Patrick Robinson - To The Death

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.

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.