The Gilgamesh Conspiracy (30 page)

‘Yes of course. I have a very good medical kit on board. What’s the problem?’

‘Erm…it’s my throat. You see I drunk water collected off the life raft canopy and of course it wasn’t very clean.’

‘Ok, I’ll find you some.’

  Next morning Gerry woke up and realised that the familiar noise of seawater rushing past the stern had dwindled to a slight slapping sound, and the pattern of light moving across the cabin showed that the yacht was rocking gently. She listened out for the familiar sound of Steven treading about the decks, but it was curiously quiet. She hurriedly pulled on her shorts, squealing ‘ouch’ when she caught some hairs in the zip and tugged on a shirt.

The deck was empty. ‘Steven?’ she called out. No reply. ‘Steven!’ she shouted. She clambered around the deck in front of the cabin and then back into the cockpit. Surely she wasn’t alone again? There was a splashing noise alongside and she peered over the side. There he was swimming alongside wearing a diving mask. She took a deep breath and tried to make her voice steady. ‘Hi! There you are. I was calling you.’

He grabbed on to a line that she now noticed was clipped on to the rail.  ‘Hi. I was taking advantage of the calm to check out the rudder and propeller and have a look at the hull.’

‘What’s the water like?’ she asked.

‘Fairly warm in these latitudes. A bit of a shock when you first jump in though.’ He grinned up at her. ‘Why? Do you fancy a swim?’

‘I don’t have a bathing costume,’ she replied. She glanced at him and despite the ripples he was creating treading water she could see that he was naked.

‘Well, come in with what your wearing, or I’ll look the other way while you strip off and dive in.’

She gazed down at him and feeling reckless she began to pull her shirt over the top of her head. She was fully prepared to gaze defiantly at him but as she emerged from under the shirt he was nowhere to be seen. Feeling rather silly she nevertheless pulled off her shorts and jumped naked into the sea. Out of curiosity she dived down and saw the propeller and rudder tinged green with algae and then she suddenly had a panicky memory of being trapped in the sinking aircraft and with pounding heart she struck out for the surface and took several huge gasping breaths. She thought about her fear while her heart rate slowed and then she deliberately forced herself to swim under the boat and stare up at the hull for a slow count to twenty. Then she surfaced on the other side and looked around for Steven. He had already climbed out and was gazing beyond the stern, a towel wrapped round his waist. A thought suddenly occurred to her. ‘Hey, what about sharks?’

‘Unlikely this far from shore. Hey, I’m sure there’s a breeze coming; I think you’d better come out.’ He pointed to a rope ladder with wooden steps draped over the stern. ‘There’s a towel on the seat.’ He disappeared below and she climbed out and wrapped herself in the towel and when he emerged half a minute later clad in shirt and shorts she went down to dress.

By the time she had untangled her hair the yacht was underway again, moving very slowly with the merest v-shaped ripple left astern. She looked at herself in the mirror. If she did not give her gap-toothed smile then her face was pretty much back to normal again, apart from a yellowish tinge here and there, and after a few days of regular food and unlimited supplies of water her body had recovered. She looked down at herself. Her tan had evened out and the remnants of her bruising were fading away. Only the scars on her neck, her abdomen and her leg showed as pale lines. She dressed herself and switched on the computer. She tried to log on to the department intranet and she was pleased to see that she could still gain access. She stared at the screen and rather reluctantly she typed ‘Sandstar’ into the search engine, but now it flagged up “Unauthorised Access”. She logged on to the general personnel file and found that she was classified as whereabouts unknown, presumed dead. She sighed and closed the site.

One thousand two hundred miles away in Washington DC a systems analyst stared at his computer screen and called his boss over. ‘The key word “Sandstar” has been recorded, and a back search has found that it was used by the same internet access address yesterday.’

‘What’s “Sandstar” then? Why was it flagged up?’

‘I don’t know. The computer just says that it is a key operational code word and gives a list of contact addresses to alert.’

