On Dangerous Ground by Jack Higgins Read Free Book Online Page A

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.
     
THREE
     
    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