Assassins

  If Gavin was complaining about being fed up, then he was doubly so, having to babysit the stroppy individual.

  ‘So, when do I start signing these Bills of yours, whatever they are?’

  ‘The minute your Coronation is out of the way.’

  ‘But you said that would be weeks off!’

  ‘True.’

  ‘Could you not bring it forward?’

  Cruid’s face remained inscrutable. Gavin was making this easy for him.

  ‘Well, I suppose…hmm. That if we didn’t make it quite so lavish – and if we, thinking off the top of my head, didn’t invite the other World leaders, and given, the hostile attitude of the English media, just have the Scottish press cover it, then we could hold it this coming Tuesday.’

  ‘Tuesday! But it’s only Friday.’

  ‘Would you rather I went back to my original itinerary?’

  ‘No, Gavin said emphatically. ‘Let’s do it on Tuesday.’ As an afterthought he said. ‘Do I still get to sit on a throne and wear a crown?’

  ‘Of course, ‘ Cruid said pleased with how this was going. Mary would be happy to hear this. ‘It would hardly be a coronation without a crown. You may however, have to wear an outfit borrowed from the museum, only there wont be time to have one made to measure.’

  Gavin looked round at Fiona. She shrugged.

  ‘It’s up to you Gav, you do what you think is best.’

  Gavin studied the Minister, not quite trusting him. ‘Ok, we do it on Tuesday. Can we help?’

  ‘N… n. no… thank you.’ Cruid leapt in. ‘There really is no shortage of people that I can call upon to help.’

  Cruid headed over to the door. ‘I shall now head off and get this up and running. There is no time to lose.’

  ‘That’s it!’ Gavin said, to Fiona the minute Cruid had left. ‘This time next week I shall be the King of Scotland and you will be Queen Fiona.’

  ‘Exciting innit?’ Fiona said. ‘I don’t mind at all if the Coronation is a small do Gav. I don’t think it’s right to spend all that money on a grand banquet. I heard they sometimes roast a swan and then stuff the insides with lots of other birds. Can’t see the point really, I mean having a goldfinch, in the middle.’

  ‘What do you think Penny?’ Gavin said turning to his PA and noting how her normal cheerful eyes looked saddened. Misreading her mind he said. ‘I do understand your concern about us rushing the Coronation through, and it will mean a heck of a lot of work for you, but I can help. Fi would help too.’

  Penny managed to smile.

  The following morning, Iris sought Gavin out.

  ‘The porridge they serve up is horrible,’ She complained. ‘I swear they are putting salt in it.’

  Gavin sighed. ‘That’s ok, Mother because, in a week from now, and Cruid and Mary Dewar don’t know this yet, but I plan to make some changes around here. It’ll be like running my own department again.’

  Fiona was worried. ‘What if this doesn’t work out Gav, what do we do then?’

  Gavin shrugged. ‘Then we pack our bags and we go back to Marbury to our old life. The house, we still own, we would just need to get the tenants out. And the last I heard the agents weren’t getting any interest in it. They said we ought to lower the rent. I told them no way,’

  ‘There’s not even a co-op nearby,’ Iris complained. ‘And when are the people round here going to start calling you your Highness.’

  ‘It’s Your Majesty, Ma,’ Fiona explained. ‘The term for a King is Your Majesty.’

  ‘Ok, Fiona said glad that something was being done at long last. ‘We only have a few more days to the coronation, we can sit it out.’

  ‘And I don’t like all them tourists in our back garden,’ Iris said looking out the window and seeing people two floors below waving and taking photos of her.

  Tuesday came. Cruid’s foreshortened plans for the coronation paid off. The proceedings went without a hitch. By the evening the fabulous Scottish Honours, the, sword the crown and the sceptre, borrowed from Edinburgh Castle, were safely back in their display cases.

  The televised proceedings watched by millions, showed King Robert and Queen Fiona, dancing till midnight at which point they said goodbye to everybody and then headed back to their four-poster bed to celebrate. Mary Dewar was the only absentee. She sent her apologies, saying she had a tummy bug!

  Chapter Eleven

  Whitehall London.

