The Gilgamesh Conspiracy

by Jeffrey Fleming

  ‘Oh shit!’ said Neil Samms as he saw the impact of the shovel on Parker’s head. Gerry whirled round and saw him walking around from the other side of the house. She glanced down at Parker’s gun which lay on the ground beside his outstretched fingers and then at the gun in Samms’ hand. ‘My time has come,’ she thought to herself. She wondered if she should make a frantic, hopeless attempt to dive down pick up the gun roll over and come up firing, but she knew that he would be ready for that. Despite the goofy grin he was a professional. His next words brought her intense relief.

  ‘I’m not going to kill you, so long as you do what I say. First I’m gonna make sure you don’t try anything stupid. Come and lie face down next to Parker with your hands above your head.’ He pointed at the corpse with the smashed skull. She lay down as commanded and then watched him bend down and drag Parker’s body so that it lay on top of her back. ‘Don’t let me see your hands move,’ he said. ‘If I do I’ll use the shovel on them.’

  Gerry watched him pick up Parker’s gun, check it was safe and then tuck it in his belt. Then she heard a groan. He was still alive!

  ‘Dan!’ she called out.

  ‘Gerry, I’ve been shot,’ he mumbled.

  She wanted to push herself up, throw off the corpse and run over to him. Instead she decided to plead. ‘Samms, please, can I take a look at him…please.’

  ‘Well, whaddya know,’ he replied with his familiar sneer. ‘The bitch is showing some emotion, or at least a fair imitation. Yeah you can take a look at him. But move real slow, or I’ll blow your head off.’

  Gerry scrambled out from under the corpse and knelt beside him. ‘Ok Dan, wake up wake up Dan wake up, damn it wake up!’ She saw his eyeballs twitch about under his lids and then he opened his eyes.’

  ‘Hi Gerry, I’ve been shot; it damn well hurts.’

  ‘Well there’s nothing wrong with your brain, then. Now you’ve been shot through the chest, but it must’ve missed your heart,’ she said whilst unbuttoning his shirt and tugging it aside. She inspected the entry wound below the collar bone, a small hole surrounded by bruised and bloodied flesh. ‘Can you roll on to your side?’ He bent his leg up and groaned as he pushed himself slowly over until Gerry could see his back. She grimaced as she saw the exit wound, larger and ragged but not as traumatic as a hole torn by an expanding bullet. ‘Ok it’s gone through and if you don’t feel too bad I reckon you’ve just got ribs and lung damage.’

  ‘Oh fucking hell!’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Is that Parker and Samms? How did they find us?’

  ‘Samms I need to bandage him, stop the bleeding. I want to use Parker’s shirt.’

  ‘Ok, you can do that. Get on with it quick.’

  Gerry pulled the shirt and the leather belt off the corpse. ‘Can I sit you up a minute?’

  Dan struggled to a seating position and she used the belt to hold the shirt around his chest. He gasped in pain as she secured the belt, mumbled ‘broken rib’ and lay back down.

  ‘Ok, now we’ve got to get him to a hospital,’ said Gerry.

  ‘Dream on, bitch!’ Samms replied. ‘I know there’s something hidden in this house; you came to find it. We came here to take it.’

  ‘But you don’t know what it is?’

  ‘I’m sure he did.’ He jerked his chin towards Parker, ‘but not me.’

  ‘Just as well, otherwise you’d probably end up dead, just like everyone else.’ She gazed for a moment at Dan. ‘Are you ok?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ll be alright. How did you track us down?’ he asked.

  ‘You were followed from Rutba, and then tracked by drone in Baghdad.’

  ‘By a drone?’ Gerry asked with a frown. ‘I didn’t know they could do that.’

  ‘Ok, enough of the chat.’ Samms pointed to the shovel. ‘You just went off to get that, so I guess what we’re looking for is buried out here. That’s why it wasn’t found before.’

  ‘You mean it was you guys who ransacked the house?’

  ‘Yeah, I think it was done five years ago. The family’s not lived here since, although they’ve been back from time to time to check on it.’

  ‘Who in the family?’

