The KLM flight in from Moscow was on time and Tatiana seemed tired though young Jerry was irrepressible, insisting his father swing him round by his arms as though he were on a fairground ride. It was only when this was finished – with Jerry in fits of giggles – that Tatiana was allowed to give her husband a hug, and, after that a fond kiss; she then buried her head in his shoulder and let out a deep sigh. Young Anastasia, the au pair, was introduced by Angus to Sir Jeremy and, to the latter’s surprise, she gave a hint of a courtesy as she shook his hand. She was then introduced to Kim and was visibly pleased when Kim exchanged greetings with her and asked her about the flight in fluent Russian.
They all followed Angus out to the helicopter hire company’s tarmac apron and were shown up into the Agusta’s comfortable leather seats for the brief flight up to Craithe. Little Jerry was thrilled and bouncy as he and Anastasia peered out of the window. As soon as all their luggage had been stowed aboard, the helicopter rose out over the west end of Glasgow and flew slightly north of west following the south shore of the River Clyde. On leaving the river where it turned south, they continued straight on, climbing up over wild, rugged moorland and mountain terrain. Anastasia occasionally pointed out to Jerry the small herds of Red Deer and of sheep that scattered from the noise of the helicopter, galloping off across the new spring heather. Kim too, was already enjoying the views and the start to the long weekend.
It took less than a quarter of an hour for the Agusta to reach and to pass over the small town of Lochgilphead on Loch Fyne and soon after that, the coastal town of Crinan. Over the deadened sound of the engines and rotor-blades, Angus leant across to Kim and pointed out the turbulent waters of the Gulf of Corryvreckan between the islands of Jura and Scarba.
Almost immediately after passing between the two islands, the pilot swung the helicopter round in a wide arc round Craithe Castle. Neither Kim nor Anastasia had ever seen anything quite like it – and Kim’s previous visit she had arrived in the Laird’s boat, the Louisa. The Castle’s sixty to eighty foot walls of granite, were punctuated here and there with windows of many different sizes, cut into the great walls of stone in apparently random patterns. On the eastern corners of the main central block of the castle and its south west, there were three massive towers, each of the over a hundred feet in height. Later, awed by the sheer size of the south west tower, Anastasia asked what was a hundred feet in her more familiar metres – ‘well over thirty’, she was told.
The sixty-five-mile trip had taken just under half an hour and the Agusta landed in one of the few spots possible, the top of a sweep of three terraced lawns running some two hundred yards down from the front of the castle to the cliff tops above the sea. Formally planted terraces of box hedges and decorative flower beds covered the few flat areas and, at the far western end where the forests of pine started, there was a large walled garden full of produce grown for the castle inhabitants. Like many great houses in Scotland, there was also a fifty-foot tall circular dovecote, with a conical roof. In times gone by, young pigeons were bred in it for consumption in the castle.
As soon as the engines had been switched off and the rotors had stopped, they all got out and Anastasia, having jumped down first, twirled in delight as she marvelled at the daunting yet thrilling sight of the massive walls of the Castle – great sweeps of sheer granite, yet pretty, she thought, with its pinkish-grey colouring.
Angus’s father and mother had been waiting for them at the massive fifteen-foot front doors, great thick barriers of oak. These were firmly shut with a more normal seven-foot door cut through one of them in Victorian times stood open. Angus’s mother, Florence, was standing by it and greeted her brother Jeremy fondly; it was the first time she had seen him since he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and she took him by the arm to lead him into the castle.
