The Gilgamesh Conspiracy (38 page)

‘Terminal Five is certainly an improvement,’ said Gerry as they rode up an escalator and walked into the Arrivals hall. ‘It was still being built when I went inside. Not that way!’ she called to Dan as he walked towards the Foreign Nationals line. ‘You’re a UK citizen now.’

‘Oh gosh yes, so I am’ he said in an appalling attempt at a sounding British.

‘Let’s hope your passport is more convincing than your accent,’ she muttered as he lined up behind her. ‘Stop it!’ she said when he tweaked her backside.

They emerged unscathed from immigration and took the coach to Oxford. ‘How far away’s this place where your folks lived?’ Dan asked.

‘It’s just beyond the city. From the centre we can get a bus to the village.’

‘Wouldn’t it’ve been quicker to hire a car?’

‘Well yes, but it would have been difficult without a credit card and I don’t want to leave any trail behind us if we can help it. Anyway we’ve got plenty of time.

‘I haven’t been on a bus in ages,’ he said.

‘Ok don’t be scared, I’ll look after you.’ she said with a grin.

‘You said you’d explain why we need to go there.’

‘I’ve got a small stash there. It’s under the garden shed. A couple of passports, a few other useful IDs, some more cash.’

‘Who owns the house now?’

‘My brother and I still own it, but it’s leased out,’ she explained. ‘We wanted to sell it but it proved difficult when I was inside, then property prices took a hit and it made better financial sense to keep it. I just hope the people in it aren’t at home. It’ll save some explanations.’

So it proved when Gerry rang the bell and knocked on the front door. Then she clambered over the side gate and unbolted it. ‘I guess this is how you used to sneak your boyfriends in when you were a teenager,’ Dan said.

‘I didn’t have any boyfriends,’ she replied. ‘Not until I went to university. There’s the shed. Seems to be in good condition, and someone’s certainly looking after the garden. It’s beautiful.’

Dan stared at her for a moment in surprise and then followed her over to the shed. ‘It’s padlocked,’ he said.

She fumbled briefly underneath by the door and came up with a small plastic bag inside which was a slightly rusty key. Inside the shed she pulled an old petrol engine mower aside and lifted up the floorboards, and then from under the shed she pulled out a metal box with a combination lock. ‘Here it is!’

She opened the lid and pulled out two hand guns wrapped in plastic and two boxes of ammunition. ‘Can’t take these with us, more’s the pity.’ She put them on the floor and pulled out a big envelope. ‘Here we are!’ She showed him a UK passport. ‘Do you recognise that name?’

‘Emily Stevens! I knew I recognised you from somewhere.’

She put it back in the envelope and pulled out another. ‘Ah this one’s better. Anne Fuller.’ She pulled out a third, stared at it then handed it to him. ‘You can take this one as a spare.’ The photo showed a cheerful looking young man slightly overweight judging by his neck. ‘Matthew Reynolds. It’s due to expire in about eight months but it will get you out of the country.’

Dan frowned at the picture. ‘He doesn’t look much like me, but then it’s nearly ten years old. How can I use this to go to Kuwait? The ticket’s in the name of James Huntley.’

‘I don’t think we should use those tickets. I think we should take a flight to Amsterdam or Frankfurt and then travel on from there.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘It’s just a feeling. If anyone’s on our tail then they’ll be expecting us to take the flight from London this evening we’re already booked on. This just leaves the trail cold.’

‘That makes sense, but why didn’t you say so before?’

‘I wasn’t sure if this stash would still be in place. It’s been over six years.’

‘Who’s this guy Reynolds in the passport?’ he asked.

She suddenly looked deeply sad. ‘That’s Philip Barrett. Phil. It was one of his.’

‘Oh…I’m sorry.’

‘It’s ok. I’ve got through it and now I have you with me.’ She managed a smile. ‘Come on, we’re going to take the Eurostar to Paris and tomorrow we’ll fly to Amman. We can get visas on arrival there.’

‘Amman? We’re going to Kuwait!’

‘Our destination’s Amman; that’s where I hope to find Rashid Hamsin. Kuwait’s a piece of misdirection, in case we were tracked.’