  ‘The wife and daughter. The son’s dead. The father…well you know about him. Ok, you’d better get digging, and who knows if you find it quickly, we might have time to get Hall to the hospital before he croaks.’

  Gerry picked up the shovel and then plunged it down, gasping from the pain in her ribs.

  ‘What’s the matter with you now?’ Samms asked.

  ‘Flesh wound,’ she said. She untucked her shirt and looked at her side. Blood was oozing from a ragged cut two inches long.

  ‘Just a graze; you’ll be alright. Sooner you’ve done, sooner you can get a sticking plaster.’

  The ground was hard and took an hour of toil until Gerry reached a depth of about two feet. The shovel clanged on to metal. Ignoring the pain in her side she dug with renewed energy and soon unearthed a black plastic garbage bag with something metal inside. She put down the shovel and heaved the object clear of the soil. She placed it carefully on the ground in front of Dan’s feet.

  ‘Open up the bag and take out whatever’s inside,’ Samms ordered.

  She discovered a corroded metal tin with some Arabic writing and a faded, discoloured picture of a palm tree and a bunch of fruit. ‘Shall I open it?’ she offered.

  ‘Why not?’

  Inside was further plastic wrapping protecting a passport, a sheet of paper written in Arabic script and two small bundles of money, one turned out to be US Dollars and the other the Iraqi currency from years gone by, on which the image of the dead dictator was prominent. She opened up the passport and immediately recognised her companion on the life raft, or a much younger version. ‘This is Lebanese and it looks like Yusuf Ali Hamsin. Do you want to have a look at it?’ She took a pace towards him and he instantly aimed the gun at her.

  ‘Don’t you come any closer than that!’ he snapped.

  Gerry cursed under her breath. Samms had correctly assumed that she had been hoping to get within reach of him.

  ‘Read out that letter,’ he ordered.

  ‘My beloved husband,’ she read, ‘as you planned we have left our house. Rashid has returned to England to continue his studies. Tomorrow I am leaving for Amman where I will stay with my brother and there I will see our daughter and tell her what has been happening. I am leaving your passport here and enough money to enable you to make the journey to Amman. I pray that we will meet up there soon and that all this madness will soon be over.

  Your loving and dutiful wife Tabitha.’

  ‘Ok leave the stuff beside Hall and then take up with the shovel.’

  Gerry continued digging for another few minutes, then she dropped the shovel and stood up with her hands clutching her aching side. ‘I don’t think we’re going to find anything else,’ she said.

  ‘Keep digging,’ he insisted.

  ‘I really don’t see there’s any point. If anything was…’

  ‘Keep digging you piece of shit,’ he snarled or I’ll blow your fucking brains out and bury you in this hole.’

  ‘I think she’s right Neil,’ another voice spoke, ‘you’re not gonna find anything.’ Gerry looked up towards the section of the wall over which she had clambered.

  ‘Hey is that you Colonel?’ Samms asked, just as Gerry identified the speaker.

  ‘Jasper White,’ she muttered.

  White swung his legs over the top of the wall and jumped down into the garden. He glanced at Vincent Parker’s corpse and then knelt down beside Dan Hall. ‘How you doing son?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve been…better,’ Dan gasped out.

  ‘We need to get him to a hospital,’ said Gerry.

  ‘Quit whining, would you?’ said Samms, ‘you don’t really believe you two are leaving here do you?’

  ‘Shut up Neil,’ said White. ‘Well Gerry, it seems like the search for the Gilgamesh documen
t ends here. The only remaining question is to tie up a few loose ends.’

  ‘I say we finish them off here,’ said Samms, leave them for the Iraqis to find.’

  ‘Give me your gun Neil,’ White ordered.

  ‘You gonna do it yourself? Sure, here you go.’ He handed it over to White, who gave the weapon a quick but thorough check. ‘Glock GL23, standard FBI issue,’ he said. ‘And that one I can see tucked into your belt; could you lend me that one too?’ White asked. Samms complied.

  ‘Sig Sauer P250,’ he murmured.

  Gerry shuddered as she watched him give the second gun an inspection before tucking it into his belt. Then he looked up at her.

  ‘Would you go sit down…next to Hall, if you don’t mind?’

