ROSARIO'S GETTING OUT

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Chapter One

The little man was just that: little. But he was manlike even as a child. He spent most of his social time in the company of adults, speaking freely with them as they replied to him. Age was not a factor—thought and intelligence were the medium of exchange. By eight, Rosario could hold his own, giving his opinions freely and replying to those of his elders, whether they were relatives or not.

His father and mother married late. His father was forty and his mother thirty-five. His parents were of mixed nationality, but both were ethnic Jews. His mother was American born, and she grew up on Long Island in the elegant section of Kings Point on the water, scant blocks from the Coast Guard Academy. Her father had been a prosperous developer who built custom-made villas for successful New York businessmen and professionals who flocked yearlong from the city for extended weekends of relative peace.

His father's family was expatriated German and Jewish. The family left the comfort of Berlin after Kristallnacht and Hitler's then recent ascent to chancellor. They had thought that France was far enough away, and their son, Rosario's father, was born in early 1943 at the height of the war. Almost immediately thereafter, the French Jews were rounded up en masse, and Rosario's father was placed to be raised as the putative child of Catholic antique dealers. His parents were denounced and carted off. Both died en route, robbing the gas chamber of its claims on them. The young Rosario heard the story only once from his father. It did not come up again. It was not a topic of discussion within the small family of three.

After the war years, the French had a change of heart regarding Jews and inspired them to join government service, preferring to trust them over more native Frenchmen who had earlier dallied with the Nazi's, becoming their partisans. They also accepted that Jews were somehow inherently smarter and more suited to matters of discipline and intelligence services.

After completing his schooling, Rosario's father was sought out by the Suretee. He enlisted and trained in general police matters. When he obviously excelled in his studies and became noted for being just plain smart, he was routed into the intelligence division and designated for foreign service. In this manner, he developed his career and was assigned to embassies and delegations in Europe and finally in the United States to the French delegation to the United Nations. It was on this assignment in New York City that he met and later married Rosario's mother with whom he returned to France, having been promoted both in rank and in a management position within the secret service of France.

The only condition his mother had placed on their marriage was that, from the age of three on, their young boy would spend summers stateside with her parents, who doted on him as their only grandchild. The boy came along a few years later. The French school recess was shorter than that in the United States, which allowed the boy almost three months of vacation annually. During these trips, he perfected his English, learning to think in the language and speak it like a native without an accent as he spoke French when at home. His maternal grandfather was an avid outdoorsman who took the boy to hunt and fish for weeks at a time, camping out in Maine and western Massachusetts. They hiked the summer woods and climbed the taller mountains, like Greylock. When the boy got older, they climbed in the Rockies and the Grand Canyon. Rosario learned to love the outdoors and enjoy the confidence of a woodsman, moving freely in the outdoors, understanding the nature of plants and animals. Early on, he learned the woodsman's tricks and the rules of wilderness survival. These lessons never left him.

By the age of ten, the boy was becoming the French equivalent of an army brat, moving time and time again with his parents to yet another foreign posting. His father spent long hours at work with executive duties, and his mother had little to do with a lot of help. Her burdens became charity work and the entertaining of other French families that were similarly posted. To avoid more upheaval, Rosario's parents agreed that he should have stability with a regular school environment without constant schooling disruptions from the threefold or more yearly relocations. He was placed in a Swiss boarding school within the Zurich Canton. He was educated in French, Swiss, and English and learned to read and study in all three.

Even as a younger man, Rosario perfected the art of reading, in part because there were few family adventures because his parents remained constantly busy with their own affairs, which made him somewhat feral. The boy loved to read, learn, and experience, even if vicariously, the events and places that rose out of the turned page. These lessons in life stretched his insight and exercised his mind.

His European school experiences also stressed travel and physical capacity. The boy learned to climb the Alps, to ski, and to hike and travel in the woods alone as he had in earlier days with his grandfather. He did not compete with others so much as with himself in developing his skills of self-reliance and his physical ability, dovetailing them with his already accomplished mental development. In this manner, he was strengthened to weather tragedy.

When he was fifteen, his parents were reposted by the ministry to Algeria, once a favored son of France. Now it had deteriorated into an unruly child, broken by subversive terrorist activities of rebels, dissidents, and separatists. His father had been so assigned because he was credited with being a minor hero in Algeria, which favored almost no white Frenchmen at the time.

Due to his repeated postings and constant concern for the security of government members developed through his intelligence work, he studied protection needs and defects both obvious and subtle. He reached a simple conclusion. During a terrorist event it was difficult in the heat of the moment to tell a friend from a foe, especially when the enemy was wearing your garb. You ended up disoriented, shooting both friend and foe alike, helping to flame the overall disruption the enemy desired.

The Algerians were an elegant and distinguished people, including visually. Obviously, they spoke the king's French. Many were born soldiers, in great physical shape, and nearly as tall as Maasai warriors. Like Jews, one Algerian knew another across a crowded room. Thus, the solution his father divined was simple and easily adopted throughout France in its government facilities. As early as the 1980s, he installed Gurka-like Algerians who were fully trained in antiterrorism as the official palace guard and in all government buildings. They lived together, ate together, bunked together, and protected together. In the few instances when there was trouble, they did not kill each other but rather operated effectively as a trained military unit. His father's trust of these Algerian soldiers and the ability of well over several thousand native families to prosper and achieve while they were in the military made him popular when he was assigned to North Africa.

It also made him a terrorist target. He and his wife were assassinated in Algiers while returning late at night from a diplomatic consular affair. They were blown apart in their armored vehicle by light rocket fire, just like...