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There it might have ended except for the fact that, having read the article in the New York Times on Hong Kong and its relations with China, Tony Jackson was struck by the coincidence of Tanner’s story. This became doubly important because Tanner had died in the early hours of Sunday morning and Jackson always had Sunday lunch, his hospital shifts permitting, at his grandfather’s home in Little Italy where his mother, since the death of his grandmother, kept house for her father in some style.
Jackson’s grandfather, after whom he had been named, was called Antonio Mori and he had been born by only a whisker in America because his pregnant mother had arrived from Palermo in Sicily just in time to produce her baby at Ellis Island. Twenty-four hours only, but good enough and little Antonio was American born.
His father had friends of the right sort, friends in the Mafia. Antonio had worked briefly as a labourer until these friends had put him into first the olive oil and then the restaurant business. He had kept his mouth shut and always done as he was told, finally achieving wealth and prominence in the construction industry.
His daughter hadn’t married a Sicilian, he accepted that, just as he accepted the death of his wife from leukaemia. His son-in-law, a rich Anglo-Saxon attorney, gave the family respectability. His death was a convenience. It brought Mori and his beloved daughter together again, plus his fine grandson, so brilliant that he had gone to Harvard. No matter that he was a saint and chose medicine. Mori could make enough money for all of them because he was Mafia, an important member of the Luca family whose leader, Don Giovanni Luca, in spite of having returned to Sicily, was Capo di tutti Capi: Boss of all the Bosses in the whole of the Mafia. The respect that earned for Mori couldn’t be paid for.
When Jackson arrived at his grandfather’s house, his mother, Rosa, was in the kitchen supervising the meal with the maid, Maria. She turned, still handsome in spite of grey in her dark hair, kissed him on both cheeks then held him off.
‘You look terrible. Shadows under the eyes.’
‘Mama, I did the night shift. I lay on my bed three hours then I showered and came here because I didn’t want to disappoint you.’
‘You’re a good boy. Go and see your grandfather.’
Jackson went into the sitting room where he found Mori reading the Sunday paper. He leaned down to kiss his grandfather on the cheek and Mori said, ‘I heard your mother and she’s right. You do good and kill yourself at the same time. Here, have a glass of red wine.’
Jackson accepted it and drank some with pleasure. ‘That’s good.’
‘You had an interesting night?’ Mori was genuinely interested in his grandson’s doings. In fact he bored his friends with his praises of the young man.
Jackson, aware that his grandfather indulged him, went to the French window, opened it and lit a cigarette. He turned. ‘Remember the Solazzo wedding last month?’
‘Yes.’
‘You were talking with Carl Morgan; you’d just introduced me.’
‘Mr Morgan was impressed by you, he said so.’ There was pride in Mori’s voice.
‘Yes, well you and he were talking business.’
‘Nonsense, what business could we have in common?’
‘For God’s sake, grandfather, I’m not a fool and I love you, but do you think I could have reached this stage in my life and not realized what business you were in?’
Mori nodded slowly and picked up the bottle. ‘More wine? Now tell me where this is leading.’
‘You and Mr Morgan were talking about Hong Kong. He mentioned huge investments in skyscrapers, hotels and so on and the worry about what would happen when the Chinese Communists take over.’
‘That’s simple. Billions of dollars down the toilet,’ Mori said.
‘There was an article in The Times yesterday about Peking being angry because the British are introducing a democratic political system before they go in ninety-seven.’
‘So where is this leading?’ Mori asked.
‘I am right in assuming that you and your associates have business interests in Hong Kong?’
His grandfather stared at him thoughtfully. ‘You could say that, but where is this leading?’
Jackson said, ‘What if I told you that in nineteen forty-four Mao Tse-tung signed a thing called the Chungking Covenant with Lord Louis Mountbatten under the terms of which he agreed that, if he ever came to power in China, he would extend the Hong Kong Treaty by one hundred years in return for aid from the British to fight the Japanese?’
His grandfather sat there staring at him, then got up, closed the door and returned to his seat.
‘Explain,’ he said.
Jackson did so and, when he was finished, his grandfather sat thinking about it. He got up and went to his desk and came back with a small tape recorder. ‘Go through it again,’ he said. ‘Everything he told you. Omit nothing.’
At that moment Rosa opened the door. ‘Lunch is almost ready.’
‘Fifteen minutes, cara,’ her father said. ‘This is important, believe me.’
She frowned, but went out, closing the door. He turned to his grandson. ‘As I said, everything,’ and he switched on the recorder.
When Mori reached the Glendale polo ground later that afternoon it was raining. There was still a reasonable crowd huddled beneath umbrellas or the trees because Carl Morgan was playing and Morgan was good, a handicap of ten goals indicating that he was a player of the first rank. He was fifty years of age, a magnificent-looking man, six feet in height with broad shoulders and hair swept back over his ears.