  Gerry backed slowly away trying to keep her eyes fixed on his rather than at the gun he had waved casually towards her. She sat down next to Dan and felt him reach for her. She felt a ridiculous moment of embarrassment as she clutched his hand. ‘Oh shit he’s going to kill me!’ her mind sang out, ‘and he’s going to kill Dan I’m going to die here, why did I come here at all I don’t want to die I want to live and I want Dan to live!’ She saw White glance at Samms and then back at her. ‘Oh god he’s going to do it now!’ She gripped Dan’s hand tighter. ‘I should have stayed in prison not gone on this useless bloody trip. I’m sorry Dan, oh shit.’ She closed her eyes and moaned very quietly.

  ‘Now Gerry, what you wanted to do was find out who killed your guy Philip all those years ago, right?’ White asked.

  It took several seconds for her terrified mind to process the question. Maybe he wasn’t going to kill her yet. Maybe she would live for a few more minutes. She opened her eyes and stared at him warily, wondering where he would go with this question. She swallowed hard and managed to answer fairly normally. ‘Yes I do, and I also want to know who it was that put me in prison.’

  ‘And I guess that you hold me at least partly responsible for that?’

  ‘It wasn’t me who killed Dean Furness’ said Gerry, she shook her head. ‘I didn’t do it.’

  ‘Ok well I reckon the two people who killed Philip Barrett are already dead,’ said White, ‘and you killed them.’

  Gerry managed to think more clearly. ‘Oh, do you mean…Carson and Parker?’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, that’s what I figured. But when it comes to Dean Furness, I don’t reckon it was you who killed him.’

  ‘No it wasn’t.’

  ‘Who do you reckon it was then?’ he asked.

  ‘I wish…’

  ‘Neil, who do you reckon it was?’ White turned round and aimed the gun at Neil Samms.

  ‘I really have no idea…’

  ‘You shot Dean Furness when he went to Gerry’s apartment.’

  ‘No I didn’t.’

  ‘Oh come on Neill, if I was gonna kill you for it I would have it done it years back when I found out,’ he said with a smile, ‘After all you were only acting under orders, weren’t you. I just want Gerry here to know who it was.’

  ‘Oh well yeah ok, it was me.’ He gave a small grin, revealing his gold tooth. ‘I was ordered by General Bruckner.’

  The Glock gave a sharp crack. Samms gave an anguished gasp, staggered back and grabbed hold of his upper arm.

  ‘Hey Colonel, you shot me!’

  ‘Yeah, and I’m going to kill you Samms, I’m fed up with your stupid grin.’ He dropped his aim and shot Samms through the knee. He gave a surprisingly high-pitched screech and collapsed to the ground.

  ‘You’re gonna die Samms, for killing Dean Furness,’ said White. He picked up the shovel and inspected the bloody blade, then looked at Gerry. ‘Do you want to finish him off?’ he asked, offering the shovel towards her. She stared at him, transfixed. She felt Dan’s grip tightening on her hand and briefly shook her head. White made as if to hit Samms with the shovel and he cried out again, and then he began a pitiful moaning which got louder as White slowly aimed the pistol towards his head and then stopped when White pulled the trigger. He looked at the corpse for a moment and then turned to Gerry.

  ‘You’d better show me where your car is parked; you need to get Dan to a hospital.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Gerry stared at Rashid’s garden gate remembering how she had helped Jasper White drag Vince Parker’s corpse alongside Neil Samms. White had then told her to drive off. She had looked back and seen him pouring petrol over the corpses and as she had climbed into the car next to Dan she had heard the whuffing noise as he had set them alight. Now she opened the car door and climbed out carefully while holding her hand briefly to her painful ribs. The doctor who had tended her bullet wound had assured her the gash was clean and given her what he hoped was a broad spectrum antibiotic injection and some tablets, but admitted that he did not know if the drugs were genuine or not. He had urged her to take Dan to the American base where he would be assured of good treatment and Dan had insisted he should go there too. Gerry had argued with him for a while but the doctor had said he could operate but he had no anaesthetics and if she really wanted Dan to live she should stop wasting time.

