He turned to Arrow. 'Adam, you and your men will be stationed inside the theatre area, agreed?'
'Mm. That's right. We'U guard the perimeter, and keep watch on the seats, in case some looker's planted himself in the audience.
One lookin' out, one lookin' in, alternately, all the way round, using night glasses. I'd be happier with another couple of men, though.'
'You've got them. I'll give you McGuire and Mcllhenney. In fact, why don't we kit them out in bulletproof vests and helmets and ask them take up position behind Ballantyne and the PM.
They're both big wide buggers. They'll make good blockers.
They'd have to volunteer, but I know them – they will. That'll "ee up all of your guys for what they're best at.' "Thanks, Bob.'
'What about Maggie Rose?' said Martin. 'We mustn't forget about her. She'd be pissed off if she was left out of the action.' "That's OK. Maggie will be with me, up here, watching for whatever happens. For believe me, boys, there will be something to be seen, and it won't be just fireworks. I've never felt as certain o' anything in my life.'
67
Everything that evening happened on cue – even the weather. Thef storm broke, finally, at 8:45 pm, just as Skinner and Maggie rosch were driving up the deserted Castle esplanade between the high-H tiered temporary grandstands, which on another night would have been filling with spectators gathering for the Military Tattoo in the3 wide parade ground which they Hanked. But fireworks and orchestra had taken precedence over marching bands and military gymnastics, and for that. Skinner guessed, as the first flash of. lightning lit up the gloaming, six thousand potential ticket-holdersg should feel truly grateful.
Heavy raindrops pounded on the roof of the car as he swung if into the tunnel which takes vehicles into Edinburgh Castle, resuming their bombardment as he drove back into the open, anc up to the parking area between Butts Battery and the Castl Hospital, which had once been, ironically, its powder magazine.
He felt glad of the long Burberry waterproof coat and hat whic he had thrown on to the back seat as he had left home.
Maggie Rose was clad for wet weather, too. In knee-lengti boots, jeans and a hooded Barbour jacket, she looked for all th world like a countrywoman on a week-end walk, not a detective engaged on life-or-death duty.
Skinner opened the boot of the car and produced from it two pairs of odd-looking, heavy binoculars.
'Here, take these,' he said, handing one set to Maggie Rose.
'They're light-intensifying, infra-red or some such. However, they work; they'll help you see in the dark. You're going to need them before much longer.
'Are you armed?' he asked casually as they walked up to their vantage point on the Mills Mount Battery.
'No, sir. I didn't see the need for it up here.'
The neither. This is an army garrison, after all. There's guns enough all around us.' i The adjutant of the Castle garrison regiment, the Royal Scots, was waiting for them on the Battery. He held a large blue umbrella over his head. Soldier's bravado, thought Skinner, as lightning cracked across the sky, searching for a route to earth.
'Taking a chance. Major Ancram, aren't you?' he said, pointing at the umbrella.
The big, middle-aged officer laughed. 'Rubber soles, old boy!
Anyway, if the bloody Argies couldn't hit me, what hope is there for this lot!'
Skinner shook his head and smiled. Daft as a brush, he thought.
He introduced Major Ancram to Detective Sergeant Rose.
Then, moving forward to the edge of the Battery, he raised the night-glasses and swept his gaze along Princes Street, from the Mound to Lothian Road. Without its street lighting, the famous street, with its shops on one side, Gardens and Castle on the other, was beginning to resemble an island of darkness in the midst of the dramatic illuminations which show off historic Edinburgh by night.
In the deepening gloom, the north pavement was already well filled with people, braving the rain for the sounds and spectacle of this unique evening. Above the pedestrians was a second tier of spectators, those privileged ones with access to upper-floor windows, or to the wide galleried fronting of some of the buildings – memorials to an architectural eccentricity decades earlier which had envisaged the eventual creation of a first-floor walkway running the length of Princes Street.
