When the ropes were taken down and they could get on board, British policemen checked the papers of all the passengers very carefully, examining Karen’s newly reissued American passport with particular interest. When they held her aside and let the other travelers go ahead she knew that she was in for trouble.
“What’s the problem?” she asked as one of the harbor policemen picked up a phone inside his little booth and made a call.
“Just making a security check, miss,” he replied politely. “Not to worry.”
“But why the delay? I’m going to visit a hospital patient in Belfast and this is the last run of the day. Time is very important.”
“Won’t take a moment,” he answered and then lowered his voice as he spoke into the phone.
Karen tapped her foot restlessly, staring out at the rolling, brackish water as the ferry’s engines idled, waiting for the run it looked like she was going to miss.
The policeman hung up the phone and returned to her, handing back her passport and then touching his cap politely.
“There you go, miss,” he said. “Sorry to have troubled you.” He smiled slightly, looking into her eyes. He was young, his speech mercifully comprehensible, clipped and clear.
“What was all that about?” she asked, annoyed, as she stowed her passport in her purse.
“You’re an American with an Irish surname,” he said, shrugging.
“So?” she asked, bewildered.
He glanced around him, as if making sure he would not be overheard, and then answered quietly, “Let’s just say that sometimes such people aren’t crossing the water just to see the sights.”
Karen stared at him for a long moment before she realized what he meant. They’d been checking to see if she had any terrorist connections.
The idea was so outrageous that she almost laughed, and then realized that to do so would be in bad taste. It was a serious matter and not entirely implausible; she’d read that antigovernment groups in Ulster frequently used women as couriers and that they had a following in the States.
“I see,” she replied neutrally. “May I go now?”
“Step right for the lower level,” he said, nodding. Karen followed his directive and was the last passenger to cross the makeshift gangway before it was removed. She felt the ferry’s throttle open as the boat began to inch forward. When she looked around to pay her fare she saw that someone came to take it after the trip was underway, as they did on the London buses. She fished in her bag for the British pounds she’d gotten for dollars at the airport, wondering what the passage was and hoping they didn’t require the exact amount, as in New York. She was so ill prepared for this sudden trip that she hadn’t even stopped to check the rate of exchange for the money. Karen couldn’t believe anybody would cheat her. The British people were associated in her mind with wartime newsreels featuring Winston Churchill’s bulwark integrity. She supposed there had to be a few criminals in the mix somewhere but was confident she wouldn’t run into any of them.
The ferry had an enclosed central mall on both levels, featuring rows of seats and glass windows allowing a view of the water all the way around. Encircling this middle portion was a promenade with a wooden deck and a railing that permitted those passengers who wished to remain outside to make the trip in the open air. Karen climbed to the top and hung over the railing, watching the English coastline vanish into the gathering dark behind her and letting the cool, damp breeze caress her face. She tried to remember that it was less than twelve hours since she’d received the call from Mrs. Schanley in Grace’s kitchen, but the distance she had come made the passage of time meaningless. Fog rolled in and she turned up the collar of her coat, blinking as the heavy dew settled on her lashes, obscuring her vision. Somewhere over the water the mist condensed even further, and when she arrived in Belfast it was raining.
She would soon discover that in Belfast it was usually raining. She walked through the large open dockside building, which reminded her of an airplane hangar, carrying her single bag in one hand and her purse over her shoulder. There was a cab stand just outside the exit, which opened onto a cobbled street, the main thoroughfare for the shipyard district. Karen flagged a taxi, a Ford Cortina that sported a sign advertising Livery. The cabbie jumped out, grabbing her bag before she had a chance to say a word. He stowed it in the boot of the car and then turned to face her, his face lined and weary but his brown eyes intelligent, aware.
“And where would you be going, miss?” he asked. He had an accent like Mrs. Schanley’s, just a touch different from the “Mr. Gallagher-Mr. Sheehan” brogue she associated with the Irish. His speech reminded her that his country was part of the United Kingdom, entirely separate now from the Republic, its neighbor to the South.
