Chapter 43: Lessons learned

The two SAS men took up station outside the house while Kalif and Sally remained inside. They knew that both the Glasgow and Edinburgh cells had been based around six adults each, so the fact that only four adults were accounted for here in Manchester left them potentially with two tangos still to find.

The wait wasn't long. Thirty-five minutes later, a jeep turned into Parkville Road and came towards the house. The street was deserted apart from the approaching vehicle and as it drew level with the gate to the safe house, The two SAS troopers opened fire on it.

One of the troopers was concealed on the opposite side of the road to the safe house, just within the fringe of the park. The second was in the driveway of the house immediately next door to the safe house. Their positioning was intentional; giving them as it did diagonally crossing fields of fire.

The crossfire was devastating and the jeep shuddered to a halt, stalling as the driver died instantly from the slugs that tore through his skull and he lost control of his feet on the clutch and accelerator. The bursts of fire continued until there was no sign of movement from inside the vehicle.

The SAS man on the park side of the road came forward in a crouch, his weapon shouldered and ready for the first sign of trouble. He jerked open the rear door first and quickly checked the two Pakistani teenagers, who were slumped over, blood issuing from numerous wounds. Satisfied that they were both dead, he moved to the front of the jeep and did the same with the occupants there. Finding both dead, he pushed the driver across and on top of the passenger and hauled himself into the driver's seat. Re-starting the jeep, he twisted the wheel and drove the vehicle and its dead, deep into the bushes of the park.

Sally and Kalif shared the disappointment at the fact that there had been only one adult tango in the jeep along with three Pakistani teenagers. That meant there was still one at large and they would need to hang around Manchester until they had dealt with him. The concern was that at any moment the leaders of the cells in Leeds or Birmingham could try and make contact with this cell. If another cell suddenly dropped out of contact, that could result in the remaining ones panicking and making a run for it.

Jamie was sitting alone in the lounge of Skibo Castle. After questioning the terrorist leader - a woman he now knew was called Shafiq - he had sought escape from his demons. Taking the Lynx to Glasgow Airport, he had loaded up his chickens and flown them north to Skibo. Jamie had remembered seeing a quite extensive chicken run while he had been taking a walk and assumed that the castle had endeavoured to produce its own eggs and poultry at one time.

Releasing the chickens into their new home, he had watched them scratch around in the dirt until he realised they were looking for food. It didn't take him long to find the store of grain that had probably been used for the last chickens to occupy the coop and he threw handfuls over the wire fence. After that he had wandered indoors and flopped down into one of the comfortable armchairs that were spread around the lounge area.

He wasn't particularly proud of what he had done with Shafiq and mentally he was trying to rationalise his actions. The terror the woman had felt was all too real, tangible in her screams, in the rigid posture of her whole body, but most noticeable in the haunted look in her eyes. He had purposely set out to achieve exactly that, believing, rightly, that it would break her and loosen her tongue.

Now he was wondering how he could have conceived of such a thing, never mind stood by while it had been carried out. Was he becoming a monster? He shuddered at the thought and tried to think of what Laura would say.

Once Shafiq had started to talk there had been no stopping her. One of the teenagers had brought a mini tape recorder and had turned it on to capture everything that was said. It was just as well, because Shafiq's information came out in one continuous stream until she collapsed exhausted and still petrified.

Jamie had nodded at the last of the original party of teenagers who had stood beside the grave and the boy had stepped forward, a syringe full of some chemical in his hand. The lethal injection had been administered while Shafiq was unconscious, still inside her pigskin straightjacket, and then she had been rolled back into the grave. He had walked away with his head down before the teenagers had even begun to shovel the earth to cover her body.

The fact that she had admitted playing a key role in the planning and execution of the virus attacks should have helped salve his conscience, but strangely it didn't. The information she had given should have given him a new focus to concentrate his attention on, but it hadn't. Her death should have allowed him to achieve some sense of closure, but he couldn't.

Jamie's mind drifted to what else he had to do today before he was finished. There was another distasteful duty to perform and he knew he had to gather himself, steel his nerve and shake of the doubts and self pity he was experiencing.

"You've done nothing to be ashamed of son, you're doing what has to be done and mom and I are proud of you for showing you have the courage to see it through. Take comfort from that son, we love you and so does your sister."

Jamie knew he was imagining his father's voice once more, but 'hearing' it and listening to the words it said were of great comfort when he needed it most. He realised that subconsciously he had been worrying about what his sister was going to think of him and the actions he had ordered. That was clearly a major part of what was nagging away at his insides.

His head jerked up as another flash of insight came to him. He realised that he had only been faced with shouldering the responsibility he had for a few short weeks, yet already it was weighing heavily on him. How did someone like the US President feel taking decisions that were several orders of magnitude beyond what he had experienced? How had that man managed to do that for so many years? Faced with constant unnamed threats from every disaffected group around the globe, how had the President kept mind, body and soul together?

