The Corporal's Wife (2013) by Gerald Seymour Page B

aggravating the irritation. They didn’t tell Mehrak not to smoke.
    Undisguised exasperation. ‘You didn’t go far underground, but you went a little way. Correct?’
    ‘That is right.’ A photograph was pushed across the table. He could see the prominence of the hills, the buildings alongside the road and the great pit in the ground, with the track winding on the outside and descending. He remembered when he had driven there that he had been careful to watch for fallen rocks. It had seemed a half-finished construction site. Laden lorries inching down ahead of him and others stacked up behind. In the photograph, he spotted the place where he had been directed to park the Mercedes. He had been in uniform that day, wearing a sidearm, the brigadier’s escort, so he was entitled to join the group of men welcoming the visitor. They had gone into the access tunnel. He had thought it like an ants’ nest, filled with scrambling activity. There was the noise from the ventilation ducts, the air-conditioning and the generators. It was a labyrinth, and he had been inside.
    ‘How many entrances, Mehrak?’
    ‘I only saw one.’
    ‘Did you come out the same way as you went in?’
    He dragged at the last of the cigarette. It was still early in the morning, breakfast hardly digested and the ashtray nearly full. The question was repeated, a snatch of annoyance in the tone.
    ‘It’s simple enough, Mehrak. Did you leave by the same route?’
    A finger pointed to the photograph, and he saw the small shadowy shapes, monochrome images, of the lorries and the few cars allowed into the restricted parking zone. He knew about the power of bombs. In his mind he saw the detonation of the ground-penetration monster that the Americans possessed that caused rock-falls and landslides, and imagined the gaping mouth of that tunnel sealed. He thought of many men and women, alive when he had been there, entombed. He imagined that the lighting and the power would fail and that the air would grow fetid . . .
    ‘The same way in and out? Yes, Mehrak, or no?’
    He had slept poorly. He couldn’t have said that the bed was too hard or too soft or that the room was too warm or too cold. He had tossed, turned and examined each step of the road he had taken: how else he could have responded. He had done the business in the bank, and two men, who had said their job was to ‘look after you, like a brother,’ had bought him a meal that had cost what to him was a fortune. They had drunk alcohol, he had not, and he had heard the suggestion that he was a man of the world. He had thought of his humiliation at lying against Farideh’s cold back, saw the multi-coloured bruise at her eye, and remembered how she had gone to work where her office could see what he had done to her. He could have refused the men’s offer, could have taken a taxi to the airport and presented his ticket at a desk. He had not. Instead he had shrugged – he hadn’t wanted to seem frightened of ‘entertainment’, had thought it would ‘punish’ his wife – and had gone. He could have walked into the brothel, allowed the two Arabs to go off with their girls than have made an excuse and taken a taxi. He had not. Would Farideh have cared if she’d known? He could no longer read his wife’s mind.
    ‘Mehrak, is there a problem?’ He heard an edge in the voice. ‘Yes or no – entry and exit.’
    He stuttered, ‘The same way.’
    ‘Thank you, Mehrak. Remember, you agreed to co-operate. Please consider your side of the obligations. Do the principal staff live underground or do they come out at the end of their working day? Are they housed above ground?’
    He saw the woman. He didn’t know her name. He saw each movement of her fingers as she had slipped off the robe she had worn in the outer area. He hadn’t chosen her, but she had taken his hand and led him through the drawn curtain into the corridor. He could have pulled away, but he had not. He had thought of Farideh, of how