His hair was jet black, a legacy of his mother, niece of Don Giovanni, who had married his father, a young army officer, during the Second World War. His father had served gallantly and well in both the Korean and Vietnam wars, retiring as a brigadier general to Florida where they enjoyed a comfortable retirement thanks to their son.
All very respectable, all a very proper front for the son who had walked out of Yale in 1965 and volunteered as a paratrooper during the Vietnam War, emerging with two Purple Hearts, a Silver Star and a Vietnamese Cross of Valour. A war hero whose credentials had taken him into Wall Street and then the hotel industry and the construction business, a billionaire at the end of things, accepted at every social level from London to New York.
There are six chukkas in a polo game lasting seven minutes each, four players on each side. Morgan played forward because it gave the greatest opportunity for total aggression, and that was what he liked.
The game was into the final chukka as Mori got out of the car and his chauffeur came round to hold an umbrella over him. Some yards away, a vividly pretty young woman stood beside an estate car, a Burberry trenchcoat hanging from her shoulders. She was about five foot seven with long blonde hair to her shoulders, high cheekbones, green eyes.
‘She sure is a beautiful young lady, Mr Morgan’s daughter,’ the chauffeur said.
‘Stepdaughter, Johnny,’ Mori reminded him.
‘Sure, I was forgetting, but with her taking his name and all. That was a real bad thing her mother dying like that. Asta, that’s kind of a funny name.’
‘It’s Swedish,’ Mori told him.
Asta Morgan jumped up and down excitedly. ‘Come on, Carl, murder them!’
Carl Morgan glanced sideways as he went by, his teeth flashed and he went barrelling into the young forward for the opposing team, slamming his left foot under the boy’s stirrup and lifting him, quite illegally, out of the saddle. A second later he had thundered through and scored.
The game won, he cantered across to Asta through the rain and stepped out of the saddle. A groom took his pony, Asta handed him a towel then lit a cigarette and passed it to him. She looked up, smiling, an intimacy between them that excluded everyone around.
‘He sure likes that girl,’ Johnny said.
Mori nodded. ‘So it would appear.’
Morgan turned and saw him and waved and Mori went forward. ‘Carl, nice to see you. And you, Asta.’ He touched his hat.
‘What can I do for you?’ Morgan asked.
‘Business, Carl; something came up last night that might interest you.’
Morgan said, ‘Nothing you can’t talk about in front of Asta, surely?’
Mori hesitated. ‘No, of course not.’ He took the small tape recorder from his pocket. ‘My grandson, Tony, had a man die on him at Our Lady of Mercy Hospital last night. He told Tony a hell of a story, Carl. I think you could be interested.’
‘OK, let’s get in out of the rain.’ Morgan handed Asta into the estate car and followed her.
Mori joined them. ‘Here we go.’ He switched on the tape recorder.
Morgan sat there after it had finished, a cigarette drooping from the corner of his mouth, his face set.
Asta said, ‘What a truly astonishing story.’ Her voice was low and pleasant, more English than American.
‘You can say that again.’ Morgan turned to Mori. ‘I’ll keep this. I’ll have my secretary transcribe it and send it to Don Giovanni in Palermo by coded fax.’
‘I did the right thing?’
‘You did well, Antonio.’ Morgan took his hand.
‘No, it was Tony, Carl, not me. What am I going to do with him? Harvard Medical School, the Mayo Clinic, a brilliant student, yet he works with the nuns at Our Lady of Mercy for peanuts.’
‘You leave him,’ Morgan said. ‘He’ll find his way. I went to Vietnam, Antonio. No one can take that away from me. You can’t argue with it, the rich boy going into hell when he didn’t need to. It says something. He won’t be there for ever, but the fact that he was will make people see him as someone to look up to for the rest of his life. He’s a fine boy.’ He put a hand on Mori’s shoulder. ‘Heh, I hope I don’t sound too calculating.’
‘No,’ Mori protested. ‘Not at all. He’s someone to be proud of. Thank you, Carl, thank you. I’ll leave you now. Asta.’ He nodded to her and walked away.
‘That was nice,’ Asta told Morgan. ‘What you said about Tony.’
‘It’s true. He’s brilliant, that boy. He’ll end up in Park Avenue, only, unlike the other brilliant doctors there, he’ll always be the one who worked downtown for the nuns of Our Lady of Mercy, and that you can’t pay for.’
‘You’re such a cynic,’ she said.
‘No, sweetheart, a realist.’ He slid behind the wheel. ‘Now, let’s get going. I’m famished. I’ll take you out to dinner.’
