Ready for a riot?

FIRST it was the suppliers, then it was the taxis.

Normally, the chain's four eateries - one West End, one East End, one Old Town and one at Bruntsfield - are guaranteed money-spinners. But all four are near the routes or access areas for G8-related marches or protests. Staff have been given the option of coming into work only if they want to.

"We have been having meetings for weeks about this and there is still uncertainty," Parkinson says wearily. "Right now the plan is to open and then just see how things go. We don't know if anyone will want to go out for a meal on those days. You wonder if not being an international company will somehow count in our favour, or what. We talk to other businesses about what they are going to do. You just don't know."

With just one more week to go until the G8, Parkinson is like thousands of business people in Central Scotland, hoping that their fears will come to nothing and that a fortnight today, they will be breathing an enormous sigh of relief.

But they can only guess. Scottish police forces are admitting that they simply do not know how many people will show up or whether they will have the officers and the resources to cope.

Once seen as the mother of all policing challenges, the Make Poverty History march on Saturday, July 2 through Edinburgh is now being regarded as possibly the least fraught of all the events of the week. As many as 200,000 marchers will make their way through the city, calling on world leaders to tackle the problems faced by the world's poor.

But that march will include Chancellor Gordon Brown, the new Deputy First Minister Nichol Stephen, SNP leader Alex Salmond, and Edinburgh Council leader Donald Anderson - hardly the baseball bat brigade. The march preparations have been meticulously worked out between avowedly non-violent campaigners and the police.

Then there is Monday, July 4, likely to be the grimmest day of the week. That day will feature an anarchist demonstration called the 'Carnival of Full Enjoyment'. It will involve organisations such as The Wombles and The Clowns, who are regarded as among the most hard-line of the anti-capitalist movement and as a magnet for others intent on violence. This is regarded as the event which is most likely to go out of control. And businesses, especially banks and companies with an international profile, are fearing the worst. Senior police officers are complaining about the lack of information from the march organisers.

One officer said: "We are getting very frustrated over how little we are hearing from them. I don't know what they are trying to achieve through all this. After all, the main reason we need to hear from them is for their own safety."

Ironically, the prospect which most alarmed the authorities, that of the million-strong march called for by Sir Bob Geldof, now appears to be evaporating. It had been hoped - or feared, depending on your outlook - that one million people would flood the streets in advance of the Edinburgh Live 8 concert on July 6, in the wake of Geldof's call for a march on the city.

But both Edinburgh City Council and Lothian and Borders Police have confirmed that they have received no notification for any kind of march on that day, and that while they are working on the preparations for the evening concert, expected to be attended by 50,000, no march is officially happening.

A spokeswoman for the city council said: "We have heard, just like everyone has head, talk of a march of one million. We have so far received no notification of a march on that day."

A police source added: "I think it's less a matter of things petering out, more a question of will there be anything to peter into."

Even Geldof's team have begun to tone down their rhetoric. A spokeswoman for the singer and activist said: "There isn't a march as such. It's a metaphorical, symbolic thing which Sir Bob Geldof was talking about. It doesn't really matter where you march. It doesn't matter whether you are there physically as long as you are there in spirit."

Very much there in body and spirit will be the security services from all over the world. Britain has hosted a G8 summit before; Gleneagles itself has hosted more than its fair share of high-powered international gatherings. But, in the words of one retired intelligence officer who recalls the preparations for the 1977 Commonwealth heads of government summit at the complex, G8 is far from "a relaxed weekend in the country".

"This is not going to be about just putting tapes on manhole covers and neutralising post-boxes right near the venue," he said. "We were quite on the ball in those days - more than any other country ever was - but now it's like getting ready for a war."

Although the enduring terror campaign waged by Irish Republicans throughout the 1980s had honed the UK security forces' ability to protect visiting dignitaries, their modern-day equivalents are labouring under far more varied and lethal threats. Each leader arriving in Scotland this week brings individual domestic travails which could make him a target for attack; together, representing the wealthy, the West and the ascendancy of global capitalism, they are seen by a plethora of interest groups and dissenters as a distillation of the most objectionable forces on the planet.

Some of the groups threatening to get in and disrupt the G8 are more reminiscent of Citizen Smith and the Life of Brian. Their threats to get into Gleneagles and "turf them out" are more likely to provoke eye-rolling and sniggering than real fear. Others, such as al-Qaeda and Chechen terrorists, are another matter altogether.

