Patrick Robinson - To The Death

“That will be excellent,” said Ravi, taking one more look through the window, straight at the curved dark blue- and gold-trimmed awning above the main entrance to the Ritz Hotel. “This will do very nicely indeed.”

“It’s a standard rental agreement, same for everyone. You can sign it in my office, subject to the references I mentioned, plus a bank statement, and a passport if you’re not a British national.”

They returned to the second floor and Ravi produced a nicely forged reference from the Egyptian embassy confirming that they had dealt many times with Mr. Fretheim concerning Finnish trade agreements, and they knew him to be trustworthy and aboveboard. Judith photocopied his equally well-forged Finnish passport, and glanced at the bank account of the Syrian ambassador, upon which the name had been changed and copied to read Haakon Fretheim, of 23 Ennismore Gardens, London SW7.

It showed a current balance of £18,346 in credit, and Ravi, with a remarkable display of affluence, paid Judith a total of three months’ rent with an American Express card issued originally to the military attaché in the Jordanian embassy in Paris.

The agent handed over two office keys and told him to collect front-door keys from Reggie, who was working the morning shift today. “I’ll call him before you get down there,” she said. “I expect I’ll see you around.”

Ravi shook hands with Judith Birchell and made his way downstairs. He stopped for a chat with Reggie the doorman and exited through the glass-paneled doors, back to the corner of Dover Street. He stepped forward and looked up to the window of his new office. He moved to stand directly below it and then looked at the angle diagonally across to the main entrance of the Ritz.

When the traffic light at the top of Arlington Street turned red, he moved swiftly across the central no-parking zone, corner to corner, pacing the precise distance from the outer wall of his office to the six white stone steps that led up to the polished mahogany revolving door of the hotel.

The traffic light had halted the one-way line of vehicles heading directly out of Arlington Street, across Piccadilly and north up Dover Street. But the onrushing line of cars and taxis running toward central London was up and moving faster than Ravi was walking, and he was hustled along by a couple of loud blasts on the horn from cab drivers. He did not look up.

Instead, he kept walking, and kept counting, until he reached the hotel steps: fifty-four yards, add six for the height of his office building, and he was looking at a shot, from sixty yards out, at an angle of fifteen degrees from the horizontal of his office outer wall. That, he considered, would be a breeze for the powerful Austrian sniper rifle with its proven needle-point accuracy from almost a half mile.

Quickly he took stock of the Ritz entrance-the curved brass rails down either side of the steps, the two curly, potted evergreens, like sentries left and right of the steps, the rounded archway of the awning. And directly in the front of the hotel, the no-waiting area, entirely controlled by the top-hatted doormen, moving the guests along, arrivals and departures, with the authority of Metropolitan policemen.

Ravi did not catch the eye of either doorman. Instead, he walked quickly past and kept going for another hundred yards until he reached the pub on the corner of Bennet and Arlington, the Blue Posts, with its cheerful line of small outside tables, none of them occupied.

Ravi sat down and waited for a few minutes until a waiter came out and agreed to bring him orange juice and coffee. And there England ’s most wanted man, heavily disguised as a native of Finland, sat and quietly watched the comings and goings at the Ritz Hotel, acquainting himself with the patterns of the traffic and the people. He was already concerned that this was not a huge area, but one that could easily be swamped by security men.

Even more irritating was the little traffic queue that formed at the top of Arlington Street right outside the main door into the Ritz. A tall vehicle waiting in there could obscure his shot, although he imagined the U.S. embassy car, which would undoubtedly be awaiting the admiral, would already be ensconced in the prime spot at the base of the six white steps.

After an hour, he paid and walked back across Piccadilly to Dover Street and into his new quarters.

“Hello, sir. Back already?” said Reggie.

“Just delivering some of my stationery,” replied Ravi. “I’ll take the elevator.”

Inside his office, Ravi moved the chair to the front of the window. Then he dropped the Venetian blind, bent one of the lower laths downward, and peered across to the Ritz entrance. Five times in the next fifteen minutes, he made notes of a high-sided vehicle driving past the hotel. Two of them parked outside in traffic for between thirty-three and thirty-nine seconds, two drove straight past without coming to a halt, and one was so far over to the right that it made no difference whether it stopped or not.

Only one of the five would have caused him a problem, which the Hamas general decided was a risk with which he would have to live. Once more he exited his new office building, and this time he turned right, walking the length of Picadilly, then crossing, via the Hyde Park Corner tube station, the gigantic road junction at the end of Grosvenor Place.

He strolled into Belgrave Square on an easy stride, pleased with his morning’s work, but full of regret that he dare not take Shakira out this evening to some of his old London haunts-the ones that had decorated his young life, a thousand years ago, when he had never even heard of Hamas, nor the pious self-righteous philosophies which accompany that glowering terrorist organization.

He thought of the Grenadier, just around the corner in Grosvenor Crescent Mews; he thought of the Bunch of Grapes in Knightsbridge, where almost every wealthy young Catholic girl in London could be found after Sunday morning Mass at Brompton Oratory; and he thought of the Scarsdale Arms, and the Windsor Castle, and the Italian restaurants in Fulham Road and King’s Road. So many places where he had once been made welcome, with a credit card provided by his father. But these places would now be like a minefield, still populated, no doubt, by people who might very well recognize him.

With the most profound regret, Ravi finally realized that he was an outlaw in a once-friendly city, an outcast in his own land, an enemy of the people. And at that moment, if he could have turned the clock back and been allowed to do things differently, he would most certainly have done so. Except for Shakira. Always Shakira. Surely, he thought, no man had ever lived with a greater, more perplexing conundrum.

Greater love hath no man than this, muttered Ravi, adjusting the Gospel of Saint John, that he would lay down his country for his wife.

Grinning at the dexterity of his own words, he walked calmly up the steps to the Syrian embassy and rang the bell, as arranged. He was ever the visitor, never a resident. And the lady for whom he had laid down his country welcomed him as if he had been away for six months rather than four hours.

For Shakira, the presence of her husband was the only solace for the long lonely hours she spent in the gilded splendor of the embassy. Occasionally she would be offered lunch or perhaps tea with a visiting Arab sheik, and they would speak politely about the political situation in the Middle East. But on each of the next two days, Ravi would leave in the morning and go to his office, always acquainting himself with fellow tenants if possible, and especially with Don and Reggie the doormen.

He normally lunched at the embassy, but in the afternoons he made another visit to Dover Street, and on Friday evening he was there yet again at 8 P.M., leaving at 9:30, carrying his briefcase, still dressed in jeans, T-shirt, and sneakers, still wearing his blond wig, moustache, and goatee. Still speaking in what he guessed, wrongly, was a Finnish accent, but in truth sounded more like Trinidad than Helsinki.