On Dangerous Ground (6 page)

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.”

Jack Tanner’s face was drawn and wasted, the sparse hair snow-white. His eyes were closed as he breathed in short gasps, a rattling sound in his throat at intervals.

“Oxygen?” Jackson asked.

“Administered an hour ago. I gave it to him myself.”

“Aye, but she wouldn’t give me a cigarette.” Jack Tanner opened his eyes. “Is that no the terrible thing, Doctor?”

“Now, Mr. Tanner,” Sister Agnes reproved him gently. “You know that’s not allowed.”

Jackson leaned over to check the tube connections and noticed the scar on the right side of the chest. “Would that have been a bullet wound?” he asked.

“Aye, it was so. Shot in the lung while I was serving in the Highland Light Infantry. That was before Dunkirk in nineteen-forty. I’d have died if the Laird hadn’t got me out, and him wounded so bad he lost an eye.”

“The Laird, you say?” Jackson was suddenly interested, but Tanner started to cough so harshly that he almost had a convulsion. Jackson grabbed for the oxygen mask. “Breathe nice and slowly. That’s it.” He removed it after a while and Tanner smiled weakly. “I’ll be back,” Jackson told him and went out.

“You said the daughter lives in Queens?”

“That’s right, Doctor.”

“Don’t let’s waste time. Send a cab for her now and put it on my account. I don’t think he’s got long. I’ll go back and sit with him.”

Jackson pulled a chair forward. “Now, what were you saying about the Laird?”

“That was Major Ian Campbell, Military Cross and Bar, the bravest man I ever knew. Laird of Loch Dhu Castle in the Western Highlands of Scotland as his ancestors had been for centuries before him.”

“Loch Dhu?”

“That’s Gaelic. The black loch. To us who grew up there it was always the Place of Dark Waters.”

“So you knew the Laird as a boy?”

“We were boys together. Learned to shoot grouse, deer, and the fishing was the best in the world, and then the war came. We’d both served in the reserve before it all started, so we went out to France straight away.”

“That must have been exciting stuff?”

“Nearly the end of us, but afterwards they gave the Laird the staff job working for Mountbatten. You’ve heard of him?”

“Earl Mountbatten, the one the IRA blew up?”

“The bastards, and after all he did in the war. He was Supreme Commander in South East Asia with the Laird as one of his aides and he took me with him.”

“That must have been interesting.”

Tanner managed a smile. “Isn’t it customary to offer a condemned man a cigarette?”

“That’s true.”

“And I am condemned, aren’t I?”

Jackson hesitated, then took out a pack of cigarettes. “Just as we all are, Mr. Tanner.”

“I’ll tell you what,” Tanner said. “Give me one of those and I’ll tell you about the Chungking Covenant. All those years ago I gave the Laird my oath, but it doesn’t seem to matter now.”

“The what?” Jackson asked.

“Just one, Doc, it’s a good story.”

Jackson turned off the oxygen, lit a cigarette, and held it to his lips. The old man inhaled, coughed, then inhaled again. “Christ, that’s wonderful.” He lay back. “Now let’s see, when did it all start?”

Tanner lay with his eyes closed, very weak now. “What happened after the crash?” Jackson asked.

The old man opened his eyes. “The Laird was hurt bad. The brain, you see. He was in a coma in a Delhi hospital for three months, and I stayed with him as his batman. They sent us back to London by sea, and by then the end of the war was in sight. He spent months in the brain-damage unit for servicemen at Guy’s Hospital, but he never really recovered, and he had burns from the crash as well and almost total loss of memory. He came so close to death early in forty-six that I packed his things and sent them home to Castle Dhu.”

“And did he die?”

“Not for another twenty years. Back home we went to the estate. He wandered the place like a child. I tended his every want.”

“What about family?”

“Oh, he never married. He was engaged to a lassie who was killed in the London blitz in forty. There was his sister, Lady Rose. Although everybody calls her Lady Katherine. Her husband was a baronet killed in the desert campaign. She ran the estate then and still does though she’s eighty now. She lives in the gate lodge. Sometimes rents the big house for the shooting season to rich Yanks or Arabs.”

“And the Chungking Covenant?’

“Nothing came of that. Lord Louis and Mao never managed to get together again.”

“But the fourth copy in the Laird’s Bible, you saved that. Wasn’t it handed over to the authorities?”

“It stayed where it was in his Bible. The Laird’s affair, after all, and he not up to telling anyone much of anything.” He shrugged. “And then the years had rolled by and it didn’t seem to matter.”

“Did Lady Katherine ever come to know of it?”

“I never told her. I never spoke of it to anyone and he was not capable and, as I said, it didn’t seem to matter any longer.”

“But you’ve told me?”

Tanner smiled weakly. “That’s because you’re a nice boy who talked to me and gave me a cigarette. A long time ago, Chungking in the rain and Mountbatten and your General Stillwell.”

“And the Bible?” Jackson asked.

“Like I told you, I sent all his belongings home when I thought he was going to die.”

“So the Bible went back to Loch Dhu?”

“You could say that.” For some reason Tanner started to laugh and that led to him choking again.

Jackson got the oxygen mask and the door opened and Sister Agnes ushered in a middle-aged couple. “Mr. and Mrs. Grant.”

The woman hurried forward to take Tanner’s hand. He managed a smile, breathing deeply, and she started to talk to him in a low voice and in a language totally unfamiliar to Jackson.

He turned to her husband, a large, amiable-looking man. “It’s Gaelic, Doctor, they always spoke Gaelic together. He was on a visit. His wife died of cancer last year back in Scotland.”

At that moment Tanner stopped breathing. His daughter cried out and Jackson passed her gently to her husband and bent over the patient. After a while he turned to face them. “I’m sorry, but he’s gone,” he said simply.

There it might have ended except for the fact that having read the article in the
New York Times
on Hong Kong and its relations with China, Tony Jackson was struck by the coincidence of Tanner’s story. This became doubly important because Tanner had died in the early hours of Sunday morning and Jackson always had Sunday lunch, his hospital shifts permitting, at his grandfather’s home in Little Italy where his mother, since the death of his grandmother, kept house for her father in some style.

Jackson’s grandfather, after whom he had been named, was called Antonio Mori and he had been born by only a whisker in America because his pregnant mother had arrived from Palermo in Sicily just in time to produce her baby at Ellis Island. Twenty-four hours only, but good enough and little Antonio was American born.

His father had friends of the right sort, friends in the Mafia. Antonio had worked briefly as a laborer until these friends had put him into first the olive oil and then the restaurant business. He had kept his mouth shut and always done as he was told, finally achieving wealth and prominence in the construction industry.

His daughter hadn’t married a Sicilian. He accepted that, just as he accepted the death of his wife from leukemia. His son-in-law, a rich Anglo-Saxon attorney, gave the family respectability. His death was a convenience. It brought Mori and his beloved daughter together again plus his fine grandson, so brilliant that he had gone to Harvard. No matter that he was a saint and chose medicine. Mori could make enough money for all of them because he was Mafia, an important member of the Luca family whose leader, Don Giovanni Luca, in spite of having returned to Sicily, was
Capo di tutti Capi
. Boss of all the Bosses in the whole of the Mafia. The respect that earned for Mori couldn’t be paid for.

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.