‘Mary,’ Irene decided to ask the direct question. ‘You look uncertain. Are you still with us?’
‘Still here,’ Mary confirmed. When she looked up her eyes altered from lazy unconcern to intense concentration. She even managed a wan smile. ‘But you seem to be keeping my part in this a secret. Where do you want me to drive?’
‘I called this meeting to keep you all updated and to hear your input. When I have formulated a plan I will let you know.’ Irene stopped as Mary frowned. She believed it was best to let her people have their say.
‘You are taking too much on yourself,’ Mary told her. She gesticulated to the computer screen. ‘This all means nothing. If I’m putting my life on the line, I want to see the ground, not some map.’
Irene saw the sense in Mary’s words. ‘We’ll all go over to Scotland,’ she decided, ‘and walk the route. Before the time comes for the hit, we’ll know more about Edinburgh than the locals do.’
Since Stefan had demanded more than she had expected for his share, Irene had been carefully balancing her budget. She had only quarter of a million dollars to pay for everything, from hotel reservations to transport and weapons, so there would be no five star luxury on this trip, unless she dug deep into her own funds.
Mary surprised her with a smile. ‘We didn’t start off too good,’ she spoke quietly, woman to woman in a testosterone charged room, ‘but I’ve been watching you. I think we can work together.’
Irene ejected Patrick from his seat to move closer to Mary. Discarding the male-trapping charm, she allowed her voice to drop an octave. ‘We’ll have to learn to trust each other.’
‘I trust your professionalism,’ Mary’s response was immediate. She repeated that taut smile. ‘At first I thought you were just a spoiled little rich girl kicking out because The Neophyte failure had hurt you, but now I think there’s more there.’ She tilted her head, dark hair flopping and eyes assessing. ‘I think that we both had to climb up a long ladder, with men pissing on us from above.’
Irene nodded. She had been right; Mary fought for feminism. She had not learned the advantages of being a woman in a world where most participants thought with their groins. As the object of life was success, empowering more women only increased the competition, so clearly Mary had misjudged the nature of Pandora when she campaigned to open the box. ‘You reached the top of your ladder, Mary, and now you can pee on the men beneath. I’m still climbing.’
‘Not many people could change course so quickly,’ Mary’s eyes were shrewd. ‘Last fall you were all set for corporate success, now you are embarking on a criminal career.’ She straightened in her seat. ‘I wonder if the two are linked.’ When Irene began to protest, Mary lit another cheroot. ‘It’s quite all right, Irene. I don’t give a shit. I had to bend quite a few rules, but it seems that you are intent on completely burning the rulebook. Well, good for you, sister.’
Unused to being so expertly analysed, Irene withdrew into a smile; ‘thank you for your approval,’ she said.
‘There’s a lot to approve.’ Leaning forward, Mary patted her thigh. ‘We have more in common than you realise, Irene. Now, what was that about visiting Edinburgh?’
As a city geared for tourists, Edinburgh had more than its share of places to stay. Irene searched the Internet for somewhere within reasonable walking distance of the Royal Mile, but not within the orbit of the Parliament building. Central Edinburgh was infested with CCTVs and she had no desire to have her face, or the faces of her team, recorded.
Desmond had obtained a selection of blank passports and skilfully inserted false identities. He had altered Irene’s nationality to Canadian, but even with her hair dyed black and a pair of frameless spectacles sliding down her nose, she was afraid that somebody might recognise her as the loser from The Neophyte.
‘God, but I’m ugly,’ Irene examined her new appearance in the bathroom mirror.
‘Yes, but it suits you,’ Patrick said solemnly, and ducked her emphatic slap.
Patrick also carried a Canadian passport, while the others retained their American identities. Mary’s fame encouraged Desmond into some original thinking, so she wore tinted contact lenses to alter her eye colouring, padded the inside of her cheeks and cropped her hair. Subtle touches with a fine make-up brush deepened the lines of her face and added ten years to her age.
Eventually Irene found a hotel in a curved Georgian terrace five minutes from the city centre. Each room had an en-suite bathroom and as many facilities as a two star hotel should enjoy.
