood in front of him. She wore jeans and a loose blouse. Her arms and head were bare, and back in her apartment her dinner was cooling on the table beside the beer she had looked forward to for most of a dull day. She had come out too fast and wasn’t dressed to confront an Iranian zealot, with God and hell-fire spilling out of him. Now he would be frightened.
    She took hold of his chin and jerked it up. Dominate . ‘Why couldn’t you screw the hooker, Mehrak?’
    She