Chapter 36: The return of the old firm

07:38, 5 September

Jamie was completely back to his old self the next morning and in fact had risen early to go for a walk around the Skibo grounds. He listened closely as he went, anxious to hear the sound of any other birds that might have escaped the virus attack, but on this occasion he was disappointed.

Returning to the hotel, he proceeded to make a huge breakfast for everybody and it was probably the combined smells of freshly brewing coffee and cooking bacon that brought the girls tumbling out of their beds. By the time Laura, Debbie and Christine made it to the dining room, Jamie had placed plates full of bacon, sausage, scrambled eggs, sliced haggis and hash browns. He had also found some frozen mushrooms and sautéed them in butter. To round things off he had made several racks of toast and had a huge pot of coffee with UHT milk in a jug.

"Oh, I'm absolutely starving," said Laura as she began to fill a plate with breakfast goodies.

"Yes, you certainly must have worked up an appetite if the noise coming from your room was anything to go by!" said Debbie with a leer on her face.

"Aye, I wonder what they were doing Debbie?" teased Christine.

All four of them quietened as the food took up their attention until Laura spoke again.

"Do you have any plans for today your Grace?" she asked, this time without a trace of humour at using Jamie's title.

"Now don't you start with that!" Jamie replied, giving her a scowl.

"Your Grace, you're going to have to get used to it. You are the King of Scots and pretty soon the numbers of subjects you have is going to multiply as the expatriates start to return. I would urge you to take it more seriously and in fact, you should really already be planning what the priorities will be when you suddenly have access to a body of trained men and women. How are you going to begin the re-building?" Laura replied.

"First of all I need to convince the US President and the Canadian Prime Minister that it's safe for flights into Scotland to resume," Jamie responded, "but you're right, I haven't given enough thought so far to what the priorities should be. It might be an idea to set up some kind of think tank to work on that."

"Surely posting the interviews from the other night on the web site will be enough to satisfy the rest of the world that Scotland is now completely free of terrorists?" Christine queried.

"I've thought of something else to add to that, something that the survivors might have some fun with too," said Jamie.

After breakfast, Jamie went back upstairs to the honeymoon suite to do a little work on the SIS web site. He uploaded the interviews from the survivors of the 'battle of the two schools', this time avoiding the guilt that he had felt previously. Without that hanging over him, he was able to see the footage for what it was - an extremely emotional record of kids who had done a remarkable thing.

He also made a blog entry describing what had happened and that he planned a memorial at the site of the brave deeds. He ended the message with an announcement of an event he planned for later that day. Once he was finished, he closed down his laptop and shouted at the girls to get themselves ready to leave.

Shafiq was smuggled off of the Air Force base in the back of a nondescript van and taken to a CIA safe house for questioning. She had not uttered a single word since she had been lifted from the apartment in London, instead simply glaring at her captors. She had made the mistake of spitting in the face of one of her guards and had a livid bruise on her cheekbone for her trouble.

The trained CIA interrogators could tell within the first half an hour that they weren't going to break this fanatic down. They were even doubtful that the usual 'just within the rules' techniques would do any good - the sleep deprivation, keeping the prisoner on their feet for hours, constant noise in the cell - all of these wouldn't affect her they judged.

"We could always try drugs," one operative suggested.

"It's always a risk, some of them are trained to cope with questioning under drugs these days and there's no knowing whether anything we get from her would be reliable," his superior replied.

"Risk or no risk, I can tell you that we're not going to get anything out of her by conventional means," advised one of the pair of interrogators.

"Let's give it the rest of the day and tonight and see if she starts to crack."

14:55, 5 September

It had been something of a whirlwind day for Jamie and the girls. The first port of call had been Fort William followed by Faslane and then a stop at every camp where survivors remained. What Jamie had in mind went down very well with everyone and the logistic required to make it happen were immediately worked on.

Once he had set everything in motion, Jamie took the Lynx over Glasgow and settled it down in the car park of Scotland's national stadium, Hampden Park. The girls and half a dozen other volunteers took over the catering facilities and began to prepare basic food for the event while Jamie went in search of the groundsman's store.