‘Are you all together?’ The booking clerk, a young brisk-eyed woman asked. Ordering a uniformed boy to carry their luggage upstairs, she offered each of them a complementary map of Edinburgh. ‘You are on the first floor,’ she said, ‘four single rooms and one double.
‘Thank you.’ Irene handed a key to each of her team. ‘Once we are settled in, we’ll take a stroll around the city.’
‘I’m sure that you will enjoy it,’ the clerk said. ‘I always believe that Edinburgh looks its best in May, before the main season begins and all the crowds come.’
Irene selected some brochures from the rack on the reception counter. ‘Remember to take the camera, Patrick. We’ll take some photographs.’
Only a hundred yards from the hotel, they came to the Dean Bridge, spanning an impressively deep chasm through which flowed a small river, the Water of Leith. Leaning as far over the wall as the sharp spikes allowed, Patrick pretended to fall. ‘There’s a waterfall down there; that’s cool.’ Bringing up the camera from its strap around his neck, he took a couple of photographs and hauled himself further up the parapet.
‘Stop acting the fool, Patrick,’ Irene snapped. ‘We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.’
Patrick shrugged. ‘I’m just acting like a typical American tourist,’ he explained, jumping down. Mary smiled sympathetically.
‘It’s all that Marine training,’ Irene explained. ‘He responds best to orders.’
Flagging down one of Edinburgh’s black taxi-cabs, Irene took them to the castle to look at the Honours, waited for their exclamations of awe and squandered a great deal of money in the castle book shop. Any scrap of information might be helpful. ‘We’ll pay in cash, ass-hole,’ she said, pushing away Patrick’s hand as he volunteered his credit card, reminding him ‘your real name’s on that.’
‘Ease up on him,’ Mary advised. ‘After all, he’s only a man.’ When they exchanged an understanding glance, Irene realised that she might just begin to like Mary.
The uniformed stewards proved as helpful as before, relating something of the crown’s history and answering every question that Irene asked.
‘You mean the crown has hardly ever been out of the castle for hundreds of years?’ Patrick could act the naïve tourist with skill, distracting the stewards as the others worked busily with their cameras.
‘Hardly ever,’ the steward confirmed. He was small and neat, with steady eyes and a face that revealed hard times.
‘That’s awesome,’ Patrick said, as Mary pressed against him, smiling. ‘We’ve nothing like that in Canada.’
‘Maybe not, sir,’ the steward agreed. ‘But Canada has plenty other attractions. Your Calgary Stampede, for example. My sister speaks highly of it, and she lives in Edmonton. Which part of Canada do you come from?’
As Patrick hesitated, Irene answered, ‘we’re from Toronto.’ She gave him a small nudge in the back. ‘Come on, we’ve got the rest of Edinburgh to see. I want to visit the palace too.’
Comfortable with her position as tour guide, Irene walked them down the Royal Mile, pointing out the intersections where the route was most vulnerable, and the CCTV cameras that festooned the tall buildings.
‘Lots of cameras,’ Desmond said quietly. ‘They’ll be able to see everything that we do.’
‘We can mask them,’ Bryan told him. ‘Or cut the cables.’ He looked down the length of the street, with the slope gradually increasing and a number of small alleys lead
ing away on the right. ‘Plenty space here,’ he said.
Stefan shook his head. ‘It’s too open. The police will be here to control the crowds.’
‘And the army,’ Patrick said. ‘I would have marksmen up there,’ he gestured to the upper flats with his chin. ‘That building provides the best field of fire up or down the street.’
Irene touched his arm, attempting to make amends for her recent verbal humiliation of him. After all, she was not with him for his intellect, and her public criticism must hurt his ego. ‘Thanks, Patrick. I knew that I brought you along for some reason.’ He responded with a surprised smile.
‘The police will have a block up there, too.’ Stefan added. ‘For crowd control.’
Irene did not offer him any reward. She was working out a plan in her head, but wanted to hear the input of these professionals first. ‘How fast can you drive, Mary?’
‘How fast is the car?’ Mary responded with a shrug.
‘Fast enough, then.’ Irene led them down the Canongate, where dark tenements crammed claustrophobically over the narrowing street. ‘This is my first choice of hit,’ she stopped outside the centuries old Tolbooth. Two youths glowered at them from a pub doorway, one wearing a Burberry baseball cap, the other with a deep hood concealing his face.
