Cloak of Silence (Jake Harding Adventures Book 1)

Jake’s mum was shaking him by the shoulder. ‘Hey, you, it’s nine o’clock.’

He stretched, half awake. It had been a long night, waiting at the bench for something to happen. There had been nothing to see with the monastery in almost complete darkness but he had stayed doggedly in position until bored, cold and tired he had come home, showered and crashed into bed.

‘I’m off out,’ his mum was saying. ‘Dad wants to see you downstairs straight away.’

That sounds like trouble.

He dressed hurriedly and used his fingers to comb his hair. His hair was dark, almost black, the colour apparently coming from his grandparents, but they had always been grey to him.

It was obvious that Efi had laid the breakfast table, her trademark a little vase of fresh flowers from the garden. An envelope was propped against the mug at the only unused place. He snatched it up, staring in disbelief at the block capital lettering ‘THUNDER BAY’.

‘Jake,’ his dad’s voice called. ‘Into the study, please,’ and he reluctantly left the envelope on the table.

There was someone waiting with his dad in the study. His heart gave a lurch – was it news of Zoë? But no, it was Doug.

His dad got straight to the point. ‘Last night at the taverna Jenny noticed that Doug was having trouble with his eyes. He told her that you had thrown sand in his face.’

Jake glanced at Doug. His eyes looked fine but he had a smirk playing around his mouth.

‘I wasn’t going to let him punch me,’ Jake thought, looking intently at his dad, hoping somehow to mentally transmit this message. But his dad looked at him sternly, arms folded across his chest.

‘Sorry, Doug, I was fooling around,’ he said disarmingly.

‘It was really sore,’ Doug grumbled.

‘I’m glad they’re okay now,’ Jake said and held out his hand. Doug looked at him and after a lengthy pause, shook his hand briefly.

‘Okay, guys, thank you,’ Richard said. ‘But, any more trouble from either of you and you’re gated. Okay?’

Doug opened his mouth to protest but Richard got in first, ‘You heard me.’

Jake hurried back to the breakfast table and picked up the envelope.

Taki was supposed to be away and he assumed he had lost contact, but here was a message from him.

‘Aren’t you going to open it?’ His dad had followed him out onto the terrace.

Jake looked at him. ‘Listen, Dad, sorry about the Doug thing.’

‘Can’t have you assaulting the paying customers, Jake. And if you’d been up at a decent time, I’d’ve asked your side of the story first.’

Jake shrugged and slit open the envelope with his knife. As expected, there was a single sheet of paper with a short message, written in the now familiar block capital letters, this time in black ballpoint: A TG HTUC ZJD JCTX TP OXIPTRGT

He remembered a few of the code letters. ‘It starts with ‘I am’ but I need the code sheet to read the rest,’ he said.

Richard looked across at the sheet of paper. ‘It looks like the Friday Project code,’ he remarked. ‘At least they learn something here,’ he went on bleakly.

‘Dad! Stop it, okay?’ Jake didn’t usually speak sharply to his father. He left that to Zoë, who could get him around her little finger. But before hurrying away to decode the message, he went on, ‘Thunder Bay is awesome and people learn all sorts of stuff they don’t even realise.’

Richard sat down and glumly buttered a slice of toast, his mind swarming with problems jostling for his attention. There were the usual issues on the course, but on top of all of those, Barbara had made it quite clear that she wouldn’t have the heart to keep the school running if Zoë didn’t come back. It was their family venture that they had dreamed of and finally made a reality together.

Running the adventure school in this beautiful and remote corner of the world suited them perfectly. The past three years had been the most exciting and fulfilling of his life and it felt much longer ago that he was having an uphill battle teaching sport at the school back in England. He had been impetuous but it had worked out, at least until now.

He managed a smile as he thought back to his confrontation with his former headmaster.

‘Is it true that you’ve just sold our last sports field to some lousy supermarket?’

‘Richard, it’s err, out of my hands, I’m afraid.’ The headmaster had been flustered at the interruption. He wished all the teachers were as single minded and determined as Richard Harding. But the bright blue eyes made him nervous.

