‘I’ve been instructed to leave the two of you to talk on your own,’ said Mandy. ‘Besides I’m sure Ali has had had enough of my company.’
Gerry and Ali watched her stalk off to the exit, then he said ‘Of course everything will be recorded anyway, in fact I expect she’ll go next door and put on a pair of headphones.’
‘In that case let’s begin, but first of all my name isn’t Emily, it’s Gerry.’
He gave his head a weary shake. ‘For years I have thought of you as Emily.’
‘Perhaps you can get used to Gerry. We intend to settle you in England, as you know. Will your wife be happy to leave Baghdad? Is there anywhere you particularly wish to go?’ Gerry asked.
‘Sloane Square sounds nice, or perhaps Virginia Water. Will the budget stretch to either of those places?’
‘I doubt it,’ Gerry smiled, ‘but you’d be welcome to stay in my little house in Twickenham until we can sort something out. It used to be my fiancé’s home, but sadly he was murdered by someone in the CIA and it’s been empty for a while.’
‘Ah… do I hear that you too have unresolved issues?’
‘Oh yes,’ she nodded, ‘I certainly have many unresolved issues. But our listeners will be growing impatient. So what do you have to tell me?
He stared at her for a moment, and then smiled.
‘Do you remember when we were travelling back to Kuwait? You and I and Hakim Mansour.’
‘Yes I remember.’
‘You saw a document named Gilgamesh?’
‘I was just about to have a look at it when you stopped me.’
‘That’s right, I did.’ He gave an artificial smile. ‘Now I want to negotiate what I know about Gilgamesh for my freedom and resettling my family in England.’
‘Why didn’t you do it years ago?’
‘Because back then George Bush was president of the United States. Now Obama is in office I feel it is time. And I am desperate. I’m worried that if not soon then I’ll never get out of here.’
‘But…’ Gerry hesitated.
‘But what?’ Ali asked, frowning.
‘President Obama has already promised to release everyone from Guantanamo Bay. First of all he said it would be done inside one year after his inauguration. That’s proven wide of the mark because he’s in his second term now, but still you should be out of here anyway.’
‘But of course nobody saw fit to inform me!’
‘Well there’s a surprise, but nevertheless that’s the case.’
‘God be praised!
‘Well yes of course, but good for President Obama as well!’
‘But this means that I don’t have to strike any deals.’
‘Well maybe not Ali, but I was told you asked for me to come here all this way to talk to me about Gilgamesh.’ She leaned towards him. ‘So go on, tell me why you had me brought here.’
Ali frowned. ‘What do you mean? I had you brought here.’
Gerry leaned back in her seat and stared at him in consternation. ‘I was told you had asked for me to come here to talk to me about Gilgamesh.’
‘I had no idea that you were coming until this very morning!’ he replied.
Gerry gazed up at the CCTV cameras and microphones, then she reached out and seized his hand. ‘I really want you to tell me what you know. I think it might throw some much needed light in dark places. It might certainly help me found out who killed my fiancé, and clear up one or two other matters.’
‘Very well,’ he shrugged, ‘Gilgamesh was an agreement drawn up between Hakim Mansour…’
A siren blast cut Ali off in mid speech. The door burst open and four men charged in. The first two grabbed Ali just as Gerry sprang to her feet, lifted up her chair and whirled it round and slammed it into the body of the third man. She lost her grip on the chair and faced the fourth man who rushed recklessly at her. She side-stepped, jabbed him under the ribs then chopped him hard on the back of the neck and then she launched herself at the two men hustling Ali towards the door. She punched one of them in the back and he fell to his knees gasping for breath. Then she heard a sharp click and felt a huge jolt of electricity all over her body; her muscles went numb and she collapsed to the floor realising that she had been hit by a Taser. She gritted her teeth knowing that the pain would end as soon as her assailant cut the power, but she saw Ali being hustled through the door before she was at last released from her seizure. The other men departed the room and left her gasping on the floor. As her muscles recovered she groaned and struggled on to her hands and knees, muttering ‘bastards!’ to herself.
‘Crap thing to happen,’ someone said. It was Mandy Fisher who had come into the enclosure. ‘I had a jolt as part of training, but they didn’t keep it on me like that for so long.’ Gerry turned her head towards the woman and saw the grin on her face. ‘Come on tough Miss Tate; get up! You’re heading back to your hotel, probably none the worse for wear.’
On the return journey to the aircraft Gerry and Mandy Fisher were escorted by two armed guards, but she was greeted cordially enough by Felix Grainger. Perhaps he was oblivious to the drama of her encounter with Ali Hamsin. At any rate he made no enquiries as to the outcome of their meeting.
Gerry sat in the aircraft considering her conversation with Hamsin. Some confidence trick had apparently been played out on them both and she found the implications very worrying. However following the abrupt and violent termination of their meeting, she was now sitting here none the worse for wear as if the whole incident had never happened and nobody seemed inclined to speak about it.
She stared across the aisle at Vince and Ryan who were reviewing case notes together. She looked at her own files while trying to listen to their conversation. After a while they began to talk about the political situation in general and her attention wandered off.
Her train of thought was interrupted by a loud snore from Grainger seated across the aisle from her. She remembered Philip snoring in bed beside her and how she had pushed him in the shoulder until he rolled on to his side. Her thoughts moved onto other intimate details of their life together and once again she felt a burning anger towards whoever had destroyed their happy relationship. She felt a resurgence of other emotions that she had repressed all those years ago: her confusion at the events that led to her suspension and then her sense of betrayal at her subsequent arrest. Only now she was not pregnant and neither was she suffering from depression. She began to speculate on the possibility that a sudden jolt of electricity from a Taser could reset her thought processes as if her brain had been rebooted like some kind of computer. She felt a renewed determination to learn the truth about what had happened to Philip and Dean Furness and who was responsible for her imprisonment. Her mind whirled around in circles until she was mentally exhausted. She deliberately closed her eyes and tried to doze off. Then she felt a prod on her shoulder.
‘Wake up Gerry, landing in ten minutes.’ Ryan smiled at her. With an effort she forced a smile in return. Somehow he no longer seemed so handsome.
Annie met them off the aircraft and drove Gerry and Vince back to their hotel. Vince began to talk to her but she just ignored him and strode off towards the elevator. Half an hour later back in her room she had poured herself a whisky from the minibar and was trawling through the service intranet searching for information when the telephone rang. ‘Yes?’ she snapped into the mouthpiece.
‘Hi Gerry, this is Dan Hall. I just wanted to say I’m sorry for the way I spoke to you yesterday, and I thought that if you weren’t busy this evening, perhaps you might like to go for a drink and I could apologise in person?’