Danger Zone (10 page)

“Tell him I went to England to visit a friend,” Karen said piously. “That’s not a lie.”

“Except you’re not staying in England and the friend isn’t Linda.”

“Details,” Karen replied. “I have to get some clothes together. Where did I put that stuff that arrived last week from Almeria?”

“It’s in the basement,” Grace said, standing up. “Come on. I’ll do the laundry so you can pack.”

“You’ll help me?” Karen said, brightening.

“I can’t think of any way to stop you,” her sister replied darkly.

They went down the stairs to the cellar, and by early that afternoon Karen was on a plane out of Kennedy in New York to Liverpool, England.

She slept during most of the five hour flight and didn’t see much of industrial Liverpool, about which she knew nothing except that the Beatles had originated there. In the autumn dusk it seemed to be a gray, grimy city, filled with working class people and brick factories spewing black dust into the damp, chilly air. Karen took a cab directly from the airport to the waterfront, passing rows of long, low tenements where children played in the narrow streets or in the fenced, postage stamp yards. Laundry lines flying multicolored flags were strung from one house to the other like utility wires, and the factory wives gossiped over the barriers to their adjoining properties as they took in their wash. Karen looked around as they drove, absorbing it all, fascinated with this glimpse of life in a town she had never seen before and probably never would see again.

The docks were crowded at the end of the business day and she almost lost her way because, incredibly, she could barely understand the directions she was given. Although the people ostensibly spoke English, their accent was so thick it made her native tongue seem like a foreign language. She finally found signs saying: Belfast Ferry, Queue Up Here, and got in line behind a group of people waiting for the boat.

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 handed 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.