Desmond shook his head. ‘It will never do,’ he said. ‘Too cramped, and there’s no space to escape.’
Mary pointed to the arched alley that pierced the massive stones of the Tolbooth and slid steeply downhill. ‘If you mean for me to burst out of there and ram the Rolls-Royce, then that’s fine, but there’s nowhere to go but down there,’ she pointed toward Holyrood Palace, then jerked her thumb in the opposite direction, ‘or up there, back toward the castle and the soldiers.’
Irene ignored their protests. Waiting for one of Edinburgh’s ubiquitous double decker buses to trundle past, she paced the width of the road. ‘About five yards,’ she said, ‘and when the Queen comes there will be no other traffic and certainly nothing parked on the roadside.’ She adopted her most serious look, as though their reactions disappointed her. ‘So none of you think that it would be possible to hit here?’
‘Not a chance in hell,’ Bryan said definitely, as Mary shook her head. Patrick and Stefan said nothing.
‘Good,’ Irene allowed her man-killing smile to reappear. ‘Then neither will the police. They are professionals, just like you, so they’ll think the same way.’
‘I have three questions,’ Desmond said, looking decidedly unimpressed. ‘One: how do we do the hit in this confined space? Two: how do we get away, and three: how do we stay free?’
‘Take photographs,’ Irene realised that the two youths had slouched closer. ‘Try to look like tourists!’ She waited until Bryan had pointed his camera at the Tolbooth with its projecting clock and exterior stairs. Patrick was more direct, focussing on the youths, who quickly withdrew, swearing. ‘That’s better. Well done, Patrick,’ Irene favoured him again, before turning her attention to Desmond.
‘Now, I’ll take your questions one at a time, Desmond. One: we find out the order of this procession. I presume that it will be structured so that different sections of the crowd have something to keep them occupied. That means that there will be a gap between the Queen and the Honours, which is so much the better for us.’
‘Why?’
Irene ignored Patrick’s interruption. ‘We wait at the entrance to Panmure Close,’ she pointed to a gated narrow lane that ran at right angles to the Canongate, on the left side. ‘The cameras can’t see us there. When the Honours are approaching this spot,’ she stamped her foot on the ground, ‘then we create diversions to focus attention on the Queen and away from the Canongate. When the media and the crowd are looking somewhere else, then we come out of the close, blow open the glass and escape down there,’ she pointed to an even narrower lane across the road. There was a name emblazoned on the stone above, but centuries of Edinburgh weather had worn it away.
‘On foot?’ Desmond shook his head. ‘They’ll catch us in minutes.’
‘No they won’t: all their attention will be on the Queen.’ Irene shook her head. ‘There will be hardly any security left here. There will only be crowds of tourists who will hamper the police, and lots of smoke to obscure the cameras.’ She gave her most triumphant smile. ‘We’ll make sure that there is plenty smoke, so even if the CCTV cables are not cut, the cameras cannot pick us up. Now come with me.’ She led them through the sloping anonymous close, and into Holyrood Road that ran parallel to the Canongate.
‘There will be security here, to guard the Parliament Building, so we must divert them away. A nice bomb threat will do; either al-Qaeda or Irish terrorists; somebody that exists so it is treated as credible.’
Irene patted Mary’s shoulder. ‘Now Mary, this is where you come in. You will take over for the next stage.’ She smiled. ‘You’ll need all your driving skills here. Come on!’ she began to jog, with Patrick keeping pace at her side. Holyrood Road was more commercial, with a new hotel at one side and the new offices of the Scotsman newspaper and local authority housing opposite. Nobody looked up when they passed, and only when Desmond protested his age and years of nicotine use did Irene slow to a walk. ‘You will drive up this street, back toward the castle, and then take a left into the Pleasance.’
‘The what?’ Desmond asked.
The Pleasance was a narrow, steep road, with a combination of ancient and modern buildings on either side. Groups of university students milled in casual unconcern as Irene walked past. ‘Straight on,’ she encouraged, as Desmond began to falter.
‘Even allowing for traffic, it will take about only twelve minutes until we reach the junction of Holyrood Park Road, then we take a sharp left. ’ She pointed out her intended route.
