Siege of Stone Page 10

  "Yes," Molly said. "It's in rough shape. It appears to have been cut or torn from a larger piece of cloth, and the technician analyzing the radioactivity of the cloth found near here noticed its similarity to the Fairy Flag, and thought that possibly the MacKenzies' flag might have been taken from this larger cloth. Some MI5 people went to Castle MacKenzie this morning with Geiger counters and a paper pattern of the larger cloth."

  "The larger cloth glows in the dark," Joseph said. "Is there any account of the Fairy Flag doing the same?"

  "No," Molly answered, "but battles are fought in daylight. Maybe no one ever happened to look at it in the darkness."

  "And if somebody had, say, centuries ago," Tony said, "maybe it wasn't worth mentioning—a Fairy Flag would be expected to glow. After all, it was magic."

  "You may be right," Molly said. "We should hear shortly if it matches and if it's radioactive. That would give us a connection, but I'm not sure what we do with it. What's your next step?"

  "I think we'll move further toward the castle," said Laika. "Creep up on them. There was some activity there yesterday, as though the caretaker was getting ready for someone to stay there for a while. Maybe we can force their hand, find out how they respond to an archeological incursion."

  Molly shrugged. "It beats sitting on our thumbs. We're just basically marking time, trying to gather the data from everyone who's been . . . visited by these bogies."

  "Bogies?" asked Tony.

  "Ghosts. Old Scots word." She stood up, setting her empty tea cup and saucer on an end table. "I'd best be getting back."

  "One more question," said Laika. "Are you going to let the owners of the castle know that you found the cloth on their property? And will you return it?"

  "The hole's been filled in so that not a trace remains," Molly said. "Nobody found anything there at all."

  Chapter 15

  Molly drove the ops back to the MacLunie land and headed north, promising to keep in touch and receiving the same promise in return. When they were alone, Laika shook her head regretfully. "All we need. Our covers shattered like glass."

  "It could be worse," Tony said. "You look at it one way, we're in better shape than before. Now we've got British intelligence feeding us information."

  "What's this woman like, Joseph?"

  He hoped Laika couldn't see everything in his face. "A good agent. Thoroughly professional." Except for making love to her colleague. "I trust her."

  "You really saved her life?" Tony asked.

  "Yes."

  "Come on, don't be shy, what'd you do?"

  "I got between her and a knife."

  "Disarmed the attacker, huh?"

  "No. I got stabbed."

  Tony chuckled. "Next time, disarm the attacker." Then his smile faded as he remembered the last time Joseph had been attacked with a bladed weapon. He had disarmed the attacker, all tight. He had killed the madwoman in that ruined townhouse in New York City. And now the scar reopened again, and Joseph could see that Tony was sorry for reminding him.

  "Okay," Laika said, trying to change the subject, "before we set up the new site, any thoughts or revelations about the cloth?"

  "Just that it seems strange that the Fairy Flag was enclosed in lead," Joseph said, getting back on track. "I can't think of lead without thinking of the Prisoner, and the lead-lined caskets and rooms the church kept him in."

  "I think we need to wait, though," said Laika, "until we learn if there's a connection between the flag and this cloth. If the flag proves to be radioactive and the same kind of weave and material as the cloth—"

  "Hey," Tony said quietly. "I just had a really weird thought, and I know you're going to think I'm full of crap, but you know that deal about waving the flag and the clan would get help in battle? Well, what if that's what happened here, but on a bigger scale?"

  "You want to expand this thesis a little?" Joseph said. "I'm still in the dark."

  "What if the old guy who found this cloth waved it? You know, just opened it up and spread it out? And what if it worked the same way as the Fairy Flag?"

  Joseph's frown of disbelief grew deeper. "You mean, what if he beckoned the fairies? You're saying that all these ghostly manifestations, including the one you saw yourself, are fairies?"

  "Shit, I don't know what I'm saying. It's just an idea, okay? I mean, maybe they were never fairies to begin with, but something else."

  "Pixies," suggested Joseph. "Or elves?"

  "Look, after everything we've seen, you're gonna draw the line at a radioactive cloth producing simple images? Joseph, that's kid stuff compared to some of the things we've actually experienced."

