Pop Goes the Weasel (34 page)

THE GAME had never really ended, but it had changed tremendously since the trial in Washington.

It was five-thirty in the evening in London, and Conqueror was waiting at his computer. He was both anxious and feverishly
excited about what was happening: the Four Horsemen was starting up again.

It was 1:30
A.M.
in Manila, in the Philippines. Famine was ready for a message, and a new beginning to the game he loved.

And War awaited news of the Four Horsemen at his large house on the island of Jamaica. He, too, was obsessed with how it would
end and whether he would be the winner.

It was twelve-thirty in Washington. Geoffrey Shafer was driving fast to the White Flint Mall, from the embassy. He had a lot
to accomplish that afternoon. He was revved and manic.

He sped up Massachusetts Avenue, past the British Embassy and the vice president’s house. He wondered if he was being followed
and supposed it was possible. Alex Cross and the other police were out there, just waiting to get him. He hadn’t spotted them
yet, which only meant that they were getting serious now.

He made a quick right, hit a traffic circle, and shot onto Nebraska Avenue, heading toward American University. He snaked
around back roads near the university, then got on Wisconsin and sped toward the mall.

He entered Bloomingdale’s and found the department store sparsely peopled—a little depressing, actually. Good; he despised
the American shopping scene anyway. It reminded him of Lucy and her brood. He walked at a leisurely pace through the men’s
clothing section. He picked up a few overpriced Ralph Lauren Polo sport shirts, then two pairs of dark trousers.

He draped a black Giorgio Armani suit over his arm and took the bundle into the changing rooms. At a security desk inside,
he handed the clothes to an attendant on duty, posted there to curtail shoplifters, no doubt.

“Changed my mind,” he said.

“That’s not a problem, sir.”

Shafer then jogged down a narrow corridor that led to a rear exit. He sprinted toward the glass doors and burst through them
into a parking lot in back. He saw signs for Bruno Cipriani and Lord & Taylor and knew he was headed in the right direction.

A Ford Taurus was parked there near the F pole. Shafer jumped inside, started it, and drove up the Rockville Pike to Montrose
Crossing, a little over a mile away.

He didn’t think anyone was following him now. He passed Montrose and went north to the Federal Plaza shopping center. Once
there, he entered the Cyber Exchange, which sold new and used software and lots of computers.

His eyes darted left and right until he saw exactly what he needed.

“I’d like to try out the new iMac,” he told the salesperson who approached him.

“Be my guest. You need any assistance, holler,” the sales-person said. “It’s easy.”

“Yes, I think I’m fine. I’ll call if I get stuck. I’m pretty sure I’m going to buy the iMac, though.”

“Excellent choice.”

“Yes. Excellent, excellent.”

The lazy clerk left him alone, and Shafer immediately booted up. The display model was connected on-line. He felt a rush of
manic excitement, but also a tinge of sadness as he typed in his message to the other players. He’d thought this through and
knew what had to be said, what had to be done.

AT NINE O’CLOCK on Monday morning, Shafer joined the monotonous, stomach-turning line of workaday morons stuck in traffic
going in the direction of Embassy Row. He had the intoxicating thought that he would never again have to work after today.
Everything in his life was about to change. He couldn’t go back.

His heart was pounding as he stopped and waited at the green light on Massachusetts Avenue near the embassy. Car horns beeped
behind him, and he was reminded of his suicide run a year ago. Those were the days, damn it. Then he blasted through on the
red. He ran. He had rehearsed his escape. This was for keeps.

He saw two blocks of clear roadway ahead, and he floored the gas pedal. The Jaguar leaped forward with raw, phallic power,
as it were. The sports car rocketed toward the puzzle of side streets around American University.

Ten minutes later he was turning in to the White Flint Mall at fifty, gunning the Jag up to fifty-five, sixty, sixty-five
as he sped across the mostly empty lot. He was sure no one had followed him.