  In yet another COBRA meeting, Sir Roger Bottomley gathered about him his military Chiefs of Staff, the Defence Minister – Malcolm Catchpole – Peter Dent, the Minister for Transport­ – Home Secretary, Katie Murrell, and some of his top Civil Servants. Also present was his Special Adviser, Terry Beaumont, the author and distributor of the fake ScottiLeak email.

  The painkillers the Prime Minister had taken half an hour ago hadn’t touched his headache. Under discussion was the on-going threat that Scotland posed to UK assets.

  Only the PM and Terry Beaumont knew that ScottiLeak was a fake and Sir Roger wasn’t entirely certain of that. There were a couple of people seated round the table that had their doubts of its authenticity. General Sir Rufus Warburton-Smyth, head of the army was one of them.

  ‘Do we know for sure that this ScottiLeak, email isn’t a hoax?’

  ‘I can assure you General the email is genuine,’ Sir Roger said authoritatively. ‘I had MI5, and MI6, check it out and they are able to confirm that on May 10th last year, in a meeting chaired by Mary Dewar, the First Minister outlined plans to overrun British military bases and to confiscate UK assets including our oil. Someone who was present in that meeting, and clearly unhappy with the direction that Scotland was headed, then passed that information on to our intelligence people.’

  Terry Beaumont’s eyebrows arched. He had to suppress a smile. If this was true, and this meeting had taken place, and the Scots had discussed plans to confiscate English owned assets, then by pure luck, his fake email had actually hit on the truth. Who’d have guessed it?

  General Sir Rufus Warburton-Smyth twiddled his handlebar moustache. He didn’t trust these people with their shiny backsides who’d never been to war, never had a bullet whizz past their ear, nor had to stand in a muddy trench up to your whatsits while waiting for the signal to go. (Neither had he). He wasn’t alone in recalling the so called: “good intelligence”, that took the UK into the disastrous Iraq war. Bloody politicians. He had a suggestion, a damn good one.

  ‘Prime Minister, I propose that we make a surgical strike, one that’ll take out their top brass. In my experience, once the head of your enemy has been lopped orf, the troops will quickly throw down their arms.’

  ‘I take your point General,’ Sir Roger said, thinking he wasn’t stupid enough to order his armies into battle. Army brass with nothing better to do, would simply love to get involved in another disastrous war just so that they could use whatever new bits of kit they bought recently. ‘However, just this morning, I was handed another intercepted email from the same dissident anonymous Scot. Tell em Beaumont.’ The PM said turning to his SA.

  Terry tugged at the neck of his shirt. It felt hot in here. He was now thinking that perhaps sending out the second email might have been a bit rash. He did try to get the PM to understand that this new one was also a fake but the silly old fool couldn’t have been listening. If he now owned up to being the author of this new email, it wouldn’t be long before the sceptics worked he must have written the original ScottiLeak email. He cleared his throat. The first few words came out in a sort of strangled squeak. He coughed and tried to stop his hand from shaking when he read from a piece of paper.

  ‘Ahem, Ministers,’ Terry said, gaining everyone’s attention. ‘I have here a second ScottiLeak email dated December 16th last year, three months before the Scots declared UDI.’ Terry couldn’t bring himself to look up at their faces all staring at him. ‘I have been reliably informed that this email came out of the office of Scotland’s First Minister. It was signed by Mary Dewar an
d distributed to her Cabinet. I will read it out: ”Further to our meeting of May 10th, in which it was agreed that immediately after UDI we would then confiscate all English assets on Scottish soil, including any property occupied, or otherwise, owned of the Royal Family, I want to press on with this as a matter of urgency. Can people make sure that they have their works calendars up to date and have agreed any holiday arrangements with me.” Terry liked that last paragraph. He thought it added a sense of genuineness to the falsehood.

  Terry hastily stuffed the email in his trouser pocket.

  The cheeks of the general, usually florid, were even more inflamed. Blowing spittle through his handlebar moustache he blustered. ‘Dammit, I never did trust them blighters. We had better get our men mobilised before we get caught with our trousers down.’

