by Tom Clancy
“Jack’s in good physical shape, except for a few loose marbles in his head,” Cathy nodded, an edge on her weary voice. “He jogs. No allergies except ragweed, and he heals rapidly.”
“Yeah,” Ryan confirmed. “Her teethmarks go away in under a week, usually.” He thought this uproariously funny, but no one laughed.
“Good,” Sir Charles said. “So, Doctor, you can see that your husband is in good hands. I will leave the two of you together for five minutes. After that, I wish that he should get some rest, and you look as though you could use some also.” The surgeon moved off with Bette Davis in his wake.
Cathy moved closer to him, changing yet again from cool professional to concerned wife. Ryan told himself for perhaps the millionth time how lucky he was to have this girl. Caroline Ryan had a small, round face, short butter-blond hair, and the world’s prettiest blue eyes. Behind those eyes was a person with intelligence at least the equal of his own, someone he loved as much as a man could. He would never understand how he’d won her. Ryan was painfully aware that on his best day his own undistinguished features, a heavy beard and a lantern jaw, made him look like a dark-haired Dudley Do-Right of the Mounties. She played pussy-cat to his crow. Jack tried to reach out for her hand, but was foiled by straps. Cathy took his.
“Love ya, babe,” he said softly.
“Oh, Jack.” Cathy tried to hug him. She was foiled by the cast that he couldn’t even see. “Jack, why the hell did you do that?”
He had already decided how to answer that. “It’s over and I’m still alive, okay? How’s Sally?”
“I think she’s finally asleep. She’s downstairs with a policeman.” Cathy did look tired. “How do you think she is, Jack? Dear God, she saw you killed almost. You scared us both to death.” Her china-blue eyes were rimmed in red, and her hair looked terrible, Jack saw. Well, she never was able to do much of anything with her hair. The surgical caps always ruined it.
“Yeah, I know. Anyway, it doesn’t look like I’ll be doing much more of that for a while,” he grunted. “Matter of fact, it doesn’t look like I’ll be doing much of anything for a while.” That drew a smile. It was good to see her smile.
“Fine. You’re supposed to conserve your energy. Maybe this’ll teach you a lesson-and don’t tell me about all those strange hotel beds going to waste.” She squeezed his hand. Her smile turned impish. “We’ll probably work something out in a few weeks. How do I look?”
“Like hell.” Jack laughed quietly. “I take it the doc was a somebody?”
He saw his wife relax a little. “You might say that. Sir Charles Scott is one of the best orthopods in the world. He trained Professor Knowles—he did a super job on you. You’re lucky to have an arm at all, you know—my God!”
“Easy, babe. I’m going to live, remember?”
“I know, I know.”
“It’s going to hurt, isn’t it?”
Another smile. “Just a bit. Well. I’ve got to put Sally down. I’ll be back tomorrow.” She bent down to kiss him. Skin full of drugs, oxygen tube, dry mouth, and all, it felt good. God, he thought, God, how I love this girl. Cathy squeezed his hand one more time and left.
The Bette Davis nurse came back. It was not a satisfactory trade.
“I’m ‘Doctor’ Ryan, too, you know,” Jack said warily.
“Very good, Doctor. It is time for you to get some rest. I’ll be here to look after you all night. Now sleep, Doctor Ryan.”
On this happy note Jack closed his eyes. Tomorrow would be a real bitch, he was sure. It would keep.
2
Cops and Royals
Ryan awoke at 6:35 A.M. He knew that because it was announced by a radio disc-jockey whose voice faded to an American Country & Western song of the type which Ryan avoided at home by listening to all-news radio stations. The singer was admonishing mothers not to allow their sons to become cowboys, and Ryan’s first muddled thought of the day was, Surely they don’t have that problem over here ... do they? His mind drifted along on this tangent for half a minute, wondering if the Brits had C&W bars with sawdust on the floors, mechanical bull rides, and office workers who strutted around with pointy-toed boots and five-pound belt buckles.... Why not? he concluded. Yesterday I saw something right out of a Dodge City movie.
