To the Death

Right now he was trying to get his bearings, assessing the distance across the yellow-painted lines of the junction into Arlington Street, to the entrance of the hotel. He stood there for only three minutes and then turned and walked through glass-paneled swing doors into the glum reception area of a London office block.

The entrance was sited amid a line of shops that curled around the south side of the block, from the Post Office on Dover Street, briefly along Piccadilly itself, and then around into Albemarle Street. The offices were situated on all six floors above the shops. Ever since the recent property collapse in London, there had been vacancies not only in this building, but in most others.

Ravi had stumbled into a buyers’ market. He wished only to rent, but if necessary he would purchase a leasehold. In this financial climate, however, a leasehold would most certainly not be necessary. Renting would be just fine, at a price way too high for a small space, but not ruinous.

He walked up to the doorman and requested the office manager. “I did call this morning,” he said. “Haakon Fretheim, Finland Farms Marketing Board.”

“Certainly, sir.”

Ravi was led up to a second-floor office fronting on Piccadilly. The rental agent was a bespectacled thirtyish lady wearing a blue suit and a Sotheby’s International name tag — Judith Birchell.

She confirmed to Ravi that there were seven available suites of offices at present, but the one she had mentioned on the phone, the single room with reception annex, was probably sufficient for one accountant and a secretary.

“It’s on the fourth floor, right above here,” she said. “Views directly across to the Ritz and St. James’s Street. let’s go up and take a look.”

Ravi followed her out to the hall, and they took the elevator two floors higher. There were several doors off the central area, two of which were open with sounds of activity from within. Two others had lights on, and the last one required a key to gain entry.

Judith showed Ravi into a carpeted office with a bright south-facing window. Ravi checked the catch and decided not to request permission to open it. There was a Venetian blind, which obviously could be lowered, and a desk and chair, which the agent said came with the rental, the last tenants having left the furniture and a rent debt for several hundred pounds.

“They left in a bit of a hurry,” she said. “They’d been gone more than a week before we realized they weren’t coming back.”

Ravi chuckled. “What rent were they paying?”

“A little over three thousand a month,” she replied. “But there’s been a rate cut since then. This is yours for twenty-two hundred, first and last deposit, on the six-month lease you mentioned.”

“Can I have it right away?”

“Oh, certainly. This building has a resident cleaning staff. The whole place has been vacuumed, carpets steam-cleaned, and the desk cleared out. The phones are connected, there’s central Internet, and the bathroom is right across the hall. Right next to it is the incinerator. You may dump the dry contents of your wastebasket down there, just paper and unwanted documents, not kitchen waste.

“If you leave the deposit, I’ll give you two keys, and one for the front door. The doormen are on duty from 7 A.M. until 10 P.M. Don and Reggie. You’ll find them extremely helpful.”

“That will be excellent,” said Ravi, taking one more look through the window, straight at the curved dark blue- and gold-trimmed awning above the main entrance to the Ritz Hotel. “This will do very nicely indeed.”

“It’s a standard rental agreement, same for everyone. You can sign it in my office, subject to the references I mentioned, plus a bank statement, and a passport if you’re not a British national.”

They returned to the second floor and Ravi produced a nicely forged reference from the Egyptian embassy confirming that they had dealt many times with Mr. Fretheim concerning Finnish trade agreements, and they knew him to be trustworthy and aboveboard. Judith photocopied his equally well-forged Finnish passport, and glanced at the bank account of the Syrian ambassador, upon which the name had been changed and copied to read Haakon Fretheim, of 23 Ennismore Gardens, London SW7.

It showed a current balance of £18,346 in credit, and Ravi, with a remarkable display of affluence, paid Judith a total of three months’ rent with an American Express card issued originally to the military attaché in the Jordanian embassy in Paris.

The agent handed over two office keys and told him to collect front-door keys from Reggie, who was working the morning shift today. “I’ll call him before you get down there,” she said. “I expect I’ll see you around.”