did, too.
He couldn’t cry anymore, so he didn’t. He wanted to go home with his grandfather.
Home was on the smallest of four small islands in the English Channel, just off the coast of France. The Channel Islands, they were called. Alex’s island was named after the dense fogs that often swirled around its peaks and valleys.
Greybeard Island.
The pirate dreams finally stopped when little Alexander Hawke was about nine.
So the nights were better, and, as Alex grew, the days were never long enough. The sun always stopped before he was ready for it to disappear. He rose each morning at first light and ran down the twisting steps to the sea. Scoundrel was always right on his heels. He loved diving from the rocks into the cold water of the channel with his dog leaping in right behind him. Later, he would sit for long hours on the craggy hillside, looking out to sea, listening to the crispy sound of late-afternoon breezes in the canopy of trees above his head.
There were long weeks at sea with his grandfather aboard the Rambler. They often sailed the schooner north, off the coast of England, sometimes as far as Portsmouth before turning for home. The boy learned to hand, reef, and steer by the stars. He learned to keep one eye aloft, looking for the telltale luff of lost wind in the mainsail.
On endless sunlit days, when Alex had the helm, he would sail the boat through vast floating fields of red krill, cheering the leaping dolphins and whales as they feasted there. Minkies and Humpies, the whales were called, and he came to recognize and love them.
He was learning something new every day. His grandfather taught him the names of the stars and shells, birds and fish. How to tie a bosun’s knot. How to knot a bow tie. How to gut a fish. How to write a poem. How to cook fresh clams and mussels in seawater. How to sew a sail. How to spell Mississippi.
He even tried to learn the art of falconry, using his pet parrot, Sniper. Sniper was not interested in becoming a falcon, however, and little Alex soon gave this up. He’d learned the bird’s genealogy from his grandfather.
The bird and its descendants had been in the family for generations. Sniper’s ancestor had belonged to Alex Hawke’s ancestor, the famous pirate Blackhawke, who always kept the bird perched on his shoulder. Pirates, Alex learned, had for centuries taught the wily birds to warn them of unseen attackers. Each generation of Hawke parrots had been taught these old pirate ways and Sniper was no exception.
Alex Hawke said his prayers every night, kneeling beside his bed and always blessing his grandfather and also his mother and father in heaven. Then he climbed up into the big four-poster bed. Through the open window beyond his bed, he could see the stars shining over the black surface of the English Channel. And hear the waves crashing against the rocks far below his grandfather’s house.
He would let his sleepy eyes drift, floating over the familiar toy boats and soldiers and pictures arranged about his room.
Over his bed hung a large painting of Nelson’s flagship, Victory, her towering masts flying acres of billowing white sail. Bright pennants fluttering from the mastheads. Next to his grandfather, of course, Admiral Lord Nelson was Alex Hawke’s great boyhood hero. It was Nelson who was struck down at the moment of his greatest triumph, when the British soundly thrashed the French fleet at Trafalgar.
Hanging from a nail beneath that painting was a very old brass spyglass that had belonged to one of his ancestors who’d sailed under Nelson. A Captain Alexander Hawke himself. Alex spent long hours sitting in his open bedroom window with that battered telescope, tracking birds and ships, imagining his famous namesake doing the very same thing.
When he was twelve, he acquired his first sailing boat. A little dory his grandfather had found, moldering away in a nearby boat yard. He kept the name, even though he had no idea what it meant. He just liked the sound of it. Gin Fizz.
As he grew bigger, the island grew smaller. He dreamed of flying, he dreamed of sailing away. He dreamed of joining the Navy one day as his father had done at his very age.
As it happened, his grandfather had attended Dartmouth, and Alex was admitted there as well. He loved books, and his grades were very good. He developed a great longing to go to sea, and his grandfather made a few discreet introductions for him at the very top echelons of the Royal Navy.
He was accepted into the naval officer air corps. Soon after he won his wings, he was flying Harrier jets off aircraft carriers. Then he moved on to fighter jets. He was decorated for valor many times. He was simply good at war.
When peacetime flying no longer thrilled him, Alex joined the special forces branch of the military known as the SBS, the British equivalent of the U.S. Navy SEALs. He gradually became an expert in the art of blowing things up and killing people silently with a knife or one’s bare hands. These were all skills he knew he would need.
Because Alex was dreaming of pirates again. He had pirate blood in him, after all. And, as the old expression has it, it takes one to know one.
1
The Englishman looked at his unsmiling reflection in the smoky mirror behind the bar and drained the last of his pint. He’d lost count of how many he’d downed since entering the tattered old pub. It was called The Grapes, and it was one of the more respectable establishments in a rather bawdy little quarter of Mayfair known as Shepherd’s Market.
Pink and rose lights were glowing softly in many of the small windows of the narrow buildings that lined the winding lanes. Hand-lettered names could be found beside the illuminated buttons inside each of the darkened doorways. Fanny. Cecily. Vera and Bea. Their pale faces could often be seen at the window for just a moment before the shade was drawn.
He had drifted aimlessly through the narrow streets of Mayfair, having decided to walk home from dinner at the German ambassador’s residence. He’d left rather early when, after he’d downed yet another flute of champagne, it occurred to him that every single thing he’d said all evening had bored him to tears.
He’d meant to go straight home, but the miserable weather so perfectly matched the texture and color of his current state of mind that he’d decided to embrace it, dismissing his driver for the evening and electing to hoof it to Belgrave Square.
Damp. Cold. Foggy. Lowering clouds threatening rain or snow or both. Miserable. Perfect.
There was an electric fire in the coal grate of the smoky pub, and now, brooding upon his perch at the end of the bar, he looked at the thin gold Patek on his wrist. Bloody hell. It was considerably further past his bedtime than he’d imagined. Not that it mattered much. He could sleep in next morning. Had nothing on until lunch at his club at one. He tried to recall whom he was lunching with and was damned if he could.
The days had become an endless blur and, except for the constant dull ache in his heart, he would have sworn that he’d died some time ago and no one had bothered to inform him of his own passing.
The pub had thinned out quite a bit, only one or two chaps remaining at the bar and a few young foreign backpackers necking in the curves of the dark banquettes. At least there were fewer patrons to stare at him and the ones remaining had finally left him bloody well alone.
He was aware, of course, that he stood out.
He was, after all, wearing white tie and tails, and his feet were shod with black patent leather pumps. His long black opera cloak, sealskin topper, and gold-headed cane lay atop the bar. He knew he must cut quite an amusing figure at The Grapes, but he was long past caring. He signaled the barman for a check and ordered what would definitely be his last pint before heading home. Sticking twenty quid under the ashtray, he returned to his stormy thoughts.
Part of it was sheer boredom, of course, what the cursed French called ennui. He was rotting away so rapidly that it would hardly surprise him if he awoke one morning to find mildew growing on his—
“Got a match, guv?” someone suddenly said at his side. He turned to regard the newcomer and saw that there were three of them. Leather jackets, shaved heads, black jeans shoved into heavy black boots. All staring at him, sneers on their pallid faces. They looked, what was the word, itchy.
