The Gilgamesh Conspiracy (20 page)

‘Ok, so no hard feelings?’ Grainger asked with a smile.

‘No, none at all.’

‘Ok, good, so let me tell you about the release program…’

An hour later Annie drove her back to the hotel. They chatted inconsequentially about Florida and the weather and London which Annie had visited several times.

‘How long have you been working with Felix Grainger?’ Gerry asked as they arrived back at the hotel.

‘Oh, for a year now. He’s one of the good guys. I hope you liked him,’ she said. She pulled to a stop outside the hotel entrance.

‘I did like him,’ said Gerry with some enthusiasm. ‘Thanks for driving me.’

‘You’re welcome.’

Gerry climbed out and shut the door but Annie slid down the window.

‘Oh, I forgot to mention it. We’re meeting for dinner this evening at the hotel. Seven o’clock in the bar.’

‘Ok thanks Annie; see you then.’ Gerry watched the black SUV drive out of the car park, pause for few seconds at the exit road before pulling out into the traffic and then she returned to her room. She switched on her computer with the intention of learning anything she could about Colonel Felix Grainger, Annie Maddon and Ryan Carson. The telephone rang.

‘Hello?’

‘Ah, Miss Tate!’ Richard Cornwall’s fruity voice blared out from the earpiece. Gerry fumbled for the volume control and turned it down.

‘Good afternoon Mr. Cornwall.’

‘Hah! Late evening here of course. I understand you’ve met our mutual friend.’ Plainly he expected a favourable comment.

‘Felix Grainger? Yes I have. We should have an excellent working relationship.’

‘I’m pleased to hear it. He liked you very much, though at first he thought that you might be a bit of an awkward bitch. His words of course, not mine.’

‘Yeah, I’m sure,’ Gerry replied. ‘Anyway this evening we’re meeting for dinner and tomorrow we’re off to Cuba.’

‘Ah, Gitmo, Camp Delta,’ Cornwall declared. Gerry presumed he was trying to demonstrate his knowledge.

‘That’s the place,’ she replied. 

‘Ok Gerry, very good! Anyway, so the homeward travel arrangements are being finalised for Wednesday evening. I’ll be sending details of the arrival plans back at RAF Lyneham to your hotel via a messenger. Vince is at the hotel, too, I presume?’

‘Yes he’s here, but I’ve not seen him since this morning.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll send him an e-mail.’

Gerry showered and then gazed into the vanity mirror in the bathroom. It both magnified and illuminated her face and she contemplated the lines and other signs of middle age that had appeared during her years in prison. It was all very well growing older as part of a fulfilling life, but she had been forced to waste some of her best years in a meaningless existence. Now the euphoria of unexpected freedom was beginning to be displaced by her deep resentment towards the people who were responsible for her incarceration.

She felt a black, violent mood threatening to envelope her. On a few occasions in prison she had gone on destructive rampages or picked fights with her fellow inmates and ended up in solitary confinement. Perhaps after dinner tonight she would slip away from the others, find a bar, have a few drinks and then provoke some poor fool into attacking her.  She gripped the mirror in both hands and was just about to wrench it off the wall but stopped herself. If she really wanted to have revenge, she should co-operate with everyone, try and work her way back into the secret world from which she had been ejected and then from the inside she might be able to find out the answers to all the questions that had bedevilled her when she was in prison. Getting herself stuck in a Florida gaol would be idiotic. Still, it was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain her mask of benevolence to all mankind.

She took a deep breath and applied make up with some care having gone so many years without using any, but after she had dressed she was still ready twenty minutes early. She looked at her watch and then flicked through the television channels wondering if there was anything which might entertain her for a while. The film “Groundhog Day” came on and she settled down to watch it but half a minute later it was interrupted by a commercial break. She clicked her tongue in irritation and switched the set off. She picked up her handbag, glanced in the mirror and with some irritation she noticed another grey hair. Soon she would need hair colour as well as spectacles or contact lenses. She plucked it out and then went down to the lobby bar.  She ordered a dry white wine and sat down at a table from where she could keep the entire bar under observation.

Five minutes later she stared in round-eyed amazement when a familiar figure walked into the bar. Although his hair was longer than a military crew cut, the scar on Dan Hall’s face was unmistakeable. Her quick appraisal took in that he had aged well, he looked as fit as he had been all those years ago in the Gulf, but she noticed that his left hand was missing most of the little finger and the tip of the ring finger. ‘Distal phalanges,’ Gerry muttered to herself. She looked around for a newspaper or a menu to hide behind while she could consider her reaction to this remarkable re-appearance. She glanced to one side and then the other and then back towards Dan Hall and their gazes locked. Gerry’s face was expressionless: Dan Hall showed astonishment then confusion which resolved into a huge smile and he walked over to her table. As he approached her, Gerry was preparing a straight denial of her knowing him as her best idea, but he said ‘Emily Stevens, it’s so good to see you! How are you, what brings you to Sarasota? It’s been such a long time. Are you still with the erm…you know.’

