“Yes.”
“Naturally.”
“Only in the twenty-first century could that count for nothing,” Wylings concluded.
“Hmm.”
“Yes.”
“Unless we make it count for something.”
Dolan nodded as if he understood perfectly. “What do you have in mind, Wylings?”
“Listen,” Wylings said with uncharacteristic fervor, “we need to show these Scots gits who’s boss. If we let them push us around, there’ll be radicals from every scrap of land we have left trying to give the Queen the boot. We need to make an example of the Scots.”
Dolan and Sykes looked expectant.
“Let’s neuter the bastards. They want to be more Scottish, well, we’ll just take away whatever Scottishness they’ve got left. Once they start getting the opposite of what they’re fighting for—well, they’ll back down in a big hurry.”
As Dolan and Sykes listened to Wylings’s plan, they were all smiles.
“You’ve got a real head for the political game, Wylings,” Dolan said. “I predict you’ll sit in Parliament some day.”
Wylings had a drained look on his face, but it was just an act. “God forbid! Besides, why should I bother when I have a couple of excellent chaps like you willing to listen to my suggestions?”
Later, Wylings sipped his Scotch alone. His excellent chaps had scampered off to do his bidding like the good little lapdogs they were. Wylings had cultivated his friendships with Dolan and Sykes when they were just lads, knowing even then that they were bound for positions of power by virtue of their intelligence and breeding.
Over the years Wylings had played with them to amuse himself in different ways, and occasionally obliged them to throw some government contracts to the family concerns. It kept Wylings wealthy without requiring him to actually get involved in the business of business; he wouldn’t allow his noble hands to become sullied with corporate ink.
When he was in his thirties, his friends in government helped him engineer a little public awareness. An American shipment of food supplies was lost while en route to Africa to aid starving victims of intertribal war. Wylings had one of his companies reroute a shipment of foodstuffs from its intended destination in Rio de Janeiro to Africa. Included in the shipment were seed corn and tents, and the small, displaced Nairobi tribe loudly proclaimed that Wylings had single-handedly ended their famine and saved their people from extinction.
For this well-publicized act of selflessness, Wylings received his knighthood at an exceptionally young age. No one ever bothered to really investigate the loss of the original American food shipment Likewise, there were no questions asked about the shipment of food, tents and seed corn that Wylings’s scrap-steel-hauling division just happened to have on hand at the fortuitous moment.
Wylings always played his cards well. He knew how to make the system work. Without any real effort on his own part, he had become one of the most respected and influential back-room players in the British government.
All at once, the jitters came and bit him. His brow broke out with a sudden sweat, and Wylings lowered the crystal glass to the surface of the bar, where it rattled noisily for a moment. Wylings mopped his brow with a linen handkerchief, monogrammed in gold thread. His eyes darted around, but there was no one around. No barman on duty at this time of the night. Members served themselves after 2:00 a.m. Nobody else in residence.
Wylings breathed a sigh of relief. Sometimes, when he wasn’t careful, the little rodent of nervousness darted out of its hole and crawled into the open before he could give it a good swift kick. Wylings prayed that no one would ever see his jitters.
Two hundred years ago, his great-great-grandsire was exactly the same kind of man, but the nature of those times meant that he could make great contributions to society and to the good of England. Now, such a man was only an outcast and a throwback.
It all came to a head far earlier than Wylings had even dreamed of. In fact, he had to cut short his next afternoon of tennis when he got the news of the brewing altercation in London.
“This is the scene on Downing Street where angry Scotsmen are gathering by the hundreds to protest the new law that was rammed through Parliament this afternoon. The law prohibits the wearing of kilts or tartan colors anywhere within the United Kingdom and is effective immediately. This was the scene in Parliament today.”
The television in the locker room showed a Scottish member of Parliament attempting to speak. He was red-faced with anger, shouting to be heard, and still the heckling drowned him out. All Wylings heard was something about the new law being “patently illegal.”
“Put on some trousers, you bleeding fairy!” responded someone in the crowd.
By evening the protests in London came to a head. After issuing a warning and giving all kilt wearers within London city limits a three-hour grace period to change their attire in accord with the new laws, they began making arrests.
Wylings watched with Dolan, Sykes and a close- knit group of like-minded patriots at the club.
The BBC anchor followed the protest coverage from locale to locale. At one point, he announced, “We’re getting reports of violent resistance being offered by the kilt-wearing criminals …”
That nearly brought the house down. Wylings and his mates had their heartiest laugh in many a day.
“Whoever heard of a violent Scotsman!”
“Outside of thrashing the beer girl at the football match, you mean!”
They sobered up when the BBC mobile camera began broadcasting evidence of the Scots fighting back.
Chapter 8
Sir Frederick Cottingsharm had the disease. It was like some sort of global plague that came and infected a person and made the person extremely moody. The events of the past few hours made it clear that Scotland was seeing a major outbreak—brought to a head with the help of British prodding.
Fred Cottingsharm was snarling when he saw Sir James Wylings standing on his doorstep. They were old acquaintances. They played golf. But the disease made Fred Cottingsharm into a Brit-hating isolationist Scot, just like all the maniacs raising hell in London.
“Fred, thank goodness I reached you before you left,” Wylings said.
“What do you want, British?”
“We’re not enemies, Fred,” Wylings said, then lowered his voice. “I’m on your side.”
“What do you mean, British?”
Wylings leaned in close and said in a quiet voice, “I’ve got Scottish blood, Fred. And a Scottish heart.”
“You? You’re the perfect little royal, you are.”
“All the better to help the Scottish cause. Fred, I’ve been working with SCOTS for thirty years.”
Cottingsharm sneered. “SCOTS is a fairy tale.”
“SCOTS is real. We’ve been working behind the scenes to gather evidence against the Crown. Fred, I have certain documentation with me that you need to see, right now.”
Cottingsharm was wary, but he swung the door open and allowed Wylings into his expensive London flat. The front parlor was stacked with old chests and new suitcases. Like many angry Scots, Cottingsharm was fleeing the land of the enemy.
“All right. Tell me about it,” Cottingsharm dared.
“Scottish Control Of Territorial Scotland is a tiny organization, and we keep our mouths shut. That’s why so many people believe it doesn’t even exist. We’re just seven souls, but each and every one of us has taken on government roles that give us access to various legal archives. We’re putting together an indictment of British theft of Scottish territory. The records we’ve found show an orchestrated, centuries-old conspiracy by the Brits to take Scotland away from the Scots plot by plot.”