To the Death am-10 Read online

  He and Shakira once more drove with hardly a word spoken. They reached the outskirts of Glasgow around noon and moved fast around the city on the freeway. Ravi followed the signs to the city center, crossed the River Clyde, and pulled up outside the Millennium Hotel in George Square, Glasgow’s focal point.

  Ravi had not been here for many years, but he remembered Scotland’s last great shipbuilding city, and he smiled for the first time this week when the receptionist told him there was a large double room which he and Mrs. Barden could have for two nights. And yes, there was a communications room for visiting businessmen who wanted access to the Internet. There were four desktop Apple Macintosh computers in there, and it was open twenty-four hours.

  Ravi and Shakira checked in, and immediately his mood began to lighten. He took Shakira down to the hotel’s conservatory, which looks out onto the square, and ordered coffee and chicken sandwiches for lunch.

  He apologized for his melancholy demeanor and tried to explain that he had taken a sacred oath, among his peers in the Hamas High Command, that he would rid the Jihad of its most sinister enemy. For him, it would be the most terrible loss of face to fail. And there was no turning back. He must assassinate the admiral or die in the attempt.

  “But what about me?” asked Shakira, plaintively. “I won’t let you die alone. But I still don’t understand why this cannot be like any other military operation. You try, you fail, then you retreat, regroup, and perhaps someone else takes over as leader. Great victories are sometimes won at the second or third try. It does not have to be all or nothing, every time.”

  “This one does, Shakira. This one is to the death.”

  “Do you have any real hope of finding him here? This Glasgow is a very big place.”

  “I know,” said Ravi. “It’s a kind of surprise after driving all through that amazing lonely country — the Yorkshire moors, then the Lake District, then the border country, and suddenly there’s this giant metropolis right on the banks of the Clyde.”

  “And those freeways, it was like being back in London.”

  “A long time ago,” said Ravi, “Glasgow was described as the Second City of Empire. After London, that is. And there were a lot of cities in the British Empire. Half the bloody world. It was a very important place.”

  “You still haven’t told me what happens to me if you manage to get yourself killed. What am I supposed to do? Where could I go?”

  Ravi was once more silent. “You are right in your thoughts. There would be nowhere else for you to go. Because they’d hunt you down and charge you with the murder of Matt Barker. Plus God knows how many other crimes. Shakira, I am pretty hard to kill, and I’m not even considering that possibility. But if we have to die, we die together, like Holy Warriors.”

  “Well, I’m sick of this dying business,” she replied. “I’m sick of blowing things up and hating everyone. I’ve been in the West for a long time now, and I can’t think of any reasons why we should go around trying to kill people. I’ve liked nearly everyone I’ve met. I’m not even sure this Admiral Morgan is all that bad.”

  Despite the seriousness of Shakira’s mindset, Ravi laughed. He had another bite of his chicken sandwich, principally to give himself time to think up a reply, and then he said, “Sometimes there is a far bigger picture than the little corner we occupy.”

  “I’m not in a picture,” she said. “I’m right here in Glasgow eating chicken sandwiches, and I don’t want you to go off and blow this admiral’s head apart with your special bullets, and then get shot by the police. That’s all.”

  “Ssssshhhh!” he hissed. “Someone will hear you.”

  “And I don’t want to go around being told to ssshhhh for the rest of my life. Why can’t we go back to Ireland? I liked it there. And we could live peacefully, miles away from all this terrorist stuff.”

  “Because I’m wanted for murder in County Cork,” replied Ravi. “And there would never be any peace for us. We have just one choice. I have to complete my mission, and then we go back to Gaza or Damascus where we will be protected. We must live in an Arab country, because that’s where we will be looked after for the rest of our lives.”

  Shakira made no reply for a full minute. And then she said, “I just have a bad feeling about this mission. And I have not experienced anything like it before. The Americans must know that a Middle Eastern group tried to kill the admiral. And if he stays here, they will have extra security all over the place.

  “I think our task will be harder now than it’s ever been. And those Americans will be armed with machine guns. And we know they can shoot straight. I think we should call the whole thing off and Hamas can try again next year. Let someone else take the risk.”

