His planned landing on the coast of southern Ireland on July 14 or 15 was still on, and suddenly the Cheyenne seemed to be losing interest, slipping back several miles astern.
At midnight, Monday, July 9, Captain Abad ordered an increase in speed as they headed directly to the Strait. She was now driving through the water at seventeen knots. And her CO would make several of these one-hour bursts, despite the stress it put on the battery.
Shakira Rashood had left the Cashel Palace Hotel on Monday morning and asked her driver to take her to the wondrous Atlantic coastline of West Cork, upon which, sometime this week, her husband would land. The journey was a little over a hundred miles, and she had checked into a small hotel in the fishing village of Schull on the shores of Roaring Water Bay. She sent the chauffeur back to Cashel with instructions to collect her in Schull on Thursday afternoon.
Today she had taken a local taxi all the way down the long undulating road to the end of the Mizen Head Peninsula. And from there on this clear summer day she could see the distant lighthouse on the Fastnet Rock. The sea was very blue out here, and the deep Atlantic looked friendly, with two or three yachts sailing close-hauled into the soft onshore breeze.
Shakira had grown to love Ireland in the short time of her stay. She liked the people and was truly astonished at the breathtaking beauty of the countryside. For someone brought up among the sands of the desert, the browns and the stony reds of the Arab landscape, she found Ireland, with its forty shades of green, to be almost beyond her imagination.
She felt as if she was standing in a giant oil painting on the cliff top of Mizen Head. Behind her stretched the switchback of hills that rise and fall among tiny stone-ringed fields that had been divided and divided again, down the centuries, as families had split, shared, and migrated, in the endless surge of Ireland ’s greatest export, her people.
All around her, she had sensed the history, the ancient myths, and the legends. Every time she spoke to anyone at any length, there was a story, because the past is never far away for the Irish. The entire landscape is dotted with reminders, the stone ring forts, the huge stone graves, the tall carved religious stones dating from 2000 B.C., the round towers, and the high crosses.
During her journey south from Dublin, Shakira had stopped whenever she saw something to which she could get close. On the great Rock of Cashel beyond her hotel room, she had spent three hours just wandering around the ancient fortifications, the roofless abbey, and the finest twelfth-century chapel in Ireland. She’d stopped on the road to gaze at ruins, checking her guidebook, perhaps because this sense of times long past was in her blood, this curiosity, this desire to imagine.
No race of people is more devoted than the Arabs to myth and history and far-lost stories of valor and achievement. Except perhaps the Irish. Nonetheless, Shakira Rashood was exceptional. If she had not been an Islamic terrorist, she might perhaps have been a scholar.
She climbed back into her taxi and told the driver to go slowly all along the road to Barleycove and Goleen. Because from those high cliffs she could see way down to the harbor of Crookhaven, the spot chosen by the Hamas High Command, into which they would insert General Rashood after his long journey in the submarine.
Slowly they made their way back along the road to the West End Hotel in Schull, where she took a long bath and then walked downstairs into the bar for a glass of fruit juice before dinner. And as always, there was another legend being related, of how Bonzo, a local fisherman, had once drunk sixteen pints of draught Guinness in an hour and twelve minutes, which was considered to be an Irish free-standing record.
Shakira did not consider it to be in the same category as the legend of Brian Boru, who had stormed and captured the Rock of Cashel in the tenth century. But the bards of the Cashel Palace downstairs bar, on the subject of the great Irish king, were precisely the same as the seamen of Schull speaking of Bonzo. They all recounted the mighty deeds in the same reverential tones: all of them as if these pinnacles of Irish history had taken place yesterday.
Shakira was charmed by all of it, and wondered if it could ever be possible for her and Ravi one day to live here in peace and seclusion, half a world away from the flaming hatreds and death that would never leave the lands of her forefathers. But in her heart she knew that she and Ravi had gone too far, that they were both wanted in too many places, that there were too many people who would shoot them both on sight. The steely-eyed hitmen of the Mossad and the CIA would surely offer neither of them one shred of mercy.
Right above the Kilo, on the surface of the most westerly reaches of the Mediterranean Sea, the rain was lashing down. This was one of those great summer squalls known in the area as a levanter. Captain Abad welcomed it with all of his heart: the belting rain was sweeping across the dark water, giving him noise cover while the submarine ran at periscope depth, snorkeling. Despite the absence of danger, he still had those ingrained submariner’s instincts-the quieter we run, the better I like it.
The majestic Rock of Gibraltar, looming above the narrow strait that separates Europe from Africa, was only about five miles to the west. The sea-lanes were quiet at this time of night, and it was no problem to keep the air-intake mast raised for the generators.
The Kilo was still running fast and making a mighty wake as she came powering through the water. Every twenty minutes, Captain Abad took a short all-around look at the surface picture and could see only a single oil tanker and a freighter, a big container ship, under the French tricolor, probably headed for the port of Marseilles.
There were, so far as he could see, no warships in the vicinity. And his radar sweep was detecting scarcely anything. The sea was surprisingly calm. And the huge generators purred with life, sending a mild shudder through the entire ship.
Captain Abad turned to General Rashood and told him first the good news, that no one was tracking them. And then the bad news, which was they would not arrive in southern Ireland until the small hours of Monday morning, July 16. “And that’s only if we get a good fast run up the Atlantic,” he added.
Ravi, who had been somewhat within himself for the past couple of days, nodded distractedly, as well he might. The terrorist commander had a lot on his mind, not least that sudden, unexpected signal from Shakira on July 3, the one that clearly indicated something had gone wrong-evacuating immediately.
For all he knew, his wife was under arrest. Anything could have happened. He did not even know what country she was in. He just hoped to hell she had made it to Ireland, that she would somehow be waiting for him in Dublin. Right now he could only be patient, trapped in this submarine, running slightly late but still more or less within his original schedule.
And Shakira was not his only problem. Because ahead of him was a journey to England, the country where he was still, probably, among the most wanted men, both by the police and the military. Wanted for three murders, that is, and the Brits did not know the half of it. The United Kingdom was by far the most dangerous place for Ravi, so many people knew him from the days, a lifetime ago, when he had been an SAS commander, a leader in Britain’s most elite fighting force, Major Ray Kerman.
Encapsulated here, in this Iranian submarine, Ravi suddenly felt, for perhaps the first time, a pang of nostalgia, a mixed feeling of wistfulness, possibly even regret. He always tried to dispel memories of the old life, the camaraderie, the respect an SAS officer enjoys, and the lifelong friendships from his schooldays at Harrow. But he had rendered himself an outcast, estranged from his parents, estranged from the military, estranged from the country that had nurtured him.