Patterson, James - Alex Cross 5 - Pop Goes the Weasel

A few gate-crashing agents of fame and fortune pressed their cards at him, promising obscene amounts of money for his story. He didn't need any of their tawdry business cards. Months before, he had picked out a powerful New York and Hollywood agent.

Christ, he was free as a bird! He was absolutely flying now. After the press conference, claiming concern for their safety, he sent his family ahead without him.

He stayed behind in the court law library and firmed up book deal details with Jules Halpern and the Bertelsmann Group, now the most powerful book publishing conglomerate around the world. He had promised them his story -but of course they weren't going to get anything close to the truth. Wasn't that the way with the so-called 'tell-all, bare-all' nonfiction published these days? Bertelsmann knew this, and still they'd paid him a fortune.

After the meeting, he took the slow-riding lift down to the court's indoor car park. He was still feeling incredibly high, which could be dangerous. A set of twenty-sided dice was burning a hole in the pocket of his suit trousers.

He desperately wanted to play the game. Now! The Four Horsemen. Better yet, Solipsis. His version of the game. He wouldn't give in to that urge, not yet. It was too dangerous, even for him.

Since the beginning of the trial, he had been parking the Jaguar in the same spot. He did have his patterns after all. He never bothered to put coins in the meter, not once. Every day there was a pile of five-dollar tickets under the windshield wiper.

Today was no exception.

He grabbed the absurd parking tickets off the windshield and crumpled them into a ball in his fist. Then he dropped the wad of paper onto the oil-stained concrete floor.

'I have diplomatic immunity,' he smiled as he climbed into his Jag.

Book Five

Endgame

?CHAPTER One Hundred and Two

Shafer couldn't believe it. He had made a very serious and perhaps irreversible mistake. The result wasn't what he had expected, and now his whole world seemed to be falling apart. At times he thought that it couldn't have been worse if he had gone to prison for the cold blooded murder of Patsy Hampton.

Shafer knew that he wasn't just being paranoid or mad. Several of the pathetic wankers inside the embassy were watching him every bloody time he stepped from his office. They seemed to resent him and openly despise him, especially the women. Who had turned them against him? Somebody surely was responsible.

He was the white, English O.J. Simpson. A weird off-color joke to them. Guilty though proven innocent.

So Shafer mostly stayed inside his office with the door closed, sometimes locked. He performed his few remaining duties with a growing sense of irritation and frustration, and a sense of the absurd. It was driving him mad to be trapped like this, to be a pathetic spectacle for the embassy staff.

He idly played with his computer and waited for the game of The Four Horsemen to resume, but the other players had cut him off. They insisted that it was too dangerous to play, even to communicate, and not one of them understood that that was exactly why this was the perfect time to play.

Shafer stared out onto Massachusetts Avenue for interminably long stretches during the day. He listened to call-in talk shows on the radio. He was getting angrier and angrier. He needed to play.

Someone was knocking on the door of his office. He turned his head sharply, and felt a spike of pain in the back of his neck. The phone had begun to ring. He picked up and heard the voice of the temp he'd been given. Ms. Wynne Hamerman was on the intercom.

'Mr. Andrew Jones is here to see you.' she said.

Andrew Jones? Shafer was shocked. Jones was a director from the Security Service in London. Shafer hadn't known he was in Washington. What the hell was this visit about? Andrew Jones was a high-level, very tough bastard who wouldn't just drop by for tea and biscuits. Mustn't keep him waiting too long.

Jones was standing there, and he looked impatient, almost angry. What was this about? His steely-blue eyes were cold and hard; his face as rigid as that of an English soldier in Belfast. In contrast, his brilliant red hair and mustache made him look benign, almost jolly. He was called 'Andrew the Red' back in London.

'Let's go inside your office, shall we? Shut the door behind you,' Jones said, in a low but commanding tone.

Shafer was just getting over his initial surprise, but he was also starting to become angry. Who was this pompous asshole to come barging into his office like this? By what right was he here? How dare he? The toad! The glorified lackey from London.

'You can sit down, Shafer.' Jones said. Another imperious command. 'I'll be brief and to the point.'

'Of course,' Shafer answered. He remained standing. 'Please do be brief. I'm sure we're both busy.'

Jones lit up a cigarette, took a long drag, then let the smoke out slowly.

'That's illegal here in Washington,' Shafer goaded him.

'You'll receive orders to return to England in thirty days' time,' said Jones, who continued to puff furiously on the cigarette.' You're an embarrassment here in Washington, as you will be in London. Of course, over there the tabloids have recreated you as a martyr of the brutal and inefficient American police and judicial system. They like to think of this as DC Confidential, more evidence of wholesale corruption and naivete in the States. Which we both know, in this case, is complete crap.'

Shafer smiled contemptuously. 'How dare you come in here and talk to me like this, Jones. I was framed for a heinous crime I didn't commit. I was acquitted by an American jury. Have you forgotten that?'

Jones frowned, and continued to stare him down. 'Only because crucial evidence wasn't allowed in the trial. The blood on your trousers? That poor woman's blood in the bathroom drain at your mistress's?' He blew smoke out of the side of his mouth. 'We know everything, you pathetic fool. We know you're a stone-cold killing freak. So you'll go back to London - until we catch you at something. Which we will, Shafer. We'll make something up if we have to.'

'I feel sick being in the same room with you. Legally, you've escaped punishment this time, but we're watching you very closely now. We will get you, somewhere, some day soon.'

Shafer looked amused. He couldn't hold back a smile. He knew he shouldn't, but he couldn't resist the play. 'You can try, you insufferable, sanctimonious shit. You can certainly try. But join the queue. And now, if you please, I have work to do.'

Andrew Jones shook his head. 'Well actually, you don't have any work to do, Shafer. But I am happy to leave. The stench in here is absolutely overpowering. When was the last time you had a bath?' He laughed contemptuously. 'Christ, you've completely lost it.'

?CHAPTER One Hundred and Three

That afternoon I met with Jones and three of his agents at the Willard Hotel, near the White House. I had called the meeting. Sampson was there, too. He'd been reinstated in the department, but that didn't stop him from doing what had originally gotten him into trouble.

'I believe he's crazy,' Jones said of Shafer. 'He smells like a lavatory at boot camp. He's definitely going down for the count. What're your thoughts on his mental state?'

I knew Geoffrey Shafer inside and out by now. I'd read about his family: his brothers, a long-suffering mother, the domineering father. Their travels from military base to base until he was twelve. 'Here's what I think. It started with a serious bipolar disorder, what used to be called manic-depression. He had it when he was a kid. Now he's strung out on pharmaceutical drugs: Xanax, Benadryl, Haldol, Ativan, Valium, Librium, several others. It's quite a cocktail. Available from local doctors for the right price. I'm surprised he can function at all. But he survives. He doesn't go down. He always wins.