To The Death, page 36
Twenty-four seconds was almost a half minute. There would be, he knew, American Secret Service agents, London police security, and possibly military personnel swarming outside the Ritz. If they had even an inkling of where the bullet had come from, they would be across Piccadilly in fifteen seconds and into the building where his office was situated. If they were through those glass doors before he was out, he’d be trapped, overwhelmed, and headed for the gallows on charges of murder and high treason against Her Majesty’s forces.
That twenty-four seconds had to be reduced, and if it couldn’t, he might have to abort the mission. But Ravi knew it could. Over and over, he assembled the rifle and then disassembled it. For almost two hours he practiced, finally realizing that the principal solutions to the operation were the swift removal of the telescopic sight and the level of tightness on the wide silver-plated finger screw which attached the stock to the neck.
After another hour, he could disassemble that sniper rifle in eighteen seconds. Within two hours, he had it down to twelve, and those twelve seconds would be all he could afford while packing the rifle away and bolting down the stairs to the freedom of Dover Street.
Early that evening, before dinner with the ambassador, Ravi went shopping alone. He walked through to Knightsbridge and wandered into Harrods, to the busy ground-floor men’s department where once he had shopped with his mother, purchasing a new tweed jacket for school. Today he wanted a new dark gray suit, a blazer, a few shirts, a couple of ties, boxer shorts, socks, and shoes.
It took him forty-five minutes to punch a serious hole in £2,500, and he paid with his Amex card, which would eventually be billed to the government of Jordan via the Paris embassy. He then made his way to men’s sporting goods and purchased a loose-fitting tracksuit and a medium-sized athlete’s duffel bag.
Casting aside the green Harrods plastic shopping bags, he folded his purchases neatly into the sports bag and walked back to the embassy via Sloane Street and Cadogan Place. He and Shakira dined with the ambassador that evening, in company with two visiting Saudi sheiks.
The following morning, Sunday, July 29, the day before Admiral and Mrs. Morgan were due to board the London flight from Washington, D.C., Ravi summoned the Audi from the Motcombe Street garage and asked one of the embassy staff to fill the tank, because he and Shakira were going on a journey of almost 150 miles.
They left at around 11 A.M., both dressed casually in jeans and sneakers, Shakira wearing a blue shirt and denim jacket, Ravi in his black T-shirt and suede jacket. This was his Irish killing gear, although he did not anticipate murdering anyone today. Indeed, he did not expect to meet, or speak to, one other member of the human race all day.
They once more drove west, but not on the gloomy old A-4 under the Chiswick flyover. This time they sped straight over the top and out onto the wide, fast M-4 motorway. They drove past Heathrow and proceeded for almost an hour to where the landscape begins to rise into the foothills of the Berkshire Downs.
They left the M-4 at Junction 13 and headed north up the A-34 toward Oxford, finally branching left to the switchback road that leads to the village of West Ilsley. This is land where all villages seem to lie in the folds in the Downs, invisible until you are actually in them.
Ravi remembered this country well. He had been out here many times with his father, to look at racehorses being worked, to visit his father’s two trainers. In his mind, he recalled the majestic sweep of the Berkshire and Oxfordshire “prairies,” miles and miles of undulating land where wheat and barley are grown, the endless fields split only by narrow roads and the horse-training gallops.
But most of all, he remembered the long woods, big but narrow growths of trees set high on the summits. In particular, he recalled those above the horse-racing village of Lambourn. He had seen nothing like it, anywhere in the world, these stark stands of high trees, sometimes four hundred yards long and rarely more than a hundred yards deep, like great, dark Medieval castles ranged along the heights.
Ravi did not know precisely where he was going, but he would know it when he saw it. And he drove through West Ilsley and on through the prairies, through literally square miles of ripening wheat and barley, up through the high village of Farnborough, and then fast down the three-mile-long hill to the town of Wantage, birthplace of King Alfred the Great and the largest town in the fabled Vale of the White Horse.
From here, he drove along the road that leads to the 374-foot chalk carving of the white horse, which has peered across the valley at Uffington for more than two thousand years. Ravi, however, swerved off up the hill to the sensational view of the Lambourn Downs, right across the rolling land, to the castles he had come for, the long woods. And there they were, ranged before him, forbidding, even in the bright summer sunlight. The one closest to him stood high above one of the most important jump-racing stables in the world, that of the maestro Nicky Henderson, godson of the late Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery of Alamein.
