The Gilgamesh Conspiracy

CHAPTER TWELVE

‘Hey Tate, you’ve got a visitor.’

Gerry carefully lowered the bar and allowed the weights to settle back down and stared at them for a few seconds. Apart from a social worker a psychologist and a solicitor, she had received no visitors since her brother had come to see her when he had arranged their mother’s funeral. Without stating it in so many words he had managed to imply that the stress of her daughter’s trial and imprisonment had contributed a good deal to her heart attack. Gerry had given up the idea of asking him if he might adopt her baby and there had been no contact between the two siblings in the years since. ‘Who is it then?’ she asked.

‘I’m not your social secretary Tate.’

She picked up her towel and began to walk towards the door.

‘You’ve got time for a shower, then in fifteen minutes I’m to take you through to the Governor’s office.’

‘The Governor?’ Gerry echoed, intrigued.

‘Yes. Hurry up.’

After her shower the prison officer was waiting in the changing room.

‘Ok where’s your stuff? I have to check it.’

Gerry watched the prison officer go through her clothes, first by feel and then with a metal detector.

‘Ok now you please.’ She placed the metal detector by her crotch and then had her turn round. A few years ago a new guard had attempted to search her by hand with unnecessary vigour. She had dislocated and broken three fingers on the intrusive hand. The other guard present had begged her to stop, not daring to try and prevent the punishment meted out by prisoner Tate 1167832. She was too scared of her.

‘Do you think I might attack this visitor?’ Gerry asked, interested in the unusual precautions.

‘I don’t know. You’re to be taken to the governor’s office. That’s all I know.’

‘That’s certainly unusual,’ said Gerry. ‘Maybe she’s going to let me out of here.’

‘Well it certainly won’t be for good behaviour. I’ve got more chance of winning the lottery than you have of being given probation. Here, get dressed.’

Gerry followed the prison officer through the security gates along a corridor to the governor’s interview room. The governor was sitting behind her desk and to one side stood a man slightly over six feet tall, physically strong; still good looking although his well-cut blond hair had a little grey in it. Her rapid calculation placed his age at fifty-three. She swallowed hard. ‘Richard Cornwall,’ she said, ‘what the fuck are you doing here?’

‘I’ve come to get you released,’ he replied.

She stood still, then sat down on the chair in front of the desk and breathed deeply for a few seconds. ‘Has someone admitted I was set up? Have you got someone else for Furness’s murder?’

‘Gerry, we have something for you to do for us, and if you cooperate then we’ll make sure you get a chance of parole in another year or so.’

‘What?’ she blurted out after a few more seconds of amazed silence. ‘What the hell are you talking about? Why the fuck do you think I would want to work for you bastards again?’ she replied, trying without success to keep the furious tremor out of her voice.

‘As I said, so you can get out of here.’

‘But I like it here. Ask the governor; ask any of the staff or prisoners. That’s why my applications for parole get refused.’

‘I want you to come up to the office to discuss matters. We’ll tell you what we want you to do and perhaps you could give it some thought.’

‘No bloody way,’ Gerry declared. ‘You can bugger off. The only way I’d do anything for you is if my sentence was set aside and I was released immediately, then I might consider it. But I’m not going to do any more assassinations for you.’

Cornwall exchanged a glance with the governor who looked askance at this statement. ‘You didn’t hear that did you?’ The governor slowly shook her head, looking slightly pale. He looked back at Gerry. ‘Ok — agreed,’ he said with a quick nod of his head

‘What?’

Cornwall picked up a suitcase that stood against the wall. ‘These are some of your clothes and personal effects which I had picked up from your flat. There’s a new set of toiletry items. I’ve had your place cleaned and it’s all in order. You seem to be pretty much the same shape so the clothes should fit you. The governor and I have some paperwork to complete so can we leave in about forty minutes?’

Gerry stared at him in open mouthed silence.

‘I’ll take you to the official visitor’s apartment,’ said the governor. ‘You can use the facilities there. I don’t want you talking to any of the staff or inmates.’

Gerry followed her in silence along a corridor, through another gate. ‘I can’t believe I’m getting out of here!’ she blurted out as the governor showed her the bathroom.

‘Neither can I, Tate. I’m sure you don’t deserve it. I’ll be back in half an hour.’

Gerry ran herself a hot bath and dumped in a generous quantity of foam. She lowered herself in and laughed out loud, then burst into tears, rubbed her eyes making them sting from soap and then smiled in delight.

‘Perhaps you can tell me what’s been going on at the office for the last few years,’ Gerry asked as they set off together in Cornwall’s chauffeured car. ‘Who’s retired; who’s been promoted, who’s been kicked out, besides me.’

‘Well Don Jarvis retired last year, through ill health.’

‘That bastard!’ Gerry exclaimed. ‘Something life-threatening, I hope.’

‘Er… heart, I think.’

‘So who’s Director of Operations, now?’

‘I am actually. Of course there’ve been many changes over the last few years. We now have…’ He realised that Gerry was staring out of the window at the countryside flashing past and no longer listening to him and he continued his surreptitious examination of her. Despite having seen recent photographs he had somehow expected her to look no different from the young woman who had been expelled from the service and imprisoned. Now her face was showing the signs of approaching middle age. Her hair was tied back severely in a ponytail. She wore no make-up but her face was still attractive, the cheeks thinner with a few lines that seemed to emphasise her determined character. There was the same tall frame that now seemed even more muscular. He noticed that her fingernails looked badly bitten. After a few minutes she looked round at him.

‘Sorry, you were in the middle of telling me.’

‘Sir Hugh Fielding has left us, and is now in charge of overall security strategy for the government, although of course he maintains close links with us lot left behind hewing at the coal face. We’re much like any other Government department these days. Part time contracts; working from home; flexible hours.’ He smiled. ‘I regret to say that Arabic language skills are still rather thin on the ground. All the clever linguists at university seem to want to learn Spanish and Chinese these days, and then they get well-paid jobs in the city.’

‘I don’t suppose you’ve sprung me from jail because you need a translator,’ said Gerry. ‘And if you think I’m going to carry out some suicidal mission for you as a price of freedom you can forget it!’

‘No it’s nothing like that,’ Cornwall assured her. ‘As you are no doubt aware, shortly after his inauguration, President Obama announced that the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay will be closed. He gave his people a year to move the detainees out and then close the facility. The timetable has slipped a few years, shall we say, but some of the people are our own citizens, and have already returned home, with a couple more to follow. Others will return to their own countries, and some will be going to third countries because their own governments have threatened them with, how shall I put it, further sanctions? Some of these people are suitably chastened and will return to a peaceful life; others are diehard terrorists and will no doubt attempt to return to their former wicked ways. Many will fall in between, and could go either way depending on the reception they receive when they return, or who their friends and associates are. They hope to prosecute some of the worst cases and send them to conventional prisons on the US mainland. They don’t have evidence against many of them though, which of course is why they’re still in Cuba, and the detention centre is still open some years later.’

‘Well why don’t they just concoct the evidence?’ Gerry asked. ‘It worked on me.’

Cornwall pulled a folder from his briefcase. She read the operation name “Sandstar” on the cover before he opened it up and took out a photograph. ‘Do you recognise this man?’

She stared at it for a moment. ‘That’s Ali Hamsin, translator for the Iraqi interior ministry, father of Rashid Hamsin who I abducted on your orders back in February 2003. I first met Ali Hamsin in January 2003. In your elevated position as director you probably now know I set up a meeting between Hakim Mansour, Sir Hugh Fielding and General Robert Bruckner at Frankfurt airport.’ She paused. ‘The late Dean Furness was present. I bet Fielding and Bruckner are probably both doing very nicely thank you, but I believe Mansour is dead and Furness was killed by person or persons unknown in the Richmond flat belonging to Geraldine Tate who was fitted up for his murder probably by…’

‘Ok Gerry, that’s enough,’ Cornwall snapped, taking back the photo. ‘Notwithstanding your resentment, airing your grievances to me every two minutes is not going to help us is it?’

‘Is it?’ he repeated.

‘Ok!’ said Gerry. She slumped back into the corner of the seat and folded her arms and pouted like a school girl. Then after a moment she began to bite her fingernails and Cornwall noticed that she was trembling slightly. He called to mind the psychologist’s report and tried to engage with her again.

‘I’m sorry Gerry, that was unfair of me. You’ve just been released and now being here with me reminds you of the past. It’s only natural that you are going to be highly sensitive on these matters and I shouldn’t try and make you supress your legitimate emotional reaction.’

She took her fingers away from her mouth, stared at him for a moment and then gave a burst of laughter which he was sure was genuine. ‘Richard, what was my degree in?’ she asked.

‘Er… psychology.’

‘Ok, so you promise not to try that crap out on me and I’ll promise not to air my grievances as you put it. Now tell me about Ali Hamsin.’

‘Very well. Ali Hamsin is one of the detainees in Guantanamo Bay. He is not classified as dangerous or a potential threat but the Americans are loath to release him until he has reassured them on certain pieces of information. They have told him that until this information is forthcoming he will remain incarcerated.’

‘But now after Obama’s executive order, they don’t have a choice.’

‘Exactly. But for the last three years Hamsin has insisted that he will give them the information they want but only under certain conditions.’

‘Oh yes? And are these conditions particularly onerous?’ Gerry asked.

Cornwall stared at her. ‘His first condition is that he talks to you.’

‘Well that certainly is unexpected,’ Gerry replied. ‘I had no idea he was still alive or that he was in Guantanamo Bay. But why would he want to talk to me? Apart from the obvious fact that he sees me as much more honest and open, even likeable than the rest of you shits.’

‘Leaving that aside, why he wants to see you has been exercising the minds of the best and brightest in Langley and Vauxhall Cross for some time.’

‘And what was their conclusion?’ she asked.

‘To send you over there,’ said Cornwall.’

Gerry Tate stared around her flat for the first time since she had packed up her suitcases all those years ago. The first thing she noted was the smell of a new carpet and freshly decorated walls in the sitting room and she wondered if Dean Furness’s bloodstains had been slowly rusting in there for years until Cornwall’s people had come round to clean up.

She wandered around inspecting her personal possessions for an hour. It was Friday evening and she was free until Monday morning. She wondered if she should go to Philip’s house and look around, but perhaps that would awaken too many memories. She thought about phoning her brother in Seattle and telling him that she was free but decided that they shared too much mutual resentment. She had turned away from her other friends when she was imprisoned. Four of them had tried to visit her on several occasions in the first two years of her sentence, but she had refused to see them.

‘What do people do when first released from prison?’ she wondered out loud. ‘Contact friends and relatives, decide to go straight or immediately resume a life of crime, go out on the town, get pissed and try and get laid.’ Then she suddenly wondered if the place was bugged. She found an old scanner and switched it on but the battery was dead. Then she decided that technological advances would probably have rendered this detector ineffective. ‘If anyone’s listening, I’m intending to go straight and I don’t want to try and get laid,’ she announced to the empty room. ‘Not tonight anyway,’ she muttered. ‘Maybe I’ll go out and get drunk though.’

She picked up her keys and left the house and walked to the main road and into the pub. Her first impression was that the place had gone downhill in the intervening years but she ordered a dry white wine. She took a few sips and looked around the room. The clientele seemed to be on the one hand young guys and girls chatting and laughing in happy flirtatious groups and on the other older people, couples mostly in their fifties or beyond perhaps. Where were the men and women of her own age? They were at home looking after their children cooking their meals, putting them to bed, helping them with their homework. Somewhere out there was a young school girl to whom she had given birth, and who she thought about every day. Did she look more like Phil or more like her? Was she happy with her adoptive parents?

Gerry signalled to the bargirl and with her rapidly diminishing mental resources summoned up a smile. ‘Hi, I’d like a bottle of this to take out please.’

She returned to her flat and poured out the wine and then pulled out the last photo album that she and Philip had compiled before the world had turned to digital photography. She slowly turned the pages and rapidly drank the bottle of wine. Then she crawled off to the cabinet and found a bottle of ten year old Glenmorangie that Phil had bought in the duty free shop on their return from the Caribbean. ‘It’s twenty years old now, Phil,’ she mumbled. She poured herself a half tumbler and sunk down on to the floor and leant back against the sofa. She switched on the television and found herself half way through an old James Bond film. She snorted derisively but then after a few swigs of neat scotch she began to giggle idiotically at the ludicrous antics. Her head was swimming and she picked a cushion off the chair, lay down and sunk into sleep.

At four o’clock in the morning she woke up, climbed wearily to her feet and staggered off to the bathroom and threw up. Then she washed down two paracetamol with a pint of water, pulled off her clothes and collapsed on to the bed.

After waking up mid-morning she looked at herself in the mirror. ‘Ok you piss head, that’s enough of the self-pity.’ A quick rummage through her clothes drawers turned up some old running kit. She set off down the road and was not surprised when a car pulled out from the kerb and began to follow her. The passenger lowered the window.

‘Tate, we’re meant to be taking you into the office in fifteen minutes!’

‘You can call Cornwall and tell him I’ll be an hour late!’ she replied. She ran down to the river and into the park and past the café where she had met Dean Furness just before he was killed. The man climbed out of the car and tried to jog after her but she lost him easily enough. When she ran back up towards her house forty minutes later she saw him standing outside her front door looking at his watch with a worried expression that turned to relief when he saw her.

‘I’ll be ready in twenty minutes,’ she called out.

‘Bloody bitch!’ he muttered.

Richard Cornwall made no comment on her late arrival, which disappointed her as she had already constructed a few well-chosen ripostes during the journey in. Instead he gave her an hour’s briefing on her trip to the USA and on to Cuba and then took her on a short re-familiarisation tour of the building which had undergone some reorganisation in the last few years.

Gerry had been expecting to see some familiar faces but there were few people she recognised. She had been hoping to bump into some old friends. ‘Where’s Fiona these days, Fiona Bennett? Is she still here?’

‘Ah… she’s married, has two kids. Fiona Davenport now. She works part time and isn’t in today,’ said Cornwall.

‘How about Diana Turner?’

‘Let me see.’ He tapped on a keyboard. ‘She’s still full time, she works… oh… she’s taken the day off. Emergency dental appointment it says.’

‘Laura Harvey?’

Cornwall made another entry and then picked up a phone. ‘Hello Laura, its Richard Cornwall. There’s someone with me… oh… well where is she then? Oh ok then.’

‘Laura’s gone to see someone in Special Branch. We’ve just missed her. Is there anyone else?’

‘No, no one. I’m sure all my erstwhile friends will have gone sick, or be at meetings or something,’ said Gerry.

‘Gerry Tate, delighted to see you again!’ came a greeting. Cornwall saw a smile light up her face for a brief moment before she identified the voice as Vince Parker’s. Nevertheless she shook hands with him agreeably enough.

‘Hello Vince, how are you? You’re coming to the States with me I understand.’

‘Yes, the Sandstar op. I’m looking forward to it.’ He gave her his confident smile.

Smug, handsome creep, she thought to herself.

‘Well I have an appointment to go to. I’ll leave the two of you to get re-acquainted,’ said Cornwall.

‘Ok, How about we get lunch Gerry?’

She tried to think of an excuse but none came to her weary mind. ‘Yes why not?’ she replied. ‘I’m going to the ladies’; I don’t really want to go to the canteen so if that’s ok with you I’ll see you in the lobby in a few minutes.

She brooded about sharing the flight to the States with Vincent Parker, formerly her junior in the hierarchy. She remembered that he was efficient and intelligent, but also inclined to be condescending. She remembered his presence hovering in the background when she had been dismissed, and although she could not put her finger exactly on the reason why, she did not really trust him. Before his entry into the service he had completed a short service commission of eight years in the Guards. He had served on active duty in the Gulf and received some creditable military decoration. He was about two years older than her, but now she thought he looked younger. Anyway, she would have to put up with him.

‘Well it seems straightforward enough,’ said Vince when they were sitting together in the pub. ‘We fly to somewhere in the States, meet up with some gentlemen from their Department of Homeland Security which in this case probably means the CIA. Then visit this fellow Ali Hamsin, who may or may not be an Al Qaeda terrorist, or a war criminal or just a guy caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. If the Americans are happy with what he tells you we can bring him back to this country.’

‘That’s about it, said Gerry, nodding. ‘The more difficult bit is keeping it all secret from the gentlemen of the press and Amnesty International until he is safely resettled. The new administration doesn’t want to see the words “extraordinary rendition” in the papers again. Apparently there’s a team of plane spotters tracking the moves of every US ad hoc charter.’

‘So that’s why we’re handling it,’ said Vince. ‘We’re the only branch of Government who can be relied upon not to blurt out the details to the press for some grubby payment.’

‘Well I hope so,’ said Gerry, ‘but no doubt the Freedom of Information Act will be soon be extended to Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Now we have a contact in the US Embassy called Neil Samms, who I believe is travelling with us. Could you go and meet him? I don’t think I’ll be welcomed in Grosvenor Square. We also need to see if we can contact any of Hamsin’s family members, and find out where they’re living.’

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

In the evening a few days later, having completed the arrangements for Ali Hamsin’s return to Britain, Gerry sat withdrawn in memories in the car that was carrying her to a small airport south west of London

‘Penny for your thoughts,’ said Vince Parker, seated next to her in the back seats.

‘Did you know that these cars have the fastest depreciation of any built in the UK? I read it in a newspaper article recently,’ Gerry declared.

Vince smiled at her. ‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to pry.’

‘It’s ok. I haven’t been in an aeroplane for some time, or to the States, or done anything much at all really.’

An hour later they were through the airfield security gates and being driven towards the white executive jet that gleamed pale orange under the apron floodlights. The muted scream from the aircraft’s auxiliary power unit was the only sound in the still night air. When the vehicle pulled up beside the aircraft, the main door swung down and the stairs extended to the ground. A moment later a man in pilot’s uniform walked down the steps followed by two women, one short and dark and the other tall and blonde.

‘Hi,’ he said, ‘my names Gary, I’m the First Officer flying you to the States. The Captain’s Harvey Wallbanger… er Harvey Wallis, I meant to say. This is Susan from your border control people, and this is Leanne from our embassy. Sue’s going to check you out and Leanne’s going to check you in, so to speak. Then we won’t have to trouble the Department of Homeland Security when we arrive in the States.’

Gerry pulled out her brand new passport and Vince his slightly dog-eared one and they handed them to the tall blonde woman who glanced through them and wrote the names and numbers on to a pad on a clipboard. She then handed them to the short dark woman who smiled broadly and said ‘Thank you!’ She pulled a hand-held computer link from her bag and swiped the passport edge through the slot and studied the biometric details. ‘Oh! It says here that you’re a convic… er… well could you just place your right index finger on the little screen there?’ she asked Gerry with a frown. Gerry complied. ‘Good. Now you sir,’ she said to Vince. ‘Good, you’re all set to go.’ She gave Vince a grin. ‘Enjoy your trip to the USA.’

Gerry climbed the stairs and boarded the Gulfstream. Inside were the usual plush seats and also one side was fitted a high tech communications console. Neil Samms, now with red hair cut short, was sitting before it busying himself at the keyboard.

He glanced up at Gerry as she walked down the aisle with a familiar gold tinted grin. ‘Hi Gerry, Vince. It’s all on schedule. Our other passenger should be with us in ten minutes.’

‘You’ve had a haircut,’ Vince remarked.

‘Yup. Tails may be ok in Europe, but back at head office they don’t look so good.’

‘Oh, you looked much younger with the ponytail,’ said Vince with a wicked smile, ‘what a shame!’

