“There will be many Spanish agents, sympathisers, Falangist infiltrators in the Colony,” he prefaced. “There’s no way of knowing what their agenda is. For example, are they agent provocatuers, fifth columnists, spies or assassins, or merely stool pidgeons put in place to betray their neighbours when the Spanish move in?”
The woman stifled a moan of exasperation.
Some men were too clever for their own good!
“Either way, now that blood has been spilt we are clearly moving into a very dangerous end game. I don’t want you out of my sight, Clara,” he announced.
Clara always liked it when he used her real name. He rarely did, of course. Sometimes in bed he’d get carried away, forget himself, otherwise they’d got so accustomed to being in character, guarding whatever legend they’d adopted that week or that month to stay alive that there were times when she almost forgot who she used to be. It was easier for him; he’d probably lived this unreal rollercoaster shadow life his whole career.
“I can look after myself.”
“Now more than ever we must guard each other’s back.”
“Okay, okay. Have it your way.”
“We haven’t got much time,” he went on. “I have to speak to the Military Governor of the Colony.”
Chapter 20
Three of the four 500-pound iron bombs had exploded in the gardens and woods behind Balmoral Castle, the fourth had dropped short of the building and skipped headlong through the window that Vice-Admiral Julian Christopher and Margaret Thatcher had been standing at seconds before. By some malevolent fluke the bomb, probably travelling at a speed in excess of four hundred miles an hour, had encountered neither a human body or any significant structural impediment as it exited the reception room and plunged, like an express train across a corridor, down into an empty dining room, through the servant’s hall beyond and crashed into the castle’s boiler room. There it sat in a cloud of scalding steam as water gushed from ruptured pipes and fifty year old electrical wiring sparked while great detonations shook the old Victorian mansion to its foundations like the approaching footsteps of an angry giant striding towards it across the Scottish landscape. In the ear-splitting, buzzing silence that followed the bomb blasts there was an unearthly whooshing sound and suddenly the distant roaring whine of jet engines abruptly ceased. The quietness was numbing, terrible and paralysing.
Julian Christopher couldn’t see a thing. Nor could he move; something unbearably heavy was pressing down on his back and his legs seemed like they were in quicksand. He tried to breath and discovered he could do no more than gasp, pant air in and out in tiny gulps. The air tasted dusty, acridly poisonous as his mind worked hard to try and understand what had just happened. His ears were ringing, every sound he detected seemed to be far away, deadened as if his ears were full of cotton wool.
“Admiral!” A very dazed woman’s voice. “Admiral…”
He must have passed out briefly at that juncture because the next thing he was aware off was the weight lifting off his back and strong arms gently lifting him and turning him onto his back. Then he was being carried…
Everything went black.
Somebody was dabbing at his face with a moistened cloth.
He opened his eyes.
“Ah, that’s better,” Margaret Thatcher declared with a housewifely relief that seemed to the old Admiral perversely bizarre.
Julian Christopher gazed at his unlikely nurse.
She was covered in grey brick dust, her hair so awry she might literally have just been dragged backwards through a hedge. The left sleeve of her blue jacket was torn and there was a blood on her blouse. The woman became aware that he was staring fixedly at the hand-sized stain which only have been dried blood approximately covering the curve of her right breast.
“You bled on me,” she explained, averting her eyes in embarrassment.
Julian Christopher tried to sit up. He desisted in a wave of nausea.
“How long was I unconscious…”
“About two hours. On and off…”
“What about the others? The Queen?” He demanded, shutting his eyes and waiting for the disorientation to subside.
“The Queen and the Prime Minister are unhurt.” The deadness in her voice gave away the fact there was bad news to come. “Alec Douglas Home is dead. There wasn’t a mark on his body. They think it was the concussion, or the blast overpressure, or something…that killed him. Prince Philip was trapped under the rubble for nearly an hour. Both his legs are broken. Tom Harding-Grayson was standing next to poor Alec and he seems completely unharmed. There was another attack on Birkhall, the residence of the Queen Mother. Fortunately, she was visiting Crathie at the time with the two older children, Prince Charles and Princess Anne…”
Julian Christopher realised he still hadn’t yet heard the worst news.
“One of the two planes that attacked the castle crashed into the east wing. The Royal Nursery was completed destroyed. They’re still searching for Prince Andrew’s body…”
The man clasped the Angry Widow’s left hand.
She tried to elude his grip but only half-heartedly.
“How could people, our own people, do something so wicked?” She asked on the trembling precipice of a flood of tears.
Philosophically, he knew the answer to her question. Or at least he knew one of the answers. To find that answer had after all been the purpose of this visit to Balmoral. But this was neither the time nor the place to attempt to explain as much.
“Damn,” he grunted. “Help me up please.”
“You have a concussion and you may have internal injuries, Admiral.”
“I’ve had worse beatings playing rugger, ma’am,” he retorted, wincing in pain. “I am the senior military officer in these parts and I’ve been shirking my duties long enough.”
He’d been stretched out on a table in what had become a makeshift casualty clearing station in the entrance hall of the castle. There were two bodies on the floor beneath bloody sheets a few feet to his left.
“Somebody help me restrain Admiral Christopher!” The Angry Widow called in voice with demanded instant obedience.
Patricia Harding-Grayson appeared out of the blurry haze.
“Admiral,” the other woman said. “You had a nasty bang on the head and several of your ribs are cracked. If you looked at yourself in the mirror you wouldn’t even be thinking of getting up.”
The man collapsed back onto the table.
“I promise I’ll lie down if you find somebody who can tell me what’s going on,” he muttered unhappily, aware of the brutal pain behind his eyes for the first time. It was like the worst black dog hangover he’d had in his life. For a moment he thought he was going to be sick. And then he was, violently, into a bowl Margaret Thatcher had miraculously conjured out of apparently thin air. He retched hurtfully for what seemed like minutes but was probably only a few seconds. Afterwards, he felt better. Notwithstanding that his head ached like an anvil with two blacksmiths hammering at it, his vision slowly cleared.
“Can you get some water down him, ma’am,” a gruff male voice asked.
“Of course.”
Julian Christopher found himself being helped to sit up. A glass was held to his lips and cool liquid dribbled from the corners of his mouth, dripping off his chin. He’d been literally parched and the fluid was like nectar. A second glass was held for him.
“You seem to have things under control, Margaret,” Patricia Harding-Grayson decided. “I’ll see if I can find somebody who ‘knows what’s going on’.”