Chapter 35

Archie hadn't been quite as quick as Amira, but his reaction was fast nonetheless. He snatched up his rifle as he ran and used a throat mic to contact the patrol that was on duty. By the time he caught up with Amira and Rory, Malloy was already dead.

"Sweep this area, I don't believe he would be out here on his own," Archie told the patrol leader. "Shoot first and ask questions later."

Heading back to the road, Archie found Dave Lawrence and Mark Petrie helping Donnie out of the Polo. He was relieved to see that Donnie looked unharmed if a little shaken.

"It was Malloy," he told Donnie.

Donnie linked to his gifts in an effort to gain some control over the sudden bout of shakes that he had developed.

"Get the police out here, it's high time we exposed MI5 for what its been doing," he told Archie.

By now the other girls had pulled on heavy coats and they were running towards Donnie, clearly very upset that he had been injured in some way. He found himself swamped under them and a few moments later Amira joined in.

Donnie managed to see past the scrum of girls and caught sight of Rory sitting with his tongue hanging out. He broke free and crouched down so that he could put his arms around the Collie in a hug.

"Thank you, my friend, I guess that's us even," Donnie whispered, alluding to the fact that they had saved each other twice now.

Katie led the way back to the house with each of the girls taking turns to fuss over Donnie and Rory.

"Look, I'm perfectly fine," groused Donnie.

He explained how Rory had probably saved him from being shot by barking in his ear and that earned the Collie more hugs from the girls.

Archie arrived to tell Donnie that the patrol had picked up two other MI5 operatives and that the police were on their way out to Ardbrecknish. Donnie nodded and then fished out his mobile phone. He hit a speed-dial number and spoke when the call was answered.

"Eric? I need you to do me a favour. Could you print off copies of the most incriminating messages from Malloy's IT account and bring them over?"

"Sure, give me a few minutes."

"Thanks," said Donnie ending the call. "Where were the others?"

This last question was directed at Archie.

"One was in a cottage at the edge of the village – they found him by following Malloy's tracks back from where he took the shot at you," Archie answered. "They picked the other one up as he was running out of the woods, heading for the cottage. No doubt he heard the shot and was making his escape."

"Where are they?" asked Donnie.

Archie realised that Donnie wanted to speak to the two captives.

"Why don't I bring them in here?" he suggested. "They're so arrogant I doubt that they pose a risk."

Eric arrived first with a sheaf of A4 pages, which he handed to Donnie. A quick flick through the pages confirmed that all of the messages ordering the various operations were there.

Archie returned with several armed members of the patrol leading the two MI5 men. Both of them had their hands secured behind their back with cable-ties. Donnie could see by their expressions what Archie meant about their arrogance and he tried to shake them up.

"You do realise that you're likely to be charged with attempted murder?" he asked them.

"Look, sonny, we're both serving officers with MI5," one of them responded haughtily.

"When will you goons get it into your thick heads that you no longer have any authority in this country?" Donnie barked at him. "You're nothing but a criminal now – plain and simple."

"Even if – and it's a big if – what you say is true, we haven't done anything wrong," said the second agent. "We were minding our own business when these idiots started waving guns at us."

Donnie thrust the sheaf of papers under his nose.

"I'm afraid that I have copies of the orders that Malloy sent out," he snapped. "Not only orders for you to keep me under surveillance, but orders for the assassination of the First Minister."

The two MI5 agents still didn't show any fear, but at least they didn't appear quite so arrogant.

The police arrived along with a forensics team and they quickly taped off the area around Malloy's body. Donnie's car was examined and photographed and they also sealed the cottage the MI5 men had been using. Donnie handed over the copies of Malloy's messages as further evidence.

The police separated them all until individual statements could be taken.

"Oh, and there's something else that you might want to have a look at," Donnie remembered. "My solicitor has got a copy of a tape taken inside Govan Police Station. It shows the dead man assaulting me in one of the interview rooms after he had basically kidnapped me."

The detective was very interested in getting a copy of the tape and Donnie phoned the solicitor to arrange that. He also made a call to John Swinney who was standing in as First Minister.

"John? It's Donnie McGregor."

"Is it a quick one, Donnie? Only things are a little hectic here as you can imagine."

Donnie quickly explained what had happened at Ardbrecknish and about the evidence he had of MI5's involvement in Alex Salmond's death. Swinney immediately saw the importance of the information Donnie had and the value of making it public as quickly as possible.

"Are you sure this stuff will stand up to scrutiny?"

"Definitely, there's more than enough here to convince a jury," Donnie told him.

"Okay. Stay put and I'll arrange for some of our media contacts to come to you and record an interview."

The interview with Donnie was the centre-piece of a half-hour show that was broadcast that night. The producer had spliced in footage of Donnie's car with the windscreen missing and the taped-off area in the woods where Malloy's body had previously lain. The solicitor had supplied another copy of the tape from the interview room and that was also featured.