‘No names attached to those addressees? What’s a sand star anyway? It sounds familiar.’ The analyst called up a new webpage and googled Sandstar.

‘Uh…a kind of starfish, an all-terrain vehicle tyre, a construction company in Canada, a kind of shoe. And there’s a name Grantham…that’s the guy you have to call first if it comes up.’

‘Ok but why did the computer flag it? It’s a common enough term.’

‘Because someone was trying to use it on the British service website.’

‘What…MI6?’

‘Yes sir.’

His boss nodded and then withdrew to his private office and picked up his telephone and dialled a cell phone number.

‘Is this Mr Grantham?’ he asked.

‘This is he,’ replied General Robert Bruckner.

‘Ok good. This is Halverson, shift manager in data monitoring. Your key word “Sandstar” has cropped up.’

‘What! You’d better give me all the details. Have you tracked down the source yet?’

‘Hold on. Hey Barney, have you got the source for Sandstar, yet?... Huh?...yeah, its Grantham...ok…ok not yet then.’

Bruckner clenched his teeth and snarled impatiently while he listened to Halverson’s half of the conversation.

‘No Mr Grantham, we don’t have it yet. Computer’s still working on it.’

‘Ok make it your top priority, do you here?’ Bruckner demanded.

‘On whose authority?’

‘Look up this code.’ Bruckner gave Halverson a number and a few seconds later the man came back to him.

‘Ok right on to it sir…absolute priority.’

Bruckner grunted in response, broke the connection and then dialled Sir Hugh Fielding in London. Next he called Jasper White, Neil Samms and Vince Parker and summoned them to an urgent meeting.

During the afternoon the gentle breeze grew in strength, at first by fits and starts, but then more steadily. Steven stared out towards the southwest. The sky was covered by an innocuous layer of altostratus but it seemed to be growing thicker towards the horizon. He heard Gerry moving about below and he recalled watching her dive under the boat.  Her face was returning to normal and, although her smile was seriously marred by the missing tooth he found her rather attractive. He remembered admiring her taut, muscular body when he saw her performing an amazing number of pull-ups while clinging on to the boom and watching the muscles writhe across her back and bulge on her arms. When she had started to climb back on board he had gone below but he had not been able to resist peeping at her through a skylight and he remembered his guilty pleasure at watching her standing naked on the deck for a few seconds before she wrapped herself in a towel. He had also noted that she had acquired a pattern of small scars across her knuckles - they resembled some he had acquired himself.

The owner of the scarred hands climbed out of the cabin and favoured him with her gap toothed smile. He showed Gerry the weather report he had downloaded and together they looked at the anemometer record. ‘There’s a deepening depression that’s moved faster than the previous forecast suggested,’ he said. ‘Now it seems like we may have some gale force winds. The barometer’s dropped quite sharply in the last two hours.’

‘What do we do?’ Gerry asked. He was acutely aware of her proximity and he peeped down at her cleavage while she read the report.

‘What sailors have done for centuries,’ he replied. ‘We batten down the hatches and reef the sails. I just hope the wind is at least from somewhere south of west otherwise we’ll lose distance. If it’s from the south as forecast it will help us on our way.’

The setting sun was hidden by clouds that edged up over the horizon. A thick layer of stratus topped by a line of towering cumulo-nimbus that even while they watched grew and spread until a wall of cloud stretched across their course. As the sky darkened flashes of lightning lit them up from within. Slowly but inexorably the wind gathered strength until it was blowing a hard gale, and when the first of the cold rain reached them they donned wet weather gear.  With the mainsail partially raised the yacht skimmed up to the tops of the waves and then raced down the other side, digging its prow into the troughs and sending showers of spray flying aft. The ride was exhilarating and the yacht steadied at a speed of twelve knots.

‘Can it go any faster than this?’ Gerry asked, calling loudly above the roar of the wind and crashing of the sea.

‘Certainly,’ he replied, ‘but we would be heeling over uncomfortably and it puts too much strain on the gear. If we were in a race with a full crew on board we would do it but it’s dangerous with just two of us alone on the ocean.’