‘Dan Hall, well hello to you. No I’m not with the - erm you know - any longer. I’m here on holiday and I’m waiting for my boyfriend. He’ll be here in a couple of minutes.’

‘But how are you? The last time I saw you, you were in hospital, and you were…’ his question trailed off. She saw him glancing at her left hand with neither engagement ring nor wedding band.

‘Yes I was pregnant, but I had a miscarriage. I’m fine. How are you?’

‘I’m good. I left the Marines after the war, and I’m in corporate security now. It’s great to see you again Emily.’

‘Yeah you too,’ said Gerry in as disinterested a tone as she could manage. She could see an expression approaching dismay on his face. It was with some relief that she saw Vince Parker walking across the bar towards them.

‘Hi Gerry, Hi Dan, I see you two have already met, so I’m going to get myself a beer.’

Dan Hall looked at Vince and then he stared at her in opened mouthed amazement. With an even mixture of disbelief and distress and surprise in his voice he asked ‘You’re Gerry Tate?’

‘Yes I am,’ she replied. 

‘Sorry Dan,’ Vince called over. ‘You don’t have a drink! Can I get you something?’ Dan Hall stood up and walked over and stood next to Vince. She heard him ask for a Sam Adams and then he was silent. She could see his face reflected in the mirror behind the bar and she suspected that he was attempting to resolve some mental turmoil, which was just what she was trying to do.

‘Hi Gerry!’ She looked up somewhat startled and realised that she had been so introspective that Annie Madden had walked up to her table without her noticing. Hell, if she became that distracted on an operation she could get herself killed.

‘Hello Annie, I thought Ryan was coming.’ Then she realised he was greeting the other two men, and then he walked over to her and Annie.

‘Hi Gerry, you look great,’ he said with a grin. He was wearing light grey trousers, open necked shirt and blue jacket that matched his eyes. ‘What can I get you girls to drink?’

‘I’ll have a dry white wine, please,’ she replied. ‘How was the sailing?’ she asked with a smile.

‘Good, but I got a little sunburnt on my back,’ he replied. ‘I’m wearing lots of moisturiser and my softest shirt. Annie, how about you?’

‘Gin and tonic, please Ryan.’

Annie and Gerry chatted inconsequentially for a couple of minutes about holidays and foolish people were old enough to know better about over-exposure to the sun, while the men waited at the bar to be served. She stared at their broad backs, thinking how similar they were in build and self-assurance. She realised that Annie had asked her a question.

‘Yes, I am hungry, and I love seafood. Any place you guys recommend would be good for me,’ Gerry replied.

‘Great! I guess we should be able to get the three of them to pick up the bill for the two of us,’ Annie grinned.

There you go Dan, I’m not the only manipulative bitch here, Gerry said to herself as she smiled in agreement.

Hours later back in her room and thankfully alone, Gerry picked up the remote control and began to hop through the channels, most of which seemed to be showing commercials. The evening, which had turned out to be purely social, might even have been enjoyable if it weren’t for the extraordinary occurrence of meeting Dan Hall. She had taken the opportunity to be seated with Ryan next to her and Hall on his other side, so minimising their conversation. At no time during the evening did she or Dan reveal that they had encountered one another before. She had asked Annie during a visit to the women’s room how long he had been in the agency and she had told her it had been five years, but apart from that she knew little about him, and Gerry had been reluctant to appear overly interested. They had finished dinner at about 10pm and Gerry turned down the suggestion of another drink at another bar and took a taxi alone back to the hotel.

She stopped changing channels when she saw a map of Florida festooned with weather symbols. Apparently tomorrow morning was going to start hot and sunny but then a weather front was going to sweep in off the Gulf of Mexico and bring thunderstorms to the west coast. The weather girl exchanged some witty comments with the news reader who then adopted a serious expression and began to read the local news. Gerry yawned and reached for the remote control. It was only 10:40pm but her body clock was somewhere mid-Atlantic, so she decided to go to bed. 

She was cleaning her teeth when she heard a knock on the door.

‘I bet it’s that bloody Jasper White again!’ she muttered to herself. She peered through the spy hole and was surprised to see Dan Hall standing outside her door. She opened it with the door security restraint in place.