The lights of the New Club, of which Skinner was a member, caught his eye. Through its high windows he could see clearly that the Fireworks drinks party was gathering momentum. He was suddenly glad that he had persuaded the Chief to make the Club his vantage point, out of harm's way yet able to observe the crowd. Further along, others, with glasses in hand, peered out of the upper apartments of the Royal Overseas League. Business was good, he noted, in the two-storey Burger King, bright on its corner in contrast to the gap site on the opposite side of Castle Street, where the Palace Hotel had once stood, and where rebuilding work was still far from completion.
'Past food's selling well,' he muttered to no one in particular, as he registered that McDonald's too was packed.
From Princes Street, Skinner swung the glasses down into the Gardens, to the Ross Theatre itself. He checked his watch. It was still only 9:15, too early for ticket-holders, especially on a night like this. But already Arrow and his black-suited men were deployed there in waiting, hooded and with bulky automatic weapons in their hands.
The stage was hidden from his view, but twenty feet away from it, behind two seats in the centre, he saw two bulky figures, grotesque in their helmets, with rain tunics over their flak-jackets, but standing there solidly as human shields. Skinner was suddenly very touched by the loyalty of his team, and very proud of them.
His moment of reverie was broken by Major Ancram •Everything OK, Mr Skinner?' •Yes, Major, so far. So far.'
'What do we do now?'
'We wait and we watch. And, if you're into it, you might like to do a wee bit of praying for those boys down there, and for the two clowns they're looking after.'
68
If smiles could cut you, Andy Martin thought to himself, Ballantyne would be bleeding all over the place.
The tension between the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Scotland was obvious to the six other people in the room:
Martin himself, Brian Mackie, the ministers' two private secretaries Fowler and Shields, and the PM's two protection officers. From chance remarks it was also obvious that the appearance by the country's leader at this concert had been Ballantyne's idea rather than his own.
The Prime Minister was a small man, almost slender alongside the stocky bulk of Ballantyne, but his firecracker temper was known to equal that of even his most formidable predecessor. He was clearly not best pleased to be here in Edinburgh, in the firing line, in the rain. The conversation between the two ministers remained polite, but it was stilted. They were clearly not the closest of political allies. And although the PM was working hard to maintain an affable front, every so often the truth of his feelings would flash in his eyes, behind the spectacles, betraying the insincerity of his professional smile.
It was a relief to everyone when Martin's radio crackled into life on an open channel. Only he could hear the voice through his earpiece. It was distorted, but it was unmistakably Skinner. 'It's all secure up here, Andy. The punters are in their seats, the orchestra's tuning up, and the blue touch paper's lit. It's five to ten, so let's get the show on the road.'
Martin snapped an acknowledgement into the handset, then turned to his charges. 'All's well, gentlemen, so if you're ready…'
'Yes,' said the Prime Minister, fixing Ballantyne with his frostiest and least sincere smile. 'I love a good fireworks display in the rain, sitting behind a bullet-proof shield! Let's go, Alan, and do your duty!' m
69
The rain still poured down, the thunder crashed and the lightning flashed, like some great overture to the fireworks to come.
The motorcyclists and the escort cars peeled off as soon as the convoy entered the Gardens. Watching
from above. Skinner and Maggie Rose could follow the Jaguar's headlights as they cut a path through the dark to the entrance to the Ross Theatre.
Expertly, the PM's driver swung the car round, and reversed it up' to stop a few feet in front of four empty seats, two of them with massive sentinels positioned behind them.
Martin and Mackie, in heavy anoraks and flat caps, jumped out; and scanned the audience. Then Martin leaned back into the car and spoke softly. The Prime Minister stepped out first, and then the Secretary of State for Scotland, each in heavy rainwear. Their arrival in the darkness went unseen by the great majority of the audience, but they were greeted by a round of polite applause nonetheless, led by the Concert's guest conductor, Daniel Greenspan, standing well back on his spotlit rostrum, only just out of the pounding rain.
