They arrived at the Cavendish Hotel a little after 7 P.M., and Rick spoke briefly to the receptionist, who summoned a porter to escort him to the sixteenth floor. The police car waited right outside the main door.
Rick checked his watch, and walked with the porter along to room 168, a large double bedroom that had an open connecting door to the biggest suite in the hotel. This was situated on the corner of the building and was composed of two large bedrooms with bathrooms, and a substantial drawing room suitable for entertaining sixteen people. This was the room that led into Commander Hunter’s bedroom. It formed what could be, at any time, a three-bedroom suite, suitable for visiting royalty and heads of state, with personal staff and protection.
The porter asked Rick if he would be needing him further, but Edinburgh ’s newest policeman declined and handed over a £10 tip, which the porter thought was not too bad, for a policeman.
Rick wandered through the rooms, wondering which bedroom he should allocate to Arnold and Kathy, and which to Sir Iain and Annie. The five of them were very much on first-name terms by now, the Scottish aristocrats having long accepted Rick as one of their own-educated, multimillionaire horse breeder, and perfectly mannered naval officer.
It had been agreed that he alone would decide who slept where, since he alone carried the ultimate responsibility to ensure that no one murdered Arnold Morgan. On this, his initial recce, he checked that the windows were fastened, checked the door locks, and checked that the phone lines were all working.
Then he called down to inform the desk that no staff was allowed anywhere near the big suite without his express permission and his personal attendance. That included maids, the housekeeper, room service, and anyone else who might wish to attend the two admirals and their wives when they arrived the following day.
He put his rifle in the wardrobe, hung up his jacket and civilian trousers, and placed the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door handles out in the corridor. Then he placed his Sig Sauer service revolver in his belt, took the elevator down, and climbed into the back of the police car.
“Over to the castle, sir?” asked the driver.
“Thank you,” said Rick. “Main entrance.”
The opening ceremony at 9 P.M. was still an hour away when Rick arrived, but the crowds were already gathering to watch the stirring massed pipers and drummers of the most revered Scottish regiments march down the Esplanade. Rick was rather looking forward to it.
But right now he was very preoccupied. He walked around to the Royal Box and sat down in the center of the front row, staring out at the grandstands, trying to assess where an assassin might position himself for a long-range shot at the admiral.
He established there would be either a police or military presence on duty at both ends of the rows of seats. It would plainly be impossible for anyone to smuggle in a rifle, not under the eyes of these trained security men.
Privately Rick thought a shot from the higher battlements would somehow be too far in the dark, however well the Royal Box was lit. And, anyway, the entire place was crawling with military guards, every fifty yards on the ramparts, all around the castle. Christ, he could see them from here.
He walked the length of the left-hand grandstand to check whether it went right to the end wall of the Esplanade. It didn’t, and there was a throughway between the last line of seats and the wall with two military policemen on duty, demanding to see people’s seating tickets.
He found it almost impossible to find a spot from which to fire a high-powered rifle anywhere beyond the Esplanade and the grandstands. He was finding it difficult to find anywhere in the entire castle environs where anyone could produce a rifle without being arrested in a matter of moments.
Rick went back to the Royal Box and sat down in one of the empty seats along the front row. He watched the huge crowd growing as they took their places around the arena. The VIPs were arriving now, among them two high-ranking generals, plus the Royal Navy’s First Sea Lord, who would take the salute tonight.
The Tattoo began with a rousing piece of music played by the band of the Royal Navy, “Fanfare for the First Sea Lord.” And then the massed pipes and drums of the Scottish regiments led the huge parade through the entrance onto the Esplanade. The Guards, the Highlanders, the Borderers were followed by the bands of the Irish Guards, the Royal Gurkha Rifles, and the Rats of Tobruk.
The ancient sounds of the Scottish marching songs split the night sky above the capital city. The haunting strains of “The Campbells Are Coming” evoked proud reminders of the Siege of Lucknow in 1857, when General Sir Colin Campbell, at the head of 4,500 Scottish troops, marched across the Punjab to defeat 60,000 Indian rebels besieging the British residency.
It was a superb military pageant, and Rick ignored the unease he felt at the end of the performance when the First Sea Lord stood up in his seat to take the salute. Rick too stood up with the crowd and joined the applause, understanding that every Scotsman in the arena felt an age-old rising of pride in a warlike past.
The U.S. Navy commander thought it was terrific, and he was almost relaxed when the Royal Marines of 42 Commando began their display, dozens of them abseiling down the castle walls, then forming up and firing their rifles into the air to signify a successful assault on a fortified stronghold. Rick had already checked. Blank rounds.
He stayed until the end, watching and applauding the Russian Cossack State Dance Company, the massed bands of the Royal Marines with their “Celebration of Trafalgar,” and the 600-strong massed military bands, with pipes and drums, playing their world-famous Edinburgh Tattoo specialties “Mull of Kintyre” and “Caledonia.”
For the finale, before a Royal Navy Guard of Honor, the entire thousand-strong cast of musicians played “Auld Lang Syne,” and, as the sacred Scottish notes died away, the Lone Scots Guards Piper appeared high on the battlements of the castle, and played a pibroch lament, the slow melancholy classical music of the bagpipes.
This effectively brought the house down, and Rick stood up and cheered as it ended. And then he stood transfixed as a mighty roll on the drums signified the moment when the great throng of musicians and serving soldiers began the March Out, in strict formation, kilts swirling, to the drums and bagpipes playing “Scotland the Brave.”
Commander Richard Hunter, a career U.S. Navy officer, had never before seen anything so perfect, so moving, and so inordinately impressive. He’d almost forgotten why he was there, forgotten about the policeman’s uniform he wore, forgotten about the grave threat to the life of the great American he was sworn to protect.
He stood and surveyed the happy crowd leaving the area, and then he walked down among them, back down the Esplanade to the main entrance and through the gap between the left grandstand and the end wall. He found himself thinking, “If I’d just shot Admiral Morgan, I’d bolt straight through here and make for the street in this big crowd… that would mean I’d need to wait until the very end…”
He found his police car and was driven back to the Cavendish. He returned to his room and stripped off his yellow police raincoat and the dark blue sweater. He put on his regular sportcoat and returned downstairs to the busy second-floor grill room and ordered himself an Aberdeen steak and a Jack Daniel’s on the rocks.
Rick did not notice another lone diner sitting close by, a man in a black T-shirt and a brown suede jacket, sipping a Scotch whisky and eating a chicken sandwich. He too had been to the Military Tattoo, but had spent his time high in the upper regions of the castle, just checking guard movements and watching the Marines form line of battle before their mock assault on the great Scottish fortress.