General Rashood had been curiously out of touch with the outside world for almost the entire month of July. In particular, he had been out of touch with the United States of America. And since the death of Matt Barker, Shakira too had little or no idea what America was thinking with regard to her crime, and whether anyone had connected her activities with Admiral Morgan.
No one from the Hamas organization had dared to put in a cell-phone call to either of them, and E-mail was impossible since neither Ravi nor Shakira was traveling with a computer. The general’s regular contact in the United States, Ahmed, the cultural attaché at the Jordanian embassy in Washington, was aware of the furor Shakira had left behind in Brockhurst, but had been able only to inform the Hamas High Command in Gaza.
And since, at the time, General Rashood was deep underwater in the Mediterranean Sea, it was a) nearly impossible, b) unwise, and c) totally unnecessary to risk satellite detection, so they sent not a screed of information about his wife’s antics on the other side of the world.
Thus Ravi was operating totally in the dark. He had no idea whether anyone in the USA understood that Admiral Morgan might be in danger. Shakira had, of course, told him precisely what had happened, but she had been far away from Brockhurst even before they discovered Matt Barker’s body. She was on the other side of the world before the Washington press corps finally switched on to her absence.
The questions haunted the general. What level of security was being employed for the admiral’s trip? How many agents from the USA would accompany him? What did the Brits think? Had they been requested to provide extra security? Would Admiral Morgan be surrounded by CIA hard men? Did Scotland Yard have their typical shoot-on-sight team awaiting his arrival?
And, perhaps above all, how long was the admiral staying at the Ritz? How long did Ravi have? If there was a foul-up, where would he and Shakira next locate Admiral and Kathy Morgan?
Ravi could only find answers in the broadest possible sense. In his opinion, Shakira would most certainly have been found out. The FBI would have interviewed anyone in Brockhurst who knew her, and that would most certainly include Mrs. Gallagher. Yes, there would be heavy security surrounding the admiral. And yes, the CIA would almost certainly have been in touch with the British authorities concerning the protection of President Bedford’s closest personal adviser, the man who had put him in power.
In Ravi ’s mind, the worst possible time to attempt the assassination would be the moment of the admiral’s arrival. If the security was anything like as ironclad as he thought, it would be impossible to strike and then get away. There would be police everywhere, probably outriders on motorcycles, and it would be early morning, the streets of London not yet busy. Ravi did not relish the thought of being pursued across a near-deserted Berkeley Square by mounted officers, sirens wailing.
Arnold ’s arrival was important, but only as an observation point. He knew roughly what the admiral looked like from newspaper photographs, and he knew what Kathy looked like from newspapers and magazines. But he anticipated some kind of a mob scene when the party arrived at the Ritz, and there would be confusion and jostling, with a lot of people on high alert.
It would be fatal to attempt a shot, miss, hit someone else, and instantly find every building surrounded by London ’s tough and efficient police force. There would also be no question of a second shot.
For a visit like this, Ravi considered it likely that the police would insist on searching and inspecting all office buildings that overlooked the Ritz. The fact was, he knew, nothing would be too much trouble, because if anything happened to Arnold Morgan in London, the police and security services would most definitely get the blame.
ARNOLD MORGAN ASSASSINATED Why, oh why, was security so lax?
Ravi could imagine the bleating of the media. And he thus anticipated heavy police activity all around the Ritz Hotel both today, Monday, and in the early morning tomorrow, when the admiral was due to show up. Those were the times he must hold his nerve, and if necessary allow himself to be interviewed as the Finnish marketing accountant going quietly about his business.
They were not, however, times for a head shot at Arnold Morgan. That would wait. Ravi would hit the admiral the first time he and Kathy left the hotel. Because then, if they were just going shopping or sightseeing, there would be a far more relaxed atmosphere. On a scale of one to ten, security would be at ten for the arrival, maybe only six for future excursions from the hotel.
It was, however, critical that Ravi be in close attendance when that motorcade pulled in at 7:30 in the morning. He needed to see the admiral through a telescopic sight, and he needed to identify Kathy and assess the weight of the security detail.
And right here, Ravi did have a further problem. He did not wish to arrive at his office soon after 7 A.M. and be noted by Reggie as the first man into the building. That would draw attention. Besides, Arnold ’s flight might be early, as transatlantic planes often were when coming from west to east with a tailwind.
He would need to be in position the previous night, which would mean evacuating the embassy this afternoon and bringing everything he needed with him, all crammed into his new sports bag. Shakira would stay one more night with the Syrians and then meet him. It did not occur to the Hamas general that he might be captured.
The doormen at the Dover Street office worked two separate shifts. This week, Reggie was 7 A.M. to 2 P.M. Don came in from 2 P.M. ’til ten. They did not keep personal records of each tenant’s comings and goings, because in this central area people were always going out and coming back.
But like most good city-center doormen, they usually knew who was in and who was out, especially in a relatively small building like this with only thirty tenants maximum. This meant Ravi would need to be on station at 1 P.M. Reggie would see him come in, but Don would not know Ravi was in the building unless he emerged from his office.
At noon, he and Shakira had a light lunch at the embassy, just salad and fillet of sole with fruit juice. Ravi had packed his duffel bag, taking only what he needed. There was little in it. Shakira would have the embassy dispose of the clothes he was not taking with him. The cooks had prepared him a pack of sandwiches wrapped in tin foil, plus a flask of coffee and a couple of bananas. Finally, he put on his loose dark blue tracksuit and sneakers from Harrods, and fitted on his blond wig, trimmed moustache, goatee, and heavy spectacles. Then he slipped his brown leather case into the duffel bag.
He and Shakira prayed together in the bedroom before he left, facing to the east, toward Piccadilly Circus. They intoned the words together… I have turned my face only toward the Supreme Being who has created the skies and the earth… to You be glory, and with this praise I begin this prayer. Allah is the most auspicious name. You are exalted and none other than you is worthy of worship-
Guide us on the straight path
The path of those on whom is thy favor
… Light upon Light
God guides whom He will, to His Light…
Ravi said good-bye to Shakira and boarded an embassy car, which took him on the short journey to Dover Street. The driver dropped him right on Piccadilly, and Ravi walked the last two hundred yards. He pushed open the doors and said hello to Reggie, who looked up and said: “’Afternoon, Mr. Fretheim. Been out jogging?”
Ravi smiled and replied, “Not yet. But I might give it a go later.”
“That’s the spirit, sir. Keep the old heart pumping.”
Ravi took the elevator up to his office, let himself in, locked the door, and settled down for a long wait. He drew down the Venetian blinds but set the angle of the laths to allow him to see the street. At 2 P.M., he was in position and watched Reggie cross the main road at the traffic light and head for Green Park Underground station. The new doorman, Don, did not know Ravi was in the building.
