“No, not like them. They were both on public duty; JFK was in a motorcade, Ronnie was outside a hotel with a crowd of people waiting. I’m an unknown former U.S. Naval officer on a private visit with my wife. Hardly anyone will know I’m there.”
“I can think of at least two bastards who will know: that bloody barmaid, and her reptile husband who went missing from 22 SAS. For Christ’s sake be careful. That’s all I can say.”
The wide thoroughfare of Piccadilly was gridlocked, all the way from the Wellington Arch at the western end of Green Park to Piccadilly Circus. The morning rush hour was under way, and it was quicker to walk than to take a bus or a taxi.
General Rashood stood among the fast-moving crowd on the corner of Dover Street, diagonally across from the Ritz Hotel. Mick Barton would not have recognized him. He was wearing a slim blond wig, a trimmed moustache and goatee beard, and heavy spectacles, with jeans, a white T-shirt, and sneakers. No jacket. He carried a briefcase.
Right now he was trying to get his bearings, assessing the distance across the yellow-painted lines of the junction into Arlington Street, to the entrance of the hotel. He stood there for only three minutes and then turned and walked through glass-paneled swing doors into the glum reception area of a London office block.
The entrance was sited amid a line of shops that curled around the south side of the block, from the Post Office on Dover Street, briefly along Piccadilly itself, and then around into Albemarle Street. The offices were situated on all six floors above the shops. Ever since the recent property collapse in London, there had been vacancies not only in this building, but in most others.
Ravi had stumbled into a buyers’ market. He wished only to rent, but if necessary he would purchase a leasehold. In this financial climate, however, a leasehold would most certainly not be necessary. Renting would be just fine, at a price way too high for a small space, but not ruinous.
He walked up to the doorman and requested the office manager. “I did call this morning,” he said. “Haakon Fretheim, Finland Farms Marketing Board.”
“Certainly, sir.”
Ravi was led up to a second-floor office fronting on Piccadilly. The rental agent was a bespectacled thirtyish lady wearing a blue suit and a Sotheby’s International name tag — Judith Birchell.
She confirmed to Ravi that there were seven available suites of offices at present, but the one she had mentioned on the phone, the single room with reception annex, was probably sufficient for one accountant and a secretary.
“It’s on the fourth floor, right above here,” she said. “Views directly across to the Ritz and St. James’s Street. let’s go up and take a look.”
Ravi followed her out to the hall, and they took the elevator two floors higher. There were several doors off the central area, two of which were open with sounds of activity from within. Two others had lights on, and the last one required a key to gain entry.
Judith showed Ravi into a carpeted office with a bright south-facing window. Ravi checked the catch and decided not to request permission to open it. There was a Venetian blind, which obviously could be lowered, and a desk and chair, which the agent said came with the rental, the last tenants having left the furniture and a rent debt for several hundred pounds.
“They left in a bit of a hurry,” she said. “They’d been gone more than a week before we realized they weren’t coming back.”
Ravi chuckled. “What rent were they paying?”
“A little over three thousand a month,” she replied. “But there’s been a rate cut since then. This is yours for twenty-two hundred, first and last deposit, on the six-month lease you mentioned.”
“Can I have it right away?”
“Oh, certainly. This building has a resident cleaning staff. The whole place has been vacuumed, carpets steam-cleaned, and the desk cleared out. The phones are connected, there’s central Internet, and the bathroom is right across the hall. Right next to it is the incinerator. You may dump the dry contents of your wastebasket down there, just paper and unwanted documents, not kitchen waste.
“If you leave the deposit, I’ll give you two keys, and one for the front door. The doormen are on duty from 7 A.M. until 10 P.M. Don and Reggie. You’ll find them extremely helpful.”
“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
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 attache 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.”