Everyone else followed these two across the large outer entrance hall with a gallery above it at the top of the wide sweep of the stairs. From the outer hall, they turned right and into a truly enormous room, known as the Great Hall. Little Jerry was being carried by Tatiana so Anastasia was able to stop on her own as soon as she was though the doors. There she just stood in awe looking about her. Kim too, who had known in general terms of Angus’s privileged background and had only been here once before was quite taken aback yet again by the sheer size of the place. The two of them stood next to each other gazing round. The vaulted ceilings above them and the room itself might have accommodated the entirety of Anastasia’s parents little country house, her home, some sixty miles outside Moscow and as soon as they were into the room, they swung away from the group and slowly wandered around. Nowadays The Great Hall served as the Castle’s main Drawing Room so, despite its seventy-foot length, fifty-foot width and thirty-foot vaulted ceilings, it was surprisingly warm and comfortable. This was largely due to the eight-foot square fireplace and massive mantelpiece dominating the end of the room which, on Florence’s insistence, was almost always alight with a blazing wood fire most months of the year.
The Great Hall itself must have been part of the original castle and, in mediaeval times would have been very cold. The walls were now covered a fine, beige coloured harling giving it a strange giant’s sandpaper effect. These were hung about with an assortment of ancient weaponry, stags’ heads, and hanging tapestries with, at regular intervals, poking their heads through all of these, portraits of long departed Macraes. Beneath one of the larger portraits, the label proclaimed that it was of Charles James Stuart, Bonnie Prince Charlie, and the Young Pretender to the Stuart Throne. It was only the sheer size of the hall that allowed for this disparate mass of wall ornament to blend into a pleasing kind of giant montage, so that the overall impression was that it was not even cluttered. Anastasia and Kim continued to walk slowly round peering occasionally at the names below the portraits and Kim wondered what these ancestors would have been like to meet and to talk to.
Angus saw the two of them wandering around together and went over to them.
‘All these weapons and the pictures of all this fighting,’ said Anastasia in Russian.
‘Yes, but it’s always been that way most places in the world hasn’t it?’ he replied, also in Russian. ‘It’s always been easier to take one’s neighbour’s hard earned treasure than go out and earn it oneself – easier to steal from his grain store than grow one’s own.’ She laughed as this brought to mind the Russian tribal wars of over the centuries.
‘And these wars and skirmishes had been happening between the Clans since Viking times’, continued Angus – and he led them both over to a table behind one of the sofas on which sat a large, ancient looking leather-bound book. It was entitled “The Macraes of Craithe, a Family History” – a book of the type many old Scottish families had compiled for themselves. The page size was nearly twice that of a standard glossy magazine and overall was a good nine inches thick, its buff coloured leather smooth and shiny with much handling and beautifully engraved in gold lettering with its title and description.
Angus opened it and went straight to the back of it where there were a number of appendices. He quickly found what he was looking for – a much abbreviated history of Craithe – so abbreviated that it fitted onto one page.
‘You can read English, can you?’ he asked Anastasia, still in Russian, as Kim looked on beside her.
‘Oh yes, top grades at Uni’, she replied in English, ‘why you show me this?’ she added as he pointed to the short history.
‘Because after all these centuries, my father and I have just changed it - we’ve given it a new ending.’
‘Is that the joining of Craithe to the Isle of Man Crown Dependency, the negotiations you were busy completing last year?’ asked Kim, also speaking in Russian,
‘It is indeed, re-joining Craithe to the Isle of Man to bring it back to the old Viking Empire; so, it’s now part of that Crown Dependency.”
‘And that’s good?’ asked Anastasia.
‘It is indeed,’ he said, ‘like
the castle, it gives us extra protection.’
He then let them read down the page through the history: -
Craithe - Chronology & notes:
- 795 to 1266 Viking / Norse West Coast ‘Kingdom of Man & the Isles’. Stretching from the Island of Lewis in the north, included all the Hebridean Islands along with strips of the Mainland south, it ran down as far as and including the Isle of Man. Many years of debilitating fighting and the strain on resources eventually led the Vikings to sell the Kingdom.
- 1266, Treaty of Perth, ‘The Kingdom’ sold by King Magnus V of Norway to King Edward I of England. This kingdom then used by several successive English Kings as a special reward for outstanding service to the Crown.
