Skinner's festival

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.

There were two others, also dressed in black like their dead colleagues. Each carried a hold-all in his left hand, and a blazing Uzi in his right. As they burst through the door, they sprayed fire blindly at unseen targets, but this kept the soldiers at the far end of the square pinned down nonetheless.

They could not see where their greatest peril waited.

Skinner dropped the first intruder with two quick shots. The other swung round towards the side exit from Crown Square, and straight into the path of the waiting soldier, who roared a battlecry as he emptied his magazine in revenge for his fallen comrades.

In the silence that followed, amid the reek of the gunsmoke, Skinner found time to look inside himself. He was pleased that he had been able to fire without hesitation, pleased too that he had handled the job so unemotionally, without any thought of Barry Macgregor in his mind. Perhaps, he thought, the closet door was locked for good. Maybe he did not need that other guy after all.

He held the other men in position for three full minutes, lest there were other intruders still inside the Jewel Chamber. But the next man to enter the square was Captain Adam Arrow, leading his silent troops in full combat array.

Arrow appraised the scene in a second, and realised why Skinner and his trio of soldiers were waiting immobile. At his signal, two men sprinted across the open space and threw stun grenades through the open door of the Flag Tower, holding their ears against the percussion. Then they rushed inside the building and up the stairs, their guns held in front of them.

A few seconds later they emerged, and waved the all-clear to Arrow.

As Skinner and the soldiers gathered at the doorway, the corporal found a switch, and soon the square was ablaze with light. Weapons at the ready, they approached the four figures lying crumpled on the flagstones. Three of the raiders were as dead as they could be, but the fourth still showed signs of life.

Skinner radioed for an ambulance.

The two hold-alls lay on the ground nearby. The larger of them was streaked with blood. Skinner knelt down and unzipped it and from within he took a sword still sheathed in its bejewelled scabbard. Not just any old sword, this one, but that which had been ceremoniously borne in state before the kings of Scotland.

He held it up by its scabbard for a moment, feeling its weight and its fine balance. Then he handed it over to Arrow and bent to open

the other bag, knowing also what he would find there.

First, the golden sceptre, finely worked, heavier than it looked.

And then Scotland's ancient pride, the crown itself. It was almost indescribably beautiful. Even in the harsh artificial light its jewels glinted in the delicate gold circlet. Pearls, set in gold,' gleamed on the red velvet inner cap, and six more, with four sapphires, formed the cross at its apex.

Skinner held it up by its white ermine surround, for all to see 'There you have it, lads. This is what our Freedom Fighters were really after. Priceless, they call it, but for someone who wanted it badly enough, not beyond price, it seems.'