‘Hello Dan.’

‘They told me you were a prize bitch,’ he said.

‘Fuck off!’ She tried to close the door but the edge thudded against a rolled up magazine that he had inserted in the gap. She tried to snatch it but there was not enough to grab.

‘Look, what the hell do you want?’ she asked, exasperated.

‘Can I come in and talk to you?’ he requested.

‘No it’s bloody late and I’m tired,’ she snapped.

‘Five minutes?’

‘Oh…what the hell…ok then. Five minutes.’ She unhooked the door restraint and allowed him into her sitting room.

‘Dan, what do you want?’

‘Why do you think you’ve come over here?’ he asked.

‘What? To the States? You know why I’m here. We talked about it at dinner this evening.’

‘Humour me?’ he asked.

She sighed irritably. ‘I’m here to talk to Ali Hamsin, then escort your unwanted prisoner out of your country where he’s something of an embarrassment as Obama wants to close Guantanamo Bay.’

‘What about the scheme to send guys to infiltrate terrorist networks?’

‘That’s really nothing to do with me, and I’m sure I don’t want to be involved.’

‘Why not? It would see you back in your exec ops section,’ Hall suggested.

‘To tell you the truth, I’m not really interested. I haven’t been involved in anything in exec ops since we did that job in the Gulf.’

‘What happened to that guy Dean Furness? Why did you have to kill him? Were you ordered to do it by my side or yours? What have you really been doing since I last saw you? Someone told me you’ve been in prison, but that’s got to be ridiculous!’

Gerry stared at him feeling more irate with each question. ‘Listen I didn’t kill the poor bastard!’ she snarled, ‘he was my only chance of finding out what happened to Phil. Now I don’t know if that’s five minutes up, but get the hell out of here Dan, before I…oh just get out!’ She saw his expression change into something that looked like despair but in the heat of her anger she slammed the door shut behind him. Later as she lay in bed she thought about that expression and his questions while staring up at the red light of the smoke alarm as it flickered every eight seconds. It took her a long time to fall asleep.

Next morning Gerry stood at the restaurant entrance staring across at Vince Parker as he ate fruit salad and yogurt for breakfast, wondering whether to retreat back to her room until he had finished. Vince suddenly turned round and caught sight of her and waved a hand; she quickly assumed a smile and walked briskly towards him.

‘Good morning Gerry,’ he called, ‘you looked lost in thought.’

‘I was just thinking about skipping breakfast and going to the gym instead. I was feeling guilty because I ate that heavy meal yesterday.’

‘Yes, after you’d told us that you weren’t very hungry,’ he said.

‘I know, but it was good food, and I did leave some of the fries,’ Gerry replied with a grin.

‘Then please join me,’ said Vince indicating the seat opposite.

‘How did you get on with our American friends last night after I left?’ she asked after she had collected her breakfast from the buffet.

‘Oh, ok, I guess. Ryan Carson seemed sorry to see you go; I think you’ve made an impression on him Gerry.’ He grinned and Gerry scowled.

‘I doubt it…what kind of impression?’

‘I think he likes you.’

‘Bog off.’

‘And Hall seemed rather interested in you too; he asked how long you’d been in the Service.’

‘And what did you tell him?’ Gerry asked trying not to sound tense.

‘I told him that you had been in for about sixteen years but you decided to take a career break, and you’d been writing a doctoral thesis or something for the last few years.’

‘Thank you Vince,’ she said astounded by his tact. Then she remembered Dan Hall remarking that he had been told that she was a prize bitch and that she’d been in prison. You bloody liar! she said to herself.

  The weather forecast she had watched the previous evening proved accurate. The turbulent air spilling out of the thunder clouds rocked the Gulfstream executive jet as it climbed into the Florida sky. Gerry cursed and grabbed the armrest with one hand whilst with the other she tried to dry her hair with the small hand towel that Ryan had handed to her. The walk from the car to the aircraft had only taken about fifteen seconds but that had given the lashing rain shower enough time to soak her. Vince and Ryan had already completed their mopping up operations but her long, thick hair was now plastered around her head. Felix Grainger sitting opposite her at the conference seating had boarded the aircraft before the downpour and was sipping coffee from a Starbucks cup whilst frowning down at a file folder.

He looked up at Gerry as she mouthed a curse as her comb caught in a tangle. ‘You should have waited in the car a few minutes; that shower would soon have passed,’ he said.

‘Well that’s what I suggested, but Ryan said we were to be airborne at ten hundred.’

‘He’s a stickler for punctuality,’ said Grainger with a half-smile. Gerry was not sure if it was a smile of approval or disdain. She nodded and returned to combing her hair.