‘So that’s why we flew out of Halifax instead of Toronto? You don’t trust Felix?’

‘If Grainger or Maddon talk, they’ll say we’re going to Kuwait, but it’s in Amman I hope to catch up with Rashid Hamsin.’

‘So in case I was captured, I wouldn’t have known either,’ said Dan. She nodded. ‘Well you might have told me before now, it’s like you don’t trust me.’

‘I do trust you; it’s just that I’ve been on my own for so long.’

‘You’re not alone any longer. What’s the Eurostar?’

‘It’s the train through the channel tunnel and on to Paris.

‘How the hell can you have lost them?’ General Bruckner bellowed into the telephone.

‘They didn’t turn up for the Kuwait flight they were booked on,’ replied Neil Samms.

‘You were meant to follow them when they arrived at Heathrow until they got on that goddam airplane; what happened to that?’

‘Well that was Weitzman’s job, General.’

Gary Weitzman, standing next to Samms, closed his eyes and grimaced while Samms grinned. ‘Would you like to speak to him?’

‘Not really, but put him on anyway.’ Samms held out the handset and Weitzman took hold of it as if it were red hot.

‘Weitzman here, General.’

‘Ok Gary, what’s the story?’

‘Tate and Hall came off the Halifax flight at terminal three, then they went down to the underground railway station there. They suddenly went into a door marked staff only and jammed it behind them. There’s a sort of network of corridors leading to fire exits and by the time we got through the door they had disappeared. She just had good local knowledge General.’

‘So she knew she was being followed?’

‘I don’t know General. I think maybe she was just taking precautions.’

‘Ok Gary, we’ve got all the airports covered and we’ve got their passport details. And our team in Kuwait are ready to pick them up when they arrive?’

‘Oh yes their ready, they’ll not make it through. The Kuwaitis are on side.’

‘And the Brits are co-operating?’

‘Yessir, they’re after them too.’

‘Ok Gary, I’ll be in touch.’

‘Yes General.’

Weitzman replaced the handset and grinned at Samms who looked at him in open mouthed wonder. ‘I don’t believe that! You frigging well lose them and rather than bawling you out he talks to you like an old pal of his! You’ve got a charmed life Weitzman!’

‘Those two are fucking idiots!’ Bruckner complained to Sir Hugh Fielding. ‘I’m gonna have their heads if anything else goes wrong.’

‘I wouldn’t be too hard on them Robert. Yes, they were clumsy to lose Tate and Hall, but Tate is a devious bitch; always has been. We’ll see what Cornwall has to say. What about Felix Grainger? Are you going to have him taken up?’

‘No he can stay out there on a long lead. Annie Maddon is reporting to me on his activities. Now we’ll be landing in twenty five minutes; let’s hope Cornwall hasn’t checked out.’

Richard and Fiona Cornwall had just finished packing their suitcases in preparation for their flight back to London and they were standing on the balcony gazing out towards the setting sun. There was a knock on the door.

‘That’ll be the porter,’ he said.

‘He’s a bit early but we’re ready so we might as well go,’ said Fiona she marched to the door and as her husband had always insisted she peered through the spy hole to identify their caller. ‘Oh!’ she said, ‘it’s not the porter, it’s a couple of policemen.’ She turned to her husband and gave him a look of inquiry.

‘Come into the bathroom! Now!’

Although for the last twenty years she had been a speech therapist, a wife and a mother, for seven years before that Fiona Cornwall had been an employee of MI6. She quickly checked the door bolt was secure and then grabbed a chair from behind the desk and dragged it into the bathroom and placed it behind the locked door while her husband tapped away at his I-Phone. She winced and gritted her teeth as the hotel room door gave way with a splintering crash.’

She heard muffled voices and then there was a knock on the bathroom door. ‘Ok would you come out please?’

‘What’s going on? We’re in the bath together!’ she said and saw her husband give a quick smile.

‘No you’re not, you asked for the luggage porter to come up in five minutes from now and you’re due to check out.’

‘Well we’re still busy in here!’

‘Open the door!’

‘Ok I’m nearly finished,’ Cornwall muttered. He quickly pulled the sim card from the phone and flushed it down the toilet. ‘We’ll open up,’ he called out.