‘Yeah, I love you too, Vince.’

‘What other passengers?’ Gerry asked while trying not to sound irritated at this male bonhomie.

‘Permission to come aboard!’ Gerry turned to the front of the cabin where a man stood with a smile that could have graced an orthodontist’s advert. He was lean and handsome with facial hair that was slightly more than designer stubble and he was dressed like a Ralph Lauren model.

‘Good evening Mr Carson, how are you?’ asked Samms pushing past Vince and holding out his hand. Gerry suspected that his overly polite attitude at odds with his usual off-hand demeanour suggested that he did not much like this newcomer. ‘These are the two friends of mine from London, Gerry Tate and Vince Parker. Ryan Carson.’

He grinned at Gerry and Vince. ‘You guys call me Ryan, though.’

They all shook hands, exchanged greetings and introductions. Then they sat down as Gary emerged from the flight deck and closed up the cabin door.

‘We’re about ready to go,’ said the pilot. ‘You all set? Hey Major Ryan Carson, United States Air Force! Sure you don’t wanna fly the airplane? Then I could just go to sleep!’

‘It’s all yours, Gary,’ Carson replied. ‘We have matters to discuss and anyway I’m not checked out on this one.’

‘Ok suit yourself,’ said the pilot. ‘Now does anyone want a safety demo? There’s a card in the seat pocket. Pay attention to the seatbelt sign and there’s definitely no smoking. There’s plenty to eat and drink in the galley stowages.’ Without waiting for a reply he disappeared behind the flight deck door and fifteen minutes later the aircraft was airborne and heading towards the west.

The seatbelt sign switched off with a sharp ping as the aircraft climbed out through the cloud tops. Ryan Carson took off his seat belt and stood up. ‘I’m happy to say this airplane’s not a dry ship: can I get anyone a drink? Neil, if I remember right, you’ll probably want Bourbon on the rocks and I could do with something to eat; I wonder if they’ve loaded any ice. I’ll have a rummage around.’ He walked up to the galley area at the front of the cabin.

‘I think Ryan sees himself as the Michael Chiarello of the airplane galley,’ said Neil Samms to Vince giving his gold toothed grin and Vince grinned back at him. Gerry lifted her eyes, shook her head and walked after Ryan.

‘Need any help?’ she asked. He turned and smiled at her and she smiled back. He was perhaps a year or two younger than her, he could do with a clean shave, but otherwise he was rather gorgeous … she gave herself a mental ticking off and put on her serious face.

‘Well there’s usually ice in one of these containers, and there might be some meals in foil containers. If there’s anything you fancy, we’ll put it in the oven. Ah… ice; think I’ll have a gin and tonic. You?’ he asked with another smile.

‘I’ll have the same please,’ Gerry replied, smiling back. She then told herself to stop behaving like an adolescent. ‘No, I’d rather have a Scotch, actually.’ She opened up another cupboard. ‘This looks like the meals,’ she announced.

‘Oh well done,’ he said and she just managed to stop herself from thanking him.

‘Hey Ryan, we’re getting thirsty back here,’ Neil Samms called out.

‘Would you mind taking requests?’ Ryan asked, gazing into her eyes.

‘Sure, no problem,’ she replied. She turned round and saw Samms and Vince grinning at her. ‘What do you two layabouts want to drink then?’ she scowled.

‘Bourbon on the rocks,’ Samms replied.

‘Same for me please,’ said Vince.

‘And bring us the menu when you have it, Gerry’ said Samms.

‘Two Bourbon on the rocks, coming right up!’ called Carson from behind her. Gerry resisted telling Samms to stick it up his arse and went back to fetch them.

‘Have you finished with your tray?’ Ryan Carson asked Gerry.

‘Yes thanks,’ she replied. He took it away and then sat down opposite her.

‘I thought this would be a good time to talk to you before I fall asleep’ he said.

‘Ok, go ahead,’ she invited.

‘I work for Felix Grainger, the guy who’s in charge of the prisoner release program,’ Carson said.

‘I didn’t realise,’ Gerry replied, ‘I don’t think I’ve seen your name on any documents.’

‘No, I was placed with him only a week ago. I’d just finished an overseas tour so this is new for me, but I’ve worked for Felix before.’

‘What’s he like?’ Gerry asked. ‘My boss Richard Cornwall didn’t tell me much about him.’

‘He’s a good guy. He’ll be meeting us at the airport tomorrow morning. Friendly, upfront. You always know where you are with Felix.’

‘What’s your background then Ryan, if you don’t mind me asking? I heard Gary say you’re ex Air Force.’

‘Yeah, I used to fly fighters, F16s, but then I hurt my back ejecting when my aircraft caught fire and I changed to transports, C17s and found that a little dull. I decided I didn’t want to fly any longer so I took a career change opportunity. I picked up Spanish from my mom and a little Portuguese, and I‘ve been in Central and South America. Why I’ve been put in this department, I don’t know; I don’t speak any Arabic. I understand you’re fluent.’

She looked at him suspiciously. ‘Did you get that from Samms? Has he been talking about me?’

‘Him? No. I just got a message from Felix. He said you were expert, and that you could read all the interrogation reports without needing them translated. Neil’s just coming home after a two year posting. He’s always trying to get based in Europe; I think he’s got some woman in London. He and Vince are involved in operation Marchwood.’

‘What’s that?’ Gerry frowned.

‘Haven’t you been briefed? That’s a scheme in which we plan to announce the release of certain prisoners held in Guantanamo bay. But instead of releasing those prisoners, we were going to release doubles. These doubles are then going to infiltrate cells back in the terrorist hotspots and report back to us. Then we we’re going to send in teams to take out those cells.’

‘I expect that’s executive operations,’ said Gerry, ‘and I’m not really part of that anymore.’

‘Oh! Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you about it,’ said Carson.

‘Do you think these doubles would be able to infiltrate without being detected?’ Gerry frowned. ‘I’m rather doubtful. It sounds like a high risk strategy.’

‘Yeah well the idea was that they wouldn’t return to their own homelands. We would send say, Syrians to Egypt and Iraqis to Pakistan, Lebanese to London on the basis that their own countries would be too hot for them. Anyway, when Obama announced after his inauguration that all the inmates would be released from Guantanamo bay in one year, it left us a bit short of time, but the year went by and hey, the place is still open. I guess Vince is your lot’s liaison officer. I expect Felix will brief us tomorrow.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Well we’ll be arriving in about six hours. I’m going to get some sleep. Do you want me to get pillows and a blanket for you too? Help you get comfortable.’

‘Thanks, that would be great,’ Gerry replied.

She woke up a couple of hours later with a sore neck. She looked for Ryan but he was nowhere to be seen and in the seat across the aisle from her she saw a man aged about fifty in Captain’s uniform finishing off a meal. He smiled at her when she sat up and held out his hand.

‘Hi, I’m Harvey. You must be Gerry.’

‘That’s right. Pleased to meet you.’

‘Ryan’s prised me away from the controls. All that stuff about not missing flying but he never throws up a chance to do some. Have you done any flying yourself?’

‘I used to have a private pilot’s licence and twin engine rating, but it lapsed some years ago and I’ve not flown since. The largest aircraft I’ve flown is a Piper Seneca.’

‘You want to come and look at our flight deck; you’d be impressed.’

‘Ok, I’d like that,’ said Gerry. What else was there to do for the next few hours? She followed Harvey up to the flight deck door.

‘Alright guys, shift change! Gary, your dinner’s ready. Me and the lady will take over for a while.’ Ryan Carson smiled at Gerry and then spoke to Harvey.

‘Hey Harve, you gonna give the lady a lesson?’

‘Ryan she has a licence and she’s checked out on the Seneca, so I guess she’s already up to your standard,’ the pilot replied, ignoring the innuendo.

Ryan looked at Gerry with some respect. ‘Hey, you never told me you could fly.’

‘No I didn’t,’ she agreed with a smile. She spent the next two hours learning how to operate the big executive jet under Harvey’s patient guidance until Gary came back from his break. She thanked the pilots, returned to the cabin and settled back down to sleep.

After a nine hour flight during which she had managed a few hours of fitful slumber Gerry stared out the aircraft window across the night landscape of Florida seeing the brightly lit cities surrounded by the geometric grid work of street lighting that was a feature of much of the urban United States. She looked at her watch. It was coming up to 9am London time. She set it back five hours, wondering what kind of reception committee would be assembled at 4am on a Saturday morning at a Florida Air Force base. She felt a headache coming on and she lay back in her seat and closed her eyes again.

A hand laid on her shoulder jolted her awake. ‘Whoa there, it’s only me,’ said Carson. Gerry connected with her surroundings and slumped back into her seat again. The burst of adrenaline had set her head throbbing.

‘I’ll feel awful,’ she groaned at him. He looked slightly different. ‘Oh! You’ve shaved. That’s… erm… are we landing soon?’

‘About twenty minutes. Here’s a bottle of water if you’d like it.’

‘Thanks, that’s exactly what I need. I’m probably dehydrated.’ She rummaged in her handbag for a couple of paracetamol, swigged back half the water and then staggered off to the toilet at the back of the plane.

With a pneumatic hiss the main door swung down and humid night air swept into the cabin and formed a slight mist as it mingled with the cold dry atmosphere inside. A few moments later a middle aged man with buzz cut blonde hair, florid face and bright blue eyes, wearing jeans and a red floral shirt came bouncing in.

‘Welcome home you guys!’ he declared. ‘Hey you look good! They’ve been looking after you real well over there, I can tell. Vince! Good to see you. Hello again Ryan! Welcome home, Neil. You ran out of excuse to stay in London then.’ He shook hands, and then turned to Gerry. ‘Hi. You must be Gerry Tate. Happy to meet you.’

‘Well thank you… Mr…?’ said Gerry.

‘Sorry; Felix Grainger … Felix.’

‘Pleased to meet you Felix,’ said Gerry shaking him by the hand and giving him a somewhat bleary eyed smile.

‘Wait, I have a message from your boss Cornwall in London.’ He put his hand in his pocket, and then in his other pocket. ‘Hell I’ve left it in your car!’

‘Our car?’ said Gerry, raising her eyebrows.

‘Well yeah. We figured you’d rather be on the coast at Sarasota for a few days rather than holed up in the airbase. Just give us your cell phone numbers before you go. Unless you’re too tired to drive. I could send someone out to drive you there or you could crash out at the base here for a few hours they have rooms and then drive down later. What’ll it be?’ Rather bemused, Gerry glanced at Vince.

‘Did you follow all that?’ she asked. He had.

‘I’m feeling ok, Felix,’ he said. ‘I’d be happy to drive down to Saratoga, if you’ve booked us in somewhere nice.’

‘Sure, but it’s Sarasota: Saratoga’s in New York where we whipped your ass in seventeen seventy-seven. We’ve booked you mini suites in a resort hotel where we hope you will have a pleasant stay. We’ll be in touch in the afternoon.’

The white Toyota SUV was equipped with satnav, so after two hours driving without having to give too much thought to the journey Vince brought the car to a halt outside a hotel separated from the beach by the coastal road lined with palm trees that swayed slightly in the morning breeze. They checked in and picked up their key cards.

‘I guess we’ll just have to take it easy until they get in touch,’ said Vince. ‘I’m going to get a few hours’ sleep and then perhaps lounge by the pool.’

‘Ok, see you later.’

Gerry opened her hotel room door and found that she had been given a mini suite with separate sitting room and adjoining bedroom with two double beds and bathroom. She shivered in a stream of frigid air. The housekeeper had left the air conditioning turned down to sixty two degrees Fahrenheit. She dumped her luggage in the sitting room, searched for the controller and turned the system off. Without bothering to unpack she stripped off her clothes and stepped into the shower. As she towelled herself dry she ran her tongue over her furred up teeth and debated the advantages of collapsing straight into bed and rummaging around for her toothbrush. The coldness of the room decided the issue and she crawled under the covers. There was a selection of six pillows on the king size bed and they all seemed to be too small and hard or too big and soft. She eventually managed to find a combination that seemed comfortable for her head and neck and then she pulled the duvet up to her ears. Thinking about Ryan kept her awake for another five seconds or so before she fell asleep.

Gerry woke up with a slight ache in her neck and a very full bladder. The digital clock read 09:47 so she had been asleep for less than three hours. She yawned and staggered off to the bathroom.

When she returned she saw a man sitting on the unused bed. Despite the gloom she could see that he was pointing a Beretta automatic at her stomach. She gasped and instinctively draped one arm across her breasts and placed her other hand in front of her crotch, and then gazed at the intruder, her mind racing to the conclusion that he wasn’t going to her kill her, not immediately anyway, because he could have done that already. Perhaps he was a rapist, or he could be some other kind of Patricia Cornwell novel-type nutter and why hadn’t she taken more care to make her room secure and why had he sneaked in on her like this?

‘There’s a bath robe hanging up in the closet.’

The voice was soft spoken, Bostonian educated American, she noted, and this was clearly an invitation for her to put it on. ‘Thanks,’ she replied, and turned toward the closet door.

She opened it and indeed on hangers she saw two white flannel dressing gowns with the hotel logo embroidered on the pocket. She scanned around the closet searching for any possible weapons. An ironing board was hanging on the wall; metal but too thin to be bullet proof; a steam iron hung on a bracket above it; a hard, blunt instrument if she could get close enough to use it, and the electrical cable she could use for strangulation. What about the hanger itself? None of them were much of a weapon against a handgun.

She thrust her arms into the sleeves of the gown, wrapped it around herself and tied the belt, thought about the iron again but left it in place. She turned to face the intruder, but found that he had walked silently into the sitting room and was pulling back the drapes and Gerry screwed up her eyes as the bright daylight flooded the room.

‘You’re Geraldine Tate,’ he announced. It was clearly not a question

‘That’s correct…and you are?’

The man turned round and gazed at her, unfriendly blue eyes peering out from under white brows.

‘Jasper White, you bastard!’

‘Well it seems you remember me, then.’ He had not changed much since she had last seen him. Despite his age there was still the athletic build. His hair was slightly thinner and as well as the moustache he had a goatee beard.

‘It’s been a few years, White. Why are you in my room?’

‘Ok, I’ll level with you. I want to know the outcome of your meeting with Ali Hamsin. In fact I want you to report to me everything that happens with you and Mr Vincent Parker while you are in the States. Who you see, what they tell you.’ He waved the hand not holding the gun, palm up. ‘Anything at all, really.’

‘Why should I do that for you?’

‘I’m not too pleased that you’ve been released from prison, Tate. If you cooperate with me then perhaps I won’t work too hard to get you put away again.’

‘I didn’t kill Dean Furness. What I told you years ago in that pub; it was the truth.’

Bullshit! The evidence was overwhelming. It was good to see you put away for Dean’s murder and I wasn’t too happy when I learned that you’d been released. I was even less happy when I found out you’ve got yourself a get out of jail free card from your government.’

‘Leaving you’re happiness on one side, I actually have very little knowledge of what’s going on with your people. I just know I have to meet Ali Hamsin.’

‘Maybe, but if you play your part, do what I ask then who knows, maybe I’ll let you walk free.’

‘You bastard! If you come after me I’ll bury you where you’ll never be found.’

‘Well let’s hope that neither of us has to carry out our dire threats.’ He walked to the door and picked the Do Not Disturb Notice off the inside handle. ‘You forgot to put this on the outside of your door. I’ll do it for you.’ Then he walked out into the corridor.

Gerry stared at the door trying to order her thoughts, brooding over the same questions that had troubled her for years. Who had killed Dean Furness? Who had planned to have her incarcerated? What she really wanted was to find out the truth and take revenge. If it was Jasper White, she would be out to bury him. If it wasn’t him then maybe cooperating rather than exchanging threats might be to her advantage. But who was Jasper White working for now and should she trust him?

She yawned, but from years of bitter experience she knew she would never get back to sleep with all these thoughts buzzing around her head. She glanced at the bedside clock. It was only 10:17am local time but 3:17 pm in London. She changed into her bikini with a light sundress over and emerged blinking into the strong morning sunlight. She walked round the landscaped pool area looking for Vince. She stopped in the semi cover of some ornamental palm trees when she saw him sitting by an attractive woman. They each had a tall fruit cocktail in their hand and they were toasting each other with elaborate ceremony. Vince took a pull through the straws and said something amusing to which the woman responded with a chuckle and a smile. Gerry quickly retraced her steps, found a quiet corner to lie down in the sun by herself and turn over in her mind the events of the last few days in which she had been released from the dull grey chrysalis of prison life and emerged into the multi-coloured butterfly world of a Florida resort hotel. She had a strong sense of foreboding? Was it because it all seemed so sudden, so unreal?’

‘Excuse me.’

Gerry opened her eyes. A very attractive young woman with long blond hair was looking down at her with a friendly smile. ‘Are you Gerry Tate?’

‘Yes, you’ve found me.’

The woman held out her hand. ‘I’m Annie Maddon. I work for Felix Grainger,’ she waved vaguely towards the adjacent sun lounger. ‘May I join you?’

She laid out her towel and peeled off her tee shirt and shorts revealing an enviable figure clad in a bright blue patterned bikini.

‘Felix thought you and Vince might be bored so he sent us over to look after you.’ She looked past Gerry shading her eyes with one hand and with the other giving a quick wave and a broad smile that showed perfect teeth. Gerry looked past her shoulder. A handsome man clad in swimming shorts was walking along the other end of the pool. He was well built, with enough musculature to show fitness without looking like a body-building obsessive. He grinned and waved at them and then despite his large reflective sunglasses Gerry realised on the one hand that it was Ryan Carson, and on the other that she might have to start wearing spectacles soon.

‘Hey Gerry, I see the two of you have already met!’ he declared as he reached them and sat down on the end of Annie’s sunbed. He and Annie did not exchange any further greeting and Gerry’s creeping jealousy faded. ‘I was trying to find Vince, but he’s not in his room,’ said Ryan.

‘Oh, he’s over there,’ Gerry turned and pointed but then she realised that Vince and his companion had departed. ‘No, he’s gone.’

‘Never mind, it’s you Felix wants to see.’

‘What… now?

‘No, for lunch. Can we leave in an hour or so?’

‘Where are we going?’ Gerry asked as they drove out of the hotel car park.

‘There’s a restaurant a couple of miles away. Very nice place.’ Annie looked round and down at Gerry’s jeans, her expression hidden by dark sunglasses. ‘You’re not exactly dressed for it… still, too late now.’

‘Did you find Vince?’

‘Ryan tracked him down, but they’re not coming, I think they’re taking a boat out or going windsurfing or something.’

‘Oh, ok.’

Behind a discrete street side façade the inside of the restaurant was expensively decorated. Original oil paintings on oak panelling, white linen tablecloths, genuine silverware, shining crystal and delicate flowers.

This afternoon Felix Grainger was more formally attired in a well-cut suit. He stood up and shook hands with Gerry. ‘Delighted to see you again. Sorry to drag you away.’

‘No problem, Felix. I’m not over here on holiday,’ Gerry assured him.

‘Annie, thank you. Could you come back in an hour from now?’ He watched Annie walk out the entrance. ‘Lovely girl, and very bright, too; Politics and International Studies at Yale.’ He smiled a happy schoolboy grin. ‘Now, how are you enjoying the hotel? Please take a seat.’

‘It’s fine,’ said Gerry, ‘and I’ve been well looked after by Ryan and Annie.’

‘I’m glad you like them. Now how about lunch?’ He turned and signalled a waiter. ‘Could you bring me the lasagne, green salad and another diet coke?