That realisation led to another revelation, another truth. While he still believed his thoughts about a teenaged approach to government and the politics of running his country had lots of merit, its conception was idealistic. He had also been judging the other man from a position of naivety and callowness.

"How would I bear up under the stresses and strains of six years making decisions that affected the world as a whole?" he asked himself.

No, he had been brash and immature. He had been applying the values and morals imparted to him by his parents, but when they had given those lessons, they hadn't been trying to get him ready to shoulder the burden of running a country, merely to face the day to day trials of a normal life. His thoughts and experiences over the past weeks had made it clear for him that sometimes that wasn't enough, for some people, life's decisions, judgements and their consequences were on an altogether grander scale.

President Bush hadn't deserved the treatment he had so arrogantly thought up and put into practice when they had met. Jamie was unsure that if he was tested in the same way, whether he would be found wanting. That doubt, that question mark in his head, told him that he had reduced things to a much too simplistic level.

He sighed and gave himself a mental shake. The only way to find out if he would pass the test or what Laura really felt about it all, was to get back to Dreghorn and find out. His next major challenge required him to be back in Edinburgh too, so he picked himself up and made his way back to the helicopter.

His mobile phone rang constantly as he flew the Lynx back to Edinburgh. Jamie ignored it. Even if he answered the phone - a potentially risky act given he was flying - any conversation he had wouldn't get him where he was going any faster.

He flared the helicopter and settled it down on its place on the parade ground of the Dreghorn barracks and lost himself in the routine of shutting the systems down. Once he had finished, he pulled his mobile phone from his pocket and looked at the screen. It showed that he had six missed calls and the little clock blinked to tell him that it was 19:51. Jamie keyed in the numbers 121 to access the phones message service and listened to six separate messages from Stuart.

It was clear his friend wanted to speak to him urgently and Jamie hoped it wasn't to deliver bad news. He had programmed in a selection of mobile numbers, one of them the phone Stuart had been issued with, and he opened his address book, highlighted Stuart's name and pressed the call button. His call was answered immediately.

"Hello? Is that you, your Grace?"

"Hi Stuart, sorry I didn't answer earlier, but I was up in the Lynx," Jamie replied.

Jamie found it difficult to make out what Stuart was saying. He could hear a lot of noise in the background and wondered what was going on.

"What's happened?" Jamie asked, his voice automatically getting louder to compensate for the noise he could hear at the other end.

"Mission accomplished, I'm on my way home!" Stuart shouted from his end.

Jamie thought he must have misheard.

"Say again, I thought you said mission accomplished?" Jamie queried.

"I did! All done and dusted. I should be with you in about an hour's time," replied Stuart.

"Okay, I'll see you then and well done!" shouted Jamie.

When he disconnected the call he looked at the time on his phone once more. Stuart had been away for only twenty-seven or twenty-eight hours yet he seemed to be saying that he had dealt with three terrorist cells, in three different cities, in that time. That couldn't be true, could it?

One of the things that Jamie had asked his growing army of techies, now augmented by adult versions, to do was try and figure out how to work the TV and radio broadcasting facilities. He recognised that using the SIS web site had proven to be effective in reaching people, but being able to broadcast around the country would be more effective yet.

The techies had succeeded, largely down to the experience of some of the returning expatriates who happened to be veterans in the broadcasting industry. For the first time since the virus attack had claimed all of the UK's adults, something more than public information was now going out over the air.

Jamie planned to broadcast live to Scotland to update the growing population on recent events. A trailer had been running in between the programme repeats that were now showing. The trailer simply said that the King of Scots would be broadcasting live on this channel. No time and no date were given, as Jamie had been keen to give Stuart a chance to deal with things in the south before he appeared.

That calculation had been on the basis that he intended to share the evidence he had gathered about the decisions President Bush had taken. He knew he could only do that once the threat to the English teenagers had been removed. Now, with his newfound insight following his soul searching at Skibo, Jamie knew the thrust of any broadcast would be significantly different. He still wanted to wait for Stuart to return, as the details of what he had been up to would undoubtedly feature prominently in the messages Jamie wanted to communicate.

He had a thought and pulled out his mobile once more. He hit the redial button and quickly had Stuart back on the line.

"Listen, don't make for Dreghorn, make for the BBC studio in Edinburgh. I'll meet you there," shouted Jamie.

"No problem, see you there," Stuart replied.

Jamie found that Laura was rested after her shift at the hospital and he sat with her for a few minutes, sharing his guilt over what had been done to Shafiq and also what he was about to do this evening.

