Gerry left the dentist two hundred and twenty four dollars worse off but with a full set of front teeth, or at least a suitable imitation. Then she went to a bank and took out three thousand dollars courtesy of Helen Mendoza’s passport, driving licence and credit cards. Next she paid a visit to the shops, bought a wheelie bag and some more suitable clothes and a laptop computer, thence to the International Airport where she found the British Airways ticket desk.
‘Hello, I need a ticket for today’s flight back to London, please.’
‘I’m sorry madam; this evening’s flight is full. We’ve got space on tomorrow’s in club and world traveller. Would you like me to book you for that?’ the agent asked her.
Gerry pursed her lips and suppressed a string of oaths. She dared not wait in case Helen Mendoza reported a stolen passport and Gerry was arrested before she could leave the island. She looked around and saw an Air Canada desk where the agent was being harangued by some apparently discontented customers. She walked over and eavesdropped that the much delayed flight to Toronto would be leaving in ninety minutes. She waited with as much patience as she could for thirty seconds but then ignoring discontented objections from the complaining passengers she barged her way to the front. ‘Do you have any seats left on that Toronto flight?’ she asked with her best smile.
‘Actually we do. You’d like a ticket?’ said the man gratified that he had one customer he did not have to placate over the delayed departure.
‘Yes I would thanks,’ said Gerry, relieved.
The flight proved to be fairly empty of passengers; presumably they had been re-routed by the airline on to earlier flights. Gerry wondered if she should have tried to bargain for a discounted ticket, but at least she had the comfort of a row of three seats to herself. After take-off she accepted a cup of coffee from the cabin crew, sat back in her seat and closed her eyes.
‘May I sit here for a moment?’ a man murmured to her. She sighed inwardly and opened her eyes then she started violently in her seat and slopped her coffee over the table top. She spent a half second wondering if she should be prepared to fight for her life or stop the coffee from pouring on to her legs, but then realised that he would probably not attempt to kill her on board the aircraft, and she was absolutely certain he would never have given her any warning.
‘I’ll go and get a cloth,’ said Richard Cornwall.
Cornwall returned a minute later carrying a damp cloth and a fresh cup of coffee for her. He watched in silence as she mopped her table and her legs. Then he took the cloth and handed her the coffee and sat beside her.
‘We thought you’d drowned until you started using the internet aboard that yacht,’ he said.
‘I’ve no idea who you mean by ‘we’. If you knew I was taking this flight then presumably you could have stopped me before I boarded.’
‘I wanted you to get away from there before Samms and Parker found you.’
‘Ok, so how did you track me down?’
‘Not my ingenuity, I have to admit. I had a message from Daniel Hall, who said that you had survived and were on a yacht destination Bermuda.’
‘How the hell did he know that?’ Gerry asked.
‘I assume a bit of a cock-up,’ Cornwall suggested. ‘He must have logged onto the website and read the reports. They must have forgotten to deny him access. You know what it’s like; sometimes people can take all the necessary precautions except the most obvious ones.’
‘Like me trying to log on from Steven’s yacht and showing that I was still alive?’
‘Yeah… pretty silly of you Gerry.’
‘Well maybe, but I’ve been in prison for the last few years trying to keep a grip on my sanity, not keeping up to date with tracking and surveillance, data monitoring and…’
‘Ok, point taken!’ said Cornwall alarmed by a note of hysteria. ‘Of course you’ve had a godawful experience. Sorry.’
‘And how do I know you haven’t arranged for me to be arrested on arrival in Toronto?’ she went on.
‘I could have had you arrested in Bermuda, still officially a piece of UK territory,’ said Cornwall. ‘Why would I let you go to Canada?’
‘Alright… fair point.’
‘You really are a ruthless bitch; you haven’t expressed any concern about Steven Morris at all! What do you think would have happened to him with your friends Samms and Parker waiting for him in Bermuda?’
‘Oh… is he alright?’
‘Fortunately I arranged for him to be taken into protective custody when he arrived and he told me something about your adventure. Now he’s off to Florida in his yacht. In the meantime I have put out some disinformation that you intend to travel to Egypt where you can live out of sight until…’ He broke off when he realised that tears were trickling down Gerry’s cheeks and she was ineffectually wiping them away with the back of her hand.
‘Bloody hell, you really have gone soft!’ he scoffed, but then felt ashamed. ‘I’m sorry; it must have been utter hell alone on that life raft for all that time.’
‘You think?’
‘Now officially I have no idea you’re still alive,’ Cornwall continued. ‘I’m meant to be on holiday in Barbados; my wife is still in the hotel in Bermuda. I hope she’s not enjoying herself too much without me.’ He glanced over at Gerry who was staring at the seat in front of her in some miserable world of her own. He sighed. ‘Look; you should trust me. We should pool whatever we know about this whole bizarre mess and we should work together.’
Gerry gazed out of the window, but drew little comfort from the vista of layers of white cloud topped by the deepening blue of the evening sky. ‘Who was responsible for putting me in prison Richard? And why was I brought out? Did you really think I would be a useful asset?’
‘No,’ he replied. ‘I thought you’d be a bloody pain in the arse. Fielding insisted. He wanted you to go to Guantanamo Bay. Ali Hamsin demanded to speak to you, but I don’t know what about.’
Gerry stared at him. ‘I find that rather hard to believe. Are you telling me you don’t know about operation Gilgamesh?’
‘I’ve been trying to find out, but it was buried years ago!’
‘I know, but Hamsin didn’t tell me where exactly,’ Gerry said.
‘What do you mean where exactly?’ Cornwall demanded. ‘It was an abandoned operation, but sensitive so all references were deleted, expunged from the records.’
‘But Ali Hamsin told me he had the documents. He knows where they were buried… literally!’
‘What… in the ground?’
‘Yes!’
‘Shit! No wonder there’s all this crap going on. There must be some really embarrassing stuff.’
‘Yes but as Hamsin didn’t tell me anything useful, they must have decided to just get rid of us both.’
‘There’s a report already written stating that you were responsible for that aircraft crash, and that everyone on board was killed,’ said Cornwall.
‘How could they possibly know that?’
‘They didn’t, but when the aircraft disappeared and then you turned up alive, they made the assumption. Then when Dan Hall disappeared from sight they reckoned that he must have had something to do with helping you.’
‘I guess that’s not too far from the truth.’ Gerry stared at the seat back. ‘If only I had shot the bastards straightaway. I could probably have flown that plane back to Bermuda and landed it myself! But why did Dan run off? He could have brazened it out?’
‘My guess is that he has some romantic notion of carrying out his own investigation into the Gilgamesh affair.’