Powerstone (25 page)

Somebody screamed ‘It’s a bomb!’
and began to push down the street, toward
Holyrood
Palace
. A large woman led a surge to the
crash barriers, where the police were attempting to keep the crowd calm while
simultaneously staring toward the sound. Thick, choking smoke rose from higher
up the street.

‘There!’ Desmond grinned at Irene.

‘You’re too early! Where’s the
parade? You’re too fucking early!’ Irene slipped forward, heading upward, toward
the smoke and against the downward thrust of the crowd. Scores of people were
screaming in panic, a baseball-hatted youth was helping an old woman who had
fallen while a man in a smart business suit tried to push them aside in his
hurry to flee.

‘Here! Here it comes now.’ Desmond
pointed upward.

A unit of Scottish infantry, all
tartan trews and jaunty glengarries, jogged toward them. Among their ranks was
the glass-topped Rolls Royce that Irene knew held the Honours. The vehicle
looked too large for the confines of the Canongate, too shiny for the tall grey
gulley through which it passed. Even through the jostle of the crowd, she could
see the gleam of gold, the glitter of precious stones. Her destiny was rolling
down an
Edinburgh
street and she was determined
that Desmond’s stupidity would not rip it from her.

‘Amanda! Are you all right?’ Irene
had forgotten all about Drew in the madness, but now she lifted her cell phone.
‘I’m fine Drew, but I have to go. All hell’s breaking out here.’ She killed the
phone, returning it to the pocket of her bulky coat. At least if anybody had
heard, they would be looking for somebody called Amanda, and she had her real
passport carefully hidden away.

Desmond laughed softly, ‘and
another one!’ This explosion was quieter, possibly through distance. The
soldiers did not even look round.

‘Give me that!’ Irene snatched the
transmitter and shoved Desmond aside. He staggered backward, swearing as she
held on to the device. It fitted snugly into her hand.

It had been Irene’s idea to create
major distractions with false bomb alerts that would take the attention of the
security forces away from the Honours, but Desmond who decided just where to
plant the ex-British Army thunder flashes, the smoke bombs and the canisters of
CS gas that he had obtained from Irish Republicans in
Scotland
. Only Desmond had the technical
expertise to wire the devices so they could be detonated by remote control.

Now Irene studied the transmitter.
There were two buttons and a small dial. She knew that the red button detonated
the thunder flashes and smoke bombs, and the green the CS gas, so the dial must
control the order in which the devices exploded.

‘This way, please, ma’am. There seems
to be some sort of disturbance.’ Close to, the policewoman looked even younger,
with a fresh face that belied the calm assurance with which she gave orders.
‘Keep back from the road now, until all the vehicles have passed.’

‘Don’t touch that!’ Struggling
through the crowd, Desmond reached for the transmitter. For a moment he
wrestled with Irene as the crowd surged around, then he pressed his finger on
two buttons simultaneously and there was a series of explosions. Somebody began
to scream incoherently.

‘You ass hole!’ Irene screamed at
him as the mass of people scattered, knocking down the protective barriers and
brushing aside the thin line of police. Her plan had been for a number of
diversions followed by a controlled sequence of harmless explosions that would
divert most of the security from the Honours to guard the Queen. Instead there
was pandemonium, with people panicking while smoke and tear gas rolled down the
Royal Mile. Irene began to cough as the fumes caught at her throat and stung
her eyes. Streams of mucus ran horribly from her nostrils.

‘Move! Now!’

Irene gasped as the words grated
hoarsely in her ear. At first she could not recognise the tall figure with the
obscene gas mask, but
Bryan
pulled her into the shelter of
the Tolbooth Wynd, beneath the great square clock. He pointed to her
over-the-shoulder bag. ‘Your mask!’

Nodding, Irene opened the bag and
hauled out the mask. Wiping her nose first, she slipped off her sunglasses and
hauled the clammy rubber over her head. It fitted snugly, so she could both see
and breathe with more clarity. Beside her, Desmond was doing the same.

