Pop Goes the Weasel

by James Patterson

  Was he going to crash?

  After dinner on Friday night, Nana and I sat out in back of the house on Fifth Street. We were spending more time together than we had in years. I knew she was concerned about me, and I let her help as much as she wanted. For both our sakes.

  Jannie and Damon were washing the dishes inside and managing not to squabble too much. Damon washed while Jannie dried. Damon’s tape deck played the beautiful score from the movie Beloved.

  “Most families have a dishwasher and drier these days,” Nana said, after she’d taken a sip of her tea. “Slavery has ended in America, Alex. Did you happen to hear about that?”

  “We have a dishwasher and drier, too. Sounds like they’re in good working order. Low maintenance, low cost. Hard to beat.”

  Nana clucked. “See how long it lasts.”

  “If you want a dishwasher, we can buy one—or are you just practicing the fine art of being argumentative before you launch into something more deserving of your talents? As I remember, you are a fan of Demosthenes and Cicero.”

  She nudged me with her elbow. “Wiseapple,” she said. “Think you’re so smart.”

  I shook my head. “Not really, Nana. That’s never been one of my big problems.”

  “No, I suppose not. You’re right, you don’t have a big head about yourself.” Nana stared into my eyes. I could almost feel her peering into my soul. She has an ability to look very deeply into things that really matter. “You ever going to stop blaming yourself?” she asked me. “You look just terrible.”

  “Thank you. Are you ever going to stop nagging me?” I asked, smiling at her. Nana could always bring me out of the doldrums, in her own special way.

  She nodded her small head. “Of course I will. I’ll stop one day. Nobody lives forever, Grannyson.”

  I laughed. “You probably will, though. Live longer than me or the kids.”

  Nana showed lots of teeth—her own, too. “I do feel pretty good, considering everything,” she said. “You’re still chasing him, aren’t you? That’s what you’re doing nights. You and John Sampson, that Englishman Andrew Jones.”

  I sighed. “Yeah, I am. And we’re going to get him. There may be four men involved in a series of murders. Here and in Asia, Jamaica, London.”

  She beckoned to me with a bent, crabbed forefinger. “Come closer now.”

  I grinned at her. She’s such a soft touch, really, such a sweetie, but such a hard-ass, too. “You want me to sit down on your lap, old woman? You sure about that?”

  “Good Lord, no. Don’t sit on me, Alex. Just lean over and show some respect for my age and wisdom. Give me a big hug while you’re at it.”

  I did as I was told, and I noticed there wasn’t any fuss or clatter coming from the kitchen anymore.

  I glanced at the screen door and saw that my two little busy-bodies were watching, their faces pressed against the mesh wire. I waved them away from the door, and their faces disappeared.

  “I want you to be so very, very careful,” Nana whispered as I held her gently. “But I want you to get him somehow, someway. That man is the worst of all of them. Geoffrey Shafer is the worst, Alex, the most evil.”

  Chapter 107

  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.

  GREETINGS AND SALUTATIONS. THIS GLORIOUS AND UNPRECEDENTED ADVENTURE OF EIGHT YEARS, THE FOUR HORSEMEN, IS NEARLY AT AN END NOW. YOU HAVE STATED YOUR CASE VERY LOGICALLY, AND I ACCEPT THE REGRETTABLE CONCLUSION YOU’VE REACHED. THE GAME HAS BECOME TOO DANGEROUS. SO I PROPOSE THAT WE CREATE AN UNFORGETTABLE ENDING. I BELIEVE THAT A FACE-TO-FACE MEETING IS A FITTING END. IT’S THE ONLY CONCLUSION THAT I CAN ACCEPT.

  THIS WAS INEVITABLE, I SUPPOSE, AND WE HAVE DISCUSSED IT MANY TIMES BEFORE. YOU KNOW WHERE THE GAME ENDS. I PROPOSE THAT WE START PLAY ON THURSDAY. TRUST ME, I WILL BE THERE FOR THE GRAND FINALE. IF NECESSARY, I CAN BEGIN THE GAME WITHOUT YOU. DON’T MAKE ME DO THAT…. DEATH.

  Chapter 108

  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 tu
rning 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.

  Chapter 109

  “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.”

  Chapter 110

  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.

  Chapter 111

  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 f
amous “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.

  His game.

  His plan.

  His ending.

  Because this wasn’t just a game; it never had been. The other players had to know that by now. They understood what they had done, and why there had to be payback. It was what the Four Horsemen had been all about from the beginning: Endgame is payback, and payback is mine… or theirs? Who knows for sure?

  His father had taught him and his brothers to sail, probably the only useful thing he’d ever done for Shafer. He actually could find peace on the sea. It was the real reason he’d come to Jamaica by boat.

  At eight o’clock he swam to shore, passing several of the smaller sailboats and a few motorboats. He found the physical exertion a neat antidote to his anxiety and nerves. He was a strong swimmer and diver, and good at most other sports as well.