Weather notwithstanding, Jason was glad to get home. He watched from the deck as the ship eased her way to its berth in the little L-shaped harbor. There was no room for a ninety-meter motor yacht anchored outside the breakwater, dancing at the end of her anchor line in the rough seas. Italian made, judging by the sharpness of her bow and the rakish slant of her superstructure. In addition to the complementary Union Jack, she flew the Panamanian flag. Normal enough. The super wealthy would hardly register their ship where they might be inconvenienced by safety regulations, minimum wage, and environmental concerns.
What was not normal was that she was here. None other than masochists went pleasure sailing in the cold, stormy waters of the English Chanel this time of year. The ship would have been more at home in the Caribbean’s sunny climes. Or, at least, the Costa del Sol or the Balearic Islands. Sark had nothing to offer besides near-arctic winds, the surrounding gray cliffs, rocky beaches, and more cows than people.
The island was hardly for the glitterati. With only about 500 permanent residents, most of whom farmed, a new pair of Wellies was likely to draw more attention than a diamond the size of the native potatoes. No place to show off a Ferrari or Bentley, either. Tractors were the only motorized vehicles allowed on the three-by-three-and-a-half-mile island.
No, that yacht was definitely out of place and out of season. Jason’s innate paranoia demanded an explanation. He could well be the reason. Why it was there was a mystery Jason intended to solve. He would inquire of the harbor master, a man happy to receive the small monthly stipend Jason paid for information as to arrivals on the island.
There were no accidental ones.
To reach Sark, one had to get to Guernsey, usually by a Channel Express Fokker F-27 Friendship, a twin turbo prop, departing any number of British airports. Then onto the ferry for the fifty-minute voyage, the sole means to or from the island available to the public.
The last of only half a dozen passengers disembarking the ferry, Jason made his way across the concrete pier to a small, one-window structure at the end. He set his single suitcase down in front of the wooden door and knocked.
A whiff of stale tobacco stung his nose and disappeared in the wind as the door opened. Before him stood a diminutive man whose navy-style pea jacket reached the patched knees of his khaki pants. A walrus mustache twitched like a living creature above a clay pipe smoldering like a subterranean fire, the source of the malodorous smell. Eyes the color of a summer sky twinkled under an unruly thatch of silver, on which rested a faded and rather ragged British Warrant Officer’s cap.
Jason was looking at Sark’s harbor master, Andrew MaCleod.
MaCleod stepped back from the door, making room for Jason to enter. “Mr. Peters! Welcome home! I ken you’ve been gone a spell.”
Jason stepped in, shutting the door behind him. Hobson’s choice: Stand in the cold or endure the smell of the pipe. The single room contained a table on which a computer rested and two swivel chairs with cushions long since flat, but displaying faded embroidered birds. The sports section of yesterday’s Daily Telegraph partially covered a ship-to-shore radio as though the device had snuggled under a blanket to supplement the meager comfort of the electric coil heater that buzzed feebly in a corner.
“Wretched weather!” Jason commented, noting the room was cold enough to see his breath.
MaCleod gave the window a glance as though to confirm or deny the statement. “Aye, but it’d be like spring in Aberdeen.”
Only a Scot would prefer the Channel’s winters to those of his native land.
Jason hugged himself seeking warmth. “That yacht out there, what do you know about it and its passengers?”
MaCleod removed the pipe from his mouth and dug in it with a nail-like instrument. The excavation continued in silence for several seconds. Then, “Not much. The Allegro. She was here when I arrived this morning. No request for customs, no yellow flag, so I assumed she had sailed from either another island or one of the Channel ports.”
Yellow flag, representing the letter Q in the international alphabet. Q for quarantine. Historically, a message there was no disease aboard. Currently, a request for customs service, something a ship arriving from a British or European Union port would not require.
Jason went to the window for another look. The falling snow gave him a view as though through gauze. “There’s a davit on the foredeck but no boat.”
There was wet sucking sound and the hiss of a struck match. Jason turned to see the harbor master staring disappointedly into the smokeless bowl of the pipe. “I dinna ken where on this island would be more comfortable than that ship,” he observed. “But someone must have come ashore last night.”
The same conclusion had already occurred to Jason. He reached for the doorknob. “Thanks for your help.”
The pipe was now issuing a slender tendril of blue smoke. “Anytime, laddie.”
Outside, wind rattled metal rigging against steel masts. The little harbor’s small boats were rolling from gunwale to gunwale at their moorings, tethered animals trying to break free.
Jason squinted in a futile effort to keep the blowing snow out of his eyes. Through the white curtain, he saw movement on the land side of the harbor. A second’s concentration and he recognized Mr. Frache and his two-wheel wagon. When he was not tending to his dairy cows, the man earned a few pounds acting as the island’s taxi service, meeting the ferry and picking up fares to one of the half dozen hotels and numerous guest houses.
Jason waved his arms, yelling. At first, he thought the elderly farmer couldn’t hear over the wind. But then the single horse turned toward Jason and the wagon lumbered over.
“G’day, Mr. Peters.” Frache was looking down at Jason and his suitcase from the driver’s perch. “You’ll be needing transportation?”
Jason tossed his bag into the cart and climbed in behind it. “Sure do. Stocks.”
If Frache thought the request to be taken to the island’s finest hotel instead of Jason’s home was strange, he didn’t show it. It offered what little luxury the island could boast. The beamed dining room’s fare — though modest when compared to Le Havre, an hour by hydrofoil from Guernsey — was the best on Sark. Even so, everyone on the island knew the place was closed from New Year’s Eve to mid-February. Frache didn’t question this, either.
Stocks was also about a quarter of a mile closer to the harbor than the 300-year-old stone Norman cottage Jason currently called home. Approaching the house on foot would give Jason a number of tactical options not available to an arrival by road. If Jason was the reason the people aboard the Allegro were here, surprise seemed a sensible precaution.
The two rode in relative silence, the only sounds being the horse’s hooves crackling through the patina of ice that had formed on the dirt road. Sights were no longer familiar in their winter costumes. The fields were a pristine white, their undulating slopes marked only by tracks of animals seeking forage under the white blanket. Snow coated the upper surface of branches of wind-stunted trees as though they had donned starched shirts.
Only the wind, though far colder than usual, was the same. On Sark, the wind hummed, sang, or screamed. It was rarely silent. Today, it spoke with a white-tinted voice as puffs of talcum whirled across the ground.
It was a time to marvel.
And a time to think.
Jason had come here, what, a year or so ago? It had been what he guessed was an intermediate step in an endless journey that had begun on the darkest day of his life and of his country, a late summer day, September 11.