Chapter 58

The airstrip was one hundred miles from Carlyle's cottage. A ninety-minute drive on normal roads, but the Scottish Highlands didn't have normal roads. If you thought of the UK's transport network as being like the body's circulatory system, the highways would be the arteries. The A, B and C roads would be major and minor veins. And roads in the Highlands would be capillaries. The thinnest blood vessels in the body. Like the ones in the whites of the eyes.

Koenig figured it would take three hours to get there. Carlyle said it would be closer to six. She said progress would be slow. There would be animals on the roads. Sheep and cattle. Wild animals like deer and feral goats. And worst of all, tourists. Thousands of them, crawling over the Cairngorms like a fungal rash.

The airstrip had sheep on it. That was Koenig's first thought. His second was that as these were living sheep, they must know when to get off the grass and onto the heather. Plane versus ruminant would end badly for both. Like a ground-zero bird strike. If the bird was the size of a large woolly suitcase. And if the plane was at the statistically most vulnerable part of the flight.

He and Draper had tucked themselves into a crevice on one of the Cairngorms foothills. The airstrip was below them. It looked as flat as a road. It was surrounded by gorse, as thick as a hedge and twice as tall. It had been cut back at each end of the airstrip, probably in case of overruns. The only things moving were the sheep and a solitary guy manning the fuel station. The wind sock was as limp as a patched sock. The ground was dry. It was quiet.

So far, so good.

‘It's a grass airstrip,' Koenig said. ‘Can the G6 land on grass?'

‘I guess,' Draper replied, her eyes fixed to her monocular. ‘I've never been in one that has, but my pilot knows what he's doing. He wouldn't have chosen an airstrip he couldn't use.' Her phone buzzed. She reached into her pocket and read the message. ‘We're on,' she said.

They backed out of the crevice and made their way to where they'd left the Jag. Carlyle was watching out for them. She seemed anxious. Margaret was asleep.

‘It's been a tiring few days,' Carlyle explained. ‘She puts on a brave face, but she's in a lot of pain now.'

‘We'll try not to wake her, but the pilot's on his approach,' Draper said. ‘And I want to get there before he lands.'