‘And for you, madam?’ the waiter asked Gerry.

‘Caesar salad with shrimp and a bottle of Perrier water, please.’ She smiled at Grainger. ‘So Felix, you invited me, so what can I do for you?’

‘I just wanted to give you an intro to Guantanamo Bay, or Gitmo as it is colloquially known. You’ve not been there before. Most people still have this idea that it’s just a series of cages with the detainees locked up like animals, and of course the pressure groups like to maintain that idea in the public mind. I’ll admit that years back that pretty well described Camp X-ray but that was just temporary. Now everyone’s in Camp Delta. Their accommodation and facilities vary according to how er… accommodating the detainees have been in the matter of their interrogations.’

‘You mean how much they’ve told you,’ Gerry declared.

‘Well you could put it that way,’ admitted Grainger. ‘You’re going to meet with this guy Ali Hamsin, who has information that he will reveal only to you.’

‘Apparently so.’

‘I’ve been briefed to tell you that we’re really hoping that he’s going to give us some hot stuff, but personally I’ve no idea what that might be.’

‘Neither have I,’ Gerry replied.

‘Ok. But I’ve also been authorised to tell you that if your meeting doesn’t bring any results… well, you’re not to worry. Uncle Sam does not want to put your ass back into jail.’

‘Well thank your Uncle Sam very much from me, but I have a legal affidavit signed by the UK Home Secretary and scrutinised by a lawyer of my choice promising not to put my arse back in prison.’

‘Well that’s as maybe, but it might have occurred to you that we will be going to a piece of occupied territory outside of both the United States and the United Kingdom where the rules are somewhat ill-defined. After all, that’s why those people were put there in the first instance. It might have suddenly occurred to you that your ass may be exposed, if I might be permitted to perhaps over-extend the metaphor.’

‘Oh, I understand,’ said Gerry.

‘Ok, so no hard feelings?’ Grainger asked with a smile.

‘No, none at all.’

‘Ok, good, so let me tell you about the release program…’

An hour later Annie drove her back to the hotel. They chatted inconsequentially about Florida and the weather and London which Annie had visited several times.

‘How long have you been working with Felix Grainger?’ Gerry asked as they arrived back at the hotel.

‘Oh, for a year now. He’s one of the good guys. I hope you liked him,’ she said. She pulled to a stop outside the hotel entrance.

‘I did like him,’ said Gerry with some enthusiasm. ‘Thanks for driving me.’

‘You’re welcome.’

Gerry climbed out and shut the door but Annie slid down the window.

‘Oh, I forgot to mention it. We’re meeting for dinner this evening at the hotel. Seven o’clock in the bar.’

‘Ok thanks Annie; see you then.’ Gerry watched the black SUV drive out of the car park, pause for few seconds at the exit road before pulling out into the traffic and then she returned to her room. She switched on her computer with the intention of learning anything she could about Colonel Felix Grainger, Annie Maddon and Ryan Carson. The telephone rang.

‘Hello?’

‘Ah, Miss Tate!’ Richard Cornwall’s fruity voice blared out from the earpiece. Gerry fumbled for the volume control and turned it down.

‘Good afternoon Mr. Cornwall.’

‘Hah! Late evening here of course. I understand you’ve met our mutual friend.’ Plainly he expected a favourable comment.

‘Felix Grainger? Yes I have. We should have an excellent working relationship.’

‘I’m pleased to hear it. He liked you very much, though at first he thought that you might be a bit of an awkward bitch. His words of course, not mine.’

‘Yeah, I’m sure,’ Gerry replied. ‘Anyway this evening we’re meeting for dinner and tomorrow we’re off to Cuba.’

‘Ah, Gitmo, Camp Delta,’ Cornwall declared. Gerry presumed he was trying to demonstrate his knowledge.

‘That’s the place,’ she replied.

‘Ok Gerry, very good! Anyway, so the homeward travel arrangements are being finalised for Wednesday evening. I’ll be sending details of the arrival plans back at RAF Lyneham to your hotel via a messenger. Vince is at the hotel, too, I presume?’

‘Yes he’s here, but I’ve not seen him since this morning.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll send him an e-mail.’

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Gerry showered and then gazed into the vanity mirror in the bathroom. It both magnified and illuminated her face and she contemplated the lines and other signs of middle age that had appeared during her years in prison. It was all very well growing older as part of a fulfilling life, but she had been forced to waste some of her best years in a meaningless existence. Now the euphoria of unexpected freedom was beginning to be displaced by her deep resentment towards the people who were responsible for her incarceration.

She felt a black, violent mood threatening to envelope her. On a few occasions in prison she had gone on destructive rampages or picked fights with her fellow inmates and ended up in solitary confinement. Perhaps after dinner tonight she would slip away from the others, find a bar, have a few drinks and then provoke some poor fool into attacking her. She gripped the mirror in both hands and was just about to wrench it off the wall but stopped herself. If she really wanted to have revenge, she should cooperate with everyone, try and work her way back into the secret world from which she had been ejected and then from the inside she might be able to find out the answers to all the questions that had bedevilled her when she was in prison. Getting herself stuck in a Florida gaol would be idiotic. Still, it was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain her mask of benevolence to all mankind.

She took a deep breath and applied make up with some care having gone so many years without using any, but after she had dressed she was still ready twenty minutes early. She looked at her watch and then flicked through the television channels wondering if there was anything which might entertain her for a while. The film “Groundhog Day” came on and she settled down to watch it but half a minute later it was interrupted by a commercial break. She clicked her tongue in irritation and switched the set off. She picked up her handbag, glanced in the mirror and with some irritation she noticed another grey hair. Soon she would need hair colour as well as spectacles or contact lenses. She plucked it out and then went down to the lobby bar. She ordered a dry white wine and sat down at a table from where she could keep the entire bar under observation.

Five minutes later she stared in round-eyed amazement when a familiar figure walked into the bar. Although his hair was longer than a military crew cut, the scar on Dan Hall’s face was unmistakeable. Her quick appraisal took in that he had aged well, he looked as fit as he had been all those years ago in the Gulf, but she noticed that his left hand was missing most of the little finger and the tip of the ring finger. ‘Distal phalanges,’ Gerry muttered to herself. She looked around for a newspaper or a menu to hide behind while she could consider her reaction to this remarkable reappearance. She glanced to one side and then the other and then back towards Dan Hall and their gazes locked. Gerry’s face was expressionless: Dan Hall showed astonishment then confusion which resolved into a huge smile and he walked over to her table. As he approached her, Gerry was preparing a straight denial of her knowing him as her best idea, but he said ‘Emily Stevens, it’s so good to see you! How are you, what brings you to Sarasota? It’s been such a long time. Are you still with the erm… you know.’

‘Dan Hall, well hello to you. No I’m not with the — erm you know — any longer. I’m here on holiday and I’m waiting for my boyfriend. He’ll be here in a couple of minutes.’

‘But how are you? The last time I saw you, you were in hospital, and you were…’ his question trailed off. She saw him glancing at her left hand with neither engagement ring nor wedding band.

‘Yes I was pregnant, but I had a miscarriage. I’m fine. How are you?’

‘I’m good. I left the Marines after the war, and I’m in corporate security now. It’s great to see you again Emily.’

‘Yeah you too,’ said Gerry in as disinterested a tone as she could manage. She could see an expression approaching dismay on his face. It was with some relief that she saw Vince Parker walking across the bar towards them.

‘Hi Gerry, Hi Dan, I see you two have already met, so I’m going to get myself a beer.’

Dan Hall looked at Vince and then he stared at her in opened mouthed amazement. With an even mixture of disbelief and distress and surprise in his voice he asked ‘You’re Gerry Tate?’

‘Yes I am,’ she replied.

‘Sorry Dan,’ Vince called over. ‘You don’t have a drink! Can I get you something?’ Dan Hall stood up and walked over and stood next to Vince. She heard him ask for a Sam Adams and then he was silent. She could see his face reflected in the mirror behind the bar and she suspected that he was attempting to resolve some mental turmoil, which was just what she was trying to do.

‘Hi Gerry!’ She looked up somewhat startled and realised that she had been so introspective that Annie Madden had walked up to her table without her noticing. Hell, if she became that distracted on an operation she could get herself killed.

‘Hello Annie, I thought Ryan was coming.’ Then she realised he was greeting the other two men, and then he walked over to her and Annie.

‘Hi Gerry, you look great,’ he said with a grin. He was wearing light grey trousers, open necked shirt and blue jacket that matched his eyes. ‘What can I get you girls to drink?’

‘I’ll have a dry white wine, please,’ she replied. ‘How was the sailing?’ she asked with a smile.

‘Good, but I got a little sunburnt on my back,’ he replied. ‘I’m wearing lots of moisturiser and my softest shirt. Annie, how about you?’

‘Gin and tonic, please Ryan.’

Annie and Gerry chatted inconsequentially for a couple of minutes about holidays and foolish people were old enough to know better about over-exposure to the sun, while the men waited at the bar to be served. She stared at their broad backs, thinking how similar they were in build and self-assurance. She realised that Annie had asked her a question.

‘Yes, I am hungry, and I love seafood. Any place you guys recommend would be good for me,’ Gerry replied.

‘Great! I guess we should be able to get the three of them to pick up the bill for the two of us,’ Annie grinned.

There you go Dan, I’m not the only manipulative bitch here, Gerry said to herself as she smiled in agreement.

Hours later back in her room and thankfully alone, Gerry picked up the remote control and began to hop through the channels, most of which seemed to be showing commercials. The evening, which had turned out to be purely social, might even have been enjoyable if it weren’t for the extraordinary occurrence of meeting Dan Hall. She had taken the opportunity to be seated with Ryan next to her and Hall on his other side, so minimising their conversation. At no time during the evening did she or Dan reveal that they had encountered one another before. She had asked Annie during a visit to the women’s room how long he had been in the agency and she had told her it had been five years, but apart from that she knew little about him, and Gerry had been reluctant to appear overly interested. They had finished dinner at about 10pm and Gerry turned down the suggestion of another drink at another bar and took a taxi alone back to the hotel.

She stopped changing channels when she saw a map of Florida festooned with weather symbols. Apparently tomorrow morning was going to start hot and sunny but then a weather front was going to sweep in off the Gulf of Mexico and bring thunderstorms to the west coast. The weather girl exchanged some witty comments with the news reader who then adopted a serious expression and began to read the local news. Gerry yawned and reached for the remote control. It was only 10:40pm but her body clock was somewhere mid-Atlantic, so she decided to go to bed.

She was cleaning her teeth when she heard a knock on the door.

‘I bet it’s that bloody Jasper White again!’ she muttered to herself. She peered through the spy hole and was surprised to see Dan Hall standing outside her door. She opened it with the door security restraint in place.

‘Hello Dan.’

‘They told me you were a prize bitch,’ he said.

‘Fuck off!’ She tried to close the door but the edge thudded against a rolled up magazine that he had inserted in the gap. She tried to snatch it but there was not enough to grab.

‘Look, what the hell do you want?’ she asked, exasperated.

‘Can I come in and talk to you?’ he requested.

‘No it’s bloody late and I’m tired,’ she snapped.

‘Five minutes?’

‘Oh… what the hell… ok then. Five minutes.’ She unhooked the door restraint and allowed him into her sitting room.

‘Dan, what do you want?’

‘Why do you think you’ve come over here?’ he asked.

‘What? To the States? You know why I’m here. We talked about it at dinner this evening.’

‘Humour me?’ he asked.

She sighed irritably. ‘I’m here to talk to Ali Hamsin, then escort your unwanted prisoner out of your country where he’s something of an embarrassment as Obama wants to close Guantanamo Bay.’

‘What about the scheme to send guys to infiltrate terrorist networks?’

‘That’s really nothing to do with me, and I’m sure I don’t want to be involved.’

‘Why not? It would see you back in your exec ops section,’ Hall suggested.

‘To tell you the truth, I’m not really interested. I haven’t been involved in anything in exec ops since we did that job in the Gulf.’

‘What happened to that guy Dean Furness? Why did you have to kill him? Were you ordered to do it by my side or yours? What have you really been doing since I last saw you? Someone told me you’ve been in prison, but that’s got to be ridiculous!’

Gerry stared at him feeling more irate with each question. ‘Listen I didn’t kill the poor bastard!’ she snarled, ‘he was my only chance of finding out what happened to Phil. Now I don’t know if that’s five minutes up, but get the hell out of here Dan, before I… oh just get out!’ She saw his expression change into something that looked like despair but in the heat of her anger she slammed the door shut behind him. Later as she lay in bed she thought about that expression and his questions while staring up at the red light of the smoke alarm as it flickered every eight seconds. It took her a long time to fall asleep.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Next morning Gerry stood at the restaurant entrance staring across at Vince Parker as he ate fruit salad and yogurt for breakfast, wondering whether to retreat back to her room until he had finished. Vince suddenly turned round and caught sight of her and waved a hand; she quickly assumed a smile and walked briskly towards him.

‘Good morning Gerry,’ he called, ‘you looked lost in thought.’

‘I was just thinking about skipping breakfast and going to the gym instead. I was feeling guilty because I ate that heavy meal yesterday.’

‘Yes, after you’d told us that you weren’t very hungry,’ he said.

‘I know, but it was good food, and I did leave some of the fries,’ Gerry replied with a grin.

‘Then please join me,’ said Vince indicating the seat opposite.

‘How did you get on with our American friends last night after I left?’ she asked after she had collected her breakfast from the buffet.

‘Oh, ok, I guess. Ryan Carson seemed sorry to see you go; I think you’ve made an impression on him Gerry.’ He grinned and Gerry scowled.

‘I doubt it… what kind of impression?’

‘I think he likes you.’

‘Bog off.’

‘And Hall seemed rather interested in you too; he asked how long you’d been in the Service.’

‘And what did you tell him?’ Gerry asked trying not to sound tense.

‘I told him that you had been in for about sixteen years but you decided to take a career break, and you’d been writing a doctoral thesis or something for the last few years.’

‘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.

‘He’s very well,’ said Bruckner. ‘Ah, there’s Doctor Fisher.’ Bruckner signalled to an attractive woman of about thirty with blonde hair tied in a ponytail, a slightly overweight figure enclosed in military style green trousers and shirt but with no badges of rank.

‘Mandy Fisher wrote the report on Ali Hamsin,’ said Bruckner. ‘Doctor Fisher!’ he called out. She looked round, smiled and walked over.

‘Hello General,’ she said, ‘Felix, hi.’

‘Mandy this is Gerry Tate from London,’ said Bruckner. ‘She’s read your report on Ali Hamsin, and I think you’ll be taking her to meet with him.’

‘Hi Gerry,’ the woman said with a smile and they shook hands.

‘I didn’t realise that you were the psychiatrist who wrote the report,’ said Gerry, ‘it wasn’t attributed.’

‘Oh I’m not a psychiatrist. I have a PhD in psychology, so yeah, I am a doctor I guess, but not in the medical sense.’

‘Still, you’re well qualified to write psychological assessments,’ Gerry replied, ‘and yours was very insightful.’

‘Thank you. Anyway, I’m here to take you to see Hamsin. We’ve an hour and a half before we meet for lunch, so are you all set?’

Gerry was hard pressed to appear nonchalant. ‘Sure, I’m ready when you are.’

Mandy led Gerry to a well-used Chevy Blazer.

‘It’s a bit of a wreck I’m afraid,’ Mandy said. ‘They don’t import too may new vehicles here, and they certainly don’t let us non-military types have them, but at least the aircon sort of works.’

‘I saw you have no rank badges. Who do you actually work for?’ Gerry asked.

‘I’m with the FBI team. I was sent here initially because I speak some Arabic. It’s not enough to converse fluently, but it helps to form some kind of rapport with the detainees. Do you speak any?’

‘Not much really, I’m afraid,’ said Gerry, out of habit revealing as little as possible, and also pleased that the American apparently knew little about her. ‘What do you know about this General Bruckner character who introduced us? He seems old for the army.’

‘Oh, he retired ages ago, but these older guys like to keep their ranks, especially if they were senior officers. I’m not sure who he is now. He’s never been FBI; I’m pretty sure he’s not CIA, but he probably was at one time. He’s just one of these well-connected people in some obscure branch of the administration who pops up here from time to time. Somehow you don’t feel like asking too many questions of them, if you know what I mean.’

‘You’re telling me! I came across some right tricky bastards in my lot. Have you been here long, in Guantanamo?’ Gerry asked.

‘I’ve been here three years now. I was seconded for one year, pretty reluctant I might tell you, but then, well, I met someone here, and so instead of being resentful, I suddenly became all happy and content.’

‘Good for you,’ said Gerry.

‘Thanks. How about you? Are you married? Do you have any children?’

‘No, I’m single,’ said Gerry, ‘and I don’t have any…’

Mandy suddenly swerved the car violently as a stray dog ran across the road.

‘Sorry about that, we’ve been trying to round them up. We’re driving to camp five. That’s where the interrogation facilities are. As you know we’re no longer interrogating Hamsin; haven’t done for months, but he’s sort of set up home there, and didn’t want to be moved.’

‘Your report stated that he is institutionalised.’

‘Well I thought perhaps he was, but when we told him you were coming to see him as per his request he became quite excited. He said he knew you from years back.’

‘That’s right.’

‘He told me that when he went on some mission to Frankfurt and this British woman went with him, only he called you Emily, not Gerry. It took us a little while to get your details from your lot. They seemed rather reluctant to have you sent over.’

‘I was on an overseas assignment,’ said Gerry, ‘and I couldn’t be freed to come over here straight away.’

‘Oh I see,’ said Mandy. She brought the vehicle to a halt outside the prison block and as she watched the British woman climb out of the car she bestowed a small look of contempt towards her back. She had been briefed that Gerry had been released from prison to meet Hamsin.

Mandy led the way into the monitoring room. Two men in military fatigues were scanning the CCTV screens that showed each occupant of the cells in turn. ‘The guards look into the cells every few minutes, and monitor them all the time on these screens.’

‘They don’t get much privacy,’ Gerry remarked.

‘No, none at all really.’

They watched the screen cycle through the detainees. They were all wearing beige coveralls, which showed that they had cooperated to some degree with their captors. Several sat in wheelchairs and a few of them were missing limbs, the result of explosions or combat injuries. Mandy tapped on the computer screen below one of the monitors and there was Ali Hamsin sitting in an armchair reading a novel. Mandy zoomed on to the cover.

‘It’s “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad,’ said Fisher. ‘Very appropriate.’

‘Yes it is,’ Gerry agreed. She glanced at Mandy wondering if she had actually read the novel and understood the metaphor in the title. Ali looked older than she had expected. He was thinner but still appeared distinguished despite his scruffy beard.

‘I don’t want to talk to him in one of those interrogation rooms,’ Gerry said.

‘We’ll go to one of the recreation pens, then,’ Fisher agreed.

She led the way along the corridors, nodding and smiling at the guards and swapping the occasional name and greeting. They were all men and they stared at Gerry with some interest. She stopped outside a door with a hatch and an observation port but rather than looking in she knocked and called out.

‘Hi Ali, this is Mandy.’

His reply emerged from a speaker on the wall next to the door. ‘So I suppose you are coming in, then.’

Mandy unlocked the door and Ali stared past her at Gerry. ‘Emily… you’re here.’

‘Hello Ali. It’s been a few years,’ said Gerry.

‘Yes.’ He inclined his head in polite agreement.

‘Come on Ali,’ said Mandy, ‘we’ll talk in one of the recreation spaces.’

