The Gilgamesh Conspiracy

by Jeffrey Fleming

  ‘Gerry, it’s your mother here. You said you were coming to see me this weekend, and I haven’t heard a word from you for a week, so if you could kindly let me know…thank you.’

  The obstetrician explained that she was the expectant mother of a perfectly healthy looking daughter and presented her with a grainy black and white photograph. She was somewhat disconcerted when Gerry inspected the picture for no more than a few seconds and said, ‘A girl is it? Well thank you very much doctor,’ before tucking the picture in her handbag.

  As she walked back to her black Volkswagen Golf GTI, Gerry pulled out her mobile phone; scrolled to ‘Anne Tate’ and dialled her mother’s home.

  ‘Hi mum, it’s me.’

  ‘Gerry, dear. How are you?’

  ‘I’m fine. Look I’m sorry I haven’t called, but I did send you an e-mail.’

  ‘Oh! Did you? I’m having trouble with the computer again, so I didn’t get that. Never mind. How did the scan go?’

  ‘Everything’s fine. I’ll tell you all about it when I see you...ok?’

  ‘Did they let you have one of those pictures?’

  ‘Yes they gave me one. Now I really have to be getting on. I’ll show you the picture when I come to see you.’

  ‘Well don’t forget to bring it…your memory sometimes.’

  ‘I know mum…sorry. Look I’ll call you this evening…bye.’

  Gerry’s memory was prodigious, but for years she had used the excuse of a poor memory to explain away the various inconsistencies that resulted from her job and concealed from her mother the fact that she was a member of the security services. She walked to her car, climbed in then she opened her bag and took out the grainy photograph, stared at it for a few seconds, put it away and started the engine, blinking away incipient tears. She pulled out her mobile and telephoned her mother.

  ‘Hello mum, it’s me again.’

  ‘Let me guess; something’s cropped up at work and you won’t be able to come.’

  ‘No mum, not at all,’ she replied trying not to be affected by her mother’s weary cynicism. ‘I’ve been given some days off and if it’s ok with you I’ll drive up this evening. I should be there by oh…eight o’clock.’

  ‘That’s lovely Gerry. Dinner will be waiting for when you arrive.’

  ‘Thanks mum, see you later.’

  She managed to beat the afternoon rush hour traffic out of London and settled down to cruise at 80mph along the M40. She spent the journey in quiet contemplation of her immediate future. By the time she reached her mother’s house in the village near Stratford she had recovered much of her equanimity and as usual she begun to hum ‘The Archers’ theme tune as she drove through farmland, past the pub and then turned up the lane that lead to her cottage. In a more light-hearted frame of mind she pulled her case from the boot and a bunch of flowers from off the rear shelf and walked up to the front door with a fairly cheerful smile in place.

  Gerry stared down at the trousers she had brought with her. She had forgotten that her expanding waist would not allow her to wear them. She pulled a safety pin from the sewing kit she had taken some months back from the Sheraton Hotel in Brussels and tried to fasten the waist with them, but it wasn’t long enough. She put her skirt back on and went downstairs to join her mother in the kitchen.

  ‘Hello, I thought you were changing?’ Anne remarked.

  ‘I was, but the clothes I brought don’t fit me anymore.’

  ‘Have you bought any maternity wear yet?’ Anne asked.

  ‘No, I haven’t; I haven’t had time,’ Gerry replied, trying not to sound like the sulky teenage daughter she used to be.

  ‘You can’t stay in denial about your changing shape, you know.’ Anne eyed her daughter’s tall frame, inherited from her late husband. ‘Though knowing you, you’ll exercise back to your original shape about a fortnight after having your baby. Do you know when you’re going to stop work yet?

  ‘Well actually I have stopped work…and,’ she hesitated. ‘If possible I would like to stay an extra night…then we can do some shopping, and I’ll have time to fix your computer as well.’ She saw Anne’s face light up.

  ‘Well that would be lovely Gerry; I’m not working at the shop this weekend. It will be nice to spend a bit more time together.’

