‘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 pro
file 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 c
an 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.
The Gilgamesh Conspiracy Page 21