  Ravi gazed at her sternly. “Shakira,” he said, “this one is to the death.”

  “Even though you might be committing suicide? I mean, how the hell do you think we’ll get away? All those assassins in the past were caught. I read the other day, they got the man who shot President Lincoln, they got that Oswald guy who shot JFK. President Reagan and John Lennon were both shot, and the police got both gunmen. Same with Martin Luther King, and Bobby Kennedy.”

  “Hey,” said Ravi, “how come you know so much about assassinations?”

  “I read a magazine article about them in the hotel last night. I’ve been saving the knowledge to hit you with it. All those men who pulled the trigger on famous people were caught and tried in a court of law.”

  “They didn’t catch me,” replied Ravi. “I walked away scot-free. And I’m still walking.”

  “Well, you might be a bit cleverer, that’s all,” she replied. “But your luck may not hold out forever.”

  “I assure you,” said Ravi, momentarily stunned by his wife’s insolence, “luck had absolutely nothing to do with it. I walked away because I planned it better.”

  “I accept that,” said Shakira, retreating. “But I just wish we could give it up and try to get on with our lives. We’ve both done enough in the cause of Islam. No one could deny that.”

  “I can only repeat what I said before. I have too much to lose in terms of reputation, and in case you had forgotten, I am still an English national, and that will always cast a shadow over me among some Muslims. There would be suspicions about my commitment. You make me say it again. This one is to the death.”

  They finished their lunch, and Shakira went up to their room. Ravi kissed her and said he treasured her above all else, and then he walked into the communications room.

  He sat in front of one of the computers and, after a quick Google search, connected to the Web site of Glasgow’s excellent newspaper The Herald. And there he typed the words Admiral Arnold Morgan, waiting patiently while a search was carried out for any mention of the American during the past few weeks. In the end there was nothing.

  He tried Web sites for the submarine service, for Holy Loch, the old U.S. base. And for Royal Navy reunions. All in the vain hope that somewhere, somehow, Admiral Morgan’s name would pop up. It didn’t. But then Ravi decided there needed to be a change of tack, since he was working on the pure assumption that Arnold was returning to his old stomping ground in the west, around the Clyde estuary.

  But perhaps he wasn’t. Perhaps he was coming to Scotland for entirely different reasons. Maybe Glasgow was a waste of time. Perhaps Admiral Morgan was going to the capital city, Edinburgh. And perhaps it would be better to search through Scotland’s other national newspaper, The Scotsman, which was based in Edinburgh.

  Ravi switched Web sites and tapped in the name Admiral Arnold Morgan and waited. Nothing came up. He decided to scroll through some recent editions and see if he could find some inspiration. His luck turned with last Monday’s newspaper, which had an entire page on the forthcoming Edinburgh International Festival, an annual August event, to which 500,000 people were expected.

  The chairman of the Festival was someone called Lady MacLean, married to a retired Royal Navy admiral, Sir Iain MacLean. Her name was Annie, and
there was a substantial interview with her about the wide-ranging aspects of the Festival, the films, the plays, the ballet, the chorale, and finally the Military Tattoo, which began on Saturday.

  Lady MacLean had revealed a list of high dignitaries who would sit in the Royal Box at Edinburgh Castle and take the salute. The fourth one down, in extremely small type, was Admiral Arnold Morgan, U.S. Navy (ret.).

  The reporter who compiled the page must have been struck by the unusual nature of a U.S. admiral showing up for this very British event. And he had plainly pressed her on the subject. Lady MacLean had rewarded his persistence by explaining that this former presidential staff member was a very old friend of her husband’s, and would be staying with them at their home in Inveraray before attending the Festival. Both Sir Iain and Admiral Morgan had commanded nuclear submarines.

  Each night, a different person takes the salute at the Tattoo, and Admiral Morgan would have the honor on Tuesday, August 7. Ravi could hardly believe his luck. He felt so relieved, he did not even take into consideration that Admiral Morgan, during his tenure on the Castle Esplanade, would be surrounded by heavy personal security plus half the British Army.

