Bahar laughed. “Shall I send you a selfie, as the Americans call it? Trust me, Strategist, I am the very image of that wealthy, reclusive old lady herself, believe me. A faded beauty, as the English say. I am dressed exactly as instructed, with your large diamonds on my fingers. The powder on my face even lightens my skin to match the whey-faced English. Lady Evelyn Durbish’s invitation is in my purse, ready to show security.”

Hercule said, “If by chance someone who knows Lady Durbish comes up to you, they won’t question you are. No one has seen her in the flesh for years. The old lady surely won’t be there. She’s very likely puttering about the family home, Durbish Abbey, an ancient pile of stones in Derbyshire.”

“I believe I see Lady Elizabeth Palmer at the entrance with a group of young women. This is surely strange. They are all dressed alike.”

“They are the bridesmaids, that is why,” Hercule said. “I wonder why they aren’t with the bride?”

Of course Bahar wouldn’t know. Hercule wondered how Bahar knew of Elizabeth. Well, he had eyes, he’d probably seen photos of him with her in the London Times or the tabloids.

A pause, then, “It is possible she will be killed, Strategist.”

“Death is but an instant away for all of us, Bahar. The C-4 is primed?”

“And carefully encased in our enriched plastic coating, flattened enough to slip into your selected spots for maximum destruction. It will not be noticed.”

“Good. In forty-five minutes I will expect to hear news of our message to the West. Do not fail us, Bahar.” Hercule slipped his mobile back into his pocket. All would go well this time, Hercule felt it to his bones. He thought of Elizabeth again. Could she possibly survive the blast where she would be standing?

Hercule had always been a fatalist, had never believed in the absurd rewards that supposedly awaited a devout Muslim upon his death. He wondered if Elizabeth was one of those who believed in an afterlife, wondered if that would comfort her in the instant before her heart stopped beating. It was doubtful, though, that she would even have that. The explosion itself was an instant in time. Then he thought of Lord Harlow, seated on the groom’s side, close to the front since the families were close, and of the eight million British pounds, half of which already resided safely in one of his Swiss accounts.

He poured himself another glass of chardonnay and walked to the wide window overlooking the Thames. He looked east, toward St. Paul’s. He wouldn’t see it explode from here, but he would hear the explosion, see the billowing clouds of black smoke rising about the buildings. And when St. Paul’s exploded, or a goodly part of it came crashing down, he would hear the beautiful sound echoing around the city, and the sirens that would follow.

He raised his glass to Elizabeth and to Lord Harlow.

ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL

LONDON, ENGLAND

Monday afternoon

Bahar walked slowly along St. Paul’s Church Yard, the wide busy street that formed the long south boundary of the rough triangle of land that enclosed St. Paul’s Cathedral. The façade of the church wasn’t set back from the incessant traffic or the encroaching buildings; it stood there right in the center of things, flanked on all sides by bicycles, big red tourist buses, and countless people scurrying about. Many small outdoor tables were filled with coffee and tea drinkers at the nearby London cafés.

He knew the real-time cameras of the state-of-the-art video surveillance system and people watching it from the on-site control room would pick him up when he entered the cathedral. They didn’t know who they were looking for, in any case, so it wouldn’t make any difference. No one would give the frail old lady a second glance.

They prided themselves on their Smartcards, given out to more than two hundred of their staff. Like most security ideas, the Smartcards sounded like a good idea, the most effective way to have a solid handle on the cathedral’s security, but it was so far from the truth, it was laughable. He hadn’t even risked stealing one. The truth was St. Paul’s allowed visitors to enter its sacred portals without even passing through an X-ray machine, and to an expert like himself, it was low-hanging fruit. The cathedral staff didn’t have the space to run such a system, not when more than two million tourists flocked here every year into an area no larger than a quarter of a square mile. The great Christopher Wren couldn’t have imagined what was going to happen to his grand creation.

Bahar felt blessed. He would achieve immortality today. He would forever be known as the man who destroyed one of the sacred shrines of the English, and of Londoners in particular. It would enrage them, they would yammer and yell, certainly, but even more, it would scare them stupid. Ultimately, what could they do but change their ways, and he couldn’t imagine that. The English mouthed every platitude of inclusion, praised diversity and tolerance, like the bloody Americans, but in the end they were certain of their own superiority, and that superiority made them objective and ethical. Hypocrites, the lot of them.