‘Look, I’m supposed to be head of sport at this school. A head of sport with no sports field is like a pub with no beer.’

‘But, Richard, it’s an excellent offer.’ He tried to run a finger round the inside of his collar, which was suddenly too tight.

‘You’ve been aiming for this all along, haven’t you?’

‘Well, we can use the money for more facilities, and that will include some new sports equipment,’ the headmaster employed his most encouraging voice.

‘With no sports fields, I’ll have to tell you where to stick that equipment.’

The conversation had moved rapidly downhill and that evening Richard and Barbara discussed their plans for the future.

He looked at the view as though seeing it for the first time. In the dazzling morning sunlight the tiny village of Zengounas looked like a film set. Tamarisk shrubs were in flower at the edge of the beach, a profusion of pink and white in front of the collection of small houses that stretched between the beach and the road as far as the taverna. In the last twenty or thirty years many young families had moved away, to Corfu Town or further afield, to Athens, New York, even Melbourne. The school had eventually closed. It was almost derelict when they bought it, together with a rough field and the ancient olive grove that ran to the cliff top. The old stone school building was spacious and solidly built although the roof timbers had rotted where rain had come in through broken tiles. The schoolmaster’s house also needed refurbishment but was surprisingly roomy and the views were magnificent.

He shook his head. ‘All this for a quarter of what that sports field was sold for back home.’

Now this was their home. They had a big mortgage and loans from the bank for working capital, but it was theirs. Ten months of hard work had turned the old school into Thunder Bay Adventure School. They renovated the old buildings, doing much of the work themselves while contractors built two dormitory blocks, the new kitchen, a small lecture theatre, the dining hall and a climbing wall. The field was levelled and grassed and, with much advice from local people, the neglected olive trees were pruned and tended. They progressed from xenoi, or foreigners, to being an accepted part of the life of Zengounas.

Now, he needed to keep a grip, for the sake of everyone. He had to put aside his doubts and keep going strongly until Zoë came back. Or until they discovered what had happened. And if she didn’t come back, they would leave…he and Barbara had agreed this.

He shook his head as if to get rid of all negative thoughts as he heard Jake coming downstairs again.

‘What does your friend Taki have to say?’ he asked as Jake appeared, the message in his hand.

‘It says,’ Jake announced, his voice unsteady. ‘‘I am back. Zoë okay at Syntagma’.’

‘What on earth…?’

‘Taki is back then,’ Jake said weakly as he sat down. ‘I’d better try to see him and ask him what he means.’

‘Jake,’ his dad’s eyes drilled into him. ‘Are you sure that’s what it says?’

‘Yes, totally sure. I checked it three times.’

‘Show me,’ he demanded and Jake handed over the message with the decoded words written in pencil.

‘Taki wouldn’t make it up,’ Jake said. ‘He’s much too sensible. He must’ve overheard someone talking. Perhaps the person who is keeping her, locked up I suppose, at Syntagma, wherever that is.’

‘Hmm,’ Richard was sceptical.

‘Yesterday, Father Theo said that Taki had gone away. Maybe that was to get us to stop asking questions.’

‘Maybe Taki sent the note before he went away. Is there a date on it?’

‘No date,’ Jake replied, looking again at the message.

‘Go and ask Efi what she knows about the letter. I’ll ring Theo, then I’ll ring your mum if her mobile is in range and ask her to tell the police.’

‘Sure,’ Jake said, getting up. At least his dad was more like his old self.

He was back in a few minutes. ‘Efi says Alesandro brought it this morning. Didn’t say anything about it; says he was talking about his fruit trees.’

‘Right,’ Richard got to his feet.

Jake got on with his breakfast while his dad made the phone calls. He tried to visualise how Taki would have got that information, but he couldn’t begin to imagine. As far as Syntagma was concerned, the only place of that name he knew was the famous square in the centre of Athens. But there must be loads of places called that; perhaps a nearby village.

Jake had finished his breakfast when his dad came back onto the terrace, looking at his watch.

‘There’s a man who doesn’t like questions,’ he announced.

Jake looked at him expectantly.