The afternoon passed slowly. Ravi sat in his chair and had a brief nap. He did not use his cell phone and he did not turn on a light. No one phoned him and no one came to the office door. The evening was light, and every half hour Ravi spent time watching the main steps of the Ritz Hotel. By 7 P.M., he realized there was one action he did not want Admiral Morgan to take, and that was to walk down against the right-hand rail, because if anyone walked with him, on his left, that would obscure the view, obscure the opportunity for a clean shot to the head.
As he sat alone up on the fourth floor, Ravi bolstered his own psyche by revisiting the evil that Admiral Morgan had perpetrated upon the jihadists just this year. He sat and pondered the known brutality of Guantánamo Bay. And he wondered about his friends, in particular about Ramon Salman, the Hamas lieutenant who had made the fateful phone call to the house in Bab Touma Street on the night of the Boston airport bombing last January.
Was Ramon in Guantánamo? And how about Reza Aghani, the ambitious young Hamas hitman who had carried the bomb into the airport? Ravi knew he had been shot and captured by a Boston cop, and he also knew of the arrest of Mohammed Rahman, the Palm Beach baggage handler. Were they all in Guantánamo Bay? And had one of them, under torture, handed over his own address in Damascus to the Americans?
The image of Shakira, sobbing, covered in blood, terrified, in the backyard of the house stood stark before him. And his hatred of the West welled up in his mind. What right had they to bomb a street in Syria just because they disliked the occupant of a house? Who did they think they were, trampling over the rights of Middle Eastern citizens? All the trouble had been caused by the West and by the Americans’ insatiable demand for oil.
And at the heart of every problem the freedom fighters of Islam had suffered in the past few years stood the malevolent figure of Admiral Arnold Morgan. Even his own people were enraged by him. He, Ravi, had read the American newspaper cuttings that proved it.
His mission had the blessing of Allah. General Rashood believed that. He also believed that if he should be killed in action, he too would join the martyrs who walked across the bridge to the sound of the three trumpets, into the open arms of God.
Ravi believed he was a Holy Warrior, on a holy mission to rid his people of their greatest enemy. He must not fail: the eyes of Allah were upon him. The Prophet Mohammed was gazing down, willing him forward, as Mohammed himself had gone forward, fourteen centuries previously. For Ravi, failure was unthinkable. He was the Chosen One, the highly trained warrior for whom this mission was nothing less than destiny.
He stood before the window and ate one of his bananas. The light in London was fading now, just before 9 P.M. One hour hence, Don would leave and lock the building behind him. Neither doorman ever bothered to check if anyone was still working; and on the rare occasion when anyone was still there, the tenants had keys and knew to lock the door behind them.
Midnight came, and Ravi was dozing quietly in his chair, slumped on the desk, his head cradled in his arms. The building was eerily quiet, and the Hamas C-in-C sensed there was no one else in residence. In the quiet of the city, he heard Big Ben chime in the distance. He unlocked the door and tiptoed across to the bathroom. In his pocket he carried a glass paperweight, because if he did encounter anyone in these offices in the dead of night, he would have no alternative but to kill them instantly and haul the body into the safety of his office. Kill them, just as he had killed Jerry O’Connell in County Cork.
Ravi, with his Middle Eastern heritage, had a very dark beard, and he had decided to shave. He locked the bathroom door, took off his tracksuit top and placed it along the base of the door, and switched on the light. The bathroom had no window or outside wall, and he ran the hot water for as little time as possible. Then he peeled off his moustache and beard, shaved, and carefully placed them back on at the conclusion of the operation.
Back in his office, he once more sat in the dark, facing up calmly to the long wait through the small hours of the morning. It was 7 P.M. in Washington, D.C.
Ahmed, the cultural attaché at the Jordanian embassy, sat quietly in a rear seat in the airport lounge, watching the first-class passengers board American Airlines Flight 163 for London. He kept his head down, buried in the Washington Post, but over the top of the newspaper he could see Admiral Arnold Morgan and Mrs. Kathy Morgan, surrounded by four obvious Secret Service men, walking toward the door to the jetway.
They were in a separate group from the regular first-class passengers, boarding first. Ahmed noted that two of the Secret Service men went with the admiral and his wife, one at the front, one at the rear. The other two remained behind, standing with the ticket girls, glancing over their shoulders at certain passports. Not until the flight was completely boarded did these two heavyweights walk through and take their seats across the aisle from Arnold and Kathy.
Ahmed had no idea of the seating arrangements on the plane, and that was not his business. He waited until the doors were closed, and then moved away to a viewing area from where he could see, from behind glass, the aircraft take off. He watched the American Boeing 747 back away from the jetway, and then saw it taxi away to the end of the runway.
Ten minutes passed before he saw it again, racing forward and then lifting off into the evening skies. He took out his cell phone and punched in a number in London. When the military attaché at the Syrian embassy answered, he just said: AA163 took off 1846. Four bruisers with seadog.
Ravi ’s cell phone vibrated in his tracksuit pocket. He pulled it out and answered. A voice just said, “They’ve taken off, sir, 1846, four agents with them. ETA London Heathrow 0626.” The line went dead and the Hamas commander decided to have his dinner, since at last he was feeling hungry rather than churned up with the tension of not knowing where the admiral and Kathy were.
As it happened, things had gone precisely to plan. Kathy Morgan had delivered Kipper as promised to her mother’s house in Brockhurst, and the robust King Charles spaniel had lived up to Arnold’s description of him to the letter. He came charging through the front door, fell joyfully upon his old buddy Charlie, and capsized Emily’s perfectly laid tray-cups, saucers, milk, sugar, boiling-hot coffeepot, and cookies-all over the living-room floor. As Arnold had observed, that dog’s as silly as a goddamned sheep.
Eventually Kathy got away and met the admiral right on time at the airport. All Ravi had to do was wait for their arrival, and then for their first shopping expedition into the West End of London. Then it would be over swiftly.
Feeling much less frustrated, Ravi pulled on his driving gloves so as not to leave fingerprints, because he would not be taking the coffee flask with him. He ate his chicken sandwiches thoughtfully and sipped the coffee from the wide lid of the flask. He saved enough for one more cup, and also saved a couple of sandwiches.
And the hours slipped away. In the still of the night, Ravi heard Big Ben chime every fifteen minutes, with the massive main bell resonating on the hour. Two o’clock, three o’clock, four o’clock-and then at a quarter to five there was a minor commotion.
Ravi was half asleep, but he heard the sudden, short, sharp wail of a police siren, two police sirens. He peered out through his closed Venetian blinds and could see the spinning blue lights reflecting in the street-level shop windows. So far as he could see, there was a police cruiser parked on either side of Dover Street, Piccadilly end, right outside the front door to his building.
