new SAM systems from Russia. He checked, too, the military news from Baghdad, and that was just about nonexistent. Just a small item about the Pentagon checking into the possibility of test-firing surface-to-air rockets somewhere down in the southern marshes.
So far as Ben could see, neither he nor anyone else was under direct suspicion for the atrocities that had taken place in the middle of the Atlantic. Which might have meant he could make a clean getaway, except that he had nowhere to get away, to or from. And, as ever, his thoughts returned to Laura MacLean.
And he gazed at the computer, afraid to slide back down into the well of maudlin introspection that had consumed him for several days. But afraid more of being alone. He told himself to get up, and get out, and think, and make a plan. But the memory of her perfect face stood before him still. He stared back at the keys and willed himself to leave the newspaper offices. But then he punched in the name of MacLean—
He ran the cursor down, pressed ENTER to retrieve, and a stack of reference material became available. Not quite so much as that on the crash of Concorde, but more than he found on the missing
Ben could scarcely believe his own eyes. It was all there, and he scrolled down the computer pages, reading with amazement the story of Laura’s split with her Scottish banker husband, Douglas Anderson.
He considered the entire thing so out of character. Laura? On the front pages of the newspapers in a terrible scandal that ended up in the High Court in Edinburgh? In his anxiety to devour as many facts as possible, Ben skipped over the part about the man with whom she had run off. It took him ten minutes, paging back through the reports, to find his name, Lt. Commander Bill Baldridge (Retd.) of the United States Navy. “At least I outrank him,” muttered Ben.
There was very little in the paper about the divorce itself, because that was heard
Laura’s barrister had pleaded her case valiantly, but reading the reports in retrospect it was obvious that the judge was never going to allow Laura’s daughters to leave Scotland while they were so young. And, to Ben’s amazement, Laura had left without them.
In an unguarded moment, in reply to a reporter’s question about when she would return, she had turned around, and snapped, “I never want to lay eyes on this damned place, ever again.”
Douglas Anderson had been very dignified throughout the whole proceedings and said nothing outside the court, except that he and his family, assisted by Admiral Sir Iain and Lady MacLean, had a duty to raise the little girls in the best possible way, and to ensure that their inheritance was properly managed.
So that was it. Laura was gone. And, save for a short mention in
An appalling melancholy swept over him. For he knew that the United States was the most dangerous place on earth for him. That was where he would be executed, summarily, if they found out who he was. And Commander Adnam did not underestimate the men in the Pentagon. He knew they were incredibly smart, absolutely ruthless, and would think nothing of “stringing up some towelhead terrorist.” He had met Americans, right here in Scotland, men from the Holy Loch Base. He knew how they talked and what they thought about serious enemies of the U.S.A.
For the first time, ever, he believed he would never speak to Laura again.
With a sad heart, he turned off the machine and walked bareheaded out into the cold, rainy streets of Edinburgh. But he did not mind the rain, because it obscured the tears that ran silently down his face. It was the first time the forty-six-year-old Benjamin Adnam had wept since he was a child in the village of Tikrit, on the banks of the Tigris River.
He did not want to return to the Balmoral Hotel, because that was just another prison. There was only his empty room, and he was frightened of the solitude. He actually thought he might break down completely. And so he kept walking, heading, for no reason, for the great ramparts of Edinburgh Castle, which glowers over the city.
It was 1235, and he turned into the High Street, walking west up the long rise to Castle Hill, which leads up to the massive granite edifice which has symbolized the innate defiance of Scotland for more than 850 years. Ben had been here once before, in 1988 with Laura, and he stood staring up at the Outlook Tower, just as the castle’s 1300 cannon shot crashed out over the city, as it did every day except Sunday.
There was a considerable crowd of tourists awaiting the sound of the cannon, and a predictable number of “oohs” and “wows” as it happened. Ben stood still at the sound of the sudden shot, and his muscles tensed. It was the reaction of a military man, in a military place. Although no armed forces have been garrisoned in the castle since the twenties, it was once home to the great Scottish regiments: the Black Watch, the Royal Scots, the Seaforth Highlanders.
In the Middle Ages, the castle was besieged constantly, mostly by the English. It is impossible to remove the overtones of blood and valor from such places, and Ben Adnam felt more at home there, in those stark, bleak vales of distant courage and gallantry, than he ever did in the Balmoral Hotel. Ben imagined the clash of steel and the thunder of the guns, as he walked slowly along the stone walkways to the twelfth-century St. Margaret’s Chapel, the small stone-arched place of worship inside the castle. These days it is nondenominational, and used only by visiting military, but once it was an important Catholic church.
Ben opened the door and stepped inside, gazing at the five magnificent stained-glass windows behind the altar. Before him were images of St. Ninian, St. Columba, St. Margaret, and St. Andrew. But Ben had no interest in them. He walked to the bright, beautifully colored window dedicated to Sir William Wallace, the great Scottish national hero of the thirteenth century.
This, Ben knew, was a real man…William Wallace, who had led his renegades to kill the Sheriff of Lanark, and then to defeat the English governor of Scotland, Lord Surrey, in a brutal battle near Stirling…William Wallace, the man who finally drove the English out of Scotland altogether. Ben knew that in the end Wallace had been executed for treason. Nonetheless, he died bravely at the age of only thirty-three, and Commander Adnam stood in front of the window and bowed his head in front of Scotland’s most noble terrorist.
He stayed for just a few minutes, then walked outside, where it was still raining, and, within him he felt the old resolve surge again. He gazed out northward across the gray expanse of the city, toward the wide waters of the Firth of Forth, and beyond to the ancient kingdom of Fife. He thought back to the days of Wallace, and the undaunted fearlessness of the man…the audacity it must have taken to move in and ruthlessly attack the enemies of his country.
Suddenly, for the first time in a month, Ben believed he was thinking clearly again. The face of William Wallace had seemed to look kindly upon him, and the example of the long-dead martyr of freedom seemed to galvanize his spirit. In a flash of inspiration the commander knew where he must go, and what he must do. It was his only chance, and it was a chance that might lead him simultaneously to Laura. But first he had to find her.
He turned from the castle and headed back downtown, hurrying along the High Street, then turning back along The Bridges to his hotel. He arrived there and found a telephone book with listings for the border country.
