A big red sun was just coming over the green hills that rose high over the perfect little city and the sea. It was a loud sun -that would eventually give Hill a headache that day.
Two badly trained soldiers stood out by the front gates, laughing and poking at each other. they rerninded Hill how little the people of these countries ever got involved in the realities of their situation.
As he passed by the soldiers, Hill tipped his Panama hat and smiled. As he did so, he automatically thought of the famous poster mocking Richard Nixon. Why is this man smiling? the poster read. Why indeed?
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
If everything went as Damian expected it to, we were to meet at the Hilton Hotel in Morocco on or around May 12. If not, not.
The Rose Diary
Cap Foyle, San Dominica
At a quarter past five on May 8, an old James Taylor song was blasting in Peter's head-'Sweet Baby James.' He was also being mesmerized by the sight of twenty black soldiers guarding the remains of the bus from Elizabeth's Fancy.
The young American watched the quiet, terrible scene for ten or fifteen minutes, planted it forever in his war atrocities file, then left to forage around for something to eat.
For some disconnected reason, he had the Super Six on his mind: Neddy, Huey, Deli Bob, Bernie,
Tailspin Tommy. And little Pete-Little Mac. As he rode away from the ambushed bus, Peter couldn't help thinking that in his humble opinion, he was way, way out of his league right now. Even in Special Forces they didn't prepare you for this kind of miserable shit.
At about that same time, Damian Rose pinched a blue mite off the sleeve of a pale sand overshirt.
At 5:30 A. M. he stood tall and wide awake inside a phone booth in the neolithic farining village of Cap Foyle. Rose asked for number twenty-six and waited for his connection.
Two sleepy Cap Foyle residents, an old man and a girl, were already pushing skeletal bicycles along the town's dusty streets. Two cross streets down from them was the sharp green Caribbean.
'Hello... I say hello-'
Damian cut off Brooks Campbell by shouting at the sleepy-sounding man-screaming at the top of his lungs into the telephone. 'You only have eight hours, asshole! Eight hours to decide to stop chasing us. to live up to your side of the contract.... If you're looking for us by midnight tonight, I guarantee both you and Hill will be sorrier than you can dream. I guarantee it! You have until midnight to be intelligent for once in your pitiful little greasestain lives. '
Damian then hung up the phone. The tall blond man walked back to his car, humming a favorite tune-'Lili Marlene.' He was beginning to enjoy his escape plan.
Meanwhile, twelve rather striking-looking men were making their separate ways to San Dominica. they were coming from Miami and New York. From Acapulco, Caracas, San Juan. Each of the twelve was an expensive male model. From the Ford Agency. From Wilhelmina Men. From Stewart and zoii.
They'd all been hired by Carrie the week before. to pose for brochures for the new Le Pirat Hotel and for the Dragon Reef Condominium Homes. they'd been specially selected off composite and head sheets at rates of $500 plus expenses per day.
The peculiar thing was that all twelve men were between six feet two and six feet four.
All were s@ngly blond.
All looked terribly, terribly English.
Part two of the curious adventure had begun. The perfect escape.
CHAPTERTWENTY-TWO
Casinos are now being built by all the big motels. The island will have one bad season. Maybe two. Maybe even three. But then it will boom like nothing even they can imagine. The island has four times the area of Nassau and New Providence. It'stwice as beautiful as Jamaica. It should become Monte-Carlo West.
The Rose Diary
These days it is fashionable to be against the Americans. it is my hope to be in the vanguard of a countermovement, which, I suspect, could be equally fashionable one day. That is-to be for the Americans.
Joseph Walthey
Coastown, San Dominica
Tuesday Afternoon.
While all this was going on, Brooks Campbell sat hunched over a steaming pot of very strong, very good Blue Mountain coffee from Jamaica. During the morning and early afternoon of May 8, the young CIA man made person- to-person, heartto-heart telephone calls to some of the best homicide men in the world. In the big office next door, Harold Hill was doing much the same thing on a slightly larger scale.
Calls went out to Mr. Alexander Somerset, the comniissioner of crime at Scotland Yard; to Edward Mahoney in the Office of Domestic Intelligence in Washington; to the Assassination Bureau in Paris. Calls went to the biggest crime men in West Germany, Italy, Spain, Canada....
The subject was top priority and very confidential, the conversations made clear:
'A very large, very private manhunt is now being conducted throughout the Caribbean and South America. The objects of the hunt are two slithery white soldiers of fortune who have taught a ragtag band of guerrillas how to fight and think like MauMaus, the PLO, and the Japanese army. Who have, among other things, massacred forty- nine civilians