" ... I understand that this MI5 officer, Fergus Malloy, was also responsible for planning and authorising a number of other operations in Scotland including the recent attacks on our airports. The most sensational operation though was called Code Robin and I believe that operation was the assassination of Alex Salmond. Here is the actual e-mail order for that operation to be carried out."

An image of Malloy's e-mail had been spliced into the show at this point.

"This is direct evidence that MI5 has been actively carrying out operations inside Scotland, including being responsible for the assassination of our leader..."

Donnie took some good-natured teasing about featuring so heavily in the programme, including the fact that he had been referred to as the 'brilliant young Scottish entrepreneur'.

The most immediate impact of the TV show was a thawing in the relationship with Westminster. John Swinney told Donnie that talks were actually underway about the possibility of an agreement on a peaceful settlement of the independence issue.

The First Minister's funeral was held in Edinburgh's St Giles' Cathedral and was shown live on TV across Scotland. After a very moving ceremony led by the Moderator of the Church of Scotland, the cortege drove slowly down the Royal Mile, which was lined on both sides by thousands who wanted to pay their respects.

The hearse then took Alex Salmond's body north so that it could be interred in the family plot in a more private ceremony. So marked the passing of a man who had lived his dream of delivering Scottish independence.

Another reaction to the revelations about MI5's involvement in attacks on Scotland was a growing spate of desertions from the British armed forces. These were not confined to lower ranks either, but included some high ranking officers.

One unhelpful consequence of the desertions was that there were now several thousand weapons in circulation in Scotland and with people growing increasingly desperate for food, that wasn't a good thing.

As January faded to an equally cold and snowy February, attacks involving armed raiders became increasingly common-place and John Swinney, now confirmed as the new First Minister, took the decision that all of Scotland's police forces should be trained and armed.

There were heated debates about this in the Scottish Parliament; with many convinced that such a move would only lead to more shooting incidents. One thing was certain, there were now an additional fifteen thousand firearms being carried in the country.

February saw two improvements in the security arrangements at Ardbrecknish. The first was down to Donnie simply buying a second-hand helicopter. Besides Commander Wilcox and Louise being qualified to fly, there were four other pilots amongst the Gregorach already at the site and a rota was quickly drawn up for regular security sweeps.

The second improvement was undoubtedly more valuable, however, and it came from an idea that Katie came up with. She tested out her thinking and found that it was possible before sharing it with first Donnie and then the others.

"Donnie?" she said one cold February afternoon. "Can I show you something?"

"Of course you can, my love" Donnie responded, putting down the report on how much food was now in storage.

"Let me link with you," said Katie.

Donnie closed his eyes to avoid the confusion of seeing normally while dealing with the images that he knew Katie was about to share with him.

"Can you see this?" Katie asked.

Donnie had an image of the outside of the house in his head.

"If you mean can I see the house from the outside, then yes," he answered her.

"Watch this," he heard Katie say.

The images that Donnie was seeing changed in perspective. It was almost as if a camera was pulling back its focus, as things became smaller and more and more of the Ardbrecknish site was visible. The image steadied once the entire site was in view.

"Are you seeing the whole site now?" Katie asked.

"Yes, this is neat," Donnie answered.

"Okay, now watch this," said Katie.

Donnie's image of the site suddenly had hundreds of little gold dots flashing at various points and two quite obvious red dots.

"What are they?" he asked.

In answer, Katie zoomed in on two of the gold dots that were close together. Donnie saw that it was actually his mother and father. The image zoomed out again until the whole site was visible and then Katie's focus changed to the two red dots. When she zoomed in on these, Donnie could see that they were actually two men from the garage in Glasgow where he had purchased a new Toyota Land Cruiser.

"Oh good, they've delivered my new car," Donnie observed.

Katie laughed.

"Do you see what this means?" she asked.

"That you're incredibly talented?" Donnie asked.

"Ha-ha, yes, that's definitely true," Katie agreed. "What's more important though is that I can pinpoint every single person on this site and differentiate between those that are from the Clan and those that are strangers. Don't you see, no one will ever be able to creep up on us again!"

"Of course! That's brilliant!"

Donnie opened his eyes and gave her a hug.

There was no let up in the freezing weather as February drifted into March. Forecasters still weren't saying anything about the Atlantic sink, but ordinary folk were commenting on the fact that winter didn't seem to be breaking like it normally did.

Donnie and his father hadn't been sitting down to watch the news together as much, simply because it was too depressing. It was Friday, 15 March 2013 and they were sharing a beer together when Donnie decided they really should be keeping up with events.

The news reports on the national TV channel had introduced the grisly idea of a count in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. That represented the total number of people dead from flu, hypothermia, starvation and from violent means in one way or another. Today the count stood at 79,503. A week before it had only been at 42,000, so it seemed that the death rate was accelerating.

"It's really happening, isn't it?" said Douglas. "What your goddess predicted – it's all going to come true."

"It certainly looks like it," Donnie agreed. "I wonder how much longer the news is going to be broadcast? It won't be long before the armed police start to go out hunting for food for their families instead of trying to maintain law and order. There will probably be gangs already looking to rob and steal every scrap of food that they can get no matter the cost in lives."