To the Death

The other problem was that no one was very impressed with Jimmy’s diagnosis of the situation. Like the admiral himself, it seemed no one could take seriously the vanishing barmaid as some kind of latter-day Mata Hari. Everyone was polite. But no one was convinced of the danger posed by the lady who had journeyed to Brockhurst with one mission in mind.

What really got to Jimmy was the fact that this Carla Martin had plainly succeeded in her mission. In a very few short days, she had moved in, befriended Arnold’s mother-in-law, and found, almost to the hour, the time of their departure, their destination, and their hotel. The Australian lieutenant commander, on this unproductive morning, was mildly surprised that Carla, or whoever the hell she was, had not managed to come up with the room number or Arnie’s breakfast order—so some fucking terrorist can get in there and poison the bloody eggs and bacon.

Those heavily connected facts and thoughts were quite sufficient for Jimmy’s antennae to start vibrating. But the clincher was the antiseptic precision of “Carla’s” departure. She had carefully erased every detail, sneaked around taking things out of the hotel files, signed for her apartment under a different name, handed over thousands of dollars. And left nothing behind. She had had no car, but there was obviously a 24-hour chauffeur to transport her everywhere: a chauffeur for whom someone was paying, with cash that had not come out of a barmaid’s wages. not to mention the bloody dagger, the one with “Syria” carved on the blade in Arabic.

Jimmy’s montage of facts sounded fine when he had them all together. It was simply one of those conundrums that did not play well to a third party. Too many little things, too much lack of one big overwhelming fact that could not be disputed. On the phone Jimmy could sense people growing more bored by the minute, thinking silently, “Shut up, Jim, the admiral’s going to be fine. None of this adds up to an assassination attempt on Admiral Morgan.”

Lt. Commander James Ramshawe knew better. Or at least he thought he did. He checked the airline schedules to London from Washington on Monday night, July 30. Arnie and Kathy would travel first-class on a U.S. airline, the trip arranged by the White House travel department. That would almost certainly be American Airlines, departing 2115, arriving Heathrow around 0830. They’d be at the Ritz by 1015 on Tuesday morning. In Jimmy’s mind, thanks to “Carla,” a Middle Eastern terrorist organization knew all that as well as he did.

He’d already had the Secret Service call the London embassy to ensure that the admiral always traveled in a bulletproof car. He’d asked for extra agents, he’d asked the FBI to alert Scotland Yard that there might be an attempt on Arnie’s life, he’d had the CIA check in with the British secret services MI-5 and MI-6, just to keep everyone on high alert.

But he was still worried. He needed a bodyguard for Arnold Morgan, an experienced operator who would treat the subject as hair-trigger dangerous, as Jimmy himself did. And he did not know such a man, not one who would be available to drop everything and go to London with Arnie and Kathy. Everyone was so stretched these days, and the military would not have sufficient personnel to help out. Everyone was too busy chasing the goddamned insurgents in Iraq, Iran, or Afghanistan.

But he would not give up. He realized, alone above all other high-placed officials in government circles, that “Carla” had done her work. That something was going to happen.

2300 Friday 13 July Tipperary, Ireland

Shakira was back in the Cashel Palace Hotel. She’d had a farewell Irish coffee with Dennis and retired to bed. The maids had drawn the curtains in her room and turned down the bed. But before she climbed between the spotless linen sheets, she drew back the curtains so she could see the illuminated outline of the Rock of Cashel, which was beginning to seem like an old friend.

Like most terrorists, Shakira Rashood slept only fitfully, awakening every two hours, alert for danger, her long fishing knife tucked under the pillow. She liked to see the ramparts of the Rock against the night sky, and she loved to contemplate its age and the centuries it had stood there, rising from a grassy plain, a place of kings and bishops, saints and choristers, Romans and Normans.

For a while she lay there, lost in the kind of peaceful speculation that so often eluded her because of the terrors of her calling. And then her mind moved on, back down to Mizen Head, where she had gazed upon great waters. And she pictured again those mighty acres of the Atlantic, dark now, flecked with whitecaps, nightcaps, far above the black submarine that was speeding through the depths, unseen, bringing her husband home to her.