Killer Elite (previously published as the Feather Men) by Ranulph Fiennes Read Free Book Online

judge in Paris, Captain David Mason’s alarm clock woke him from a deep sleep in his bedroom on the first floor of Buckingham Palace. He dressed as quickly as his uniform allowed and left the palace.
    Straightening his back, he walked over the gravel of the front courtyard. Above, in the cold autumn breeze, the Royal Standard fluttered to confirm that the Queen was in official residence. In fact, David knew, she had been away for some time. A gust caught at his bearskin as he emerged past the police sentry box. Instinctively he braced his lower jaw against the chin strap and cursed the fact that it did not lie below his chin at all, but sat just below his lower lip. The bearskin itself was hollow, with plenty of room for carrying loose items. The previous week one of David’s guardsmen had been caught on sentry duty with a transistor radio tuned to Radio Caroline on his head. When approached by the ensign, he had come smartly to attention and jogged the volume control. He got eight days’ detention.
    Such temptations had been unknown in the less boring days when the sentry boxes were outside the palace railings. Sadly the tourists had grown more and more familiar when posing for photos—sometimes girls would strip—and even steal items of uniform. The young guardsmen could only grin and bear the indignities, so they had been brought inside the railings. Many regretted this and various lost perks. It had not been unknown for American tourists to part with good money when prompted by a veteran, speaking out of the side of his mouth, “That will be twenty dollars for the photo, sir.Just roll it up and stuff it down my rifle barrel … Thank you very much, sir. Anyone else? How about you, madam?”
    Underneath his greatcoat David wore his dark blue “number one dress tunic.” The trousers sport a broad red band and are worn outside “Wellingtons,” footwear that looks like cowboy boots minus the high Cuban heels. Since the tunic jacket is often too warm when worn beneath a greatcoat, many officers dispense with it except in very cold weather. One lieutenant was badly caught out when summoned into the royal presence and invited to make himself comfortable. He wore only a Snoopy T-shirt under his greatcoat, and Her Majesty was not amused.
    At 8 a.m. sharp David crossed from the palace to the “Birthday Cake,” as Guards officers describe the Victoria Memorial, and then across to the far side of the busy roundabout. Many officers, frightened of being run over, take the slower route to St. James’s Palace, by using the pedestrian crossing at the Buckingham Palace end of Constitution Hill, but David regarded this as a waste of time. He carried his sword menacingly free of its polished steel scabbard and, since his bearskin appeared to perch on his nose, obscuring his vision, the traffic invariably screeched to a standstill and let him pass.
    On arriving at St. James’s Palace, he acknowledged the shouldered rifles and salutes of the sentries and entered to eat a full cooked breakfast in sumptuous surroundings. In the officers’ sitting room on the first floor, he paused to look at the
Times
headlines. In a revenge raid following the murder of white farmers, Rhodesian commandos had penetrated deep into Mozambique. During the night, at midnight, 3 a.m., and 6 a.m., while his ensign, the young and rather green Second Lieutenant James Manningham-Buller, had inspected the St. James’s Palace Guard, he had inspected the BuckinghamPalace Guard. Now he wrote up his Guard Report and signed for his mess bill.
    David paused in front of a large mirror inside the door of the officers’ guardroom and adjusted his calf-length, blue-gray greatcoat and the brass-link chin strap of his bearskin with its six-inch green and white plume. He emerged from the guardroom without bending. In his bearskin David was almost eight feet tall, but the doorway had been designed with just such problems in mind. He returned to Buckingham Palace,