They had finished their meal at the Four Seasons, were at the coffee stage, when one of the waiters brought a phone over. ‘An overseas call for you, sir. Sicily. The gentleman said it was urgent.’
The voice over the phone was harsh and unmistakable. ‘Carlo. This is Giovanni.’
Morgan straightened in his seat. ‘Uncle?’ He dropped into Italian. ‘What a marvellous surprise. How’s business?’
‘Everything looks good, particularly after reading your fax.’
‘I was right to let you know about this business then?’
‘So right that I want you out of there on the next plane. This is serious business, Carlo, very serious.’
‘Fine, Uncle. I’ll be there tomorrow. Asta’s with me. Do you want to say hello?’
‘I’d rather look at her, so you’d better bring her with you. I look forward to it, Carlo.’
The phone clicked off; the waiter came forward and took it from him. ‘What was all that about?’ Asta said.
‘Business. Apparently Giovanni takes this Chungking Covenant thing very seriously indeed. He wants me in Palermo tomorrow. You too, my love. It’s time you visited Sicily,’ and he waved for the head waiter.
The following morning they took a direct flight to Rome, where Morgan had a Citation private jet standing by for the flight to Punta Raisa Airport, twenty miles outside Palermo. There was a Mercedes limousine waiting with a chauffeur and a hard-looking individual in a blue nylon raincoat with heavy cheekbones and the flattened nose of the prize fighter. There was a feeling of real power there, although he looked more Slav than Italian.
‘My uncle’s top enforcer,’ Morgan whispered to Asta, ‘Marco Russo.’ He smiled and held out his hand. ‘Marco, it’s been a long time. My daughter, Asta.’
Marco managed a fractional smile. ‘A pleasure. Welcome to Sicily, signorina, and nice to see you again, signore. The Don isn’t at the town house, he’s at the villa.’
‘Good, let’s get moving then.’
Luca’s villa was outside a village at the foot of Monte Pellegrino, which towers into the sky three miles north of Palermo.
‘During the Punic Wars the Carthaginians held out against the Romans on that mountain for three years,’ Morgan told Asta.
‘It looks a fascinating place,’ she said.
‘Soaked in blood for generations.’ He held up the local paper which Marco had given him. ‘Three soldiers blown up by a car bomb last night, a priest shot in the back of the neck this morning because he was suspected of being an informer.’
‘At least you’re on the right side.’
He took her hand. ‘Everything I do is strictly legitimate, Asta, that’s the whole point. My business interests and those of my associates are pure as driven snow.’
‘I know, darling,’ she said. ‘You must be the greatest front man ever. Grandad Morgan a general, you a war hero, billionaire, philanthropist and one of the best polo players in the world. Why, last time we were in London, Prince Charles asked you to play for him.’
‘He wants me next month.’ She laughed and he added, ‘But never forget one thing, Asta. The true power doesn’t come from New York. It lies in the hands of the old man we’re going to see now.’
At that moment they turned in through electronic gates set in ancient fifteen-foot walls and drove through a semi-tropical garden towards the great Moorish villa.
The main reception room was enormous, black-and-white tiled floor scattered with rugs, seventeenth-century furniture from Italy in dark oak, a log fire blazing in the open hearth and French windows open to the garden. Luca sat in a high-backed sofa, a cigar in his mouth, hands clasped over the silver handle of a walking stick. He was large, at least sixteen stone, his grey beard trimmed, the air of a Roman emperor about him.
‘Come here, child,’ he said to Asta and, when she went to him, kissed her on both cheeks. ‘You’re more beautiful than ever. Eighteen months since I saw you in New York. I was desolated by your mother’s unfortunate death last year.’
‘These things happen,’ she said.
‘I know. Jack Kennedy once said, anyone who believes there is fairness in this life is seriously misinformed. Here, sit beside me.’ She did as she was told and he looked up at Morgan. ‘You seem well, Carlo.’ He’d always insisted on calling him that.
‘And you, Uncle, look wonderful.’
Luca held out his hand and Morgan kissed it. ‘I like it when your Sicilian half floats to the surface. You were wise to contact me on this Chungking business and Mori showed good judgement in speaking to you.’
‘We owe it to his grandson,’ Morgan said.
‘Yes, of course. Young Tony is a good boy, an idealist, and that’s good. We need our saints, Carlo, they make us rather more acceptable to the rest of the world.’ He snapped a finger and a white-coated houseboy came forward.
‘Zibibbo, Alfredo.’
‘At once, Don Giovanni.’
‘You will like this, Asta. A wine from the island of Pantelleria, flavoured with anis.’ He turned to Morgan. ‘Marco took me for a run into the country the other day to that farmhouse of yours at Valdini.’
‘How was it?’