Like all of the other five long woods, this one was shadowed, several hundred yards in length, and only a hundred yards wide maximum. It did, however, unlike the others, lack privacy, because the road down to Lambourn village ran hard beside it.
Ravi stopped the car and stared out toward the west. High on the Downs to the left, there was the wood that runs close to the gallops used by many trainers. Directly in front, maybe a mile away, were two high woods situated way up on the land above Kingston Warren. But down below, at the far end of the hundreds of acres belonging to Henry Candy and his family, there was a long wood set in a shallow valley, completely out of view of the trainer’s house.
This was a very lonely spot, on the edge of the border country between Henderson and Candy, neither of whom was in any way acquainted with the Hamas commander in chief. It was absolutely perfect for a quiet spell of fine-tuning for a planned assassination.
Ravi drove down from the hills and parked the Audi. He took out the brown leather case and left Shakira in the passenger seat. He walked to the end of the wood, studied the landscape for a few minutes, then climbed the gate and entered the deserted wood. It was just one o’clock on this Sunday, lunchtime. Ravi remembered quite enough about England to know that this was a sacred time for men who work seven days a week throughout the racing season. He did not expect to be disturbed.
First he walked into the center of the trees, and then chose his “range.” He used a small drawing pin to fix one of Mr. Kumar’s targets to the tall trunk of an ancient oak, two feet off the ground, giving him a downward angle. Then he walked back for sixty paces.
He assembled his rifle, fitted the silencer, and slid a practice bullet into the breech. He stared through the telescopic sight and then made two small adjustments on the screws that varied the crosshairs. There was nowhere to rest the weapon, which there would be in his office, so he leaned on a tree to steady his aim, and squeezed the trigger. The sound was hardly discernible, and, still holding the rifle, Ravi walked the hundred paces to the target and saw that the bullet had smashed into it around three inches to the left of center.
He walked back and once more adjusted the crosshairs. Then he fired again, and again, and again. When he walked back to the target, he could see that he was still slightly left. Once more he made the slight adjustment. Too far. Three more bullets hit home a fraction to the right. They were well grouped, but right.
The operation took another twenty minutes of painstaking correcting and recorrecting, back and forth in this gloomy private firing range, undisturbed, unseen, and all alone.
Finally he had the range and the accuracy. He took down the two battered targets and fixed his last new one to the tree. Again he walked back, reached his firing mark, leaned on the tree, aimed, and fired. This time he required only one shot.
He walked back to the target, which was pristine save for one small round hole, 7.62mm across, straight through the dead center of the bull’s-eye. The next time he fired the SSG, the bullet would smash straight through Arnold Morgan’s skull, metal splitting the bone, and then blowing the great man’s brains out. Instant death. Ravi was certain that he could not miss.
Slowly he dismantled the rifle and, with the utmost care, placed it back in its case and clipped it shut. That, he decided, was a good day’s work. The long wood at the end of Henry Candy’s one-mile gallop would keep the secret well, and he sincerely hoped Mr. Kumar would do the same.
CHAPTER 11
Monday 30 July London
General Rashood had been curiously out of touch with the outside world for almost the entire month of July. In particular, he had been out of touch with the United States of America. And since the death of Matt Barker, Shakira too had little or no idea what America was thinking with regard to her crime, and whether anyone had connected her activities with Admiral Morgan.
No one from the Hamas organization had dared to put in a cell-phone call to either of them, and E-mail was impossible since neither Ravi nor Shakira was traveling with a computer. The general’s regular contact in the United States, Ahmed, the cultural attaché at the Jordanian embassy in Washington, was aware of the furor Shakira had left behind in Brockhurst, but had been able only to inform the Hamas High Command in Gaza.
And since, at the time, General Rashood was deep underwater in the Mediterranean Sea, it was a) nearly impossible, b) unwise, and c) totally unnecessary to risk satellite detection, so they sent not a screed of information about his wife’s antics on the other side of the world.