  "I wouldn't rule anything out, Joseph," Laika said. "But until we hear any more from Molly, I suggest the most productive use of our time is to get closer to that castle and whoever's in it, especially since the cloth was found on their land." She started walking toward the van. "Dig we must."

  Tony drove the van up over the crest of the hill, past their second site, and down toward the Minch and Castle Dirk, parking only a few yards from the stone wall that surrounded the castle. It was a spot where they would be sure to be seen from both the castle and the caretaker's cottage. Then they got out and began laying out a site grid with stakes and ribbon, and removing the turf.

  "I'm getting sick of this," said Joseph. "Why can't we do surveillance in a town where we can sit in a sidewalk café and peek over a newspaper? I never yet got calluses peeking over a newspaper."

  "Yeah, but you don't see any fairies at sidewalk cafés," said Tony, hoisting a shovelful of dirt. Joseph considered a comeback, but found it politically incorrect and remained silent.

  Around five o'clock, just as they were talking about calling it a day, Tony called out, "Incoming." Two vans and a car were coming down the long dirt drive from the road to the castle. It was growing dark, and at a distance of 200 yards, the ops were only able to see that there were several people in each vehicle. They felt sure, however, that they had easily been seen from the dirt road.

  "Keep working," Laika said. "Maybe we'll be lucky and get some company." The vans and the car followed the road as it passed through the rubble of the outer curtain, and then wound through the opening of the inner gatehouse and vanished from sight. "Let's just play it cool, boys."

  "Duh-deeeeeeee-dah!" Tony sang, snapping his fingers rhythmically afterward.

  "A loose rendition of West Side Story?" asked Joseph.

  "Yeah. I'd dance, but I'm too tired from this damn digging."

  "Who in bloody hell were they?" asked Angus Gunn.

  "That's what we'll find out," Colin Mackay said.

  Angus shook his head. "Naebody good, I'll wager. You think police?"

  "No, not police, Angus. Probably just some damned treasure hunters. See a castle and they think there's gold buried all over."

  "Would you like me to talk to them?" said the man they knew as Mulcifer. "I'm sure I could put a stop to whatever it is they're doing. Permanently."

  Colin ignored him. The man was teasing, playing his little games. He'd made such suggestions whenever they ran into a spot of difficulty, which hadn't been very often. The trip from the United States to Scotland had been surprisingly trouble free, all except getting through customs with Mulcifer, and that had been the creature's own fault.

  His false passport had been perfect, in the name of Philip Braxton, an American traveling on business, planning to stay in the United Kingdom for two months, the time divided between northern England and Scotland. The contact with the customs officer was the first Mulcifer had had with anyone outside of Colin's organization since joining them, and Colin suspected that Mulcifer had been waiting for such an opportunity.

  Colin had been several spaces behind Mulcifer in the customs line, and tensed slightly when the officer had asked "Mr. Braxton" to please open his luggage. There should have been nothing to worry about. The fake samples of "Mr. Braxton's" product line were as they should be, and the clothes were neatly packed.
Then something strange happened.

  The customs officer took out a very conservative regimental striped necktie, and looked quizzically at Mulcifer, who then simply nodded. The officer removed the tie he was wearing, and then tied Mulcifer's about his neck, closed the suitcase, and beckoned him through, as if nothing had happened.

  Colin joined Mulcifer as they left customs, and asked what the exchange was all about. The man shrugged. "He simply liked my tie better than his own. In fact, he liked it so much that tonight when he goes home he'll hang himself with it." He flashed a smile like a light blinking on and off, and kept walking.

  There was no way that such a minor incident at Glasgow Airport could be traced to them, Colin decided, and tried to stop thinking about how quickly and easily Mulcifer could take a life. But when the thought would not depart, he started to think how that talent might best be used for their great cause.

  He had returned to Scotland with a monster at his side, but that monster, if properly controlled, could bring him what he wanted for his country, total freedom from the English yoke. Why, then, did he feel, as he entered what had been his father's castle and was now his own, that he was doomed to failure, that this was a mistake, a great and tragic one?

