Free Run Before the Wind by Stuart Woods

Ireland, even though it was less than fifteen miles from my grandfather's farm. A man in foul-weather gear on the dock looked the length of Toscana and said, "She looks very tidy to, have come in out of that." He nodded toward the harbor entrance.
    Mark winked at me.
    "Oh, she stands up very well, she does," he said, smiling broadly at the man.
    "She likes a bit of weather."
    We trudged up the ramp to the clubhouse in the light rain, dumped our oilskins on a bench outside, and went into the bar.
    Warmth and the smoky scent of burning turf greeted us. The bar was just opening for the day, and the club was deserted, except for us. Mark ordered Guinness for the three of us.
    "We'll ring Coolmore from here," he said.
    "He'll want to know we've arrived."
    "Who?"
    "It's Lord Coolmore, actually. He owns the castle that our cottage belongs to. I should ring Thrasher, too. He'll want to know we're still alive." He got up and went to look for a phone.
    "You'll love the cottage," Annie said.
    "It was built as a gamekeeper's house--must be more than four hundred years old."
    We chatted idly for a few minutes, the fatigue of the night before beginning to catch up with us. Mark returned.
    "All set," he said.
    " Coolmore's meeting us with a key; we'd better be off upriver."
    We gathered our oilskins and walked back to the water dock in the rain. As we cast off I looked up to the road at the club's gates and saw someone step into a telephone booth. I had only a glimpse before he was obscured by the rain on the booth's glass panes.
    I turned to Mark.
    "Did you reach Derek Thrasher?"
    "Yep. He was relieved to hear we'd made port safely. Apparently, there are a couple of yachts missing out there."
    "In London?"
    "What?"
    "Did you reach Thrasher in London, or was he somewhere else?"
    "In London."
    He revved the engine, and we began the last mile of our passage.
    I looked back toward the phone booth, now hidden by a wall. I could see only part of a car that might have been a Mercedes. I turned back to coiling lines and found Annie looking at me oddly.
    WE MOTORED UP (he Carrigaline River, heeling slightly in the sharp gusts that came at us across the water and slapped little waves against the hulls of the moored yachts and fishing boats. We came around a bend to the left and another to the right, and it seemed that the river was about to peter out. Still, we continued and rounded yet another sharp bend to come to a placid anchorage, sheltered by heavy brush on one side and an extensive stand of large trees on the other, and by hills on both sides. Carved into the forest on our right was perhaps half an acre of grass surrounding a large stone cottage. A tall, lean man who looked to be in his late fifties or early sixties walked from the cottage to a stone jetty, got into a dinghy, and began to row toward us.
    Mark handed me the boat hook
    "Stand by to pick up that mooring." He pointed to a fluorescent red buoy dead ahead. As we secured to the mooring the man in the boat came alongside and clambered aboard. He greeted Mark and Annie warmly and turned to me with an outstretched hand.
    "And you'll be Willie, I expect," he said, grinning at me broadly.
    "I'm Peter-Patrick Coolmore."
    "Will Lee," I replied, taking his hand while inwardly saying goodbye to my preferred name. It was a losing battle. He came below and admired Toscana's interior layout, then we and our gear made it ashore in two trips. We entered the cottage for the first time to a scent mixed from new wood, old furniture, paint and other building materials.
    "Oh, it's lovely," Annie exclaimed, walking about.
    "So much improved since we first saw it."
    "You didn't arrive a moment too soon," Coolmore said. We've just got it together. Joan picked out what furniture she thought you'd need. We've a couple of rooms full of unused things at the castle if you need anything more. Your things arrived yesterday," he said, indicating several large packing crates in an adjacent room.
    "I'll leave you