The night air was peaceful and calm and fragrant. The sea was flat. Not a ripple disturbed the surface. Well, there would be plenty of ripples soon.
A car was waiting for him just off the coast road, a black Ford Mustang, glossy and shiny in the moonlight.
He smiled when he saw it. The game was progressing beautifully.
Famine was there to meet him.
No, Famine was there for another reason, wasn’t he?
George Bayer was waiting on shore to kill him.
Chapter 112
“GEORGE BAYER isn’t in his room. He’s not with Oliver Highsmith or James Whitehead, either. Damn it to hell! He’s loose.”
The alarming message went out over the two-way radio. Sampson and I had been watching the south side of the hotel for close to eight hours, and we were sure George Bayer hadn’t come our way.
We heard Andrew Jones’s concerned voice on the radio. “Remember that all of the Four Horsemen are agents, like ourselves. They’re capable and deadly. Let’s find Bayer right away, and be extra alert for Geoffrey Shafer. Shafer is the most dangerous player—at least we think he is.”
Sampson and I hurried out of our rented sedan. We had our guns out, but they seemed inappropriate at the beautiful and serene resort. I remembered feeling the same way nearly a year before, in Bermuda.
“Bayer didn’t come this way,” Sampson said. I knew he was concerned that Jones’s people had lost Famine. We wouldn’t have made that mistake, but we were seen as backup, not the primary team.
The two of us quickly walked up a nearby hill that gave us a perspective on the manicured lawns rolling down toward the hotel’s private beach. It was getting dark, but the grounds near the hotel were relatively well lit. A couple in bathing suits and robes slowly walked toward us. They were holding hands, oblivious to the danger. No George Bayer, though. And no Shafer.
“How do they end this thing?” Sampson asked. “How do you think the game ends?”
“I don’t think any of them knows for sure. They probably have game plans, but anything can happen now. It all depends on Shafer, if he follows the rules. I think he’s beyond that, and the other players know it.”
We hurried along, running close to the hotel buildings. We were getting nervous and concerned looks from the hotel guests we passed on the narrow, winding sidewalk.
“They’re all killers. Even Jones finally admits that. They killed as agents, and then they didn’t want to stop. They liked it. Now maybe they plan to kill one another. Winner takes all.”
“And Geoffrey Shafer hates to lose,” said Sampson.
“Shafer doesn’t ever lose. We’ve seen that already. That’s his pattern, John. It’s what we missed from the start.”
“He doesn’t get away this time, sugar. No matter what, Shafer doesn’t walk.”
I didn’t answer Sampson.
Chapter 113
SHAFER WASN’T EVEN BREATHING HARD as he made it to the white-sand shoreline. George Bayer stepped out of the black Ford Mustang, and Shafer watched for a weapon to appear. He continued to walk forward, playing the game of games for the highest stakes of all: his life.
“You bloody swam?” Bayer asked, his voice jovial yet taunting.
“Well, actually, it’s a fantastic night for it,” Shafer said, and casually shook water off his body. He waited for Bayer to move on him. He observed the way he tensed and untensed his right hand. Watched the slight forward slant of his shoulders.
Shafer took off a waterproof backpack and pulled out fresh, dry clothes and shoes. Now he had access to his weapons. “Let me guess. Oliver suggested that you all gang up on me,” he said. “Three against one.”
Bayer smiled slyly. “Of course. That had to be considered as an option. But we rejected it because it wasn’t consistent with our characters in the game.”
Shafer shook his hair, let the water drip off. As he dressed, he turned halfway away from Bayer. He smiled to himself. God, he loved this—the game of life and death against another Horseman, a master player. He admired Bayer’s calmness and his ability to be so smooth.
“His playing is so bloody predictable. He was the same way as an agent and analyst. George, they sent you because they thought I’d never suspect you’d try to take me out by yourself. You’re the first play It’s so obvious, though. A terrible waste of a player.”
Bayer frowned slightly but still didn’t lose his cool, didn’t let on what he felt. He thought that was the safest attitude, but it told Shafer his suspicion was true: Famine was here to kill him. He was sure of it. George Bayer’s cool demeanor had given him away.