  No. It was a mistake only if he allowed it to become so. He knew how this creature could be contained, and there were enough men who served him to bring down Mulcifer by sheer strength of numbers, regardless of the great power his father had claimed he had. Colin had called some of his men who were still in Scotland and told them to have a leaden casket made in Glasgow that would hold a man. Were Mulcifer to grow too hard to control, they would simply force him into that, and there would be an end of it.

  But first there were the strangers on his land to take care of. Exploring his castle for the first time would have to wait. The vehicles parked within the great square of the inner ward, and they all got out. Colin asked Rob Lindsay to see to the unpacking, and walked back out the way they had entered and across the field toward the strangers.

  He easily hopped over the stone wall and walked up to them, two men and a woman who all looked tired and dusty. "Good afternoon," he said without a smile. "May I ask what you're doing here?"

  The woman answered that they were archeologists from Princeton University, and were searching for the site of a seventeenth-century village that was reputed to be in the vicinity.

  "Then you'd better search somewhere else. This is my land you're on."

  The woman looked puzzled. "But I thought the wall marked your property line, Mr. . . ."

  "Scobie. Francis Scobie. Believe me, madam, I've just spent two days in a solicitors' office in Inverness concerning this property, and I do know my boundaries. You're over them, and you're not welcome. I have plans for this land, and digging is not among them."

  "Then I apologize, Mr. Scobie. We'll remove ourselves from your property immediately. Where does your line stop?"

  "Along the crest of that rise." He pointed and moved his arm in an arc that spanned the darkening southeastern horizon. "On this side of it about twenty yards."

  "We can replace the soil and turf first, if you like," the woman said, nodding at the pile of earth and the stacks of turf.

  "Not necessary. I'll see to it myself. I shouldn't want to keep you here after dark." Then he turned on his heels and strode back to the castle.

  "That went well," Joseph said when Francis Scobie was out of earshot. "Let's get our tools and get out of here, boys and girls, or that Celtic warrior might be after us with his claymore."

  "He was a big one, wasn't he?" mused Laika, watching the retreating form. The man's red hair gleamed in the dying light, and his tall body moved effortlessly.

  Tony began gathering tools. "The bigger they are . . ." he said.

  "The harder they swing their claymores," Joseph finished.

  "We'll pull back to the ridge again," said Laika. "We can still see the castle from there. I want it kept under surveillance from now on. Did you see the way he looked at us?"

  "And it got worse when you said we were from Princeton," Tony said. "I don't think he likes Yanks."

  Laika kept watching the man walking back toward his castle. "The man's a firebrand. And whatever his name is, it isn't Scobie."

  "What makes you think that?" asked Joseph.

  "Because he didn't say it with enough pride."

  Chapter 16

  "Now, O master, what is it you would have me do?"

  Mulcifer eyed Colin Mackay over steepled fingertips. The Scot was sitting in a plain wooden chair, sipping from a cup of tea sitting on the chair's wide, flat arm. They were alone in the first bedchamber on the ground floor, which had been turned, by the addition of furniture, into a small meeting room.

  "We want to strike against the English," Colin said. "The targets must be the British government and trade and not the Scottish people. No stores, no public places. Only government and military facilities and British business offices in Scotland."

  "And would you like to restrict the victims to men only, and of a certain age group? No one with families, of course, for we can't have any orphans or widows, can we?"

  "Don't be absurd."

  "No, don't you be absurd, Colin Mackay. You want to be a terrorist, you have to spill blood, you know. I believe that's how it's done. Now you tell me specifically the kind of target you would like. What organization? What building? What man?"

  He thought for a moment. "All right, then. The executives of British Petroleum, who take our North Sea oil. The British education officials who've funneled funds away from our public schools. The English monarchy itself—let their country cry for all their dotty, inbred rulers, not just their precious princess of hearts."

  "Ah, you'd like me to extinguish the little princes then? Just like Richard the Third? Smother them in their beds?"

