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.
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.
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.
