To the Death

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 LightGod 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.