Assassins Read online

  ‘No,’ Sir Roger said irritably. ‘Forget South America. It’s the bigger players that I am worried about, the Ruski’s in particular. Bloody hell we must do something.’ Turning to his Chiefs of Defence the PM said.

  ‘We need a strategy. What ideas have you got?’

  General Sir Rufus Warburton-Smyth, the head of the Army, offered a suggestion.

  ‘We give em a damn good spanking… trousers down… that sort of thing. In Eton that sort of thing always brought the fags into line.’

  Sir Roger frowned. ‘I take your point Rufus, but I was rather hoping for suggestions of a more specific nature.’

  ‘I doubt there is anything more specific than a jolly good rogering with a cricket bat Bottomley. I imagine, at Eton a soft wimp like you would have had a few of them bigger boys sort you out eh?’

  The PM took out a hankie and mopped his brow. He would rather the General hadn’t reminded him of those times.

  Malcolm Catchpole the Defence Minister was worried.

  ‘Prime Minister, I am a little concerned the Scots might decide to close their borders. If that were to happen they could conceivably overrun our military bases, seize our military hardware and even nationalise our oil operations.’

  Sir Roger Bottomley looked round sharply,

  ‘They wouldn’t dare… would they?’ He said directing his remark at Lord Soper.

  ‘PM, you need to understand, we are sailing in uncharted waters,’ the head of MI5 replied. ‘I really can’t say what the Scots might do. If they wished, as a truly independent nation, they could close their borders. ‘ Soper shook his head. ‘As you can imagine, if that were to happen, vast amounts of our military equipment including aircraft, warships and even our nuclear submarines would be trapped behind enemy lines.

  This situation would undoubtedly create a split in our armed forces. The Scottish regiments would rally around their own flag and the remainder of the UK regiments would be expelled.’ He warned, ‘Sir Roger, figuratively speaking, in that scenario, your severed head might end up on London Bridge mounted on a spike.’

  Even though he was quiet sure that sort of practice had ended with Oliver Cromwell, Sir Roger Bottomley didn’t like the image that just popped into his head. He adjusted his tie and tugged at his shirt collar.

  ‘My God, we must do something. We can’t have them overrun our bases, steal our military bits and bobs, guns, and warplanes and such. What are to going to do, someone tell me?’

  He shook his head to clear his thoughts. If he thought the Brexit result was bad, the Scots leaving the UK was a whole lot worse. He could see his career heading down the Swanee. If there was to be blood on the carpet, he decided, it wasn’t going to be his. What he needed was a foolproof plan, and one that was guaranteed to get him off the hook. He wasn’t going to be kicked out of office, forced to bugger orf to the Fens or somewhere equally dreary to write his memoirs. He studied the faces of his Minsters who were looking to him for leadership.

  Starkly aware that any one of them could end up in the firing line none were too keen on showing their head above the parapet.

  Which of these, the PM wondered, was Brutus with a dagger concealed in his cloak? Quite possibly all of them! Right now, all he wanted to do was go find the lovely Charlotte and have her cool hands soothe away his worries.

  ‘If I may make a suggestion, Sir Roger?’ Admiral Sir Stanley Mortimer said. ‘With your permission, I can have my ships take on board every bit of naval equipment on Scottish soil and then have it brought down to England. And in the meantime, I shall have our Trident submarines put to sea and harass the Scottish trawlers.’

  ‘Excellent plan Mortimer,’ Sir Roger said sufficiently impressed he wanted to take the credit for it. ‘Here’s what we shall do. I want every bit of military hardware and every soldier, airman and navy what-cha-mathingy withdrawn from Scottish soil. I want nothing left behind. I want the Sots thoroughly disarmed and disabled. I want them at my mercy.’

  See you can do it… he reminded himself.

  Seeking to dig out a little of the Chuchillian spirit that people used to say he exemplified, and taking his Cabinet by surprise, he got to his feet and with two fingers in the air he announced:

  ‘We shall go on to the end. We shall fight them in France, we shall fight them on the seas and the oceans, we shall fight them on the beaches of Margate and beyond, we shall fight the Scots in the hills, in the fields and in the streets, we shall, do all that and a bit more… we shall never, never surrender.’

