The Gilgamesh Conspiracy (43 page)

General Robert Bruckner finished reading the report written by Jasper White. It stated that he had arrived at the Hamsin house in Baghdad the evidence suggested that after an exchange of shots, Tate and Hall had killed Parker and Samms. Hall had also been shot and White had taken him to the US Embassy base for treatment. Gerry Tate had disappeared. Hall had informed White that they had failed to find the Gilgamesh documents. Tate had been wounded, but he did not think it was severe. After she had recovered it was a fair assumption that she would be seeking revenge.

Bruckner rubbed his chin. He walked over to his drinks cabinet and poured out the end of a bottle of Glenmorangie single malt whisky. That was the bottle that Sir Hugh Fielding had given to him back in February when they had first discussed the plan. He would have to notify Hugh as soon as possible so that he could take any precautions he thought necessary to ensure his safety. He stared out of his study window into the dark night. With only a little imagination he could picture an enraged assassin aiming a high powered sniper rifle at him. He closed the curtains and sank into an armchair and considered the message from Tate that had been sent to him via Richard Cornwall.

Wherever he hid away, she had said, and whatever precautions he took to guard himself, she would find a way through to him. Maybe not this year maybe not the next, but one day he would find himself in the same room as her with nowhere to run and nobody to help him.

He believed her, and so he had decided he would do nothing to protect himself. When she came he would try to talk to her, but he had decided it was pointless living his life in continuous fear of her. Besides, if he asked for round the clock protection from an assassin, he would have to provide a full explanation, and it would be difficult to explain how the events of several years ago had suddenly led to him being in imminent danger.

Without actually announcing his retirement, he completed his current projects and reports and asked to be excused from any further work for the time being. This was accepted without any question, and probably with some relief by the younger members of the directorate. After all he was coming up to sixty-five years old and it was entirely appropriate that he should stand down. He felt secure within his own home with its elaborate security system and while he was officially on active duty he was entitled to a trained personal security specialist who acted as his chauffeur.

  Four months had gone by without incident and he was being driven back to Washington after visiting his daughter when a tyre blew out. His suspected that the tyre had been shot out but the vehicle was fitted with run flat tyres and he ordered the driver to drive on until they reached a busy service stop. A subsequent inspection showed that a piece of rusty nail had punctured the tyre.

On another journey a motor cycle raced by and then stopped abruptly a few hundred yards ahead. The rider removed a helmet and long dark hair blew free and the woman disappeared into the trees. The chauffeur stepped out, donned his flak jacket and prepared to hunt down the rider. A few minutes later he came back somewhat embarrassed and reported that the woman was taking a toilet break. She gestured angrily as the car drove past while Bruckner gave an apologetic wave.

On a different occasion a UPS delivery driver was subjected to a thorough search and an interview when she turned up at the wrong address with a souvenir hunting knife.

Bruckner reacted to all these false alarms with the same weary resignation. In a way he was somewhat relieved when he woke up one morning, came downstairs and found her sitting in the kitchen drinking coffee and reading his copy of
The Washington Post
. He stood in the doorway. She looked up at him and smiled. ‘Good morning General,’ she said.

‘Where’s Patterson?’ he asked.

‘He’s tied up in his room. He’s asleep.’ She glanced up at the wall clock. ‘For about two more hours, I think.’ She stared at him for a few seconds. ‘There’s a few things you can do for me.’

‘And then you’ll kill me?’

‘First of all I want to know that you’ll release Dan Hall, and drop any formal charges against him plus you’ll call off any attack dogs from us both.’

‘You think I can do that?’

‘Of course you can. You can do anything I want within reason; otherwise the Presidents of Iraq and Iran and the Ayatollah will receive a copy of the Gilgamesh document. After that it might go viral on the internet.’

She handed him an envelope. He opened it and withdrew a few pages of typewritten script. He only had to read for about fifteen seconds to know that she must possess the original.

He stared at her for a moment. ‘So what are you going to do with this?’

‘First of all, whose idea was it?’

‘It was partly mine and Hugh Fielding’s but mostly Hakim Mansour’s.’ He paused, pursed his lips. ‘Mansour was a very intelligent man, very subtle. He foresaw that one day things might come to a critical head.’

‘You thought it was a good idea, keeping Iran under a brutal dictatorship?’

‘Half the countries in the region are under some kind of dictatorship. The best that their people can hope is that the dictators are fairly benevolent. Now if the Gilgamesh operation had continued as planned, three things would be in place.

‘One: the United States would have had control of Iraqi oilfields and Iraq would become a swing producer. They would have displaced Saudi Arabia from that role and we could have stopped the price of oil rising ever higher.

‘Two: the Iranian government would have had a US military base on their western border, for all they know with missiles targeted on all their cities and strategic locations.

‘Three: Saddam Hussein would have been removed from power and his son would have taken over with his freedom of action constrained by our military presence.

‘Now Miss Tate; which of those outcomes would you say is undesirable?’

‘Undesirable for who? The State Department or the people of Iraq? That’s the trouble; people like you see everything through a lens which only shows you what’s good for the USA.’

‘Bullshit! Your people are just as bad! Look at the legacy left by your empire throughout Africa and the Middle East.’

They glared at each other in silence.

‘So what happened?’ Gerry asked eventually. ‘Why did it all go wrong? Why did the invasion take place with its chaotic aftermath?’

‘It went ahead because our government found out that there were no so-called weapons of mass destruction. They decided that they could just roll in the tanks and troops and set up a regime in favour of the US. You know the rest. The people in Iraq only needed us to topple Saddam Hussein; apart from that we weren’t welcome. But we dismantled their state and created a huge power vacuum and nobody in the Bush administration had a fucking clue how to fill it.’

