The Gilgamesh Conspiracy (40 page)

‘Just a bottle of water please,’ said Gerry.

‘That would suit me, thanks,’ said Dan.

‘Rashid’s just phoning his wife,’ he explained as he walked back into the room a minute later with a tray laden with soft drinks. ‘I hope this is not going to be too upsetting for him, this story.’

‘It will be upsetting for him, and for me,’ said Gerry. ‘He lost his father; I lost my fiancé and my daughter and I’ve spent the years since we last met in prison.’

‘What the hell…?’ said Rashid from the doorway.

She looked up at him. ‘Sit down and I’ll tell you the story. I’m sure you’ll have questions, so just stop me any time.’

It was nearly midnight when Gerry brought her narrative to an end by describing how she and Dan had broken into Farajat’s garage.

‘I’m sorry I couldn’t save your father. I’m sorry that you were ever involved. If you know where the Gilgamesh stuff is hidden you can tell us if you wish. I’ll not try and force you.’

Strangely enough she felt that some burden had been lifted by the retelling of her story to Rashid. Suddenly it no longer seemed important that she ever found out what Gilgamesh was about. She wondered if she and Dan should make their way to Indonesia or the Philippines where they could hide somewhere amongst their numerous islands. She looked at Dan for a moment. He probably had military notions of honour and duty and would feel a responsibility towards Felix Grainger and Richard Cornwall and maybe also to Dean Furness and Philip. She’d had enough. She just wanted the two of them to make a life for themselves somewhere safe.

‘Come back to the garage tomorrow morning,’ said Rashid. ‘I’ll have decided by then whether I’ll tell you anything.’

‘What?’ Dan exclaimed. ‘After all she’s been through and what happened to your father…’

‘That’s ok Dan; I’m happy with that,’ Gerry interrupted. ‘Is nine am ok?’

Ishmail and Rashid looked at one another. Ishmail shrugged. ‘It’s up to you, Rashid.’

‘Ok; nine tomorrow.’

‘Let’s go Dan.’

Outside in the car Gerry drove around the corner and then turned the car around.

‘Are we going the wrong way?’ Dan asked.

‘No, I want to see where Rashid lives; we’ll follow him.’

‘Oh, ok.’

They sat in silence for a minute and then Gerry leaned across and rested her head on his shoulder. ‘I like being with you Dan,’ she said.

‘That’s good because I still…’ she stopped him saying anything else with a finger across his lips.

‘He’s just coming out,’ she whispered. ‘Where’s his car parked I wonder.’

They watched Rashid walk a short distance up the road and then open another gateway and disappear inside. ‘He bloody well lives next door!’ said Gerry with a small chuckle.  ‘Come on let’s get back to the Marafi’s place; you’ll have to navigate again.’

The demands of finding their way along the dark streets curtailed any further conversation until they were much closer to their friends’ house.

‘Do you think they’ll still be awake?’ Dan asked.

‘I know Adnan will wait up for us, because he didn’t give me a house key. At any rate he’ll try and wait up, but he might have fallen asleep in front of the television.’

She stopped the car beside the house. ‘He’s left the outside lights on for us anyway,’ she said. They walked up to the front gate and rang the doorbell, then when there was no reply she rang again.

‘He’s left the gate open for us’ said Dan who had given it an experimental shove and now pushed it wide open.

‘Oh shit!’ said Gerry. She pulled the gun from her waistband and ran up to the front door, followed by Dan who had realised the danger slightly later. The front door was open too and she pushed it open slowly and listened. Then she pulled off her shoes and threw them inside the hallway and there was an immediate crash when they knocked a ceramic jar off a table and on to the tiled floor. Then there was silence again.

Gerry felt round the side of the door and found the hall light switch and then she saw the body of Adnan Marafi lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood.

‘Leyla!’ Gerry shouted and she ran into the house while Dan bent down and felt for a pulse in Adnan’s neck, and then heard Gerry call ‘Oh no!’

He found her bent over Leyla’s corpse. The old lady’s hand still clasped a big kitchen knife but it had been no defence against the bullets that had caught her in the centre of her chest. She stared down at the dead woman for a few seconds and then looked up at Dan. He could see her tears.

