Revelation

11 The Gardens

'I know all about HMS Daring.'

Romella and Findhorn, loading up a Miele dishwasher with breakfast things, looked up in surprise. Stefi was standing in dramatic pose at the kitchen door, looking like a snow-dusted mummy.

'Well?'

She flung off coat and scarf and flopped, teasing out the moment. She pulled back a kitchen chair and put her leather-booted feet up on the table. 'At least, I know where to go to find out about it. I spoke nicely to a young man in the National Library. It's all in the Public Records Office in Kew.' She read from a little card. 'Admiralty Report Number 26/54, for instance, tells us about the ship's vibration trials. There's lots of stuff like that.'

'When were those trials?'

'1954.'

'Clever girl,' Findhorn said, 'But the diary entry was July 1942. 1954 didn't exist then.'

'Oh.'

The deflation lasted a few seconds. 'Well what about this? HMS Daring. British destroyer of 1,375 tons. Torpedoed by a U-boat on the 18 Feb 1940 off the coast of Norway. Only fifteen survivors. He wrote his entry just four months after it sank.'

'That's it? Nothing unusual about it?'

'It was unusual for a British warship to be sunk by a U-boat, otherwise I can't see anything odd. You Brits are so proud of your Royal Navy, but Bulgaria has a navy too, you know. I could murder a coffee, especially one with two sugars and lots of milk.'

Findhorn was filling the kettle. 'We've seen nothing in the diaries.'

'But we've only gone as far as 1942,' Romella pointed out. 'Black and no sugar.'

'I need to photocopy the rest of them.'

'Where are they?' Stefi asked.

'Tucked away safely.'

'He doesn't trust us. Are you sure you want to risk the mean streets?' There was a slightly sarcastic edge to Romella's voice.

Findhorn was looking for sugar. 'I do not, but what choice do I have?'

'Okay, while you're out risking your life I'll get more girlie things from the flat. It looks as if we'll be here for some days.'

'Be careful, Romella. If anyone asks, you've never heard of me. You're not translating anything for anyone. And make sure you're not followed back here.'

Romella glanced at Stefi. 'Isn't that the most wonderful chat-up line? What do you think?'

Stefi was undoing laces. 'I believe everything Fred tells me. He's being hunted by bad people. I'll stay here and drink coffee and hope he doesn't get caught.'

Findhorn ordered a taxi and watched for it from an upstairs window. He sat well back on the short journey to the bank, looking out at the normality on the streets and feeling foolish, as if Mr Shorthand and Mr Speedhand were receding bad dreams, with Ms Drindle and her pet gorilla even more remote and unreal.

He emerged from the bank with an armful of diaries. George Street was busy and grey, and a cold, freezing fog had descended. He walked briskly along the street, feeling exposed, and turned into the business centre.

First he phoned Archie. The call was brief.

Then he started to photocopy. The diaries went up to 1952 and after an hour he had reached 1948 and needed a break, and he phoned Archie again. This conversation was even shorter:

'Archie?'

'It's all set up, Fred.'

'Thanks.'

And Findhorn resumed the photocopying. After another hour the tedium became unbearable and he sat down at a terminal. He now had access to an antiquated, unused computer in the basement of Archie's department at Glasgow University. He thought about a password. It had to be memorable, unguessable and in no dictionary. He thought of:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure dome decree

He took the initial letters of the first seven words, replacing the A by the number 1 to give iXdKKls, and concluded it with a couple of nonsense symbols. The final password was unguessable, but mentally retrievable:

iXdKKls!!

Assume the people behind Drindle and the Korean had access to high-speed computers which they might use in combination to approach cracking speeds of a million characters a second. A six-character password based on a combination of ten numbers would be broken in ten seconds. One based on the 26 lower case letters might take two and a quarter hours. An alphanumeric combination could be broken in forty days and eighteen hours. A password based on all 96 characters on a keyboard, upper and lower case, would occupy the computers for two years and seventy-eight days, day and night. And Findhorn's password had nine characters.

In any case, first find your computer.

The scanning was slower and even more tedious than the photocopying, and it took him well into the afternoon.

Photocopies of the diaries to 1950 were now heaped on the desk in front of him, as were the originals; but their electronic clones lay in a secret machine, accessed through an impenetrable gateway and protected by an unbreakable password.

As an afterthought, Findhorn checked his e-mail. He froze. A terse message stared at him from the monitor:

The source of the message was some Brazilian address, no doubt meaningless. He hard-copied the message. His watch said three thirty.

He phoned Romella's flat, letting it ring for a full minute before giving up. Then he rang his brother's flat. Stefi answered straight away: 'Hello?'

'Stefi.'

'Fred, thank heavens you phoned.' There was anxiety in her voice.

'What's the problem?'