  There was a time when he could recite Winston Churchill’s famous wartime speech word-for-word. Today, that was the best he could do.

  Chapter Three

  Thinking he ought to check out the legal aspect of Mary’s UDI, Cruid made a call to the Solicitor General.

  ‘Cruid, I have been looking into it and think we need to meet up.’

  ‘Why?’ The SG sounded worried. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Let’s speak in my office.’

  The Solicitor General bade Cruid sit down and shook his head.

  ‘I… I just wished Mary had come to me before she went ahead and announced UDI.’

  ‘You know Mary,’ Cruid said with a shrug of his bony shoulders. ‘Does she ever seek advice? Now, what’s the problem.’ An hour later he wished he hadn’t asked. With his head in his hands he could weep.

  When the SG protested that he had far too much work on to leave his office right now, Cruid wasn’t having any of it.

  ‘You are coming with me Cruickshank. This is your cockup. You can tell her.’

  At a knock on her door Mary Dewar called out. ‘Come in.’

  Cruid stepped aside so that Cruickshank could be the first to enter the lion’s den. Mary Dewar was seated in her thought pod, a rather odd shaped window seat that poked out the rear wall of the Scottish Parliament Building. Each of the MSP’s offices had one of these quirky window boxes.

  Built over five years, at a cost of over four hundred million pounds the parliament building was a bewildering fusion of glass, steel, polished concrete and wood. The entire edifice made you wonder what was going on in the head of the architect when he drew up the plans that must have had the builders tearing their hair out.

  Looking at the two men, Cruid was wringing his hat. The smile fell from Dewar’s face.

  ‘What’s up?’ Mary said warily. ‘You both look worried, should I be worried too?’

  ‘Mary,’ Cruid said treading on eggshells. ‘We all agree that you did really well announcing the UDI. It was indeed an utterly brilliant plan… unfortunately there is a teeny-weeny problem.’ Cruid, thinking about his career and his pension was about to offload the problem onto the SG.

  ‘Cruickshank here, has looked into the ramifications of UDI and he thinks that we may have shot ourselves in the foot.’

  ‘Oh!’ Dewar said narrowing her eyes and stepping down out of her window pod. If these two buffoons were about to give her bad news she wanted to hear it from behind her desk. ‘Go on.’ She said icily.

  Not wanting to be the messenger that got shot, Cruid said, ‘the Solicitor General is far better placed than I to explain the problem.’

  The SG looked round sharply at Cruid.

  ‘First Minister,’ the Solicitor General started hesitantly. ‘When Downing Street warned us the Scottish Parliament wouldn’t be able to govern as an independent state they were quite right.’

  ‘I don’t think I want to hear this,’ Dewar said darkly, ‘but go on.’

  Cruickshank said, ‘under existing constitutional rules, bills passed by our parliament can only become law with Royal Assent.’

  ‘Are you are saying,’ Mary looked about to burst a blood vessel, ‘Scotland cannot pass a single law without the Queen’s signature?’ Mary threw her hands in the air.

  ‘That’s right. I’m truly sorry First Minister. This must be infuriating for you. But our hands are tied. There is no way around it.’ Then in a vain attempt to lighten the mood Cruickshank jok
ed. ‘Like the Christmas turkey, we are stuffed.’

  Mary appealed to her Minister, ‘Cruid!’

  ‘Sorry Mary,’ Cruid said thinking he was getting far too old for this. ‘The simple fact is we shouldn’t have rushed headlong into UDI without first checking the legal requirements. Sir Roger Bottomley and his cronies in Number 10 will be a laughing like drains right now.’

  When Mary Dewar came around her desk her face was like thunder. She snapped. ‘Tell me… this isn’t happening. What am I supposed to do now, Cruid… hmm? Do I tell the world, oh, sorry, Cruid cocked up and now Scotland can’t become an independent nation after all.’

  This was what he was afraid of, Mary blaming him when it was entirely her decision to rush headlong into this whole UDI thing.

  ‘Surely, as an independent sovereign nation,’ Mary said, ‘we shouldn’t need to comply with rules that apply to the UK?’

  Cruid shrugged. He had no idea. He was tired. Tired of life almost.

  For what was possibly the first time in her political life Mary came up with a half-sensible suggestion.