‘These are the latest reports on Ali Hamsin,’ he declared. He closed the folder up and placed it in front of her on the table.

‘Ok,’ she said, and continued combing her hair. His mouth tightened in irritation, his mask of bonhomie had slipped revealing the taskmaster beneath. She responded by gazing out of the window whilst attending to another tangled lock. She then decided that there was no point in provocation and gave him her best smile.

‘Shan’t be long.’  Her comb was festooned with long dark hair. ‘Have you finished with that cup?’ she asked.

‘Yeah,’ he replied glancing down at it. She removed the lid, pulled the loose hair off her comb and stuffed it in the empty mug and replaced the lid while he frowned in disapproval. Then she picked up the file and began to read about Ali Hamsin.

He had been approved for release, but it was the opinion of the psychiatrist at the detention camp that he had become institutionalised. In sentences laden with gloomy jargon it was related that Hamsin seemed to have little connection with reality. He suspected that one of the guards or his fellow inmates were determined to kill him unless he kept vigilant all times. He had formed a relationship with a female interrogator named Amanda S. Fisher, a trained psychologist, who had used her admittedly small knowledge of Arabic to useful effect, in that Hamsin had decided to correct and improve her knowledge. It was noted that his knowledge of English, both written and spoken was excellent. There was a reference to his studies at a university in England. .

She read how Fisher had progressed from the Emotional Fear-Up Approach to the Emotional Pride Ego-Up Approach and then failed at the Emotional Futility stage when Hamsin had appeared to acquiesce but instead of revealing any information he had suddenly become withdrawn.

‘Who compiled this stuff?’ she exclaimed.

‘A psychologist at Gitmo,’ Grainger replied looking up from his own reading.

‘It’s very thorough,’ said Gerry, hoping that her scepticism had passed unnoticed. Apparently it hadn’t.

‘You sound sceptical.’

‘It’s all this psychological assessment; it’s seems more jargon than anything substantial.’

‘So are you a trained psychologist then?’ Grainger challenged.

‘Yes I am,’ she replied.

He was somewhat deflated. ‘Oh! Ok then.’

Hamsin’s relationship with Fisher had broken down to the extent that now he was extremely reluctant to speak to her. Fisher was unable to account for his change in heart and a study of the recordings of their conversations had not revealed a reason. Now Hamsin rarely responded to conversation in any language. However he read books and watched television. A list of his reading material and favourite television programmes followed. Aside from his mental health, Hamsin appeared to be in basically good physical health, but in the last few years this had deteriorated due to low diet and little physical activity.

She put the folder down and gazed out the window. Ali Hamsin was now over fifty years old. Her only encounter with him had been in that meeting in Frankfurt. They had spent hours talking to each other on the flight back to Kuwait and made some kind of connection, but hardly enough to make him choose her as his confidante. Then she had abducted his son, Rashid Hamsin. If Ali was aware of that it would hardly endear her to him. She recalled her encounters with Rashid; the first occasion they had travelled back together from the protest meeting in London. They had sat next to one another on the coach and then shared a meal and he had talked optimistically about his future. He had asked her about her own life but of course she had deflected and dissembled. Then she had drugged him so that he could be abducted by the Neil Samms and his team.

The second occasion she had been deeply embittered by her loss of Philip and in a spontaneous and reckless betrayal of trust she had encouraged the young man to escape. Maybe Ali Hamsin knew about that? No, surely he would have had no opportunity to find out. 

She recalled her conversation with Rashid. He had talked about the so-called weapons of mass destruction, and how they were a flimsy pretext for the invasion of his country. Well that had been amply proven over the following years, but ex-President George Bush and ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair were both totally unrepentant about the death and destruction that had enveloped Iraq following the invasion. For some reason they seemed to be able to disown any responsibility for it, which she thought suggested that they were in more need of psychiatric help than anyone. Then Rashid suggested that the real reason was to enable America to get control of Iraq’s oil supplies. He had described how Colonel White had made him carry a document to someone in Baghdad, code name Gilgamesh, which his father had translated into Arabic. Maybe Gilgamesh was the code name of an individual, maybe Saddam Hussein himself. Damn! Why hadn’t she paid closer attention? She should have bloody well interrogated Rashid, not sent him on his way.

Having disembarked from the aircraft, the passengers boarded a small Navy launch that carried them across the bay to the main base. Gerry remembered watching Tom Cruise making the same journey in the film “A Few Good Men” and she wondered if it had been filmed on location or in some part of Los Angeles harbour or Longbeach. She was musing on the film when she looked up and saw they were approaching the jetty where there was a small group waiting to meet them.

