Free The Gilgamesh Conspiracy by Jeffrey Fleming

weeks or so.’
    ‘Good, good. Now I’m sorry to be leaving so soon, but I do have some work to attend to.’ He glanced at the clock. ‘It’s at the Ministry, so a car will be coming to pick me up in ten minutes.’ He smiled and held Rashid by the shoulders. ‘It is good to see you again. You can tell me about your course, your life in England, when I return. How is Omar?’
    ‘He’s fine. He’ll be surprised when I tell him I’ve been at home.’
    His father frowned. ‘Mansour told me to expect you, but I’ve no idea why you’ve made this strange journey. Maybe you can tell me everything this evening.’
     
    The next day the family had breakfast together. Rashid had stayed up late last night with his parents explaining the extraordinary series of events that had brought him home. Ali’s advice was to never breathe a word about his journey to anyone else, which Rashid readily agreed to. Then they had chatted about life in England, the friends he had made and his university studies. His mother Tabitha had told him about his sister Farrah, now living with their relatives in Amman, and her prospects of marriage with the son of a family friend.
    This morning his father was unwilling to tell Rashid about his own work, but he was pleased to discuss his university life in England, Shakespeare and the contrasts between Arabic and English poetry. ‘I have invited Professor Khordi to visit us this evening,’ Ali announced. ‘He wants to hear about his old friend Professor Gilbert, and to learn your latest idioms. He has always been proud of his grasp of vernacular English. I’m sure you’ll confuse him with your student slang and modern idioms,’ he said with a smile. He rose from the table and hunted about for the case of papers he had to take in to the ministry and hurried out of the door.
    After breakfast Rashid spent some time looking through the books on his father’s shelves. Besides the collection of dictionaries, thesauri and encyclopaedias, his father had acquired a fair collection of English novels, both classical and modern and as he had hoped he found the novel “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad. He was required to hand in an essay to his tutor next month with his critique of the book. He took it off the shelf and began to flick through it to find the place he had reached when there was a bell from the outside gate and a loud knocking.  Rashid replaced the book and hurried out the front door and across the front garden and looked through the spy hole. A police car had pulled up outside and two armed officers were standing outside. Rashid unbolted the gate and opened it. ‘Yes?’
    ‘Are you Rashid Hamsin?’ asked the policeman, looking down at some papers and then at the bewildered young man.
    ‘Yes I am. Of course.’ He heard some rapid footsteps and Tabitha came up beside him.
    ‘What’s happening Rashid? Why have they come here?’ she asked in a trembling voice. ‘Has something happened to your father?’
    ‘We’ve just been told to bring Rashid Hamsin to the Foreign Ministry. There’s someone there who thinks he can help out with some kind of report,’ said the police officer. ‘I can’t tell you anything else.’
    ‘I’d better go then,’ said Rashid, trying for his mother’s sake to hide his anxiety. ‘I don’t expect I’ll be very long. Tell father where I am if he’s back home before me.’
    His mother nodded and watched her son being guided into the back seat of the police car. She gave him a little smile and a wave as the car drove off and then closed and bolted the door. Then she shuffled back towards the house weeping anxiously, hoping that her son would not join the list of mysteriously vanished young men that was murmured about in the bazaars of Baghdad.
     
    Rashid presumed he would be driven to Hakim Mansour’s office at the Foreign Ministry where he would be asked to describe his journey from England to Iraq in greater detail. He was alarmed when the car