Steven stayed by the wheel most of the time watching the behaviour of the automatic steering system. Now and again he would adjust the angle of the boom and creep carefully about the decks checking everything was made fast, leaving Gerry standing by the wheel. As midnight approached the storm system drifted away to the north and the rain stopped. They could just see stars through some ragged holes in the clouds. The wind began to moderate but the yacht was still pitching up and down over the monstrous waves. ‘Why don’t you try and get some sleep now?’ Steven suggested.

‘What about you?’ Gerry asked, feeling guilty that she slept most of the night while he maintained his routine of sleeping for an hour at a time.

‘If you go below and get some sleep now, then if it keeps easing off, maybe you could keep watch for me.’

‘Ok,’ said Gerry, pleased that he would trust her alone up here, although of course he could be on deck in seconds if something cropped up needing more expertise than her slender experience could provide. ‘I’ll see you later then; don’t forget to wake me.’

Gerry went below and quickly fell asleep. She dreamed that she was back on the life raft being tossed around by frightening high seas and then woke up when she slid out of the bunk onto the floor. The boat was heeling over at a frightening angle. She scrambled out of the cabin and crawled up to the cockpit, barking her shins on the unfamiliar angles. Steven was lying on the deck clutching on to the shrouds trying to pull himself upright. The main sheet had parted somewhere and the boom was flung out to starboard, its end dipping into a raging sea. The wind howled through the rigging and a new storm flashed lightning across the sky followed by a huge crash of thunder. Gerry shrieked in alarm, then gathering her wits she shouted ‘Steven, what shall I do?’ She saw the relief in his face.

‘Turn us to port!’ he shouted.  She managed to grab the wheel. It span out of her grip giving her wrist a painful wrench. ‘Shit,’ she muttered and took a more determined grip and turned the wheel round. At first the yacht refused to respond but as it crested a wave the boom shook clear of the sea and the yacht turned into the wind and the sail began a thunderous flapping. She could see Steven struggling with the halliards and suddenly the sail slid down the mast. The yacht began to turn away from the wind.  She tried to stop the turn but it was beginning to gather sternway and twist slowly round. A huge wave rose up blotting out the horizon and she realised the yacht was going to meet it on its beam. She stared in horror as they began to climb sideways up the wave heeling further and further over. Then she saw Steven hoisting a small jib up the forestay. The wind grabbed the sail and the yacht span round and began to run before the gale. As it picked up speed the helm began to respond and she tried to keep a steady course. She watched Steven wrestling with the mainsail and he managed to lash it to the boom. He unfastened his tether and crawled across the deck and jumped into the cockpit beside her and gave her a hug; she enjoyed the warm contact of his body and wished she could respond but she dared not let go of the wheel.

‘We’re safe like this,’ he said ‘but we’ll be back where we were yesterday evening if this keeps up much longer.’

  ‘That trace and alert on key word Sandstar,’ said Jasper White to Bruckner. ‘It’s come up with a result. Internet connection relates to a computer that belongs to a Brit called Steven Morris.’

‘Very good…and his whereabouts?’

‘The guys promise they will have that very soon.’

‘Call me back when they do.’

Colonel White stared across the table at Vince Parker and Neil Samms who did their best not to look apprehensive. ‘Well I hope that this is going to be the last frigging loose end attached to this operation,’ he suddenly snarled. ‘Who is this guy Morris? One of Dan Halls’ buddies? Or maybe Richard Cornwall’s? Maybe his daughter’s boyfriend?’

‘Do you want me to go London and take care of it Colonel?’

‘What? After you and Vince screwed up over catching Dan Hall?’ White gave a quick shake of his head. ‘Ok, that wasn’t your fault; I guess we were all unaware that he knew Tate from way back in the gulf and probably had some kind of emotional attachment to her. We should find him quickly enough.’

Samms was grateful that White seemed to have got over their failure to catch the fugitive. After an initial bawling out, he had seemed to treat him and Vince with slightly more consideration.