To The Death Part 31

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 antic.i.p.ated 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 a.s.sa.s.sINATED Why, oh why, was security so lax? Why, oh why, was security so lax?

Ravi could imagine the bleating of the media. And he thus antic.i.p.ated 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 a.s.sess 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 emba.s.sy 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 emba.s.sy, 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 emba.s.sy 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- 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 G.o.d guides whom He will, to His Light . . . His Light . . .

Ravi said good-bye to Shakira and boarded an emba.s.sy 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 h.e.l.lo 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 pa.s.sed 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 Guantanamo 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 Guantanamo? And how about Reza Aghani, the ambitious young Hamas. .h.i.tman 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 Guantanamo 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 G.o.d.

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 gla.s.s 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.

1800 Monday 30 July Dulles Airport, Washington, D.C.

Ahmed, the cultural attache at the Jordanian emba.s.sy, sat quietly in a rear seat in the airport lounge, watching the first-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers board American Airlines Flight 163 for London. He kept his head down, buried in the Washington Post, 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. 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-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers, 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 pa.s.sports. 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 gla.s.s, 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 pa.s.sed 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 attache at the Syrian emba.s.sy answered, he just said: AA163 took off 1846. Four bruisers with seadog. AA163 took off 1846. Four bruisers with seadog.

0100 Tuesday 31 July Dover Street, London.

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 G.o.dd.a.m.ned sheep. that dog's as silly as a G.o.dd.a.m.ned 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 ma.s.sive 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 gla.s.s 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? POLICE! ANYONE THERE? Occasionally Reggie could be heard calling someone's name- 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 c.o.c.kney doorman's reply: "You can pick me up in a squad car any morning you like, old mate. 'Cept the b.l.o.o.d.y 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 a.s.sa.s.sin, 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 a.s.sessment 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-cla.s.s police snipers who would be unlikely to miss, firing directly down at a would-be a.s.sa.s.sin.

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 a.s.sa.s.sin, 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 pa.s.senger 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." "American landed."

Just thirty minutes later, at 0645, the phone rang again and a voice said: "Seadog plus bruisers. Two U.S. emba.s.sy cars plus two police cars left Terminal 3."

What the man from the Syrian emba.s.sy 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. emba.s.sy car, containing the admiral and Kathy, plus two armed CIA men in the front seats; then the second emba.s.sy 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 whoops that caused the very savvy British drivers to ease over to the left, giving the convoy an almost free run into Knightsbridge. 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 a.s.sailed 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, G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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 emba.s.sy 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 cl.u.s.tered 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. k.u.mar'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 emba.s.sy 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 t.i.tan 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 a.s.sumption 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.