  ‘Couldn’t we just bring in a new law, one that ends that stupid Royal Assent rule?’

  Cruid thought about that for a minute and then shook his head.

  ‘That would be indeed be feasible Mary, if we didn’t need Royal Assent to bring in such a law. As things stand even that, would require the Queen’s signature.’

  ‘How about, ‘Mary said, ‘if we asked the Queen if she wouldn’t mind helping us out, do a little moonlighting, on-the-side, royal assent, cash-in hand stuff?’

  Was she joking? Clearly not! Cruid could see no way out of this cul de sac that they had blindly walked into. The Scottish Government was going to be forced into making an embarrassing climb-down.

  ‘You two had better come up with a way to get me out of this mess because I am not going to back down… think for God’s sake!’ Mary shouted. ‘Independence means Independence, and that means no half measures, no compromises.’

  Cruid had a thought. Dare he mention it? It was as if Mary had read his mind.

  ‘What is it Cruid? You just thought of something didn’t you?’

  She wasn’t going to like it, but it might just work.

  ‘Just thinking aloud here Mary, so don’t bite my head off. I think I might have a solution, but I doubt you’d go for it.’

  ‘Out with it Cruid.’

  ‘It occurred to me that if Scotland was to have it’s own monarch, we could get all our bills signed off in-house, so to speak.’ Cruid shrugged. ‘Ok, don’t say it, you don’t like it, fair enough.’

  When Mary didn’t jump down his throat but instead stood there staring at him and chewing on her thumb he wondered if she might actually go for it.

  Mary was not a fan of monarchies but what Cruid had said made sense. However, if she was to agree to this plan, then this monarch, it could be a king, or a queen, it didn’t matter which, was to be no more than a figurehead, employed just to sign off their bills.

  ‘Ok,’ Mary said warily, ‘say I was to go along with this. How would it work?’

  Not for a minute did Cruid imagine that she would buy his idea. He wasn’t even sure how it would work. Cruid hooked his hands behind his stooped back and paced the room.

  Finally Cruid faced Mary Dewar.

  ‘My idea was: if Scotland had a king…’

  ‘Or a queen.’ Mary interrupted him.

  ‘Quite, or a queen,’ Cruid conceded although he could never see Mary Dewar working with another female head of state. If they were to go ahead with this, he wanted a king. He told himself. Slow down, think it through. Up to this point, Cruickshank hadn’t said a word. Encouraged by Cruickshank’s absence of objections Cruid soldiered on.

  ‘If Scotland had it’s own king, or queen,’ He added, ‘then he, or she, could sign off our bills so that these could then be enacted into laws without the need to trouble the Queen.’

  ‘Cruid is quite correct Mary,’ the SG chimed in with great enthusiasm, happy now that Cruid may have saved both their careers. ‘The Royal Assent law requires only that parliament’s bills are signed off by the reigning monarch. Nowhere does it specify who that monarch had to be.’

  Mary said, ‘we could really do that… I mean get our own monarch and pass our own laws?’

  ‘Indeed. First Minister,’ the SG was almost gleeful.

  Mary spent some time digesting this, looking from one face to the other.

  ‘Does Scotland have to become a monarchy?’ Mary said, like she was sucking on a wasp. ‘Is there no other way?’

  ‘I’m afraid not Mary.’ Cruid said.

  ‘And of course Parliament would need to approve it.’ Cruickshank reminded Mary.

  ‘Parliament will do whatever I tell it to.’ Mary reminded him. Then addressing Cruid she said.

  ‘Say we put this king in place, would it be possible to have this person change the law so that we no longer need Royal Assent?’

  Cruid looked round at Cruickshank who shrugged as if to say he had no idea.

  ‘He would have to be a pretty stupid king, ‘Cruid said, ‘to sign a bill that would make him redundant? However, that is not to say we couldn’t find a way to trick him into it.’

  ‘I love it. Mary crowed. ‘Ok. How do we proceed? I want this up and running quickly because at the moment we can’t bring in a single new law, which means I can’t take our EU application forward. If we are going to do this Cruid, it needs to happen… like yesterday.’

  The two men watched Mary pacing her office thinking. She then turned on them.

  ‘Ok, I’ll go along with your idea Cruid but I am not having a king,’ Mary pouted. ‘I hate bossy men.’