  Gerry immediately felt guilty that she had not spent more time with her mother in the two years since her father had died. Her brother and his family lived in Seattle so her mother did not see them very often. She suddenly felt even more guilty as it occurred to her that she might need her mother’s help with childcare and perhaps she should try and persuade her to move in with her for a while when the baby was born. Anne managed a charity shop and perhaps she would be unhappy to be away from it for too long. Gerry was hit by the realisation that she was likely to be dependent on other people for the first time in years, and with a strange sense of bewilderment she announced ‘I’m going to need you, Mum!’

  Mother and daughter spent Friday shopping in Stratford, and despite having to compete with crowds of summer tourists Gerry felt a little better despite the dull ache in her mind. In the evening Anne began to cook, but when Gerry suggested that she should help, she was banished from the kitchen and told to relax. After watching the news and weather forecast Gerry wandered into the study and gazed at the family photos in their silver frames. She picked up the picture of her and Philip sitting in the garden. It showed the two of them seated side by side on the bench. They were both reading sections of the Sunday newspaper clad in shorts and tee shirts in the afternoon summer sunshine; she sat with her right leg crossed over his left knee and they had put the pages down and smiled at the camera. He was good at smiling for the camera, she decided for the hundredth time; she wore a bit of an idiotic grin.

  She replaced the picture and sat down in front of the malfunctioning computer. It was an old one that she had passed on to her mother after she upgraded her own when Windows XP was released. Anne had learnt to use the internet and e-mail capably enough but on the occasions that something went wrong that she did not understand, she would shut down the computer and wait for her daughter to fix it for her.

  Gerry switched it on and waited for the Windows 98 operating system to go through its start-up procedure. She entered her mother’s password and the computer desktop appeared. When she tried to open Outlook Express, a small window came up requesting a password. She frowned; that was unexpected. She entered her mother’s password again but the computer immediately shutdown. She mumbled a curse and walked into the kitchen and asked her mother if she had changed her password.

  ‘No, I’ve no idea how to do that.’

  ‘Well what were you doing when the system crashed? It seems to have picked up a virus.’

  Her mother looked very uncomfortable; she put down the chopping knife and sat down on the stool. ‘I had just opened an e-mail.’ She paused, and then with a rush said ‘It was from Philip. It just said that he hoped I was alright and that he should be coming home in a couple of days and the two of you would be up to see me soon. Then he mentioned it was your birthday and he had a big birthday surprise that he was going to keep a secret from you and the details were in an attachment. I clicked on it but there was a password needed and then it shut down. I haven’t been able to start it since.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Gerry. She sat down as well and gazed at the pattern on the work surface. ‘When abouts did he send that?’ she asked eventually.

  ‘It was probably sent at the beginning of May. Anyway that’s about the time the computer broke down. Then you got the news about Philip, and I didn’t want to bother you about it of course, not when…well, you know.’ Gerry nodded. She felt slightly distressed that the last person Philip had e-mailed was her mother and not her, but there was another anomaly.

  ‘But Mum, why should he mention a birthday surprise? My birthday’s not until August.’

  ‘Well I know that dear, but mine is in May, and you know what men are like; always mixing up birth
days and anniversaries. At least your father did,’ she added.

  Gerry sat brooding for a moment while Anne watched her. Then she looked up and said ‘I’ll take it with me. There’s probably someone from work who can get it sorted out. And I’ll bring you up another computer I’ve got at home as a replacement. That one was a bit old and slow anyway.’

  ‘Oh that would be nice, if you can spare it. I never thought for a moment I would miss having one. Now wash your hands; dinner’s ready.’

  Gerry required all her professional resources to maintain an appearance of equanimity during dinner and afterwards when they watched an episode of Midsomer Murders together. When her mother had gone up to bed she tried to switch on the computer again but the operating program would not access the hard drive. She mumbled a stream of abuse at the Dell logo and then went upstairs to bed.

