he caught sight of a silhouette unmistakable even in its overcoat.
'Thank Christ for the boss tonight,' he muttered sincerely. 'But what's he doing up there still?'
74
The corporal looked puzzled as he handed Skinner the whistle.
Skinner took it from him with a curt nod.
'Right, you all know me?'
'Sir!' said the corporal, speaking for all six men.; 'Major Ancram will have told you that you are rtow under my, command. What I want you to do is this: throw a guard around the Crown Square – that's the Great Hall, the Queen Anne Barracks, the War Memorial, and the Royal Palace. All the areas below will be empty by now, but there's nothing there that anyone would be after. What you must guard against is anyone or anything that shouldn't be there. The chances are that nothing unusual will happen, but if it does…'
He paused to let his words sink in, then went on. 'If any of you sees anything, and you don't know for sure it's friendly, don't ask I for its name, shoot it. If it turns out to be the regimental mascot, f or the RSM's tart, well, that'll be too bad, but they can both be replaced. Right, Corporal, get your men spread out.' He held up the whistle. 'I know it's old-fashioned, but if I need you, I'll blow this thing. If you hear it, regroup here, by the One O'clock Gun. If any of you need me, chances are I'll have heard you shoot!'
75
But Skinner was wrong.
He was standing by the gun, training his night-glasses on the National Art Gallery, looking for any sign of intruders. For he suddenly felt acutely aware that the building was currently housing an international exhibition of the life's work of Rembrandt. It had been brought to the Edinburgh Festival under the sponsorship of a major insurance company, and it was worth, conservatively, over a hundred million pounds.
'Forget the banks. That's only money,' he said softly to the night, his thoughts gathering speed. 'Anybody with the resources to fund what we've just seen doesn't need money. But what if he wants something else, something unique, just for himself, and will go to any lengths, any cost? There's only one other collection in Edinburgh as valuable as that exhibition, and we're up here guarding that.'
Then he heard the strange sound in the dark, and knew at once, with his detective's instinct, that the National Gallery was not the target – and that his germ of an idea had been right all along.
The Royal Regalia of Scotland are not nearly as famous as their English counterparts in the Tower of London, and they have been admired by far fewer tourists over the years. Indeed, most Scots do not even know they art there. Since the Union of the Kingdoms almost five hundred years ago, only King Charles II, then an exile and outlawed by Cromwell, has been crowned in Scotland. Thus the Honours of Scotland – as they are sometimes called – are, in main, older than the Crown Jewels of England. They are also, in their own way, beyond price. Therefore they are guarded in the most effective manner possible, by the army itself, in the heart of the garrisoned citadel of Edinburgh, which stands impregnable on its rock – unless, in some dire emergency, that garrison were to be flushed out.
Without waiting to discover exactly what that sound in the dark had been, but sensing its meaning anyway. Skinner grabbed his radio and spoke urgently into the open channel.
'Get some back-up here to the Castle. They're after the Crown Jewels! •
76
He stumbled over the body in the dark. The soldier lay face-down, near the Portcullis Gate, at the foot of the Lang Stairs. Skinner turned him over. The heavy clouds reflected the amber light of the city back down to earth, and in that dim glow Skinner could see that the man had been stabbed in the throat. The gurgling sound heard earlier must have been his death rattle, or a last attempt to raise the alarm.
The man had dropped his rifle. Skinner spotted the short, fully automatic weapon lying on the ground. He picked it up without further thought, thankful for his practice sessions with this same firearm on the St Leonards rifle range.
Leaving the dead soldier. Skinner hurried back to his rendezvous point by the One O'clock Gun. He hesitated for a moment about blowing the whistle, with the risk of alerting the intruders, but quickly decided that alerting his own men had priority. So he gave a single sharp blast, and hoped that the raiders would confuse it with the many other varied sounds now floating up to the Castle from the chaos in the city below.
Only three of the other soldiers answered his summons, including the corporal. Skinner glanced at him and held up the whistle, a gesture asking whether he should blow it again.
But the NCO shook his head sadly. 'Naw. They're good lads.
They'd have come if they could.'
With twenty-twenty hindsight. Skinner cursed himself for not commandeering twice as many men, then he addressed the remaining three. 'Look lads, we've got a raiding party in the Castle. They're after the Crown Jewels. I don't know how many there are, but they must be inside the Palace by now. I've already radioed for back-up, but we can't wait that long. If they get what they're after, then get loose out there in the dark, we'll never catch them.
'Corporal, you take one of these two and go round behind the war Memorial to the main entrance to Crown Square. The other will come with me up the Stairs, and in by the side way. And, again ask no questions. You see it, you shoot it!'
The corporal slapped one of his soldiers on the shoulder, and together the pair headed off up a slight incline to the right, hunched in the dark and their rifles held ready. Skinner led the remaining man back past the body of his dead colleague and up to the top of the stone staircase, until it opened on to the topmost level of the Castle. Together they raced across the ground behind the Fore Wall and the Half Moon Battery, and flattened themselves against the side of the Scottish National War Memorial.
Slowly, Skinner eased forward to peer round the corner into Crown Square. At the edge of his vision he saw the corporal and his partner sprint into the square, away from the dangerous frame of the narrow entrance, bracing themselves, crouched, against the buildings.
There were two men stationed at the door of the Palace. They were dressed in black, and carried short, ugly guns which Skinner recognised at Uzis. They spotted the two soldiers as soon as they appeared at the far end of the square, and swung their weapons up to firing positions. But too slowly.
The corporal and his companion cut them down with bursts of sustained deadly accurate rifle fire. Skinner saw both men thrown back against the wall of the Jewel Chamber by the impact. Then as the firing stopped, they crumpled slowly, limp and dead, to the ground.
He shouted across the square. 'Corporal, is there any other way out of there?'
'No, sir,' the man called back. 'Whoever's in there must come through that door at the foot of the Flag Tower.'
'Right, we wait. Our back-up should be here any minute.'
As he spoke, he heard, from within the building, a sound like the smashing of heavy glass. An alarm bell began to ring, pointlessly.
Skinner left his soldier companion in the lee of the War Memorial, and ran across to the steps of its only entrance. He shielded himself behind its arch, and blessed his luck and foresight as a grenade exploded in the square. He heard shrapnel zing i against stone walls, and ricochet off into the night. Then he swung I himself out from behind the grey pillar and waited ready for what he knew would happen next.