Fiona dragged the chair away and opened the door.

‘What’s the meaning of this intrusion,’ she demanded with as much outrage as she could summon. Then she saw another man walk into the room.

‘Why Sir Hugh, what a nice surprise!’

‘Belt up Fiona,’ Fielding ordered. ‘Richard, you’ve some questions to answer. You’re coming to London with me. Your wife can go with British Airways.’

Robert Bruckner watched Richard Cornwall and Sir Hugh Fielding climb out of the car and then enter the cabin. The suave Englishman was too much of a professional to appear the least bit flustered and settled himself in the Gulfstream’s luxurious seat as if he was a guest rather than a man under arrest.

‘Jasper White has told us what’s been going on,’ Bruckner said without any preamble. ‘You’re up to your fucking neck in it.’

‘Yes but in what exactly?’ Cornwall asked. ‘A conspiracy to conceal the truth about a clandestine operation before the Iraq invasion. One that was too sensitive to be revealed by Philip Barrett or Dean Furness who were both killed, or by Ali Hamsin and Gerry Tate, both of whom were locked up. Then when you thought that you’d have to release Hamsin, you had this idea that he might be prepared to talk to Gerry Tate, and then when that didn’t work you were going to have them both incarcerated in some godforsaken prison cell. Or were you planning to just kick them both out of the plane, mid-Atlantic?

‘The only thing I haven’t worked out is what exactly it is you’re trying to keep covered up, and how high it goes. It obviously includes the two of you, but who else wants it kept hidden I wonder?’

‘You’re a smart man Richard, you always have been,’ said Fielding. ‘But of course what you’re saying is hogwash.’

‘You mean I can’t prove it. So what have you got lined up for me? Is something going to be pinned on me?’

‘We reckon we’ll have you for the murder of Geraldine Tate.’

Cornwall was quiet for a moment. ‘So you’ve managed to catch up with her, have you?’

‘Not yet, but we will do soon,’ Fielding assured him.

Although she excelled at Arabic, Gerry’s knowledge of French was schoolroom standard, and she was struggling to make the waitress understand her. She was somewhat amazed when Dan stepped in with a stream of fluent French which elicited a broad smile from the sulky waitress who then bestowed a look of contempt at Gerry before disappearing back to the kitchen.

‘What did you say to her,’ Gerry asked.

‘I just told her what we wanted to eat.’

‘There was something else at the end.’

‘I said that you were English and that meant you were incapable of learning another language.’

‘Bloody cheek!’ Gerry spluttered, ‘I’ll have…’ Her phone bleeped. She picked it up and frowned at the screen. ‘It’s from Richard Cornwall’s wife. She says he’s been snatched up by Fielding and suggests we act on the basis that he’ll reveal all he knows.’

‘Oh crap! Did he know we would be going to Amman?’

‘No, he thinks we’re off to Kuwait as well.’

‘Do you think he’ll be safe?’

‘Nothing will happen to anyone while we’re still on the loose, but if we can’t find Rashid Hamsin and find out the truth of operation Gilgamesh, then who knows?’

‘If they catch up with us, do you think they’ll put you back inside?’ Dan asked.

‘No I think they’ll kill us both,’ she replied. ‘We really need to find what we’re looking for.’

‘Do you think Rashid will help us?’

‘I hope so. I helped him get away when he was about to be picked up.’

‘I thought you were the one who snatched him in the first place.’

‘Yes that was me, but then the second time I was sent to pick him up, I arranged his escape.’

‘Let’s hope he remembers that. How are we going to find him now?’

‘His mother’s brother has a vehicle repair and car dealership in Amman. I can’t remember which type it is but I do remember it was one of the Japanese manufacturers.’

‘Well hopefully there aren’t too many car dealers in Amman then, otherwise we could be searching for days.’

‘It’s not going to be a problem finding the right one so long as an old friend of mine named Adnan Marafi is still around.’

