Alex Cross 5 - Pop Goes the Weasel

by Patterson, James

  He was running toward the sea, moving fast and purposefully. He disappeared behind a small sand dune shaped like a turtle. Where was he going? What was next for him?

  Then I saw him again. He was kicking off his shoes and getting out of his trousers. What was he doing?

  I heard Sampson come running up behind me. 'Don't kill him, John! Not unless we have to,' I yelled.

  'I know! I know!' he called.

  I plunged ahead.

  Shafer turned and fired off a shot at me. The distance was too much for anyone to be accurate with a hand-gun. Still, he was a good shot and came close. He knew how to use a gun - and not just from a few feet away.

  Sampson was kicking off his sneakers, pulling away his pants. I did the same with my sweats and T-shirt.

  I pointed out to sea. 'He must have a boat out there. One of those.'

  We saw Shafer striding into the low waves of the Caribbean, heading into a cone of light made by the moon.

  He did a shallow dive and started to swim in a smooth-looking crawl stroke.

  We were down to our underwear. Nothing very pretty. We both made shallow dives into the sea.

  Shafer was a very strong swimmer and he was already pulling ahead of us. He swam with his face in the water, lifting it out sideways after several strokes to catch a breath.

  His blond hair was slicked back and stood out in the moonlight. One of the boats bobbing out there had to be his. Which one?

  I kept a single thought in my head, stretch and kick, stretch and kick. I felt as if I were gathering strength from somewhere inside. I had to catch Shafer - I had to know the truth about what he'd done to Christine.

  Stretch and kick, stretch and kick.

  Sampson was laboring behind me, and then he started to fall even farther back.

  'Go.' I called to him. 'Go back for help. I'll be all right. Get somebody out there to check those boats.'

  'He swims like a fish,' Sampson called.

  'Go. I'll be fine. Hold my own.'

  Up ahead I could still see Shafer's head and the tops of his shoulders glistening in the creamy white moonlight. He was stroking evenly, powerfully.

  I kept going, never looking back to shore, not wanting to know how far I had come already. I refused to be tired, to give up, to lose.

  I swam harder, trying to gain some sea on Shafer. The boats were still a good way away. He was still going strong, though. No sign of tiring.

  I played a mind game of my own. I stopped looking to see where he was. I concentrated only on my stroke. There was nothing but the stroke; the stroke was the whole universe.

  My body was feeling more in synch with the water and I was buoyed as it got deeper. My stroke was getting stronger and smoother.

  I finally looked. He was starting to struggle. Or maybe it was just what I wanted to see. Anyway it gave me a second wind, added strength.

  What if I actually caught him out here? Then what? We fought to the death?

  I couldn't let him get to his boat before me. He'd have guns on board. I needed to beat him there. I had to win this time. Which boat was his?

  I swam harder. I told myself that I was in good shape, too. I was. I'd been to the gym every day for almost a year - ever since Christine had disappeared.

  I looked up again and I was shocked at what I saw.

  Shafer was there! Only a few yards away. A few more strokes. Had he lost it? Or was he waiting for me, gathering strength?

  The closest boat was no more than a hundred, a hundred fifty yards away.

  'Cramp!' he called out. 'Bad one!' Then he went under.

  ?CHAPTER One Hundred and Nineteen

  I didn't know what to think, or exactly what to do next. The pain on Sharer's face looked real; he looked afraid. But he was also an actor.

  I felt something underneath me! He grabbed hard between my legs. I yelled and managed to twist away, though he'd hurt me.

  Then we were grabbing at each other, struggling like underwater wrestlers. Suddenly, he pulled me under with him. He was strong. His long arms were powerful vices, and he held me tightly.

  We went down and I started to feel the coldest, most serious fear of my life. I didn't want to drown. Shafer was winning. He always found a way.

  Shafer stared into my eyes. His blue eyes incredibly intense and manic and crazed. His mouth was closed, but it was twisted and evil-looking. He had me; he would win again.

  I pushed forward with all of my strength. When I felt him straining against me, I reversed directions. I kicked out with my leg and caught Shafer under the jaw, maybe in the throat. I hit him as hard as I could and he began to sink.

  His long blond hair floated up around his face. His arms and legs went limp.

  He went down and I followed him. It was dark this far under the surface. I grabbed one of his arms.

  I barely caught him. His weight was pulling me with him toward the bottom. I couldn't let him go. I had to know the truth about Christine. I couldn't go on with my life unless I did.

  I had no idea about the water's depth. Shafer's eyes had been wide open and so had his mouth. His lungs must be filling with water.

  I wondered if I'd broken his neck with the kick. Was he dead, or just unconscious? There was some satisfaction in the idea that I'd broken the Weasel's neck.

  Then it really didn't matter. Nothing did. I had no more breath. My chest felt as if it would collapse. There was a fire spreading wildly inside me. Then a severe ringing started in both ears. I was dizzy and I was starting to lose consciousness.

  I let Shafer go, let him sink to the bottom. I didn't have a choice. I couldn't think about him anymore. I had to get to the surface. I couldn't hold my breath any longer.

