On dangerous ground

"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. Ta

"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 Ta

"Oxygen?" Jackson asked.

"Administered an hour ago. I gave it to him myself."

"Aye, but she wouldn't give me a cigarette." Jack Ta

"Now, Mr. Ta

Jackson leaned over to check the tube co

"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 Ta

"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."

Ta

"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. Ta

"I'll tell you what," Ta

"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?"

Ta

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?"

Ta

"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 Ta

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 Ta

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 Ta

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.