And the hours slipped away. In the still of the night, Ravi heard Big Ben chime every fifteen minutes, with the massive main bell resonating on the hour. Two o’clock, three o’clock, four o’clock-and then at a quarter to five there was a minor commotion.

Ravi was half asleep, but he heard the sudden, short, sharp wail of a police siren, two police sirens. He peered out through his closed Venetian blinds and could see the spinning blue lights reflecting in the street-level shop windows. So far as he could see, there was a police cruiser parked on either side of Dover Street, Piccadilly end, right outside the front door to his building.

He had never heard, or even sensed it, before, but he somehow knew people were entering the building. He packed into his duffel bag the remains of his dinner, the two small sandwiches, and the flask. He slipped his briefcase into the wide central drawer of his desk and moved to a position behind his office door, which was locked.

The police were obviously in the building, and he heard, or certainly felt, the dull thud down below as the main front door, between the glass swing doors and the street, was slammed shut. He must have heard it before, but this morning it sounded amazingly loud. He could hear a succession of loud thumps from the lower floors, voices, shouting, growing nearer all the time.

Then he heard Reggie’s voice from almost outside his office. “There’s no one here, boys, you can trust me on that.” Then he added, “Don would have checked the building before he left.” This was of course palpably untrue. Neither doorman had ever checked the building before leaving.

The banging continued, and Ravi guessed the police were knocking hard on every office door. There were intermittent shouts of POLICE! ANYONE THERE? Occasionally Reggie could be heard calling someone’s name-“Mr. Marks-it’s Reggie here, just checking the building-no worries.”

The footsteps grew closer, and finally, shortly after five o’clock, there were three sharp, loud bangs on Ravi ’s door. The terrorist chief froze against the wall.

ANYONE THERE? POLICE!

Ravi knew he could have made a different choice, left the door open, lights on, and been sitting at his desk working. But that would have meant he’d been there all night. Bad idea. Ravi had decided to throw the dice and gamble on the police checking, but not opening, every door in the building.

He heard them banging on the office next door. He heard them go into the bathroom where four hours earlier he had shaved. Then he heard them climbing the stairs to the next floor, and he checked his watch. It was 0516, and he thought about the admiral for the millionth time this night. Seventy minutes from landing. That would put him somewhere over Ireland right now.

He could still hear the footsteps above him, and finally he heard them coming back down the stairs. He heard Reggie say, “Well, I did tell you the place would be empty. Anyway, it’s good you’ve got your blokes in position.”

As the footsteps continued below him, he caught one of the policemen saying “Thanks for coming in, Reggie.”

And he heard the Cockney doorman’s reply: “You can pick me up in a squad car any morning you like, old mate. ’Cept the bloody neighbors’ll think I’ve been nicked!”

The footsteps died away. And there was but one thought in the ex-SAS major’s mind: there were fewer people going downstairs than there had been going up. Somewhere, up above him, the police had left two or three men behind. Ravi stayed absolutely still, waiting for more footsteps descending the stairs. Nothing.

He tried to dismiss it from his mind. But he could not. In Ravi’s opinion, there were at least two, maybe three, London policemen, probably marksmen, stationed on the roof of this building, watching the main entrance of the Ritz Hotel, watching for the sudden appearance of an assassin, a man who might burst out of the crowd and fire a shot at Admiral Morgan, just as that crazed kid John Hinckley had done to President Reagan outside the Hilton Hotel in Washington in 1981.

Ravi ’s assessment was accurate. Scotland Yard had marksmen on the roof of every building that overlooked the main entrance to the Ritz. They were not exactly SWAT teams, with heavy machine guns and missile launchers, ready to repel attack from the air. But they were top-class police snipers who would be unlikely to miss, firing directly down at a would-be assassin.

Lt. Commander Ramshawe had put just enough of a scare into the security authorities for them to install a very serious steel ring of protection around the admiral. But, in Jimmy’s opinion, it was not nearly enough to take care of a top international assassin, the kind of high-level, trained terrorist who he believed would imminently strike at the best friend of the President of the United States of America.

The Dover Street office block again went quiet. Big Ben chimed six times. Ravi went to his leather briefcase and took out the telescopic sight to his rifle, training it on the deserted front steps of the Ritz, staring through the crosshairs, imagining the dimension of his task later this day.

The transatlantic passenger jets were beginning to come in now; staring south through the window, Ravi could easily discern the flight pattern as they came in, banking steeply over East London and the city and then tracking the River Thames along the south bank, out past Hammersmith, Chiswick, and into Heathrow, directly into the prevailing southwest wind.

The sun, just rising now, glinted on the fuselages as one by one they dropped down toward the world’s busiest airport. Northwest Airlines, Air Canada, British Airways, Delta, Virgin, American, line astern at the end of their Atlantic crossing. Ravi tried to spot incoming AA163, and at 0615 he thought he saw the sunrise lighting up the entire length of a Boeing 747. He guessed that was the reflection on the familiar bright silver surface of American Airlines.

He may or may not have been correct, but his phone signaled an incoming call that relayed to him only two words: “American landed.”

Just thirty minutes later, at 0645, the phone rang again and a voice said: “Seadog plus bruisers. Two U.S. embassy cars plus two police cars left Terminal 3.”

What the man from the Syrian embassy did not know was that four police outriders, on motorcycles, had joined the four-car motorcade along the slip road to the M-4.

The order of the convoy was now two motorcycles, side by side, riding shotgun in the lead; then one police car, containing four armed Metropolitan police officers; then the first U.S. embassy car, containing the admiral and Kathy, plus two armed CIA men in the front seats; then the second embassy car, containing Arnold’s regular three armed Secret Service agents and the new man, George Kallan; then the second police car, with four more armed policemen; then the final two outriders bringing up the rear. No sirens sounded, and the only flashing lights were on the leading motorcycles.

The convoy ran swiftly into West London. They were in moderate traffic, which was not yet into the eight o’clock gridlock. And there were no holdups whatsoever until they reached the big junction where Cromwell Road meets the Earls Court Road. Then everything slowed down.

But as soon as they crossed that junction, the outriders opened up their sirens, just short sharp whoops that caused the very savvy British drivers to ease over to the left, giving the convoy an almost free run into Knightsbridge.

They swung right down Beauchamp Place and ran straight through to Belgrave Square. Shakira, looking through her bedroom window, saw the motorcycles and cars come streaming past and guessed immediately who was in the black one with the darkened windows. But she thought not of the archterrorist-buster Arnold Morgan, but of his wife, her friend Emily’s daughter, the very beautiful Washington socialite, who only the previous day must have delivered Kipper to Brockhurst.