He had never heard, or even sensed it, before, but he somehow knew people were entering the building. He packed into his duffel bag the remains of his dinner, the two small sandwiches, and the flask. He slipped his briefcase into the wide central drawer of his desk and moved to a position behind his office door, which was locked.
The police were obviously in the building, and he heard, or certainly felt, the dull thud down below as the main front door, between the glass swing doors and the street, was slammed shut. He must have heard it before, but this morning it sounded amazingly loud. He could hear a succession of loud thumps from the lower floors, voices, shouting, growing nearer all the time.
Then he heard Reggie’s voice from almost outside his office. “There’s no one here, boys, you can trust me on that.” Then he added, “Don would have checked the building before he left.” This was of course palpably untrue. Neither doorman had ever checked the building before leaving.
The banging continued, and Ravi guessed the police were knocking hard on every office door. There were intermittent shouts of POLICE! ANYONE THERE? Occasionally Reggie could be heard calling someone’s name-“Mr. Marks-it’s Reggie here, just checking the building-no worries.”
The footsteps grew closer, and finally, shortly after five o’clock, there were three sharp, loud bangs on Ravi ’s door. The terrorist chief froze against the wall.
ANYONE THERE? POLICE!
Ravi knew he could have made a different choice, left the door open, lights on, and been sitting at his desk working. But that would have meant he’d been there all night. Bad idea. Ravi had decided to throw the dice and gamble on the police checking, but not opening, every door in the building.
He heard them banging on the office next door. He heard them go into the bathroom where four hours earlier he had shaved. Then he heard them climbing the stairs to the next floor, and he checked his watch. It was 0516, and he thought about the admiral for the millionth time this night. Seventy minutes from landing. That would put him somewhere over Ireland right now.
He could still hear the footsteps above him, and finally he heard them coming back down the stairs. He heard Reggie say, “Well, I did tell you the place would be empty. Anyway, it’s good you’ve got your blokes in position.”
As the footsteps continued below him, he caught one of the policemen saying “Thanks for coming in, Reggie.”
And he heard the Cockney doorman’s reply: “You can pick me up in a squad car any morning you like, old mate. ’Cept the bloody neighbors’ll think I’ve been nicked!”
The footsteps died away. And there was but one thought in the ex-SAS major’s mind: there were fewer people going downstairs than there had been going up. Somewhere, up above him, the police had left two or three men behind. Ravi stayed absolutely still, waiting for more footsteps descending the stairs. Nothing.
He tried to dismiss it from his mind. But he could not. In Ravi’s opinion, there were at least two, maybe three, London policemen, probably marksmen, stationed on the roof of this building, watching the main entrance of the Ritz Hotel, watching for the sudden appearance of an assassin, a man who might burst out of the crowd and fire a shot at Admiral Morgan, just as that crazed kid John Hinckley had done to President Reagan outside the Hilton Hotel in Washington in 1981.
Ravi ’s assessment was accurate. Scotland Yard had marksmen on the roof of every building that overlooked the main entrance to the Ritz. They were not exactly SWAT teams, with heavy machine guns and missile launchers, ready to repel attack from the air. But they were top-class police snipers who would be unlikely to miss, firing directly down at a would-be assassin.
Lt. Commander Ramshawe had put just enough of a scare into the security authorities for them to install a very serious steel ring of protection around the admiral. But, in Jimmy’s opinion, it was not nearly enough to take care of a top international assassin, the kind of high-level, trained terrorist who he believed would imminently strike at the best friend of the President of the United States of America.
The Dover Street office block again went quiet. Big Ben chimed six times. Ravi went to his leather briefcase and took out the telescopic sight to his rifle, training it on the deserted front steps of the Ritz, staring through the crosshairs, imagining the dimension of his task later this day.
The transatlantic passenger jets were beginning to come in now; staring south through the window, Ravi could easily discern the flight pattern as they came in, banking steeply over East London and the city and then tracking the River Thames along the south bank, out past Hammersmith, Chiswick, and into Heathrow, directly into the prevailing southwest wind.
The sun, just rising now, glinted on the fuselages as one by one they dropped down toward the world’s busiest airport. Northwest Airlines, Air Canada, British Airways, Delta, Virgin, American, line astern at the end of their Atlantic crossing. Ravi tried to spot incoming AA163, and at 0615 he thought he saw the sunrise lighting up the entire length of a Boeing 747. He guessed that was the reflection on the familiar bright silver surface of American Airlines.
He may or may not have been correct, but his phone signaled an incoming call that relayed to him only two words: “American landed.”
Just thirty minutes later, at 0645, the phone rang again and a voice said: “Seadog plus bruisers. Two U.S. embassy cars plus two police cars left Terminal 3.”
What the man from the Syrian embassy did not know was that four police outriders, on motorcycles, had joined the four-car motorcade along the slip road to the M-4.
The order of the convoy was now two motorcycles, side by side, riding shotgun in the lead; then one police car, containing four armed Metropolitan police officers; then the first U.S. embassy car, containing the admiral and Kathy, plus two armed CIA men in the front seats; then the second embassy car, containing Arnold’s regular three armed Secret Service agents and the new man, George Kallan; then the second police car, with four more armed policemen; then the final two outriders bringing up the rear. No sirens sounded, and the only flashing lights were on the leading motorcycles.
The convoy ran swiftly into West London. They were in moderate traffic, which was not yet into the eight o’clock gridlock. And there were no holdups whatsoever until they reached the big junction where Cromwell Road meets the Earls Court Road. Then everything slowed down.
But as soon as they crossed that junction, the outriders opened up their sirens, just short sharp whoops that caused the very savvy British drivers to ease over to the left, giving the convoy an almost free run into Knightsbridge.
They swung right down Beauchamp Place and ran straight through to Belgrave Square. Shakira, looking through her bedroom window, saw the motorcycles and cars come streaming past and guessed immediately who was in the black one with the darkened windows. But she thought not of the archterrorist-buster Arnold Morgan, but of his wife, her friend Emily’s daughter, the very beautiful Washington socialite, who only the previous day must have delivered Kipper to Brockhurst.
Shakira was unaccountably overwhelmed by a feeling of sadness, not so much for the mayhem and murder her husband was about to inflict on that family, but for her own lost life, the absence of normality, of calm and happiness. Perhaps Ravi would gun down Arnold Morgan later today. But Shakira was assailed by the fear that wherever the admiral fell, Ravi too must lie someday.
As she turned away from the disappearing convoy, tears trickled down the exquisite face of Shakira Rashood.