- 1485, Title and Tenure of ‘The Isle of Man and the Isles’ given to John Stanley, first Earl of Derby, as a reward for his key role in crowning Henry VII on the battlefield at Bosworth upon the death there of Richard III.
- 1642, Craithe and the Isles passed by James Stanley, 7th Earl of Derby to his second daughter Louisa as her Dowry on her marriage to James Macrae, Laird of Craithe, (Written Permission for this transfer given by King Charles the First, in a letter dated 12 June 1642).
- 1828, Isle of Man sold by Dukes of Atholl to the Crown, (‘The Isles’ retained in the ownership of the Lairds of Craithe, in feu to the Crown).
‘This Crown Dependency?’ asked Kim in Russian so that Anastasia would feel included, ‘am I right in thinking that means that, like the Isle of Man, Craithe is now outside the laws of both the United Kingdom and the European Union?’
‘It does indeed,’ replied Angus, ‘very useful for what the team are doing here.’
‘Aha, your own sovereign state just like the Federation of Russia,’ cried Anastasia, smiling as though she now understood the significance of what she had just been told.
‘Yes, smaller version,’ said Angus. All three laughed.
During this short dissertation on history, Kim had been leafing through an earlier bit of the book and had come across an extensive family tree with dozens of pretty, ornate coats of arms on it representing the many families of Angus’s ancestors.
‘Good heavens,’ she cried, ‘look at all of these.’ She continued to look in greater detail at some of the names under each shield. ‘A lot of very grand Earls and a Duke here,’ she went on, ‘and here’s a Stuart – a relation of Bonnie Prince Charlie by any chance?’
‘Well yes actually, and I have the Stuart name in mine to acknowledge that,’ said Angus, ‘but they’re not all grand, look here. There’s Maria daughter of the bad, Jack Black, notorious pirate and general scoundrel – eventually caught and hanged. His daughter inherited his huge quantities of ill-gotten gains and a handsome fortune as well. She was a very feisty lady herself and you can tell how beautiful she was you’ll find her portrait in the dining room and her father’s name is also in mine.’
‘Ah that’s better,’ said Kim, ‘I like the thought of a banker having pirate’s blood in his ancestry – very appropriate,’
‘Are you mocking me by any chance?’ asked Angus.
‘Heaven forbid I should ever mock you, Boss,’ replied Kim grinning back at him.
The far end of the room, the Laird beckoned them and Angus took them back over to join the others. By now little Jerry was tired and Angus led Anastasia carrying his son up to the children’s quarters which Mrs McGovern the head housekeeper had prepared for them.
When Angus returned down to the Great Hall, he was anxious to talk to Sir Jeremy. He found him on his own, seated in a comfortable chair, sipping a glass of whisky; he was looking out of one of east-facing windows, relaxing in the view of the islands of Scarba and Jura and the mainland beyond. His eyes were half closed in peaceful contemplation of the shimmering seas, the islands and the pale blue of the evening spring sky. A small pot of pills lay on a delicate little Georgian side table beside him and Angus could see that the earlier pain had gone and that he was now enjoying being here in this tranquil world. Angus helped himself to a small glass of whisky from a table of drinks in the corner of the room and went over to join him.
‘How’re you feeling?’ said Angus as he drew up a comfortable arm chair next to the other.
‘I’m fine, though I found the helicopter a bit difficult after such a long day’. He smiled a wisp of shadow leaving it as he looked back at his nephew. His illness meant that he had little to do with the project from day to day, but as it was to be his last project and his legacy, he liked to be kept informed of developments.
‘You’ll have heard that Athena gets launched tomorrow,’ said Angus.
‘Yes, you’ve done wonders getting it as far as you have,’ replied Sir Jeremy, ‘and I can’t thank you enough – yet again – for taking over the burden of developing it for me. You may not know this, but I was very aware of the sacrifice you made when you gave in to my pleading and joined the Towneley Bank when Jack died. Believe it or not, I was aware that you had inclinations to do other things with your life and I’m truly grateful you gave those up for a career in banking.’