Jack would have been just as happy to slide back into sleep. He tried closing his eyes and willing his body to relax, but it was no use. The flight from Dulles had left early in the morning, barely three hours after he’d awakened. He hadn’t slept on the plane—it was something he simply could not do—but flying always exhausted him, and he’d gone to bed soon after arriving at the hotel. Then how long had he been unconscious in the hospital? Too long, he realized. Ryan was all slept out. He would have to begin facing the day.
Someone off to his right was playing a radio just loudly enough to hear. Ryan turned his head and was able to see his shoulder—
Shoulder, he thought, that’s why I’m here. But where’s here? It was a different room. The ceiling was smooth plaster, recently painted. It was dark, the only illumination coming from a light on the table next to the bed, perhaps enough to read by. There seemed to be a painting on the watt—at least a rectangle darker than the wall, which wasn’t white. Ryan took this in, consciously delaying his examination of his left arm until no excuses remained. He turned his head slowly to the left. He saw his arm first of all. It was sticking up at an angle, wrapped in a plaster and fiberglass cast that went all the way to his hand. His fingers stuck out like an afterthought, about the same shade of gray as the plaster-gauze wrappings. There was a metal ring at the back of the wrist, and in the ring was a hook whose chain led to a metal frame that arced over the bed like a crane.
First things first. Ryan tried to wiggle his fingers. It took several seconds before they acknowledged their subservience to his central nervous system. Ryan let out a long breath and closed his eyes to thank God for that. About where his elbow was, a metal rod angled downward to join the rest of the cast, which, he finally appreciated, began at his neck and went diagonally to his waist. It left his arm sticking out entirely on its own and made Ryan look like half a bridge. The cast was not tight on his chest, but touched almost everywhere, and already he had itches where he couldn’t scratch. The surgeon had said something about immobilizing the shoulder, and, Ryan thought glumly, he hadn’t been kidding. His shoulder ached in a distant sort of way with the promise of more to come. His mouth tasted like a urinal, and the rest of his body was stiff and sore. He turned his head the other way.
“Somebody over there?” he asked softly.
“Oh, hello.” A face appeared at the edge of the bed. Younger than Ryan, mid-twenties or so, and lean. He was dressed casually, his tie loose in his collar, and the edge of a shoulder holster showed under his jacket. “How are you feeling, sir?”
Ryan attempted a smile, wondering how successful it was. “About how I look, probably. Where am I, who are you—first, is there a glass of water in this place?”
The policeman poured ice water from a plastic jug into a plastic cup. Ryan reached out with his right hand before he noticed that it wasn’t tied down as it had been the last time he awoke. He could now feel the place where the IV catheter had been. Jack greedily sucked the water from the straw. It was only water, but no beer ever tasted better after a day’s yardwork. “Thanks, pal.”
“My name is Anthony Wilson. I’m supposed to look after you. You are in the VIP suite of St. Thomas’s Hospital. Do you remember why you’re here, sir?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Ryan nodded. “Can you unhook me from this thing? I have to go.” The other reminder of the IV.
“I’ll ring the sister—here.” Wilson squeezed the button that was pinned to the edge of Ryan’s pillow.
Less than fifteen seconds later a nurse came through the door and flipped on the overhead lights. The blaze of light dazzled Jack for a moment before he saw it was a different nurse. Not Bette Davis, this one was young and pretty, with the eager, p
rotective look common to nurses. Ryan had seen it before, and hated it.
“Ah, we’re awake,” she observed brightly. “How are we feeling?”
“Great,” Ryan grumped. “Can you unhook me? I have to go to the john.”
“We’re not supposed to move just yet, Doctor Ryan. Let me fetch you something.” She disappeared out the door before he could object. Wilson watched her leave with an appraising look. Cops and nurses, Ryan thought. His dad had married a nurse; he’d met her after bringing a gunshot victim into the emergency room.
The nurse—her name tag said KITTIWAKE—returned in under a minute bearing a stainless steel urinal as though it were a priceless gift, which under the circumstances, it was, Ryan admitted to himself. She lifted the covers on the bed and suddenly Jack realized that his hospital gown was not really on, but just tied loosely around his neck—worse, the nurse was about to make the necessary adjustments for him to use the urinal. Ryan’s right hand shot downward under the covers to take it away from her. He thanked God for the second time this morning that he was able, barely, to reach down far enough.