The Prime Minister was ramrod straight, and smiled widely around him as he walked the few steps to his seat. Behind him, Ballantyne, glum and nervous, hurried to sit down under the cover provided by Mario McGuire. Martin took the seat immediately beside the PM, while Mackie flanked the Secretary of State. Each detective kept a hand inside his jacket, on the butt of his pistol.
Greenspan turned to face the orchestra and raised his baton.
70
Skinner felt Maggie Rose jump slightly beside him, in involuntary alarm, as the first firework. launched from the wide area around the foot of the Castle rock, exploded in synchronicity with the first bars of Aaron Copland's 'Outdoor' overture.
'Get used to it, Maggie. Keep looking around, and keep your fingers crossed that's all you'll see or hear.'
For some while it seemed as if Skinner's hope against hope would be fulfilled.
As the Concert unfolded, the unamplified music boomed up towards them on their battlement. Different shapes, colours and patterns of light burst all around them, as the pyrotechnics lit the night sky, in uncanny harmony with the music.
Skinner concentrated his view to the left, and Rose kept hers to the right. From time to time, flashes from the fireworks were channelled through the night-glasses and blinded them, but as the hour's duration of the concert wore on, they were able, between them, to keep under observation the whole of the area surrounding the Gardens and the theatre. They could see nothing untoward, only the enthusiastic crowds down in the Street, as they jumped and clapped with each new wonder of light in the dark sky.
At last, the programme reached its climax, Handel's Musicor the Royal Fireworks.
'They're nearly at the end now,' Skinner called out above the noise to his two companions. 'So far, so-'
He was cut short by the sound of an explosion, carrying clearly through a lull in the music, and a momentary break in the fireworks. It came from their left.
Skinner swept his glasses along Princes Street to the Caledonian Hotel, but saw nothing untoward. Carrying on, he scanned along Castle Terrace. Saltire Court and the Traverse Theatre seemed undisturbed, and from what he could see of the Usher Hall and we Sheraton, they too looked undamaged. But beyond them, beyond the Royal Lyceum, in Lothian Road, to the left of the high top of Capital House, he saw a billowing cloud of smoke and dust rising and shining in the floodlights which illuminated the front of the building which had been home to the Film Festival.
His radio was in his hand in a second. 'Major incident, Filmhouse,' he barked into the open line. 'All emergency services required now. Every second officer in Princes Street go to the scene, immediately.'
Just as he finished issuing the order, he heard the tail-end of a second blast, this time sounding from the right.
Again Skinner swung round, searching through the glasses, but something took him instinctively to the Balmoral. The hotel's foyer was out of his line of sight, but his eye was caught at once by the shattered windows in its side. Then he saw the smoke of the; bomb as it spread outwards in a mushroom from the front of the huge, square stone building.
'Jesus Christ, there's been another.'
The radio mike was in his hand once more. 'Second explosion, Balmoral Hotel. Emergency services respond again. Headquarters, let's get every policeman in Edinburgh into this area!'
He was still issuing his orders when Maggie Rose grabbed his arm. 'Sir, what's that over there, on the Mound?'
He followed her finger pointing into the night, until his glasses found the stationary lorry. It was big and flat-backed, and it seemed to have been pulled right up on to the pavement, just at the point where the curving section of the Mound straightened to run down towards Princes Street, past the National Gallery. The lorry's cab was empty, but its curtain side, facing the Gardens, had been pulled open, and four figures stood on its platform.
Skinner could see them clearly – and could see clearly what they were doing.
Two of them clasped bulky, box-like objects to their shoulders, while the others were braced against them, to hold them steady.
'Andy!' he roared into the radio. 'Get them into the car, now, they've got missiles! In the car! In the car! In the car!'
And as he spoke he saw the launchers fire, simultaneously. He followed the path of the squat fly-by-wire projectiles as each homed in on its target.
'Down! Down! Everybody down.' He screamed into the radio, and into the darkness of the Garden Theatre.
