'I haven't known what to say about Carole.'
Campbell flipped his cigarette onto the beach sand. 'I'm sorry. I hope you know how I feel, Harry.' 'You feel that you have to say something,' Harold Hill said, and smiled cruelly. 'That's all you feel, Brooks. '
Campbell let his eyes drift out over the soothing, beautiful Caribbean. 'What about Macdonald?'
'If we catch Rose, Macdonald makes the ID. I'd hate to do it off that photokit drawing.... I'm also prepared to try him as bait for Rose. If we can be clever enough to do that discreetly. '
'I think Rose might try to hit Macdonald anyway. What else is keeping him around here?'
Harold Hill extended his hands, palms up. He didn't know.
The two men walked back across the hotel's rolling lawns. As they approached a waiting Puma helicopter, men in blue jumpsuits began to take off the plane's chocks and hawsers.
'We're getting very close to him now,' Harold Hill said, 'or vice versa.'
At eleven o'clock Peter made the first of four tape recordings for the CIA's more than 8.5-billionitem computer files.
For an hour and a half straight he talked into a reel-to-reel Sony for the edification of two very hip acadeniic- type interrogators from Washington. He told them about his odyssey through the West Hills jungle; about everything he'd seen at Turtle Bay; about his feelings toward the U.S. government after Watergate; after Cambodia; after, say,, Jane had been killed.... In short, the two interrogators were trying to determine whether Peter was going to give them any trouble. At twelve-thirty a police artist started a photokit drawing of Damian Rose, based on what Peter could remember from the unbelievable fifteen-second tableau on the Shore Highway.
By one o'clock his interrogators were in the offices of Alcoa Aluminum, color copying a fair likeness of the tall blond man.
Also at one o'clock, Peter asked the CIA for a gun to protect himself, but he was refused.
At two a crowd of agents removed him from the Golf and Racquet Condominiums. Things were going too fast all of a sudden. Everything fuzzy and unclear.
they took an elevator two floors down to the lobby. Then a fast walk through a garden-to a gray Ford with little American flags on the fenders. Switched back two cars to a blue Mercury Cougar with the shiniest front grille in captivity.
Doors shut like clockwork, then the blue Mercury jerked away from the curb. Flashed past palm trees and stately casuarinas. Tires screeched out onto Orange Boulevard, where unconcerned blacks sold bananas and papaya on the sidewalks. Off to the Church of Angels. Off to see a lot of the victims, including Jane.
Sitting in back-am-is folded, mind folded-Peter wondered why they had decided to go to the church in broad daylight. He forgot the thought momentarily. Saw Jane blinking on and off like licull lights. Saw the blond man over Turtle Bay. Saw himself on the flashy green Peugeot bicycle.
'You all right, Pete?'
'Yeah. Sure. I was just thinking.........
Inside the medium-size Catholic church, Harold Hill and Brooks Campbell waited in the sacristy. Both Washington men were wearing lightweight business suits; they looked appropriately respectful.
they were discussing important logistics with an oblate priest, Father Kevin Brennan. they wanted to know where all the side and back doors were. Where the press could get their photographs but not get in the way. Where an assassin-'if an assassin had it in mind,,Father'-might try to hide inside the church.
Meanwhile a crowd from the streets was starting to gather and move inside the front doors of the church. The crowd also included both Clive Lawson and Damian Rose.
As the government car swept around the church's circular driveway, Peter couldn't help thinking that the baby cathedral wasn't a bad place for a sniper. Ugly deranged crowd; busy city streets; lots of carnival confusion.
Stepping out of the official-looking Mercury, he heard the crowd's loud chant.
'United. State. Murderers!
'United. State. Murderers!
'Haile Selassie!
'Haile Selassie!'
He watched a blur of black faces craning long necks, bulging veins, trying to find out what was going on all over their island.
It was so goddamn weird. A lot like Saigon in '73. It made Peter feel like getting up with a microphone- explaining that most people in the United States were okay. That they didn't want all the island's bauxite-they didn't want to hurt anybody. Period. Five men in dark suits and crisp white shirts met him on the creaking front steps of the church. Brooks Campbell. Dr. Johnson. Harold Hill. The American ambassador himself.
A young Catholic priest took Peter by the arm. Brief condolences and clumsy apologies were exchanged. Then the entourage quickly moved inside.
A TV news cameraman followed close behind them, stumbling along like a proud uncle at a wedding.
Two marines followed with MAT submachineguns.
Meanwhile Peter had put on his old baseball hat. Like Green Berets wearing their hats to funerals. Fuck your silly rules; conventions; fuck you!
'Not in here, Peter,' the priest whispered. 'The hat. Please.'
Peter heard nothing but the sound of two rows of plain wooden coffins being lined up in front of the church's
