The First Casualty Read Online Free PDF Page A

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.
    â€œWretched 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