Royal Flush

8

She grew uneasy as the first flush of victory wore off. She had not expected to achieve it without losses, but the losses had been high indeed.

Of the three squads attacking the north side, only Flynn had survived — and judging by his shotgun wounds, he might not yet.

Seven of the main force from the Land Rovers were dead. A graze on her shoulder reminded Kathleen of just how close she had come to joining them.

When the attack against the castle had first been proposed by Shillelagh several months ago, Kathleen thought the idea preposterous. With Shillelagh's help, she turned a preposterous idea into a workable plan. The plan had been launched and the raid had succeeded.

The next step was to get out.

Kathleen pulled a list from her pocket. Shillelagh had provided the names of each member of the royal family and photograph for each name on the list. Thirty-five people.

Each corpse in the room was examined — eliminating four of the names on the list. As terrorists herded the family out from under the table, each face was scanned.

Kathleen separated the hostages into two groups. The first was made up of the survivors on the list, the second were those not on the list. The second group could be let go; it was the first group that mattered. Kathleen went up to an old man who was being set free and handed him the sheet of names and photographs. She gave her instructions in a soft Irish brogue. "When you and the others in your group leave this room, give the list to whoever is in charge out there. The people on the list will be released on payment of one million pounds sterling, in a manner that the authorities will be told of shortly.

"If anyone attempts to follow us when we leave, we will immediately kill the hostages. If our demands are not met, we will begin killing individual hostages starting with the last name on the list and working toward the first.

"Within fifteen minutes, I want a bus brought out to the front of the castle. One of my people will go and check it out. No harm must come to him, or some of these people die..."

The twenty-fourth Earl of Kintail was not the best man Kathleen might have picked for the task. The tall, clear-eyed gentleman from Northern Ireland had an iron will and a sense of duty to the royal family that went beyond mere patriotism.

The earl was a bastard. As an only child, his legal right to his father's title had fallen in a muddy area of British common law, and the courts had decided against him. Over forty years ago the crestfallen young man had learned of the court's decision against him in his digs in London.

In the short span of a few hours his entire life had changed. In the rigidly structured British army of the thirties, he could never hope to achieve a prominent place without the edge his title had given him. By withdrawing his title, the courts had condemned him to a middle-echelon position where his fine training and talents would be frustrated. He was an eager young man then, with a young man's ambitions.

The courts had also made him ashamed of his parents, something that, until then, Eddie had thought impossible. At school and at university, he had never endured the insults of his fellows. He remembered how the biggest boy in All Saints had called him a "shrewd little bastard" in front of his class. He heard the snickering around him and turned to face the rest of the boys. "I am a royalbastard," he said in his loudest and most precise voice. Then he broke the bully's nose.

Such moments became a source of strength for Eddie, but the news of the court's decision had made his pride disappear. He felt as he had felt as a child holding a fistful of hail pellets tightly in his hands; he remembered his disappointment as the perfect white pearls melted and dripped through his closed fingers.

"Hello Eddie," the voice had said more than forty years ago. "No lad, don't get up." Eddie had not seen the King of England since his father's funeral, but the man now stood inside the doorway of his London apartment. "I heard the news. Bad luck, Eddie, old boy. I expect you'd like to get drunk, what? Do you have any brandy?"

While sipping the liquor, the king explained that under British law, Eddie's father's estate would become the property of the British crown. In effect, the king could do anything he liked with all of the Kintail estate.

"Did you know, Eddie," the king asked, "that there have been Kintails in the House of Lords since the days of that upstart Cromwell?" The king smiled. "Of course you did," he continued. "So I think it would be a damn shame to lose a family that has been such a bear for punishment for such a long time. What I mean to say, Eddie, is that there have been Kintails in our service since the time before the Empire.

"Are you married, Eddie? No? Well, give it time. Find a fine woman, lad, someone with your mother's spirit — yes, I did know her — find that woman, lad, and give the kingdom a twenty-fifth Earl of Kintail. Oh yes, I didn't mention it, Eddie, but I'd like you to be my twenty-fourth earl. It merely involves a bit of paperwork. Are you interested?"

Later, over a second bottle of brandy, the king said, "You know, Eddie, sometimes it's quite pleasant this being a king."

When Kathleen thrust the list of instructions into his hands, the old man stiffened visibly. The Earl of Kintail knew that if the terrorists escaped Windsor Castle with their royal hostages, the queen's chances of survival worsened a hundredfold. He faced the young woman impassively and put the list back into her hands.

"I won't do it," he said. "You'll have to get another man."

"Eddie," the queen spoke gently from across the room, "do as the young woman says."

"No, ma'am," he said. The last word was drowned out by the clatter of the Uzi fired by a terrorist across the room.

Kathleen stepped over the bleeding corpse of the late earl and put the piece of paper into the hands of a horror-dazed young boy.

"Give this to the men outside," she said.

The boy who bowed to the queen and left the room, clutching the list of demands in his right hand, was the twenty-fifth Earl of Kintail.