  Sir Roger said, ‘I was just about to suggest that. (He wasn’t) ‘However, it wouldn’t do if se were to invade Scotland without having… erm! What’s the phrase Beaumont?’

  ‘Having–exhausted–every–available–diplomatic–means.’ Terry prompted.

  ‘That’s the one,’ Bottomley said. ‘So, while I go talk to that bloody awful woman in charge of the Scottish Government and make out that I am trying to be reasonable, you, General, will move your troops and your big… no your biggest guns, into place. We cannot discount the possibility of a war between our two nations. If we don’t act decisively we could lose all our military and commercial assets.’

  ‘And perhaps a few English owned stately homes, Prime Minister.’ Home Secretary, Katie Murrell reminded Bottomley.

  The Home Secretary, a stalking horse in Sir Roger’s Cabinet was secretly planning to take his place as the PM. Her tentative enquiries about who might back her in a leadership challenge faltered when a Cabinet colleague, surprised her by suggesting quite erroneously, that in times of war the death penalty for traitors was still an option. With a very real possibility that hostilities could at any moment break out between Scotland and the UK, she was keeping quiet about such ambitions. To her mind it was a little too convenient both these emails popping up just when Sir Roger was backed into a corner and everyone baying for his head to roll. Katie Murrell would not have been at all surprised if Terry Beaumont, the PM’s lapdog had written them. Katie couldn’t imagine the English and the Scots ever being at war with each other. Not after over three hundred years of relative harmony. To her mind the English and the Scots were a bit like an old married couple. Going to war with Scotland! This was getting ridiculous. Sensibly, Murrell decided that with all these men rattling their sabres, beating on their chests and blowing spittle out their mouths, she had best keep her powder dry.

  Closing the meeting, Sir Roger Bottomley only needed a big fat cigar to complete the Winston Churchill pose. General Sir Rufus Warburton-Smyth and the Navy Minister, Admiral Sir, Stanley Mortimer, along with the Head of the Air Force Air Chief Marshal Sir Andrew Shelley, went off in separate cars. As a matter of urgency they needed to chair a series of military briefings with the military objective of disarming and disabling the Scottish regiments that were certain to stand behind their own flag.

  *

  In Edinburgh, Mary Dewar feeling exultant after UDI announced that Scotland was to have it’s own Independence Day. It was to be similar to the ones that the Americans celebrated on the 4th July. The pubs were to remain open for twenty-four hours and every community was to hold street parties organised and paid for by the local authorities.

  When the Heads of the UK Armed Forces heard that the men in the Scottish regiments were determined to join in these celebrations, the Whitehall military strategists who had predicted this scenario were entirely confident that everything would go to plan.

  *

  While the Scottish armed forces were happily getting drunk and carousing the streets of Scotland, on the stroke of midnight, the other UK regiments began their massed retreat.

  The troops were given orders to pack up every bit of military kit and then load it onto fleets of trucks. These were then to be driven across the Scottish border where a defensive line of men and steel was to be set up along the entire length of Hadrian’s Wall.

  The Scottish soldiers, quite used to seeing the English regiments holding night exercises, took little notice of the amount of men and equipment being moved. Even when this included the kit out of their own bases they seemed not to care.

  Sunrise, when the Scottish troops began to sober up they found their barracks had been ransacked and they no longer had any weapons.

  The UK armed forces were now entrenched south of the Scottish border.

  In addition to this aggressive stance taken by the UK Government, an armada of naval vessels were deployed to beef up the security around the North Sea oilrigs. As if they were encircling sharks, Trident submarines could be seen patrolling the waters off the Scottish coastline. The sonic booms of British fighter planes screaming overhead rattled the windows of the townsfolk. It would take just one mistake, one trigger-happy soldier to fire off one round, and the whole thing could kick off. (Except Scotland had nothing to kick off with).

  Chapter Twelve

  The retreat of the UK armed forces didn’t quite go to plan.

  At two in the morning, the first of two unfortunate incidents very nearly dragged the nations into a full-scale conflict.