Angus seemed about to say something to all of this but Sir Jeremy held up his hand to stop him, and continued. ‘When your still in your prime, things like ‘family history’ and ‘heritage’ don’t mean a great deal and it must have been difficult for you to understand why, when Tommy died, the dying out of the male line of the Towneleys mattered so much to me. As you’re half a Towneley, I hope one day that you’ll thank me for press-ganging you into all of this against your wishes and I thank you for doing so – especially as family, lineage, and all that are regarded as a bit of an anachronism, not just by you but by most people these days.’
‘It’s kind of you to say all that,’ replied Angus, ‘but I’ve come to see that you gave me something really worthwhile to do with my life and as we complete the first objective of your project with its launch tomorrow, the financial world will quickly begin to become a safer and more stable place.’
‘I gather there’s a threat of an attack on one of the banks expected tomorrow, can the project, I mean the team you’ve built up, can they cope with that?’
‘Yes, we will’ said Angus, ‘the only thing to stop that will be if the attackers go for one of the banks which has not yet installed our software.’
‘I’m still not clear why this matters quite so much now,’ said Sir Jeremy.
‘Mainly because without our own cyber-attack detection software on a system, when an attack comes in, Athena won’t be triggered to counter-attack. I’m afraid we know, that those just relying on proprietary defence systems are going to fail and suffer the consequences. Still, after the demonstration this afternoon and a repeat of the crucial bit of it at the conference tomorrow morning, we hope that the rest of them will allow us to install.’
‘That’ll be good,’ said Sir Jeremy, ‘everything else under control?’
‘I’m sure it will all go just fine,’ replied Angus smiling back down at his uncle.
‘You’re sure?’ repeated Sir Jeremy, ‘I’ve often found that when people use the phrase “I’m sure” they often actually mean “I hope”. But there’s no shame in hoping and I too naturally hope you’ll all succeed.’
‘You’re right, of course,’ replied Angus, ‘there was no way in which even Athena can guarantee to deal with the incoming cyber-attack; depends somewhat whether or not cyber-attack teams had learned any new tricks for which Athena has not been prepared.’
Sir Jeremy seemed to be about to doze off after his medication so Angus quietly left him and went up to see how Perry was getting on with his researches into the software brokerage company, Silayev & Komarov. All that was known so far was that Komarov was close to the President – did that mean that the attacking team were state-backed or was it perhaps a team belonging to the less-known character Silayev? Angus wondered when they would discover the full truth behind the Komarov-Silayev twosome. Was Komarov acting with the Silayev mafia or was the real power behind the two of them the Kr
emlin? It was going to be interesting to see how it was going to play out – well interesting, but also, even in Angus’s mind, a touch daunting.
Chapter 11
Thursday late afternoon,
Eaton Square, London W1
Jed and Maisie Butters had been looking forward to the long Easter weekend for some time. Not because they needed the rest – working for Sir Jeremy and the late Lady Towneley was hardly demanding - even less so since her death last year. They were excited, because their daughter and grandchildren were coming up to London to visit them for a week or so.
These days, Butters was more of a caretaker and general handyman than his earlier role as full-time butler. Maisie was hardly overworked as part-time cook either, for as often as not, if there was to be a dinner or luncheon party, Mortillas were called in to bring and serve the whole meal, right up to and including the coffee. The days of entertaining, however, had all but ended after Lady Towneley had died and Sir Jeremy became ill.
Butters used to worry that the Towneleys thought he and his wife too old for the job, but whether or not that was true, nowadays, the current arrangements seemed to work well and they were down in their sitting room watching a game show on the television, relaxing whilst they had the opportunity to do so before the grandchildren arrived and turned the whole place into a fairground. As Sir Jeremy had gone to Scotland, the other two members of staff had been given the long weekend off and so the two of them had the whole place to themselves.
Betrayed: (A Financial and Conspiracies Thriller – Book 1 in the Legacy Thriller Series) Page 8