‘Whoever did this was really clumsy. I’m sure they were meant to interrogate them, not just kill them. They won’t have learnt anything from them at all. Unless they’ve found fingerprints or something, they won’t know for sure that we were here. We didn’t leave anything of ours in the house did we?’

‘Maybe they’ve got the place under surveillance,’ said Dan ‘Could be someone outside; could be a reconnaissance drone. We have to leave now.’

‘They’d still be alive if we hadn’t come here.’

‘Not now Gerry! Come on, we have to go.’

‘Stay where you are!’ commanded a voice from the doorway.

They turned and saw a powerfully built Lebanese man pointing a MAC-10 machine pistol with a sound suppressor at Dan.

‘So you two are ones the Americans are looking for.’

‘Are you Saeed Massoud?’ asked Gerry.

‘My name doesn’t matter. In a short while they’ll come to pick you up.’

‘You killed my friends, you bastard!’

‘The Marafis…pah!’ He spat on the floor.

Gerry bent down and hugged the corpse. ‘Leyla, I’m so sorry.’ Then she suddenly snatched up the dead woman’s body and charged at Massoud. He was so surprised he barely had time to fire more than one quick burst. Two shots thudded into the corpse before the combined weight of the two women slammed into him and they all tumbled to the floor. Massoud scrambled to his knees but Gerry, much quicker than him, kicked him in the head and he collapsed face down. She jumped on to his back, wound an arm around his neck and pulled his head up.

‘Can you see her face, the old woman you killed?’

‘Yes…yes,’ Massoud gasped.

‘Good…look at her while you go to hell!’

Dan winced as she broke his neck, and then saw the blood on her leg as she stood up. ‘You’re hit!’

Gerry glanced down at where Dan pointed. ‘No I’m ok. It must be Leyla’s blood; one of the bullets went through her but it missed me.’ She looked around at the scene of death. ‘Whoever comes along, it’ll take them ages to piece together what happened here. Now we’d better warn Rashid. Oh shit Dan, I’ve got Adnan and Leyla killed, and now Rashid and all his family could be next. I wish we’d never come.’

The need to navigate the streets back to the street where Rashid and Ismail Farajat lived and agree their next course of action distracted Dan and Gerry from brooding on the death of her friends. They parked outside Rashid’s gateway and rang the bell. He appeared after a couple of minutes hastily dressed in jeans and the shirt he had been wearing all day with the buttons mis-matched. ‘You’re back already,’ he stated briefly through the cracked open doorway, across which Gerry could see a strong chain.

‘Yes. I’m sorry to have to say this but we’ve been trailed. You need to get your family away from here for a while…immediately - I’m sorry.’

Rashid stared at her. ‘You bloody mad dangerous bitch. Why did you have to come here? You’ve caused me and my family nothing but…’

‘Yeah I know, but you really have to go now!’ Gerry insisted. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘So you keep saying, but it doesn’t make me feel any better.’ Nevertheless he unhooked the chain and ushered them through the door. On the other side they saw a young woman with wildly tousled hair wearing jeans and what appeared to be a night dress with a sweater on top.

‘This is my wife, Selwa,’ said Rashid.

Gerry held out her hand but Selwa lashed out with her palm towards her face. Gerry effortlessly deflected the blow and grabbed the woman’s wrist. ‘Please don’t do that. Go and get your children ready to travel in the shortest possible time.’

She snatched her hand away muttering something under breath and then turned away and stalked off.

‘Here,’ said Rashid. He held out a sheet of paper with two rectangles drawn one inside the other. Gerry took it and saw two lines with distances on and a north pointing arrow. Outside the rectangle was a small square with a crescent moon in the middle. She gave Rashid and enquiring look.

‘That’s our family home in Baghdad with the wall around it. That’s the local mosque. You can see the minaret from the garden, if it’s still standing. What you’re looking for is buried in the garden. I think I’ve got the measurements about right, but it was a few years back.’ He turned the sheet over. ‘I’ve written the address here.’

The doorbell rang and a few seconds later Ismail Farajat hurried in. ‘I got your text message,’ he began, ‘what’s happening…oh, you two are back,’ he said to Gerry and Dan with an expression of distaste.

‘You’d better clear off now,’ said Rashid.