  His initial thought was to attempt to shoot Arnold Morgan while he was at the house in Inveraray. If that proved impossible, he would have another chance at the Tattoo. Five minutes ago, he had had no chances whatsoever, and now he had two. Ravi sensed that his luck had turned around.

  He made two short notes in his leather book and then took the elevator to the sixth floor, where Shakira was asleep. He woke her gently and told her that he was attending afternoon prayers at the Central Mosque of Glasgow, which stands on four acres right by the river. He did not tell his wife, but he was feeling in urgent need of spiritual reinforcement, so cutting had her words been earlier in the day.

  The flat brand of logic that was Shakira’s specialty had, in a sense, gotten to him. Because there was of course much truth in her argument. Why should he and this beautiful Palestinian girl continue to risk their lives, or at best face life imprisonment, when no one else seemed to be doing anything?

  He needed encouragement, and although Muslims do not communicate directly with God — not even the ayatollahs do that — Ravi usually felt an affinity with Allah inside the mosque, and, as the Chosen One, he lived in hope that one day he would hear the voice of the Great One.

  He was not losing his new faith. But he was most certainly questioning it. And that was something no one could help. Ravi knew, above all else, that he needed to stand alongside the Prophet Mohammed in order to carry out His work on the planet Earth. The Muslim dream of a vast kingdom stretching from the Horn of Africa to Morocco was well within the grasp of the oil-rich sheiks of the Middle East. But only if men like himself, General Rashood, could pave the way by eliminating the more troublesome warriors of the West.

  Just to hear the mullah call the faithful to prayer, to sense those rhythms of the ancient desert religion. That was his need, his requirement, here in this strange Scottish city where he was struggling to regain an impassioned belief in his God, the same belief that forced him every day to turn to the east, toward the holy shrine of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, and prostrate himself before Allah.

  Ravi took a cab to the Mosque, which turned out to be a hugely impressive building, bigger than the Regents Park Mosque in London, with a massive, geometric steel-and-glass dome and a separate minaret. When Ravi heard the call of the mullah, he once again felt the old familiar lure of the desert.

  This was a call to the faithful, and now he was back among that vast throng of faithful Islamists. He belonged there with these people, many of whom wore Arab dress. And he joined them in removing his shoes, and he walked inside to the great hall of prayer, and once more he prostrated himself before his God, and the recent words of Shakira faded away into the darkness of the unbelievers.

  When he returned to the hotel, Shakira was awake and changed for the evening, and he explained that he was taking a long drive out to the small town of Inveraray, which stands at the top of Loch Fyne, a 55-mile journey from Glasgow.

  He did not wish her to join him, and he hoped to be back by 10 P.M. Shakira accepted the news with equanimity and said she would have dinner by herself. She seemed, once more, both distant and disinterested. But she noticed that he did take his briefcase with him when he left, and distractedly wondered if she would ever see him again.

  1500 Same Day Goring-on-Thames

  Arnold and Kathy were finally ready to leave the Leatherne Bottel. The Royal Air Force helicopter was once more down in the parking lot, rotors spinning, luggage loaded. There were two police cars stationed top and bottom of the entrance drive, which winds down a steep hill. Two CIA hard men were positioned either side of the entrance door to the helo, and two other guards, Al Thompson and a new man from the U.S. embassy in London, were outside the restaurant’s main entrance, ready to walk close quarters across the terrace with the admiral and his wife.

  With everyone on board, strapped in, doors locked, the pilot took off, rising and backing at the same time, until the screaming military aircraft was stationary over the middle of the River Thames. At which point it tilted forward and rocketed upstream, gaining height, rising up to a thousand feet, before it clattered over the thirteenth-century bridge that guards the ancient town of Wallingford.

  The pilot headed north, leaving Oxford to his port side, then Birmingham, then Leicester, Nottingham, and York. At this point he changed to a slightly more westerly course, across north Yorkshire, before coming in to land at RAF Leeming for his refuel. The first two hundred miles of the journey had taken a little over an hour.