… Light upon Light,
God guides whom he will to His Light…
The convoy ran south out of Belgrave Square and then turned east, toward the endless high wall of Buckingham Palace. They sped past the Royal Mews and the Queen’s Picture Gallery, and then swerved around onto the Mall, still at a fast speed.
They passed Clarence House, where Prince Charles lives, and at the next traffic light made a left, past St. James’s Palace, and then straight up St. James’s Street heading north.
Just before the Piccadilly traffic light, the outriders opened up their sirens again and made a sudden left turn along Bennett Street. With the convoy past, two London policemen, each with a submachine gun slung across his shoulder, stepped off the sidewalk and dragged three traffic cones across the entrance to the street.
At the Blue Posts pub, desolate at this time in the morning, the convoy swung right onto narrow Arlington Street and came to a halt right outside the Ritz. The two lead motorbike cops drove several yards beyond the main door, as did the first police car, which left Arnold Morgan’s armed embassy chauffeur to pull up directly at the flight of six white stone steps.
The American security guards were out and on the sidewalk in a split second. The outriders deployed strategically, still on their bikes, engines running. Right now, it was impossible to gain entrance to the street from either end. Arnold ’s four guards went immediately to the left rear door and clustered around as the great man disembarked.
Two of them mustered to his right, the other two to the left. Four Metropolitan policemen made the same formation around Kathy as she exited the right rear door and made her way around the front of the car to join the admiral. Thus, eight guards formed a kind of armed rugby scrum around the couple as they walked up the steps into the hotel.
High in his office, General Rashood held his finely tuned telescopic sight to his left eye. He could see everything with immense clarity. A head shot on the admiral would have been as near to impossible as making no difference. There were just so many people. Aside from the eight-man scrum that surrounded the American visitors, there were also two doormen. At one point, Ravi counted twelve people on the steps. The two guards who walked closely on the admiral’s right side almost obscured him. Which was, of course, the general idea.
Ravi estimated that there had been two “windows,” of perhaps two seconds each, when he might have risked a shot. But this was very, very tight. The greatest marksman in the world might have missed and hit someone else.
Ravi Rashood might very well have been the greatest marksman in the world, but from the scene playing out below him, he would not have dared to pull the trigger. It was too difficult a target, there were too many police and security officers, and the odds against success were just too great. There would be better times.
He did have some kind of a view of the admiral, who was not a tall man but was powerfully built, immaculately tailored in a suit from nearby Savile Row and an Annapolis tie. Ravi could see his steel-gray hair, and for the briefest moment had the side of his head in the telescopic sight. He had no wish to kill Kathy, and merely noted her alongside her husband. She was wearing a dark blue suit, and her red hair was loose on her shoulders.
Even from his fourth-floor redoubt, Ravi could see that she was a very beautiful woman, and he wished her no harm. He did not give one single thought to the fact that he was about to break her heart and wreck her life, all with one of Mr. Kumar’s exploding 7.62mm bullets.
Within moments, the entire crowd had dispersed through the revolving doors. The police hung around for a while, and then the outriders pulled off into Piccadilly and turned left toward Hyde Park Corner. Both police cars pulled away and headed east to Piccadilly. The embassy cars remained in place outside the hotel, engines running, drivers at the wheel.
Inside the hotel, two security guards accompanied the admiral and Kathy to their suite. Both men remained on duty outside in the corridor. There were two doors from the corridor, one of which led into the small drawing room, with the bedroom off to the left. The other led directly into the bedroom and had not been opened for about forty years. This was a suite much in demand, and it had never been necessary to turn the bedroom into a single room.
Admiral Morgan outlined his plan of battle to his wife. “Right now I’m going to sleep for two and a half hours. Then we will have a lavish breakfast delivered right here to the room-English bacon, eggs, and toast. My favorite, reminds me of the old days in the submarines, Holy Loch.
“Then we will venture out and take a stroll along Piccadilly to my favorite bookstore in all the world, Hatchards. We will browse in there, buy some books that we would not see in the USA, and have Hatchards send them all directly to Chevy Chase.
“I will then accompany you to Jermyn Street, where we will shop for a while at Fortnum and Mason’s and request that our food selections also be forwarded on to Chevy Chase, by courier, to arrive the day we get home.
“And then we will wander among the greatest shirtmakers in the world and place some orders for both of us, and likewise have them sent directly to the USA. Thereafter, we will cross to the north side of Piccadilly and I will permit you the freedom of the Burlington Arcade while I wander up to my longtime tailor, Gieves and Hawkes at the corner of Savile Row, to be measured for a couple of new suits. How’s that?”
“Not bad,” said Kathy. “What about lunch?”
“Forget that,” said the admiral. “I intend to eat such a gargantuan breakfast, it will not be necessary.”
“What about me?” asked Kathy. “How would it be if I didn’t want to feast like Henry VIII at ten o’clock in the morning? Imagine that I wanted only some fruit and coffee, and then a light lunch, perhaps a small fillet of Dover sole and some salad?”
“Then it would be my very great pleasure to provide it for you at Green’s restaurant, corner of Duke of York Street.”
“And what will you do while I eat my lunch?”
“Me? Oh, I’ll probably have the same.”
Kathy could not help laughing. She had never been able to resist laughing at this irascible titan of American foreign policy-his ups, his downs, his fury, his brilliance, and his wit; the way he answered to no man, the way he loved food and wine, his natural assumption that nothing short of the absolute best could possibly be good enough for him. And indeed for his wife.
Kathy smiled at him and asked if he intended to get right into bed, pajamas and all, or whether he was just going to lie on top of the spread.
“Christ, women!” he exclaimed. “These sheets are costing us about fifty bucks a square inch, and I’m taking total advantage.”
“You mean straight in?” said Kathy.
“Straight in,” he replied. “Coming?”
“Probably,” she laughed, somewhat sassily.
Across the street, Ravi was trying to commit to memory the images still clear in his mind of the four bodyguards who had surrounded the admiral as he entered the hotel. They were all six-footers, taller than Morgan, and the one certainty of the morning was that at least one of them would step outside before Arnold and Kathy.
Like the admiral himself, all four agents had their hair cut closely. One of them was virtually bald, one of them was black, and the other two were fair-skinned with light-colored hair. From this distance, Ravi could not tell if either of them was gray. From the shape of their jackets, the Hamas chief was sure they all wore shoulder holsters, and likely knew how to shoot straight.
He could no longer see the U.S. embassy cars, but there was a police car down Arlington Street beyond the Blue Posts. At the bottom of the steps, on the sidewalk, the doorman was speaking to a uniformed London cop.