“No, nothing like that,” Bayer said. “We’re going to play according to the rules tonight. The rules are important to us. It’s to be a board game, a contest of strategy and wits. I’m just here to pick you up, according to plan. We’ll meet face to face at the hotel.”
“And we’ll abide by the throw of the dice?” Shafer asked.
“Yes, of course, Geoff.” Bayer held out his hand and showed him three twenty-sided dice.
Shafer couldn’t hold back a sharp laugh. This was so good, so rich. “So what did the dice say, George? How do I lose? How do I die? A knife? A pistol? A drug overdose makes a great deal of sense to me.”
Bayer couldn’t help himself. He laughed. Shafer was such a cocky bastard, such a good killer, a wonderful psychopathic personality. “Well, yes, it might have occurred to us, but we played it completely straight. As I said, they’re waiting at the hotel for us. Let’s go.”
Shafer turned his back to Bayer for an instant. Then he pushed hard off his right foot. He sprang at Bayer.
But Bayer was more than ready for him. He threw a short, hard punch that struck Shafer’s cheek, rattled and maybe even loosened a few teeth. The right side of Shafer’s head went completely numb.
“Good one, George. Good stuff!”
Then Shafer head-butted Bayer with all of his strength. He heard the crunch of bone against bone, saw an explosion of dizzying white before his eyes. That got his adrenaline flowing.
The dice went flying from Bayer’s hand as he reached for a gun, or some other weapon. It was tucked in the back of his waistband.
Shafer clutched Bayer’s right arm, twisted with all of his strength, and broke it at the elbow. Bayer shrieked in pain.
“You can’t beat me! Nobody has, nobody can!” Shafer screamed at the top of his voice.
He grabbed George Bayer’s throat and squeezed with super-human strength. Bayer gagged and turned the brightest red, as if all the blood in his body had rushed to his head. George was stronger than he appeared, but Shafer was speeding on adrenaline and years of pure hatred. He outweighed Bayer by twenty pounds, all of it muscle.
“Noooo. Listen to me.” George Bayer wheezed and gasped. “Not like this. Not here.”
“Yes, George. Yes, yes. The game is on. The game that you bastards started. Tally-ho, old chap. You did this to me. You made me what I am: Death.”
He heard a loud, crisp snap, and George Bayer went limp against him. He let his body fall to the sand.
“One down,” said Shafer, and finally allowed himself a deep, satisfying breath. He snatched up the fallen dice, shook them once, then hurled them into the sea. “I don’t use the dice anymore,” he said.
Chapter 114
HE FELT SO DAMN GOOD. So fine. God, how he had missed this! The mainline of adrenaline, the incomparable thrill. He knew it was likely that the Jamaica Inn was being watched by the police, so he parked the Mustang at the nearby Plantation Inn.
He walked at a quickening pace through the crowded Bougainvillea Terrace. Drinks were being served while the wretched song “Yellowbird” played loudly. He had a nasty fantasy about shooting up the terrace, killing several dickhead tourists, so he got away from the crowded area immediately for everybody’s sake—but mostly for his own.
He strolled the beach, and it calmed him. It was quiet, restful, the strains of calypso music gently weaving through the night a
ir. The stretch between the two hotels was eye-catching, with plenty of spotlights, sand the color of champagne, thatched umbrellas placed at even intervals. A very nice playing field.
He knew where Oliver Highsmith was staying: in the famous White Suite, where Winston Churchill and David Niven and Ian Fleming had slept once upon a time. Highsmith loved his creature comforts almost as much as he loved the game.
Shafer despised the other Horsemen, in part because he wasn’t of their snobbish social class. Lucy’s father had gotten him into MI6; the other players had gone to the right universities. But there was another, more powerful reason for his hatred: they had dared to use him, to feel superior and throw it in his face.
He entered through a white picket-fence gate at the property line of the Jamaica Inn. He broke into a soft jog. He wanted to run, to sweat. He was feeling manic again. Playing the game had made him too excited.
