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.