‘Look!’
Bryan
had taken command. Hefting an
innocuous Tesco’s carrier bag, he pointed to the Rolls Royce, which was
isolated in the centre of a mob of terrified, gasping people. ‘Everything’s
fucked up but we can still do it. Keep your heads and follow me. Stefan is
keeping our escape route clear.’

Irene nodded. The officer in
charge of the soldiers was using them to help the police, concentrating more on
humanitarian aid than on his duty in guarding the Honours. Coughing and
swearing, the soldiers were scattered, with only two men posted beside the
vehicle.

Keeping low,
Bryan
crossed rapidly to the Rolls
Royce. The first soldier was bowed double, coughing and vomiting as the CS gas
thrust into his lungs, but the second moved forward.

‘Back! Stand clear of the
vehicle!’ His voice was hoarse from the gas, his eyes were swollen and mucus
streamed from his nose, but still he pointed the squat SA 80 rifle directly at
Bryan, who slouched on. Without hesitating,
Bryan
pulled a silenced pistol from inside his leather jacket and fired a
single shot. The sound was muted, hardly heard amidst the clamour of the crowd.

‘No killing! I ordered no killing!’
The gas mask muffled Irene’s scream as the soldier immediately dropped. The
rifle clattered to the ground.
Bryan
fired a single shot into each offside tyre of the Rolls Royce and replaced his
pistol.

Stepping over the soldier’s body,
Bryan
poured fast acting superglue into
the lock of the Rolls Royce door, trapping the driver and escort inside.
Ignoring their frantic efforts to escape, he removed a small square of what
looked like yellow putty from his bag and placed it at one corner of the glass
box that held the Honours. Producing a small detonator, he stepped casually
over the prone body of the shot soldier. He pushed Irene out of the way.

‘Keep back. Don’t get involved.’

Despite her shock at the murder,
Irene watched in fascination as the men inside the Rolls Royce hammered at the
sealed door. She knew that Desmond had obtained the C5 from his Irish
connections, but had never seen it in operation before.

The sound was less loud than she
had expected, but the force of the explosion was shocking. Rather than
shattering, the reinforced glass roof lifted clean off the frame, before
sliding down the body of the vehicle, trapping the driver inside his cab. The
escort at last wrenched open the door and staggered out, holding a pistol in
his right hand. Blood seeped from his ears.

With his gas mask making him
appear like something from the First World War, Stefan pushed his way through
the crowd from the opposite side of the road. Lifting a massive hand, he
chopped straight-fingered at the escort’s throat.

‘Don’t kill him!’ Irene heard the
panic in her voice, but knew the mask would muffle her voice. She could only
watch as Desmond produced a brace of yellow-bodied smoke bombs and rolled them
down the road. They rattled away, emitting choking white smoke that further
confused the situation.

‘Oh Jesus Lord help me,’ Irene
prayed. She had expected something clean, with the professionals executing a
clinical robbery, but here she was in a scene reminiscent of Dante’s Inferno.
Viewed through her eyepieces, the Canongate was a shambles of retching, gasping
people lumbering from patches of yellow smoke, or wiping helplessly at their
eyes.

She saw a child lying on its face,
spewing helplessly as its mother held it; she saw the policewoman guiding an
elderly woman toward a close, both doubled up with the pain of constant
coughing; she saw the baseball-capped youths supporting each other against the Tolbooth
steps while a group of tartan-bedecked tourists huddled against the harsh stone
wall of the Tolbooth.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I
did not know, I truly did not know.’ Irene shook her head, sobbing her shame
into the mouth of the gasmask.

Even before Stefan had disposed of
the escort,
Bryan
had dived onto the Honours.
Producing a folded bag, he reached for the crown.

Irene choked back her tears. She
had not expected horror like this; she hesitated, torn between her ambition to
complete the procedure and her desire to help these stricken people. ‘Oh suck
an elf!’ Having come so far, she could not stop now.

