Theatre.
71
The Prime Minister experienced a sudden sensation of flight. One second, having forgotten, temporarily, his anger over Ballantyne's ridiculous bravado, he was enjoying Handel's finest work. The next he was in mid-air, seized bodily by Andy Martin, lifted clear of his seat, and bome at speed across the short distance to the Jaguar.
Then its rear door was wrenched open and he found himself thrown across the back seat. An instant later, Ballantyne landed heavily on top of him, hurled there by Brian Mackie. Then Mackie himself dived in to cover them both with his large body.
Martin, his pistol drawn, slammed the door shut behind them, slapped the side of the Jaguar, and dived to the ground as it roared off.
He looked up, back towards the audience, and could spot McGuire and Mcllhenney. Obviously they, too, had been alerted by Skinner's voice in their ear-pieces, since, arms outspread, they were gathering in as many of the people around them as they could and forcing them down between the seats.
On stage, the orchestra played on in triumph, as oblivious to the two explosions as were all but a few members of the audience.
Overhead the fireworks crashed and sparkled, at their luminescent climax.
72
There is no mistaking a Sidewinder missile for a firework.
Skinner watched, struck dumb by the horror, as one of them smashed right into the middle rows of the audience and exploded.
He saw that, at the moment of impact, several people, noticing the sudden commotion in the front row, had stood up trying, vainly, to catch a view in the dark. By a small mercy, the other Sidewinder flashed across the front of the stage, exactly where the Jaguar had: stood bare seconds before, over a figure lying face-down in the tarmac, and then off to explode in the trees beyond the theatre's iron gate.
Maggie Rose screamed out loud, and kept on screaming, until Skinner gripped her by the shoulders and shook her hard.
Even without night-glasses. Major Ancram could see the flashes of the missile strikes, and needed no telling what had happened.
'Mr Skinner, I'm calling out the garrison. I'll have to get every man down there.'
'Yes, Major,' said Skinner, recovering his power of speech.
'Fast as you can, too. Let's get down there.'
And then, suddenly, he changed his mind. 'No!' he said loudly, • and the Major, who had been heading away to gather his soldiers, stopped in his tracks and turned to stare in surprise. 1 'There's something else,' said Skinner, vehemently. 'I said that they want to get us tear-arsing around. That's what they've got now, in spades. But what happens next?'
He stood for perhaps twenty seconds, thinking hard, while Rose and Major Ancram stared at him. Then, decisions made, he looked again at the soldier. 'Major, OK, you get your men down there on the double, but leave half-a-dozen up here with me.
Maggie, you go on down with him, and do what you can.'
She nodded silently, determined to be as tough as anyone in Skinner's command, and ashamed of her earlier weakness.
'Major, how many men have you got?'
'Just now, three hundred.'
'Good. When you get down there, I want you to put armed men on guard around the National Gallery, and at the big bank branches at the Mound, St Andrew's Square, George Street and the West End. I'll tell you why later. For now, get going, and send that half-dozen men to me.'
A germ of a notion was festering in Skinner's mind, one so bizarre that he thought that it surely had to be fantasy, and yet it was there and he could not totally dismiss it as a possibility. An afterthought struck him and he called after the disappearing Ancram. 'Major, see if one of your men can find me a whistle!'
73
Andy Martin picked himself up from the wet tarmac, without even a thought of dusting himself off. When he heard Skinner's first alert, he had jerked bolt upright in his seat, and a voice inside him had screamed silently. For a second he had almost sprinted from; the Prime Minister's side, off through the Gardens and into the night, to Lothian Road, the Filmhouse and Julia.
But then the second alert had come, and Skinner's frantic command. He had acted instinctively, and had ensured that the Jaguar and its passengers had made it to safety. Now he looked around him, and listened carefully. On the stage a percussionist was banging away, either lost in the score or refusing to believe what had happened. Daniel Greenspan stood in his spotlight, his baton by his side, staring into the darkness.
Martin re-holstered his pistol and took out his radio. He switched channels to call the operations room at fettes. 'Find whoever can arrange it, and get as much light as we can in here.
For a start, have someone turn on the lights in Princes Street. And get me any news you can of Filmhouse.' I A second later, he found that his first instruction had been anticipated by the stage manager of the Ross Theatre. Above the stage a row of floodlights flickered into life, illuminating the i audience. Martin moved forward fearfully, into a world of death and desolation, unable to block out the fear that it might be the same where his Julia was.
There was carnage indeed in the Ross Theatre, 'nd yet he soon saw it might have been worse. He looked around first for McGuire and Mcllhenney, and to his great relief spotted them both, still huge in their jackets and helmets, shepherding uninjured spectators away from the scene.
And then Adam Arrow was by his side. 'God, Andy, I've never seen anything like this. What do you hear on that radio of yours?' Once again the accent had vanished. Three attacks one after the other. First Filmhousc, then the3 238 Balmoral – both bombs, from the sound of it – then here. We were attacked by missiles fired from the Mound. One missed. The other hit over there by the looks of it.'
'Sidewinders, I imagine. In that case we were lucky.'
'Not all of us, though.'
They had reached the heart of the missile's devastation. Neither could be sure how many had died, but a circle of twelve metal seats lay tangled and bloody under the floodlights, with broken bodies twisted among them. Around this immediate circle, perhaps two dozen people sat stunned and disbelieving. Some were bleeding, and several held their ears as if deafened. The silence was that of a mourning parlour. It had a power of its own, one which seemed almost to hold at bay the growing clamour from Princes Street, and the howling of sirens as police, fire crews and ambulances raced to their different destinations.
The soldier and the detective began to direct the men at their disposal to the care of the casualties, to render first-aid to those who were bleeding, and to confirm, as far as they were able, that none of the walking wounded was seriously hurt.
When he was satisfied that everyone was in good hands, Martin called across to McGuire. 'Mario, you're in charge here now. I've got to check out Filmhouse.'
As he sprinted into the night, he glanced up at the Half-Moon Battery. Standing at its edge, framed in light,