She led the way outside the back of the building into an area about six metres by three surrounded by a concrete wall and a mesh roofing that cut out most of the sun. Gerry looked round and saw that there was another CCTV camera mounted in one corner with an array of microphones beneath it. There was no chance of a private conversation while Ali Hamsin was under the supervision of his captors in Guantanamo bay. Presumably Bruckner, Grainger and half a dozen others were preparing to listen to their conversation. Maybe it was also being transmitted to the George Bush Center in Langley.

Ali sat down on one side of the table and Gerry and Mandy sat down on the other. He placed his hands on the table and Gerry could see that his nails were bitten as badly as her own. He had a mosquito bite on the back of his hand and he had scratched it until it bled.

‘So Emily,’ he began in his near perfect English accent, ‘how are you enjoying your visit to our tropical island paradise.’

‘Not at all really Ali,’ she replied. ‘I’m here strictly on business.’

‘Why that’s too bad,’ he said in a high pitched American accent, ‘we have excellent facilities for leisure and entertainment, all the food you can eat; medical care; feature films as well.’

Gerry guessed that his accent was an imitation of Mandy Fisher’s. She glanced towards the psychologist and her tight-lipped expression confirmed it. ‘Unfortunately the television is mostly closed circuit surveillance and hardly anyone gets a chance to leave,’ Ali finished.

‘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?’

Bloody Dan Hall; now he was inviting her out with this obviously prepared speech! She considered just how rudely to brush him off.

‘Gerry?’

You don’t need to antagonise everyone, the voice of reason whispered in her ear. ‘Sorry, I can’t… er… I haven’t eaten yet. Sorry Dan.’

‘Ok… maybe some other time then.’

Wait a minute; maybe Dan Hall could answer some of the questions that were vexing her. Perhaps she could subtly grill him for information. ‘No wait Dan… what I meant was can we go someplace where I can get a light meal or something. Have you eaten yet?’

‘Well no; going out someplace was what I had in mind.’

‘Could you give me twenty minutes please Dan?’

‘Great I’ll see you in the lobby if that’s ok.’

Gerry looked at herself in the mirror above the desk and plucked at her rather sweaty shirt. Her rain-drenched hair was a mess and she had been wearing her clothes all day.

‘Actually can you make it seven thirty? That’s fifty minutes from now.’

‘Ok sure, see you then!’

After a shower she dried her hair and pulled clean jeans and a polo shirt from the closet. She checked the time. Still twenty minutes before Hall was due to pick her up. She picked up the TV remote control and lounged on the bed and began to flick through the channels. Her attention was caught by a wincing Sandra Bullock who was having her legs waxed in preparation for her transformation from grungy detective to beauty pageant detective. Many years ago Gerry had heard one of her colleagues mutter ‘Here comes Miss Congeniality… not!’ in a whisper plainly meant for her to hear and she had subsequently watched the film during a flight to Boston. At the time she had viewed it with amused derision but now perhaps if she was going to pump information out of Dan Hall she should try the feminine wiles approach. She rather suspected she would be no bloody good at it but nevertheless she quickly pulled off her jeans and top and put on her shorter skirt and a blouse that would display some cleavage. She put on some high heeled shoes, wishing for a thousandth time that her feet were a size smaller, but then she decided that she did not want to be taller than him. She kicked off the shoes and chose sandals with a low heel and then rushed to the bathroom and busied herself with mascara and eyeliner and lipstick. By 7:30pm she decided she had done the best she could. Time to go.

The restaurant Dan chose was busy so they sat down on barstools with a beer each while waiting for a table.

‘Sorry we’re having to wait, but this is a good place,’ he apologised.

‘No problem,’ Gerry replied, wondering how she would steer their conversation in the direction she wanted.

‘I’ve sort of known you for years now Gerry but this is the first time I’ve seen you alone since that unfortunate conversation in the hotel in Fujairah.’

She nodded, remembering his anger. She had returned to her room with a surprisingly guilty conscience and as a result of her distraction she had been stabbed.

‘You haven’t changed much,’ he continued as she seemed at a loss for words. Then he added ‘I’m sorry about your fiancé. Vince told me he died in a road accident while on duty.’

This was not the conversation Gerry wanted. ‘Look Dan, I didn’t come out here to discuss my personal life with you!’ she snapped. He looked somewhat mortified. Gerry cursed herself for an idiot. If she wanted to pump him for information then she should stop sounding so bad tempered. She reached out and touched his arm.

‘God, I’m sorry Dan; if it wasn’t for you I would probably be dead, but my life’s been turned upside down since we were in Fujairah. It’s really painful still, but actually you’re someone I feel I can talk to, if you’re happy to listen. You saved my life back then; I had rather forgotten that I owe you my thanks and now I owe you an apology…I’m sorry.’

He smiled and seemed slightly embarrassed, but was saved from making a reply by the arrival of the maître d’ who appeared at his elbow.

‘Your table’s ready now, sir.’

‘Oh…er… good, thank you.’

Their table was in a quiet corner. Gerry sat down, took a tissue from her handbag, gave a little sniff and wiped away imaginary tears from the corners of her eyes, taking care not to disturb her make up. ‘Philip, my fiancé, was out in Abuja as an Arabic speaker. He wasn’t really a field operative, but they needed a good translator out there. Anyway he was working with Dean Furness and Dean thinks that a kill order was put on the two of them because they learned some highly sensitive information. Phil died in a car accident and Dean escaped to London and came to see me. He was killed in my apartment and I was arrested for his murder.’

‘That must have been a bad time, but I can’t believe your people didn’t back you up.’

She shook her head. ‘I was put on trial, convicted of murder and I’ve been in prison until a few days ago. I expect you remember I was pregnant; I didn’t have an abortion, I had the baby in prison and I gave her up for adoption. I was only released because Ali Hamsin insisted on seeing me.’

‘Holy shit, how perfectly awful for you!’

Having engaged Dan’s sympathy Gerry tried to turn the conversation around so he was talking.

‘How about you? Did you get married, have kids?’

She glanced down at his injured left hand but she remembered from their meeting two days ago that he had no ring on the stub of his finger. She looked up again, but he had followed her gaze.

‘That was my closest brush with death in Helmand province. Presumably a bullet, or shrapnel maybe,’ he mused, gazing at his hand. ‘But no, not married. Nearly, once; but not.’

‘So what have you been doing since we last met?’ she asked, but at that moment the maître d’ appeared at his elbow. They spent a couple of hurried minutes reading menus and ordering their dinner.

‘You asked me what I’d been up to,’ said Dan. ‘After our adventure I spent two years in Iraq from where I emerged unscathed. Then I was in a training post back home for a year and then I transferred to Special Forces in Afghanistan. After my hand was injured I went back home; I needed a surprisingly intricate operation to repair tendon damage.’ He held out his hand and Gerry took it and inspected the scars. For a moment she considered kissing it, but decided that would be over the top.

‘I met this nurse called Sylvia in the hospital. We were together for two years or so but in the end it didn’t work out and I left the army and joined the agency. When I was in hospital I’d met this guy Jasper White who’d been shot through the leg. We used to meet up in physio, and he said that perhaps if I decided to leave the army I should give him a call. When I split from Sylvia, I did.’

Gerry latched on to this opportunity. ‘This Jasper White guy must have made a good impression on you. I don’t think I’ve ever met him but I’ve heard his name mentioned.’

‘His background is similar to mine. He was a colonel in the marines but then he was recruited by the agency. He was brought in by his former CO, General Robert Bruckner.’

‘Oh yes, I know him,’ said Gerry. ‘Go on.’

‘Well White and Bruckner head up the section on Middle East Special Projects, which has obviously been very active over the last few years. We try to keep as low a profile as possible though, because of all the stuff about extraordinary rendition and harsh interrogation.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Gerry, ‘it was pretty brutal.’

Hall looked up sharply at her. ‘Well don’t sound so prissy,’ he muttered, ‘you were a friggin’ assassin for chrissake!’

‘I was not an assassin,’ she whispered back fiercely, ‘I was in executive ops, and sometimes people get killed. On both sides.’

‘Yes I know; I’m sorry.’ He looked around. ‘Our starters should be here by now.’

‘What do you know about me, then Dan? Have you been given a thorough briefing on Geraldine Tate, who you thought was Emily Stevens?’ she challenged. He seemed very uncomfortable and Gerry cursed herself for sounding aggressive. The waiter suddenly appeared and placed a bowl of soup in front of Gerry and a Caesar salad before Dan. She quickly picked up a spoon and tasted it. It was too salty. ‘This is good,’ she declared enthusiastically, ‘how’s yours?’

‘Well I’ve hardly started, but it seems ok. Look Gerry; I probably know more about your career than you imagine. I looked you up in the computer today, but it reported that you’d been discharged. It didn’t say you were in prison.’ He paused. ‘And it never mentioned your daughter.’

She nodded. ‘Well the last few years have certainly been a fairly blank period for me.’

‘Do you want to talk about it?’

‘No, not now Dan. I could give you a two minute token piece of bullshit, or else I might go on for hour after hour, unloading it on to you.’ He gazed at her with a strange, unfathomable expression that she found disconcerting.

‘So why did you invite me out tonight, Dan?’ she asked.

He put down his fork and gazed intently at her. ‘I just want you to know that if things suddenly turnout a bit er… unexpected, then I want you to know that you can count on me.’

‘Unexpected in what way?’ she asked, intrigued.

‘I just think someone is playing a sort of double game, someone has a hidden agenda, but I don’t know exactly who at the moment.’

Gerry put down her spoon and smiled at him. ‘Your right Dan, lots of people have agendas, and one of them is me.’

‘Why are you telling me that? Aren’t you concerned that I’ll report back?’

‘If your lot don’t think I’m going to try and squeeze every personal advantage I can from this situation, from being in prison to suddenly finding myself involved in what looks to be some kind of cover up, I’d be amazed.’

‘Gerry, this is important. I’m sure something’s going down, and I want you to know that I’ll be there for you.’

She put on her most serious face. ‘Ok Dan thank you for that assurance, I’m grateful. I’ll be on my guard.’ She could trust absolutely nobody but herself, and that included Dan Hall, no matter what he said. ‘Just because I’m not paranoid, it doesn’t mean they’re not all out to get me,’ she said to herself. She decided to change the subject. ‘How’s your squash?’

‘My squash?’ He looked at his salad and then realised what she meant. ‘Oh you mean the game! How did you know?… oh yes, I’d just finished a match with Richard Davies, your Embassy guy when we first met. We’ve kept in touch. He’s in Singapore at the moment. I last saw him out in Kabul. Last time he e-mailed me he said he was thinking about early retirement because he had met some Australian woman and thought that after all his years abroad he’d prefer to live somewhere hot and sunny rather than cold and damp.’

‘Yes, he was a good guy. What was it like in Kabul? Sorry, silly question as you nearly lost your hand. What with the scar on your cheek, you’ve got your share of wounds.’

He fingered the side of his face. ‘This wasn’t incurred in the line of duty.’ He grinned. ‘Let me tell you a cautionary tale about teasing the neighbour’s dog,’ he began.

Against her expectations Gerry enjoyed her evening with Dan Hall. He told her about his family and assured her that his financial affairs were in order. She wondered why, but then recalled that she had described his financial problems to him in detail in that awkward encounter years earlier. She had noticed him sneaking the occasional glance at her breasts while putting down his glass, but she had looked approvingly at his own physique so that was fair enough. She felt relatively cheerful as he drove her back to the hotel.

She was a little disappointed when he did not try to give her as much as a peck on the cheek, but before he went she had to ask him an important question, so she took hold of his hand. ‘Dan, why are you looking out for me? Why are you so eager to… well why did you say that I should definitely trust you?’

He turned to one side and then the other, and then peered over her shoulder and then looked down to her hand holding his. ‘Because I love you Gerry,’ he mumbled. She dropped his hand as if it had burnt her and took a step back.

‘What?’ She shook her head slowly. ‘That’s ridiculous! You hardly know me… I hardly know you!’

‘Yeah… well there it is… ever since we first met I’ve been thinking about you, but I sort of pushed it aside. Then I suddenly see you again and wham. Yeah I’m crazy I guess. Sorry to freak you out.’ He turned away and walked quickly out of the lobby. Gerry turned on her heel, lifted her eyes heavenwards and shook her head again as she walked to the elevator.

Back in her room she sat down at the desk and gazed into the mirror. Should she have gone to meet him without bothering to have a shower or change her clothes or put on make-up? Would that have made a difference? She suddenly remembered clutching one of his hands as she lay bleeding on the bed whilst with his other he held the towel over the wound in her abdomen. She remembered him calling ‘Stay with me Gerry, stay with me!’ as they waited for the ambulance. For years and years nobody had told her that she was loved. Oh what crap, he barely knew her!

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Gerry spent a restless night tossing and turning. Whenever she woke up, her mind began to consider the implications of her meeting with Ali Hamsin and the startling admission by Dan Hall which kept distracting her from her analysis of the situation. In the small hours of the morning she replayed their adventure in Fujairah and their more recent meetings and much to her surprise she acknowledged a developing interest in seeing him again. This admission seemed to calm her and she fell asleep until 5.50am when she heard a strange muffled thud through the door, then another. She realised it was the sound of newspapers being dropped in the hotel corridor outside each occupied room. She pulled back one of the drapes and gazed out over the sea. It was about half an hour before sunrise but she could just see the waves rolling towards the shore, and the wet sand reflecting the light from the shore front street lamps. She let the drape fall back and lay down on the bed. She drifted between asleep and awake for another hour before getting up and making some strong coffee which she hoped would enable her to think more clearly about the events of yesterday. Her meeting with Hamsin had been abruptly terminated, just as he was about to reveal something, but when he flew back to London with her then surely he’d have ample time to speak to her. Perhaps they wouldn’t release him now after all, or perhaps she wouldn’t be allowed to meet him again. She opened a drawer and pulled out her running kit. Dawn lightened the sky to the east, but it was still dark along the shore front road. She set off at a steady pace and settled into her rhythm, but having turned matters over during an hour’s run she was no nearer an explanation.

Gerry was in the bath when her telephone rang. She reached out for the handset, thinking once again that having a telephone in her bathroom at home might be a useful addition. ‘Yes?’

‘Good morning Gerry! Richard Cornwall here. How are you?’

‘I’m ok thanks. How are things back in the office?’

‘We’re managing thank you. I’m calling to say that I received your e-mail with your arrival time. 2100 hours local time here. Does it have to be so late?’

‘No it doesn’t but I thought we should arrive after dark, so no inquisitive types can see us.’

‘Ok, fair enough but it’s going to put the overtime bill up of course. I have to watch my budget you know. I’ve confirmed all the details with our friends in Grosvenor Square, Special Branch, the Ministry, et cetera et cetera.

‘Very good. Are you coming out to the airport?’ asked Gerry.

‘Actually I will. It’s got me out of a social engagement I’ve been looking to avoid. So… any problems at your end?’

Gerry wondered whether she should bring up the business of her meeting with Ali Hamsin being terminated, and the startling revelation that he had no idea that she was coming to see him, but she decided that discretion was her best option. ‘No. Everything’s fine here, but I’m in the bath at the moment.’

‘Oh… well I won’t keep you. Call me when you have a departure and arrival time fixed.’

Gerry wallowed amongst the bubbles for a while, then wrapped a towel around herself, walked back into the bedroom and came to an abrupt halt. Ryan Carson and Vince Parker were sitting in the armchairs beside the window. Carson was holding a gun which was pointing towards her and Parker was holding a Taser.

‘Do you suppose she’s got any dangerous weapons concealed under that towel?’ he announced with an evil grin.

‘Oh grow up, Carson,’ said Parker. ‘Sorry Gerry, we’re going to ask you to get dressed and come with us, and obviously we’re not going to let you out of our sight for a moment.’

Gerry stared at them for a while, trying to think of some way in which she might escape the situation. She was not overly concerned with modesty but nevertheless she turned away from them as she lowered the towel to her waist, put on her bra and a blouse and then hoisted her knickers up underneath her towel before putting on her jeans. Then she turned round and asked ‘What the hell is this all about?’

‘Why don’t you sit down and put your shoes on?’ Vince suggested.

She sat on the bed and pulled on socks and her trainers. Then she heard the mechanical twang of the Taser and she collapsed on to the floor. As she lay immobilised Carson thrust a syringe into her buttock and pressed down the plunger with his thumb. His grinning face was the last thing she saw as her mind faded.

Gerry woke up with a throbbing headache. She opened her eyes and saw the metal roof of a utility van. She moaned and clutched the side of her head. She remembered being hit by the Taser and then the sharp stab in her backside. She took some deep breaths hoping the pain in her skull would ease off.

‘See Mark, she’s awake already,’ said Carson. Gerry felt a foot nudging her in the ribs. ‘Come on Tate, time to wake up.’

Gerry closed her eyes and opened them slowly. The pain in her head changed from an intense throbbing to a dull ache. She looked around and saw she was strapped inside a covert surveillance van with her arms cuffed behind the seat back. Ryan Carson was sitting next to the communications console. In the other seat sat a powerful man with a Mexican style moustache. He held a Taser which he pointed at Gerry.

‘This is Mark Stafford,’ said Carson, ‘he’ll zap you if you make any sudden moves.’

‘Where are we going?’ she mumbled. She tried to shake off her drug induced torpor. ‘Ryan! What the hell are you playing at?’ she demanded. ‘I thought we were meant to be on the same side?’

‘Well we’re not sure whose side you’re on, Gerry; we think perhaps you’ve gone over to the dark side.’

‘It’s that bastard Bruckner who’s the dark side. I want to speak to my boss Cornwall.’

‘Sorry, you’re not in any position to make demands,’ said Carson. We’re going to ship you home, where I think they’ll be waiting to arrest you. Now we’re gonna take you to the airport.

‘What about my things?’ she asked.

‘Don’t worry; Dan Hall’s already packing up your stuff, then he’ll pay your hotel bill and return your car to the hire company.’

Dan Hall? So much for her trusting him. ‘This is ridiculous, why don’t I speak to General Bruckner. I’m sure…’

‘Why don’t you just be a good girl and shut the fuck up?’ said Stafford with a slight wave of the Taser.

She was driven to an anonymous house in a rundown neighbourhood and ushered inside at gunpoint. Carson showed her into a room sparsely furnished with a bed and an armchair, and a small table with a stack of tatty magazines on top of it. He took off the handcuffs.

‘There’s water and granola bars in the fridge. Bathroom’s through there,’ he said indicating a doorway. She looked in and saw that the small window was bricked up.

‘See that mirror?’ He pointed, and she looked at the large wall mirror with a serving hatch beside it. ‘We’ll be watching you through that. If we think you’re spending too long in the bathroom, we’ll come and see what you’re up to. We’ll pass you water and food through that hatch if you want it.’

Gerry walked to the hatch and opened it. There was a small ring-stained shelf and another door on the other side of the wall.

‘You said we were going to the airport,’ Gerry said.

‘True enough, but your flight’s not due to leave until this evening.’

Gerry woke up slumped in a corner of the SUV. She had no recollection of climbing into it. She remembered spending a few boring hours reading through the pile of magazines that ranged from the Economist and Newsweek through various women’s periodicals, magazines covering fly fishing, golf and baseball and the National Enquirer. She had been provided with a water bottle and when she had grown hungry she asked her captors for a chicken salad. Instead she had been given a spicy pepperoni pizza and told that was all she was going to get. After she had eaten some of it she felt really thirsty and asked for more water. She remembered sitting in the chair, feeling very drowsy and deciding to climb on to the bed and thinking it would take a huge effort to move and then no more until she had come round to find herself in the vehicle.