  She lay awake thinking about the possible contents of the e-mail and imagined Philip sitting down in front of his computer in Nigeria and composing it, never imagining for one moment that it would be the last message he would ever send. She rolled over, thumped the pillows into shape, yawned wearily and at last she fell asleep.

  The next morning Gerry said farewell to her mother and set off in her black Volkswagen towards the M40. She was negotiating a sharp bend slightly faster than the speed limit when she heard a bang and saw a puff of smoke emerge from the front of the engine compartment and swirl around the windscreen. She slammed on the brakes as the road straightened up and pulled into a convenient lay-by. Then she leapt out of her car and ran until she was about fifty metres away and crouched down on the verge. After half a minute she was satisfied that there was no further danger she began to walk back towards her car. Two other cars had passed by the scene of her mishap, but the occupants had given no more than a curious stare as they drove by, but a third car pulled out of a small side road and crept to a halt twenty metres behind her car.

  She walked towards the car, wondering if the driver was a possible Good Samaritan but she was suddenly suspicious; she wished that her handbag containing her gun was slung across her shoulder rather than sitting on the passenger seat. She stopped and glared at him as he climbed out of his car. He was taller than her, distinguished looking, late middle aged with cropped white hair and a thick white moustache gleaming in his suntanned face. He took a couple of paces towards her and held out his hand. ‘Jasper White,’ he called out.

  ‘I’m Gerry Tate,’ she replied, giving his hand a brief shake. She ran the name White through her memory and suddenly felt tense when she remembered Rashid Hamsin telling her about a Colonel White. ‘I suspect that you knew my name already. Perhaps you should tell me what you’re doing here?’

  Clearly she had already rumbled him, but he kept up his act. ‘I’m here to help a lady in distress,’ he replied. He stopped by her car, leant through the driver’s doorframe and pulled the bonnet release. He opened the hood and looked inside. Gerry retrieved her bag from inside the car and then watched while he quickly reached inside with a handkerchief wrapped round his hand. He pulled out a small pyrotechnic device.

  ‘It’s just a little firework with a remote detonator. Doesn’t do any harm to the car apart from a bit of a scorch mark under the hood.’ He wrapped it up and put it in a pocket. ‘Needless to say the driver always thinks his car has a real problem and stops to take a look at it.’

  Gerry stared at him, and then demanded ‘So explain why you’re here.’

  ‘What you’re really wanting to know is why I stopped you on a quiet road in the English countryside on a Sunday afternoon,’ he declared.

  ‘Yeah, that would be a good start.’

  ‘Ok, well perhaps we could sit inside my car for a minute and I’ll explain,’ he offered.

  ‘Yeah right,’ she scoffed. ‘I think we’ll sit inside my car and I’ll scan you for electronic devices before we talk.’

  ‘Ok, as you wish. You have a scanner?’ White asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re a suspicious character. A gun too, I imagine?’

  ‘Yes; a gun, a knife, a handbag and an attitude problem; armed to the fucking teeth I am.’

  He looked down and saw that she had one hand inside the bag now slung over her shoulder.

  ‘Ok, I’ll come quietly.’ He sat himself in the front passenger seat and watched her walk round the other side. Instead of getting into the driver’s seat she opened the rear door and climbed in behind him. She thought he looked slightly nervous in the rear view mirror.

  ‘So explain why you stopped me then, Jasper White,’ Gerry demanded. She had rather assumed that White was an alias when Rashid named him because it seemed such a commonplace surname.

  ‘My company was rather disappointed at the disappearance of Rashid Hamsin from this country. We feel that he must have had some assistance.’

  ‘How do you know he’s not in this country still?’

  ‘Because he transited through the airport in Amman, Jordan.’

  ‘Well if you managed to find him, why don’t you ask him?’

  ‘We didn’t get hold of him at the time and he’s slipped out of sight.’