‘Theo said Taki went away yesterday and is emphatically not there. Thinks the note must have been written ‘days ago’ as he put it. Taki had been in the monastery until he went away, and not in touch with anyone outside, so he doesn’t see how he can have any news of Zoë. Just boyish imagination, he suggested, when I mentioned Syntagma.’

Jake wasn’t surprised, but it was disappointing.

‘Taki must have sent the note before he left and Alesandro forgot to leave it,’ Richard said.

‘Except it says, ‘I’m back’, so he must’ve gone away, come back, written the note and gone away again,’ Jake pointed out. ‘That’s rubbish ‘cos I saw him the day before yesterday.’

Richard looked at him with an expression that said he didn’t understand it either. ‘Oh, and Theo was grumbling that the police were there yesterday afternoon.’

‘Good!’ Jake exclaimed. ‘Let’s hope they found something.’

‘Listen Jake, he won’t thank you for visiting the monastery again, so leave it out okay?’

The phone started ringing and he hurried inside again. ‘I was hopeful,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘But then I am looking to be hopeful.’

Jake was still sitting at the table when Efi came to clear away.

‘Hey, Efi, is there a place called Syntagma near here?’

She stopped what she was doing and considered the question for a few moments. ‘No, the only Syntagma I know is parliament square in Athens,’ she said at last.

Jake got up. ‘Thanks Efi. I’ll ask Dimitris when I see him.’

His dad came back onto the terrace, looking ashen faced and they looked at him in alarm.

‘I just spoke to Barbara,’ he said. ‘The police arrested Bill Blizzard this morning.’

Efi’s hands flew to her face and she gave a cry of dismay. Jake sat down again.

‘On what charge?’ Jake asked. This was exactly what the journalist thought might happen.

‘He is accused of abducting Zoë,’ Richard said. ‘They’re searching his house now it seems.’

‘Do they think…?’ Efi said, reaching for a tissue.

‘They don’t know,’ Richard replied. ‘The police told Barbara they’ve investigated the monastery, found nothing wrong and eliminated it from their enquiries. They believe she went to the bench that night to meet Bill and he has abducted her, but when Barbara pressed them, they didn’t seem to have any hard evidence.’

‘I will go and pray,’ Efi said, her voice breaking as she hurried away, the tissue to her face.

‘Did you tell Mum about Syntagma,’ Jake asked.

‘Yes. She’s gobsmacked like we are. She’ll ask the police to check into it.’

‘But if they’ve decided it’s Bill Blizzard, they won’t be interested in anything else,’ Jake said.

‘We’ll have to wait and see,’ his dad said. ‘Mum will be back soon with the TV crew that Bill arranged.’

Jake went through to the study and got a search engine up on the computer. He typed in the word ‘Syntagma’, clicked ‘search’ and after a moment the screen filled with results. The first thirty or so concerned Syntagma Square in Athens. He tried searching ‘Syntagma Corfu’ but the results mostly led him back to the square in Athens. There didn’t appear to be anywhere with that name on Corfu. Nothing with a web page, anyway.

He noticed the time in the corner of the screen: nearly 11:00. He turned off the computer and hurried down to the beach. There was a strengthening breeze and he knew that the windsurfing class would be more challenging than yesterday.

‘Why is your board so small?’ Doug asked mockingly as Jake rigged it on the beach at the start of the session. ‘Couldn’t your dad afford a bigger one?’ He sniggered at his own joke.

Jake’s mind was swirling with thoughts of Zoë, Syntagma and Bill Blizzard, and took no notice, but Jamal intervened.

‘You need to be good to sail a short board,’ he commented.

Doug looked at him grimly but Jamal went on. ‘It’s like a sports car, corners better, but it’s tricky.’

‘If you know so much about it, why are you so rubbish at it?’ Doug countered but the other boy simply ignored him. That really was the way to deal with his baiting.

Rob told the group that because they were progressing so well, they would do a couple of practice runs around the buoys and finish up with a race. There were some apprehensive comments but Sam had a steely look of determination on his face.

