The First Casualty

12

Recently published novel in hand, Jason was swaddled in a comforter, a mummy wrapped in eiderdown, stretched out on the bed that occupied the sole room of the cottage’s upstairs. Corelli’s Concerto Grosso No. 4 in D Major filled the room, violins punctuated with occasional brass. Fundamental order, yet tuneful, sometimes exuberant. The sound came from a turntable playing a 33⅓ LP vinyl record. CDs were digital, records analog. Since actual sound is analog, digital reproduction is like comparing a photograph to the real thing. Jason’s ear could distinguish between the two.

The kitchen downstairs had been quiet for some time now. Mrs. Prince had done the supper dishes and gone home for the night. The snow had turned to sleet, now clicking against the window panes in the language of winter. The room’s gas heater whispered in conversation with Pangloss’s rhythmic snores from his hooked rug in a corner. There was an occasional low growl as the dog stretched, pursuing a mole through doggy dreamland. Robespierre was somewhere in the house, conducting his solitary nocturnal patrol.

Jason surprised himself by not nodding off within minutes after a day of travel followed by his hike through the snow. He put down the book and looked around the room. Whether it was Momma’s observation about being bored in Maria’s absence; the span of empty, cold sheet beside him; or his rare feeling of loneliness, he couldn’t concentrate on the book’s plot line.

His eyes went to the pine table that served as a desk and the volume on one corner, the book Momma had left. Maybe… Nah, no reason to even think about getting involved in whatever problem Narcom was handling.

Momma had charmed Maria at their first and only meeting; but, then, Maria had no idea of what Momma and her company did. If she had an inkling of the mayhem caused by the woman with the radiant smile, knew of the volume of blood on those huge hands that had given Maria’s arms a friendly squeeze, heard the death sentences uttered in the same mellifluous voice that had made small talk, Jason’s mere association with Momma would be grounds for Maria’s final and permanent departure. She had all but left him a year or two ago when an unfortunately placed TV camera had implicated Jason in the assassination of an African dictator. That and nearly getting her killed in Sardinia within the early months of their relationship.

Maria believed that there was always a peaceful solution no matter how many times she was proved wrong. An English language bumper sticker on the Fiat she owned when they first met proclaimed war is not the answer. That, of course, depended on the question. Like so many who believed in ideals rather than reality, she insisted if one side to a dispute simply refused to resort to violence, the other would follow suit. Violence, no matter the justification, was simply evil, brutish, and unacceptable. Jason supposed that, at some time in his life, he might have held views equally idealistic. He just couldn’t remember when or what they were.

No doubt about it: Any further involvement with Narcom that Maria discovered would be his third and final strike.

Wait a minute.

It was the ever-annoying voice inside his head again.

On the average of every couple of months, Maria takes off to some place to observe a volcanic eruption.

“So? That’s what volcanologists do,” Jason retorted, unaware he was speaking out loud.

In his corner, Pangloss opened one eye, assured himself nothing requiring action was taking place, and resumed his snoring.

So, what do you do? the voice persisted.

“In case you hadn’t noticed, I paint. Make almost enough selling in the galleries in Guernsey and Jersey to pay the rent here.”

Swell. Maria studied, became a volcanologist, has a job with the Italian government, doing…?

“Like most people in the field, she hopes by studying eruptions, they might find some way to predict them. You can see why that might be of interest to the Italians.”

And you were trained…?

Jason saw where this was going. “I’ve retired from what I was trained to do. Now I paint.”

How wonderful and fulfilling daubing pigment on canvas must be. Particularly, in view of your former occupation.

Jason wasn’t sure how a person could be sarcastic with himself, but the damn voice was a master at it.

You’re telling me that the life of a painter on a remote island is as exciting as what you used to do, that you enjoy it as much? C’mon! Kidding yourself isn’t good mental hygiene.

“So, OK, the old life had its moments, but all good things…”

Come to an end? Like you and Maria?

“Make your point.”

Simple enough: You’re bored out of your gourd when a trip to Liechtenstein to see your bankers is the highlight of your winter. Maria is doing what she loves. And whoever she loves, for all you know. The two of you never discuss what happens when you’re apart. She does what she wants; you paint.

“What if painting is what I want to do?”

If it were, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, would we?

Jason disentangled himself from the comforter. He was staring at the book on the table as though it might exhibit some paranormal qualities, levitate, disappear, spontaneously erupt in flames, something like that. His feet appeared from under the covers like early spring flowers through the snow. Groping blindly with his toes, he located first one then the other fur-lined moccasins that served as bedroom slippers. His breath emitted a cloud of steam despite the efforts of the heater. Jason took the two or three steps required to cross the room.