She had no idea how long she had been unconscious, but the sun was setting behind the buildings. She knew she should be thinking about the possibilities of escape, but instead she considered how unsuitable she had become for the role of an intelligence agent on foreign soil. She had taken no proper precautions to secure her safety; she should have alarmed the door, kept a weapon handy at all times, even when she was taking a bath. If she had been as careless years ago as she had been in the last few days she would have been dead by now. She remembered the last time she had been taken by surprise in a hotel room. Dan Hall had been around to save her. Perhaps he would live up to his recent promise, hold up the vehicle and set her free. The car drew to a sudden stop and she looked outside. Not Dan Hall; just a security guard raising a striped pole set in the gap of a chain link fence topped with a coil of razor wire. He waved the vehicle through and Gerry slumped back in the seat. She guessed that she had been given dose of rohypnol or something similar to keep her placid after the sleeping drug had worn off.

The car pulled up beside a set of aircraft steps. The door opened and hands reached out and pulled her towards the stairway. She looked up and saw an airliner painted entirely in white. Along the fuselage she could see the faint outlines of letters of its previous owners, but she could not make out the logo. She saw someone carrying her suitcase up to the aircraft side and a voice encouraging her to follow. She stumbled on the lowest step and banged her shin, but someone hauled her upright and she trod wearily up to the doorway.

Once inside she saw that there was a row of rearward facing seats at the front of the passenger cabin and rows of tatty looking economy class seats in standard three abreast on each side of the aisle, but instead of being crammed together for cheap air travel the rows were spaced six feet apart.

She was ushered half way down the cabin and told to sit in the seats on the right. Trying to overcome her dispirited lethargy she inspected her surroundings with more interest. The first thing she noticed was that her seat had a five point harness of the type fitted to a rally car or to a pilot’s seat. The buckle was fitted with a keyhole instead of the usual rotary release knob. Down on the floor by each seat there were steel rings for shackles. The aircraft was plainly used for the transportation of dangerous criminals, part of the Justice Prisoner and Alien Transportation System, JPATS, more commonly known as Con Air.

She looked up when another figure was escorted on board. It was Ali Hamsin! She called out his name. He did not seem to recognise her but merely stared at the floor as he was prodded down the aisle until he was shoved into a seat three rows ahead of her.

She heard new voices talking. She looked up and saw General Robert Bruckner talking to Ryan Carson, Vince Parker and Mark Stafford. They all four stared towards her and she stared back towards them hoping she appeared defiant rather than bewildered. Then Dan Hall stepped through the doorway. Here was the man who had told her to place her trust in him; she must have been a bloody idiot to have given him any credence.

She closed her eyes and tried to organise her thoughts. Why was she being sent back to the UK as a prisoner? If she was to be arrested for the murder of Dean Furness, they could have done that in Florida. Were they actually going back to the UK, or were they heading for some country where human rights were routinely disregarded, including waterboarding and imprisonment without trial?

‘Ok Gerry, I’m going to have to strap you in.’ She looked up; it was Dan Hall.

‘What the fuck are you doing Dan? I thought I was meant to trust you, but I’m just one of your bloody prisoners.’ His steady gaze carried no hint of the emotions he had expressed yesterday.

‘I’m sorry Gerry; I’m unable to answer any of your questions. Please sit back in your seat and allow me to fasten these straps.’ He reached for the harness and began to fasten it. She grabbed his wrists.

‘What the hell are you doing to me?’ she demanded.

‘Does she need a jolt?’ someone called out. Gerry saw Stafford standing in the aisle with his Taser ready. Hall turned back to Gerry and frowned at her.

‘No, she’s not going to be a problem.’ Hall gazed into her eyes for a moment and then twisted his hands free and fastened the five point harness in place with a series of sharp decisive clicks. Next he ran his hands down her leg and Gerry suddenly froze as she felt a hard object being pushed down inside her shoe. ‘It’s a key to the buckle,’ he whispered. Then he reached under his jacket and briefly showed her a Smith and Wesson Chief’s Special, a small but effective handgun, and began to push it behind her. She eased her lower back forward to make room. Finally he showed her a card which he pushed under her thigh. ‘Contact me if you can. I’ll be on the run. It’s the best I can do… good luck.’

‘Thank you,’ she whispered back.

He straightened up. ‘That’s not too tight, is it?’ he announced.

‘You fucking bastards,’ she snarled. Carson, Stafford and Bruckner glanced briefly at her but then resumed their conversation as Hall re-joined them. Bruckner stared down the length of the aircraft until his eyes fastened briefly on hers and then he turned and said something to the other three men who chuckled in response. Then he clapped Dan Hall on the shoulder and the two of them disappeared through the entry door. Vince Parker said something to Ryan Carson and they shook hands, then Parker looked towards her, gave an ironic salute and then he followed Bruckner and Hall out of the aircraft.

Ryan Carson opened the flight deck door and disappeared inside. Stafford sat down in the rearward facing seats at the front of the aircraft and looked at her and Ali briefly. Gerry heard the engines being started. A couple of minutes later she felt the aircraft begin to move. After a few minutes taxying, it turned onto the runway and as it accelerated Gerry was pressed back into her seat and the gun pushing into her lower back seemed to give her a surge of adrenaline as the aircraft roared into the night sky.

Gerry forced herself not to act too quickly. She waited until the aircraft had reached its cruising altitude and another two hours had elapsed and Stafford had relaxed and stopped watching them closely. While keeping a careful eye on him she felt down inside her shoe and pulled out a metal shaft with some projections. She tried pushing it carefully into the harness buckle where it fitted neatly.

Next she called to Ali in Arabic. ‘Ali, how are you feeling?’

‘Er… I’m alright. I feel I’ve been drugged up for a couple of days. I have a headache but otherwise I’m not injured.’

‘I’m trying to see if that bastard speaks Arabic at all.’

‘I doubt it Gerry, he doesn’t seem to have been recruited for his intelligence.’

She watched Stafford; he was reading a magazine and did not appear to be taking in what was said.

‘Hey you ugly bastard!’ she said quietly in Arabic, ‘my harness has come undone and I’m about to come over and rip your head off.’

‘No reaction,’ said Ali, ‘I think we can assume he doesn’t understand, and he’s not paying attention.’

‘Ok Ali, now try not to react to what I tell you. I have a key to unlock the harness and a gun. I’m going to free myself and then when I tell you, I want you to have some sort of fit, so that Stafford comes over to you.’

‘What will you do then?’

‘I’m going to kill him.’

As she expected the pilots heard the sound of the shots. The flight deck door opened. It was not Carson, but the other pilot who stepped out. The first thing he saw was Gerry lying down on the floor with blood on her face and chest and her arms flung out. The gun was hidden under her head. He saw Stafford sitting in a seat next to Ali, and stepped over Gerry to talk to him. She climbed silently to her feet and hit him under his back ribs and he crashed to the floor. She knelt on top of him, ground the muzzle into his ear and snarled ‘You’re going to do exactly what I say or I’ll blow your brains out you piece of shit!’

‘Yuh..ok,’ he mumbled.

‘Ok what’s your name?’

‘Reece, Carl Reece.’

‘Ok Carl, the first thing you’re going to do is release Ali… ok? This key should probably work. And in case you’re wondering, before I killed him, Stafford handed me his gun, his knife and his Taser, so you behave yourself.’

She watched him unfasten Ali who grinned up at her.

‘Ok Carl, back to the cockpit, at the double.’

Carson turned round as the door opened. ‘Hey Carl, what the hell’s happened? What was the problem with…’ he broke off as he saw Gerry come into the flight deck behind Reece. ‘Fuck!’ he said.

‘Ok Carson, I want a headset so I can hear what’s going on,’ Gerry demanded.

‘Er… I don’t think there’s a spare one,’ he said.

‘Wrong answer. From now on for each wrong answer I’ll cut off one of your fingers,’ she replied.

‘Ok behind you there’s one on a hook. I think it’s already plugged in.’ She gave a quick glance, saw the headset and put it on.

‘Good,’ said Gerry. ‘Now you’ll carry on across the Atlantic as normal. Later on I’ll give you some new instructions. And I warn you, I’m in a hell of a bad temper. As you remember I’ve got a pilot’s licence and enough experience to know if you do something unusual with this aircraft.’ She waited until the atmosphere had settled down and the two pilots were looking less tense.

‘Good, now you’re going to fly me to Bermuda.’

‘What?’

‘You heard me. We’ll fly out across the Atlantic until we get close to the island, and then you’ll turn off your transponder and descend to three thousand feet so the radar can’t see us. Then you’ll divert to Bermuda. When we get real close you can use the radio again and explain that you’ve had pressurisation problems or engine problems or maybe both and that you need to land. You’ll taxy to the edge of the airport and me and Ali will jump out. If I’m happy I won’t shoot you before I go. Is that straightforward enough for you?’

‘Ok, I guess you’re calling the shots.’

‘Yeah, definitely.’

Despite her display of self-confidence Gerry felt nervous within the confined space of the flight deck. Her assertion that she would know if things weren’t right had been somewhat hollow. She was in horribly close proximity to the two men, both of whom had detailed knowledge of the complex aircraft. All she had on her side apart from the gun was their knowledge that she would shoot them if she suspected that they were trying to deceive her.

She looked around the flight deck. The instruments were a mix of the old fashioned type to which she was accustomed from her own training and the large navigation screens which Harvey Wallis had introduced to her on the flight over. The route was on the screen underneath the main flight director. Her best chance was to say as little as possible and not to ask questions that might reveal her lack of confidence or knowledge. First of all she could use some of her experience supplemented by what Wallis had taught her.

‘Okay I want to see Bermuda on the screen? What’s the four letter ICAO code for it?’

‘TXKF,’ Reece replied, and she saw the sharp look that Carson gave him.

‘I want to see it on the screen,’ she repeated.

‘I can’t; it’s too far away,’ Carson replied.

Damn! One mark of credibility lost, but she had an answer. ‘Ok, show it as a diversion airport with bearing and distance,’ she replied. Neither man moved.

‘Now!’ she shouted and hit Reece across the side of the skull with the muzzle of the gun. He swore and clutched his head.

‘Ok, ok,’ Carson said with a note of resignation that did not fool her for a moment, but he entered TXKF into the alphanumeric keypad and she read 570 nautical miles.

‘Ok, this aircraft usually flies at about eight miles a minute, so allowing for the wind and adding a bit for flying at low level for a while, and approach and landing, give me a flight time.’

Carson entered some more data and turned round to look at her.

‘About one hour and forty minutes to landing at Bermuda,’ he reported.

That seemed reasonable, she decided. ‘Ok, now I’ll establish some rules. I’ll stand or sit at the back here, and you two will not look around at me unless I give you permission. I know that if I kill one of you, the other one can land the plane. My gun will always be trained on one of you, but you won’t know who. I also have a Taser which will be ready for whomever I don’t shoot. There’ll be no warning shots or wounding shots; I’ll shoot you through the back and into the heart. Any questions?’

‘November Two Seven Whisky, climb flight level 350 and route direct to two zero north, six zero west, continue with New York on HF’ came the voice of the air traffic controller.

‘Climb flight level 350 and direct two zero north, six zero west, continue on HF November Two Seven Whisky,’ Reece answered automatically and then he froze, expecting another outburst from the British agent.

‘That’s good,’ said Gerry. ‘Just take things normally until I say. Now just think of me as your Federal Aviation Authority check pilot not saying much but watching you very, very carefully.’

She spent the next fifty minutes in a state of high anxiety, not daring to relax her vigil for a moment. Fortunately at cruising altitude there was little for the pilots to do in terms of flying. The operation was carried out using the flight management computer that was coupled to the autopilot. She thanked her good fortune again that Wallis had shown her how to operate the Gulfstream jet. The system fitted to the Boeing was different but by careful observation she noted how the numeric information on the small computer screen related to the navigation display on the instrument panel and the occasional air traffic control communications. Soon the aircraft would be about 250 miles from Bermuda and it would be time to ask for a course to the island’s airport. Her bladder was becoming uncomfortably full, and she wondered if she could get Ali to hold the gun on them, then quickly dismissed the idea. If necessary she would just wet herself. She was becoming increasingly confident that she could pull this off.

‘Okay, turn off the transponder, descend to three thousand feet on this track and then turn towards Bermuda,’ she ordered.

Ryan Carson had spent the last fifty minutes scheming how he could turn the situation around. He had been careful to do exactly as bidden for as long as possible to lull the English bitch into a false sense of security. Without turning directly to look at her, he had made a surreptitious inspection of the flight deck, checking distances to miscellaneous items of equipment. He had slowly adjusted the lighting until he had a fairly clear reflection of her in the centre instrument screens. The most important thing being that he could see which way her gun was pointing. He had also chosen his moment to make his move.

He sensed as much as heard Gerry Tate’s sigh of relief as the aircraft reached three thousand feet and he prepared to act. Unbeknownst to the British agent an eight inch steel crowbar was tucked into an alcove behind his seat, secured to the bulkhead by a pair of fabric tabs held by press studs. Its primary purpose was to lever open panels in case of an electrical fire on board the aircraft. Carson spent the next twenty minutes as the aircraft approached Bermuda planning his movements.

The symbol for Bermuda appeared three hundred miles away on the navigation display. ‘Look there’s the island,’ Carson declared and pointed at the screen. He saw Gerry automatically look in the direction he pointed. ‘Carl, get your Bermuda info out,’ he ordered. Reece turned to his right to retrieve the aerodrome reference booklets from their folder. Carson watched Gerry’s reflection and saw her follow the co-pilot’s movements and next in one rapid motion he reached round with his right hand, tugged the crowbar from its mounting and then he swung it backhanded towards her hand holding the gun.

Too late Gerry realised something was amiss. She realised that Carson was reaching for something out of her sight and his sudden change in body language showed that he was ready for action. She swung the gun round to point at him but just before she pulled the trigger the crowbar caught her with a numbing blow on the forearm just as she fired the gun. The bullet ricocheted off the centre console and hit Carl Reece. He shrieked and clutched at the wound in his neck from which blood was spurting. Her eyes met Carson’s as she tried to take aim again but in the pain that followed the numbness her hand lost its grip and she dropped the gun. She flung her arms up as he tried to hit her over the head with the crowbar and she shrieked as the metal rod caught her on the thigh just above the knee. She tried to ignore the pain and scrambled out of the flight deck, hoping to retrieve the taser from where she’d left it on the front seats but her leg gave way and she tripped over. Carson tried to follow her but his seat belt was still fastened. Then he saw the gun lying on the floor behind the centre console and he snatched it up, released his harness and followed her out. She was kneeling on the floor clutching at her leg. Just as he was about to shoot her, the dying co-pilot slumped over the controls and the auto pilot disconnected. When the warning horn sounded Carson instinctively swung round to look back in the flight deck and in that moment Gerry kicked the gun from his grasp. He snarled and swung the crowbar at her. She ducked under the sweep of the weapon and threw herself at him. The two of them rolled around on the floor in a hate-filled embrace as the aircraft plunged towards the sea. His superior strength was overcoming her fighting skills, rendered ineffective in the restricted space of the lurching fuselage. He struck her over the head again but the awkward blow lacked any force. Before he could hit her again she wriggled free snatched the gun up from the deck and shot him. Then she looked out through the flight deck window and realised the aircraft would soon crash into the sea.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Gerry sat up and gazed out over the sea. The crescent moon cast a slight silvery glow which enabled her dark adapted eye to see the life raft and the waves. The sky had cleared and she rolled over on to her back and considered the immensity of space.

She heard Ali groan and shift position. She looked over at him. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘My head aches a little,’ he replied, ‘but it’s not too bad. So you’re still awake then?’

‘Yes, I was just passing the time by doing some star gazing,’ said Gerry. ‘You fell asleep as you finished your story of how you became a senior translator for the Iraqi foreign ministry.’ She slumped back against the side of the raft, lifted her arm and sniffed. She carried a distinct odour of jet fuel.

‘Oh yes, I remember now,’ Ali murmured thoughtfully. ‘How long until dawn do you think?’

‘Probably another two hours or so.’ The raft struck a wave and some freakish combination of wind and water sent a sheet of spray that drenched her.

‘Oh crap!’ she shouted.

‘What happened?’ Ali asked, coming wide awake.

‘A wave splashed me; I’m soaked.’ She shivered. ‘And I’m cold.’

‘It’s getting lighter,’ said Ali. She realised that the moon had set and they were able to see by the light of the approaching dawn. Maybe just a few hours of warm sunshine in the morning followed by cloudy skies with occasional rain showers at convenient intervals to replenish their water supplies was what they needed, she decided to herself with a small smile at her exacting requirements. ‘First hint of the sun above the horizon and we should each drink a half litre of water,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow we will have a quarter litre.’

‘How much should we be drinking?’ Ali asked. ‘To stay alive, I mean.’

‘If it stays cool, and we don’t do any exercise, we should drink about three litres a day.’

He spent a few moments in quiet consideration. ‘So how long will we last after our water runs out?’

‘We may last three days. Then we’ll get headaches, lethargy and eventually fall into a coma.’

‘What day is it today?’

‘Friday, the twenty ninth of May, so we will probably both be dead by Tuesday evening.’

They fell silent, each trying to avoid a descent into despair as the raft rose and sank on the Atlantic rollers. Gradually, as the raft crested a wave, they watched the sky turn brighter to the east. A layer of cloud close to the horizon began to glow pink and then the first bright red glow of the rising sun crept into sight.

‘Time to celebrate the dawn,’ said Ali.

‘Are you ready for your water ration?’

‘I am ready, but first I must pray.’

As Ali attended to his devotions, Gerry considered her own agnosticism. ‘If I uttered a prayer now and we were rescued, would I become a believer? It will take a miracle to save us. Oh god, your conflicting religions have caused more wars, death and destruction for thousands of years than anything else and I for one think we’d all be a lot better off without you, but hear the prayer of Geraldine Mary Tate who doesn’t believe for a moment in your existence but nevertheless would like to get safely off this raft to wreak vengeance on the bastards who killed her partner, condemned her to years of misery in prison, and dumped her in the sea, so when I open my eyes now I expect to see a boat coming towards us.’ She gazed all around the raft, shook her head and muttered ‘Loser!’

She retrieved the water bottle from the corner and stared at the contents until Ali announced ‘I have finished.’

‘Ok. Do you agree that your half litre takes the level down to this place on the label? Then mine will take it to this rib on the bottle?’

‘Yes that seems fair.’

‘Ok go ahead and drink.’

He took the bottle from her and began a series of careful mouthfuls, gasping in relish as the water relieved the foul, sticky, salty taste in his mouth. Each time he held the bottle up for Gerry’s inspection, acutely aware of the feral gaze of the woman who was taller than him, heavier than him and had infinitely more capacity for violent behaviour than he did.

‘That’s about it, I think,’ he said holding up the bottle and inspecting the level once more. She nodded and held out her hand for the bottle.

‘Ah, that feels a little better,’ she said having drunk her half litre. ‘Tomorrow we have only half that much, and then we can drink that dodgy stuff.’ She placed the bottle back in the corner of the raft and then gazed around at the sky before resuming her seat opposite Ali.

He made no reply for a while, but gazed up at the sun that was beginning to emerge over a layer of distant hazy cloud on the horizon. ‘We’re going to get burnt out here; at least you are, I’m much darker than you but I still need some kind of shade.’

