To the Death

Shakira arrived back at Chesapeake Heights at around 2 P.M. Fausi dropped her off and drove away. She greeted the doorman and made her way to her top-floor apartment. The day was hot but cloudy, with a slight but increasing breeze that might easily turn into a thunderstorm.

She made herself a sandwich of roast beef and goat’s cheese and houmus on the bread. It gave it an offbeat Middle Eastern flavor, and it made her homesick, and she wondered if she and Ravi would ever make it home together.

But most of all, she wondered where he was and what his plans were. She had, she knew, fulfilled the relatively easy part of the Hamas scheme. All she wanted was to be with him again, and to help him in his mission and protect him if she could.

She took a chair out onto her wide penthouse balcony and sat reflectively, staring out over the wide green treetops toward the river. She knew so little of this evil country. All she knew was the great highway that had brought her from Boston to Brockhurst, to this peaceful place with its wide river and warm climate.

She had met with only friendliness here. The cheerful officer in the Boston immigration booth, who had welcomed her home; the big doorman at the Pierre who had carried her bag; Freddy, the nice, helpful doorman downstairs here; agreeable, trusting Jim Caborn, her boss; and her new best friend, Emily.

So far as she could tell, America was very short of archvillains, the kind her husband always railed about. But she had never really been anywhere until she met Ravi, and he had taught her almost everything she knew.

She supposed he must be right about America. But she had not seen anything yet, firsthand, to suggest a terrible land populated by ogres like Admiral Morgan. No, she had definitely not seen any of those.

She ate her lunch thoughtfully, and drank some fruit juice. And she wondered how and when she should extricate herself from here before going to meet Ravi. She most certainly would not tell Emily she was going, which would leave the old lady in a bit of a spot when Kipper arrived. Not, however, in so bad a spot as the one in which Kipper’s master, Admiral Morgan, might shortly find himself.

Shakira would have liked to say a proper good-bye to Emily and perhaps make plans to stay in contact. But that could never happen. The truth was, if she just vanished, it would take maybe a day, or even two, before anyone even realized she had gone. If she announced her departure, a lot of people would know she was leaving before she even started. No, the only way was to vanish, and she had to organize that.

Her cell phone rang, and she rushed back into the apartment to retrieve it from her handbag and answer it. There could be only one person in all the world calling that number, but she knew he would not be there personally.

She pressed the receiving button and heard a voice recording. It intoned only a dozen words: Dublin. Ireland. The Great Mosque in Clonskeagh. 1700. July 16 to 18. The line went dead.

And Shakira clicked off the phone. The message had, she knew, been overheard by no one. And it meant she must be in Dublin by the evening of July 15. That was a week from Sunday. She must be on her way, on a flight from the USA by Friday night, July 13, at the latest.

She plugged her computer into the Internet connection and decided the best flights were Aer Lingus. She was flying first-class, and her very expensive ticket could be switched to another airline, from British Airways, which did not fly direct to Dublin.

She returned to the balcony with a new glass of fruit juice. And she sat there for a half hour, reading one of the celebrity magazines she so loved and wondering if Emily and Charlie would ever think of her.

In her mind, there were two people, two Mrs. Rashoods: the Shakira who tried to be polite and helpful, the one Emily had grown fond of; and then there was the other Shakira, the assassin’s ruthless assistant. She did not like to think of herself as one and the same.

Midnight Same Day (Monday 2 July) Gaza City

General Rashood was invited to chair this meeting as the most senior member of the Hamas military. Once more, they were seated on cushions in the whitewashed situation room in the basement of the walled house off Omar el-Mokhtar Street.

He opened the discussion by pointing out that in the short time that had passed since he had first seen the Washington Post story on Admiral Morgan, there had been a serious uproar in the liberal media back in the USA. People were beginning to ask important questions about the presence of Arnold at the right hand of the president.