'It's Romella. She should have been back long before now. And she's not answering the phone. Where can she be?'

'Stefi, stay put and don't answer the door. I'll be there shortly.' He hung up before she could reply.

In George Street, a taxi approached on cue and he took it straight to the flat. The driver was happy to park on the double yellow lines. Findhorn thought he saw movement behind a net curtain as he climbed the steps. He heard the Chubb lock turn, and then the big bolt which went into the floor, and then the Yale lock, and then Stefi's eye was peering anxiously round the door.

Findhorn handed the e-mail over without comment. Stefi gave a little scream. He dropped the diaries on the floor and ran for the stairs. 'I have twenty minutes.'

'Will you call the police?' She was running after him.

'It would take me more than twenty minutes to explain and even then they'd never believe it. And if the police get in on the act it will be the end of her.' Stefi caught up with him at the marble Eve and grabbed him by the sleeve.

'Fred, take a minute. Stop and think. What will happen to you if you go there?' She was beginning to tremble.

'Stefi, all I know is that I'm out of time.' He pulled free, ran up to the African watering hole and came back down, two steps at a time, carrying a briefcase. Stefi was standing at the front door. It was locked and she was slipping the key inside her sweater.

'What do you think you're doing?' he shouted angrily.

'Seafield Cemetery in this weather will be deserted.'

'Of course it will. Why else…'

'So you'll get a knife in your ribs, you idiot. If you can't think of yourself think of Romella. She's a witness. What do you think they'll do to her once they've got what they want?'

Findhorn hesitated.

'How badly do these people want the diaries?'

Ten dead; a million pound offer; a large organization hunting me. 'Very badly.'

'So. Is that not a great big bargaining chip?'

'Okay. Okay.' Findhorn paced up and down the hallway, his head bowed. Then: 'You're right, Stefi. I'll e-mail these creeps from some cyber cafe. We'll meet as equals in Edinburgh Castle.'

'Is that safe?'

'It's a military garrison.'

She said, 'I'll come. If you do get her back she'll need female company'

He hesitated again. Then Stefi was saying, 'I'll stay in the background. Nobody will see you with me.'

'Hell, there's no time to argue.'

Stefi was groping around in her sweater. 'This key is bloody freezing.'

The man was about forty, gaunt, with thick lips, metal-framed spectacles and short, vertical sandy hair. He was dressed in a long black coat, the collar of which was turned up against the icy breeze, and his hands were in its pockets. He was standing next to Mons Meg, looking out over the battlements of the castle. Findhorn joined the man at the wall. Far below, office staff were criss-crossing Princes Street Gardens, looking like amoebae under a microscope. Beyond the gardens, Princes Street was festooned with decorations and crawling with traffic. 'It's a long way down,' Findhorn said.

'But at least death would be quick.' There was something odd about the man's demeanour; Findhorn couldn't specify it. 'The Castle goes back to the fourteenth century. You would think it was impregnable — who could climb walls like these? And yet it has been conquered, twice, in its long history. Once by siege, once by trickery.' The accent had a slight northern English tinge; Findhorn tentatively placed it in Yorkshire.

'Trickery is what's bugging me.'

'Yes.'

'I like it,' Findhorn said, trying to keep the fear out of his voice. 'No false reassurances or stuff like that. I think maybe I'll be dead in a few hours and you say "yes".'

'A few hours? You are an optimist. Unless you deliver.' The man's eyes flickered towards Findhorn's briefcase. 'You have them, I sincerely hope.'

'What exactly is in these diaries?'

'If we knew that, we wouldn't need them.' The man stepped back from the wall. 'Think what we have achieved in four hundred years. Think of the damage done by a cannonball from this.' He tapped Mons Meg, the massive cannon, next to him. 'Now we have bombs the size of a cannonball which could evaporate the castle, the hill it stands on, the Esplanades and everything within a kilometre of here. Can you imagine what the future will bring?'

'Is this relevant to anything?'

A gleam entered the man's eyes. 'Oh yes, very much. God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions. Ecclesiastes one, twenty-nine.'

'Oh God,' said Findhorn, 'Not a religious fanatic'

'Take your friend. I could kill her now, by a slight movement of my finger, even although she is miles away.' He pulled a mobile phone out of his pocket and held it towards Findhorn. The little square monitor had a message, easily read even in the fading light: KILL THE BITCH.

'A touch of the button and the message is sent.' The man put his hands, with the mobile, back in the deep pockets of his coat.

Findhorn suddenly felt as if he was walking on eggshells. 'Why "the bitch"? You've got something against the ladies?'

'Who can find a virtuous woman? Proverbs thirty-one, ten.'

'A woman-hater and a religious nut, all in one. I don't believe you're real.'