“Mercy Hospital, Donegall Place,” she answered. “I hope it isn’t far.”
“Certainly not,” he answered, opening the back door and holding it for her. “Get in.”
Karen obeyed, and he took off almost before her feet were inside the car. She soon discovered why the Irish were frontline claimants for the dubious title of worst drivers in Europe; he pulled in front of oncoming traffic and dodged lorries three times the size of his taxi with suicidal aplomb. She was cringing, hanging on to her seat with both hands, when he said, “You’d be an American by the sound of you.”
“Yes,” she whispered as they shot across an intersection, barely missing a double decker bus. Its driver shook his fist and screamed epithets that they mercifully could not hear.
“And what’s your business here?” he asked, glancing in the rearview mirror at her. The light at the next crossing changed as they approached it and he jammed on the brakes, hurling Karen’s purse onto the floor.
“I’m visiting someone in the hospital,” she managed to say, scrabbling for her bag and praying for a quick end to her perilous journey.
“That’s a terrible pity,” he sympathized. “Is this your first time in the North?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you should be ready for some fearful sights,” he advised. “We’ll be passing the roundabout in a bit. The post office there went up like a Jerry bomb just yesterday. They had a Tory dignitary visiting, I’m told, an M.P. who’d made quite a few killing speeches against the IRA. A bunch of provos took the station over and held him till some hired boyos broke him out. Couple of them got it, though; I saw the pictures on the telly.” He pointed suddenly. “Look sharp—there you go. The coppers still have the lines up.”
Karen looked where he pointed, her throat closing. This had to be where Steven was hurt. The rubble from a recent conflagration littered the street and the area was roped off from pedestrian traffic, the entrance blocked by a police van. Even in the dark and the rain she could see the aftermath of conflict in the scene.
“Not exactly like home, is it?” the cabbie asked dryly.
“We have our problems too,” Karen answered quietly.
“Will you be staying the night?” he said as he pulled up to the hospital entrance.
“Yes.”
“I’d mind where you go,” he cautioned her. “This district is no place for a young lady the likes of you to be larking about at night.”
Karen had no idea what “larking about” was, but she didn’t think she’d be doing it. “Can you recommend a hotel?” she asked.
He thought about it as he shifted into neutral and the little car idled under him. “The Ulster Arms is a decent place,” he said. “Not too dear, and respectable.”
She liked the way he pronounced “decent” as if it were spelled “day cent.”
“Thanks for the advice,” she said, getting out and handing him a fistful of bills. “Take your fare, and a tip for yourself.”
“Meela murder,” he groaned, “never tell a working man to set his own price. Did you not look at the meter?”
Karen did, but it was all in pounds and pence, the sum a mystery.
Seeing her confusion, he separated two bills from the rest and hande
d her the difference. “Good luck to you, miss,” he said fervently. “I’ve a mind you’ll be needing it.”
“Good night,” Karen called after him as he peeled off into the rainy night, his tires protesting.
The stone facade of the hospital loomed before her, its entry lit by Grecian style electric torches on either side of the main door. It looked solidly built, but old, like Bellevue in New York, and also like Bellevue took up critical space in the heart of a city. She walked up the wide steps, flanked on either side by large religious statues, and went in the front door, stopping by a desk marked Patient Information.
The woman seated there glanced up politely. “Yes?”
“I’d like to know where Steven Colter’s room is,” Karen said. “He was admitted, oh, I guess last night or early this morning.”
The woman, who wore a name tag marked Mrs. Dunphy, looked through a box of index cards on the desk before her. No personal computers for Mercy Hospital.
“What would that spelling be?” Mrs. Dunphy asked.
Karen realized she didn’t know. Hoping that it looked the way it sounded she took a guess.
Mrs. Dunphy removed a card from her collection. “Here he is,” she said, “but he’s in critical care, miss. He can’t be having any visitors.”
