“My name’s Ciaran. Please follow me.”
Instead of heading for a parked car, the guide took Monk’s suitcase and headed for the courtesy shuttle bus. They sat in silence as the coach took them to Terminal One.
“We’re not going to London?” asked Monk.
“No, sir. We’re going to Scotland.”
Ciaran had their tickets. An hour later the London-Aberdeen businessmen’s flight took off for the Highlands. Ciaran buried himself in his own copy of the Army Quarterly and Defence Review. Whatever else he could do, small talk was not his forte. Monk accepted his second airline breakfast of the morning and caught up on some sleep lost across the Atlantic.
At the Aberdeen airport there was transportation, a long-base Land Rover Discovery with another taciturn ex-soldier at the wheel. He and Ciaran exchanged eight syllables, which seemed to rank as a pretty long conversation.
Monk had never seen the mountains of the Scottish Highlands, which they entered after leaving the airport on the outskirts of the east-coast city of Aberdeen. The unnamed driver took the A96 Inverness road and seven miles later pulled off to the left. The signpost said simply: KEMNAY. They went through the village of Monymusk to hit the Aberdeen-Alford road. Three miles later the Land Rover turned right, ran through Whitehouse, and headed for Keig.
There was a river on the right. Monk wondered if there were salmon or trout in it. Just before Keig the vehicle suddenly pulled off the road, crossed the river and went up a drive. Around two bends the stone bulk of an ancient castle sat on a slight eminence looking out over the hills. The driver turned and spoke.
“Welcome to Castle Forbes, Mr. Monk.”
The spare figure of Sir Nigel Irvine, a flat cloth cap on his head, white wings of hair blowing on either side, came out of the stone porch.
“Good trip?” he asked.
“Fine.”
“Tiring all the same. Ciaran will show you to your room. Have a bath and a nap. Lunch in two hours. We’ve a lot of work to do.”
“You knew I was coming,” said Monk.
“Yes.”
“Ciaran made no phone call.”
“Ah, yes, see what you mean. Mitch there”—he pointed at the driver unloading the suitcase—“was also at Heathrow. And on the Aberdeen plane. Right at the back. Got through Aberdeen airport before you, didn’t have to wait for luggage. Reached the Land Rover with five minutes to spare.”
Monk sighed. He had not spotted Mitch at Heathrow, on the plane. The bad news was, Irvine was right; there was a lot of work to do. The good news was, he was with a rather professional outfit.
“Are these guys coming where I’m going?”
“No, ‘fraid not. When you get there, you’ll be on your own. What we’re going to do for the next three weeks is try to help you survive.”
Lunch was a kind of minced lamb covered in a potato crust. His hosts called it shepherd’s pie and soaked it all in a spicy black sauce. There were five at the table: Sir Nigel Irvine, the genial host, Monk himself, Ciaran and Mitch, who always referred to both Monk and Irvine as “Boss,” and a short alert man with thin white hair who spoke good English but with an accent Monk recognized as Russian.
“There will have to be some English spoken, of course,” said Irvine, “because not many of us speak Russian. But for four hours a day, minimum, you will be speaking Russian with Oleg here. You have to get back to the point where you can actually pass for one.”
Monk nodded. It had been years since he had spoken the language and he was going to discover how rusty he had become. But a natural linguist never forgets and enough practice will always bring it back.
“So,” his host continued, “Oleg, Ciaran, and Mitch here will be permanent residents. Others will come and go. That includes myself. In a few days, when you’re settled, I’ll have to fly south and get on with ... other things.”
If Monk had thought some consideration might be given to jet lag, he was mistaken. After lunch he had four hours with Oleg.
The Russian invented a range of scenarios. One minute he was a militiaman on the street, stopping Monk to challenge his papers, demand where he had come from, where he was going and why. Then he would become a waiter, seeking details of a complicated meal order, an out-of-town Russian asking directions of a Muscovite. Even after four hours Monk could feel the sense of the language coming back.
Hauling on fishing lines in the Caribbean, Monk had reckoned he was pretty fit, despite a thickening of the waistline. He was wrong. Before dawn the next morning he had his first cross-country run with Ciaran and Mitch.
“We’ll start with an easy one, Boss,” said Mitch, so they only did five miles through thigh-deep heather. At first Monk thought he was going to die. Then he wished he would.
There were only two staff on duty. The housekeeper, the formidable Mrs. McGillivray, widow of an estate worker, cooked and cleaned, accepting with a disapproving sniff the series of experts coming and going with their English accents. Hector looked after the grounds and the vegetable garden, motoring into Whitehouse for groceries. No tradesman ever called. Mrs. McGee, as the men called her, and Hector lived in two small cottages in the grounds.
A photographer came and took a range of pictures of Monk for the various identification papers being prepared for him somewhere else. A hair stylist cum makeup man appeared, skillfully changing Monk’s appearance and showing him how to do so again with minimum materials and nothing that could not be easily bought or carried in luggage without anyone suspecting the true use of the item.