  She sighed and walked over to the gate and pressed the bell push, just in case Rashid had been foolish enough to return already. There was no sound of an inner door being opened, and no response when she banged on the door with her fist either. She looked up and by the light of the moon she noted the strands of barbed wire across the top of the gateway lintel. She returned to her car and then drove it up next to the gate. She pulled out a rear seat cushion and stood on the roof and put the cushion on top of the wire. She climbed over the gate and jumped down the other side, wincing as the landing jarred her ribs.

  Then she had a sudden sense that she was not alone. She turned around slowly and was confronted by a woman wrapped up in a gown with a shawl over her head and her arms folded in front of her.

  ‘I think you must be Sandra, or Gerry,’ the woman spoke to her in good but heavily accented English. ‘I am Tabitha Hamsin. You had better come inside.’ Gerry followed her into the house. ‘Come into the kitchen,’ said Tabitha. ‘It’s not so comfortable but I find women always talk to one another most openly in the kitchen, don’t you agree?’

  ‘Er…I don’t know,’ Gerry mumbled. Perhaps in the kitchen, maybe down the pub, possibly in the office canteen. Or in a prison cell. ‘I suppose so,’ she added.

  ‘Here, take a seat.’ Gerry sat on a chair at the big wooden table and watched her hostess. Her face was lined but she was a handsome woman with very long dark hair shot through with white streaks. She was slightly over-weight but straight backed and elegant. Gerry recalled that she was twenty three years older than Rashid so that made her in her mid-fifties.

  ‘Would you like some coffee, or a cold drink?’ she asked.

  ‘Coffee please, milk no sugar.’

  Nothing further was said until the two of them were seated opposite one another. ‘Excuse me I’m going to have a cigarette,’ said Tabitha. She pulled an ashtray across the table. ‘Do you want one?’

  ‘No thanks,’ Gerry replied. She watched Tabitha light up and take a drag.

  ‘Now you’d better tell me your story,’ she said.

  ‘How far back do you want me to go?’

  ‘You can go back as far as you like but maybe start with why you kidnapped my son. Perhaps you can explain why you are so careless towards other people?’

  ‘I’m not careless.’

  ‘I didn’t mean careless; I meant callous.’ Tabitha saw her guest appear to flinch at the accusation. ‘Perhaps we should speak in Arabic. Rashid tells me you are remarkably good.’

  Gerry spoke for nearly an hour and a half. She explained why she had kidnapped Rashid; how she had become pregnant; how she had helped him escape; ended up in prison; given up her baby for adoption; how she had been released and been sent on her journey to the USA; why she had met Ali Hamsin in Guantanamo Bay and how they had ended up on a life raft together; how he had died; why she and Dan Hall had come
to Amman and then finally to Baghdad; how Samms and Parker had died; her failure to find the Gilgamesh document and her return to Amman.

  When she had completed her story she stretched her arm out across the table and rested her head on it. Tabitha stared down at her and they were both silent for a minute.

  ‘What a miserable life you have led,’ Tabitha said eventually.

  Gerry looked up at her and then sat upright. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What have you got to show for all this pain and sorrow? The only time you seem to have been happy was when you were in prison; I’m surprised you wanted to leave. The only close woman friend you’ve had seems to have been Angela who shared your prison cell and the only man who you loved and who loved you was this Philip who died.’

  ‘That’s not true, Dan Hall loves me.’

  ‘Yet you left him with the Americans who you think will probably send him to prison, assuming he lives.’

  ‘We hoped that if we found this Gilgamesh document then it would give us some leverage. For one thing I wanted to be able to guarantee your family’s safety, and also I want to…oh, it doesn’t matter now.’

  ‘Do you think it would have given you this leverage?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Gerry sighed. ‘I don’t really know exactly what the document said, if the threat of revealing its contents would have been enough.’

  ‘The document said that the United States Army would stop short of Baghdad. Qusay Hussein would provide the whereabouts of his father Saddam Hussein and his brother Uday Hussein. The two of them would be arrested or killed along with various other members of the regime. In exchange Qusay Hussein would be allowed to take over power in Iraq. The United States would not object if he became President for his lifetime. In addition the United States and the United Kingdom would raise no objections if Qusay’s son were to succeed him as President in the future.