“Could you, uh, excuse me for a minute?” Ryan willed the girl out of the room, and she went, smiling her disappointment. He waited for the door to close completely before continuing. In deference to Wilson he stifled his sigh of relief. Kittiwake was back through the door after counting to sixty.
“Thank you.” Ryan handed her the receptacle and she disappeared out the door. It had barely swung shut when she was back again. This time she stuck a thermometer in his mouth and grabbed his wrist to take his pulse. The thermometer was one of the new electronic sort, and both tasks were completed in fifteen seconds. Ryan asked for the score, but got a smile instead of an answer. The smile remained fixed as she made the entries on his chart. When this task was fulfilled, she made a minor adjustment in the covers, beaming at Ryan. Little Miss Efficiency, Ryan told himself. This girl is going to be a real pain in the ass.
“Is there anything I might get you, Doctor Ryan?” she asked. Her brown eyes belied the wheat-colored hair. She was cute. She had that dewy look. Ryan was unable to remain angry with pretty women, and hated them for it. Especially young nurses with that dewy look.
“Coffee?” he asked hopefully.
“Breakfast is not for another hour. Can I fetch you a cup of tea?”
“Fine.” It wasn’t, but it would get rid of her for a little while. Nurse Kittiwake breezed out the door with her ingenuous smile.
“Hospitals!” Ryan snarled when she was gone.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Wilson observed, the image of Nurse Kittiwake fresh in his mind.
“You ain’t the one getting your diapers changed.” Ryan grunted and leaned back into the pillow. It was useless to fight it, he knew. He smiled in spite of himself. Useless to fight it. He’d been through this twice before, both times with young, pretty nurses. Being grumpy only made them all the more eager to be overpoweringly nice—they had time on their side, time and patience enough to wear anyone down. He sighed out his surrender. It wasn’t worth the waste of energy. “So, you’re a cop, right? Special Branch?”
“No, sir. I’m with C-13, Anti-Terrorist Branch.”
“Can you fill me in on what happened yesterday? I kinda missed a few things.”
“How much do you remember, Doctor?” Wilson slid his chair closer. Ryan noted that he remained halfway facing the door, and kept his right hand free.
“I saw—well, I heard an explosion, a hand grenade, I think—and when I turned I saw two guys shooting the hell out of a Rolls-Royce. IRA, I guess. I took two of them out, and another one got away in a car. The cavalry arrived, and I passed out and woke up here. ”
“Not IRA. ULA—Ulster Liberation Army, a Maoist offshoot of the Provos. Nasty buggers. The one you killed was John Michael McCrory, a very bad boy from Londonderry—one of the chaps who escaped from the Maze last July. This is the first time he’s surfaced since. And the last”—Wilson smiled coldly—“we haven’t identified the other chap yet. That is, not as of when I came on duty three hours ago.”
“ULA?” Ryan shrugged. He remembered hearing the name, though he couldn’t talk about that. “The guy I—killed. He had an AK, but when I came around the car he was using a pistol. How come?”
“The fool jammed it. He had two full magazines taped end to end, like you see all the time in the movies, but like they trained us specifically not to do in the paras. We reckon he bashed it, probably when he came out of the car. The second magazine was bent at the top end—wouldn’t feed the rounds properly, you see. Damn good luck for you. You knew you were going after a chap with a Kalashnikov?” Wilson examined Ryan’s face closely.
Jack nodded. “Doesn’t sound real smart, does it?”
“You bloody fool.” Wilson said this just as Kittiwake came through the door with a tea tray. The nurse flashed the cop an emphatically disapproving look as she set the tray on the bedstand and wheeled it over. Kittiwake arranged things just so, and poured Ryan a cup with delicacy. Wilson had to do his own.
“So who was in the car, anyway?” Ryan asked. He noted strong reactions.
“You didn’t know?” Kittiwake was dumbfounded.
“There wasn’t much time to find out.” Ryan dropped two packets of brown sugar into his cup. His stirring stopped abruptly when Wilson answered his question.
“The Prince and Princess of Wales. And their new baby.”
Ryan’s head snapped around. “What?”