‘Hall and Tate shouldn’t be too difficult to find,’ said Bruckner. ‘So they’ve not turned up in Kuwait, but we know they have to be heading towards the Middle East.’ He pointed to a map of the world displayed on one of the screens. ‘The other countries bordering Iraq are Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria. Saudi Arabia is very unlikely as people can’t turn up without a visa, and I doubt that they have had time to get past that problem. Similarly Iran is a place where they don’t encourage tourists. That leaves Turkey, Syria and Jordan as the most likely countries but they could have gone to other places such as Bahrain where UK citizens are fairly welcome. I want you to go over Tate’s history and work out where she would most likely have gone.’

‘What about Hall’s past, General?’

‘This is Tate’s stomping ground. Let’s figure she’ll be calling the shots. Now get to it. I want them found. Oh, and keep the line open to London. They might not have the facilities we have but they know Tate better than we do.’ 

‘This should be the last time we have to worry about being picked up,’ said Gerry as they stood in line to board the flight from Paris to Amman the next day.

‘That sounds a bit complacent,’ Dan warned. ‘You don’t realise how much data we haul in these days, and what computing power we’ve developed since nine-eleven. They’ll be watching out for any pair of travellers that have left London or somewhere else in Europe, heading for destinations anywhere in the Arab world, and then they’ll search the background of each and every one of those passengers. I believe it’s just a matter of time before they track down our passports, find there’s no genuine background to them and decide it could be the two of us. We just have to hope that it doesn’t happen before we get to Amman.’

Gerry stared at him for a moment. ‘You’re right; I’ve been out of the game for too long.’ She grabbed his hand and gave it a squeeze. ‘I’m glad your with me Dan, otherwise I would have just tried to hide somewhere. I’ve had too much crap kicked out of me in the last few years.’

‘You were going to tell me about Adnan Marafi,’ he said once they were seated on board the aircraft.

‘He’s a contact in Jordanian intelligence. I saved his life once and he owes me. He’s retired now but he has this car rental agency that has an office in Queen Alia airport. I’m sure he or his contacts will help us track down the family.’

‘But he’s retired, you say.’

‘Let’s say he’s inactive. He must be nearly seventy years old, but nobody ever retires really, not from this business and definitely not in his part of the world. You need to keep a friend on the inside to help you keep tabs on your enemies.’

‘Uh…General.’

Bruckner glared with disfavour at Gary Weitzman. ‘Yes, have you finally had a moment of inspiration?’

‘Well it’s like this sir. I’ve been checking Ali Hamsin’s family connections. According to this old report I’ve turned up his wife came from Jordan originally, not from Iraq and I wonder if she might still have relatives there. Also Rashid Hamsin might not have gone back to Iraq; he might have gone there too.’

‘To Jordan?’

‘Yes sir.’

Bruckner pursed his lips and finally nodded. ‘Ok listen up everyone, I want to make Jordan a priority. We have people on the ground in Amman, and I want them woken up and sent to work. I want the passenger lists for arrivals in Amman examined and the flights for the next few days. Don’t stop looking at the other places though; just work twice as hard, ok?’

He looked around the London ops centre and saw a renewed burst of feverish activity. He saw Hugh Fielding talking on the phone to his people in Vauxhall Cross, and the Englishman pointed to Weitzman and raised his thumb. Bruckner took the hint.

‘Ok Gary, good work,’ Bruckner called out somewhat grudgingly, and Weitzman gave a nod and a grin. ‘Samms, call the guys at Farnborough and get the aircraft readied for a trip to Amman,’ Bruckner growled, ‘and in the meantime why don’t you see if you can come up with something intelligent as well. Ok everyone, keep up the good work; let’s get the job done.’

‘In happier times we will drive down to Petra together,’ Adnan Marafi announced. ‘Have you ever been there, Daniel?’

‘No I haven’t, but…no never.’

‘Come on Dan what were you were going to say?’ Gerry asked.

‘I was going to say that I had seen it in a film. Not a documentary though; it was that Indiana Jones movie.’

‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,’ supplied Marafi. ‘I enjoyed those films. When you have finished whatever it is you’re doing, we will go and find the Holy Grail together. I could do with a new…what do you say, leash on life.’

‘Lease of life,’ said Gerry. ‘I could do with one too, but first we need to find Rashid Hamsin.’