  I swam frantically up, pulled at the water, kicked with all of my might. I didn't think I could make it; it was too far to the surface.

  I had no more breath.

  I saw Sampson - his face was looming above. Close, very close. It gave me strength.

  His head was framed against a few stars and the blue-black of the sky. 'Sugar,' he whispered.

  He held me up for a while, let me get my breath, my precious breath. My head continued to swim. We both trod water.

  I let my eyes explore the surface for some sign of Shafer. My vision was blurred, but I didn't see him. I was certain he'd drowned.

  Then Sampson and I slowly paddled back to shore.

  I hadn't gotten what I needed out there. I hadn't been able to learn the truth from Shafer before he drowned.

  Once or twice I glanced behind to make sure that Shafer wasn't following us, that he was gone. There was no sign of him. There was only the sound of our own, exhausted strokes cutting into the tide.

  ?CHAPTER One Hundred and Twenty

  It took two more exhausting days and nights to finish with the local police investigation, but it was good to keep focused and busy. I no longer had any hope of finding Christine, or discovering what had happened to her.

  I knew it was remotely possible that Shafer hadn't taken Christine; that it was some other madman from my past, but I didn't give that possibility more than a passing thought. I couldn't go there. It was too crazy an idea, even for me.

  I'd been unable to grieve from the start, but now the monstrous finality of Christine's fate struck me with all of its brutal force. I felt as if my insides had been hollowed out. The constant, dull ache I had known for so long had become a sharp stab of pain that pierced my heart every waking moment. I couldn't stop, yet I felt as if I were never fully awake.

  Sampson knew what was happening to me. There was nothing he could say, but he made comforting small talk.

  Nana called me at the hotel, and I knew it was Sampson's doing, though both of them denied it. Jannie and Damon got on the phone, and they were both sweet and kind and full of life and hopefulness. They even put Rosie the cat on for a friendly long-distance meow. They didn't mention Christine, but I knew she was always in their thoughts.

  On our final night on the island, Sampson a
nd I had dinner with Jones. We had become friendly, and he finally told me some facts he had withheld for security reasons. He wanted me to have some closure; he felt I deserved that.

  Back in 1989, after Shafer arrived in MI6, he was recruited by James Whitehead. He had reported in to Oliver Highsmith, and George Bayer had worked for him. Shafer had performed at least four sanctions in Asia during the next three years. It was suspected, but never proved, that he, Whitehead, and Bayer had murdered prostitutes in Manila and Bangkok. These murders were obviously the precursors to the Jane Does, and the game. All in all, it had been one of the worst scandals in the history of the Secret Service. And it had effectively been covered up. That was how Jones wanted to keep it, and I had no worthwhile objection. There were already more than enough unfortunate stories to keep people cynical about their governments.

  Our dinner broke up at around eleven and Jones and I promised to keep in touch. There was one bit of disturbing news, though no one wanted to overstate the significance of it: Geoffrey Shafer's body still hadn't been found. Somehow that seemed a fitting end.

  Sampson and I were due to catch the first flight to Washington on Tuesday morning. It was scheduled to leave at ten past nine.

  That morning, the skies were swirling with black clouds. Heavy rain teemed on our car's roof all the way from the hotel to the Donald Sangster Airport. School-kids ran along the side of the road, shielding themselves from the rain with flopping banana-tree leaves.

  The downpour caught us good as we tried to dash out from under the cover of the tin overhang outside the rent-a-car depot.

  The rain was cool, though, and it felt good on my face and head and on the shirt plastered to my back.

  'It'll be real good to be home,' Sampson said as we finally made it under the cover of a metal roof painted a bright yellow.

  'I'm ready to go,' I agreed. 'I miss Damon and Jannie, Nana. I miss being home.'

  'They'll find the body,' Sampson said. 'Shafer's.'

  'I knew who you meant.'

  The rain hammered the airport's roof without mercy, and I was thinking how much I hated to fly on days like this, but it would be good to be home, to be able to end this nightmare. It had invaded my soul, taken over my life. In a way, I suppose it was as much a game as any that

  Shafer had played. The murder case had obsessed me for over a year, and that was enough.

  Christine had asked me to give it up, Nana had asked, too, and I hadn't listened. Maybe I hadn't been able to see my life and actions as clearly as I did now. I was the Dragonslayer, and all that it meant, the good and the bad. In the end, I held myself responsible for Christine's kidnapping and murder.

  Sampson and I tramped past the colorful concession stands without any real interest, barely a passing nod. Street hawkers, called higglers, were selling wooden jewelry and other carvings, but also Jamaican coffee and cocoa.

  Each of us carried a black duffel bag. We didn't exactly look like vacationers, I was thinking. We still looked like policemen.

  I heard a voice calling loudly from behind, and I turned back to look at the commotion coming up from the rear.

  It was the Jamaican detective, John Anthony, calling out my name in the noisy terminal, coming our way in a big hurry. He was walking rapidly, a few steps ahead of Andrew Jones, who looked powerfully dismayed.

  Jones and Anthony at the airport? What in God's name was happening now? What could possibly have gone wrong?

  'The Weasel?' I said, and it came out like a curse.