“Oh, but Mrs. Schanley called me and told me to come,” Karen said, not to be denied her goal after a transatlantic trip in search of it. “She said he asked for me.”
“That well may be,” said Mrs. Dunphy, who knew her hospital procedure as well as her King James Bible. “But visitors are not permitted...”
“Can I see Mrs. Schanley?” Karen interrupted anxiously.
“Mrs. Schanley went home at five,” Mrs. Dunphy informed her primly.
Karen closed her eyes. Of course. It was after 8:00 p.m.
“Will she be in tomorrow?” Karen asked.
“Certainly. Nine o’clock.”
“Thank you,” Karen said hastily. “Thank you very much.” She turned and went toward the door again, waiting until Mrs. Dunphy became occupied with another questioner. Then she fled to the bank of elevators she had spotted around the corner, stopping a uniformed nurse who walked out of one as the doors opened.
“Could you tell me where the intensive care ward is?” Karen asked her.
“Cardiac, postnatal, post surgical?” the nurse said briskly.
“Uh, post surgical,” Karen replied.
“Third floor, step left as you leave the lift,” the woman replied. “You can ask at the desk. You’ll see it right enough.”
Karen thanked her and took her place on the old- fashioned elevator, which actually closed with a grille, something she’d seen only in movies. The “lift” creaked and groaned as it rose, and Karen hoped that the inspection sticker fixed to the wall was recent. She didn’t have the nerve to check. The nurse’s station was in plain view as Karen reached the third floor. She went to the desk and waited. One of the nurses, a middle aged matronly blonde, finished making notes on a chart and looked up at Karen. The woman was attired in a pale blue uniform with a full white apron and a pleated gauzy cap that looked like an inverted muffin cup.
“Yes, miss?” she said.
“Is this the intensive care ward?” Karen asked, praying that she would be able to talk her way past this starched bastion of her profession.
“It is. May I help you?”
“I want to see Steven Colter,” Karen said baldly, deciding on the direct, confrontational approach. The woman, whose name was Miss Mandeville, didn’t look susceptible to the anguished pleas of a weary traveler. She looked, in fact, like she arm wrestled the all-Ulster rugby team before breakfast.
“The American?” Miss Mandeville said. “The one brought in from the trouble in Castlebar Street?”
“Yes. Please. I know it’s against the rules, but I’m very concerned and it would really help if I could just see him....”
“And have you come all the way from the States?” Miss Mandeville asked. She crossed her arms over her full bosom and peered at Karen narrowly, her pale blue eyes missing nothing.
Karen nodded wearily. She was tired and hungry and so worried that if they didn’t let her see him soon she was ready to take on Miss Mandeville with a club.
“Well then, you must have a look,” Miss Mandeville said, bustling out from behind the waist high counter and motioning to Karen to follow.
Karen stared for a moment, disbelieving, then almost ran to keep up with her.
“Is he,” she began, then stopped. “What’s his condition?” she amended quietly, as they walked down the white tiled hall.
“Rallying, I should think,” Miss Mandeville said. “It was a bit dicey at first, I must say. I was on duty when he arrived and he’d lost so much blood that surgery had to be postponed until he could be transfused. But his color’s good now, and his blood pressure’s back up, with a nice strong pulse.” She turned to Karen as she opened the door of a private room, isolated at a bend in the corridor. “I’ve an idea he’s a tough Yank.”
“Not as tough as he thinks,” Karen replied. “No one is.”
Miss Mandeville stepped aside and let Karen precede her into the room.
Karen halted at the foot of the wrought iron bed and tried not to show what she was feeling. But Miss Mandeville had been around hospital visitors far too long.
“Not given to fainting, are you?” she asked Karen sharply.
“I have never fainted in my life,” Karen replied calmly, thinking that she hoped she wasn’t about to break that tradition now.