'Handle me with care, Doctor Findhorn. I'm real, I'm a religious fanatic, as you put it, and I am deeply irrational by your standards. And now, if you please, the diaries.'

Findhorn, dreading the reaction, unstrapped the buckles of the case and handed over a dozen sheets of paper, then stepped back to give the man a secure space. The man skimmed through the pages and then looked up sharply. 'And the rest?' His tone was suddenly harsh.

'They're not here. What you have is proof that I have them. I'm not about to hand them over without some guarantee that Romella will be released.'

'This wasn't the arrangement.'

'Not your arrangement, chum. But it is mine.'

Cold blue eyes studied Findhorn from behind the spectacles. 'You don't know who you're trying to push around.'

'The Castle's closing, gentlemen.'

The man waited until the soldier was out of hearing. 'You'll be getting her by instalments, Findhorn.'

'Start sending me parcels and I'll start burning the diaries.' Findhorn found himself getting angry, tried to control it.

'Gentlemen, if you please.'

'I'm just looking for a secure exchange. And remember you need the diaries more than I need Romella. She's just a translator. She means nothing to me.'

'Is that so?' The man hissed. 'Let's take a walk down the esplanade, Doctor Findhorn, while we make a new arrangement and you explain why you're risking your life for a girl who means nothing to you.'

It was six o'clock and the rush-hour traffic was being replaced by late-night shoppers and pantomimegoers.

Findhorn turned off Princes Street down a steep path leading to the darkness of the Gardens. He cut off the path over wet grass, heading for the safety of the shadows as quickly as he could. A couple of giggling girls passed, then a drunk who wished him a Merry Christmas. Findhorn grunted in reply. He found a tree, stood in its shadow, letting his eyes slowly adapt to the dark, and waited.

And waited.

Suddenly, after half an hour, lasers began to probe the sky overhead like futuristic searchlights, coming from some point on the Salisbury Crags about three miles away. Behind Findhorn, Edinburgh vibrated with life; buses sped along a busy Princes Street; shop windows reflected the Christmas lights. He was only fifty yards from safety. In front of him, the Castle loomed high over the Gardens, its turrets and walls reflecting a pale, ghostly light.

A hundred yards to his right the Norwegian pine was draped with lights. Ahead of him two men on ladders were trying to drape a banner across the bandstand. Another was setting up chairs on the stage. Half a dozen musicians were taking instruments out of cases. There was something reassuring about the hammering and the banter. A circle of light about thirty yards in radius surrounded the bandstand; beyond this circle, shadowy forms were moving, on the limit of visibility. They were real, or they were Findhorn's imagination at work; he could not say.

It was so huge that, at first, Findhorn thought he must have imagined it. And then he realised that he had, that the towering black cliff was old lava rather than ice, that the rumble at its base was a passing Intercity train and not the thunder of waves at the foot of the berg. To his horror he realised that he had momentarily dozed; but the return to reality brought back the bitter cold and the terror.

Marooned in an island of dark shadows, surrounded by a sea of light, he gripped the briefcase with both hands and again peered into dark shadows. His mouth was dry. Now and then he looked quickly behind.

Somewhere in the dark, if the man could be believed, was Romella. She would be brought into the light of the bandstand; Findhorn would approach out of the dark with the diaries which he now held; the exchange would be made; and the parties would each melt back into the dark night.

Or so they said.

Something odd about the men on the bandstand.

A cough in the dark, over to Findhorn's right. He shrank back against the tree.

A cigarette was glowing red about a hundred yards to the left. An occasional arc marked its passage in and out of the owner's mouth.

A torch picked out a group of three, on the bridge crossing the railway. It was the briefest flash; but Romella was in the middle of the group. The grip on his briefcase tightened.

In a minute three figures emerged into the light in front of the bandstand. Two men, one a teenage tearaway in a leather jacket, the other the religious fanatic, still in his long black coat, warmly wrapped up with a red scarf. Romella propped between them, head lolling from side to side. She was wearing a short skirt and a simple T-shirt. Findhorn thought she must be utterly frozen, perhaps even close to hypothermia. The men stood, gazing into the dark around them.

The musicians were hardly ten yards away. They were paying no attention, and Findhorn suddenly knew what it was about them. They weren't testing their instruments.

And no seating had been set up for an audience.

And the men on the ladders were taking forever to set up the banner.

He stepped out of the shadow of the tree and walked towards the three. They spotted him about thirty yards away. Romella went still.

Someone else, a small, plump woman, approached out of the dark like a ghost, and stood beside the two men. She was carrying a large, plain black handbag.

Findhorn walked into the light of the bandstand. The men were watching him intently.

Some of the musicians were climbing down the bandstand at its far end and walking into the shadows.

Romella was shaking her head in a doped but urgent way.