Pangloss raised his head, an inquiry as to what was going on. He started to lower it again and stopped halfway. From somewhere deep in his throat came a low growl, a most un-Pangloss noise. Whether it was the unusual sound or long-ago Delta Force training-become-instinct, Jason hit the light switch, flattening himself against the wall next to a window. Slowly, he extended his neck to see through the pane. He used a circular motion of a hand to make a peep hole through the glass slick with translucent frost.

The wet glass gave him back only his reflection. Beyond, the night was as dark as the stomach of any Jonah-swallowing whale. Other than the absence of sound, Jason couldn’t even tell if the snow/sleet had stopped. He sat, his eyes just above the sill. Unless someone out there had night-vision equipment, he doubted he could be seen from the yard. The cold of the glass would defeat infrared, and he guessed light enhancement would have little to work with, with the darkened room as backdrop.

He waited a full five minutes by the luminescent dial of his Rolex, the watch he removed only in the shower. Pangloss was growling, whining and, from the sound of nails clicking on the wooden floor, pacing. Dark nothingness on the other side of the glass was the only reward for Jason’s patient vigil.

He stood, snorting at the dog, “Alarmist! There’s nothing out there but…”

Before the sentence was complete, a red dot of light, perhaps the size of a dime, danced across the window’s glass.

Jason threw himself aside, away from the window, just as the glass shattered inward.

On his belly, Jason crawled quickly back toward the bed. Small shards of the window glass pricked at his bare hands like insect stings. Beside the bed was another hooked rug similar to the one on which Pangloss slept. With one hand, Jason lifted the near edge, using the other to grope underneath. His fingers closed around a metal ring sunk into the floorboards, and he heaved upward. Blindly in the dark, his hands explored the hidden compartment until they touched what he was searching for: The American version of the South African Armsel Striker, a twelve-gauge shotgun mounted over a twelve-round revolving magazine.

Grabbing the rear pistol grip, Jason dragged the eighteen-inch barrel free of its hiding place at the same time pulling into place the top-mounted folding stock. Again, commando fashion, he crawled across the floor, this time to the open well of stairs leading below. His progress was heralded by the crackling of glass particles under his weight.

His back pressed against the wall, he put an exploratory foot on the top stair. He was well aware of which steps tended to creak or groan underfoot and where, but weather and age moved these locations with exasperating unpredictability. He reluctantly trusted to luck the ancient wood would bear his weight silently.

He was fairly certain whoever had taken the shot had not entered the house. Redundant indoor alarm systems out of reach of local cattle would have alerted him to an entry. Unless the shooter had found a way to disarm them. Although that was unlikely, Jason had more than one former comrade who had suffered the consequences of ignoring all possibilities.

In the seventh of well-memorized fourteen steps, he stopped, listening. Other than Pangloss somewhere behind him, the night gave him only an ear-ringing silence in which he imagined he could hear his own breathing. There were the phantom footsteps of old wooden beams expanding or contracting, the low moan of the endless breeze caressing the shingle roof.

By that intuition common to nature’s predators and learned by their human counterparts, Jason sensed emptiness. Nonetheless, he waited another full five minutes before completing his descent. Aware as any blind person of the exact location of furniture in his home, he crossed the small room to a chest, opened a drawer, and produced Night Optics night-vision goggles, a bulky apparatus that resembled something NASA might have invented more than something worn by a pilot.

The room came to visual life, furniture black shapes in a green murk. Cradling the shotgun, Jason stepped to the window that framed the orchard, the place from which the shot had come. The familiar trees in their shrouds of snow were huge, green vegetables, the snow, greener than fresh grass, shifted in the wind like a restless tide.

There was no sign of human life. Jason might as well have been viewing some long-dead planet on which restless emerald sands blurred objects as through a photographer’s Vaseline lens. Edges of trees and rocks were particularly hard to distinguish, but close scrutiny revealed two sets of dark marks in the snow.

Tracks?

Human tracks?

Hard to tell from the indistinct images of the NVGs. Possible tracks left by wandering cows, although the thrifty farmers of Sark would probably house their livestock in this weather rather than risk loss by freezing. For sure, Jason had no intent of going outside for a closer inspection. It took little imagination to visualize a rifleman, his night scope zeroed in on the door, as he waited for such a move.