One of them was a tall man aged in his mid-sixties, wearing a lightweight civilian suit but nevertheless plainly of military bearing. He had iron grey hair and a craggy face that carried the self-assured aura of one accustomed to authority.

‘Gerry, this is General Robert Bruckner,’ Grainger declared.

‘Yes we’ve met before, at Frankfurt airport in 2003,’ said Gerry. ‘Good morning General.’

‘Good morning Miss Tate, I’m glad you could come along and help us with this situation. Sir Hugh Fielding told me that you would be happy to co-operate.’

It appeared that the fact that she had been languishing in prisoned for the murder of an American citizen was being swept under the carpet. ‘How is Sir Hugh?’ she enquired, ‘I haven’t seen him in a while.’ The last time was when he was ordering her dismissal from the Secret Intelligence Service. No, she had seen him in the public gallery at her trial when she had been sentenced.

‘He’s very well,’ said Bruckner. ‘Ah, there’s Doctor Fisher.’ Bruckner signalled to an attractive woman of about thirty with blonde hair tied in a ponytail, a slightly overweight figure enclosed in military style green trousers and shirt but with no badges of rank.

‘Mandy Fisher wrote the report on Ali Hamsin,’ said Bruckner. ‘Doctor Fisher!’ he called out. She looked round, smiled and walked over.

‘Hello General,’ she said, ‘Felix, hi.’

‘Mandy this is Gerry Tate from London,’ said Bruckner. ‘She’s read your report on Ali Hamsin, and I think you’ll be taking her to meet with him.’

‘Hi Gerry,’ the woman said with a smile and they shook hands.

‘I didn’t realise that you were the psychiatrist who wrote the report,’ said Gerry, ‘it wasn’t attributed.’

‘Oh I’m not a psychiatrist. I have a PhD in psychology, so yeah, I am a doctor I guess, but not in the medical sense.’

‘Still, you’re well qualified to write psychological assessments,’ Gerry replied, ‘and yours was very insightful.’

‘Thank you. Anyway, I’m here to take you to see Hamsin. We’ve an hour and a half before we meet for lunch, so are you all set?’

Gerry was hard pressed to appear nonchalant. ‘Sure, I’m ready when you are.’

Mandy led Gerry to a well-used Chevy Blazer.

‘It’s a bit of a wreck I’m afraid,’ Mandy said. ‘They don’t import too may new vehicles here, and they certainly don’t let us non-military types have them, but at least the aircon sort of works.’

‘I saw you have no rank badges. Who do you actually work for?’ Gerry asked.

‘I’m with the FBI team. I was sent here initially because I speak some Arabic. It’s not enough to converse fluently, but it helps to form some kind of rapport with the detainees. Do you speak any?’

‘Not much really, I’m afraid,’ said Gerry, out of habit revealing as little as possible, and also pleased that the American apparently knew little about her. ‘What do you know about this General Bruckner character who introduced us? He seems old for the army.’

‘Oh, he retired ages ago, but these older guys like to keep their ranks, especially if they were senior officers. I’m not sure who he is now. He’s never been FBI; I’m pretty sure he’s not CIA, but he probably was at one time. He’s just one of these well-connected people in some obscure branch of the administration who pops up here from time to time. Somehow you don’t feel like asking too many questions of them, if you know what I mean.’

‘You’re telling me! I came across some right tricky bastards in my lot. Have you been here long, in Guantanamo?’ Gerry asked.

‘I’ve been here three years now. I was seconded for one year, pretty reluctant I might tell you, but then, well, I met someone here, and so instead of being resentful, I suddenly became all happy and content.’

‘Good for you,’ said Gerry. 

‘Thanks. How about you? Are you married? Do you have any children?’

‘No, I’m single,’ said Gerry, ‘and I don’t have any…’

Mandy suddenly swerved the car violently as a stray dog ran across the road.

‘Sorry about that, we’ve been trying to round them up. We’re driving to camp five. That’s where the interrogation facilities are. As you know we’re no longer interrogating Hamsin; haven’t done for months, but he’s sort of set up home there, and didn’t want to be moved.’

‘Your report stated that he is institutionalised.’

‘Well I thought perhaps he was, but when we told him you were coming to see him as per his request he became quite excited. He said he knew you from years back.’

‘That’s right.’

‘He told me that when he went on some mission to Frankfurt and this British woman went with him, only he called you Emily, not Gerry. It took us a little while to get your details from your lot. They seemed rather reluctant to have you sent over.’

‘I was on an overseas assignment,’ said Gerry, ‘and I couldn’t be freed to come over here straight away.’