  The ground crew was awaiting the helicopter’s arrival, and they were on their way again after twenty minutes, flying high, directly over the A-66 where Ravi and Shakira had driven the previous day.

  They flew right across the north Yorkshire moors, and then over Durham and Northumberland, before crossing the Scottish border just east of the city of Carlisle. Their route to the estuary of the Clyde took them almost identically over the route Ravi and Shakira had taken into Glasgow.

  They left Loch Lomond to starboard and flew across the Forest of Argyll, coming out of the east to Loch Fyne, where, under guidance from Arnold Morgan, the pilot swept across the water and put down on the wide flat lawn of a beautiful white Georgian house on the west bank of the loch.

  Standing there to meet them was the still-commanding figure of Admiral Sir Iain MacLean, now almost seventy years old. He was accompanied by three rambunctious black Labradors who all charged into the water to meet the helicopter, and then charged straight back out again when the pilot elected to come down on dry land.

  Barking and shaking water all over everyone, they hurled themselves at their old friend Arnold Morgan, who greeted them like lost brothers, roughing them up the way Labradors expect to be treated. The American admiral introduced his staff to Sir Iain, and the helicopter’s loadmaster helped with the luggage.

  In moments, the helicopter was gone, flying back south, trying to make it before dark. It was exactly 5:30. Fifty-five miles away, Ravi Rashood was just driving away from the Millennium Hotel in Glasgow, heading for Inveraray with his briefcase.

  Sir Iain hugged Kathy and shook hands with Arnold. They were all old friends, and the tall Scotsman was delighted to see them both. But as they walked up the lawn, Arnold could see three Navy staff cars and two police cruisers from the Argyll force.

  “The chaps have been telling me about that trouble in London,” he said. “I read about it, of course, and I guessed it might have been connected with you. Although no one seemed very sure. I had the distinct impression that the police were not releasing any information they could reasonably keep secret.”

  “That’s about right, Iain,” said Arnold. “They never caught the killer, of course. He was up and out of there before they realized George Kallan had been shot. It was a very professional operation.”

  “A bit too professional for m
y taste,” said Kathy. “Arnold could have been killed. Those Middle Eastern hitmen are damned dangerous, don’t you think?”

  “Most certainly they are,” replied the Scotsman. “But you have enough security here to keep you very safe. The police chief, chap standing over there, told me they plan to surround you until you leave.”

  Arnold laughed. And Kathy added, “Of course, he flatly refused to go home. And we had a message from the president this morning that he’s sending a Special Forces team leader, ex-Navy SEAL, to take personal charge of the situation. He’s arriving on Air Force One, if you can believe it. Tomorrow morning. Just one passenger.”

  By this time, they had reached the house, and the American bodyguards dispersed to make their arrangements. The Navy had taken rooms in the local hotel in Inveraray and provided cars for them to drive to and from the house. Sir Iain MacLean ushered Arnold and Kathy inside and had his butler/chauffeur Angus take the baggage up to their usual room. “Let’s go and have a cup of tea, and then you two can have a rest before dinner. Annie will be home in a few minutes. She’s been playing golf. God knows how she does it. I’ve retired from the bloody game, bad back and a slice that frequently borders on the grotesque.”

  1830 Same Day Forest of Argyll

  Ravi gunned the Audi fast along the mountainous, curving A-83 road through the forest and crossed the river at the top of Loch Fyne, four miles from Inveraray. He did not know the precise location of Admiral MacLean’s house, but he had a feeling it might be obvious.

  He drove fast through the village and, still on the main road, suddenly saw up ahead a parked police car, blue lights spinning, right across the main gates of a big white house. He steadied his speed and drove sedately past, noticing another cruiser in the drive. Ravi did not need to inquire precisely whose residence this was.

  A short distance beyond the house, he noticed a wide track leading up into the woods, and he swung right, driving for a half mile until he had a clear view straight down to the loch. The house was largely obscured from his view by tall trees, but through his telescopic gunsight he could see enough.