‘Look, I’ve come here for a real challenge, not this sort of stuff,’ Doug glared around after the chatter had subsided.

‘Talk to me again when you’ve won the race,’ Rob said icily.

The session went well apart from a few difficult moments in the strong wind. ‘But nothing too hairy,’ Rob said later.

Cath won, her hair streaming behind her as she crossed the finishing line. Jamal was second and Doug came third, complaining that someone was in his way rounding one of the buoys. Sam was not far behind him. They all completed the course although Ruby twice needed help from the rescue boat.

‘Congratulations, all of you,’ Rob said as they came ashore. He reserved a quiet, ‘that was great, mate,’ for Sam, a hand on his shoulder and Sam smiled in appreciation.

Jake congratulated Cath and she gave him a warm smile that lifted his spirits.

After Rob and Jenny had gone back to the school, Jake helped the grommets de-rig the boards and stack them in the windsurfer store.

‘Hey, Jake,’ Doug called and Jake looked at him warily. ‘When are you going to admit this stuff about your sister is a stunt?’

Jake met his eyes and gave him a pitying look.

He picked up his board and, without a backward glance, took off out into the bay. He’d put some distance between them before there was another incident. There was a strong breeze now and he could have a blast. He pushed his feet into the foot straps and the board raced across the water, relishing the exhilaration of speed and the spray in his face. A fast sail would get rid of some of his pent up frustration. He brought the board around in a stylish carve gybe opposite the taverna and set a course for the mouth of the bay. The group was standing on the beach watching him. He must not mess up!

He pumped the board by pulling hard on the boom with both arms. The power pulsed through his feet into the board, which quickly rose up onto its planning surface, seemingly weightless. It was close-hauled now and he was streaking across the bay, plenty of spray flying which always looked impressive.

So I’m showing off. So what the hell?

It took him only a couple of minutes to reach the open sea, choppy with an underlying swell beyond the protection of the heads. He hit the rough water and the board took off, two metres up before landing and racing on, clattering over the choppy surface. It was perfect for some fast spectacular windsurfing. The standing rule was no windsurfing alone beyond the heads, but he wasn’t in the mood for rules.

He came about again and set off north-east, towards the tip of the promontory. He was out of sight of the beach now and relaxed a bit; messing up back in the bay would have been awful. When he cleared the headland and the north coast of the island opened up in front of him he turned again, eastwards. It was less choppy here in the lee of the headland and he spilled wind to slow further as he reached a point opposite the entrance to Monastery Bay.

He carried on a few hundred metres further until the monastery dropped out of view behind him. The shoreline here was steep and wooded with dense foliage spilling down over low cliffs. He went about and cruised slowly past the bay, again close inshore. The monastery building and grounds were screened by the belt of tall trees that encircled the bay and he was fairly sure that nobody could see him.

‘So what the hell?’ he asked himself for a second time and dropped the mast and paddled a few strokes to the flat rock outcroppings.

The sea rose and fell against the rocks with regular thumps and swirling eddies while the trees moved uneasily in the strong wind. Jake sat astride his board a safe distance off the rocks watching the rhythm of the sea like a surfer waiting for the perfect wave. After a few minutes he made his move. He paddled forward, allowing a wave to carry him onto the flat expanse of rock, scrambled off the board and found a foothold before the receding water could drag him and his board away.

He clambered up the rock and laid the windsurfer down carefully in a crevice out of reach of the sea with the mast and boom on top of the sail so that it wouldn’t flap in the wind.

The low cliff was easy to climb and he was soon at the top and pushing his way into the dense undergrowth under the trees that covered that part of the peninsula. The wind in the trees drowned out any noise he made forcing his way through the foliage.

Jake looked back at the expanse of blue sea behind him. He had got here without really thinking through what he was doing. Was he crazy? What if he got caught? What would his dad say then?

Come on! Go for it!

He turned again and headed directly away from the sea. The ground underfoot was uneven but sloped constantly from the monastery garden down to the bay. The undergrowth was dense and unkempt and it looked as though nobody ever ventured in there. Luckily there were no brambles or thorny bushes to tear at his skin or wetsuit but he had to stop a few times to remove small thorns from his bare feet. By keeping to a contour on the sloping ground he reckoned he would keep on a course between the monastery lawn above and the bay below. After ten minutes of moving forward slowly and carefully, he came across a narrow footpath running at right angles to the direction he was going.

