When,the rifle was cleaned, when the M-21 was all back together, he went into the bathroom, where he worked for another hour or so. Using a mixture of Quiet Touch and Miss Clairol, he dyed his hair what the package called 'blue black,' with gray highlights. Damian's own hair color.
Now there was only one tall blond Englishman: Clive Lawson. And only one more day. Before Damian Rose called it a night, he took a new field machete out of its cheesecloth wrapping. He laid the knife out carefully by his rifle.
Then the tall black-haired American went off to sleep.
PART III
The Perfect Ending
May 11, 1979, Friday
Shoot-Out! Be4 i Die
May 11, 1979; Coastown, San Dominica
Friday morning. The Last Day of the Season.
Dr. Johnson broke open a croissant, dabbed half of the crisp roll with guava jelly, watched Peter out of the corner of his eye. 'What a damn wonderful time for living it could have been.' Peter shook his head as he spoke to the fat black policeman.
The young American man was looking especially American in the bright light of morning. He was wearing a forest green (holey, punky) SEE BEAR MOUNTAIN T-shirt; wrinkled athletic shorts; no shoes or socks; his ratty old baseball hat.
He was rubbing his bare feet together like sticks trying to make a fire. 'Swimming.' He continued on with his spiel. Sailing. Playing baskethall, if you're a recidivist like me... running around in a baseball cap like you're ten years old again and don't care... all kinds of wonderful, life-wasting crap. Nothing too serious, you know, R and R.'
The middle-aged police chief was beginning to feel very tired, depressed. He kept remembering the night he spent in the hospital with the blond girl. Moreover he was beginning to feel paternal toward the young American. He liked Peter. Sometimes he felt it was them against all the rest.
'This island used to be that way. When I was a boy. I don't know if the world will let you do that anymore. Be carefree.'
Peter nodded without saying anything.
He and the police chief were sitting under a striped yellow umbrella on a sixteenth-floor terrace of the Dorcas Hotel. Across the terrace from them, two CIA men stood by the railing with their suit jackets off, old-fashioned shoulder holsters strapped across their white shirts. Behind them, Coastown stretched out like a giant, glittering carnival. One story above, the roof of the Dorcas was yellow, the color of gold teeth. The sloping roof was too steep for anyone to climb on, someone who knew about such things had decided.
Peter threw back his head and looked around and around a cloudless, china blue skyscape. He started to think about heroes, leaders, inspiration.... Once, when he was a plebe, he remembered going to a humanities symposium: 'Is the Hero Dead in Western Civilization)' Four history and classics professors answered-shouted to the rafters'Yes! Yes! Dead and buried!'
Well, dammit, people still needed heroes. He did, anyway... Ulysses, Churchill, Lincoln... whoever! Somebody! That unbelievable ass Nixon. Gerry Ford. Jesus! Didn't they know anything about being leaders? Heroes?... If Kissinger could get to be a sex object, Richard Nixon could have at least gotten up to the level of human being.
'Man, oh, man, oh, man,' he said in rhythm with his neck and head circles. 'It's so damn unbelievable, isn't it? Worse than Vietnam, and that really sucked. Bad, Meral, bad.... I keep fantasizing that Janie is going to be alive again.'
Trelawney, San Dominica
Dmfian Rose passed the first three hours of the morning struggling to fix a badly misused twentyfive-foot Bertram Sportsman.
Naked to the waist, dressed only in striped cotton pants, he worked on the speedboat's trimplanes first; then replaced all the plugs; then did what he could about the engine's timing.
The Caribbean was a pretty dark blue in the early morning. The cove where he worked was A Technicolor blur. Fuzzy blue-and-gold-and-white brilliance. Like movies shot through a Vaselinecovered lens.
The cove was also neady hidden from passing sea traffic; a little dogleg right behind a hill thick with palmettos.
Tucked up in the hills behind the cove was the home of a famous Caribbean landscape painter, the old recluse Eric Downes. Hidden in a closet with stacks of bare canvases, Downes now lay dead.
As he tuned the boat's engine, Damian's mind slipped back and forth between the Caribbean and France. Between the start of this working year and the end of it.... He remembered walks with Carrie through the Luxembourg Gardens; whole afternoons wasted in the Tuileries, the Place des Vosges, cafe sitting around St. - Germain-des-Pr6s.
After he finished the engine work, Rose took an extra gas tank and two M-21 rifles down below into the cabin. He left the new field machete up in the cockpit.
When he finally looked at his watch, he was sur- prised to see that it was nearly nine. That meant Carrie ought to be on her way to Morocco.
As he settled down to wait, Daniian began to whistle sweet 'Lili Marlene.' A truly great song. A tune that never failed to remind him of Carrie.
Zurich, Switzerland
Wearing a blue-gray shift and gray Valentino turban, she sat across from a red-mustached, very fat munchkin, S. 0. Rogin, in the Schweizer Kreditverein in Zurich.