The traffic was still light, but it was now flowing along Bennett Street, through Arlington to the Piccadilly throughway. Ravi permitted himself three guesses-a luxury in which he rarely indulged. The first was that the police snipers were still on duty on the roof of the building; the second was that Reggie was at his desk in the foyer. The third was that Admiral Morgan’s car would be summoned by phone when he left the Ritz, and that the security detail would make certain that he and his wife were quickly into the vehicle. His fourth thought was an assumption, not a guess: that his “window” of opportunity would again be very short-lived, but less crowded.
It was only just 8 A.M., but people were beginning to arrive. Ravi could hear the elevator creaking as it went up, but it made no noise as it descended. If the two cops, the ones he assumed were still on the roof, left via the elevator, he would not know they had gone.
Equally, Reggie did not know Ravi was in the building. No one did, and the last image Reggie had in his mind, concerning Mr. Fretheim, was from yesterday, of a man in a loose-fitting dark blue tracksuit, wearing sneakers and carrying a sports bag. Images were critical in operations like this, because they affected the memory, shaded the truth, and distorted the reality.
Ravi poured himself the last of his coffee and ate the remaining two chicken sandwiches. He did so in front of the window, from an area to which he had shifted his chair. When he stood up, he slipped the window catch and pushed upward. The old-fashioned lower section rose, and Ravi kept pushing until it was open all the way.
If the security men were scanning the front of this building, they would not notice the lower open window, because it was fully open. He adjusted the Venetian blind so the light breeze from the southwest would not cause the laths to rattle.
While Arnold and Kathy slept, Ravi made his final preparations. He realized the Americans might not leave the hotel until after lunch, maybe not until tomorrow, and during this time he would be a virtual prisoner in this office. He resolved to change clothes at 10:30 A.M. and take up his position at the window immediately afterward. He would not move again.
And now he peeled off his tracksuit and sneakers. He pulled a dark gray suit out of his bag, plus a new shirt, tie, and shiny black loafers. He dressed carefully and slung the suit jacket over the back of his chair. Everything else, except for the briefcase, he crammed into the duffel bag, which he left behind the office door.
Inside the suit pockets he had crammed cash, an English driver’s license in the name of Michael Barden, and a British passport to match. It stated his birthplace as Maidstone, Kent. In the wallet was an American Express card under the same name, on an account registered, if anyone was looking, to the attaché at the Jordanian embassy in Paris. Credit limit: 100,000 euros.
Ravi would need only to dispose of the duffel bag, and now he went to the briefcase, released the catch, and opened it wide on the desk. He took out the barrel of the SSG 69 and carefully began to assemble the rifle. He handled it lovingly, the instrument of his holy mission. The pieces slotted and screwed together perfectly.
When it was completed, he loaded the six silver-headed bullets, five into the breech, one into the firing position in front of the bolt. His last actions were to clip on the telescopic sight and the silencer, which he did with practiced expertise. He balanced the weapon in his hands and smiled at the memory of the final shots in the Long Wood out in Oxfordshire. If he could get a clear view, with this rifle he could not miss.
Eleven o’clock came and went, and still Ravi stood motionless before the window, staring at the Ritz entrance, watching hotel guests come and go, up those six steps. Taxis came. Taxis went. Chauffeurs pulled up, helped people with baggage, and departed.
At 11:30, Admiral Morgan’s bald bodyguard stepped out of the hotel. He said one quick word to the doorman, who immediately stepped out into the street, raised his arm, and signaled for a car. Ravi heard him blow hard on a whistle.
From way down Arlington Street, the embassy car with the darkened windows came sliding along to the Ritz. Four police outriders led the way. Inside the lobby, Admiral Morgan was telling his other three agents that it was such a beautiful morning, he and Kathy would prefer to stroll along to Hatchards. All three of them objected, telling him that with a terrorist alert in progress, it would make everyone much happier if he were given safe passage in the big bulletproof embassy car.
“Goddamned Ramshawe still causing trouble,” said Arnold ruefully. “He’s been waiting for this moment for a month, trying to curtail my simplest pleasures.”
“Darling, don’t talk about him like that,” scolded Kathy. “He cares about you more than anyone in the world, except for me. He is genuinely worried, as you well know.”
“I know all that, but he’s still a goddamned nuisance,” replied her husband. And he turned to Big George, his new bodyguard, and demanded, “And where the hell do you think you’re going to park that thing while I’m in the bookstore? In the biography section?”
“Don’t worry about that, sir. The car will be right there when you come out. I’m only following orders. The president insists you play everything by the book while we have this terror threat.”
Admiral Morgan scowled. But did as he was told. George checked outside. “Car’s here, Admiral,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Kathy took Arnold ’s right arm, and the five of them walked across the carpeted lobby. George went through the revolving doors first, followed by the other two guards, then Kathy, last of all the admiral.
From high above, Ravi leveled the Austrian precision rifle at the Ritz entrance. One by one he watched them emerge, gravitating to the right-hand brass rail. The doorman, however, was standing on the left, and when the admiral himself came out, he stood next to the doorman as Kathy took his right arm. They started down the steps, and the moment Arnold moved forward, Ravi had his clear head shot, for less than one second.
But Big George, sensing the admiral’s unprotected left flank, suddenly swung around on the fourth step down and took a giant stride back up to Arnold ’s left.
Ravi tensed, kept the rifle steady, the crosshairs on the admiral’s head, and pressed the trigger. The sound was a soft phutt. The 7.62-millimeter shell ripped out of the barrel just as George reached for Arnold ’s arm, stepped across, and completely blocked him from the left.
The bullet caught the big bodyguard full in the temple, splitting the skull right in front of the hairline, penetrating the brain, exploding on impact inside his head. George died while he was still holding on to the left-hand brass rail.
He pitched forward, pushing Arnold and Kathy to the right and falling into the top step, his neck twisted. The small wound to his left temple was obscured. And for at least five seconds, no one had the slightest idea what had happened. Then the blood began to trickle down the steps.
All three remaining agents formed a cordon around the admiral, one of them shouting, “Police! Right here we have a shooting! One of our guys is dying!”
The doorman blew his whistle and the agents hustled Arnold down the steps and almost hurled him into the embassy car. The police outriders swung around and drove the motorbikes into tight formation around the vehicle. With Arnold now onboard, the American agents raced up the steps to collect Kathy, who was standing next to the doorman.
George’s immediate boss, the black Secret Service man Al Thompson from the White House, was on the phone while he was helping to half-carry Kathy down the steps and into the vehicle with Arnold. A police cruiser came howling around the corner from Bennett Street. Everyone knew the drill as far as an attempt on the admiral’s life was concerned-and that was to get him as far away from the datum as possible, immediately.