Shafer held his head for a moment. He wanted to laugh and scream at the top of his lungs. He leaned against a wooden post on the path leading up from the beach, and tried to catch his breath. He knew he was crashing, and it couldn’t have happened at a worse time.
“Everything all right, sir?” a hotel waiter stopped to ask him.
“Oh, couldn’t be better,” Shafer said, waving the man away. “I’m in heaven, can’t you tell?”
He started walking toward the White Suite again. He realized that he was feeling the same way he had that morning last year when he nearly crashed his car in Washington. He was in serious trouble again. He could lose the game right now, lose everything. That required a change of strategy, didn’t it? He had to be more daring, even more aggressive. He had to act, not think too much. The odds against him were still two to one.
At the far end of the courtyard, he spotted a man and a woman in evening clothes. They were loitering near a white stucco portico strewn with flowers. He decided they were Jones’s people. They had staked out the hotel, after all. They were here for him, and he was honored.
The man glanced his way, and Shafer abruptly lowered his head. There was nothing they could do to stop or detain him. He’d committed no crime they could prove. He wasn’t wanted by the police. No, he was a free man.
So Shafer walked toward them at a leisurely pace, as if he hadn’t seen them. He whistled “Yellowbird.”
He looked up when he was a few yards away from the pair. “I’m the one you’re waiting for. I’m Geoffrey Shafer. Welcome to the game.”
He pulled out his Smith & Wesson nine-millimeter semi-automatic and fired twice.
The woman cried out and grabbed the left side of her chest. Bright-red blood was already staining her sea-green dress. Her eyes showed confusion and shock before rolling back into her forehead.
The male agent had a dark hole where his left eye had been. Shafer knew the man was dead even before his head struck the courtyard floor with a loud, satisfying smack.
He hadn’t lost anything over the years. Shafer hurried toward the White Suite and Conqueror.
The gunshots certainly would have been heard. They wouldn’t expect him to run straight into the trap they’d set. But here he was.
Two maids were pushing a squeaking cleanup cart out of the White Suite. Had they just turned down Conqueror’s bed? Left the fat man a box of chocolate mints to nibble?
“Get the hell out of here!” he yelled, and raised his gun. “Go on, now! Run for your lives!” The Jamaican maids took off as if they had just seen the devil himself, and later they would tell their children they had.
Shafer burst in the front door of the suite, and there was Oliver Highsmith freewheeling his chair across the freshly scrubbed floor.
“Oliver, it’s you,” Shafer said. “I do believe I’ve caught the dreaded Covent Garden killer. You did those killings, didn’t you? Fancy that. Game’s over, Oliver.”
At the same time, Shafer thought, Watch him closely. Be careful with Conqueror.
Oliver Highsmith stopped moving, then slowly but rather nimbly turned his wheelchair to face Shafer. A face-to-face meeting. This was good. The best. Highsmith had controlled Bayer and Whitehead from London when they were all agents. The original game, the Four Horsemen, had been his idea, a diversion as he eased into retirement. “Our silly little fantasy game,” he always called it.
He studied Shafer, cold-eyed and measuring. He was bright—an egghead, but a genius, or so Bayer and Whitehead claimed.
“My dear fellow, we’re your friends. The only ones you have now. We understand your problem. Let’s talk things through, Geoffrey.”
Shafer laughed at the fat man’s pathetic lies, his superior and condescending attitude, his nerve. “That’s not what Georgie Bayer told me. Why, he said you were going to murder me! Hell of a way to treat a friend.”
Highsmith didn’t blink, didn’t falter. “We’re not alone here, Geoff. They’re at the hotel. The Security Service team is on the grounds. They must have followed you.”
“And you, and Bayer, and Whitehead! I know all that, Oliver. I met a couple of crackerjack agents down the hall. Shot ’em dead. That’s why I have to hurry up, can’t tarry. The game’s on a clock now. Lots of ways to lose.”
“We have to talk, Geoff.”
“Talk, talk, talk.” Shafer shook his head, frowned, then barked out a laugh. “No, there’s nothing for us to talk about. Talk is such an overrated bore. I learned to kill in the field, and I like it much more than talking. No, I actually love it to death.”
