Jack Higgins - On dangerous ground

When Jackson arrived at his grandfather's house, his mother Rosa was in the kitchen supervising the meal with the maid, Maria. She turned, still handsome in spite of gray in her dark hair, kissed him on both cheeks, then held him off.

"You look terrible. Shadows under the eyes."

"Mamma, I did the night shift. I lay on my bed three hours, then I showered and came here because I didn't want to disappoint you."

"You're a good boy. Go and see your grandfather."

Jackson went into the sitting room where he found Mori reading the Sunday paper. He leaned down to kiss his grandfather on the cheek and Mori said, "I heard your mother and she's right. You do good and kill yourself at the same time. Here, have a glass of red wine."

Jackson accepted it and drank some with pleasure. "That's good."

"You had an interesting night?" Mori was genuinely interested in his grandson's doings. In fact, he bored his friends with his praises of the young man.

Jackson, aware that his grandfather indulged him, went to the French window, opened it, and lit a cigarette. He turned. "Remember the Solazzo wedding last month?"

"Yes."

"You were talking with Carl Morgan, you'd just introduced me."

"Mr. Morgan was impressed by you, he said so." There was pride in Mori's voice.

"Yes, well, you and he were talking business."

"Nonsense, what business could we have in common?"

"For God's sake, grandfather, I'm not a fool and I love you, but do you think I could have reached this stage in my life and not realized the business you were in?"

Mori nodded slowly and picked up the bottle. "More wine? Now tell me where this is leading."

"You and Mr. Morgan were talking about Hong Kong. He mentioned huge investments in skyscrapers, hotels, and so on and the worry about what would happen when the Chinese Communists take over."

"That's simple. Billions of dollars down the toilet," Mori said.

"There was an article in The Times yesterday about Peking being angry because the British are introducing a democratic political system before they go in ninety-seven."

"So where is this leading?" Mori asked.

"So I am right in assuming that you and your associates have business interests in Hong Kong?"

His grandfather stared at him thoughtfully. "You could say that, but where is this leading?"

Jackson said, "What if I told you that in nineteen forty-four Mao Tse-tung signed a thing called the Chungking Covenant with Lord Louis Mountbatten under the terms of which he agreed that if he ever came to power in China he would extend the Hong Kong Treaty by one hundred years in return for aid from the British to fight the Japanese?"

His grandfather sat there staring at him, then got up, closed the door, and returned to his seat.

"Explain," he said.

Jackson did, and when he was finished his grandfather sat thinking about it. He got up and went to his desk and came back with a small tape recorder. "Go through it again," he said. "Everything he told you. Omit nothing."

At that moment, Rosa opened the door. "Lunch is almost ready."

"Fifteen minutes, cara," her father said. "This is important, believe me."

She frowned but went out, closing the door. He turned to his grandson. "As I said, everything," and he switched on the recorder.

When Mori reached the Glendale Polo ground later that afternoon it was raining. There was still a reasonable crowd huddled beneath umbrellas or the trees because Carl Morgan was playing and Morgan was good, a handicap of ten goals indicating that he was a player of the first rank. He was fifty years of age, a magnificent-looking man, six feet in height with broad shoulders and hair swept back over his ears.

His hair was jet black, a legacy of his mother, niece of Don Giovanni, who had married his father, a young army officer, during the Second World War. His father had served gallantly and well in both the Korean and Vietnam wars, retiring as a Brigadier General to Florida, where they enjoyed a comfortable retirement thanks to their son.

All very respectable, all a very proper front for the son who had walked out of Yale in nineteen sixty-five and volunteered as a paratrooper during the Vietnam War, emerging with two Purple Hearts, a Silver Star, and a Vietnamese Cross of Valour. A war hero whose credentials had taken him to Wall Street and then the hotel industry and the construction business, a billionaire at the end of things, accepted at every social level from London to New York.

There are six chukkas in a polo game lasting seven minutes each, four players on each side. Morgan played forward because it gave the most opportunity for total aggression and that was what he liked.

The game was into the final chukka as Mori got out of the car and his chauffeur came round to hold an umbrella over him. Some yards away, a vividly pretty young woman stood beside an estate car, a Burberry trenchcoat hanging from her shoulders. She was about five-foot-seven with long blond hair to her shoulders, high cheekbones, green eyes.

"She sure is a beautiful young lady, Mr. Morgan's daughter," the chauffeur said.

"Stepdaughter, Johnny," Mori reminded him.

"Sure, I was forgetting, but with her taking his name and all. That was a real bad thing, her mother dying like that. Asta, that's kind of a funny name."

"It's Swedish," Mori told him.

Asta Morgan jumped up and down excitedly. "Come on, Carl, murder them."

Carl Morgan glanced sideways as he went by, his teeth flashed, and he went barreling into the young forward for the opposing team, slamming his left foot under the boy's stirrup and lifting him, quite illegally, out of the saddle. A second later, he had thundered through and scored.

The game was won, he cantered across to Asta through the rain, and stepped out of the saddle. A groom took his pony, Asta handed him a towel, then lit a cigarette and passed it to him. She looked up, smiling, an intimacy between them that excluded everyone around.

"He sure likes that girl," Johnny said.

Mori nodded. "So it would appear."

Morgan turned and saw him and waved, and Mori went forward. "Carl, nice to see you. And you, Asta." He touched his hat.

"What can I do for you?" Morgan asked.

"Business, Carl, something came up last night that might interest you."

Morgan said, "Nothing you can't talk about in front of Asta, surely?"

Mori hesitated. "No, of course not." He took the small tape recorder from his pocket. "My grandson, Tony, had a man die on him at Our Lady of Mercy Hospital last night. He told Tony a hell of a story, Carl. I think you could be interested."

"Okay, let's get in out of the rain." Morgan handed Asta into the estate car and followed her.

Mori joined them. "Here we go." He switched on the tape recorder. • • • Morgan sat there after it had finished, a cigarette drooping from the corner of his mouth, his face set.

Asta said, "What a truly astonishing story." Her voice was low and pleasant, more English than American.

"You can say that again." Morgan turned to Mori. "I'll keep this. I'll have my secretary transcribe it and send it to Don Giovanni in Palermo by coded fax."

"I did the right thing?"

"You did well, Antonio." Morgan took his hand.

"No, it was Tony, Carl, not me. What am I going to do with him? Harvard Medical School, the Mayo Clinic, a brilliant student, yet he works with the nuns at Our Lady of Mercy for peanuts."

"You leave him," Morgan said. "He'll find his way. I went to Vietnam, Antonio. No one can take that away from me. You can't argue with it, the rich boy going into hell when he didn't need to. It says something. He won't be there forever, but the fact that he was will make people see him as someone to look up to for the rest of his life. He's a fine boy." He put a hand on Mori's shoulder. "Heh, I hope I don't sound too calculating."