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

he should be grateful to us. You’ve done well, PK.’
    The meeting broke up.
    Sara Rogers asked him quietly, ‘Austria – Vienna? You’re sure about that?’
    ‘It’s totally right. We’ve a good history there – and he’ll be at arms’ length.’
    ‘Not dangerous for us?’
    ‘Not at all. I feel good about this. It’ll be straightforward, no complications, believe me. And I can only sit at the top table if I have something to play with and something significant to barter.’
     
    ‘Why are we doing that, skip?’ A navigator’s question to his captain.
    ‘Ours not to reason why – that sort of stuff.’ A captain’s answer to a reasonable question, concerning the diversion of a C17 Alpha Globemaster, prize product of the Boeing Corporation and in the dark camouflage colours of RAF Transport Command, from its normal flight path out of Bastion in Helmand, north of Kandahar.
    ‘I’m not inside that loop. The touch-down, I’m told, will be of minimal duration, like fifteen minutes for the take-on of two passengers. One will be assessed as a potential security risk and watched by the loadmaster. They’ll sit in the cargo section, away from the personnel, en route to Akrotiri.’
    There was a grin. ‘Spook stuff?’
    And a gentle put-down: ‘I wouldn’t know and wouldn’t care to ask.’
    ‘I didn’t think we were still up for that sort of thing.’
    ‘Please, just the route – Bastion to Al Dhafra, UAE, then out of Al Dhafra for Cyprus . . .’
    ‘On the priority scale, must be something high up the ladder. Agreed, skip?’
    ‘Maybe they’re bringing a box of dates – or a sack of camel dung for the Brize rosebeds.’
    The diversion would be plotted, with the extra fuel it would necessitate. Take-off was in fifteen: the first of the personnel for rotation were streaming off the buses towards the steps, and an Afghanistan deployment would be over – thank Christ and good riddance to the fucking place, as most would say . . . The cockpit and cabin crew would be wide-eyed when a passenger with a security issue and an escort came on board at the first touch-down, the captain could guarantee it.
     
    It was long past midnight, and Mandy Ross had the home number of the head of the section that handled ‘increments’. The cutbacks had not only chilled the building at night, but had reduced to freelance and short-term contracts those who did jobs for which full-time employment was no longer considered justifiable: the increments.
    She was told, ‘Bloody hell, Mandy, they don’t grow on trees. We’ve hardly done that sort of thing since the Cold War. Had a bit of a spike at the Libya time . . . Anyway, this is the best I can do. Full names first, then home phones. You want three, right? . . . Here’s five names, and good luck. From the top, what they like to be called . . .’
    ‘It’s not a kids’ party we’re organising. Do they want paper hats as well?’
    ‘Funny crowd, the babysitters. They like to be called Auntie, Father William, Nobby and—’
    She interrupted, ‘Who do we have in Vienna?’
    ‘Just a man who stayed on after retirement – well, redundancy, actually. He was a bottle-washer to Hector Kenning – remember him? Uncle of Petroc and—’
    ‘And when he has to be tucked up, what name does he prefer?’ Mandy Ross tried for sarcasm and thought she came over as peevish. She was given another number and told that if she called it she would reach Sidney.
    She hung up, allowing the man to go back to bed. She didn’t know the world of the so-called ‘babysitters’, and knew equally little about defectors, if that was what the wasp in the jam jar proved to be – volunteer or compromised. She drank some cold coffee, lifted the phone and punched the number for ‘Auntie’. It would be a learning curve, about as steep as it could get.
     
    He sat in a corner of the secure room. Katie had solid shoulders and fancied she might need them: the responsibility for the business