Patriot

CHAPTER 6

Cam Hooker was semiretired from the Agency now. He’d been the director under George H. W. Bush and had had a good run. Under his watch, the CIA was a tightly run ship. No scandals, no snafus, no bullshit, just a solid record of intelligence successes around the world. He was proud of his service to his country, and it pained him to see the condition it was in now. Diminished, that was the word, goddammit. How could the bastards, all of them, let this happen to his magnificent country?

He shook off such thoughts, leaving them well ashore as he stepped aboard his boat. He went aft and climbed down into the cockpit and kicked his topsiders off so he could feel the warm teak decks on the soles of his feet. He felt better already. Smell that air!

Ben Sparhawk had thoughtfully removed and stowed the sail cover from the mainsail. Cam grabbed the main halyard, took a couple of turns around the starboard winch, and started grinding, the big mainsail blooming with fresh Maine air as it rose majestically up the stick.

Some days, when there was no wind, he’d crank up the old Universal diesel, a 42-horsepower lump of steel that had served him well over the decades. Now, with a fresh breeze, he winched the main up, loosing the sheets and letting her sails flop in the wind. The jib was roller-furling, one of his few concessions to modernity, and at his advancing age, a godsend for its ease of use. He also had a storm trysail rigged that he’d deploy when he got out beyond the harbor proper.

“Shove her bow off for me, Ben, willya?” he said, putting the helm over and sheeting in the main.

“Aye, Skipper,” the boy said, and moments later Cam was pointed in the right direction and moving away from the dock toward the Thorofare running between North Haven and Vinalhaven Islands.

He turned to wave good-bye to the boy, saw him smiling and waving back with both hands, and found his old blue eyes suddenly gone all blurry with tears.

By God, he wished he’d had a son like that.

He threaded his way, tacking smartly through the teeming Thorofare. It was crowded as hell, always was this time of year, especially this Fourth of July weekend. Boats and yachts of every description hove into view: the Vinalhaven ferry steaming stolidly across, knockabouts and dinghies, a lovely old Nat Herreshoff gaff-headed Bar Harbor 30; and here came one of the original Internationals built in Norway, sparring with a Luders; and even a big Palmer Johnson stinkpot anchored just off Foy Brown’s Yard, over a hundred feet long he’d guess, with New York Yacht Club burgees emblazoned on her smokestack. Pretty damn fancy for these parts, if you asked him.

As was his custom, once he was in open water, Cam had put her hard over, one mile from shore and headed for the pretty little harbor over on the mainland at Rockport. Blowing like stink out here now. Clouding up. Front moving in for damn sure. He stood to windward at the helm, both hands on the big wheel, his feet planted wide, and sang a few bars of his favorite sailor’s ditty, sung to the tune of the old English ballad “Robin on the Moor”:

The words caught in his throat.

He’d seen movement down in the galley below. Not believing his eyes, he looked again. Nothing. Perhaps just a light shadow from a porthole sliding across the floor as he fell off the wind a bit? Nothing at all; and yet it had spooked him there for a second but he—

“Hello, Cam,” a strange-looking man said, suddenly making himself visible at the foot of the steps down in the galley. And then he was climbing up into the cockpit.

“What the hell?” Cam said, startled.

“Relax. I don’t bite.”

“Who the hell are you? And what the hell are you doing aboard my boat?”

Cam eased the main a bit to reduce the amount of heel and moved higher to the windward side of the helm station. He planted himself and bent his knees, ready for any false move from years of habit in the military and later as a special agent out in the field. The stranger made no move other than to plop himself down on a faded red cushion on the leeward side of the boat and cross his long legs.

“You don’t recognize me? I’m hurt. Maybe it’s the long hair and the beard. Here, I know. Look at the eyes, Cam, you can always remember the eyes.”

Cam looked.

Was that Spider, for God’s sake?

It couldn’t be. But it was. Spider Payne, for crissakes. A guy who’d worked for him at CIA briefly the year before Cam had retired. Good agent, a guy on the way up. He’d lost track of him long ago… and now?

“Spider, sure, sure, I recognize you,” Cam said, keeping his voice as even as he could manage. His right hand had started twitching involuntarily and he stuck it in the pocket of his jeans. His mind was ramped up, searching wildly for some kind of explanation as to how the hell this man came to be here. It just didn’t make any damn sense at all.

“What in God’s name is going on?”

“See? I knew this might freak you out. You know, if I just showed up on the boat like this. Sorry. I drove all night from Boston, then came over to the island on the ferry from Rockland last night. Parked my truck at Foy Brown’s boatyard and went up to that little inn, the Nebo Lodge. Fully booked, not a bed to be had, wouldn’t you know. Forgot it was the Fourth weekend. Stupid, I guess.”

“Spider, you know this is highly goddamn unprofessional. Showing up like this. Uninvited. Are you all right? What’s this all about?”

“How I found you, you mean?”

“Why you found me, Spider.”