‘Hurry up!’
Bryan
was gesticulating, his eyes angry
behind the smeared eye pieces of his mask.

Stepping over a middle- aged man
who was attempting to crawl under the smoke, Irene scrambled to
Bryan
’s side. Reaching for the sceptre,
she curled her hand around the stem and pulled, but it would not move.

‘Shit, shit, shit! It’s stuck!’
Irene pulled again, swearing, but the sceptre did not move. ‘It’s bolted down!’
She looked at
Bryan
. He glared back through
magnified, alien eyes. She leaned closer, hissing urgently. ‘Use your gun!
Shoot them free.’ She raised her voice above the continuing racket of the
crowd. ‘Use your gun!’

They had to be quick, before
Edinburgh
’s notorious wind cleared away the
smoke and gas. Irene had to consciously control her bladder as a hard hand
tapped her shoulder.

Desmond pushed between them,
scrabbling at the massive Sword of State, his thin body wriggling with effort.
Pushing him roughly aside,
Bryan
produced his pistol, pressed the muzzle against the first of the two steel
clamps that held the crown and fired. The clamp parted and he repeated the
procedure. The crown jumped slightly as it was free.

‘For God’s sake, don’t damage it!’
Irene heard her voice rising. She could hear
Bryan
’s breath rasping through the muzzle of his mask as he
pressed his pistol against the clamps that held the Sword of State.

Irene winced at each shot. Each
impact felt like somebody was striking her, but Desmond snatched the sword the instant
the clamps split, yelling his triumph. ‘Up you, you Brit bastards!’

Ignoring the gilded scabbard, he
swore as he lifted the four and a half feet of steel and silver gilt. ‘Damn but
it’s heavy!
Erin
gu Brath!’ Lifting it high, he
dodged into the crowd, jinking around a soldier who pawed feebly at him while
guiding a wheezing woman away from the worst of the gas.

Stefan appeared at the opening to
the un-named close. He lifted his gas mask, shouted ‘this way’ and replaced the
mask, looking tall and immensely capable.

Irene watched Desmond cross to
Stefan, even as
Bryan
shot the sceptre free.

The dense mass of people had
combined with the summer heat to confine the tear gas within the Canongate, but
now the wind gusted through the closes. The gas and smoke were thinning, just
as the officer in charge of the escort realised that the Honours had gone.

‘That man! Stop!’ The officer
thrust an arm out, finger pointing directly to Desmond.

‘Move! Move! Jesus, move it!’
Thrusting the sceptre into her hand,
Bryan
pushed Irene away from the Rolls Royce. ‘Come on!’ He had the crown
in his left hand and waved the pistol in his right as he barged down a slender
teenager and ran across to Stefan.

Irene followed, gasping to breathe
inside the gas mask. The sceptre was heavier than she had imagined, and clumsy
to carry. It felt more like a burden than a national treasure half a millennium
old. She saw a mob of people crowd around a policeman, a soldier wiping mucus
and tears from his face, a tourist in a tartan shirt leaning against a barrier,
and then Stefan was holding her arm and pulling her into the close.

‘Down here!’

The passage was short and dark,
with uneven cobbles beneath her feet and faded graffiti on one wall.
Bryan
kicked an empty beer can and
swore, glancing over his shoulder. He began to struggle with his gas mask, but
Desmond put a hand on his arm and shook his head. Although Irene could hear
heavy footsteps in the close, she dared not look back. In her hands she held a
prize that would make her one of the most powerful women in the world, if only
she could keep her nerve for the next few hours. There was no time for
faltering, no time for regrets; she must keep going.

Sweet Lord, she had succeeded in
stealing the Crown Jewels of Scotland. It was a theft that would make headlines
throughout the world, an accomplishment that would be discussed for centuries
to come.

Desmond was well in front, holding
the sword as if it were a lance, with
Bryan
not far behind. Ignoring Desmond’s previous instructions, he tore off
the gas mask, revealing a face bright red with exertion.