She looked up and then screwed up her eyes as the sun suddenly shone forcefully at her. ‘You’re right.’ She remembered the kit she had pulled out of the water. ‘There’s some kind of cover I think.’

She found the bag containing the waterproof book. It was an instruction manual that described the use of the items inside the pack, These turned out to be a repair clamp, a leak stopper, a sponge, a baler and a hand pump to keep the raft inflated. There was also the large sheet of heavy duty waterproof plasticised material to unfold and form a tent-like canopy, and there should be some folding rods to support it. Apparently they were in a pocket in the floor of the raft. She crawled along the raft until she found them. She also found that there was a lamp at each end of the raft and a rubber ring on the end of a length of line to throw out and pull back any swimmers. She took an inventory of her other possessions. In a pocket was her mobile phone. She tried to switch it on but the thorough soaking had rendered it useless. She flung it over the side. Her cheap but accurate black plastic Casio watch was waterproof to 50m and working perfectly, still set on USA Eastern time. In her other pocket she found a soggy card with the telephone number and e-mail address that Dan Hall had given her just legible. She memorised both of them and put the card back in her pocket.

She looked at the other item she had found dangling from the end of the raft. It was another fabric package fastened up into a bundle with press studs. The words “Sea Anchor” were stencilled on to it. She unfastened the studs and unfolded a large bag-like device. She threw it over the side and watched it slowly fill out with water. It was plainly designed to reduce the speed of the raft through the sea so that it remained close to the crash site. Did she want to stay close to the crash site? She would decide later. Gerry read through the manual again and with Ali’s assistance she eventually had the raft canopy rigged up according to the instructions. She picked up a cylindrical rubber object with a nozzle at the end which she readily identified as a hand pump. Obviously somewhere on the raft there was a receptacle where it could be plugged in so that the raft could be kept inflated. Next she began to bail out the sea water. When the raft was nearly dry she settled down in the shade and considered their situation.

They had little water and no food, but she knew they could survive for weeks without eating. She looked at the two bottles lying in the far corner. The two of them would not last many days on their meagre contents. She wedged them in the corner of the raft with the equipment pack.

Taking another look at the handbook she read that there was meant to be an emergency transmitter fitted to the slide raft which would send out a distress call on an international radio frequency. She studied the location diagram and then crawled off to the corner of the raft where it should be fitted. Sure enough there was a recess and some Velcro straps but there was no transmitter. She sank back down onto the floor of the raft and buried her face in her hands and swore a few times while she came to terms with the disappointment.

She was aroused from her despondency by a retching sound from Ali. She crawled over to him.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘I feel like throwing up again, but my stomach’s empty.’

Gerry studied his bloodshot eyes. ‘Does your head hurt much there?’ she asked, pointing to the dried blood matting his hair.

‘It aches a bit, but not too bad.’ He felt carefully at the wound in his head and then looked for a moment at the blood smeared on his fingers before washing it off in the remaining water that sloshed back and forth across the raft.

‘You must have been barely conscious when you got out the aircraft,’ she said, ‘so maybe God was looking out for you.’ She frowned at the wound. ‘Your head doesn’t look so good. I can try and clean off the old blood and take a look.’

He stared at her for a moment and then gave a small smile. ‘You don’t look so good either. Your hair’s a great tangled mess; your mouth looks awful with a missing tooth and a split lip. You also have a black eye. You look dreadful, Gerry.’

‘Then it’s lucky I don’t have a mirror. But of course if I did it would be a good signalling device for any passing ships or aircraft,’ she added thoughtfully.

‘How much water do we have left?’ he asked.

‘About a litre and a half. We need to reduce our sweat loss. No moving around, try and stay as cool as possible.’

‘So if we’re not rescued in a few days, we’ll be dead,’ he sighed. ‘It will be God’s will.’

‘We need a ship to come by,’ Gerry said. ‘I wish we had some signal flares.’

‘Maybe an aircraft will fly overhead.’

‘I doubt they’d see us; we’d just be a tiny speck on the ocean.’

‘So there is nothing further to do but sit and wait, but perhaps my prayers will be answered.’

‘Perhaps, but it looks like it’s going to be a hot day today,’ she said.

‘Yes, but maybe we’ll get a rainstorm.

‘Did you pray for rain?’

‘Oh yes,’ he said.

‘Me too,’ she said, ‘and of course a ship. Did you see the film “Cast Away” with Tom Hanks?’

‘No, they didn’t show us many films in the camp.’

‘This one came out nearly ten years ago I think. Anyway Tom Hanks is trapped alone on a desert island for a couple of years, but he eventually escapes on a raft. He’s drifting alone on the Pacific Ocean when he’s picked up by a passing freighter.’

‘Was it based on a true story?’ Ali asked.

‘I don’t think so, but maybe life will imitate art.’

They sat in silence for a while, and then Ali asked ‘So while I’ve spent the last few years in Guantanamo Bay, what have you been doing?’

Gerry stared at him. ‘I’ve been locked up in prison,’ she said.

He was reduced to an open mouthed silence for a moment and then asked ‘Why?’

‘For the murder of Dean Furness.’

He stared at her, wide eyed. ‘Did you do it?’

She shook her head. ‘No, I was set up for it. And that’s why, if you’ve nothing else to do now, perhaps you could tell me about Gilgamesh? Because I think it might help me understand why this has happened to us. Do you remember when we were in that aircraft with Hakim Mansour flying back to Kuwait? Mansour was in the toilet and I was trying to have a look in his briefcase but you stopped me from reading any further, otherwise I might have learned something about it back then.’ She gazed across at Ali Hamsin now slumped in the corner of a life raft in the Atlantic Ocean, rather than enjoying the comfort of an executive jet and aged beyond his years by his incarceration in Guantanamo Bay detention centre.

‘I remember stopping you,’ he said, ‘but Hakim Mansour came out the aircraft toilet with his trousers down and if he had found you reading it then there would have been hell to pay, for me anyway and probably for you too.’

‘So what was it all about, that agreement? What were you hiding from me?’

Ali tilted his head back and sighed. ‘If it wasn’t for that agreement and my association with Hakim Mansour I could have sheltered in Baghdad with my wife, or perhaps we would have left for Amman, where her brother lives, but I wouldn’t have finished up in Guantanamo Bay.’ He suddenly gave Gerry an accusing stare. ‘Maybe Rashid would have stayed safe in England, and you wouldn’t have arranged for the abduction of my son.’

‘Oh crap!’ she said to herself, and then aloud ‘So you know that was me.’

‘Rashid explained that a tall attractive woman named Sandra who spoke excellent Arabic in the Gulf style befriended him, but at the end of the evening he was snatched away from his home by some Americans. He also mentioned that Sandra had a scar on her neck. Apart from the name, that’s a fair description of you.’

Gerry’s hand automatically reached for the scar that ran down the right side of her neck and across her collar bone, remembering how the blood had flowed down her chest and how lucky she was not to have been slashed across the face or had her artery cut. She stared out of the raft where the sun was hidden behind some shower clouds, giving the two of them a respite from the heat.

‘It was just a few weeks after that meeting in Frankfurt.’ She shrugged ‘Depending on your point of view I’m a conniving bitch or a loyal and patriotic member of my country’s security service… or at least I was back then…I was carrying out orders to abduct Rashid. It was shortly before the invasion. Of course I never told him that I’d already met you. I asked my boss what was going to happen to him. First of all he told me to mind my own business, but then he told me that there was a job for your son, but not to worry, he would be going to Baghdad to re-join his family. Then a few days later I was given set a task in Oman, and planning that rather put him out of my mind.’ She paused. ‘Anyhow he arrived safely back at home with you.’

‘Safe? He was in Baghdad, on the eve of an aerial bombardment! Where he was safe was back in Southampton, before you and your people kidnapped him!’ He looked at Gerry. ‘You see how hard it is for me to trust you?’

‘Yeah I can understand that, but after the invasion he did get back to Southampton.’

‘But thanks to you he was involved, even if he didn’t know what he was carrying across the border.’

‘So he was carrying the Gilgamesh documents?’

‘Yes. Have you any idea what happened to him when he arrived? He told me he was interrogated by the secret police. They were convinced that he might have read them, but fortunately Hakim Mansour turned up just in time before they got really rough with him. Have you ever been interrogated?’

Gerry ran her tongue over her missing tooth, and stared toward the distant horizon for a few seconds while she suppressed an unpleasant memory. ‘So what happened to Rashid after I delivered him to the CIA?’ she asked.

‘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.

‘I’d be sick if there was anything in my stomach,’ Ali groaned.

‘It will make you more dehydrated if you throw up,’ Gerry warned. At that moment her own stomach gave an extra heave and she brought a revolting tasting fluid up into her mouth. She tried to swallow it down but instead she gagged and spat it down the front of her shirt. ‘Oh fuck,’ she moaned, and then spat again to try and get rid of the horrible taste.

Then she heard a new sound and realised that rain was beating down on the canopy. She was galvanised into action. She snatched up the empty water bottle and made a futile attempt to pick a hole in the middle of the canopy roof with her finger. Shit! Why wasn’t she ready? She looked round for inspiration and snatched up one of the support rods and she managed to force a hole with the metal end. Then she held the bottle underneath and she and Ali watched it fill with water. When it came to the top of the bottle she put it to her lips, drank and then spat it out. ‘Bugger it; it’s salty! All that spray has drenched the top.’

‘Try again!’ said Ali. ‘Maybe it’ll wash clean.’

She emptied the bottle into the raft and held it up to the hole again. It was a quarter full when the flow of water stopped. The rain shower had passed by. She tested the water. ‘Yuk! Still salty, but maybe not so bad.’

‘Keep it for when we get desperate,’ Ali suggested, then added ‘more desperate.’

They slumped back down and sat staring at nothing while the raft pitched about. Every now and again they would exchange a glance, but the effort of talking seemed too much as they focussed on their feelings of nausea and disappointment at their failure to collect more water, and they each began to contemplate their almost certain death from dehydration.

As evening approached the sea began to moderate and the raft resumed a more even rise and fall, although it still remained rougher than it had been in the morning. ‘The sun must be going down soon,’ said Gerry. She lifted up the canopy sides and they gazed out at a beautiful sunset, a bright red orb obscured sufficiently by the haze to enable them to look directly at it and a cloudy sky that glowed a luminescent pink. They watched the sun rippling as it sunk below the horizon and the colour slowly faded.

‘It’s still quite rough,’ Ali remarked.

‘I believe this is probably normal,’ said Gerry. ‘I think this morning was exceptionally calm.’

‘And the afternoon was exceptionally rough,’ said Ali.

Gerry glanced at him but said nothing. She suspected that exceptionally rough weather would tear off the canopy, toss the raft upside down and drown them, but perhaps that would be an easier death than dying of thirst. ‘Shall we pull up the side of the canopy again?’ she suggested.

‘I think so. I like to look at the night sky.’

‘It’s still partly cloudy, but I guess it’s better than just staring at the inside.’

They settled back down in the raft and gazed towards the horizon. Gerry wondered if this was a good moment to ask Ali about Gilgamesh again. She gazed over at him but he had his eyes closed and seemed to be asleep. She decided that she would wait until tomorrow before trying to elicit further information from him. She stared up at the stars alone with her memories.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

She was trapped in the sinking aeroplane fighting with a man named Barry Mulholland who had succeeded in stabbing her low down in the abdomen and although there was no pain in her dream world she knew that she was pregnant and her baby was in danger and across the other side of the cabin she could see Dan Hall but for some reason she could not attract his attention although she was screaming that she could not get her leg free and then she lost sight of him as the water swirled around her and then she woke up from the nightmare and realised that Ali had taken hold of her foot and was shaking her leg. ‘Gerry, wake up! Are you ok?’

She sat upright and stared across at him while her mind collected her conscious thoughts into order. ‘So we’re still on board the raft then?’ she said eventually.

‘I’m afraid so. I didn’t know if I should wake you. You were shouting out.’

‘Sorry, I must have woken you up.’

‘No I’ve been awake for ages. I’m too cold to go to sleep.’

‘I’m cold too. Let’s take the canopy down and wrap ourselves up in it.’

‘Ok.’

A few minutes work and then they were lying under the plastic sheeting.

‘Maybe we should keep it down and then use the cleaner underside to collect water,’ Ali suggested.

‘But what if it doesn’t rain, we’ll just get hotter, sweat more.’

‘Let’s see what the weather’s like in the morning.’

They lay in silence for a while.

‘Still awake?’ Gerry asked when she felt him shift slightly, but he made no reply.

‘You could tell me what was in the Gilgamesh document,’ she went on.

‘Ah, back to Gilgamesh again. What is the point of me telling you when we are both going to die out here? You cannot profit by the knowledge.’

‘What is the point of you not telling me?’ Gerry countered, trying hard not to sound irritated by his fatalism. ‘After all you did ask for me to come to Guantanamo Bay to see you.’

‘No I didn’t!’ he declared. ‘Remember I had no idea you were coming until the day you arrived!’

‘What?’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh… yes, of course, but you might at least satisfy my curiosity, even if there’s no longer any benefit to me. And besides which I did help your son escape.’

‘Escape? It was you who delivered him to the Americans!’ he said angrily.

‘No no, this was three months later. They were after him again, but this time I helped him get away.’

He was silent for a moment. ‘Very well. First of all tell me how you helped my son escape and how you ended up in prison. Then perhaps I’ll tell you about Gilgamesh.’

‘Ok then. I had just got back from this operation in the Gulf and I was taken off active duties because I was pregnant.’

‘Pregnant?’ exclaimed Ali. ‘You have a child?’

‘No, I don’t have a child…I… I had a miscarriage.’

‘Oh I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘It was a long time ago.’

‘Yes I know, but all the same…’

‘Look, shall I tell you about Rashid or shall we discuss my gynaecological issues?’

‘Sorry, please go on with your story.’

Gerry described how she had gone back to Southampton, met up with Rashid and encouraged him to flee to Ireland.

‘When I spoke to Dean Furness just before he was killed he told me Rashid had been seen in Amman. He must have got clear because I was given all this grief and then kicked out of the service. I didn’t really put up much of a fuss because I had recently heard about Phil’s death and I was feeling rather downhearted as you can imagine. Then I went to visit my mother and on the way home I met Colonel White and…’ she stopped and looked over at Ali Hamsin. Under the light of a crescent moon that shone feebly through the clouds he appeared to be fast asleep. She wondered at which point in her story he had drifted off. She resisted the temptation to wake him up. She was uncomfortable and thirsty, and although mentally exhausted, her mind pored over her memories and would not allow her to sink into sleep. Maybe Ali’s years of incarceration had left him fatalistic, or maybe his religious beliefs had taught him to trust in the will of God. What was ordained was ordained and whether he was fearful or brave, only God would decide if he lived or died out here on this life raft on the Atlantic Ocean.

Or maybe he had died already. Gerry rolled over onto her hands and knees and scrambled over to him and with some relief heard his gentle snoring over the sound of the sea washing around the raft and the breeze rustling through the canopy. She crawled wearily back to her place and lay on her back staring up at the stars and wondering how he could possibly rest so easily.

She remembered her feelings of bitter anger at the world in general after she had heard of Philip’s death and her sense of isolation. She had been completely unprepared for becoming a mother and the prospect scared her. She had few friends with whom to discuss the life-changing step into parenthood. Following her recruitment into the service she had allowed herself to drift apart from her university friends who had begun to settle and start families. The demands of her secret life had dragged her away from social events and the need to avoid discussion of her profession had rendered her reticent and reserved in company. Now her friendships were only with people who shared her work. She had experienced three serious relationships since she had joined the service, and these had all been with colleagues. One of them had left the service when he married, the second was now based permanently in the USA having wed an American woman, and the third had been Philip with whom she had been closely involved for three years until his death.

Gerry looked out at the clearing sky. She folded part of the canopy back so that she could gaze up at the stars. To the north she could see Ursa Major, one of the few constellations she could easily recognise, and to the south she thought she could identify Scorpio. She looked up overhead where her eye was caught by the flashing lights of an airliner flying towards Europe, its strobe lights winking in the night sky. ‘Hello, here I am,’ she muttered quietly and gave a sad little wave. She watched the airliner slip past the backdrop of stars until it was out of sight.

She huddled down in the bottom of the raft and thought about her convalescence and return to London. Until Cornwall had given her the news of Phil’s death she had enjoyed a brief period contentment in which she had come to terms with the shock of being pregnant. She was looking forward to the challenges of family life with Philip despite the abrupt change in her career. But did she really love him? Although they had been together for three years there had still been some lack of commitment. Despite sharing his house, she had never sold her own flat and she had often retreated there when the demands of their lives conflicted or tension had arisen between them. Her pregnancy had been the result of mutual declarations of love during a winter holiday in Barbados followed by enthusiastic sex which had included a contraceptive failure.

She thought back to the day all those years ago when they had first met. The end of the year was approaching and she had been facing the prospect of another Christmas and New Year alone when Richard Cornwall had summoned her with instructions to go on her annual liaison meeting at GCHQ in Cheltenham. ‘‘Do I really have to go?’ she had protested. ‘I’m due to go to Amman in three days and I’ve lots of stuff to research.’

‘But I heard you in the canteen telling your friend Fiona Bennett that you were hoping to play golf tomorrow, and as I’m sure that golf isn’t part of your mission you can damn well spend tomorrow in Cheltenham. Your train leaves Paddington at 7:25am and gets in at 10:00am. You’ll have to get up early but then it’ll help you get on to Amman local time, so that’s ok. Alternatively Brian Lincoln, Robert McAllister and Malcolm Cooper are taking the train this evening and staying the night. You could go with them if you like, it’s up to you.’

‘Oh not Brian Lincoln! I think I’ll take the train tomorrow.’

‘I remember that when you were accepted into exec ops it was emphasised that you were expected to maintain good relations with everyone on the team, including Lincoln,’ said Cornwall. ‘I don’t know why I put up with you.’

‘You put up with me because I’m the best Arabic speaker you’ve got and because I’m better looking than all of the blokes.’

‘Some of our chaps are very good looking Gerry, even though… oh I give up. Have a lovely day in Cheltenham.’

‘Yeah thanks… sir.’

Outside GCHQ building Gerry snagged her tights on the edge of the seat as she climbed out of the taxi and let go a stream of Arabic invective. A young man about five feet nine inches tall, slightly overweight with unruly brown hair was approaching the entrance and he turned around when he heard her. He peered at her through his spectacles and then down at her legs. ‘Oh that’s quite some pair, er… some tear you’ve got in those legs, I mean tights.’

Gerry finished her inspection of the damage and straightened up to her full height of six feet in her high heels and stared down at him. She was about to issue a withering reply but then he asked her forgiveness in Arabic and she noticed his engaging grin and the fact that he was blushing.

‘No problem,’ she replied in the same language and preceded him through security. In reception she was gazing at the display screen that showed visitors where their attendance was required when she was aware of him standing near.

‘Are you here for the seminar on the Middle East?’ he enquired. She gazed round at him and he quickly added, ‘because I’m Philip Barrett and I’m hosting it. You must be Geraldine Tate.’

‘Gerry,’ she said holding out her hand.

‘Er, I’m Phil,’ he said. ‘Look, without wanting to go into any boring explanations of how I know, there’s this vending machine that sells tights and other stuff in the ladies loo over there. If you want to get some more, that is.’

‘I can wait for you here…’ he saw Gerry’s raised eyebrows ‘or… or maybe I should go on up. It’s room two nineteen, second floor.’ He pointed vaguely towards the lifts and then hastened off, pushing his spectacles into place.