Thus Ravi was operating totally in the dark. He had no idea whether anyone in the USA understood that Admiral Morgan might be in danger. Shakira had, of course, told him precisely what had happened, but she had been far away from Brockhurst even before they discovered Matt Barker’s body. She was on the other side of the world before the Washington press corps finally switched on to her absence.
The questions haunted the general. What level of security was being employed for the admiral’s trip? How many agents from the USA would accompany him? What did the Brits think? Had they been requested to provide extra security? Would Admiral Morgan be surrounded by CIA hard men? Did Scotland Yard have their typical shoot-on-sight team awaiting his arrival?
And, perhaps above all, how long was the admiral staying at the Ritz? How long did Ravi have? If there was a foul-up, where would he and Shakira next locate Admiral and Kathy Morgan?
Ravi could only find answers in the broadest possible sense. In his opinion, Shakira would most certainly have been found out. The FBI would have interviewed anyone in Brockhurst who knew her, and that would most certainly include Mrs. Gallagher. Yes, there would be heavy security surrounding the admiral. And yes, the CIA would almost certainly have been in touch with the British authorities concerning the protection of President Bedford’s closest personal adviser, the man who had put him in power.
In Ravi’s mind, the worst possible time to attempt the assassination would be the moment of the admiral’s arrival. If the security was anything like as ironclad as he thought, it would be impossible to strike and then get away. There would be police everywhere, probably outriders on motorcycles, and it would be early morning, the streets of London not yet busy. Ravi did not relish the thought of being pursued across a near-deserted Berkeley Square by mounted officers, sirens wailing.
Arnold’s arrival was important, but only as an observation point. He knew roughly what the admiral looked like from newspaper photographs, and he knew what Kathy looked like from newspapers and magazines. But he anticipated some kind of a mob scene when the party arrived at the Ritz, and there would be confusion and jostling, with a lot of people on high alert.
It would be fatal to attempt a shot, miss, hit someone else, and instantly find every building surrounded by London’s tough and efficient police force. There would also be no question of a second shot.
For a visit like this, Ravi considered it likely that the police would insist on searching and inspecting all office buildings that overlooked the Ritz. The fact was, he knew, nothing would be too much trouble, because if anything happened to Arnold Morgan in London, the police and security services would most definitely get the blame.
ARNOLD MORGAN ASSASSINATED Why, oh why, was security so lax?
Ravi could imagine the bleating of the media. And he thus anticipated heavy police activity all around the Ritz Hotel both today, Monday, and in the early morning tomorrow, when the admiral was due to show up. Those were the times he must hold his nerve, and if necessary allow himself to be interviewed as the Finnish marketing accountant going quietly about his business.
They were not, however, times for a head shot at Arnold Morgan. That would wait. Ravi would hit the admiral the first time he and Kathy left the hotel. Because then, if they were just going shopping or sightseeing, there would be a far more relaxed atmosphere. On a scale of one to ten, security would be at ten for the arrival, maybe only six for future excursions from the hotel.
It was, however, critical that Ravi be in close attendance when that motorcade pulled in at 7:30 in the morning. He needed to see the admiral through a telescopic sight, and he needed to identify Kathy and assess the weight of the security detail.
And right here, Ravi did have a further problem. He did not wish to arrive at his office soon after 7 A.M. and be noted by Reggie as the first man into the building. That would draw attention. Besides, Arnold’s flight might be early, as transatlantic planes often were when coming from west to east with a tailwind.
He would need to be in position the previous night, which would mean evacuating the embassy this afternoon and bringing everything he needed with him, all crammed into his new sports bag. Shakira would stay one more night with the Syrians and then meet him. It did not occur to the Hamas general that he might be captured.
The doormen at the Dover Street office worked two separate shifts. This week, Reggie was 7 A.M. to 2 P.M. Don came in from 2 P.M. ’til ten. They did not keep personal records of each tenant’s comings and goings, because in this central area people were always going out and coming back.
But like most good city-center doormen, they usually knew who was in and who was out, especially in a relatively small building like this with only thirty tenants maximum. This meant Ravi would need to be on station at 1 P.M. Reggie would see him come in, but Don would not know Ravi was in the building unless he emerged from his office.
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 Light
God 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.
