Suddenly, he knew where he was.
And then he saw her and felt her hand soothe his forehead and heard her voice again. 'Hugo,' she said. 'You're safe. Relax. Lie back. There is nothing to worry about. You must rest and get well.'
The digital wall clock read 2:23.
Kathleen, a warm, dark-haired woman in her early thirties, was changing his drip. On Linda Foley's initiative, she had been seconded from Intensive Care. Burke's patients tended to do better than most. She had the touch.
She finished her task and checked his pulse. She had an upside-down watch pinned to her uniform and she was looking at it as she counted silently. He liked the touch of her fingers and the clean, warm smell of her body. There was the mark of a recently removed ring on the third finger of her left hand.
'Can I get you something, Hugo?' she said very softly.
Fitzduane smiled. It was strange. The pain was still there but somehow remote. He felt rested and at peace. He lifted his hand and took hers. There was nothing sexual in the gesture. It was the kind of thing you might not do in broad daylight but which is somehow appropriate when it is two in the morning and the rest of the world seems asleep.
'Tell me about it,' he said sleepily. His fingers stroked the spot where the ring had been.
Kathleen laughed quietly. She was a very pretty woman, all the better for the signs of the passing of the years etched on her face. 'It doesn't work that way,' she said. 'You're supposed to do the talking. It doesn't do for a nurse to give away her secrets to a patient.'
'It takes away the mystique,' said Fitzduane quietly, with a smile, quoting what a nurse in Dublin had once told him. 'Patients want support and strength – solutions, not problems. It doesn’t do to get emotionally involved with a patient.' He grinned. 'One way or another, we move on.'
He started to laugh out loud. Outside in the corridor, the Ranger on duty heard the sound and felt mildly jealous. It would be nice to recline in bed with a pretty nurse as company. Then he contemplated what he had seen and heard about Fitzduane's injuries and decided that he had the better part of the bargain, after all.
The nurse came out of the room some ten minutes later and there was a smile on her face. She looked more relaxed, happier somehow. Earlier on, when he had checked her on screen before letting her through the double security barrier, the Ranger could have sworn she had been crying.
A message sounded in his earpiece, and he responded by pressing the transmit button in the day's coded response. Then he concentrated on the routines that the General had laid down to keep Fitzduane safe from another attack. The Ranger hadn't needed any reminders that lightning can strike as often as it takes. He had been one of the force that had relieved the siege of Fitzduane's castle three years earlier. As far as he was concerned, if you were a player in the war against terrorism, you were in a state of permanent danger.
Simply put, either you killed them or – sooner or later – they would inflict lethal force on you.
January 24
General Shane Kilmara – it was really rather nice being a general at last – thought that Fitzduane looked terrible.
On the other hand, he looked less terrible than three weeks earlier. The sense that you were looking only at a receptacle for tubes, electronics, and the drug industry was gone. Now Fitzduane looked mostly like a messed-up human who was still being stuck together. Shades of Frankenstein when he needed more work, only Fitzduane was better-looking.
He was pale, he'd lost a lot of weight, and he was strapped, plastered, and plugged into a drip and a mess of other hardware, but he was sitting up and his green-gray eyes had life in them again. And that was good. Also, he was talking. That, perhaps, wasn't so good. Hugo was a particularly bright human being, and his questions meant work. And tended to have consequences.
'Who and why?' said Fitzduane.
'How about ‘Good morning,’' said Kilmara. 'I haven't even sat down.' He pulled up an armchair to demonstrate his lack and began to nibble at Fitzduane's grapes.
It was curious how hard it was to talk to the sick. You tended to meet and deal with most people in full, or at least reasonable, health. A person laid low was like a stranger. You no longer possessed a common frame of reference. The same applied to a soldier on the battlefield. When he was mobile, he was fire support and valued. After injury he was a statistic, a casualty – and a liability. It wasn't very nice, but it was true. And like many things in life, there wasn't much you could do about it.
Fitzduane, it appeared, wasn't going to accept the convention. He might look like something the cat had chucked up behind the sofa, but his brain was working.
Kilmara formed the view that his friend – actually his closest friend, now he thought of it, except maybe for Adeline, who was his wife and therefore didn't actually count in that particular census – was on the mend; maybe. The medics were still hedging their bets.
But it was going to be a long haul. Being shot with a high-powered rifle tended to have that effect. As they used to say in Vietnam, 'A sucking chest wound is nature's way of telling you you've been hit.' Hugo had been hit twice, and it showed.
'Shane,' said Fitzduane. There was something about the tone.
Kilmara was caught in mid-munch. He swallowed the pits.
'No speeches,' he said. 'I embarrass easily.'
Fitzduane was silent. 'In case I forgot to mention it,' he said, after a very long pause, 'thank you.'
'Is that it?' said Kilmara, sounding incredulous. 'Is that all?' He grinned. 'Truth to tell, we were lucky. Well, relatively lucky.'
Fitzduane raised an eyebrow. 'That's a matter or perspective,' he said. 'Now let's get to work. The white suits have cut back on the pills and needles, so I'm beginning to be able to string together a thought or two, and these first thoughts are not kindly. I want whoever is behind this. You've got some of the puppets and that's nice, but that's not what counts. What really matters is nailing the puppetmaster.'
Two nurses came in and started to do things to Fitzduane before Kilmara could respond. They asked Kilmara to wait outside. When he came back in Fitzduane was paler, but his pillows were puffed up and his bed looked neater.
Kilmara had been shot in his life and had had malaria and other reasons for being hospitalized. He had formed the view that the medical professionals sometimes had their priorities mixed up. They liked their patients to look sharp so that they could show them off to the doctors. The patient's rest didn't seem to come into it. Nonetheless, he had a weakness for nurses. He could forgive most nurses most things.
He switched his mind back to Fitzduane. He had been told in words of one syllable that the patient was not to be worried and that stress was to be avoided at all costs. And now Fitzduane, his medication at last down to manageable proportions so he could think reasonably clearly, wanted to dive straight into the investigation. Tricky. Hard to know what to do.
'Hugo,' he said, 'are you sure you're ready for this? You're still a very sick fellow.'
Fitzduane looked at him long and hard, eyes blazing.
'Shane,' he said deliberately, the words punched out, 'they nearly killed Boots. I saw the back of my son's head open up and his lifeblood pour out. I thought he was dead. Next time they could succeed. Don't fuck with me. You're my friend. Help me. These' – he paused now, shaking with emotion and weakness, searching for the right word – 'these vermin have to be found, fixed, and destroyed. And I will do it, with or without your help.'
'Found, fixed and destroyed.'
The military phrase brought back a flood of memories to Kilmara. Fitzduane as a young lieutenant in the Congo. His first recon mission. The brutal firefight that had followed. Other missions. Other demonstrations of his effectiveness at the skills of deadly force. The man had a natural talent for combat. But then, that was his heritage.
