‘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 cooperate.’
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.