Every G8 summit for almost a decade has taken place under the shadow of fears of attack from al-Qaeda. Four years ago, in Genoa, warnings of threats from Bin Laden operatives reportedly prompted heightened security around President Bush, including anti-aircraft missiles deployed at the airport, and naval vessels patrolling offshore. Bush himself spent a night aboard a US aircraft carrier during his stay.

Gleneagles, although less obviously primed for trouble, is little different from anything that has gone before. The multi-million pound security operation includes plans for warships to patrol a one-mile exclusion zone around the coast. Army helicopters, containing the latest countermeasures - such as flares to lure away heat-seeking missiles - will be used to ferry dignitaries and even police officers around. And military commanders at the army's Scottish headquarters at Kirliston near Edinburgh are understood to have made special plans to use soldiers from the two infantry battalions based in the city to back up police should it be necessary.

"There will be various security perimeters established around the location," explained Mike Smith, an intelligence expert at King's College, London. "Police snipers will be placed on rooftops and the SAS's Sabre Squadron - the anti-terrorist unit - is unlikely to be too far away."

Other intelligence experts confirm that the lower-key operations have already begun, and the extensive surveillance of protest groups, their literature and websites is merely the "back-office work" for more hands-on operations elsewhere.

"Individuals will be checked out in person," one analyst said. "Anyone with a particularly radical profile, especially anyone who has suggested they might get up to something around G8, or who has encouraged anyone else to do so, will be watched pretty closely. But it isn't just the crusties like the anti-globals. The security people will know about anyone who is already here that might pose a nuisance. They'll be watched. It's a labour-intensive strategy, but it's absolutely necessary."

The domestic security forces are not the only ones to start early. Bush has already sent a team of secret service experts to Scotland to check out arrangements for his safety while he is at Gleneagles, and to prepare for his arrival at RAF Leuchars. Scotland on Sunday understands that Russian president Vladimir Putin has made similar advance arrangements. A delegation of officials from the Russian security service the FSB has been investigating the venue for six months, and slipped back into the country within the last week to make final arrangements. They will remain in Scotland at least until Putin has arrived safely back in Moscow. The former KGB officer, who arrived in Genoa under a dense curtain of security protection amid fears of attack from Chechnyan separatists, clearly does not believe he is less vulnerable to attack than he was four years ago. "They are as preoccupied about security as anyone else," one source close to Downing Street confirmed last night. "Putin has his enemies. He has an extraordinary level of protection, but that is par for the course nowadays."

Throughout the unprecedented concentration on activities that would otherwise remain deeply confidential, one area the authorities have managed to keep completely under wraps is the detail of their contingency plans should protests or attacks force a radical review of their well-laid preparations.

In advance of Genoa, the Italian government and security forces decided that, if they had to abandon the original venue, they would move the G8 - lock, stock and barrel - offshore to a flotilla of naval vessels stationed in the harbour. None of the experts poring through what is known of the arrangements for Gleneagles doubts that the UK authorities have made similar plans, but the alternative venue remains a closely-guarded secret. The enclosed, rural location of Gleneagles make them suspect that, this time, it will not be required.

A former senior UK policeman who advised on security arrangements for the G8 summit in Georgia told Scotland on Sunday: "It is a different scene in the UK. The Brits are very good at these events and will be well prepared. The [Special] Branch and Security Services will have looked at all the different problems that may arise."

On the other side of the divide, the coaches and cars will begin converging on Scotland from all over Europe from Thursday. Many protesters will be "disguising" themselves as innocent hillwalkers wanting to tackle the Ochils this weekend. Briefing notes on everything from what to do when arrested by a Scottish officer to whether midges are really a problem at this time of year have already been translated into a series of languages.

Back in Glasgow and Edinburgh those who must go about their daily business display a mixture of hope against hope and grim resignation. A seven-foot tall metal fence surrounds the Scottish Parliament and the Palace of Holyroodhouse, despite First Minister Jack McConnell's demand that everyone "calm down" over fears the G8 could lead to trouble. Security around Bute House, McConnell's official residence, will also be stepped up.

The most unlikely firms - from large stores to restaurants - have run drills on what to do in case of trouble. This week will see the cities' businesses hold last-minute meetings as they ponder whether to open or not during the G8 week, with most likely to open in the mornings and then play things by ear.

One Princes Street shop manager admitted he was deeply worried, and said his company still did not know whether they would open. "I don't know what to expect. I don't know if there is any point in opening. I don't know whether the police really know what is going on. I don't know if head office has the remotest idea what could happen in Edinburgh. We all feel totally helpless. What on earth did we do to deserve all this?"

• Additional reporting by Brian Brady