‘Hey Phil,’ she called after him.

‘Yes?’

‘Thank you.’

‘Ok ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our day then I think,’ said Phil Barrett six hours later. ‘Unless anyone wants to bring up any last minute thoughts?’

‘Well Rob and Colin and I have a train to catch, so I think we’d best be going,’ Brian Lincoln announced. ‘How about you Gerry? Are you heading back to the smoke with us?’

She had endured quite enough of Lincoln’s company for one day. ‘No I’m going to get a coffee and then I’m going to visit a friend. I’ll see you next time.’ She watched the three of them gather their things and prepare to leave and then realised that Phil and his GCHQ colleagues were looking slightly miffed.

‘Before you rush off I’d like to thank Philip for organising our day. It’s been really interesting and I’m pleased to have met you all. Once a year isn’t really often enough for our visits here, wouldn’t you agree Brian?’

‘Oh absolutely right,’ he said taking the implied rebuke comfortably in his stride. ‘It’s been a pleasure.’

In the canteen she took her cappuccino to a corner table and pulled out her laptop and while it was starting up she heard some muttered conversation and saw the five people from GCHQ who had been at the seminar gazing over at her and one of the men gave Philip Barrett a small shove. He walked over to her table.

‘Hi, can I join you? I wanted to thank you for the commendation at the end and wondered what you really thought of the day.’

Gerry smiled. ‘It was good; really.’ She closed the lid of her computer. ‘Perhaps you should get yourself a coffee, if you are joining me,’ she suggested.

‘So you’re going to visit a friend,’ he said when he had sat down opposite her with his drink. ‘That’s lucky being able to get in a social call in the same day. Does she… or he live nearby? But unlucky for me because otherwise I would have asked you out for dinner myself,’ he added with a rush.

On the other side of the canteen Gerry saw his colleagues grinning and pretending not to listen. ‘Actually there’s no friend,’ she confessed. ‘I’m really just avoiding travelling back on the train with Brian Lincoln. I’m going to catch the following train, so I’ll have to be going now unless…’

‘Unless what?’ he asked.

She raised her eyebrows and smiled at him.

‘Oh! In that case… perhaps you could have dinner with me after all, before you go?’ he asked, blushing again.

‘That would be lovely, but I don’t have very much time so shall we go now?’

‘Great!’ He jumped to his feet and upset the remains of his coffee on to the table top. Gerry quickly pulled a handful of paper napkins from a dispenser and blotted up the mess, and then she stowed her computer in her bag, linked arms with him and smiled at his colleagues as the two of them left together.

Away from the pressure of work, Gerry found Phil a lively and interesting companion, with an excellent working knowledge of Arabic although lacking her familiarity of the vernacular and regional variations. She also found him entertaining on topics away from work and the evening passed quickly. While sipping their after dinner coffees she smiled and asked ‘So did you have a bet with your colleagues on asking me out, then?’

‘Oh… er… no actually, nothing quite that bad. They just said I wouldn’t have the courage to ask you. They told me you were out of my league and I’d find you too intimidating, they said. Sorry.’

She smiled at him. ‘No need to be: I am intimidating.’ The smile dropped from her face. ‘I spend my working life being intimidating. I’m known as… oh never mind.’

He saw her brooding expression and wondered what to say to restore her smile.

‘I think you’re lovely,’ he blurted out.

‘Now that’s just the booze talking,’ she replied.

He smiled down at his glass of diet coke. ‘No really. I’d ask you out again but we do live a long way apart.’

‘That needn’t stop you.’

‘Ok! Well when I’m next in London, perhaps we could do this again, if you’re around.’

‘That would be nice, and I’ll look forward to it. I’m away for the next ten days or so but then I should be back home.’ She pulled a notepad out of her bag, tore of a sheet and wrote. ‘Here’s my private e mail address and my home number; call me when you’re coming. In fact call me anyway.’

‘Thank you,’ he took it from her and gazed at it as if it was a winning lottery ticket. ‘Look the last fast train back to London leaves in about twenty minutes. I can give you a lift to the station.’

‘I think perhaps I’ll go back tomorrow,’ said Gerry. ‘I could go to a hotel tonight.’

‘It’s quite late; maybe you should check there’s one available.’

She stared into his eyes. ‘Go on Phil.’ She gave him her most winning smile. ‘Take a risk!’

He stared at her for a moment before looking around the restaurant and then whispered to her. ‘Or, or you could come back to my place… if you like.’

Phil proved to be a gentle and considerate lover and after four months of occasional liaisons driven by the irregular nature of their schedules Gerry began to rely on him more and more for her happiness. Then one day she came home from an operational screw-up with her front teeth broken and a heavily bruised face. Despite her reluctance to allow him to see her she was desperate for his company, and sent him an e mail as she was barely able to talk on the phone.

‘Before you come in, I look bloody awful,’ she mumbled through her slightly opened front door.

‘I can hardly believe that,’ he said, ‘you’ll always… oh shit!’ he finished as she opened the door wide.

‘No you can’t hug me,’ she said backing off and holding out a hand.

‘Why not?’

‘I’ve got a broken rib.’

‘What the hell happened, poor love,’ he asked as they sat down on her sofa.

‘I was in a car accident, I wasn’t wearing a seat belt,’ she began. Then she sighed. ‘Sod it! Why don’t I tell you the truth?’ She stopped and stared at her right hand and he realised that her knuckles were bruised and split. ‘I was in a fight; in Leipzig; I got beaten up.’

‘Oh hell Gerry, I didn’t realise you did the dangerous stuff.’

‘What? Because I’m a woman?’ she asked sharply.

‘No of course not, because you always seem such a… a calm person,’ he said.

‘Oh hah bloody hah! You really don’t know who I am, do you? Poor little Philip. Safe amongst your code breaking and translating and not realising that your girlfriend is a fucking killer. You want to know what happened to the guy who smashed my face? I broke his fucking neck. I beat him unconscious and then I knelt on his back, got hold of his head and twisted it. It makes a really weird noise you know when the neck breaks. That’s who you’ve been shagging for the last few months; someone who kills people and gets paid for it. So I wouldn’t blame you if you just walked out and went back to your nice quiet life in Cheltenham.’ She stopped, turned away from him, and began running her tongue over the remaining stumps of her front teeth.

‘Please don’t speak to me like that again,’ he said. ‘I’m going to take the week off and the next week off after that if you’re not better, and furthermore if you don’t behave I’ll never leave you in peace again. In fact I don’t think I’ll ever leave you Gerry unless you chuck me out. Now what do you need me to do for you?’ He smiled. ‘I’m actually pretty good at making soup you know.’

‘Ok, well the first thing you can do is give me a lift to the orthodontist, I’ve got an appointment in forty minutes, but I don’t like soup much. I think I need ice cream, chocolate and pistachio.’

‘What, together?’

‘No! Two separate flavours of course.’

Later on she was lying on her back in bed which was the only position which prevented her ribs from hurting, and describing the realities of her life to him in more detail. ‘So you’re not going to leave me then, are you?’ she finished up.

‘Of course not. Is there anywhere I can give you a kiss where it won’t hurt?’

‘On my face, you mean?’

‘Not necessarily’ he grinned at her.

She managed a small smile. ‘You’d better make it my forehead. I don’t think I’ll be ready for anything strenuous for a while.’

Then while he was sharing her flat he had applied for a job in the MI6 headquarters in London, and with his linguistic skills he was readily accepted. He had not suggested that they live together on a permanent basis; instead he had rented his own place until he had sold up in Cheltenham and bought a small terrace house in Twickenham. He was able to afford it because his parents had died when he was only twenty-four and left him a fair amount of capital. She had been a little put out that he had not even suggested that they live together but then there was his recent promise never to leave her and she realised she was content with their off and on cohabitation at each other’s homes. It wasn’t until she returned home pregnant after the Mulholland business that she realised that actually she really did love Philip. She had been looking forward with some trepidation to telling him that he was going to be a father, because she had absolutely no idea what his thoughts would be. The idea that she would become a parent had never seriously crossed her mind and so she had never discussed the possibility with him. She wondered if he had been similarly disinterested or whether she had just been extraordinarily selfish. But before they could resolve any of these issues together she had received that message from Richard Cornwall. The time had been 11:37.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

‘Gerry! Wake up!’

She sat up abruptly. The sun was just beginning to raise a red rim on the eastern horizon. She groaned and rubbed her eyes.

‘Why did you wake me up?’ She yawned widely.

‘It’s nearly dawn, time for us to have some water.’

She saw him grimacing as he spoke to her. ‘Are you ok?’ she asked. She stretched her arms up, gazed across the sea to the east where the sky was brightening and yawned again.

‘Yes I’m alright, I think.’ He frowned. ‘It’s just my head.’ He struggled to a sitting position and the sudden effort sent a pulse of pain through his head. He put his hand on the place where his hair was still matted with dried blood and moaned.

‘Ali what’s wrong?’

‘It’s my head; it really hurts.’

Gerry stared at him and saw the right side of his mouth drooping and his right eye closing. ‘Oh shit you’re stroking. Oh hell Ali. Lie down.’ She eased him back against the side. ‘Talk to me!’

His breathing had taken on an awful rasping quality. What could she do? She staggered over to the corner and snatched up the remaining water.

‘Drink this; come on.’ She tilted the bottle to his mouth and encouraged him to drink. After drinking half of it he pushed the bottle away.

‘I haven’t told you about Gilgamesh yet.’ His voice was slurred but she could just make out his meaning.

‘Oh fuck Gilgamesh,’ she said. ‘Come on, drink some more.’

She offered him some more of the water and he drank it gratefully. His breathing became less stressed.

‘How do you feel,’ she asked.

‘My head still aches,’ he mumbled. ‘I can’t feel my arm.’

Gerry looked all around the raft, seeking inspiration from she knew not what. ‘Ok, maybe the worst is over. You must have had a blood clot where you were hit on the head.’

‘I’ll tell you about Gilgamesh now. Tabitha knows where it is. It’s hidden in my house back in Baghdad.’

‘What? You have a copy?’

He managed a crooked smile. ‘That photocopy of the original, which Mansour made. I kept it. I never got the chance to give it back. It’s signed by all those people.’

‘Whose signatures?’ she asked, ‘who signed it?’

‘And seals. Official seals. I kept it hidden away. At my house in Baghdad. It’s been there all these years.’

‘Where is it hidden Ali?’

‘But first promise me you’ll find my son. And Tabitha… they know.’ He began to cough.

‘I’ll get you the rest of the water. Hold on.’ She retrieved the bottle from where she had dropped it, unscrewed the cap and supported his head with her other hand. ‘Here drink this.’ Then she realized his head was sinking down on to his chest, his breathing became more labored, slowed down further, then he gave one last sighing, groaning breath. She lifted his chin and immediately saw his right eye was closed and his left had a fixed stare. She placed her fingers under his jaw and tried to feel for a pulse, but she had seen enough death to know his life had ended.

She lifted up the water bottle and inspected the contents. She ran her tongue over her dry lips and drank what little remained. Then she slumped back against the other side of the raft and stared at him, turning over in her mind what he had told her. There was a Gilgamesh document; it was signed by a list of people who would not want its contents revealed; it was hidden at his house in Baghdad and his wife Tabitha or son Rashid would know where it was.

‘Now all I need to do is get safely off this raft,’ she muttered, ‘then I have to avoid the bastards trying to kill me; find my way to Baghdad; identify your house; befriend your wife and son; locate this document and bring it safely home. Should be a piece of piss really.’

Then suddenly she felt a sense of rage and outrage flooding through her. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck,’ she shrieked. ‘I want to get those bloody bastards!’ She slammed her hands on the side of the raft. ‘I want to kill the bloody fuckers.’ She hit the side with alternate hammer blows of her fists, ‘I want to beat their bloody brains out, rip their hearts out, they killed Phil; they locked me up for fucking years; took away my baby; oh shit, shit, shit!’ she collapsed onto the floor and howled in rage and frustration until the emotion slowly drained away from her.

Gerry pulled Ali’s body into the meagre shade given by the edge of the raft and pulled his eyelids down. ‘Ali, I’m going to try and survive,’ she said quietly, ‘and if I do… well they’ll get what’s coming to them.’ She tugged off his sweater, arranged his arms across his stomach and draped the sweater over his face in a forlorn gesture of respect.

She shaded her eyes and stared overhead. Apart from a thin layer of cloud out to the west the sky was clear and the sun was climbing above the horizon. She looked at the sea. This morning there were no white capped waves, just an even swell over which the life raft steadily swooped up and dived down. She had become so accustomed to the rhythm she barely noticed it. She decided to set up the canopy again. If it looked like it was likely to become splashed by spray she would take it down and wrap it up so as to keep it salt free.

‘Ali, I’ve got nothing to drink and nothing to eat,’ she announced to the dead man. ‘I just have to do what I can to stop dehydrating, and hope your prayer for rain is answered. Although it looks like it’s going to be a beautifully sunny today. And hot.’ She pulled off her blouse and sweater, still damp and clammy from their soaking and spread them over the top of the canopy to dry. Then she thought they might get blown off by a gust and spread them out on the side of the raft with one of the straps tucked through a sleeve.

Maybe she would live three more days before she became so severely dehydrated that her organs would fail and she would die. Until then she had to do her utmost to reduce sweating, she had to protect herself from the sun and keep still as much as possible and hope for a miracle. She realised she was getting hot and perspiring so she stripped off the rest of her clothes.

For hour after hour under the shadow of the canopy Gerry sat very still. Every now and again she gazed at Ali, nursing a crazy idea that he would suddenly wake up and pull the sweater clear of his face. If he did, she would revise her opinion of ghosts, zombies and life after death generally. She kept her breathing as shallow as possible and only moved to relieve aches in her limbs and vary the pressure points on her buttocks and back. A sheen of moisture covered her upper body and she gazed resentfully at the rivulets of sweat that dribbled slowly down her front. She used the bailer to scoop some seawater back into the raft and she sat against the side with a tepid pool swilling around her legs and then every few minutes she would pick some up and pour it over her head and shoulders.

From time to time she looked at the tainted rain water that she had collected off the roof sloshing gently about in the bottle and wondered if she would be better or worse off if she drank it. She suspected that in another couple of days she would be desperate enough to take the risk. Otherwise she would become more dehydrated and she would feel increasingly lethargic. Next would follow dizziness, loss of concentration and thereafter she hoped that she would just slip into unconsciousness.

For the moment she was thoroughly bored. She had nothing to do except scan the horizon with slow careful movements of her head. She passed the time by going back over her memories, trying to concentrate on the pleasant ones, but her mind insisted on recalling her more troubled times.

She had been happy at boarding school until the bullying started and she had turned into a lonely girl, sometimes a victim of teasing about her scrawny height. They had called her Miss Take as a cruel pun on her name.

Then, through her genetic inheritance, from a gangling twelve year old she had blossomed into a tall well-proportioned figure by her mid-teens. In addition, through a series of martial arts classes augmented by vigorous self-imposed exercise, she had become a tough determined character whom nobody dared cross.

First of all she had adopted a policy of totally ignoring the bullies whilst slowly building up her strength and agility. When she was on holiday back in the Gulf she enrolled in a judo class, and then she began taekwondo. After a year she had mastered most of the basic movements but what she really wanted to do was impress her enemies with a jump spin hook kick. At the end of the long summer holidays when she was sixteen she was ready to use her skills but by then the bullying had stopped. She was now tall, powerful, morose and nearly friendless. At the end of the year her father was posted back to London. Her parents wanted her to stay on at the private school but she insisted on going to the local comprehensive. She was five feet ten inches tall and weighed one hundred and fifty eight pounds of trained muscle and was immediately marked out as someone not to be trifled with. This reputation was confirmed when she came to the defence of another girl who was being threatened by a couple of young men and she used her skills to somewhat unnecessarily violent effect. Fortunately this incident took place in the town and although it was witnessed by her school friends, none of her fellow pupils were involved. Her parents had been somewhat aghast as the policeman who had been called to the scene just off the high street had officially cautioned her on the use of martial arts.

Her time at university had been fairly happy. She had finally had her first sexual experience in her second year when she had at last learned not to be so prickly with the young men who would ask her out once, but generally not a second time. By the time she graduated she thought herself to be fairly well adjusted but she sometimes wished she had not decided to read psychology because she subjected herself to unrelenting critical self-analysis.

After university she had applied to join the Intelligence Service and after two years she had joined Executive Operations. Her training had advanced until she was lethal with her hands and feet as well as with guns and blades and other weapons. Then a few years on, just as she had unexpectedly found her life enhanced by meeting Philip and the bemusing prospect of becoming a parent, her life was overshadowed by his death. And then after she had allowed Rashid Hamsin to escape, it seemed that some sort of divine or devilish retribution was visited upon her and in a state of bewilderment and depression she had ended up in prison.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Every time the life raft rose to the top of a wave she glanced around the horizon hoping to sight the impossible miracle of a ship. From time to time, overcome by fatigue, hunger and dehydration, she would slump into a semi-conscious sleep until fleeting dreams brought her back to wakefulness.

She was desperately bored. At first she had begun to sing to herself but soon grew frustrated by her inability to remember complete songs. Strangely enough it was Christmas carols and hymns from her childhood and songs from “The Sound of Music” that seemed to be indelibly lodged in her memory and she sung those until she was fed up with them. She had spent some time thinking back over her sex life, classifying former lovers, although lover was a term barely applicable to some who had been merely one night stands. Then she remembered Dan Hall’s extraordinary declaration of love and she speculated about where he might be. Perhaps he would wonder what had become of her and might even organise a search. She clung to the slender hope as the raft pitched up and up, lurched at the crest of the wave and then sank down and down. She lay back against the side and realised it was not as resilient as it had been. She looked about her and found the hand pump in the equipment bag and spent half an hour pumping up the raft and then slumped back feeling lethargic and even more thirsty.

The small quantity of water she had collected off the canopy was tormenting her. She stared at the contents of the bottle as it sloshed back and forth as the raft rose and fell over the gentle swell. From the label she muttered the brand name ‘Crystal Geyser.’ In Castaway, Tom Hanks had called his volleyball Wilson. She had tried calling her bottle ‘Crystal, darling’ then ‘Geyser, you bastard’ depending on whether she thought of it as female or male, but it had no blood-painted face staring back at her, it was just a bottle containing a little tainted water. She picked it up and twisted its neck as if strangling it. ‘Take that you stupid fucking prick,’ she muttered. ‘When you’re empty I’ll call you Ryan and break you in half.’ Then she picked pieces off the label and dropped them over the side until she broke a fingernail. She slammed the bottle down and shouted ‘Shit!’ but then her dry throat finished the exclamation off with a painful cough.

She gazed up at the sky. All morning she had been cursing the sun as it sapped the moisture from her body. Now the cloud was building up and she was fervently hoping for rain. She hoped that she could pull the canopy down into a bowl shape and through a small hole she would be able to gather water in the empty bottles. In the distance she saw a flicker of lightning against the darkening sky. Surely that greyish curtain reaching down to the sea was rain. She shivered as a cool breeze stole across the sea and the sea sucked and gurgled along the underside of the raft. It rose higher as a stronger wave reached it, shortly followed by another. She felt slightly chilled and began to get dressed, wrinkling her nose as she caught a whiff of vomit from off the front of her shirt. She wondered again if she was really cold or if dehydration was beginning to distort her senses. If only it would rain! She practised kneeling in the middle of the raft, pulling the canopy down and holding a bottle under the hole. She did not need to practise, but after so many hours on the raft with nothing else to do she needed something, anything to occupy her mind besides the ever present fear of death.

