To the Death

“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.