Because General Rashood would now have to enter England, which was almost catastrophically difficult. Air travel was out of the question. Ravi was one of the most wanted men on earth. If he presented any passport, forged or genuine, at Heathrow’s immigration desk, the computer would probably explode.
A clandestine landing by sea was no less hazardous. The new antidrug culture had put the entire British Coast Guard on red alert. There were Royal Navy ships patrolling the English Channel like bloodhounds. Every radar dish, civilian or military, was sweeping the coastline for intrusive small aircraft.
There was only one way in, only one that carried an acceptable risk, and that meant Ravi had to move very fast. As it happened, he was in the house when Shakira called, and he wished fervently that he could speak to her. But he knew better, and he tried to shut her from his mind as he prepared for the immediate conference of the Hamas High Command and the two visiting senior members of Hezbollah. It was 9:30 in the evening.
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.
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.
They had trotted out all the predictable platitudes: Just who does this admiral think he is? Why does a modern USA require this aged Cold Warrior? Is Arnold Morgan leading us back to gunboat diplomacy? Just how dangerous is this ex-nuclear submarine commander? President Bedford must explain to the American people… If Arnold Morgan wants this much influence, he should run for office.
The television networks seized upon the theme. Political “forums” were established specially to wreck the admiral’s reputation. And very quickly, the Arab al Jazeera television station leaped onto the bandwagon with such “documentaries” as The Terrorist-Buster in the White House-an in-depth look at President Bedford’s Hard Man.
General Rashood was as utterly disinterested in this outpouring of indignation in the USA as Admiral Morgan was himself, regarding all media journalists as a bunch of know-nothing, half-educated, hysterical charlatans. Or worse.
What concerned the general was the intelligence between the lines: that Admiral Morgan had indeed been the principal force that sent three of the top Hamas field officers to Guantánamo Bay, probably for the rest of their lives. That there was a definite chance that the suicide Boeing 737, Flight TBA 62, going for the Capitol building, had been shot down by the U.S. military on specific orders from Admiral Morgan.
In General Rashood’s opinion, the jihadists were fighting a war against one man, and losing it. Time and again. Militarily, there was only one option. And he would carry out that option himself. They now had a time, a place, and the target. All that remained was to enter England in a thoroughly clandestine way.
Colonel Hassad Abdullah interrupted to report that the Iranian Navy had one of their Russian-built Kilo-class diesel-electric submarines in the Mediterranean, patrolling somewhere off Lebanon. It had been refueled at the north end of the Suez Canal, and its task was, essentially, to stand by to help the holy warriors of Hezbollah should they require it. The Iranians, however, would be only too delighted to help General Rashood on his mission.
This was the best possible news, because without that submarine, it would be nearly impossible to land General Rashood in the operations area. Even now, time was extremely tight. Southern Ireland was the obvious landfall for anywhere in Great Britain, although the distance was somewhat daunting. From Lebanon, it was approximately 3,900 miles by sea, straight through the Med to the Strait of Gibraltar, a distance of 2,500 miles, then 1,400 more north across the Bay of Biscay to the open Atlantic and on to the coast of County Cork.