Stay of Execution

78

Brian Mackie had never been more tense. The summons to the DCC’s office had come as a complete surprise to him, and the message that he had been given there, by Skinner, with a grim-faced Willie Haggerty looking on, had brought his worst dreams of the previous few weeks to the edge of reality.

New intelligence information. Not obtained from the security services, but as a by-product of a criminal investigation within Edinburgh itself. Two terrorist sleepers, moved to his city from an assassination in the Middle East, but hidden among the professional classes, not among the ethnic communities, where previous real or would-be terrorists had invariably been found.

Mackie shuddered as he thought of the implications of this new tactic, and as he watched the chartered Alitalia Airbus make its gentle approach to the runway at Edinburgh airport, escorted by two fighter jets, one on either side. As the Pope’s plane landed, they veered off and headed back to RAF Leuchars. The same procedure had been followed when the Prime Minister had arrived an hour earlier. Nobody had told the chief superintendent, but he had guessed that the two aircraft were there to intercept any ground-to-air missile that might have been launched.

He watched from his position on a viewing gallery on the roof that was off limits to the travelling public. He scanned to his left and right, checking that all the snipers were in position, then looked down at the airport’s concourse as the big jet taxied in. The reception committee was waiting, headed by the Lord Provost, both as the capital’s leading citizen and as its Lord Lieutenant, the personal representative of the Queen. After Lord Provost Maxwell there stood, in order, the Prime Minister, his familiar quiff blowing in the breeze, the much shorter figure of the red-haired Tommy Murtagh, MSP, Scotland’s First Minister and clear loser of the precedence argument between Holyrood and Whitehall, Sir James Proud, imperious as ever in his heavily adorned uniform, and last of the five, in richly embroidered vestments, Archbishop James Gainer.

Mackie had suggested moving the formal greeting indoors, but Skinner had decided against the idea since that would have meant explaining the last-minute change to the television crews and rota photographer who were being allowed to cover the first event of John the Twenty-fifth’s brief visit. Whatever story they had invented, media speculation would have been inevitable, and some of it might have been uncomfortably close to the truth. However, he had decreed that to minimise the period that the Pope spent in the open, there would be no wives in the line. This message had been conveyed to the protection officers, who had accepted it without argument, and possibly, in one case, with relish.

And so the chief superintendent held his breath as the plane came to a halt, the steps were put in place, and finally the door of the Airbus was opened. He felt his heart pound as the white-robed figure stepped out and made his way down the staircase and on to the red carpet, then knelt to kiss the ground, rising with great agility for a man of his age. Mackie looked around, almost frantically, as the Pope made his way along the receiving line, checking the snipers again, picking out the uniformed officers and those in plain clothes, with the tell-tale gold badges glinting on their lapels, his eyes searching all the time for anyone or anything that should not have been there.

It seemed to take an age, although only two minutes elapsed between the emergence of His Holiness from the aircraft and his entering the familiar vehicle with its canopy of bullet-proof glass and its ton and a half of armour plating, hidden and unsuspected under the gleaming white coachwork.

As the convoy, led and tailed by two police vehicles and flanked by eight motorcycle outriders, headed off for the City Chambers, Brian Mackie allowed himself a very small sigh of relief.