  For the best part of half an hour, now totally lost south of Inverness on a dark and narrow winding B road, Sapper Danny Buxton, driving an articulated low-loader hauling a Challenger MK II tank had been hoping to see a sign indicating which way to the motorway. He figured some miles back he must have missed the sign. He thought about waking Humpy–Paul Humphries, who was snoring on the passenger seat with the map crumpled in his lap.

  The past couple of months, Danny had been thinking of quitting the Royal Engineers. Having been ordered to drive a low-loader all the way up to Scotland just to haul this big bugger back to Sunderland, on his bloody rest day, was the last straw. One of the things the twenty-one year old sapper hated about the army was the hours, and the fact that just about anyone with a rank above corporal could screw up his life. Trundling along, keeping the speed down to around twenty, he was praying for a sign to the motorway, before these bloody silly roads got any narrower.

  A couple of miles on, his headlights picked out a sign that said: "Welcome to the historic town of Bonnie." Had someone told him the town was named after Charles Edward Louis John Casimir Sylvester Severino Maria Gavin, better known as Bonnie Prince Charlie, he would have shrugged. So what!

  He was now driving through the edge of town, rumbling past unlit houses where the low-loader was ratting the windows. Folk stirred in their sleep.

  Up ahead, in his headlights Danny saw they were now approaching a market square with a stone cross dead centre. Hmm, Danny wasn’t at all sure that he could swing his low-loader around the obstacle. He thought about reversing back up the High Street, and then what? He didn’t see that he had a choice. They were going to have to go round the bloody thing.

  ‘Humpy… Humpy, wake up,’ Danny slapped his co-driver on the head. ‘We got a problem.’

  ‘What!’ Humphries rubbed his knuckles in his eye sockets and then looked about him. Totally confused as to where they were. ‘Where are we?’ He said.

  ‘Some town called Bonnie.

  ‘Oh.’ Disinterested, Humpy curled up on his seat and closed his eyes again.

  ‘Humpy!’ Danny slapped his head, harder this time.

  ‘Ow… what! Stop hitting me Danny.’

  ‘See that up ahead,’ Danny pointed through the windshield at the stone cross set on a plinth in the middle of the road. ‘I don’t know that I am going to be able to steer this bloody thing round that. So’s I don’t damage the bloody thing, make yourself useful, keep an eye out on your side.’

  Danny eased the truck forwards teasing the clutch. The brakes were a little too jerky causing the tank secured with chains on the low-loader to buck to and fro.

  ‘Humpy, we cle
ar on your side?’ Danny said, ‘Watch out for the cross. Talk to me Humpy.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’re good to go.’ Humpy had his head out the window looking behind them. ‘For Chrissake Danny get a move on will you? I could drive a circus round that little old cross.’

  Awoken by the noise of the truck rumbling through their quiet town, emerging from their houses, dressed in their nightwear and looking like a scene out of a zombie movie, the townsfolk began slowly making their way towards the low-loader hauling a tank.

  ‘We got company Danny.’ Humpy said looking back up the road out the passenger window.

  Danny checked his rear view mirror. ‘Jesus! What the hell is that? It looks like something out of Sean of the Dead.’

  Distracted by the ghoulish scene developing behind him, it only took one second of distraction for Danny’s truck to mount the plinth. As a result, the turret of the tank, that Humpy was supposed have secured with chains, swung about causing the gun barrel to flatten the cross.

  ‘Shit, Danny.’ Now you’ve gone and done it.’ Humpy said leaning out the window looking down at the cross that was now in four pieces. A shout made him look back up the road.

  The townsfolk, having seen the tank flatten their ancient landmark suddenly became animated. A few men ran back home to fetch their shotguns, while some of the others armed themselves with spades, pitchforks, and a couple of men had swords.

  Seeing this baying mob of red-bearded men in pyjamas and carpet slippers, waving all manner of weapons and cursing him in a dialect that he didn’t recognise, Danny wasn’t about to wait around to say: “really sorry… it was an accident.” Shoving the truck into first gear, he slammed his foot down on the accelerator. The low-loader lurched forwards causing the wheels to reduce what was left of the Celtic cross, that had stood unmolested on that site for almost a thousand years, to a heap of rubble.