Quintin Jardine - Stay of Execution

‘Why so sure?’ asked Russell. ‘Couldn’t one of the naval bases, Faslane or Rosyth, be a target?’

‘Rosyth’s a dockyard,’ said Adam Arrow. ‘I don’t see them attacking an empty vessel. As for Faslane, it’s a nuclear bunker. It’s the most secure facility in this country.’

‘What about one of the nuclear power stations? Hunterston or Torness?’

‘That would have to be another September Eleven,’ McIlhenney told him. ‘And even then, it wouldn’t work. They’re built to withstand aircraft impact.’

‘Something from within, then. He’s a chemist, isn’t he?’

‘That’s right; and not a nuclear physicist. Anyway, they’re also built to withstand earthquakes and they have all sorts of emergency shut-down mechanisms.’

‘What about a gas attack?’ asked Brian Mackie.

‘Gas is non-specific,’ Merle Gower pointed out, ‘a random weapon. These two people have been here for eighteen months. If that’s what they were here to do they’d have done it already.’

‘I have thought about it, though, Brian,’ said Skinner. ‘In the five or so hours since I found out about this, I’ve had people crawling all over their home, and over Alsina’s work areas at Heriot-Watt looking for traces of anything that might relate to the manufacture of ricin, or sarin, or XV. There’s absolutely nothing in their house, and a facility for producing a nerve agent in a university would attract attention, I reckon.’

He pointed at Russell. ‘To answer your original point, Jack, it’s the timeline that makes me think their presence is related to this visit. I’m going to make some assumptions here; one of them is that these two people were in Dubai for the specific purpose of taking out an American intelligence operative, a counter-strike in the war on terror. Would you go with that, Merle?’

Special Agent Gower nodded. ‘Yeah, we know that they both arrived and left there at the same time.’

‘During the period they were there, Pope John the Twenty-fourth died, and Gilbert White, Cardinal Archbishop of Edinburgh, was elected as his successor. We’re in an era of non-Italian popes now; the last one was French. What do they do, invariably, within the first couple of years of their reign?’

‘They go home,’ Arrow said ‘to let their own people see them in their new exalted state.’

‘Exactly. I believe that the people running Middlemass and Alsina, or Polly Price and Anwar Baradi, or whoever, anticipated this, and sent them here to settle down, find work that would fit their experience, keeping them as far away from potential surveillance as possible. . a South African banker and a Spanish doctorate student are pretty good cover, we have to admit. . and wait for the moment; this moment. That’s what I see so far. The bits I can’t see yet are why they ran or what they’re planning to do, but does anyone disagree with my assessment so far?’

Nobody contradicted him.

‘So what do we do about it?’ asked Russell. ‘Call the Murrayfield rally off?’

‘If that’s what the Pope wants, yes. Gio?’

‘What’s the risk to the public?’

‘There’s no evidence of a potential gas attack. The place is completely swept for explosives on a daily basis. We’ve even searched inside the scaffolding poles that make up the platform on the pitch. If there’s a threat, it’s likely to be personal.’

‘Then there’s not a chance he’ll pull out.’

‘What about the mass this evening?’

‘Admission is by ticket only; had to be, because of the numbers.’

‘I want officers at all entrances to the cathedral all the same, with mugshots of the pair. We’ve done some alternative images from the Kabul photo.’

‘Then go ahead and station them.’

‘Thanks,’ Skinner acknowledged. ‘The Royal Infirmary visit tomorrow’s easy: we can lock that up tight. That leaves the rally as our real problem, our point of potential weakness. What do we do about it? We catch them if we can. But if we can’t, then at the very least we try to guess what they’re planning and make sure they can’t carry it out. For example, nobody gets near the Pope who shouldn’t be there.’

He looked at Gower. ‘We’ve all got our part to play in this. Merle, forget which agency pays your salary. I want the CIA to put its resources into finding out who this woman really is, and to create some potential attack scenarios for us, based on what’s happened elsewhere.’

‘That’s already happening, Bob.’

‘Good.’ He turned to Arrow. ‘Adam, do we need more soldiers?’

‘We could use them to set up a wider security perimeter around the ground and let no vehicles through. That would prevent a mortar attack. I can do that.’

‘Do it.’

‘Where do the public’s cars go?’ asked McIlhenney.

‘Saughtonhall sports fields,’ said Mackie. ‘We divert them there. The buses can go on the back pitches, as planned.’

‘Anything else we need do?’

‘There’s already a no-fly zone in place, Bob,’ Arrow replied. ‘Any light aircraft heading anywhere near Murrayfield will be seen off.’

Skinner looked back across the table at Russell. ‘Jack, I’d be happier if there was only one potential high-tariff target on that platform. Could you persuade him to pull out?’

‘That would run counter to the basic principle of not letting terror be seen to gain the smallest victory,’ said the protection officer. ‘Sometimes I reckon that “martyr” is the word, above all others, that my man would like carved on his tombstone.’

Mario was gazing out of the window when the buzzer sounded. He liked the view across the water, even at night when all he could see were the lights of the docks and of Ocean Terminal beyond. When his Aunt Sophia had decided that she could live there no longer after his Uncle Beppe’s death, he had seized the chance to move into the family-owned penthouse, and had not regretted the decision.

As he picked up the handset that connected him to the main entrance he knew who would be waiting below. ‘Hi,’ said the quiet voice he knew so well, the one he had expected to hear.

‘Come on up.’ He pressed the button that opened the door, holding his finger on it till he heard her shout, ‘Okay!’ then walked out of the apartment to wait beside the lift.

‘Hiya,’ he greeted Maggie as she emerged, kissing her lightly on the cheek. He held the door open for her, and watched her as she stepped inside. She was dressed casually, as she had always dressed, yet there seemed to be something different about her, about her manner, about her bearing.

‘Are you not seeing Paula tonight?’ she asked him. There was no animosity in her tone; indeed, there had been none between them since they had split.

‘She’s at the theatre with her mum,’ he told her. ‘They’ve got tickets for the musical at the Playhouse; afterwards they’re going to Ferri’s for supper. They had to take a taxi, though. I warned Paulie off trying to drive there: with the papal mass in the cathedral just across Picardy Place, the traffic’ll be hellish.’

‘So you’re on your lonesome.’

‘Yup.’

‘Are you still upset about Colin Mawhinney?’

‘What do you think? I reckon Neil’s got a lead, though. He hasn’t said, but he was closeted with an American the other day, and then they went off to see the Big Man.’

‘How about you? Does the uniform still fit? Are those badges on your shoulders wearing you down yet?’

‘Not one bit.’

He walked over to the bar set in a corner of the big open living space. ‘You want a drink?’

‘What do you have open? No. Wait. Let me guess. Chianti?’ He laughed. ‘What else?’ He filled a glass for Maggie and topped up his own. ‘So what’s up?’ he asked, as he handed her the dark red wine. ‘Why the official visit?’