Jack Higgins: On dangerous ground

The saloon was deserted. Ahern moved forward and looked down through the windows to the forward deck where the President stood at the microphone, the British and Israeli Prime Ministers beside him. Ahern eased one of the windows open and took out his gun.

The door opened gently behind him and Dillon moved in, his Walther ready. "Jesus, Michael, but you never give up, do you."

Ahern turned, the gun against his thigh. "Sean Dillon, you old bastard," and then his hand swung up.

Dillon shot him twice in the heart, a double thud of the silenced pistol that drove him back against the bulkhead. Norah Bell stood there, frozen, clutching the tray.

Dillon said, "Now if there was a pistol under that napkin and you were thinking about reaching for it, I'd have to kill you, Norah, and neither of us would like that, you being a decent Irish girl. Just put the tray down."

Very slowly, Norah Bell did as she was told and placed the tray on the nearest table. Dillon turned, the Walther swinging from his right hand, and said to Ferguson and Hannah, "There you go, all's well that ends well."

Behind him Norah hitched up her skirt, pulled the flick knife from her stocking and sprang the blade, plunging it into his back. Dillon reared up in agony and dropped his Walther.

"Bastard!" Norah cried, pulled out the knife, and thrust it into him again.

Dillon lurched against the table and hung there for a moment. Norah raised the knife to strike a third blow and Hannah Bernstein dropped to one knee, picked up Dillon's Walther and shot her in the center of the forehead. At the same moment, Dillon slipped from the table and rolled onto his back.

It was around midnight at the London Clinic, one of the world's greatest hospitals, and Hannah Bernstein sat in the first floor reception area close to Dillon's room. She was tired which, under the circumstances, was hardly surprising, but a diet of black coffee and cigarettes had kept her going. The door at the end of the corridor swung open, and to her astonishment Ferguson entered followed by the President and Colonel Candy.

"The President was returning to the American Embassy," Ferguson told her.

"But under the circumstances I felt I should look in. You're Chief Inspector Bernstein, I understand." The President took her hand. "I'm eternally grateful."

"You owe more to Dillon, sir. He was the one who thought it through, he was the one who knew they were on board."

The President moved to the window and peered in. Dillon, festooned with wires, lay on a hospital bed, a nurse beside him.

"How is he?"

"Intensive care, sir," she said. "A four-hour operation. She stabbed him twice."

"I brought in Professor Henry Bellamy of Guy's Hospital, Mr. President," Ferguson said. "The best surgeon in London."

"Good." The President nodded. "I owe you and your people for this, Brigadier, I'll never forget."

He walked away and Colonel Candy said, "Thank God it worked out the way it did, that way we can keep it under wraps."

"I know," Ferguson said. "It never happened."

Candy walked away and Hannah Bernstein said, "I saw Professor Bellamy half an hour ago. He came to check on him."

"And what did he say?" Ferguson frowned. "He's going to be all right, isn't he?"

"Oh, he'll live, sir, if that's what you mean. The trouble is Bellamy doesn't think he'll ever be the same again. She almost gutted him."

Ferguson put an arm around her shoulder. "Are you all right, my dear?"

"You mean, am I upset because I killed someone tonight? Not at all, Brigadier. I'm really not the nice Jewish girl Dillon imagines. I'm a rather Old Testament Jewish girl. She was a murderous bitch. She deserved to die." She took out a cigarette and lit it. "No, it's Dillon I'm sorry for. He did a good job. He deserved better."

"I thought you didn't like him," Ferguson said.

"Then you were wrong, Brigadier." She looked in through the window at Dillon. "The trouble is I liked him too much and that never pays in our line of work."

She turned and walked away. Ferguson hesitated, glanced once more at Dillon, then went after her.

And two months later in another hospital, Our Lady of Mercy in New York on the other side of the Atlantic, young Tony Jackson clocked in for night duty as darkness fell. He was a tall, handsome man of twenty-three who had qualified as a doctor at Harvard Medical School the year before. Our Lady of Mercy, a charity hospital mainly staffed by nuns, was not many young doctors' idea of the ideal place to be an intern.

But Tony Jackson was an idealist. He wanted to practice real medicine and he could certainly do that at Our Lady of Mercy, which could not believe their luck at getting their hands on such a brilliant young man. He loved the nuns, found the vast range of patients fascinating. The money was poor, but in his case money was no object. His father, a successful Manhattan attorney, had died far too early from cancer, but he had left the family well provided for. In any case, his mother, Rosa, was from the Little Italy district of New York with a doting father big in the construction business.

Tony liked the night shift, that atmosphere peculiar to hospitals all over the world, and it gave him the opportunity to be in charge. For the first part of the evening he worked on the casualty shift, dealing with a variety of patients, stitching slashed faces, handling as best he could junkies who were coming apart because they couldn't afford a fix. It was all pretty demanding, but slackened off after midnight.

He was alone in the small canteen having coffee and a sandwich when the door opened and a young priest looked in. "I'm Father O'Brien from St. Marks. I had a call to come and see a Mr. Tanner, a Scottish gentleman. I understand he needs the last rites."

"Sorry, Father, I only came on tonight, I wouldn't know. Let me look at the schedule." He checked it briefly, then nodded. "Jack Tanner, that must be him. Admitted this afternoon. Age seventy-five, British citizen. Collapsed at his daughter's house in Queens. He's in a private room on level three, number eight."

"Thank you," the priest said and disappeared.

Jackson finished his coffee and idly glanced through the New York Times. There wasn't much news: an IRA bomb in London in the city's financial center, an item about Hong Kong, the British Colony in China which was to revert to Chinese control on the first of July, nineteen ninety-seven. It seemed that the British governor of the colony was introducing a thoroughly democratic voting system while he had the chance and the Chinese government in Peking was annoyed, which didn't look good for Hong Kong when the change took place.

He threw the paper down, bored and restless, got up and went outside. The elevator doors opened and Father O'Brien emerged. "Ah, there you are, Doctor. I've done what I could for the poor man, but he's not long for this world. He's from the Highlands of Scotland, would you believe? His daughter is married to an American."

"That's interesting," said Jackson. "I always imagined the Scots as Protestant."

"My dear lad, not in the Highlands," Father O'Brien told him. "The Catholic tradition is very strong." He smiled. "Well, I'll be on my way. Good night to you."

Jackson watched him go, then got in the elevator and rose to the third level. As he emerged, he saw Sister Agnes, the night duty nurse, come out of room eight and go to her desk.

Jackson said, "I've just seen Father O'Brien. He tells me this Mr. Tanner doesn't look good."

"There's his chart, Doctor. Chronic bronchitis and severe emphysema."

Jackson examined the notes. "Lung capacity only twelve percent and the blood pressure is unbelievable."

"I just checked his heart, Doctor. Very irregular."

"Let's take a look at him."