The Savage Day - Jack Higgins [60]
'We'd like to stay for a while, Sister,' I said. 'Until after the operation, if you've no objection?'
She hesitated, then made her decision. 'Very well, I'll send for you when it's all over.' She opened the door, paused, a hand on the knob and turned to Binnie who had slumped into a chair, shoulders bowed. 'I spent five years at a mission hospital in the Congo, young man, so gunshot wounds are not unknown to me. A small prayer might be in order, however.'
But I was long past that kind of thing myself. Perhaps there was a God who cared, although from my own experience, I doubted it. But I knew a professional when I saw one and beyond any shadow of a doubt, if Sister Teresa couldn't save him, no one could.
I left Binnie and went out to the Land-Rover to check on our prisoner. When I opened the door I found that he was not only conscious again, but had managed to roll over on his back. His face was streaked with dried blood and his nose, from the look of it, was very possibly broken.
He looked up at me, dazed and more than a little frightened. 'Where am I?'
I said, 'You're on the wrong side of the Border in the hands of the IRA. Lie very still and quiet, there's a good lad, and you might come out of this with a whole skin.'
He seemed to shrink inside himself. I got up and went back to the ante-room.
We weren't left alone for very long. After twenty minutes or so, a nun appeared and took us down the corridor to a washroom where we could clean up. Then we were taken to a large dining-room with several rows of tables. We had the whole place to ourselves, two nuns standing patiently by to serve us while we ate.
Afterwards, we were escorted back to the ante-room. It was a long wait, in fact, a good two hours before a nun appeared and beckoned us.
We followed her along the corridor to another small room at the far end. Again there was a glass wall, this time looking in at a side ward. There were half a dozen beds, but only one occupant, Michael Cork, and he was in an oxygen tent.
A couple of nuns knelt at the end of the bed in prayer, two more leaned over the patient. One of them turned and came towards us. It was Sister Teresa and she still wore a surgeon's white cap and gown, a mask suspended around her neck.
She looked tired, lines etched deeply from either side of her nose to the limits of her mouth. I think I knew what she was going to say even before she opened the glass door and joined us.
'He's going to be all right?' Binnie said.
'On the contrary,' she told him calmly. 'He's going to die and very soon now. As I had feared, there was damage to the heart as well as to the lungs, but much worse than I would have thought possible.'
Binnie turned away. I said, 'He's a good man, Sister. A fine man. I know the Church does not approve of the IRA's actions, but he deserves a priest.'
'I've sent for one,' she said simply. 'But first, he wishes to speak to you.'
'Are you certain?'
'He is quite rational though very weak. He said I was to bring the Major quickly. There isn't much time.'
She opened the glass door and I followed her through. I paused beside the oxygen tent and waited, the voices of the nuns in prayer a soft murmur. Cork opened his eyes and looked up at me. Sister Teresa unzipped the plastic flap that we might speak.
'I'm going, Vaughan,' he whispered. 'At the end of things at last and full of doubts. I'm not sure if I've been right. If it's all been worth while. Do you follow me?'
'I think so.'
'Connolly and Pearse - Big Mick Collins. They were names to conjure with, but what came after? Did it really measure up to their sacrifice?' He closed his eyes. 'I could have been wrong all these years. I can't risk another death on my conscience.'
'Norah?' I said.
He opened his eyes. 'Get back to Stramore if you have to walk through hell to do it. Tell Barry that if he wants that bloody gold he'll have to swim for it. It's six fathoms down in the middle of Horseshoe Bay on Magil Island.