Quintin Jardine - Stay of Execution

‘How about the woman?’

‘Bourgiba had no known female associates in Dubai. However, there was a woman who disappeared on the very same day that he did. She lived in a rented apartment in the city, had a part-time job in a library, and her passport showed her as a Zimbabwean author, Polly Pride.’

‘Photographs?’

Merle Gower nodded. ‘I brought them.’

‘It’s her, boss,’ said Steele. ‘I’ve seen them and I’m absolutely certain. The Bourgiba photograph could be anyone. It’s years old and in it the guy has a real Taliban beard, but Superintendent Chambers is on her way out to Heriot-Watt with it now, to show it to the people in the chemistry department.’

The DCC frowned. ‘So connect me into this, please. Would two terrorist operatives go to all that bother just to set up a bank sting, albeit for a million? Is the network running short of money?’

‘Maybe,’ Gower murmured, ‘but. .’

‘They didn’t do it,’ Steele announced. He opened his briefcase, took out two clear plastic evidence envelopes. ‘These turned up this morning, out of the blue.’

Skinner read Ivor Whetstone’s letter to his son. When he was finished, he removed the bank book and flicked through it. ‘So it was him all along. The man was dying and he decided to look out for his lad. . and maybe set him a test too. If that was in his mind, he’d be glad to know that he passed.’

‘So why did they run off?’ Dan Pringle asked. ‘If they’d sat tight. .’

The big DCC’s blue eyes fixed him. ‘So why were they here in the first place, Dan? That’s the really big question.’

He looked up at the ceiling of his office once more, gazing at nothing as the seconds grew into minutes.

‘What is it, boss?’ Steele asked at last.

Skinner smiled. ‘It’s a tapestry, Stevie, starting to weave itself. I can’t make out all the pattern yet, but it’s forming.’

Suddenly he leaned forward, his shoulders hunching. ‘I’ve no idea why they did a runner, people,’ he exclaimed. ‘But I’ll bet you the million Whetstone nicked on this: they are coming back!’

He shot to his feet, pounding his big right fist into his left palm. ‘And you know what it means, don’t you?’ he continued, speaking to himself rather than to his companions. ‘The security briefing I’ve just attended is now out of date, hours before the ball starts rolling. We do now have a specific threat!’

Brian Mackie had never been more tense. The summons to the DCC’s office had come as a complete surprise to him, and the message that he had been given there, by Skinner, with a grim-faced Willie Haggerty looking on, had brought his worst dreams of the previous few weeks to the edge of reality.

New intelligence information. Not obtained from the security services, but as a by-product of a criminal investigation within Edinburgh itself. Two terrorist sleepers, moved to his city from an assassination in the Middle East, but hidden among the professional classes, not among the ethnic communities, where previous real or would-be terrorists had invariably been found.

Mackie shuddered as he thought of the implications of this new tactic, and as he watched the chartered Alitalia Airbus make its gentle approach to the runway at Edinburgh airport, escorted by two fighter jets, one on either side. As the Pope’s plane landed, they veered off and headed back to RAF Leuchars. The same procedure had been followed when the Prime Minister had arrived an hour earlier. Nobody had told the chief superintendent, but he had guessed that the two aircraft were there to intercept any ground-to-air missile that might have been launched.

He watched from his position on a viewing gallery on the roof that was off limits to the travelling public. He scanned to his left and right, checking that all the snipers were in position, then looked down at the airport’s concourse as the big jet taxied in. The reception committee was waiting, headed by the Lord Provost, both as the capital’s leading citizen and as its Lord Lieutenant, the personal representative of the Queen. After Lord Provost Maxwell there stood, in order, the Prime Minister, his familiar quiff blowing in the breeze, the much shorter figure of the red-haired Tommy Murtagh, MSP, Scotland’s First Minister and clear loser of the precedence argument between Holyrood and Whitehall, Sir James Proud, imperious as ever in his heavily adorned uniform, and last of the five, in richly embroidered vestments, Archbishop James Gainer.

Mackie had suggested moving the formal greeting indoors, but Skinner had decided against the idea since that would have meant explaining the last-minute change to the television crews and rota photographer who were being allowed to cover the first event of John the Twenty-fifth’s brief visit. Whatever story they had invented, media speculation would have been inevitable, and some of it might have been uncomfortably close to the truth. However, he had decreed that to minimise the period that the Pope spent in the open, there would be no wives in the line. This message had been conveyed to the protection officers, who had accepted it without argument, and possibly, in one case, with relish.

And so the chief superintendent held his breath as the plane came to a halt, the steps were put in place, and finally the door of the Airbus was opened. He felt his heart pound as the white-robed figure stepped out and made his way down the staircase and on to the red carpet, then knelt to kiss the ground, rising with great agility for a man of his age. Mackie looked around, almost frantically, as the Pope made his way along the receiving line, checking the snipers again, picking out the uniformed officers and those in plain clothes, with the tell-tale gold badges glinting on their lapels, his eyes searching all the time for anyone or anything that should not have been there.

It seemed to take an age, although only two minutes elapsed between the emergence of His Holiness from the aircraft and his entering the familiar vehicle with its canopy of bullet-proof glass and its ton and a half of armour plating, hidden and unsuspected under the gleaming white coachwork.

As the convoy, led and tailed by two police vehicles and flanked by eight motorcycle outriders, headed off for the City Chambers, Brian Mackie allowed himself a very small sigh of relief.

There were no smiles around the table in the room that normally seated dinner parties in Bute House, the First Minister’s residence. Bob Skinner knew it well enough, having been there on several occasions during his term of office as security adviser to the secretary of state for Scotland, the official occupant of the fine Georgian terrace before his eviction by the creation of the Scottish parliament, but for the other six it was a first-time visit.

Brian Mackie had come straight from the airport, with Giovanni Rossi, Jack Russell, the Prime Minister’s senior protection officer, and Adam Arrow, who had flown north with him. Skinner himself, Neil McIlhenney, and Special Agent Merle Gower had headed there from Fettes. The DCC had chosen the venue for its discretion, since there were no watching eyes or wagging tongues in Charlotte Square.

‘Thanks for coming, Adam,’ he said, after he had explained the day’s developments, ‘and thanks for not asking why I wanted you here.’

‘No problem.’ The little major’s accent was the one he reserved for serious business, not his customary Derbyshire twang.

‘Now that you’re all up to speed on this new situation, let’s try to analyse the threat. Why are Alsina and Middlemass here? What’s their mission? I don’t think there’s any coincidence about it. I do not believe that two international terrorists would park themselves in Scotland, with almost foolproof and effective new identities, just to be out of the way. I believe they are here to pull something, and until I’m proved wrong, I’m going to assume that it’s connected with this visit.’