  "I don't care what happens to that damned bloodline! Windsor, my arse—Saxe-Coburgs and Battenburgs and Tecks is what they are, as much German blood as English. And even if they weren't, what right have the English to rule us, anyway? They stole our land from us—"

  Colin broke off when he saw Mulcifer's sneer. When he spoke, Colin heard the timbre of his own voice. "And the '45 and Bonnie Prince Charlie, and William Wallace and the Bruce, and Culloden and Glencoe and the Clearances . . . oh, please . . ." The voice returned to Mulcifer's own soft, velvet tones. "Spare me the lectures. I know all about the history of poor, bleeding Scotland. Now if you're finished spewing your chauvinist bile, may I present a plan of action that should accomplish what we both desire?"

  Colin nodded. The man made him feel like a damned fool all too often. He mocked Colin's passion for his country the same way in which he would mock any passion for anything held dear.

  "First, how many men do you have in your little shock troops? A dozen?"

  "Fifteen here at the castle. Across the Isles, nearly a hundred, and they've all got mates—foot soldiers. We've men, and women, in Edinburgh, Glasgow, London, and in Belfast, too—anywhere the British can be hurt."

  "And are they professionals?" Mulcifer asked, leaning toward him. "Have they set bombs under the Houses of Parliament? Picked off prime ministers through sniper scopes? Sliced the throats of dukes in public loos? Have they done, or do they have the capability to do, all these things?"

  "I think . . . I know they have the capability."

  Mulcifer sat back and crossed his legs. "Then what do you need me for?"

  Colin held his mocking gaze. "Because you're more than a professional. You exist for violence, you feed on destruction. Your capabilities alone are far greater than my entire company of patriots."

  "Which isn't too great a company at all . . . in number, at least. I take it you've heard all about me from your . . . late father."

  "Yes. He told me a good number of things about you."

  "And did your . . . late father tell you I was the Antichrist?"

  "Yes."

  "And did your . . . late father tell you I was th
e epitome of human and nonhuman evil?"

  "He implied that. Look, why do you keep referring to him like that?"

  "The answer puts me in mind of a story, probably apocryphal, that I once heard about a very much disliked jazz musician, a violent man who had made a lot of enemies with his temper and his bullying, a man after my own heart, in fact. It seems his widow received a telephone call asking for her husband, and she told the caller that he was dead. The next day she received another such call, and again told the caller that her husband was dead. The third day she received still another call, and was sure from the voice that it was the very same man. She said to him, 'Look, I already told you he's dead—why do you keep calling?' And the man said, very gently, 'I just like to hear it.'

  "You see, Colin, that's the way it is with me. I just like to hear that your father, Sir Andrew Mackay, and the eleven other hounds who tried to undo my handiwork over the centuries are dead. Dead. Dead and gone, not to that heaven for whose blessings they so nobly strove, not to that hell whose lord and . . ." He raised both hands in self-recognition. ". . . Supposed minions they so despised. But gone to nothingness. Oblivion. Non-existence, from which they can never return, from which no sweet and mewling Christ can raise them. Thus, your . . . late father. I just like to hear it."

  "Fine. Refer to him as you like."

  Mulcifer raised an eyebrow. "I take it there was little love between you."

  "We're not here to talk about me. Why don't you tell me your brilliant plan?"

  "Oh my, do I detect a note of hostility? Well, politics does make strange bedfellows, and as your. . . late father might add, he who sups with the Devil had best use a long spoon. But as for my brilliant plan, as you so foresightedly put it, let me explain what I have in mind.

  "I prefer to use other people to do my work. I don't care for making bombs and aiming guns myself. So the question becomes where to find those people. Now, being a prisoner for so long has given me a true empathy for other prisoners, particularly for those imprisoned for political and religious reasons. After all, I myself was cruelly confined because of . . . religious intolerance. My soul is not entirely devoid of sympathy, now, is it? At one stroke, I could aid your cause and satisfy my own needs while freeing these poor souls. What did Jesus say? 'I was in prison, and ye came unto me.'" Mulcifer grinned, and stage whispered, "Yes, that suits my purposes. Anyway," he went on, "I shall do more than simply come unto them. I shall free them, on the condition that they use their very specialized skills to advance our joint cause."