Colter was hooked up to so many tubes and machines that he looked like a large, tanned, severely damaged android under repair. A heart monitor beeped on one side of the bed while intravenous fluids, blood and saline and glucose, dripped into his arm from a stand on the other. He was naked to the waist, his brown skin contrasting sharply with the white sheets. A large gauze dressing covered the left side of his torso, extending to his midsection, just below the electrodes taped to his chest. The nurse had said his color was good, but his skin had a sallow cast beneath the tan that Karen found alarming. He was so still that he seemed strapped to the bed, immobilized by all the equipment. His bright hair, usually so shiny and smooth, was matted and dull, spread on the pillow like dirty straw. His long sandy lashes lay lifelessly on his cheeks, and his lips were parted slightly, dry and pale. But even the injury and all the indignities modern medical science had inflicted on him couldn’t make him ugly. He was still beautiful.
“He isn’t in a coma, is he?” Karen asked fearfully.
“No, no, don’t fret yourself about that,” Miss Mandeville replied. “He’s just sedated, it’s the drugs keeping him under. He should come out of it within a day or so.”
“Will he be in a lot of pain?” Karen murmured.
Miss Mandeville didn’t answer and Karen wished she hadn’t asked.
“Can I stay in here with him for a while?”
The nurse shook her head firmly. “I’m afraid not. This has to be it for tonight.”
“What about tomorrow?” Karen asked anxiously.
Miss Mandeville thought about it for a moment. “I’ll leave word that you can see him for a brief bit.”
“You won’t get into trouble, will you?” Karen said, for the first time remembering that the woman had broken the rules to help her.
Miss Mandeville drew herself up to her full five feet two inches and announced, “I’m the nursing supervisor on this floor, miss. Only doctor can change my orders, and he’ll permit it if I will.”
“Oh, thank you, thank you,” Karen said, effusively grateful. “I’m sure you’re taking very good care of him, of course, but I imagined all sorts of things and it means so much to be able to see him.”
“You’re very fond of him, aren’t you?” Miss Mandeville asked.
Karen met her eyes, then looked away. “It’s crazy,” she answered. “The truth of it is I hardly know him.”
“Well, that’s the way of i
t sometimes,” Miss Mandeville answered softly, and Karen glanced at her sharply. The other woman’s expression was wise, and Karen realized that her sober, no nonsense appearance now did not preclude a youth that had been far different.
“Come away, now,” Miss Mandeville said, and they left the room together, pausing outside in the corridor.
“I’ll be back in the morning,” Karen said.
“I’ll leave the orders,” Miss Mandeville replied.
“I appreciate what you’re doing, Miss Mandeville,” Karen said.
“Not at all, not at all. Good night to you, and don’t fret. He’s on his way back. You can rest easy about that.”
Karen left the hospital feeling better than she had since before Mrs. Schanley’s phone call. She fled past Mrs. Dunphy at the reception desk and emerged into a chill, light rain, glancing down the street for the sign indicating the Ulster Arms.
She found it half a block away and walked into the lobby just before nine in the evening. The place looked slightly threadbare but very clean, and the desk clerk showed her to a room on the third floor overlooking the street.
“Can I get anything to eat?” she asked him as he put her bag on the floor next to the bed.
“Dining room’s closed, miss. Would you be wanting a snack?”
“That’ll be fine. What’s available?”
“Biscuits and tea, toasted cheese sandwich?” he suggested.
“Great, send that up to the room, please.” Since she’d seen Colter alive and apparently on the mend her appetite had returned.
“Just as you say.” He bowed out, and Karen went to the window to look down at the rainy thoroughfare below.
Maybe tomorrow she could talk to him, tell him that she’d come as he’d requested, that everything would soon be all right.
Karen turned back to the bed and took off the spread, exposing a woolen blanket and thick, ribbed sheets. She undressed and put on her robe and was washing her face in the bathroom when the clerk knocked with her tray.
Men of Intrgue A Trilogy Page 31