He drove toward a large Borders Books & Music store, turned right, then zoomed up a narrow side lane between buildings.

There were five exits out of the mall that he knew of. He accelerated again, tires squealing.

The surrounding neighborhood was a warren of narrow streets. Still no one was behind him, not a single car.

He knew of a little-used one-way entrance onto the Rockville Pike. He got on the road, heading out against the barrage of
traffic streaming to work in the city. He hadn’t spotted any cars speeding behind him inside the mall, or on the side streets,
or on the pike.

They probably had only one car, or at most two, on him in the morning. That made the most sense to Shafer. Neither the Washington
Metro police nor the Security Service would approve a larger surveillance detail to follow him. He didn’t think they would,
anyway.

He’d probably lost them. He whooped loudly and started blaring the Jag’s horn at all the pathetic suckers and fools stuck
in the oncoming lanes, headed for work. He’d been waiting nearly eight years for this.

It was finally here.

Endgame.

“WE’VE STILL GOT HIM?” I asked Jones, nervously looking around at the half-dozen agents working in the crisis room inside
the British Embassy. The room was filled with state-of-the-art electrical equipment, including half a dozen video monitors.

“Still got him. He won’t get away that easily, Alex. Besides, we think we know where he and the others are going now.”

We had a tiny, sophisticated homing device on the Jaguar, but there was a reasonable chance that Shafer would discover it.
So far, he hadn’t. And now he was running in the Jag, running with the bait—at least that was what we
thought
was happening.

The Horsemen were all on the move. Oliver Highsmith had been followed from his home in Surrey to Gatwick Airport, outside
London. Agents at the airport made sure that Conqueror got on the British Air flight to New York, then called Washington to
report he was en route.

A couple of hours later, an agent phoned from the Philippines. George Bayer was at Ninoy Aquino Airport in Manila. Famine
had purchased a ticket to Jamaica, with a stopover in New York.

We already knew that James Whitehead had retired to Jamaica, and that he was on the island now. War was waiting for the others
to arrive.

“I’m trying to get a fixed pattern for the Four Horsemen game, but there are several points of view at work. That’s what they
like about the game, what makes it so addictive,” I said to Jones as we waited for more information to come in.

“We know that at least three of them have been playing the game since they were stationed in Thailand, in ’ninety-one. Around
that time, bar girls and prostitutes began to disappear in Bangkok. The local police didn’t spend much time on the investigations.
Girls in Pat Pong had disappeared before. The police have somewhat the same attitude here in Washington with respect to the
Jane Doe killings. These girls didn’t mean much. They were written off. Murders and disappearances in Southeast certainly
aren’t investigated like ones in Georgetown or on Capitol Hill. It’s one of Washington’s dirty little secrets.”

Jones lit a new cigarette off the butt of his last one. He puffed, then said, “It might be just Shafer who’s involved in the
actual murders, Alex. Either that or the others are much more careful than he is.”

I shrugged my shoulders. I didn’t think so, but I didn’t have enough concrete evidence to argue my case effectively with Jones,
who was himself no slouch as a detective.

“The end of the Four Horsemen is coming, right? Can they really end their little fantasy game?” Sampson asked.

“It sure looks like they’re getting together,” I said. “Four former British agents, four grown men who love to play diabolical
games. In my opinion, four murderers.”

“Possibly.” Andrew Jones finally admitted that the unthinkable could be true: “Alex, I’m afraid you could be right.”

JAMAICA MUST HAVE BEEN CHOSEN because it was relatively private, and because James Whitehead owned a large beach house there.
But perhaps there were other angles attached to the game of the Four Horsemen. I hoped that we would know soon enough.

Oliver Highsmith and George Bayer arrived on the island within minutes of each other. They met at the baggage claim inside
Donald Sangster Airport, then drove for about an hour to the posh Jamaica Inn in Ocho Rios.

