Revelation

Findhorn hesitated.

'How badly do these people want the diaries?'

Ten dead; a million pound offer; a large organization hunting me. 'Very badly.'

'So. Is that not a great big bargaining chip?'

'Okay. Okay.' Findhorn paced up and down the hallway, his head bowed. Then: 'You're right, Stefi. I'll e-mail these creeps from some cyber cafe. We'll meet as equals in Edinburgh Castle.'

'Is that safe?'

'It's a military garrison.'

She said, 'I'll come. If you do get her back she'll need female company'

He hesitated again. Then Stefi was saying, 'I'll stay in the background. Nobody will see you with me.'

'Hell, there's no time to argue.'

Stefi was groping around in her sweater. 'This key is bloody freezing.'

* * *

The man was about forty, gaunt, with thick lips, metal-framed spectacles and short, vertical sandy hair. He was dressed in a long black coat, the collar of which was turned up against the icy breeze, and his hands were in its pockets. He was standing next to Mons Meg, looking out over the battlements of the castle. Findhorn joined the man at the wall. Far below, office staff were criss-crossing Princes Street Gardens, looking like amoebae under a microscope. Beyond the gardens, Princes Street was festooned with decorations and crawling with traffic. 'It's a long way down,' Findhorn said.

'But at least death would be quick.' There was something odd about the man's demeanour; Findhorn couldn't specify it. 'The Castle goes back to the fourteenth century. You would think it was impregnable — who could climb walls like these? And yet it has been conquered, twice, in its long history. Once by siege, once by trickery.' The accent had a slight northern English tinge; Findhorn tentatively placed it in Yorkshire.

'Trickery is what's bugging me.'

'Yes.'

'I like it,' Findhorn said, trying to keep the fear out of his voice. 'No false reassurances or stuff like that. I think maybe I'll be dead in a few hours and you say "yes".'

'A few hours? You are an optimist. Unless you deliver.' The man's eyes flickered towards Findhorn's briefcase. 'You have them, I sincerely hope.'

'What exactly is in these diaries?'

'If we knew that, we wouldn't need them.' The man stepped back from the wall. 'Think what we have achieved in four hundred years. Think of the damage done by a cannonball from this.' He tapped Mons Meg, the massive cannon, next to him. 'Now we have bombs the size of a cannonball which could evaporate the castle, the hill it stands on, the Esplanades and everything within a kilometre of here. Can you imagine what the future will bring?'

'Is this relevant to anything?'

A gleam entered the man's eyes. 'Oh yes, very much. God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions. Ecclesiastes one, twenty-nine.'

'Oh God,' said Findhorn, 'Not a religious fanatic'

'Take your friend. I could kill her now, by a slight movement of my finger, even although she is miles away.' He pulled a mobile phone out of his pocket and held it towards Findhorn. The little square monitor had a message, easily read even in the fading light: KILL THE BITCH.

'A touch of the button and the message is sent.' The man put his hands, with the mobile, back in the deep pockets of his coat.

Findhorn suddenly felt as if he was walking on eggshells. 'Why "the bitch"? You've got something against the ladies?'

'Who can find a virtuous woman? Proverbs thirty-one, ten.'

'A woman-hater and a religious nut, all in one. I don't believe you're real.'

'Handle me with care, Doctor Findhorn. I'm real, I'm a religious fanatic, as you put it, and I am deeply irrational by your standards. And now, if you please, the diaries.'

Findhorn, dreading the reaction, unstrapped the buckles of the case and handed over a dozen sheets of paper, then stepped back to give the man a secure space. The man skimmed through the pages and then looked up sharply. 'And the rest?' His tone was suddenly harsh.

'They're not here. What you have is proof that I have them. I'm not about to hand them over without some guarantee that Romella will be released.'

'This wasn't the arrangement.'

'Not your arrangement, chum. But it is mine.'

Cold blue eyes studied Findhorn from behind the spectacles. 'You don't know who you're trying to push around.'

'The Castle's closing, gentlemen.'

The man waited until the soldier was out of hearing. 'You'll be getting her by instalments, Findhorn.'

'Start sending me parcels and I'll start burning the diaries.' Findhorn found himself getting angry, tried to control it.

'Gentlemen, if you please.'

'I'm just looking for a secure exchange. And remember you need the diaries more than I need Romella. She's just a translator. She means nothing to me.'

'Is that so?' The man hissed. 'Let's take a walk down the esplanade, Doctor Findhorn, while we make a new arrangement and you explain why you're risking your life for a girl who means nothing to you.'

* * *

It was six o'clock and the rush-hour traffic was being replaced by late-night shoppers and pantomimegoers.

Findhorn turned off Princes Street down a steep path leading to the darkness of the Gardens. He cut off the path over wet grass, heading for the safety of the shadows as quickly as he could. A couple of giggling girls passed, then a drunk who wished him a Merry Christmas. Findhorn grunted in reply. He found a tree, stood in its shadow, letting his eyes slowly adapt to the dark, and waited.

And waited.

Suddenly, after half an hour, lasers began to probe the sky overhead like futuristic searchlights, coming from some point on the Salisbury Crags about three miles away. Behind Findhorn, Edinburgh vibrated with life; buses sped along a busy Princes Street; shop windows reflected the Christmas lights. He was only fifty yards from safety. In front of him, the Castle loomed high over the Gardens, its turrets and walls reflecting a pale, ghostly light.

A hundred yards to his right the Norwegian pine was draped with lights. Ahead of him two men on ladders were trying to drape a banner across the bandstand. Another was setting up chairs on the stage. Half a dozen musicians were taking instruments out of cases. There was something reassuring about the hammering and the banter. A circle of light about thirty yards in radius surrounded the bandstand; beyond this circle, shadowy forms were moving, on the limit of visibility. They were real, or they were Findhorn's imagination at work; he could not say.

It was so huge that, at first, Findhorn thought he must have imagined it. And then he realised that he had, that the towering black cliff was old lava rather than ice, that the rumble at its base was a passing Intercity train and not the thunder of waves at the foot of the berg. To his horror he realised that he had momentarily dozed; but the return to reality brought back the bitter cold and the terror.

Marooned in an island of dark shadows, surrounded by a sea of light, he gripped the briefcase with both hands and again peered into dark shadows. His mouth was dry. Now and then he looked quickly behind.

Somewhere in the dark, if the man could be believed, was Romella. She would be brought into the light of the bandstand; Findhorn would approach out of the dark with the diaries which he now held; the exchange would be made; and the parties would each melt back into the dark night.

Or so they said.

Something odd about the men on the bandstand.

A cough in the dark, over to Findhorn's right. He shrank back against the tree.

A cigarette was glowing red about a hundred yards to the left. An occasional arc marked its passage in and out of the owner's mouth.

A torch picked out a group of three, on the bridge crossing the railway. It was the briefest flash; but Romella was in the middle of the group. The grip on his briefcase tightened.