And the very next morning, all three IRA agents were found hung by their necks from light standards behind Usher Hall. That was the supposed end of the troubles in Edinburgh.
Was Patrick Callaghan’s presence inside the walls of the castle the other night indicative of a change of terrorist policy? Colin Stewart shuddered to think of the consequences for Scotland if this was true. Until more intelligence information was received, he could only pray that this was an isolated incident. Perpetually short of money to fund their revolution, the IRB most probably thought they could get away with carrying off the Scottish crown jewels. But now one of their ranks lay cold in the morgue, the royal regalia still secure as ever in their resting place as they had been for hundreds of years past. Surely they got the message that such a fantastic operation was ill-conceived from the very start.
Sincerely hoping that this was the case, Colin Stewart climbed down to the rampants that graced the western walls of the castle. The mist had all but stopped now, and he could just make out the harbor area and the gray waters of the Firth of Forth in the distance.
When he was active in the SAS, anti-terrorist operations had been his specialty. He had been at the Iranian embassy in London on May 6, 1980, when the SAS interceded to save the lives of twenty-one frightened hostages. As a devout student of religious fanaticism, he understood the warped sense of values that such groups based their actions upon. The only way to control such an organization was to root it out at its very base. That’s why Stewart’s next great concern was tracking down Patrick Callaghan’s accomplice.
Somehow this individual had succeeded in escaping from the heretofore all but impregnable confines of Edinburgh Castle. He was last seen scurrying over the walls of the Half Moon battery, where a blood trail led them as far as the gatehouse. The sentries there reported sighting no trespassers. But unless he just disappeared into thin air, he managed to elude them and vanish into the surrounding city.
Stewart immediately notified the metropolitan police.
He then personally called the local hospitals and clinics, who spread the word to every doctor in the city to report the treatment of any suspicious gunshot wounds to the castle at once. When twenty-four hours passed and these efforts failed to show results, Stewart feared the worst.
Still not ready to throw in the towel just yet, he received permission from headquarters to expand the search. To determine his next move,
Stewart tried to think like his prey. Since he now knew that the man was most probably Irish, there could be only one place where he would be attempting to flee to, and that was home. Now the Highlander had only to figure out how the wounded terrorist would manage such a feat.
The only way he’d be able to return to Ireland was by sea or air. If he chose to travel by sea, there could be any number of places where he could depart from.
Stewart would begin by asking army intelligence to initiate a sweep of every port on the western shore of Scotland, with most of their effort to be centered on Glasgow. Certainly a wounded young Irishman was bound to draw some attention, especially if he utilized public transportation.
Plane travel would be a bit easier to monitor. Since there were only so many airfields in the vicinity, they could be intensively covered. Again they would concentrate their efforts at the major public airports in Glasgow, Prestwick, and Edinburgh. Here passenger manifests could be scrutinized and all flights to Ireland carefully screened.
Since there was always the possibility that he’d attempt chartering a small plane from a private field, Colin Stewart would ask assistance from the R.A.F. One of their Nimrod AWACS platforms was on continuous patrol over the Irish Sea and would have a taped record of every single flight headed westward. In this way they could track down any unauthorized aircraft that left Scotland without filing an official flight plan.
Though the possibilities were still very good that he would manage to escape their dragnet, Colin Stewart felt that it was absolutely necessary that they at least made the effort. A serious wrong had been done when one of the most hallowed shrines in all of Scotland had been violated. One of the perpetrators had already paid the ultimate price for this folly. And if Major Colin Stewart had anything to say about it, his accomplice would soon feel the iron hand of Scot justice also.
A little over two hundred miles to the southwest of Edinburgh castle lay the green rolling hills of County Caven in the northern portion of the Republic of Ireland.
Primarily made up of small farms. County Caven was a relatively poor district, where potatoes and lamb provided basic subsistence.
It was sixty-two years ago that a Belfast-based surgeon moved his new wife and infant son out of the city and into County Caven. He chose a two-hundredandfifty-acre plot of land outside the village of Cootehill on which to build his new home. No expense was spared on this estate, which included a magnificent manor house, barn, and several cottages for the help.
Here he planned to raise his newborn boy as a country gentleman, far away from the pollution and sectarian violence that had made Belfast all but uninhabitable.
No sooner was the last brick of the estate laid when the Great Depression hit Ireland with a vengeance. The surgeon had been planning to augment his medical practice by raising sheep and produce. But the new economic climate made such a dream impossible. After his savings were drained, he was forced to return in earnest to his old trade. He became a traveling country physician, going from village to village treating the sick, who most often could only pay him in trade goods, the setting of a broken leg costing a chicken and so forth. Meanwhile, his wife was charged with the vast responsibility of attempting to wring some sort of nominal existence from the land they had settled upon. As the years passed, she succeeded in this challenging endeavor, though the cost of this triumph drained her energy and ultimately broke her resolute spirit. was well into his forties, though no one knew his exact age for certain. One only had to take a close look at his face to know that he had seen much of life in his years. There were deep character lines etched on his cheeks, and with a black eye patch that covered his right eye and a long, brown ponytail, he almost resembled a modern-day pirate.
Bernard Loughlin was one of the original founders of the IRB, and one of the most ruthless men that the physician had ever met. Car bombs and snipings were his specialty. He had a callous disregard for human life, as long as it wore a British uniform. Yet he was a fair man in his own way, and a genius of strategy. He also knew how to judge a man’s character instantly and determine his worth to the cause. Together with Marie Barrett, who helped dictate political strategy, Bernard commanded a virtually invisible army of guerrilla warfare specialists, who yearly displayed their loyalty to the Brotherhood with a blood oath.
Though some of their methods were a bit distasteful, especially when the loss of innocent lives was concerned, Tyronne knew that this crudeness was but a temporary evil. The IRB was an army of change that wouldn’t lift its offensive until the goal was reached.
And since in any war loss of life was inevitable, they had to look beyond the bloody present to the day when all Ireland was one socialist state, united by the bonds of equality and brotherhood.