After a moment’s thought, he turned to the right and cautiously followed the path up the hill. It had obviously not been used recently as small branches, spiders’ webs and trailing tendrils barred the way. The path soon became wider but he stopped abruptly as he realised that he was about to walk out into the open. The beautifully mown lawn lay a step ahead and the monastery building towered above it. He ducked down quickly, hoping that nobody had been looking out of a window at that exact moment.

After sitting quietly for a minute he persuaded himself that no harm had been done and crept back the way he had come, down the narrow path towards the bay. The belt of trees and bushes was only fifty metres wide at this point and he soon saw the roof of the boathouse through the bushes below. He made no sound on the soft sandy soil that was strewn with pine needles. The track ended at the wide concrete path that ran along the edge of the bay with a tall pine tree marking the point where the path emerged from the trees. It didn’t provide much of a hiding place and by parting two branches with his hands Jake could take in the whole of the bay.

The boathouse lay at the end of path to his left and the wooden jetty with its black metal cross was directly in front of him. To his right the path ran along the edge of the bay, past the small store building at the top of the beach and on through the trees. The little building had a terracotta tiled roof with a cross, identical to the one on the jetty, fixed to the ridge tiles. Jake idly wondered why it was part way along the roof – it would surely look better at one end or in the middle.

The bay and surroundings was deserted even though the late afternoon was a superb time for a swim. The water was calm with even the biggest of the sea swells that came through the narrow entrance being reduced to ripples arcing across the peaceful surface of the bay.

He turned his attention to the boathouse. It had been carefully positioned with two-thirds of its length over the water and the remainder securely on the land. It looked as though it had been there forever, although the wooden boarding was in good condition. There was a single door in the side of the building with the concrete path leading straight up to it. Two windows were set in the wall facing the beach. He would love to see inside, but the windows were above the water and way too high to look in, even if he waded out to them. There didn’t seem to be anybody around, but he wasn’t going to risk stepping out into the open. He walked a little way back up the sandy path before pushing his way through the undergrowth to the back of the boathouse, where he discovered a clearing in the trees used as a junk area. Old fishing nets, floats and pieces of wood were stacked in untidy heaps.

The timber boarding to the boathouse was quite rough and surely there must be a small opening somewhere that he could look through? Eventually he spotted a knot hole at high level. An old oil drum was lying amongst the junk and he rolled it across the clearing and upended it against the wall. His wetsuit made it difficult to climb onto the drum but he managed after a couple of goes. A smell of wood stain hit him as he put his eye to the tiny hole.

He had an excellent view down the length of the building with enough daylight coming through the windows that he could see the interior clearly. A narrow wooden walkway ran from the door, along the side of the building, past the two windows to the far end. Two slatted gates closed off the end of the boathouse and extended down to below the water level.

But the most distinctive feature was the boat, which almost filled the available space. It was a rigid inflatable boat or RIB, like a giant version of the Thunder Bay safety boat.

He drew in his breath. ‘A RIB, but what a RIB!’

The rugged lines of the craft and a fairing over what must be a big inboard engine hinted at massive power and speed. It was like peering into an old barn and seeing the latest model Ferrari parked inside.

The hull, about nine metres long he guessed, comprised two black inflatable tubes with a rigid deck between them. The craft was nose-in to the boathouse and Jake looked across the open foredeck to a driving console set amidships. It too was black and topped with a low windscreen. Four high seats in dark grey upholstery behind the console reminded him of exercise horses in the school gym. Behind these, a bench seat was built across the full width of the boat into the front of the streamlined housing that encased the engine. There didn’t seem to be a name or identifying numbers on the hull.

He stared through the peephole for several minutes before jumping down from the oil drum. He put it back where he had found it and, lost in thought, walked slowly back through the trees to his windsurfer.

What on earth were monks doing with a boat like that?