“At the Highland Mary monument in the Greenock Cemetery.” He shook his head. “I have no idea who she is, was.”
“She was Robert Burns’s great love. ‘O’ my Sweet Highland Mary.’ Burns was a maudlin man at best, and she wasn’t his only one. Where’s the cemetery?”
“They gave me directions. We follow this road for two miles and turn right on Murdieston Road.” Hector pulled a small reporter’s notebook from his pocket, flipped it open, and read. “‘Go through green gate entrance and travel uphill. It gets steep, and about three hundred yards in and on the left is Highland Mary’s grave. It is a tall monument surrounded by a low black fence.’ ”
“Let’s go see Sweet Highland Mary,” Caitrin said and put the car into gear.
* * *
Greenock Cemetery was completely black, and their sole headlamp caught only edges of the road as it got steeper. Hector held a torch inside the car to hide the beam and scanned the passing gravestones. “There it is,” he said.
Caitrin stopped on a rise just above the monument and switched off the engine. “We’re running out of time.”
“We have no choice. It would be impossible to find the Talisman in this blackout.”
They waited. The night was silent, apart from the ticking of the engine as it cooled.
“So you think the great Scottish poet Rabbie Burns is maudlin?” Hector said.
“I do. He’s soppy and a bit daft and, like most Scotsmen, was born a half-bottle under par.”
“Who do you like?”
“Dylan Thomas.”
“Welsh?”
“Naturally.”
“Never heard of him.”
“You will. But he’s a bit of a daft drunk too. Listen.”
They heard an engine complaining as it climbed the steep hill and saw the horizontal slit of a headlamp appear. A canvas-topped army lorry stopped next to them, and four uniformed men got out.
“Here they are.”
“My woman’s intuition tells me there is something not quite right about this,” Caitrin said and reached for her revolver as Hector wound down the window.
“Lord Marlton?” one of the men, no more than a silhouette in the darkness, said in a strong Scottish accent.
“Yes,” Hector answered.
“I’m Captain Murray. We have to move fast. Time and tide, Sir.”
Hector patted Caitrin’s arm. “I think we’re all right, Cat. Let’s help them load up.”
The horse box and car boot were quickly emptied, and Captain Murray opened the lorry door for Hector and Caitrin. “Your part of the operation is over, but I thought you might like to see the Jewels being loaded onto the submarine.”
“It’s not over until I see them aboard,” Caitrin said. “But I’ll sit in the back with the Jewels, if you don’t mind.”
“Me too,” Hector said.
“I believe I’ll join you,” Murray said with a grin. “Not often you get to travel with such riches.”
“What about my car and horse box?” Hector said.
“It’ll be safe enough here, and we’ll bring you right back as soon as we’re offloaded.”
As they climbed into the lorry bed, Caitrin glanced at Captain Murray. He looked familiar, but from where? She struggled to focus her memory, but he would not come to the surface. But she had seen him before, of that she was certain. The journey downhill was slow, and when they reached Port Glasgow, the lorry turned right.
“You’re going the wrong way,” Caitrin said. “Greenock’s to the left.”
“You’re right, but we’re not going to Greenock,” Murray said, and his automatic rose from the darkness until it was aimed squarely at Caitrin’s face. “Now I would like you to hand me your revolver, slowly. Yes, I know you have one. And then you, Lord Marlton, do the same. Any heroics, and Miss Colline will die first.”
They surrendered their weapons, and Caitrin leaned back against the canvas top and groaned at her failure. Full attention should always be paid to a woman’s intuition.
17
To bodyguard Thompson’s eternal despair, almost every night Churchill—wearing his blue siren suit under an RAF overcoat and sometimes, reluctantly, a tin helmet but rarely his gas mask—insisted on climbing up to the Downing Street Annexe roof to watch what he insisted on calling “The Grand Show.” Five floors down were the underground Cabinet War Rooms, safely reinforced against bomb blasts with steel girders and five feet of concrete, but Churchill thought them claustrophobic and wanted to be up on an exposed rooftop in the middle of the Blitz.
He sat in a favorite chair with a glass of brandy nearby, a cigar clenched in his jaws and binoculars in hand. Thompson had managed to get a low sandbag wall built around him, but it would be no defense against a near-miss or shell splinters, let alone a direct hit. He submitted to his own fate and stood in the protective lee of a brick chimney, silently praying the Luftwaffe would take the night off. They were prayers unanswered.
“Here it comes,” Churchill growled as he shifted in his chair and raised the binoculars. “The Grand Show.”
In the streets below, wardens shouted and shook their warning rattles, air-raid sirens moaned, the first anti-aircraft guns barked, and searchlights lanced up into the night sky. The drone of approaching aircraft engines grew louder, followed by the first whistling of bombs.
“Yes, I know, I know,” Churchill answered Thompson’s unspoken thoughts. “People are about to die, here in the city and up there in the sky. That is the way of war, always has been, and that will never change. But this is a rare moment, Thompson, in which we are privileged to be witnesses to the savage creation of history. Look at that!”
