background for any kind of terrorism.
The Rose Diary
May 3, 1979;. Titchfleld Cove, San Dominica
Thursday Morning The Third Day of the Season.
Dressed in loose-fitting blue jeans and a blue cotton T-shirt, Damian Rose climbed hard and as fast as possible. He moved toward huge outcroppings of black rock poised above the Shore Highway.
High up in the rocks, the lazy island trade winds had chiseled two primitive heads over centuries and centuries-neither of which, Rose was thinking as he moved along, had been worth the hot air and bother.
His fingers curled into small cracks, Rose pulled himself up over countless tiny ledges toward the sea blue sky. He could feel his boots crunching loose rocks as he ascended; he could taste his own salty sweat. After fifteen minutes of hard climbing, he pulled himself onto a barren ledge of flat rock. The small jut of rock was about four feet long, less than three feet wide. Close up, the black rock was loaded with specks of shiny mica. Mica and tiny seagull bones.
From the gull's high burial ground, Damian could see everything he needed to see.
The morning after the Turtle Bay murders had turned out crisp and pure, with a high blue sky all over the Caribbean. A hawk flew directly over his head, watching the empty highway and watching him, it seemed. Far below, the sea was choppy in spite of the pacific blue skies. Brown reefs were visible on the outskirts of Titchfield Cove. There was a long, dramatic stretch of crystal beach that ended in another hill of high black rocks.
Damian Rose began to concentrate on a slightly balding dark-haired man and his two children as they walked down the perfect beach.
The three of them were getting their feet and legs wet in the creamy surf... walking along as if they were waiting for the man who photographed such moments for postcards and greeting cards.
Damian took out two lengths of streamlined black pipe. He began to screw them together. Made a barrel. Screwed the longer pipe into a lightweight stock. Made a gun. Added a sniper's scope from his backpack.
The dark-haired man, Walter Marks, dived over a small blue wave and disappeared.
His boy and little girl seemed leery of the water. Attractive children, Rose bothered to notice. Two blonds, like their mother.
Their father was an ass to take them out the morning after the machete killings. A shallow, foolish ass. Promised them a vacation. Always kept his promises.
Rose put the sight of the German rifle to his eye. Thin crosshairs that didn't meet.
He watched Marks's slick brown hair surface in bubbles. The man stood up, and the water was only to his waist. He had a very hairy chest: brown hair that seemed to turn black in wet tufts.
Through the powerful Zeiss sight, Walter Marks seemed close enough to reach out and touch. Rose saw the Cuban waving from high weeds not far behind the beach. 'Shooting goldfish in a bowl': he remembered a strange, wonderful saying.
Damian squeezed off just one shot.
Walter Marks fell over backward in the three foot-high water. He looked as if he were trying to step back over a wave to amuse his children.
The bullet had gone through the center of his forehead, spitting out brain like a corkscrew.
The children began to scream at once. they hugged each other and seemed to be dancing in the suddenly pinkish water.
Kingfish and the Cuban appeared with the machete. The Roses' inspired buck-and-wing team. Wading out into the sea.
Fortunately, but at the same time unfortunately for the Marks children, there had to be witnesses this time. The witnesses were to be the children themselves.
Too bad, Rose thought for a split second. And yet perfect.
The cold-blooded murder of the president of ASTA. The public execution of the president of the American Society of Travel Agents.
Who deserved it for being such a pompous fool. For ignoring all the warnings.
Turtle Bay, San Dominica
Somewhere in the U.S. Marine annals, it says that 'a Marine on Embassy Duty is an Ambassador in uniform. '
Clearly out of uniform-dressed in gray insignia shorts and nothing else-twenty-four embassy duty marines spent the morning of May 3 conducting a dreaded sector search of the beach at Turtle Bay.
The muscular soldiers picked up driftwood, seahorses, periwinkle, clear, rubbery jellyfish. they picked up chewing gum, matches, lint, stomachturning shreds of human flesh, strands of hair, the nub of a woman's finger. they picked up everything on the beach that wasn't sand: literally everything.
they put whatever they found into heavy-duty plastic bags marked XYXYXY.
Then the marine captain ordered his men to 'rake the sand back to normal.'
Hand in hand up on the Shore Highway, Peter Macdonald and Jane Cooke watched the dubious detective work going on all over the beach.
Beside a big man like Macdonald, Jane seemed -slighter than she really was. Close up, she was somewhat big-boned-an old-fashioned rnidwestem beauty right out of Nelson Algren. Freckles, dimples, long blond hair a river of curls.