‘So the Gilgamesh plan never made it past the White House?’

‘A plan that left a Hussein in charge?’ Bruckner forced a bitter laugh. ‘You can imagine how that went down. No WMD, no bargaining position. I decided to send it to Mansour nonetheless. We hoped we might be able to make some use of it. But the signatures on it are not real. Bush and Blair, Rumsfeld, Cheney; they have absolutely no knowledge of it being sent to Mansour.’

‘You expect me to believe that?’

He shrugged. ‘You’ll believe anything you want.’

‘But you ordered it to be buried, and anyone who knew about it was buried as well. I find that hard to believe for something you now say was merely an elaborate hoax.’

‘Yes.’ He nodded. ‘But I’m the one responsible. So have you come to kill me?’

‘No,’ she shook her head. ‘There’s no point. The dead stay dead, but I do have a question.’

‘Just one?’

‘No, but this is one I find quite puzzling. Why did you have me arrested and put in prison? Why didn’t you just have me killed along with Phil and the others?’

‘Well it’s because you were pregnant.’

‘What? Really?’

‘Of course. Fielding thought I was being a sentimental fool. He is actually more ruthless than me.’

‘Was,’ said Gerry.

‘He’s dead? You killed him?’

‘You’re not going to believe this, but we were having a conversation a little like this when he had a heart attack. I actually tried to save him you know. I performed CPR for nearly fifteen minutes while I waited for the ambulance to arrive.’ She smiled. ‘I had persuaded him to sign a letter declaring that Richard Cornwall was a loyal servant of the Crown and recommending that he succeed him as Director of Operations.’

‘And do you think that Fielding’s recommendation will carry sufficient weight?’

‘By itself, perhaps not, but you are going to add your support for Cornwall’s promotion.’ She opened a document folder and handed over a letter. ‘Here you are. This is the kind of thing you should write.’

He looked at the letter. ‘Very well. Cornwall’s a good man.’

‘Yes he is, and so is this man.’ She handed him a photo. ‘You have Dan released, you leave us alone and you leave the Hamsin family alone.’

‘That’s all you want?’

‘Yes, but I have another question.’

‘Go on.’

‘When I was talking to Ali Hamsin on the raft, he asked me if it helped 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 dictatorship. reign of terror. Less than three thousand people died in the twin towers of the World Trade Centre but four thousand coalition troops died and perhaps four or five hundred thousand Iraqis died in the invasion and the years after, and yet his country had nothing to do with the atrocity in New York.’

‘Yes I’ll accept those figures. So what’s your question?’

‘Bush and Blair and the others seem strangely unrepentant about the whole ghastly, chaotic mess they left behind. How do you feel about it? Do you think it was worth it?’

‘Of course not. I hoped Gilgamesh would stop it happening.’

Three days later Dan Hall was escorted away from his work detail and into the presence of the prison governor. Without furnishing any explanation, the governor informed him that he was to be released with immediate effect. Dan’s first fear was that there would be someone waiting for him on the outside with evil intent. On asking what arrangements were available to allow him to proceed home, as he put it, he was informed that a tall woman was waiting for him outside the main gate. She had assured the governor that she would give him a lift to wherever he needed to go. With eager anticipation he walked out of the gateway a free man, encumbered only by a rucksack.

‘Dan!’ the woman yelled and he quickly dropped his pack and braced himself as Gerry ran across the street and gave him a huge hug.

‘It’s good to see you, I’m sorry it took longer than I expected, how are you?’ she asked, and he was instantly aware that his eyes were growing moist, which he felt uncomfortable with. ‘I’m fine!’ he said. ‘How come you’re here? How did you manage to get me out?’

‘I found the Gilgamesh document so I could strike a deal with Bruckner. And I’m here because I love you. Now tell me how you really are!’ She backed off a pace and looked at him; saw the tears in his eyes. ‘Well you’ve lost weight, so let’s go to the best restaurant we can find have a good meal and then we’ll buy some beers, go back to my hotel, have great sex, tell each other our stories and I for one will probably have a bloody good cry.’ She reached into a pocket and pulled out a cell phone. ‘Hold on I’m just going to tell Jasper White you’re out.’

‘Jasper! How is he?’ Dan asked.

‘He’s retired. I had a hell of a job persuading him not to go for Bruckner, but he seems fairly happy. He’s met somebody too. He introduced me to him.’

‘Him?’ exclaimed Dan, amazed.

‘Jasper’s gay. Didn’t you realise? Men can be surprisingly un-perceptive.’

‘Oh! Was Dean Furness then too?’

‘No, but Jasper told me all about it. To cut a long story short, Dean Furness was local CIA in Berlin, investigating this character named Dennis Gorley, who Jasper had got friendly with. Jasper was still in the Marines back then. Anyway it turned out Gorley was really an East German named Friedrich Steinbruck. This was just before the wall came down in 1985, so it would have turned out real bad for Jasper. Besides which, Marine officers were not expected to be gay, so his career would have tripped up. Dean went to see Jasper and together they trapped the guy, and Dean kept their personal relationship covered up. He found some incriminating photos which he destroyed.’

‘Oh! Was Dean gay too?’ Dan asked.

‘No, but his elder brother was, and so Dean was sympathetic. Several years later Jasper joined the Agency, and he found himself promoted above Dean. Dean was always a field agent, but Jasper climbed the ranks back in Langley. He and Dean remained close and some years later Dean got into trouble himself. He was taken by an Iranian border patrol, but Jasper found out where they were holding him. He mounted a rescue mission and brought him back.’

‘Good for Jasper.’

‘Did you realise that it was Jasper who told Richard Cornwall how I could find you. He put a tracker on your camper van when he found you in that camp site in West Virginia before you were warned to get away by the owner.’