"Jamie, I know how much this must be hurting and I have never been so proud of you at the way you refuse to shirk the responsibility. I admit the methods with this Shafiq were brutal - at least in a mental sense - but the Americans had probably tried all of the 'accepted' methods and got nowhere. I don't think the ends necessarily justify the means, but you got the job done. More importantly, the fact that you do feel so guilty about it is sign enough that you didn't enter into things lightly.

"No one is going to think any worse of you for this, believe me. I certainly don't, if anything it makes me love you even more," Laura said with absolute conviction.

"You might not say that when I tell you what else I thought about when I was at Skibo this afternoon," Jamie responded.

He proceeded to tell Laura about his 'epiphany' and how that had changed his views on the President's actions and decisions. He almost had his thoughts from that afternoon burnt deeply into his memory and was able to repeat virtually word for word the process he had gone through.

Laura sat quietly and let him get it all out. Even when he had finished talking and was looking at her anxiously, trying to gauge her response, she thought about her reply. She could see how important this was to her brother, how much her own views meant to him. She looked at his anxious face and knew that she could never let him down.

"Jamie, I guess I didn't realise just how difficult it is to be the one everyone else turns to, to make the decisions. They way you describe it, I can see we have been very naïve in our thinking. If you want to change what we do about this, I'll support you all the way. No one else is in your position, so we can't feel what you're feeling or fully understand the way you're thinking. Well, no doubt President Bush can empathise, but the rest of us can't.

"I can see the logic in what you went through in your head this afternoon and I'm just glad that I don't have to deal with that kind of pressure. I know I couldn't cope with it.

"As for what you're going to do tonight, I trust you to get that right too. I suppose knowing that we all trust you to come up the proper decisions, or the best way of solving each problem is part of the pressure you've been talking about. Well, I'm sorry my love, but that's just how I feel. I've got every confidence in you and you get my vote every time," said Laura.

Jamie put his arms around her and hugged her hard. Laura could swear she saw some of the tension draining out of the tight muscles in his shoulders and neck. She hoped that was true. Now that she had a better understanding of what his role was doing to him, anything she could do to ease the pressure was going to be her life's mission from now on.

"Do you want me to come to the TV studio with you?" she said into his ear.

Jamie just nodded in reply, enjoying the hug, the contact with his sister too much to think about breaking away from her just yet. Laura for her part enjoyed the feeling that she was somehow supporting her brother, her brother the King of Scots.

By the time Stuart's helicopter landed in the car park of the BBC studio, Jamie and Laura had already arrived and Jamie was in make-up. Stuart waved at the rest of the team as the helicopter lifted off once more to make its way to the Dreghorn barracks.

He made his way inside the studios and was directed to where Jamie was. One look at his friend's face warned Stuart not to make any jokes about the make-up situation. He took the cup of coffee that was offered to him and sat waiting until Jamie was able to talk to him. The make-up artist continually urged Jamie to stop frowning, as it was making her job much more difficult.

"I know you don't like it, your Grace, but believe me it's necessary for the lights and the cameras," the girl said.

Stuart turned his head away so that Jamie wouldn't see the grin on his face. Laura did catch him however, and they both covered their mouths to stifle the sniggers they felt trying to get out.

At last Jamie was finished and the make-up artist removed the cloth cover she had draped over his shoulders, allowing him to get up from the chair. Once again Stuart and Laura had to turn away to hide their grins at Jamie's appearance. This time he couldn't miss their reaction and he suddenly found himself laughing at the absurdity of it all. When Stuart and Laura heard him, they turned their heads back toward him and joined in. It was clear that here were three people comfortable in each other's company.

Jamie calmed down first and asked Stuart to talk him through how things had gone in the south. Stuart shared the details of the approach to having all three cities under surveillance at the same time and then talked through how his 'secret weapon' of Kalif and Sally had worked ridiculously easily at each of the three locations.

"The actual fighting took only minutes at each safe house. Kalif and Sally were just too irresistible to them and Sally is quick man, bloody quick. Anyway, your Grace, I think we can claim that the UK is completely tango free!" cheered Stuart.

If anything, Jamie's smile was even wider than his friend's.

"Stuart, this is a huge thing that you and your team have achieved and to have managed it with such little fuss and in such a short space of time is a miracle. How many prisoners did you take?" Jamie asked.

For the first time, Stuart's grin slipped and a troubled look crossed his face. Jamie realised that this was one of those occasions where a question was best left unanswered and he quickly changed the subject. This was another lesson in the difficulty of running a country, the responsibility that you had to shoulder.

"Given how quick you were, I don't suppose we have any estimate of what kind of support each of the locations is going to need to help them try and bring some order out of the chaos?" he asked.

It was a stupid question really, but it was the first thing that had come into Jamie's head as a way of papering over the pregnant pause caused by his previous question. Stuart jumped on the question with a look of thanks at his friend and monarch. He realised that Jamie had quickly picked up on his unease about the question of prisoners and had changed the subject to avoid the need for an answer.