“You are mad,” Highsmith exclaimed, his grayish-blue eyes widening with fear. Finally, he understood who Shafer was; he wasn’t intellectualizing anymore. He felt it in his gut.
“No, actually, I’m not insane. I know precisely what I’m doing—always have, always will. I know the difference between good and evil. Anyway, look who’s talking: the Rider on the White Horse.”
Shafer moved swiftly toward Highsmith. “This isn’t much of a fight—just the way I was taught to perform in Asia. You’re going to die, Oliver. Isn’t that a stunning thought? Still think this is a bloody fantasy game?”
Suddenly Highsmith jumped to his feet. Shafer wasn’t surprised; he knew he couldn’t have committed the murders in London from a wheelchair. Highsmith was close to six feet, and obese, but surprisingly quick for his size. His arms and hands were massive.
Shafer was faster. He struck Highsmith with the butt of his gun, and Conqueror went crashing down on one knee. Shafer bludgeoned him a second time, then a third, and Highsmith dropped flat on the floor. He groaned loudly and slobbered blood and spit. Shafer kicked the small of his back, kicked a knee, kicked his face.
Then he bent and put the gun barrel against Highsmith’s broad forehead. He could hear the distant sound of running footsteps’ slapping down the hall. Too bad—they were coming for him. Hurry, hurry.
“They’re too late,” he said to Conqueror. “No one can save you. Except me, Conqueror. What’s the play? Counsel me. Should I save the whale?”
“Please, Geoff, no. You can’t just kill me. We can still help each other.”
“I’d love to stretch this out, but I really have to dash. I’m throwing the dice. In my mind. Oh, bad news, Oliver. The jig is up. You just lost game.”
He inserted the barrel of his gun into Highsmith’s pulpy right ear, and fired. The gunshot blew Conqueror’s gray matter all over the room. Shafer’s only regret was that he hadn’t been able to torture Oliver Highsmith for a much, much longer time than he had.
Then Shafer was running away, and suddenly he was struck with a realization that actually surprised him: he had something to live for. This was a wonderful, wonderful game.
I want to live.
Chapter 115
SAMPSON AND I sprinted toward the secluded wing of the hotel where Oliver Highsmith had his suite. There had been gunshots, but we couldn’t be everywhere at once. We’d heard the pistol reports all the way on the other side of the Jamaica Inn.
I wasn’t prepared for the bloody massacre scene we
found. Two English agents were down in the courtyard. I’d worked with them both, just as I’d worked side by side with Patsy Hampton.
Jones and another agent, in addition to a team of local detectives, were already crowded into Highsmith’s suite. The room was abuzz. Everything had turned to chaos and carnage in a burst of homicidal madness.
“Shafer went through two of my people to get here,” Jones said in an angry voice strained with tension and sadness. He was smoking a cigarette. “He came in shooting, took down Laura and Gwynn. Highsmith is dead, too. We haven’t found George Bayer yet.”
I knelt and quickly checked the damage to Oliver Highsmith’s skull. It wasn’t subtle. He’d been shot at point-blank range, and the wound was massive. I knew from Jones that Shafer had resented the senior man’s intelligence, and now he’d blown out his brains. “I told you he liked to kill. He has to do this, Andrew. He can’t stop.
“Whitehead!” I said. “The end of the game.”
Chapter 116
WE DROVE FASTER than the narrow, twisting road safely allowed, barreling toward James Whitehead’s home. It wasn’t far.
We passed a road sign that read Mallard’s Beach—San Antonio.
Sampson and I were quiet, lost in our own thoughts. I kept thinking of Christine, couldn’t stop the images from coming. “We have her.” Was that still true?
I didn’t know, and only Shafer, or possibly Whitehead, could give me the answer. I wanted to keep both of them alive if I could. Everything about the island, the exotic smells and sights, reminded me of Christine. I tried, but I couldn’t imagine a good conclusion to any of this.
We headed toward the beach and soon were skimming past private houses and a few very large estates, some with long, winding driveways that stretched a hundred yards or more from the road to the main house.