Bruckner rubbed his chin. He walked over to his drinks cabinet and poured out the end of a bottle of Glenmorangie single malt whisky. That was the bottle that Sir Hugh Fielding had given to him back in February when they had first discussed the plan. He would have to notify Hugh as soon as possible so that he could take any precautions he thought necessary to ensure his safety. He stared out of his study window into the dark night. With only a little imagination he could picture an enraged assassin aiming a high powered sniper rifle at him. He closed the curtains and sank into an armchair and considered the message from Tate that had been sent to him via Richard Cornwall.
Wherever he hid away, she had said, and whatever precautions he took to guard himself, she would find a way through to him. Maybe not this year maybe not the next, but one day he would find himself in the same room as her with nowhere to run and nobody to help him.
He believed her, and so he had decided he would do nothing to protect himself. When she came he would try to talk to her, but he had decided it was pointless living his life in continuous fear of her. Besides, if he asked for round the clock protection from an assassin, he would have to provide a full explanation, and it would be difficult to explain how the events of several years ago had suddenly led to him being in imminent danger.
Without actually announcing his retirement, he completed his current projects and reports and asked to be excused from any further work for the time being. This was accepted without any question, and probably with some relief by the younger members of the directorate. After all he was coming up to sixty-five years old and it was entirely appropriate that he should stand down. He felt secure within his own home with its elaborate security system and while he was officially on active duty he was entitled to a trained personal security specialist who acted as his chauffeur.
Four months had gone by without incident and he was being driven back to Washington after visiting his daughter when a tyre blew out. His suspected that the tyre had been shot out but the vehicle was fitted with run flat tyres and he ordered the driver to drive on until they reached a busy service stop. A subsequent inspection showed that a piece of rusty nail had punctured the tyre.
On another journey a motor cycle raced by and then stopped abruptly a few hundred yards ahead. The rider removed a helmet and long dark hair blew free and the woman disappeared into the trees. The chauffeur stepped out, donned his flak jacket and prepared to hunt down the rider. A few minutes later he came back somewhat embarrassed and reported that the woman was taking a toilet break. She gestured angrily as the car drove past while Bruckner gave an apologetic wave.
On a different occasion a UPS delivery driver was subjected to a thorough search and an interview when she turned up at the wrong address with a souvenir hunting knife.
Bruckner reacted to all these false alarms with the same weary resignation. In a way he was somewhat relieved when he woke up one morning, came downstairs and found her sitting in the kitchen drinking coffee and reading his copy of The Washington Post. He stood in the doorway. She looked up at him and smiled. ‘Good morning General,’ she said.
‘Where’s Patterson?’ he asked.
‘He’s tied up in his room. He’s asleep.’ She glanced up at the wall clock. ‘For about two more hours, I think.’ She stared at him for a few seconds. ‘There’s a few things you can do for me.’
‘And then you’ll kill me?’
‘First of all I want to know that you’ll release Dan Hall, and drop any formal charges against him plus you’ll call off any attack dogs from us both.’
‘You think I can do that?’
‘Of course you can. You can do anything I want within reason; otherwise the Presidents of Iraq and Iran and the Ayatollah will receive a copy of the Gilgamesh document. After that it might go viral on the internet.’
She handed him an envelope. He opened it and withdrew a few pages of typewritten script. He only had to read for about fifteen seconds to know that she must possess the original.
He stared at her for a moment. ‘So what are you going to do with this?’
‘First of all, whose idea was it?’
‘It was partly mine and Hugh Fielding’s but mostly Hakim Mansour’s.’ He paused, pursed his lips. ‘Mansour was a very intelligent man, very subtle. He foresaw that one day things might come to a critical head.’
‘You thought it was a good idea, keeping Iran under a brutal dictatorship?’
‘Half the countries in the region are under some kind of dictatorship. The best that their people can hope is that the dictators are fairly benevolent. Now if the Gilgamesh operation had continued as planned, three things would be in place.
‘One: the United States would have had control of Iraqi oilfields and Iraq would become a swing producer. They would have displaced Saudi Arabia from that role and we could have stopped the price of oil rising ever higher.
‘Two: the Iranian government would have had a US military base on their western border, for all they know with missiles targeted on all their cities and strategic locations.
‘Three: Saddam Hussein would have been removed from power and his son would have taken over with his freedom of action constrained by our military presence.
‘Now Miss Tate; which of those outcomes would you say is undesirable?’
‘Undesirable for who? The State Department or the people of Iraq? That’s the trouble; people like you see everything through a lens which only shows you what’s good for the USA.’
‘Bullshit! Your people are just as bad! Look at the legacy left by your empire throughout Africa and the Middle East.’
They glared at each other in silence.
‘So what happened?’ Gerry asked eventually. ‘Why did it all go wrong? Why did the invasion take place with its chaotic aftermath?’
‘It went ahead because our government found out that there were no so-called weapons of mass destruction. They decided that they could just roll in the tanks and troops and set up a regime in favour of the US. You know the rest. The people in Iraq only needed us to topple Saddam Hussein; apart from that we weren’t welcome. But we dismantled their state and created a huge power vacuum and nobody in the Bush administration had a fucking clue how to fill it.’
‘So the Gilgamesh plan never made it past the White House?’
‘A plan that left a Hussein in charge?’ Bruckner forced a bitter laugh. ‘You can imagine how that went down. No WMD, no bargaining position. I decided to send it to Mansour nonetheless. We hoped we might be able to make some use of it. But the signatures on it are not real. Bush and Blair, Rumsfeld, Cheney; they have absolutely no knowledge of it being sent to Mansour.’
‘You expect me to believe that?’
He shrugged. ‘You’ll believe anything you want.’
‘But you ordered it to be buried, and anyone who knew about it was buried as well. I find that hard to believe for something you now say was merely an elaborate hoax.’
‘Yes.’ He nodded. ‘But I’m the one responsible. So have you come to kill me?’
‘No,’ she shook her head. ‘There’s no point. The dead stay dead, but I do have a question.’
‘Just one?’
‘No, but this is one I find quite puzzling. Why did you have me arrested and put in prison? Why didn’t you just have me killed along with Phil and the others?’