  Ah, this might explain why she never married? She wasn’t gay. He was pretty sure of that. He’d heard rumours. He didn’t approve of them. Lewd comments that people made to the effect that her neighbour, as in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, when his wife was at work, would hop over the garden fence and tend her garden.

  Mary said. ‘Shouldn’t we be giving some thought to gender equality. Have you any idea how many women are in the highest paid jobs in this country?’

  ‘No Mary?’

  ‘Oh, neither do I. But you get my point.’

  Cruid had no problem with equal opportunities for women. In fact he regards himself as a champion of women’s rights. However, two female monarchs, one on either side of the border, swinging handbags and orbs at each other? That cannot happen. So, he had better come up with a good reason why he wanted a king and not a queen. Making it up as he went along, he argued.

  ‘Mary, whilst I have absolutely no objections to us having a queen I’m afraid it is going to have to a king, only because, the last Scottish queen… as you will recall it was Mary Queen of Scots, became a bit of a disaster. Must I remind you she was involved in that scandal over her and Rizzio, her secretary, them being lovers, and then she was suspected of having a hand in her first husband’s death. Then there was the matter of her treasonous activities that led to her head being lopped off. Sorry Mary, it will have to be a king.’

  ‘Ok, but this has to be temporary arrangement.’ Mary warned her two Ministers. ‘We take on the king and then we get him to sign his own death warrant.’ Mary laughed. “What! I was only joking. I wouldn’t actually want him dead.’

  Cruid’s face belied his scepticism.

  ‘Can we move on please?’ Cruid said feeling his skin creep. She could do that to him. ‘We need to give some thought to this person’s credentials. Ideally this person will have proven rights of succession.’

  ‘What do you mean, proven rights of succession? Blue blood you mean?’ Mary said. ‘Sure, but how do we go about doing that?’

  Truthfully, Cruid had no idea how to go about it. Off the top of his head he said.

  ‘Using DNA sampling, it should be possible to find at least one suitable candidate. Then having located him, we give him some on the-job-training, get him up to speed, and then we’re do
ne.’

  ‘You saying: we’re done. You mean once we have him in place we can then get our bills signed off?’ Mary looked relieved. ‘Well, I have to admit your plan is pretty good Cruid, but it’s not as utterly brilliant as my UDI idea.’

  Thinking, if this all goes pear-shaped she can lay the blame at his door, and then it’ll be him who will have to resign, Mary said. ‘Ok, Cruid–mister, “Kingmaker”, you got the job of finding Scotland a king.’

  Cruid groaned inside. The last thing he needed right now, just months off retirement, was to get saddled with a job fraught with political landmines.

  Mary could almost see the cogs in her canny Minister’s head whirring. She said.

  ‘You already have someone in mind don’t you? I can read you like a book you old fart. So, go on tell me, who is he? I have in mind a hunk of a man standing on a mound of granite up in the Highlands, not the least bit bothered by the force-ten gale whipping around his long hair and his red beard. The wind has trapped his kilt between his meaty thighs. His right arm, muscled and scarred holds aloft an ancient sword…’

  ‘Not quite, Mary,’ Cruid said, interrupting the flow of juicy thoughts in the First Minister’s head. ‘Although I can quite imagine what you was thinking.’

  ‘I was thinking of a Rob Roy figure.’

  ‘Yes, I could tell, only,’ Cruid struggled to rein in his impatience. ‘First Minister, Rob Roy was an outlaw. No, this king would have to be a man capable of harnessing the passion of our nation. One that will lead us from the front…’

  ‘Rob Roy could have done that.’ Mary leapt in. ‘Rob Roy was a leader.’

  ‘Rob Roy was a leader of a gang of thieves Mary, ‘ Cruid said through gritted teeth.

  ‘Aw,’ said Mary. ‘I loved the way Mel Gibson played him. With his hairy chest and his big biceps.’

  Cruid couldn’t be bothered to explain she was talking about an entirely different film. And why the hell were they even having this discussion about American and Australian actors who if their lives depended on it, couldn’t manage a half decent Scottish accent.

  ‘Actually,’ Cruid said. ‘I was thinking of Robert The Bruce. If we could find a direct descendent of his that’d be perfect.’ He saw Mary’s eyes widen.