Right now, Ravi had shut the window and was dismantling his rifle. He’d missed. He knew that. Missed because of a million-to-one fluke, when the late Big George suddenly swung onto the admiral’s left side and blocked the path of the bullet. The seconds ticked away, and Ravi clipped the case shut. He then applied the finishing touch to his disguise-a thick but neatly trimmed black wig.
He now wore no blond moustache or goatee. He was clean-shaven, of dark complexion, and in his gray suit and tie he looked like an elegant businessman, a persona he had never assumed before. Neither doorman had ever seen him in anything but jeans, T-shirt, and sneakers, or a tracksuit. Twenty-four seconds had elapsed since he pulled the trigger. And now he picked up the duffel bag and briefcase, peered out of the office door, and stepped out, locking the empty room behind him.
There was no one on the landing, nor on the one above. He crossed the floor and softly rammed the duffel bag down the incinerator. Then he moved swiftly down the stairs, and, without even a sideways look at Reggie, walked across the foyer and pushed open the swing doors.
He was a totally different person from the fair-haired Finn Haakon Fretheim. No one would have guessed the transformation. Reggie glanced up and saw the departing figure. Not the face, just the dark hair, suit, and leather briefcase. The man could have been visiting anywhere in the building, and Reggie did not remotely recognize him. He turned back to the sports pages of The Sun.
Ravi turned right and headed straight up Dover Street, walking steadily but in no great rush. Behind him, across Piccadilly, pandemonium had broken out. At least three police cruisers were howling toward the scene of the shooting, one of them swerving right in front of the colonnaded north portico of the Ritz, blocking the westbound route along to Hyde Park Corner. They also blocked Bennett Street and directed traffic north up Albemarle Street into Mayfair.
A detective superintendent was already on the scene, talking to the admiral’s bodyguards, trying to get an idea of the direction from which the bullet had been fired. All three of the Americans had seen Big George go down, and all three confirmed that the shot he took to the left temple must have been fired from a building across the street.
Arlington Street itself was under strict scrutiny by the security forces and the police. No one had fired from ground level, or someone would have seen them. The shot most definitely had come from one of the two buildings on the south corners of Dover Street, most probably the one on the southeast.
The superintendent looked up and could see the police marksmen on top of the building. He turned to the sergeant who was supervising the deployment of his men as they arrived, and asked, “Did we search that building this morning?”
“Certainly did, sir. Just before 0500 this morning. I was in there myself. We checked every office, top to bottom. The place was deserted. It never opens ’til 7 A.M.”
“Did you go inside the offices?”
“No, sir. They were all locked up for the night. But we tried every door, checked there were no lights on.”
“Who’s the doorman?”
“Reggie Milton, sir. We picked him up at home in Putney just after four this morning, sir. He took us through, swore to God no one was left in the building last night, swore to God no one was there when we entered this morning.”
By this time, the car bearing Arnold and Kathy had swooped through the Hyde Park underpass and then swung into Belgravia. Two police outriders led the way and came to a stop in Lowndes Square. One of them dismounted and walked back to talk to the chauffeur from the U.S. embassy.
“We’re evacuating Admiral and Mrs. Morgan,” he said. “Out of London immediately. By helicopter. Somewhere to the west, avoiding flying over the city. Ask the admiral if there’s anywhere he’d especially like to go. Otherwise we were thinking of somewhere like Henley-on-Thames, actually anywhere that’s quiet and secret. I imagine you know that that bullet was meant for him, not Big George.”
“I think we all know that,” replied the chauffeur. “I’ll just follow you to the takeoff point.”
“No problem,” said the outrider. He remounted and headed south, back down to Eaton Square, and then turned left toward Buckingham Palace. And from there he turned into Birdcage Walk and accelerated down to Horse Guards, the giant military parade ground that stands in the shadow of Great Britain ’s Admiralty at the end of St. James’s Park.
He rode to the north corner and signaled the embassy car to park. Then he told the two CIA men in the admiral’s car their transportation would arrive any moment.
In the backseat, Kathy Morgan was terrified. She clung to the admiral’s arm and kept saying, over and over, “They could have killed you, my darling, they could have killed you.”
Arnold himself was strangely philosophical. “In my line of business, kid, this kind of thing can happen. For us, the main thing was they missed. For Big George’s family it’s tragedy. I guess I’ve cheated death a few times, but I agree with you, this one was close.”
Kathy wanted to know what their new plan was, and Arnold was, as usual, resolute. “Well, we’re going up to Scotland in a couple of days to see Iain MacLean. And I wanted to spend the spare time in London. But, hell, we can have a nice time in the English countryside, and I’m pretty damn certain we can stay at a little place up the Thames River. Iain stays there when he comes south, says it’s his favorite restaurant.”
Arnold pulled out his cell phone, dialed a number, and asked to be put through to the U.S. ambassador’s office in Grosvenor Square. When his old pal Sandra King, ex-White House, answered, he asked her to somehow trace the restaurant for him and see if he could get rooms there for a couple of nights.
As one might expect from the secretary to one of America ’s most important ambassadors, Sandra called back within ten minutes and told him the place was called the Leather Bottle, downstream from Wallingford on the Goring Reach. She’d booked him and Kathy in for two nights, in the new bridal suite.
“Attagirl,” said Arnie.
Meanwhile, the police were swarming into Ravi ’s office block. They told Reggie to lock the door. “No one leaves until we’re done,” said the Metropolitan Police detective sergeant. “We need to speak to every tenant, every staff member of every corporation with space in here.”
They started on the ground floor and questioned everyone. On the second floor, they found three offices locked, but spoke to everyone else. On the fourth floor, they found Ravi ’s office locked. By the time they reached the top floor, they had interviewed all the tenants except for seven where the offices were locked and no one was in.
The detective sergeant asked Reggie if they could enter the locked premises, and Reggie said he was sure that would be fine and he would get the keys. When he unlocked the door to Mr. Fretheim’s room, he was quite surprised at how thoroughly empty the place looked.
He had never been in there when the accountant with the Finland Farms Marketing Board was working, but still he imagined there would be the usual office paraphernalia, computers, writing pads, pens, books, ledgers, maybe a couple of cups or a coffeepot. But this place was desolate.
The detective looked quizzical. “How long’s this character been here?” he asked.
“’Bout a week, I suppose,” replied Reggie. “Seemed a nice sort of bloke. I saw him yesterday lunchtime. He was in his tracksuit, said he was going jogging later. I expect in the park.”
“What did he look like?”
“Youngish. About thirty. Fair hair. Moustache and goatee beard. Spectacles. Not very tall-less than six feet. Spoke with a Finnish accent.”
“Do you know what a Finnish accent sounds like?” asked the policeman.