‘Not until we see you safely on your way,’ said Dan.

‘While you’re getting ready, do you have a computer?’ Gerry asked. ‘I need to book us flights to Baghdad tomorrow morning.’

‘Do you think they’ll be safe?’ Dan asked as they watched the two families drive away in big GMC SUVs.

‘I’m afraid they’ll catch up with them eventually and then Rashid will tell them everything he knows so he can protect his family. I just hope we’ve given them enough of a head start.’

‘What shall we do until the flight leaves? It’s going to be rather dangerous going through the airport isn’t it?’

‘Yes, so we’re not taking the plane; that was mis-information. We’re driving to Baghdad. It’s about five hundred and forty miles, so if we’re lucky we’ll be there tomorrow afternoon.’

Dan stared out into the dark desert as Gerry drove at eighty miles per hour towards the Iraqi border. ‘Is it safe to drive this fast? I don’t mean your driving; I mean is the road surface ok?’

‘I wish I knew, but we need to reach the border crossing point at dawn. I’m hoping we can join a convoy. It’ll give some protection against marauders and hijackers.’

‘Is driving across Iraq still dangerous this long after the war?’

‘I don’t know Dan,’ she snapped, ‘it’s one of the many things I didn’t learn about when I was in prison.’

‘Sorry.’

They drove along in silence for a few minutes.

‘I’m sorry Dan; I shouldn’t have got sharp with you.’

‘It doesn’t matter, let’s talk about something else.’

‘You could ask me who my favourite author is, what kind of music I like,’ she suggested.

‘Ok then, what kind of…hey; déjà vu! When we were on the road to Fujairah, we had that conversation back then.’

‘I wondered if you’d remember. A lot’s happened to us since.’

‘You bet it has, back then I was a Marines…’ His voice trailed away, and then he began again. ‘That’s when everything started to turn bad for you. You must have been a lot happier back then.’

She reached across and found his hand. ‘It doesn’t matter. Right now I think I’m happy with you.’

‘Good…great, even.’

As dawn broke the Iraq border lay about five miles ahead of them. The landscape was a featureless flat dull brown all the way to the Jordanian check point. The gate was decorated with a huge portrait of King Abdullah dressed in his military commander-in-chief uniform. Dan pulled up while Gerry took their UK passports to the immigration office. She emerged a few minutes later chattering to a uniformed official.

‘Dan, this is Ahmed from customs. He just wants to have a look around our vehicle. I think we have a small export payment to make.’

‘Sure,’ said Dan and handed over a roll of dollars that they had prepared. ‘Is that the correct amount?’

The official made a quick inspection and said something to Gerry at which she laughed, and then he wandered off and waved to the man operating the barrier. Gerry drove under the red and white pole and parked the car alongside a collection of saloon cars, utility vehicles, pick-ups and trucks.

‘Is this Iraq?’ Dan asked. ‘Where are their border guards?’

‘This is a sort of no man’s land between the two countries. The border’s not well defined. See those tents over there?’

He saw a few rows of black tents and noticed people moving in and out of them or just standing and staring back at him. ‘Who are they?’

‘They’re people in some kind of purgatory, waiting to get into one country or the other. In times of conflict, or rather worse conflict, thousands of people gather here, or in places like these. It’s been going on for decades now throughout the Middle East. Now let’s see when this convoy is setting off.’

After an hour sitting in the line of vehicles that snaked towards the Iraqi checkpoint the time came to hand over their passports to the Iraqi guards. Then Dan realised that there was a contingent of US Military personnel working alongside the Iraqis.

‘Oh hell we’re not gonna be able to pay our way through here!’ said Dan.

‘Let’s hope I can get through as a journalist,’ said Gerry. She handed over her passport in the name of Emily Stevens and her various credentials as a journalist; unfortunately they were all dated from the year of the invasion.

‘Please come to the office,’ the Iraqi official asked politely. As they walked off to the office leaving their vehicle empty in the line they heard a chorus of protests from the cars behind theirs, the drivers and passengers eager to be on their way.

Inside the cabin Gerry explained in her most polite Arabic that she had not worked as a newsprint journalist for a few years, but she had been working for the BBC as a television news producer. An American officer arrived half way through her explanation and frowned at her passport.