A sudden lurch of the raft made her fall forward. She saw a big wave with a foaming white top high above her some hundred metres away. She whimpered in terror and scrambled back into her seating position against the side of the raft. A few seconds later the raft began to heave quickly up the wave until at the crest it tilted sharply up as it met the foaming crest and Gerry screamed in alarm and then coughed and spluttered as spray caught her in the face. Then the raft seemed to soar down the other side of the wave and Gerry’s protesting stomach heaved. Despite her emptiness she coughed up acidic bile which trickled down her chin and added to her misery. With a frantic effort she untied the canopy and folded it up then she stared out and saw another wave even taller than the first rushing towards her. She gave a little moan, grasped the straps on the raft side and then looked in alarm as her water bottles rolled across to the other side. She let go of her hold and flung herself across the raft to retrieve them. The raft surged up the wave and Gerry clung on to her bottles lying face down in the sloshing bilge water. Then the raft tipped and she swore as she began to slide towards the open end of the raft where it had been attached to the aircraft side. She let go of one bottle and grabbed for a strap just before her feet reached the end. Then the raft tipped back and she slid all the way to the other end and collided with Ali’s body. She looked at her bottle and with intense relief she found that it was the one that still contained water and then she saw the other one rolling about. She watched out for the next wave, still a little distance away. She crawled back to her usual seating position and tucked the bottle inside her shirt and prepared to sit out the storm.

Sometime later there was a violent crack of lightning, then another and then the rain came pouring down. ‘Oh crap!’ she mumbled looking at the folded canopy. For a moment she thought about trying to set it up to collect water but she knew the wind would just tear it away from her grasp. She held her open mouth out towards the rain but although she seemed to be getting thoroughly soaked very little seemed to go into her mouth. Then she realised that her sweater was soaked. She tried sucking some off but it tasted of fabric and salt. Then she pulled the sweater over her head and wrung it as dry as she could and held it up to the rain. When it was thoroughly soaked she tried to suck the water off. Still salty! She wrung it out once more and then soaked it. Now the water tasted fairly fresh. She sucked at the sweater and then held it out again but abruptly the rain stopped. She could see the pattern of its fall on the sea surface moving away in the direction of the wind. She sucked as much fresh water as she could and then slumped back down into the raft and looked around just in time to see Ali’s body sliding down towards the low end of the raft. A vague memory of how shipwrecked mariners would keep a dead body for food floated through her mind but she knew that thirst would kill her long before hunger. The raft rose to another wave but his body remained stuck against the end. She remembered that according to Islam, a body should be washed, shrouded and buried as soon as possible. Maybe tipping him into the sea after a heavy rainstorm was as close as he would get under the circumstances. She crawled across the raft and pushed him over the edge into the water, then hurried back to her position. After the next heaving wave she gazed all around the raft but there was no sign of him.

‘Oh God, get me out of this mess,’ Gerry muttered, ‘and just because I’ve denied your existence for the last thirty years, don’t let that hold you back now.’ The sun suddenly broke through a gap in the clouds. She shaded her eyes and peered right around the horizon. ‘Just as I thought; not a single ship in sight. God you don’t exist or you’re just a total jerk. Or else you’re far too busy with the other eight billion people on the planet. But you know Father Christmas can make ten million house calls in one night and you’ve had three bloody days to get around to rescuing me!’

She ran over in her mind all the people who she had met since she emerged from prison. First, Richard Cornwall; she had always had a certain regard for him and she was not sure if he was involved in the operation that had dumped her in the ocean; she should probably interrogate him first. Next there was Hugh Fielding, who had been responsible for kicking her out six years ago; easy, definite kill. That bastard Don Jarvis was in poor health after a heart attack; he was suffering enough, but maybe make him suffer a little more. Who else? Vince Parker of course! She snarled.

Now the Americans. First of all Carson; she summoned up a mental image of Ryan Carson’s handsome smile disintegrating as the bullet hit his head. She remembered that big coward Stafford meekly sitting down in the aircraft seat and handing over his weapons and the pathetic pleading expression on his face a moment before she shot him. Next there was Neil Samms; he was probably ok but after questioning him she would hand him an unloaded gun and ask him to do the decent thing; it would be interesting to watch how he dealt with that. How about Felix Grainger? He had definitely seemed one of the good guys, but he should be checked out. Then there was the beautiful Annie; what the hell was her surname? A threat to carve her initials on each cheek would be enough to have her reveal everything she knew, but she was probably not a major player. Then there was Jasper White who blamed her for Dean Furness’s death and probably wanted to kill her, but he was a mystery.

And that left Dan Hall, who had promised to try and keep her safe, but failed because now she was alone in a life raft in the Atlantic Ocean, with hardly any water left and only her own developing paranoia for company. Paranoia was her chosen alternative to the sick fear that was creeping over her, and Dan had told her he loved her, which was crap because he hardly knew her, and anyway she was just a murderous bitch who killed people for a living and probably deserved to die and definitely God thought so because still she was surrounded by nothing but water; water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink.

‘It is in an ancient mariner, and he stoppeth one of three; by thy long grey beard and glistening eye, now wherefore stop’st though me and dumps me on this bloody raft in the middle of the ocean! Oh shit, I do not want to die.’

The water she had managed to suck off her sweater went some way to reviving her, but it had the unfortunate effect of rekindling her hunger. Instead of songs she thought about food and menus and memorable restaurants and although she knew little about sophisticated cooking, she could prepare a decent wholesome meal.

‘Phil was much better than me in the kitchen,’ she mumbled to herself. ‘We were both good in the bedroom, though. At least, he never made any complaints.’ She hadn’t had sex for years. At least not with a man, she corrected herself.

Angela Wallis had been transferred to Gerry’s prison following her request to be closer to her home and family. She had been handed down a sentence of four years for the grievous bodily harm of her abusive partner, who had been cunning enough not to have revealed any of the physical and mental torment he had inflicted on her.

Gerry had paid no attention to the slightly plump blonde woman until one afternoon she was sitting down reading when she saw Angela being harassed by two notorious, heavily built characters who now stood one in front and one behind her. The one in front was not letting her pass by and the one behind was grabbing her backside.

‘Would you two please leave her alone,’ said Gerry, who was trying to concentrate on her book. The women swung round with aggressive intent but then realised who had spoken to them. One of them walked off without a word, but the second one muttered ‘I expect she wants you for herself,’ in Angela’s ear before following her friend.

Angela stood and stared at Gerry, wondering if she should say thank you or make the improbable assertion that she could have taken care of herself.

‘You’re welcome,’ said Gerry giving her a quick glance and then looking back at her book. The woman stood staring at her for a moment longer and then turned away.

‘Don’t worry, I’m not gay either,’ Gerry called out. The other woman turned back and gave and a nod and a small smile. ‘Thank you.’

‘My name’s Gerry.’

‘I’m Angela,’ she replied and then she realised with some surprise that this must be the prisoner Tate whom she had been warned about. ‘Don’t cross her and you’ll be fine,’ was the advice she had been given by a fellow inmate.

Three weeks later Frances, Gerry’s current cell mate was released and Gerry had the cell to herself for a couple of days. She was in the middle of a series of press-ups when the door opened and the prison officer announced that prisoner Wallis would be her new cellmate.

‘Just keep out of the way on the bunk there would you?’ Gerry asked. ‘The top one’s yours. I’ll be finished soon.’ She completed her mini work-out and smiled at Angela. ‘Excuse me; I’ll be a bit sweaty now until my next shower.’

‘Bloody hell, you’re muscly,’ Angela burst out, and then blushed. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean nothing by it,’ she added meekly.

‘Not at all,’ Gerry assured her. ‘If we’re going to share a cell then we might as well be straight with each other.’

‘You don’t mind then? I’m sorry to put you out at all; I’ll try not to get in your way.’

‘In my way how?’ she asked. Then she realised that her new cellmate was sitting uncomfortably with her knees drawn up and appeared to be trying not to meet her gaze. ‘Look, there’s no reason for you to be apprehensive. I’m sure we’ll get along fine.’

‘You’re alright then with me being in here with you? It’s just that…’ her voice faded away.

‘You mean I’m inside for murder and I have a reputation? Well I heard that you beat your partner over the head with a steam iron. Maybe if you’d had a gun instead of an iron you’d be in for murder too.’

‘Well he had it coming to him, didn’t he?’

‘So I understand. Anyway, here we both are so we’ll do our best to get along.’ She smiled. ‘Is that ok by you.’

‘It’s great by me.’

Gerry found that she and Angela got along fine. Although not well educated she was bright and she had held a responsible job as a petrol station manager until her partner’s inclination to abuse her had reached a dangerous level. Gerry thought that if she had been able to afford a really good lawyer, Angela would have avoided a custodial sentence altogether, but her boyfriend had suffered a fractured skull and had lain in a coma for two months.

One night Gerry woke up and heard Angela moaning in the bunk above her. It was not the first time but she had decided that she would say something. ‘Can you learn to do that more quietly, do you think?’

Instantly there was complete stillness from her cellmate. The next morning it was plain that Angela was highly embarrassed.

‘Sorry, but I had to say something,’ Gerry apologised.

‘I suppose you work it all off with exercise, you never do it.’

‘I’ve been in here for four years, and no amount of exercise is enough,’ Gerry replied. ‘I’m just, well, quiet.’

Three months later Angela heard Gerry weeping softly in the middle of the night and amazed that her tough cellmate would ever display such emotion she climbed down and asked her what was wrong.

‘It’s my daughter’s fifth birthday today,’ Gerry said.

‘Do you want to talk about it at all?’

‘Maybe I do. Sit down on the edge there, so I can talk quietly.’ Gerry described in vague terms how she had become pregnant, how her partner had died and how she had given birth in prison and given up her baby for adoption.

‘No wonder you’re so sad,’ Angela said. On a sudden impulse she lay down beside her on the narrow bunk and gave her a hug. Her arms lingered around her and Gerry felt an unaccountable urge. She reached up and cupped Angela’s breast. She felt her tense up but then she relaxed again. After a few seconds Angela asked ‘why are you doing that?’

‘I don’t know,’ Gerry replied. ‘Why aren’t you stopping me?’

‘I don’t know either,’ Angela replied. Gerry rolled over to face her. They stared at each other for a moment and then began to kiss. Angela felt Gerry’s hands on her bottom pulling them closer together.

‘We’re still not gay are we?’ Angela asked after a minute.

No, just sex starved.’ Then she giggled quietly when she felt a hand slide under her shirt.

‘Do you think we should stop?’ Angela asked quietly.

‘No I don’t,’ she whispered back.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

As darkness fell she folded the canopy around her. ‘I’m like a Cornish pasty,’ she muttered, ‘or a pizza calzone. She lay back underneath the canopy and stared up at the sky and tried to go to sleep, but her lack of physical activity and anxiety stopped her from feeling tired. ‘Maybe I’ll count sheep,’ she announced quietly. Nobody answered.

‘I said maybe I’ll count sheep!’ she shouted.

‘There you go Gerry, nobody gives a shit,’ she said.

White lights flashing high overhead caught her eye. ‘Oh look there’s another aeroplane,’ she announced. ‘I hope you’re enjoying the flight madam. What would you like to drink? Diet Coke? Gin and tonic? Red wine? A nice big glass of cool water then? Sparkling or still? Sparkling perhaps, with ice and lemon. Something for dinner? Fillet steak? Seared Sea Bass? Chicken Jalfrezi? Caprese salad followed by Saltimbocca Romana? Double bacon cheese burger and fries? No nothing for me thank you, I’m not hungry. Though maybe you could give me a couple of paracetamol for my headache and then I think I’ll just stare at the stars and wait to die if that’s alright.’

She saw what appeared to be a star moving slowly overhead. ‘A moving star? That’s unusual,’ she muttered. ‘Must be a satellite, or maybe the international space station.’ She wondered what life was like in orbit. Definitely not as boring as floating in a raft. Probably more interesting than being in prison. Higher self-esteem, certainly; less personal danger, probably. She fell asleep.

Dawn the next morning proved to be a slow progression from a delicate white glow to the east followed by a steady brightening of the sky from starlit black through to dull blue until the sun hauled itself relentlessly clear of the horizon to shine with increasing strength. Gerry gazed all round at the cloudless sky and wearily put the canopy back up. She picked up the bottle and swigged back the brackish water. ‘That doesn’t taste as bad as I thought. Maybe that means it will do me some good.’

Rather to her surprise she needed to pee a little and decided to add it to the water that swirled round the edge of the raft. A sudden stinging sensation made her flinch and she examined herself. ‘That’s great; a urinary tract infection or something. Just to make my last days more interesting. Thank you God. That’s alright Miss Tate, take these antibiotics and drink plenty of water.’

She gave a little giggle. ‘Don’t forget; drink plenty of water. Yes doctor. Don’t forget… drink plenty of water. Don’t forget Miss Tate… drink plenty of water.’

‘Plenty of water.’

‘Plenty of water.’

‘Plenty… of… water.’

‘Plen… … teeee.’

‘I’m cold.’ She shivered. ‘Why am I so cold? The sun’s gone down. No it hasn’t. It’s just turned cloudy. Over there, that grey mist beneath the cloud looks like rain. Shit!’

Summoning up her last reserves of energy Gerry hauled down the canopy and set it back up with the underside on top and formed into a funnel as she had practised. She had her bottles ready and her sweater and blouse laid out in case the funnel effect didn’t work. She sat there shivering hoping and hoping as the rain came towards her. At one time she thought it was going to pass her by but suddenly she was caught in a deluge. She filled up a water bottle and tried some. Yuk! Salt and chemicals. She filled it again; tried it and swore her foulest oaths at the taste. A third time and this time she drank and drank until there were two litres of water sloshing about in her belly. She began to drink some more but there was a warning twinge of pain deep inside her. She filled up the two water bottles and carefully stoppered them and then she lay back and let the rain wash over her laughing a little and occasionally mumbling ‘plenty of water.’ Then she doubled up in pain as her digestive system tried to cope with the sudden flood of liquid after days of deprivation, alternately hugging up her knees and then arching her back as she tried to alleviate the spasms.

Gerry groaned in exhaustion as she wrapped the canopy around herself. By the light of the moon her watch told her that the time was somewhere close to midnight. Her stomach had settled down and although she was no longer suffering from a raging thirst, she was miserably scared and lonely. She had spent many days in solitary confinement in prison for her multitude of misdemeanours, but the guards had always been close by and had provided some human contact. Back then she had defiantly decided that solitary confinement was easily endured, but now she realised the true meaning of solitude she realised how hard it was to bear. She tried to replay movies in her mind as a way to alleviate the tedium and occasionally sunk into bouts of fitful sleep as her memories took her off into dreams. The night slowly dragged on towards dawn and another day on the life raft began.

‘Wind — light; sea state — moderate; cloud — broken layer of stratus to the southwest; temperature — probably going to be hot.’ She reached for a bottle as the sun cleared the horizon and drank a quarter litre of water, then tensed her stomach muscles in anticipation of painful cramps. After a few minutes she relaxed and said ‘Well I seem to have got away with that; now what shall I wear today? Smelly underwear, sweaty and salty trousers, shirt and sweater slightly washed in rainwater or maybe nothing at all?’ She looked down at her body. Her skin was a strange mixture of even suntan and blotchy red sunburn, decorated further by fading bruises. Her face still ached dully where she had been hit. She ran her tongue over her missing tooth and felt the crusty scab where her lip had been split. Then with misplaced satisfaction she saw that she had lost fat over her stomach and her abdominal muscles were once again displayed with a definition she had not shown for many years. Apart from that she felt physically in fairly good shape, apart from one small problem. She squatted down and tried peeing; she groaned but then on reflection decided the stinging pain had subsided. ‘Thank heaven for small mercies,’ she muttered.

She prodded the sides of the raft and decided that she could afford to work up a sweat using the hand pump to get it fully inflated again and afterwards she felt better for the twenty minutes of physical effort required. She lay back on the canopy and as the body heat generated by her exertion subsided she folded the fabric back over herself for warmth and watched the dawn’s progress. After an hour the sun rose further until it began to shine into her eyes. She closed them and settled back further under the canopy and tried to decide if she should get dressed or raise the canopy into position and then she fell into a deep sleep.

The raft plunged down the side of a wave and Gerry rolled out of the folded canopy and slid down towards the end of the raft.

‘Help me Ali!’ she called out as she thudded against the side and grabbed for one of the straps. She looked around to check that he was alright until the last remnant of her dream was chased away by the memory of his death. The sea was behaving strangely; it was no longer the gentle swell of the last two days which she now barely noticed, neither was it the flat calm of her first day or the white capped spray of the storm. Instead the waves seemed shorter and steeper. It felt like the sea sucked out from under the raft and then thrust it back upwards. She looked around to see from which direction the waves were coming and they seemed to be coming from two directions at right angles to each other. The clouds were a continuous layer of stratus that seemed to be moving with some speed overhead. Just then the wind tore a ragged split in the low cloud and through it she saw a chain of vast thunderheads with black centres split by lightning flashes. She stared up at them until the rip in the clouds passed by.

The raft lurched and she was thrown off balance even from her seated position. Spray crashed against the side, shot upwards and then drenched her as it fell. ‘Shit,’ she mumbled. A cold gust of wind lifted the loose edge of the canopy and she flung herself across and grabbed the flapping sheet before it could be carried away. Where were her bottles? By some good fortune still wedged in the corner. Where were her clothes? There, the soggy mass floating on the floor. She struggled into them. A sharp gust nearly pulled the sweater from her grasp as she lifted it over her head but eventually she was clammily dressed. She gathered one water bottle and the other raft equipment and then tucked them inside the canopy which she rolled up as tightly as she could and then secured to the raft with the straps. Then she tied herself on and clutched the other bottle tight just as the raft began to climb the side of a wave. She looked up to see the crest begin to roll towards her but the raft crashed through it before it broke. She wondered what would happen if the raft was tossed upside down. Maybe there would be some air trapped underneath and she would hang down from the straps until she got a chance to climb back on top. Most likely she would drown. Oh well, who would miss her? ‘Nobody really,’ she muttered.

The raft began to climb the next wave and she felt her stomach heave, despite being empty. She felt a sudden looseness in her bowels; she gave way to it and briefly felt a new liquid warmth soaking the seat of her trousers. ‘Mostly water; should wash out with some bio powder,’ she mumbled. There was a sudden cold gust of wind that pulled her hair across her face. She swept it aside, looked up and saw the sky had turned black overhead. There was a blinding flash followed almost instantly by a huge crash of thunder and moments later she was pounded by heavy rain. The raft began its ascent up the next wave.

For hour after hour she lay there, alternately clutching a water bottle and a strap with each hand and trying to ignore the pain as her palms were rubbed raw. Quite suddenly it seemed to her fatigued mind that the wind had eased and the sky cleared to the west where the sun now hung quite low in the sky. The sea still tossed the raft around but she presumed it would take some time after the storm front passed by before the sea settled. She uncapped the bottle she had been clutching for hours and had a good drink of water. She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Well Ali, apparently we’re no worse off than we were before,’ she announced. She gazed around the horizon but there was nothing to be seen in any direction apart from the waves.

‘I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky, and all I ask is a tall ship and a what the fuck is that?’

A pale, sunlit orange triangle appeared briefly above the waves, disappeared, and then reappeared.