We were on the move, too. Sampson and I had gotten there on an early-morning flight from D.C. The weather was glorious. Blue
skies, warm breezes. We heard strains of English and Jamaican Creole at the airport, reggae and ska. The rustle of the banana
trees as the sea breeze rushed through them was like a soft chorus.

The hotel in Ocho Rios was very private and old-fashioned, just forty-five rooms overlooking the sea. We arrived there simultaneously
with four English teams. There were also two teams of detectives from Kingston.

The English High Commission office in Kingston had been alerted about our presence and our purpose here. Full cooperation
had been promised. Everyone was committed to bringing down all four game players, whatever the consequences, and I was very
impressed with the English group, and also with the local detectives.

We waited for Geoffrey Shafer. Sampson and I were strategically positioned to watch the narrow, shaded road that led to the
hotel. We were on a lush hillside between the hotel and the sparkling blue Caribbean sea. Andrew Jones and another agent were
in a second car hidden near the hotel’s rear entrance. Six of Jones’s agents were posing as porters and maintenance workers
at the hotel. The Jamaican detectives were also posted on the grounds.

We’d had no news about Shafer. He had finally lost us. But we believed he would join the others. Jones complained that there
weren’t enough of us to stop Shafer if he was coming after the others. I agreed; if Shafer was playing kamikaze, there would
be no adequate defense.

So we waited and waited. Continual updates came in over the car’s short-wave radio. The messages didn’t stop all afternoon.
They were a kind of electronic heartbeat for our surveillance detail.

“Oliver Highsmith is still in his room. Doesn’t want to be disturbed, apparently.…”

“Bayer is in his room as well. Subject was spotted on the terrace about ten minutes ago, checking out the beach with binoculars.…”

“Bayer has left his room. He’s taking a dip in the deep blue sea. Subject is in a red-striped swimming costume. Difficult
to miss. Makes the job easier. Not on the eyes, though.…”

“Black Mercedes arriving at the front gate. Driver’s tall and blond. Could be Geoffrey Shafer. You see him, Alex?”

I reported immediately, “The blond man isn’t Shafer. Repeat, it isn’t Shafer. Too young, probably American. Young wife and
two children tagging along. False alarm. It isn’t Shafer.”

The radio reports continued.

“Highsmith has just ordered up from room service. Two English breakfasts in the middle of the day. One of our people will
take it up to him.…”

“Bayer is back from his swim. He’s well tanned. Little guy, but muscular. Tried to hit on some ladies. Struck out.”

Finally, at around six o’clock, I made another report. “James Whitehead just drove up in a green Range Rover! He’s coming
inside the hotel. War is here.”

Only one more game player to go.

We waited. Death had yet to arrive.

SHAFER WAS IN NO PARTICULAR HURRY to flash the checkered flag. He took his sweet time thinking through each possible scenario.
He had spotted the coast of Jamaica on the horizon several hours before. He had originally flown to Puerto Rico, then sailed
from there in a chartered boat. He wanted to be able to leave either by air or by sea.

Now he calmly waited for nightfall, drifting in his boat with the cooling trade winds. It was the famous “blue hour” on the
sea, just past sunset, extraordinarily serene and beautiful. Also magical and slightly unreal. He had finished five hundred
more push-ups on the deck of the boat, and he wasn’t even winded. He could see half a dozen large cruise ships anchored near
Ocho Rios. All around him were scores of smaller boats like his own.

He remembered reading somewhere that the island of Jamaica had once been the personal property of Christopher Columbus. It
pleased him to think there had been a time when a man could take whatever he wanted, and often did. His body was tight and
hard, and he was bronze from the three days of sun during his trip. His hair was bleached even blonder than usual. He’d had
the drugs under control for almost a week now. It had been an act of will, and he’d risen to the challenge. He wanted to win.

Shafer felt like a god. No, he
was
a god. He controlled every move in his own life and in the lives of several others. There were surprises left, he thought
as he slowly sprayed his body with cooling streams of water. There were surprises for everybody who still chose to be in the
game.