“’Course not,” said Reggie. “Never spoke to one of ’em, have I? ’Cept for Santa Claus-and Mr. Fretheim.”
“What I mean, Reggie, is, was that a Finnish accent, or could it have been French, or German, or Arabian?”
“Beats me, guv’nor. Could have been anything. I just assumed it was Finnish, because he said that’s where he was from.”
The detective smiled. “Anything else about him?”
“Not really. But I had the impression he was an athletic sort of bloke. I mean he was always dressed very casual, jeans, T-shirt, and sneakers.”
The detective nodded. “Did he keep regular hours?”
“Well, I can’t rightly say about that. Our shifts change at 2 P.M., so we don’t really know if people are in or out when we come on afternoon duty.”
“Did he ever come in at unusual times, like evenings or anything?”
“I don’t think so. I never saw him here in the evening. Matter of fact I haven’t seen him since yesterday lunchtime.”
“And you never saw him leave?”
“No. But I wouldn’t, would I? Don did the afternoon shift and locked up last night.”
“Could Fretheim have been in the building overnight?”
“No. Don would have known that. You always know if someone’s here in the evening. Tell you the truth, we usually nip out for a pint around nine o’clock, and the first thing you’d notice would be a light on at the front of the building.”
“Perhaps Mr. Fretheim was sitting in the dark,” said the detective. “Thank you, Reggie. Tell Don we’d like a word this afternoon.”
“Righto, sir.”
At that moment, the two police marksmen were making their way down from the roof. When they reached the detective sergeant, one of them said, “We just heard, on the phone, sir. But neither of us saw a thing, and we never heard anything either. Me and Brian here were watching the area around the hotel all the time. Whoever fired must have done it from somewhere in here. But it was a damn quiet gun, I’ll say that.”
In the meantime, General Rashood had completed his walk up Dover Street and had turned left down Hay Hill and into Berkeley Street. He crossed and strolled into the narrow walkway of Lansdowne Row, where he was when the police began their search of his office building.
He knew Lansdowne Row mostly because it contained one of the best newspaper shops in London. Ravi used to go there with his father occasionally to pick up Middle Eastern publications.
He bought the London Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail and then walked into the café next door and ordered some coffee and buttered toast. He took off his jacket and placed it over the back of his chair, and put down his briefcase. He’d been here before, in another life, and it looked much the same, but better. It seemed bigger, and Ravi thought they must have purchased the flower shop next door.
Anyway, it felt like a haven right now, and happily he did not recognize the proprietor. Calmly he sipped his coffee and read the newspapers. It was a busy place, filled with shirtsleeved young advertising and financial executives. Ravi fitted right in, and outside, to the south, he heard the constant wail of police sirens. And the distant clatter of a helicopter swooping low over the city.
It was a little after 12:30 when he left. He put on his jacket and walked into Berkeley Square, which was lunchtime busy. He made his way up the west side of the square, past the distinctive awning of Annabel’s, the world’s most exclusive nightclub, and then turned left into Mount Street.
Up ahead he could see the Audi, Shakira at the wheel. He watched her step out and walk around to the front passenger seat. Casually, he made his way to the driver’s side, tossed his jacket and briefcase in the back, and positioned himself behind the wheel. Without a word, he drove down the north side of Berkeley Square and then swung left, heading up the one-way system in fast-moving traffic. He neither stopped nor spoke for fifteen minutes. Shakira knew everything had gone wrong, but at least he had not been shot, and in a sense she felt an overwhelming feeling of relief.
The helicopter he had heard was currently standing on the Horse Guards parade ground. Arnold and Kathy were aboard, along with two of the secret agents. They were just waiting for the luggage to arrive from the now-besieged Ritz Hotel, which currently contained more policemen than guests.
The body of Big George had been removed by ambulance to St. Mary’s Hospital. And before it left, the police pathologist had confirmed that the bullet had been fired from a height and had hit George at a shallow angle to the horizontal.
The westbound lanes of Piccadilly were still blocked, and the hotel staff car containing the Americans’ luggage was forced to take a circuitous route to Horse Guards. When it arrived, the loadmaster packed the suitcases into the hold, and the helicopter from the Queen’s Flight took off, heading west. Destination: classified.
The Royal Air Force pilot followed the River Thames all the way, flying at around ten thousand feet. Putney Bridge, Hammersmith Bridge, Barnes Bridge, and Chiswick all passed beneath them. They continued on to the Berkshire town of Maidenhead, then Henley-on-Thames, where Arnold could still see the famous blue-and-white tents at the end of the Royal Regatta course.
This had once been familiar territory for the Big Man. He’d rowed here in an Annapolis crew more than forty years before, got beat by the Harvard lightweights. “Bastards,” muttered Arnold.
“Sorry?” said Kathy.
“Bastards,” repeated Arnold wistfully. “They got a half length at the start, beat the umpire’s call. We never pegged ’ em back. Finished only a canvas down.”
“Who did?”
“Oh, sorry,” he said. “I was just reliving one of my early disasters, when the Naval Academy got beat down there at the Henley Regatta. See those blue-and-white tents? Where the river runs straight? Right there.”
“Were you rowing?”
“Stroke. But I can’t talk about it. It’s too painful.”
“You mean you can talk about some lunatic almost blowing your head off, but you can’t speak about a boat race?”
“Correct. The lunatic missed, so it’s just a fantasy. But the boat race was real. Oh boy, was it ever real.”
Kathy shook her head, and the helicopter kept going west until it swung right just before the market town of Wallingford, with its thirteenth-century bridge over the Thames. And now the pilot began to lose height, dropping down and flying a hundred feet above the river, following it downstream.
To the left were the Chiltern Hills, to the right the Berkshire Downs, and along the lonely river valley, clattering noisily in the soft summer air, came the helo from the Queen’s Flight, bearing the admiral to a place of safety. You could search for a hundred years and never find him here.
The GPS numbers in the cockpit finally signaled their arrival, and the pilot slewed the helicopter in the air, making it almost stationary forty feet above the water. And there before them, on the banks of the river, was the picturesque Leather Bottle, except it was spelled differently-The Leatherne Bottel.
“Jesus,” said Arnold, staring at the lettering on the sign. “These guys can’t even spell, never mind cook!”
“Olde English,” yelled the loadmaster. “This place has been here for centuries.”
The pilot dropped down almost to water level and then edged forward, landing on the concrete parking lot, with the tail jutting out over the river. The admiral and Kathy disembarked with the two agents, who unloaded the baggage, and the four of them walked across the stone terrace and into the bright, low-ceilinged restaurant with its stunning views across the river to the Downs. Way along the summit, it was just possible to see one of the fabled Long Woods.
“Beautiful place,” said Admiral Morgan to James, the young man who was supervising the luggage.