‘That goes back into town,’ Bryan complained.
‘Not quite,’ Irene smiled. When Desmond had recovered his breath she increased her speed, walking briskly until she reached a roundabout. ‘Left again here and we are within the Queen’s Park.’
Matching her pace for pace, Patrick alone looked as if he were enjoying a casual stroll. He grinned down to her. ‘That’s another full day in Scotland and I haven’t seen a man in a skirt yet.’
‘Pity,’ Irene warmed to his simplicity, ‘as if we did, I could at least admire his hairy legs.’ She winked as he laughed.
Behind a sloping green field, the red rocks of Salisbury Crags rose sheer in front of them, a semi circle of cliffs in the middle of the city. ‘So we hide out here?’ Desmond began to swear. His breath was coming in short gasps.
Irene allowed him two minutes. ‘No. This is where Patrick meets us with the transport. I told you that he was in the Marines. I did not say that he was a helicopter pilot.’ She waited until the expected exclamations subsided. ‘Once we’re in the air, we’re home and dry. There will be so much confusion in Edinburgh that nobody will have time to bother about us.’
‘I didn’t know that you were a pilot,’ Mary’s eyes were contemplatively narrow. ‘What did you fly?’
‘Super Cobras and Hueys,’ Patrick spoke quietly, as if he were ashamed of this undisclosed skill. He looked at Irene. ‘Where shall I fly to?’
‘You’ll fly us to the Hebrides; that’s the islands to the west of Scotland. I will have a chartered yacht ready to take us over the Atlantic.’ Irene stepped back. ‘So that’s the plan, people. Mary has the hardest part in driving through Edinburgh.’ She gave an encouraging nod. ‘So it’s good to know that we’re in safe hands.’
Mary looked back over the road they had just walked. ‘Not quite the wide open spaces of the Mid West, but certainly doable.’
‘OK, then.’ Irene rattled out orders. ‘Stefan. I want you to get back to the Canongate and learn the ground thoroughly. You are our expert for the actual hit, so I want a detailed proposal.’
Stefan nodded and walked off without a word.
‘Desmond. You and Bryan work out how to create diversions. I want smoke
bombs at the actual site and alarms elsewhere. I want false telephone calls, warnings to the media, but the timing is crucial. I only want things to begin after the convoy has started; I don’t want it cancelled. And I want enough diversity of warnings to thin out the security at the Honours and bunch them around the Queen.’
Desmond looked doubtful for a minute, but Bryan produced a smile. ‘That will be a pleasure. We’ll make the Brits hop.’
‘Good. Mary, go and hire a car big enough to carry all of us plus the Honours. Drive over the route until you know it perfectly.’
Mary shrugged. ‘It’s a long journey for a short drive.’
‘Learn it until you can drive the route in your sleep,’ Irene ordered, and, with a brief nod, Mary left.
Irene smiled to Patrick. ‘I feel better now that everybody knows their part. I presume that you can hire a helicopter somewhere in Scotland?’
‘I would like an American craft, preferably the Bell 412.’ On his home ground, Patrick spoke with authority. ‘But if I can’t get one, I’ll try for the Aerospatiale Gazelle. It’s French but built in Britain, so might be easier to obtain.’
‘Why that one?’
‘It holds five people including the pilot, which is not common for civilian helis. It also has a 220-pound payload, which will be handy as I’m not sure what other equipment we might need. Try and find out what the Honours weigh, so I can do the math.’
Irene enjoyed listening. Patrick had the capacity to irritate her, or raise her to heights of passion, but sometimes she just liked his company. Occasionally she even thought that it would be hard to let him go.
Patrick grinned to her. ‘You’ll like the Gazelle, Irene; it’s pretty nippy too. Once we get airborne, we can cruise at 120 miles per hour, so we can cross Scotland in no time.’
Irene stepped back. ‘I’m impressed,’ she said. ‘Did you work all that out just now?’
Patrick shook his head, still smiling. ‘Not quite. You’re too much the businesswoman to bring me along just for my incredible looks, so I must have had some function in your plans. Apart from sex, piloting is the only skill that I have.’ He shrugged. ‘I looked up the specs for helicopters as soon as you told me your ideas for the hit.’
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