The Corporal's Wife (2013) by Gerald Seymour Read Free Book Online

close to the river in Worcester – easy for professional cricket and for walking his dogs. He wondered if the old boy had put on his slippers before he’d gone off in search of his contacts book, and how much of the cigarette he would have smoked before he found it. Petroc would not have been in SIS had it not been for the excitement his uncle had generated, and probably his uncle’s string-pulling. He waited, and was rewarded for his patience. The number was dictated and he repeated it.
    ‘A good defector is heavy currency, Petroc. Might make your name, but you’ll know that. But if you don’t know what you’re doing it might explode in your face. You’ll find no one better than Rollo Hawkins.’
     
    He cut a good figure. He was not tall – many of the men around him dominated his slight build – and not heavy in the chest and hips. He had no jowls, and his hands were small, the fingers narrow, almost delicate. His eyes roved continuously. He did not appear to be a man who inspired nervousness in those around him. None of the junior officers who walked with Brigadier Reza Joyberi would have contradicted him: none would have told him to his face that he was wrong in any assessment he made; none, behind his back, would have been foolish enough to criticise a decision he had confirmed. A man who had risen to the most senior ranks of the al-Qods division had arrived there neither by luck nor accident.
    He dressed differently from those who escorted and briefed him. If he was visiting a missile battery, ground-to-ground or air defence, those with him would be in military uniform and he would wear civilian dress – slacks, polished slip-on shoes, a collarless shirt and a lightweight grey jacket. Should he be with civilians, inspecting a laboratory or an area of the University of Technology where nuclear or chemical research took place, those with him would be in civilian clothing and he would have chosen the fatigues of the Guard Corps. It was his style to ask few questions, to listen keenly to what he was told, then to pick the best from the bones. He would write a paper, then send it as an edict to those he had seen. It would have been unwise for any of them, officer, scientist or engineer, to gainsay his final decision. Any who ignored an instruction given in the name of Brigadier Joyberi, al-Qods division of the Guard Corps, faced a dismal future, their influence curtailed, with the possibility of arrest or detention.
    His duties were many and increasing.
    The sun came from behind him, throwing grotesque shadows over the concrete platform and the rocks below it. He watched as a giant oil tanker negotiated the shrunken shipping lane from the Gulf into the Arabian Sea. It was the Strait of Hormuz, a choke-point through which a fifth of the world’s oil supplies passed. Dislocation of those lanes, or the threat, through missile strikes, the sowing of mines or the use of fast patrol boats, was a primary weapon in his country’s arsenal. He had responsibility for the protection of the batteries, the reinforced bunkers where the mines were stored and the harbour where the patrol boats were moored.
    He listened. He was told the likely success of the defence system round the missile sites, and queried the readiness for dispersal of the patrol boats. The previous week he had been to the uranium mine at Yazd: he had found its protection inadequate. Ten days before he had been to Esfahan: orders to deepen caves, air-raid shelters, had been issued but not carried out. The threats of sabotage grew and Zionist menaces were ever more shrill. Responsibility burdened him.
    Other matters queued for his attention. Among them were the bank accounts, which could be accessed via offices in Dubai, what they held and where investments should be made during the recession that gripped the global market. Another matter was the scale of imports – widescreen TVs and Apple-brand computers, pads, phones and MacBooks: a rightful ‘benefit’