Deadly Secrecy

Edinburgh journalist Willie Morton suspects the death of a veteran anti-nuclear activist Angus McBain was murder but is abducted by the sinister Daniel McGinley and scared into suspending his investigations. Later he finds McBain’s missing briefcase and a secret compartment stitched into the lining. There’s been an illegal deal to bring radioactive material across Europe for reprocessing at Atom Tech in Dounreay in northern Scotland and Morton wants to know if the UK Government is involved and if the Scottish Government is aware.

But he is being pursued across the beautiful landscape of the Highlands, having to hitch-hike by the shores of Loch Ness, cross wild boggy landscape on foot, make a passage across the treacherous Firth of Lorn in an inflatable raft. Meanwhile the convoy of nuclear juggernauts from the Czech Republic has rumbled under cover of darkness from Dover and is coming ever nearer. In a remote distillery, Morton escapes bullets which dent the copper stills: He is trapped as McGinley closes in. But a distillery worker cops the bullet – and Morton pushes McGinley into the boiling mash tun.

The authorities strike a deal with Morton and McBain’s niece Elizabeth, a Cambidge Univefsity student. As Scottish field supervisor of the Nuclear Installations Protection Squad, McGinley was “acting entirely without sanction”. There will be an internal inquiry but the existence of any convoy on UK roads or photographs or any nuclear incident in Europe is firmly denied. Morton leaves the meeting with nothing but apologies for the harassment he has suffered and revisits McBain’s grave on the hill above Arisaig. As sea-mist rolls in from the Atlantic, he feels only gratitude at having survived.