Working out how to drive the sit on grass-cutter was easy enough and Jamie proceeded to trim the grass on the giant football pitch so that it was a playable length. He also mixed up some white powder with water in the specially made roller that was used to paint the lines on the pitch. The old lines were still just visible and he used them as a guide to mark out fresh ones.

A quick dash in the BMW he had abandoned outside the stadium some weeks before took him to two other football stadiums in the city where he loaded up with replica kit, boots and even grabbed a massive trophy.

That had all been earlier in the day and now it was nearing the traditional time for a football match to kick-off - 15:00.

Jamie's idea had been to stage a Rangers v Celtic match at the national stadium. He saw it as a chance for the teenagers to have some fun after the weeks of despair and terror. It was also something that they could film and put onto the web site to show the rest of the world that Scotland was free of terrorists.

Rangers and Celtic, Glasgow's 'Old Firm' had supporters in every corner of the world. They had been nick-named the 'Old Firm' because between them they had been established for hundreds of years and basically cornered the market in terms of football in Scotland - both revenue, but most importantly in terms of trophies won.

Jamie knew the two teams enjoyed world-wide appeal and he hoped the sight of the familiar team colours would be something that many people in the US and Canada would immediately recognise and see the game as a sure sign that normality was returning to Scotland.

Volunteers to play on both sides had not been difficult to find and now they came down the tunnel and on to the pitch. As they stepped out into the September sunlight, a rousing roar came from the stands and the players looked around themselves to see virtually all of the remaining survivors all gathered together to watch the match. Jamie estimated there were seven or eight thousand teenagers in the stadium and he made sure the techno-wizards who were filming panned round to capture the numbers of spectators.

Somehow the techies had managed to work out how to broadcast the match live onto the Internet and Jamie had put a link on the Surviving in Scotland web site for anyone who was interested in following the event.

Only months before, an occasion like this would have been completely different. Both halves of the Old Firm were very tribal with a rivalry going back over a hundred years. That usually meant a packed crowd of fifty or sixty thousands and a highly charged atmosphere, much of it fuelled by religious bigotry and sheer hatred of the other side.

Today was altogether different. There was no animosity anywhere in the ground and an almost carnival atmosphere prevailed. As he took his time to look round the crowd, Jamie couldn't help smiling in satisfaction. It had been a good idea he decided.

Jamie wasn't to know, but in the US and Canada, his earlier message on the blog announcing there would be a Rangers v Celtic match had aroused much excitement. There were official supporters clubs of both teams throughout North America, encouraged by tours by both teams to the US and Canada on a regular basis. In Boston, New York, Ontario and Florida, clubs were packed and large screens had been put up to show the game. Beer flowed and traditional songs were sung as the match kicked off.

The result hardly mattered inside the stadium, it was more the symbolism of what was taking place - football was Scotland's national game and the teenagers were celebrating their freedom, their culture and the fact that they had prevailed. Indeed, the tension and noise inside the clubs in the US and Canada was far more 'edgy' as the watchers there got caught up in seeing the red, white and blue of Rangers take on the green and white hoops of Celtic.

It was eleven teenagers against eleven teenagers, not twenty-two professional footballers, so the spectacle wasn't for the purist and the final result was 5-5. That didn't matter to the thousands in the crowd who gave both sides a standing ovation at the final whistle. Jamie got up from his seat in the traditional royal box in the stand and walked down the steps onto the playing surface. The figures of Kalif and five other Scots of Asian origin remained seated behind him having been found by Jamie that day. He had given them a place of honour for the match, the first Muslims accepted as free Scots since everything had begun.

Jamie led Laura by the arm and Debbie and Christine followed behind. The two teams lined up and the captains for the day introduced Jamie and Laura to each of the players in turn. He paused to share a few words with each player before moving on down the line. Once he had shaken the hand of each of the players, Jamie called the two captains forward and presented the huge trophy he had brought to them both. The captains held the trophy aloft, almost as if it were a symbol of all that the Scottish teenagers had achieved in the past few weeks and the crowd went wild in celebration.

Another interested set of spectators in the US were gathered round a screen in one of the briefing rooms below the White House. POTUS and a group of his senior advisors watched the match play out and were impressed by the number of spectators that had somehow managed to gather together to watch in the stadium.