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strong waves of ugly shit.... Dr. Johnson was saying something to him, but all
he felt like doing was shouting at the dead man.
@ "He's the one," he finally whispered to the black police chief. "He's the
one, goddamn him to hell. "
Which was about the time Peter finally heard what Meral Johnson was saying to
him.
Running in a low infantry crouch, Damian moved forward, his trooper boots
squashing across a slippery wooden ramp at the Tryall Club's yacht basin. He
climbed movable stairs down onto the floating dock, stepped into the lurching
Bertram Sportsman, and began to smile in spite of himself.
Then he began to laugh. A chilly, unnatural laugh.
He could barely distinguish voices in the distant, babbling conunotion coming
from up around the main clubhouse. He saw the thousand-watt floodlights
flashing through swaying palm and banana trees up and down the first fairway.
Then the bouncing red lights of two ambulances turned a corner of the
clubhouse building. Siren screams cut through the rain and wind like sharp
knives.
Finally, after more than a year, after the most insanely exhausting ordeal
he'd ever put himself through, it was over and done with.
Up on the Tryall Club's veranda, the ex-Green Beret, all-American boy,
unimpeachable witness, had identified Clive Lawson as the tall blond man from
Turtle Bay.... The English killer's hair, his hairstyle, height, facial
features, were nearly identical with the man Macdonald had seen April 25. At a
quick glance, Rose and Lawson were look ikes-and a glance was all Peter had
ever had. fteen seconds on a bicycle.
Moreover, the way Lawson's face wound up, it was academic anyway.
The great Damian Rose was officially dead. Killed on his most audacious
tympanic contract. The psychological logic of the ploy was classic. Hubris
struck again. Precisely the,end they all would have predicted from him. Like
Evel Knievel dying on a motorcycle. Now, if Carrie succeeded in Washington,
they were home free. No one would come looking for the Roses for quite some
time. Maybe not ever.
Another smile drifted over Damian's thin, pretty lips. The pure satisfaction
of playing the game well. The absolute, spine-tingling beauty of it. Like
having built one's own cathedral in this slapdash age.
Moving quickly but quietly, Rose started the blowers, then untied the Dacron
stem line that held the Sportsman to San Dominica. The twenty-fivefoot
speedboat was shaking like mere flotsam in the unsteady sea; the rain
continued to teem.
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As he unlooped a final knot in the bowline, a man appeared in the hatchway,
coming from the sleeping cabin below. The man was tall and thin, dressed in a
gray slicker with a hood. He threw back the hood, and his silver-gray hair
completed the perfect yacht clubber image.
Hello, there," the dark figure said. "My name is Harold Hill. I thought we
should meet."
The director of Great Western Air Transport hoisted himself into the stonny
cockpit. Harry the Hack. Dependable Harry.
"Actually, you do nice work." He continued to speak as he climbed up top.
"Stay put, now. Don't get up on my account. Don't move a fucking muscle.
Pointing a dark Walther at the younger man's heart, Hill rested his bottom on
the back of a swivel chair.
"Hair dyed a nice shade of black." He showed his teeth in an appreciative
smile. "Cut to look like some goober from Lithuania. That's nice. What did you
plan to do from here?"
Damian tried to keep himself calm. Icy. Think straight lines. Think nothing
but straight lines. As he spoke, his mind raced back and forth through his
alternatives, through all the possibilities for this situation. "I was going
to take a commercial flight off the island. " He spoke softly. At the same
time, he was thinking that something about Harold Hill was bothering him; he
couldn't put his finger on it exactly. "Now that I'm officially dead, you
know."
"Macdonald isn't, you know," Harold Hill said. "I'm curious-why didn't you
kill Macdonald, too? The famous last shoot-out scenario?"
"I thought a live witness would be more convincing in the long run. Don't you
think?... Macdonald was part of all this from the start, you know.
Hill seemed a bit confused. "Macdonald was working for you?
Don't laugh at him, Damian thought. Don't laugh in his face....
"No. No... but right from the beginning we knew we'd need a witness to
identify Lawson. to make our escape work right... we knew that Peter Macdonald
rode around Turtle Bay every afternoon' So we planned a murder right there.
C'est ga. Macdonald saw me because he was meant to see me. We even went to
great lengths to strengthen his credibility afterward.... Tell me something.
Did Carrie do this?"
Harold Hill shook his head from side to side. "I ask the questions." The CIA
director smiled and motioned for the younger man to get up. Slowly.
As he stood, Hill knocked Rose back down with a gun-butt blow to the cheek. A
vicious hit.
6 6Best I can do right now, " Hill said through clenched teeth. "For Carole.
My wife.... Get up now. I won't hit you anymore. I have lots of questions
before I kill you, Rose. I have an interesting idea for that, too."
His mouth all bloody, Damian got up again. He held his hands high, in plain
sight. Like a magician about to do a trick.
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At Hill's direction, Rose took hold of the ladder going up to the dock. "On
our way across the lawn"-he spoke in calm, measured tones-"I want you to
listen carefully to what I have to offer you. We can renew our partnership."
As the tall dark-haired man put both hands on the metal ladder, the right side
of his head exploded.
His face crashed forward against the aluminum slats. His chin bounced down two
rungs, then he fell over backward into the boat.
Harold Hill looked up to find the black police chief standing on the wooden
ramp. Beside him was Macdonald, slightly bent over, holding a Walther pointed
down at the boat.
"We followed you," Meral Johnson said simply. Peter Macdonald said nothing.
As Hill started to climb past the dead or dying man, he saw the sugar-cane
machete lying across a leather seat. The most obscene murder weapon. The
cleaver they'd used on Carole in Virginia.
In one unbelievable stroke, he brought it down powerfully across Rose's face.
The hacking blow made a noise like a butcher's cleaver. Damian snorted like a
horse.
The field machete came down again. A clumsy guillotine.
Finally Hill kicked the head and it sloshed up against a sideboard. Floated in
a dark pool of rainwater.
Then Harold Hill climbed up the movable ladder. He said nothing to the black
policeman; nothing to Peter.
"What partnership was that?" Peter said. Then he let it go... let the sentence
evaporate in the night air. It didn't matter. Of course the CIA was in on
it.... For a long moment they all stood on the wet ramp. The black man and the
young white man close together. None of them speaking.... Then Hill untied the
last restraining rope. It doesn't end, the CIA man was thinking. Now these two
have to be taken care of....
As the Sportsman slowly drifted away, Meral Johnson fired several shots into
the boat's bottom and sides. "Let the fish have him," the black man said. At
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