What Comes Around

CHAPTER 1

The bright blue waters of Penobscot Bay beckoned, and Cam Hooker paused to throw open his dressing room window. Glorious morning, all right. Sunlight sparkled out on the bay, flashing white seabirds wheeled and dove above. He took a deep breath of pine-scented Maine air and assessed the morning’s weather. Sunny now, but threatening skies. Fresh breeze out of the east, and a moderate chop, fifteen knots sustained, maybe gusting to thirty. Barometer falling, increased cloudiness, possible thunderheads moving in from the west by mid-morning. Chance of rain showers later on, oh, sixty to seventy per cent, give or take.

Perfect.

Certainly nothing an old salt like Cameron Hooker couldn’t handle.

It was Sunday, praise the Lord, his favorite day of the week. The day he got to take himself, his New York Times, his Marlboros, and whatever tattered paperback spy novel he was currently headlong into reading for the third time (an old Alistair MacLean) out on his boat for a few tranquil hours of peace and quiet and bliss.

Hooker had sailed her, his black ketch Maracaya, every single Sunday morning of his life, for nigh on forty years now, rain or shine, sleet, hail, or snow.

Man Alone. A singleton. Solitary.

It was high summer again, and summer meant grandchildren by the dozen. Toddlers, rugrats, and various ragamuffins running roughshod throughout his rambling old seaside cottage on North Haven Island. Haven? Hah! Up and down the back stairs they rumbled, storming through his cherished rose gardens, dashing inside and out, marching through his vegetable patches like jackbooted thugs and even invading the sanctuary of his library, all the while shouting at peak decibels some mysterious new battle cry, “Huzzah! Huzzah!” picked up God knew where.

It was the Revolutionary War victory cheer accorded to General George Washington, he knew that, but this intellectually impoverished gizmo generation had not a clue who George Washington was! Of that much, at least, he was certain.

You knew you were down in the deep severe when not a single young soul in your entire clan had the remotest clue who the hell the Father of Our Country was!

Back in Hook’s day, portraits of the great man beamed benevolence down at you from every wall of every classroom. He was our Father, the Father of our country. Your country! Why, if you had told young Cam back then that in just one or two generations, the General himself would have been scrubbed clean from the history — why, he would have—

“What are you thinking about, dear?” his wife said, interrupting his dark reverie at the breakfast table later that morning. Gillian was perusing what he’d always referred to as the “Women’s Sports Section.” Sometimes known as the bridal pages in the Sunday edition of the New York Times. Apparently, it was the definitive weekly “Who’s Who” of who’d married whom last week. For all those out there who, like his wife of sixty years, were still keeping score, he supposed.

“You’re frowning, dear,” she said.

“Hmm.”

He scratched his grizzled chin and sighed, gazing out at the forests of green trees reaching down to the busy harbor. On the surface, all was serene. But even now a mud-caked munchkin wielding a blue Frisbee bat advanced stealthily up the hill, stalking one of his old chocolate Labs sleeping in the foreground.

“Will you look at that?” he mused.

Gillian put the paper down and peered at him over the toaster.

“What is it, dear?”

“Oh, nothing. It’s July, you know,” he said, rapping sharply on the window to alert his dog of the impending munchkin attack.

“July? What about it?”

“July is the cruelest month,” he said, not looking up from the Book Review, “Not April. July. That’s all.”

“Oh, good heavens,” she said, and snatched away her paper.

“Precisely,” he said but got no reply.

Dismissed, he stood and leaned across the table to kiss his wife’s proffered cheek.

“It’s your own damn fault, Cam Hooker,” she said, stroking his own freshly shaved cheek. “If you’d relent for once in your life, if you’d only let them have a television, just one! That old RCA black and white portable up in the attic would do nicely. Or even one of those handheld computer thingies, whatever they’re called. Silence would reign supreme in this house once more. But no. Not you.”

“A television? In this house?” he said. “Oh, no. Not in this house. Never!”

Grabbing his smokes, his newspapers and his canvas sail bag and swinging out into the backyard, slamming the screen door behind him, he headed down the sloping green lawn to his dock. The old Hooker property, some fifteen acres of it, was right at the tip of Crabtree Point, with magnificent views of the Fox Islands Thorofare inlet and the Camden Hills to the west. He was the fifth generation of Hookers to summer on this island, not that anyone cared a whit about such things anymore. His ancestor, Captain Osgood Hooker, had first come here from Boston to “recuperate from the deleterious effects of the confinements of city life,” as he’d put it in a letter Cam had found in a highboy in the dining room. Traditions, history, common sense and common courtesy, things like that, all gone to hell or by the wayside. Hell, they were trying to get rid of Christmas! Some goddamn school district in Ohio had banned the singing of “Silent Night.” “Silent Night”!

He could see her out there at the far end of the dock when he crested the hill. Just the sight of her never failed to move him. His heart skipped a beat, literally, every time she hove into view.

Maracaya was her name.

She was an old Alden-design ketch and he’d owned her for longer than time. Forty feet on the waterline, wooden hull, gleaming black Awlgrip, with a gold cove stripe running along her flank beneath the gunwales. Her decks were teak, her spars were Sitka-spruce, and she was about as yar as any damn boat currently plying the waters of coastal Maine, in his humble opinion.

Making his way down the hill to the sun-dappled water, he couldn’t take his eyes off her.

She’d never looked better.

He had a young kid this summer, sophomore at Yale, living down here in the boathouse. The boy helped him keep Maracaya in proper Bristol fashion. She was a looker, all right, but she was a goer, too. He’d won the Block Island Race on her back in ’87, and then the Nantucket Opera Cup the year after that. Now, barely memories, just dusty trophies on the mantel in some people’s goddamn not-so-humble opinion.

“ ’Morning, Skipper,” the crew-cut blond kid said, popping his head up from the companionway. “Coffee’s on below, sir. You’re good to go.”

“Thanks, Ben, good on ya, mate.”

“Good day for it, sir,” the young fellow said, looking up at the big blue sky with his big white smile. He was a good kid, this Ben Sparhawk. Sixth-generation North Haven, dad and granddad were both hardworking lobstermen. Came from solid Maine stock, too. Men from another time, men who could toil at being a fisherman, a farmer, sailor, lumberman, a shipwright, and a quarryman, all rolled into one. And master of all.

Salt of the earth, formerly salt of the sea, Thoreau had called such men.

Ben was a history major at New Haven, on a full scholarship. He had a head on his shoulders, he did, and he used it. He came up from the galley below and quickly moved to the portside bow, freeing the forward, spring, and aft mooring lines before leaping easily from the deck down onto the dock.

“Prettiest boat in the harbor she is, sir,” Ben said, looking at her gleaming mahogany topsides with some pride.

“Absofuckinlutely, son,” Cam said, laughing out loud at his good fortune, another glorious day awaiting him out there on the water. He was one of the lucky ones and he knew it. A man in good health, of sound mind, and looking forward to the precious balance of his time here on earth, specifically in the great state of Maine.

Cam Hooker was semiretired from the Agency now. He’d been 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, goddamnit. 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. First thing he did, he 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 to speak of, he’d crank up the old Universal diesel, a forty-two-horsepower lump of steel that had served him well over the decades. Now, with a freshening 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 that bow off for me, Ben, willya?” he said, putting the helm over and sheeting in the main.

“Aye, Skipper,” the kid said, and moments later he 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 youngster, saw him smiling and waving back with both hands. He was surprised to find his old blue eyes suddenly gone all blurry with tears.

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