Pop Goes the Weasel (Alex Cross 5)

They were standing around like statues in the elegant galley hall of the large Georgian house in Kalorama. The children had been summoned to say good-bye to him.

His wife, the former Lucy Rhys-Cousins, was ash-blond, her sparkling green eyes even brighter than the Bulgari and Spark jewelry that she always wore. Slender, still a beauty of sorts at thirty-seven, Lucy had attended Newnham College at Cambridge for two years before they were married. She read useless poetry and literary novels, and spent most of her free time at equally pointless lunches, shopping with her expatriate girlfriends, going to polo matches, or sailing. Occasionally, Shafer sailed with her. He’d been a very good sailor once upon a time.

Lucy had been considered a prize catch, and he supposed that she still would be, for some men. Well, they could have her skinny, bony ass and all the passionless sex they could stomach.

Shafer hoisted up four-year-old twins Tricia and Erica, one in each arm. Two mirror images of their mother. He’d have sold the twins for the price of a postage stamp. He hugged the girls and laughed like the good papa he always pretended to be.

Then he formally shook twelve-year-old Robert’s hand. The debate being waged in the house was over whether Robert should be sent back to England for boarding school, perhaps to Winchester, where his grandfather had gone. Shafer gave his son a crisp military salute. Once upon a time, Colonel Geoffrey Shafer had been a soldier. Only Robert seemed to remember that part of his father’s life now.

“I’m only going away to London for a few days, and this is work, not a holiday. I’m not planning to spend my nights at the Athenaeum or anything like that,” he told his family. He was smiling jovially, the way they expected him to be.

“Try to have some fun while you’re away, Dad. Have some laughs. God knows, you deserve it,” Robert said, talking in the lower-octave man-to-man’s voice that he seemed to be adopting lately.

“Bye, Daddy! Bye, Daddy,” the twins chorused shrilly, making Shafer want to throw them against the walls.

“Bye, Erica-san. Bye, Tricia-san.”

“Remember Orc’s Nest,” Robert said with sudden urgency. “Dragon and The Duelist.” Orc’s Nest was a store that sold role-playing books and gaming equipment. It was located on Earlham, just off Cambridge Circus in London. Dragon and The Duelist were currently the two hot-shit British magazines covering role-playing games.

Unfortunately for Robert, Shafer wasn’t actually going to London. He had a much better plan for the weekend. He was going to play his fantasy game right here in Washington.

Chapter 4

HE SPED DUE EAST, rather than toward Washington’s Dulles Airport, feeling as if a tremendously burdensome weight had been lifted. God, he hated his perfect English family, and even more, their claustrophobic life here in America.

Shafer’s own family back in England had been “perfect” as well. He had two older brothers, and they’d both been excellent students, model youths. His father had been a military attaché, and the family had traveled around the globe until he was twelve, when they’d returned to England and settled in Guildford, about half an hour outside London. Once there, Shafer began to expand on the schoolboy mischief he’d practiced since he was eight. The center of Guildford contained several historic buildings, and he set out to gleefully deface all of them. He began with the Abbot’s Hospital, where his grandmother was dying. He painted obscenities on the walls. Then he moved on to Guildford Castle, Guildhall, the Royal Grammar School, and Guildford Cathedral. He scrawled more obscene words, and splashed large penises in bright colors. He had no idea why he took such joy in ruining beautiful things, but he did. He loved it—and he especially loved not getting caught.

Shafer was eventually sent to school at Rugly, where the pranks continued. Then he attended St. John’s College, where he concentrated on philosophy, Japanese, and shagging as many good-looking women as he possibly could. All his friends were mystified when he went into the army at twenty-one. His language skills were excellent, and he was posted to Asia, which was where the mischief rose to a new level and where he began to play the game of games.

He stopped at a 7-Eleven in Washington Heights for coffee—three coffees, actually. Black, with four sugars in each. He drank most of one of the cups on his way to the counter.

The Indian cashier gave him a cheeky, suspicious look, and he laughed in the bearded wanker’s face.

“Do you really think I’d steal a bloody seventy-five-cent cup of coffee? You pathetic jerkoff. You pitiful wog.”

He threw his money on the counter and left before he killed the clerk with his bare hands, which he could do easily enough.

From the 7-Eleven he drove into the Northeast part of Washington, a middle-class section called Eckington. He began to recognize the streets when he was west of Gallaudet University. Most of the structures were two-storied apartments with vinyl siding, either redbrick or a hideous Easter-egg blue that always made him wince.

He stopped in front of one of the redbrick garden apartments on Uhland Terrace, near Second Street. This one had an attached garage. A previous tenant had adorned the brick facade with two white concrete cats.

“Hello, pussies,” Shafer said. He felt relieved to be here. He was “cycling up”—that is, getting high, manic. He loved this feeling, couldn’t get enough of it. It was time to play the game.

Chapter 5

A RUSTED and taped-up purple and blue taxi was parked inside the two-car garage. Shafer had been using it for about four months. The taxi gave him anonymity, made him almost invisible anywhere he chose to go in D.C. He called it his “Nightmare Machine.”

He wedged the Jaguar beside the taxicab, then he jogged upstairs. Once inside the apartment, he switched on the air-conditioning. He drank another sugar-laced coffee.

Then he took his pills, like a good boy. Thorazine and Librium. Benadryl, Xanax, Vicodin. He’d been using the drugs in various combinations for years. It was mostly a trial-and-error process, but he’d learned his lessons well. Feeling better, Geoffrey? Yes, much better, thank you.

He tried to read today’s Washington Post, then an old copy of Private Eye magazine, and finally a catalog from DeMask, a rubber and leather fetish wholesaler in Amsterdam, the world’s largest. He did two hundred push-ups, then a few hundred sit-ups, impatiently waiting for darkness to fall over Washington.

At quarter to ten, Shafer began to get ready for a big night on the town. He went into the small, barren bathroom, which smelled of cheap cleanser. He stood before the mirror.

He liked what he saw. Very much so. Thick and wavy blond hair that he would never lose. A charismatic, electric smile. Startling blue eyes that had a cinematic quality. Excellent physical shape for a man of forty-four.

He went to work, starting with brown contact lenses. He’d done this so many times, he could almost do it blindfolded. It was a part of his tradecraft. He applied blackface to his face, neck, hands, wrists; thick padding to make his neck seem broader than it was; a dark watch cap to cover every last strand of hair.