“One of the best views in England,” he said. “Shall I take your bags up to your room? We’re not really a regular hotel, just two suites for VIPs, which I imagine you must be.”
“Not us,” said Arnold. “We’re just a couple of strays with no other hotel room, looking for a place to stay for two or three days.”
“Absolutely,” chuckled James. “Nearly everyone who comes here arrives in a Royal Air Force private helicopter from the Queen’s Flight.”
At this moment, a police car came swiftly down the steep, winding approach to the Leatherne Bottel to check that all was well. The sergeant asked to see the manager, to stress the importance of privacy and secrecy for the guests. He told her that a limousine from the U.S. embassy would be arriving shortly, with two more security men, and that the four agents would share the second suite.
James led the admiral and Kathy back out to the terrace and seated them at a table right on the riverbank beneath a pergola. It was just one o’clock and the sun was high. Only an hour and forty minutes had elapsed since the Hamas general had tried to assassinate Arnold Morgan.
“I’ll bring you some lunch, if you wish,” said James. “How about some fillets of plaice and spinach? Chef’s just cooking it now.”
“Perfect,” said Kathy.
“How about a roast beef sandwich with mayonnaise and mustard?” asked the admiral.
“Shut up, darling,” said Kathy, and then, turning back to James, “Two plaice and spinach. Ignore him.”
Arnold chuckled. He was always amused at being bullied by the only person in the world who even interrupted him, never mind argued.
James hesitated, but Arnold confirmed, “She’s the boss. Well… mostly. And would you give the guys whatever they want? Everything’s on my tab.”
“I don’t think so, sir,” he replied. “We were told specifically that every last charge would be handled by the U.S. ambassador’s office in London.”
“Guess I’m more popular than I thought,” said Arnold.
Meanwhile, Ravi and Shakira were still driving north and had reached the Hertfordshire town of Baldock, where he pulled into the parking lot of the King’s Arms Hotel. Ravi took out his cell phone and tapped in the numbers for the Ritz Hotel.
“Would it be possible to speak to Admiral Arnold Morgan?” he said.
The operator was silent for a few seconds, and then said, “I’m sorry, sir. The admiral and Mrs. Morgan checked out more than an hour ago.”
“Did they leave a forwarding number or address?”
“I’m sorry, sir. We have no further information on that.”
Ravi, who had been timing the call on his watch, clicked off his phone. It had taken twenty-five seconds, and Ravi knew full well it would have taken the police around fifteen seconds to log into the call, and perhaps trace geographically the cell phone’s position.
He knew it had run too long, but he needed to know the admiral had left the hotel. The police, who he guessed correctly were already tapped into the Ritz switchboard, probably now knew someone had called the admiral from the Hertfordshire area.
This meant he had to get out of the area, and he backed out onto the main road, and headed up to Cambridge, to a city he knew slightly, and to an anonymous hotel. They had to go somewhere, and he had to find out the whereabouts of the admiral. Otherwise everything would have been for nothing.
The journey took around an hour, and they located the Sheraton out on the edge of the city, checked in for the night under the name of Mr. and Mrs. Michael Barden. Ravi ’s impeccable English accent eliminated the need for passports. They ordered coffee and biscuits in their room, and sat down to work out a plan to locate Admiral Morgan.
After a half hour, there was only one name that had not been discarded. It was that of Emily Gallagher, who a) obviously knew where the Morgans were going and b) might tell a friend of the admiral’s. She would most definitely not tell Carla Martin, who had let her down so badly over Charlie and Kipper and who might have murdered the owner of the Brockhurst garage.
So far as Ravi could tell, either he located the admiral and his wife, or the entire mission, with its vast expense and three murders, was on the verge of being aborted. Arnold Morgan could be anywhere. Maybe even at another hotel in London. But wherever he was, security would surround him. In Ravi’s opinion, there was not much difference from trying to take him out in England or in the USA. The risks were huge, there was an American security presence, and everyone involved was taking the matter extremely seriously. Especially the British police.
Ravi wrote off the possibility of using official channels. Anyone making any inquiries whatsoever would immediately come under suspicion by those hard-eyed London cops. The only chance was family, and that meant Emily Gallagher.
He told Shakira he would make one call only, since he was confident that Emily’s phone would now be tapped by the FBI. He had no idea how long he would have before they located his cell phone, and there was no point trying to make the call on a land line from the hotel. They’d pinpoint that in under ten minutes.
Somehow he had to make the call from out in the open and see if he could outfox the old lady. Shakira said she didn’t much like the idea of involving Emily again, of forcing her to play a part in the smashing of her own daughter’s happiness.
But Ravi was becoming fixated by the thought of Arnold Morgan. It was as if there was nothing beyond the American admiral. Shakira thought he was possessed by some kind of obsession about Arnold Morgan, and she was afraid that obsession would lead to his own death.
She noticed how withdrawn he had become, how reluctant he was to talk to her. And now, in the teeth of the gravest danger, he wanted to make a personal phone call to Emily. In Shakira’s opinion, they had both done their very best and should now retreat, back to Gaza where it was relatively safe. It was time to let someone else try their luck. This was becoming, in her opinion, ominously beyond the reasonable call of duty.
Ravi paced the room. He checked his watch. It was almost five o’clock, noon in Virginia. They were on the top floor of the Sheraton Hotel, and he had noticed a sign for the roof terrace. He told Shakira somewhat curtly to “wait here.” Then he left the room, walked along the corridor, and stepped out onto the deserted terrace.
He tapped in the numbers-zero-zero-one. Then area code 703, then the number. It rang three times, and then a voice said, “Hello, this is Emily Gallagher speaking.”
“Oh, good morning, Mrs. Gallagher. This is Commander Toby Trenham, of the Royal Navy in London. I’m a very old friend of Admiral Morgan’s from our days in Holy Loch. And he gave me this number to call if I missed him while he was staying in the Ritz.”
“Well, I’m very sorry, Commander. I only know about the Ritz and I thought he was there today. If they aren’t, I really have no idea where they’ve gone.”
“Oh, gosh. How disappointing. I was going to give them dinner at Admiralty House. You have no clues where I might pick up their trail?”
“Commander, I really don’t. Except Arnold did say something about going to Scotland for a few days.”
“No idea where, I suppose?”
“Not really. It’s a very big place, you know, all those Highlands, and Lowlands, and Western Isles, and Loch Lomond, and Loch Ness where that frightful underwater creature lives.”
“It doesn’t sound promising, Mrs. Gallagher, I agree. I think I’d better abandon it. If you do hear from the admiral, you might just tell him I called. Trenham, Commander Toby Trenham.”
“I’ll be sure to. Good-bye, Commander.”