“You really didn’t know?” the nurse asked.
“You’re serious,” Ryan said quietly. They wouldn’t kid about this, would they?
“Too bloody right, I’m serious,” Wilson went on, his voice very even. Only his choice of words betrayed how deeply the affair disturbed him. “Except for you, they would all three be quite dead, and that makes you a bloody hero, Doctor Ryan.” Wilson sipped his tea neatly and fished out a cigarette.
Ryan set his cup down. “You mean you let them drive around here without a police or secret service—whatever you call it—without an escort?”
“Supposedly it was an unscheduled trip. Security arrangements for the Royals are not my department in any case. I would speculate, however, that those whose department it is will be rethinking a few things,” Wilson commented.
“They weren’t hurt?”
“No, but their driver was killed. So was their security escort from DPG—Diplomatic Protection Group—Charlie Winston. I knew Charlie. He had a wife, you know, and four children, all grown.”
Ryan observed that the Rolls should have had bulletproof glass.
Wilson grunted. “It did have bulletproof glass. Actually plastic, a complex polycarbonate material. Unfortunately, no one seems to have read what it said on the box. The guarantee is only for a year. Turns out that sunlight breaks the material down somehow or other. The windshield was no more use than ordinary safety glass. Our friend McCrory put thirty rounds into it, and it quite simply shattered, killing the driver first. The interior partition, thank God, had not been exposed to sunlight, and remained intact. The last thing Charlie did was push the button to put it up. That probably saved them, too—didn’t do Charlie much good, though. He had enough time to draw his automatic, but we don’t think he was able to get a shot off.”
Ryan thought back. There had been blood in the back of the Rolls—not just blood. The driver’s head had been blown apart, and his brains had scattered into the passenger compartment. Jack winced thinking about it. The escort had probably leaned over to push the button before defending himself.... Well, Jack thought, that’s what they pay them for. What a hell of a way to earn a living.
“It was fortunate that you intervened when you did. They both had hand grenades, you know.”
“Yeah, I saw one.” Ryan sipped away the last of his tea. “What the hell was I thinking about?” You weren’t thinking at all, Jack. That’s what you were thinking about.
Kittiwake saw Ryan go pale. “You feel quite all righ
t?” she asked.
“I guess.” Ryan grunted in wonderment. “Dumb as I was, I must feel pretty good—I ought to be dead.”
“Well, that most emphatically will not happen here.” She patted his hand. “Please ring me if you need anything.” Another beaming smile and she left.
Ryan was still shaking his head. “The other one got away?”
Wilson nodded. “We found the car near a tube station a few blocks away. It was stolen, of course. No real problem for him to get clean away. Disappear into the underground. Go to Heathrow, perhaps, and catch a plane to the continent—Brussels, say—then a plane to Ulster or the Republic, and a car the rest of the way home. That’s one route; there are others, and it’s impossible to cover them all. He was drinking beer last night, watching the news coverage on television in his favorite pub, most likely. Did you get a look at him?”
“No, just a shape. I didn’t even think to get the tag number—dumb. Right after that the redcoat came running up to me.” Ryan winced again. “Christ, I thought he’d put that pigsticker right through me. For a second there I could see it all—I do something right, then get wasted by a good guy.”
Wilson laughed. “You don’t know how lucky you were. The current guard force is from the Welsh Guards.”
“So?”
“His Royal Highness’s own regiment, as it were. He’s their colonel-in-chief. There you were with a pistol—how would you expect him to react?” Wilson stubbed out his cigarette. “Another piece of good luck, your wife and daughter came running up to you, and the soldier decides to wait a bit, just long enough for things to sort themselves out. Then our chap catches up with him and tells him to stand easy. And a hundred more of my chaps come swooping in.
“I hope you can appreciate this, Doctor. Here we were with three men dead, two others wounded, a Prince and Princess looking as though they’d been shot—your wife examined them on the scene, by the way, and pronounced them fit just before the ambulance arrived—a baby, a hundred witnesses each with his own version of what had just taken place. A bloody Yank—an Irish-American to boot!—whose wife claims he’s the chap in the white hat.” Wilson laughed again. “Total chaos!