‘He was taken to an American airbase in England, where someone who called himself Colonel White told him he would be doing a great service for his country by taking this document over the border from Saudi Arabia to Baghdad. Hakim Mansour met him and took delivery of it and then brought him back to our house.
‘The next day he was taken away again and then he was very quiet when he later came home,’ Ali replied. ‘He refused to talk about where he’d been, but he told my wife and me that he had been interviewed by the police about the journey over. Later when his mother had gone to bed he described what had happened to him in greater detail. He told me that it had been the secret police who had interrogated him and how they had threatened him. He hadn’t understood what they were trying to find out from him but he was very happy when Hakim Mansour turned up and made them release him. I was glad that I had a good relationship with Mansour despite his close connection with the Husseins. But just the same, I think Rashid was more badly frightened than he admitted to me.’
‘I can imagine he was,’ said Gerry. ‘People were always disappearing during Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship. Thousands of political prisoners, deaths in police custody and then there were the Kurds and the Marsh Arabs.’
‘Maybe, but how many Iraqis have died in the years since the invasion? I don’t want to be an apologist for the old regime, but does it profit a man’s family to know that he died by bomb or bullet before or after his country had been freed from Saddam Hussein’s reign of terror? Three thousand people died in the twin towers of the World Trade Centre but thirty thousand Iraqis died in the invasion and yet my country had nothing to do with the atrocity in New York.’ Ali suddenly looked uncomfortable. ‘Gerry, I need to er… use the washroom, as you might say.’
‘Ok Ali, I’ll close my eyes while you go over the side. Erm… that side of the raft, so the wind is behind you. Call me when you’re done.’
She turned away from him and gazed at the distant clouds that had built up during the last hour. It was approaching midday and the sun was beating down on the canopy. If she had been alone she would have stripped off her clothes to try and stay cool but she did not feel that she could upset Ali Hamsin. Apart from his wife there was a fairly good chance that he had never seen any woman naked before, or at least been in such close proximity to one. Also despite his age and his good manners, he was a man who had been in prison for many years and it was unfair that she should cause him any anguish. ‘Even if I do look a mess,’ she muttered quietly to herself.
‘What was that you said?’ he asked
‘I said it look there’s rain over there,’ she answered and sure enough greyish swirling curtains of rain fell from the base of distant storm clouds down to the sea. ‘If it rained on us then we could collect water on the canopy.’
She saw him swallow awkwardly at the mention of water. She looked at her watch. It was 10:43am US eastern time, but out on the ocean the sun had climbed towards its midday zenith. They had been on the raft for nearly nine hours and she had drunk about three quarters of a litre of water and already she was feeling a raging thirst. She looked at the remaining one and a half litres of water in the plastic bottle lodged in the corner of the raft and felt that she could drink all of it in one go. She glanced at Ali who was staring out across the sea. No doubt he felt just as thirsty. She wondered if he might try and drink all of the water when she was asleep, but deep down she was convinced that he was a deeply honourable man. Perhaps he was more likely to offer to forego his half so that she might have more. Would she be strong enough to reject his offer? There was no possibility that he could force the issue in his favour. She was bigger and stronger and highly trained; she could overpower him in a few seconds if it ever became necessary. As for her, she would do her best to keep him alive, at least until he had told her all he knew about Gilgamesh.
‘Look, it’s an aircraft!’ he called.
Gerry immediately looked up and sure enough there was a vapour trail visible above the scattered clouds directly above them. She saw the tiny silver shape of the aircraft generating the trail. ‘Probably going to the Caribbean,’ she said. She imagined the scene in the cabin; the lights dimmed, the crew relaxed, the passengers enjoying drinks while watching films on the entertainment system, all of them secure in the knowledge that they would arrive safely in some holiday resort in a few hours’ time, and absolutely no one on board would be searching the ocean for the tiny silver speck that was their life raft. Nevertheless Ali waved franticly at the aircraft but as it travelled westward at eight miles a minute it was soon out of sight leaving nothing but a vapour trail that broadened, disintegrated into smaller sections and then faded away.
‘We should keep a look out for ships,’ said Gerry. ‘It might be best if you look one way and I look the other. First of all I’m going to use the bailer; I’m fed up with sitting around in puddles of water.’
After thirty minutes of slow bailing, trying to avoid working up a sweat Gerry and Ali had the raft nearly dry inside apart from an impossible to reach stream where the cylindrical side met the floor, but the heat of the sun began to dry that up as it trickled back and forth.
They sat down opposite each other.
‘So how did you end up in Guantanamo Bay then Ali? And what the hell did this Gilgamesh document say that was such dangerous information?’ she asked, suppressing an urge to seize Ali by the throat and shake the truth out of him.
‘Ok I’ll get around to that. You asked me how I ended up in Guantanamo Bay, didn’t you.’
‘True, but…’
‘We have plenty of time, don’t we? What else is there to do on this raft except relate our stories to one another?’
Gerry sighed in irritation, but then she said ‘Fair enough Ali, go on then, tell me.’ She and gave him what was meant to be a bright smile but it turned into a grimace of pain from her damaged mouth.
Ali related how he had been summoned by Hakim Mansour to translate the Gilgamesh document. Then he had been taken by Kamal Ahwadi to work for Qusay Hussein in his desert palace, and after the invasion he had finally ended up in prison where he had been found by their old acquaintance.
‘So that’s how I learned about Gilgamesh and how I met Dean Furness again. I was taken to the airport and put on an aircraft. You can imagine how surprised I was to see Kamal Ahwadi brought on board too. I found out later that he had been picked up trying to cross the border into Lebanon carrying half a kilo of gold bars. Of course by then he wasn’t the same Ahwadi. The swaggering stride had been replaced by a stumbling stagger; his hair was in disarray and his face was badly bruised. I think perhaps his hands had been cuffed behind his back.’
The raft suddenly lurched to a wave and there was a sudden surge of water alongside. Gerry looked behind and saw that there was a line of dark clouds scudding along in the distance and a churned up sea with some foamy white wave tops. The raft surged again and some spray flew aboard, just missing her but splashing into the far end.
‘Maybe we should put the sides of the canopy down,’ Ali suggested.
‘Then we might miss a ship,’ Gerry protested.
‘Rather we need a ship to see us, I think,’ he suggested. ‘After all we have no means of attracting their attention.’
She thought about it and then reluctantly nodded. They pulled down the sides of the canopy and secured them to the edge of the raft. In the short time it took them, the sea had become much rougher and they felt the raft heave and sink as the spray crashed down on to the canopy. They sat back down and clutched on to the straps that ran along the inside as the raft lurched about.