  Gerry had not known for certain that Rashid had successfully eluded his pursuers, but she frowned to avoid a delighted grin. ‘Actually I don’t give a shit about the whereabouts of Rashid Hamsin. I’m on maternity leave. Ask your own people: they staked out his place.’

  ‘We’ve seen the reports and we’re not convinced that someone didn’t tip him off.’

  ‘So you followed me up here to tell me that. Your people send a surveillance team because you have some suspicions?’ She stared at him in the rear view mirror. ‘If that was the case I’d be having further interviews back in the office, not be put on immediate maternity leave and allowed to travel at will.’

  ‘There’s no surveillance team; just me.’

  ‘So you’ve been watching me. What did you learn?’

  ‘I know that you are expecting a girl, unless those pink baby clothes you were looking at were for someone else.’

  She stared at him angrily in the rear view mirror. This bastard had been watching her for the last few days, and what made her even more irritated was that she had not picked up on it. ‘You’re a nasty toad, White,’ she eventually replied.

  ‘I’m just doing my job. C’mon! You’ve done surveillance, so it’s unreasonable to become all high-minded when it happens to you!’

  ‘So are you going to file a report describing my weekend away? You still haven’t said why you stopped me out here.’

  ‘Have you been in contact with Dean Furness?’

  She frowned. Dean Furness was that guy who she had met on that freezing January night in Frankfurt, when she had brought Hakim Mansour and Ali Hamsin to meet with Hugh Fielding and General Brooking or someone. Not Brooking…Bruckner. ‘Dean Furness? Who’s he?’ she asked.

  ‘Give me a break. Have you heard from him recently?’

  ‘No I haven’t heard from any Dean Furness. Why are you asking?’

  ‘I want to know what happened to Rashid Hamsin, and also to Dean Furness…he’s a good friend.’ He placed a card on the dashboard above the vents. ‘I’ll get out now if that’s ok. You can look me up on the computer, but if you want to get in touch I’ll leave my phone number here.’

  Gerry nodded and watched him walk back to his silver Ford Mondeo. He turned round to gaze at her for a moment and called out ‘I’ll be seeing you, Gerry,’ before climbing into his car.

  As she drove home Gerry wondered what to make of the fact that Jasper White, a CIA agent had evidently been watching her every move during the last few days, but then had candidly admitted to her that he had done so. If she was under some unknown American suspicion then why had he waylaid her on a quiet country road and introduced himself. There was evidently a connection between herself, Dean Furness, Jasper White, Ali Hamsin the translator and his son Rashid Hamsin, but what did it amount to?

  CHAPTER TEN

  Reaching
her Richmond apartment, Gerry opened her front door, put down her overnight case and picked up her mail. She found a letter from a solicitor that confirmed that she was sole beneficiary to the will of the late Mr Philip Barrett, and could she attend his office at a mutually convenient time? She guessed that she would be given title to his house in Twickenham, but she wondered what else the terms of his will would reveal. Perhaps, she thought with some anticipation, there would be something that would shed light on his death and the e-mail that he had sent, but then she knew that was ridiculous. Secrets would not be left around for his lawyer to see. Nevertheless she decided to drive over to his place immediately on the off chance that there was some letter for her.

  She had not been to Philip’s home since she had checked up on it two weeks ago as the rooms held to many memories for her. She had spent some time looking at his clothes and books and personal effects, trying to come to terms with the fact that he would never return to wear them or read them or use them again.

  As soon as she opened the door she realised that since her previous visit Philip’s house had been searched thoroughly. It had not been ransacked and there was no sign that anything had been stolen, but her inspection revealed that every drawer had been opened, the contents removed and put back in a slightly different way that was immediately apparent to someone who had spent so much time there. The pictures on the walls were no longer hanging quite straight while the toiletry items in the bathroom, some hers, some his, were arranged in neat groups on the shelves and on the corner of the bath.

  She wondered if her own organisation had carried out the search or if it had been the work of the Americans. She wondered what they were looking for, and indeed if they had found it. Then she noticed that the tower case of his computer had been taken away.