71
The Prime Minister experienced a sudden sensation of flight. One second, having forgotten, temporarily, his anger over Ballantyne's ridiculous bravado, he was enjoying Handel's finest work. The next he was in mid-air, seized bodily by Andy Martin, lifted clear of his seat, and bome at speed across the short distance to the Jaguar.
Then its rear door was wrenched open and he found himself thrown across the back seat. An instant later, Ballantyne landed heavily on top of him, hurled there by Brian Mackie. Then Mackie himself dived in to cover them both with his large body.
Martin, his pistol drawn, slammed the door shut behind them, slapped the side of the Jaguar, and dived to the ground as it roared off.
He looked up, back towards the audience, and could spot McGuire and Mcllhenney. Obviously they, too, had been alerted by Skinner's voice in their ear-pieces, since, arms outspread, they were gathering in as many of the people around them as they could and forcing them down between the seats.
On stage, the orchestra played on in triumph, as oblivious to the two explosions as were all but a few members of the audience.
Overhead the fireworks crashed and sparkled, at their luminescent climax.
72
There is no mistaking a Sidewinder missile for a firework.
Skinner watched, struck dumb by the horror, as one of them smashed right into the middle rows of the audience and exploded.
He saw that, at the moment of impact, several people, noticing the sudden commotion in the front row, had stood up trying, vainly, to catch a view in the dark. By a small mercy, the other Sidewinder flashed across the front of the stage, exactly where the Jaguar had: stood bare seconds before, over a figure lying face-down in the tarmac, and then off to explode in the trees beyond the theatre's iron gate.
Maggie Rose screamed out loud, and kept on screaming, until Skinner gripped her by the shoulders and shook her hard.
Even without night-glasses. Major Ancram could see the flashes of the missile strikes, and needed no telling what had happened.
'Mr Skinner, I'm calling out the garrison. I'll have to get every man down there.'
'Yes, Major,' said Skinner, recovering his power of speech.
'Fast as you can, too. Let's get down there.'
And then, suddenly, he changed his mind. 'No!' he said loudly, • and the Major, who had been heading away to gather his soldiers, stopped in his tracks and turned to stare in surprise. 1 'There's something else,' said Skinner, vehemently. 'I said that they want to get us tear-arsing around. That's what they've got now, in spades. But what happens next?'
He stood for perhaps twenty seconds, thinking hard, while Rose and Major Ancram stared at him. Then, decisions made, he looked again at the soldier. 'Ma
jor, OK, you get your men down there on the double, but leave half-a-dozen up here with me.
Maggie, you go on down with him, and do what you can.'
She nodded silently, determined to be as tough as anyone in Skinner's command, and ashamed of her earlier weakness.
'Major, how many men have you got?'
'Just now, three hundred.'
"Good. When you get down there, I want you to put armed men on guard around the National Gallery, and at the big bank branches at the Mound, St Andrew's Square, George Street and the West End. I'll tell you why later. For now, get going, and send that half-dozen men to me.'
A germ of a notion was festering in Skinner's mind, one so bizarre that he thought that it surely had to be fantasy, and yet it was there and he could not totally dismiss it as a possibility. An afterthought struck him and he called after the disappearing Ancram. 'Major, see if one of your men can find me a whistle!'
73
Andy Martin picked himself up from the wet tarmac, without even a thought of dusting himself off. When he heard Skinner's first alert, he had jerked bolt upright in his seat, and a voice inside him had screamed silently. For a second he had almost sprinted from; the Prime Minister's side, off through the Gardens and into the night, to Lothian Road, the Filmhouse and Julia.
But then the second alert had come, and Skinner's frantic command. He had acted instinctively, and had ensured that the Jaguar and its passengers had made it to safety. Now he looked around him, and listened carefully. On the stage a percussionist was banging away, either lost in the score or refusing to believe what had happened. Daniel Greenspan stood in his spotlight, his baton by his side, staring into the darkness.
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