  Sampson and I stopped, and they finally caught up with us. I almost didn't want to hear what they had to tell us.

  'You have to go back with us, Alex. Come with me.' Jones said, slightly out of breath. 'It's about Christine Johnson. Something's turned up. Come.'

  'What is it? What's happened?' I asked Jones, then Detective Anthony, when the Englishman was slow in answering.

  Anthony hesitated, but then he said, 'We don't know for sure. It could be nothing at all. Someone claims to have seen her, though. She may be here in Jamaica, after all. Come with us.'

  I couldn't believe what he had just told me. I felt Sampson's arm wrap tightly around me, but everything else seemed unreal, as in a dream.

  It wasn't over yet.

  ?CHAPTER One Hundred and Twenty-One

  On the road out of the airport, Andrew Jones and Detective Anthony filled us in on what they knew. I could tell that they were trying not to build up my hopes too much. I'd been in the same untenable situation many times, but not as a victim of a crime.

  'Last night we caught a small-time local thief breaking into a house in Ocho Rios.' Anthony said as he drove, the four of us packed tightly in his Toyota. 'He said he had information to trade. We told him we would hear what he had to say, and then we would decide. He then revealed that an American woman had been kept in the hills east of Ocho Rios, near the town of Euarton. There's an outlaw group lives up there sometimes.

  'I learned about it only this morning. I called Andrew and we hurried to the airport. The man says she was called Beatitude. No other name was used. I contacted your hotel, but you had already left for the airport. So we came out here to get you.'

  'Thank you.' I finally said, realizing I had probably been told as much as they knew.

  Sampson spoke up. 'So why does this helpful thief appear now, after all this time?'

  'He said there was a shooting a few nights ago that changed everything. Once the white men died, the woman wasn't important anymore. Those were his words.'

  'You know these men?' I asked Detective Anthony.

  'Men, women, children. Yes, I've dealt with them before. They smoke a lot of ganja. Practice their hybrid religion, worship the Emperor Haile Selassie, I know. A few of them are small-time thieves. Mostly, we let them be.'

  Everyone in the car grew quiet as we hurried along the coast road toward Runaway Bay and Ocho Rios. The storm had passed quickly, and suddenly the island's hellified sun was blazing again. Sugarcane workers with machetes on their hips were tramping back into the fields.

  Past the village of Runaway Bay, Detective Anthony turned off the main road and headed up into the hills on Route Al. The trees and bushes here were a thick jungle. The road eventually became a tunnel boring through vines and branches. Anthony had to turn on the headlights.

  I felt as if I were drifting through a mist, watching everything as if in a dream. I understood that I was trying to protect myself, but also that it wasn't working.

  Who was Beatitude? I couldn't make myself believe that Christine was alive, but at least there was a chance, and I clung to that. I had given up weeks before. Now I allowed myself to remember how much I loved her, how I missed her. Suddenly, I choked hard, and I turned my face toward the window. I went deep inside myself.

  Bright light shone in my eyes. The car exited the brush after two or three miles that had seemed much longer on the twisting road. We were entering lush hills that looked something like the American South back in the fifties and sixties - maybe like Georgia or Alabama. Children in dated clothes played in front of small run-down houses. Their elders sat on uneven, slanted porches and watched the occasional car drive past.

  Everything looked and felt so incredibly unreal to me. I couldn't focus.

  We turned onto a skinny dirt road with a thick, high corridor of grass running between deep tire ruts. This had to be the place. My heart was pumping loudly, and it sounded like a tin drum being pounded in a tunnel. I felt every bump in the road like a hard punch.

  Beatitude? Who was the woman they were holding? Could it possibly be Christine?

  Sampson checked the load in his Glock. I heard the mechanism slide and click, and I glanced his way.

  'They won't be happy to see us, but you won't need the gun,' Anthony said, turning to us. 'They probably know we're coming. They watch the local roads. Christine Johnson might not be here now, if she was even here at all. I knew you would want to check for yourself.'

  I didn't say anything. I could
n't. My mouth felt incredibly dry and my mind was a blank. We were still involved with The Four Horsemen, weren't we? Was this Shafer's play? Had he known we'd eventually find this place in the hills? Had he set a final trap for us?

  We arrived at an old green house with tattered white cloth over the windows and a burlap bag for a front door. Four men immediately came outside, all of them sporting dreadlocks.

  They walked toward us, their mouths set hard, their eyes blazing with distrust. Sampson and I were used to the look from the streets of Washington.

  Two of the men carried heavy field machetes. The other two wore floppy shirts, and I knew they were armed beneath the loose-fitting clothes.

  'Just turn around, go back, mon,' one of them shouted loudly at us. 'Get out of here while you can.'

  ?CHAPTER One Hundred and Twenty-Two

  'No!'

  Detective Anthony got out of the car with both hands held high. So did Sampson, Jones and I.

  There was the beat of traditional drums coming from the woods directly behind the main house. A pair of lounging dogs raised their lazy heads to look at us, and barked a few times. My heart was thundering faster now.

  I didn't like the way this was going.

  Another one of the men called to us, 'I and I would like you to leave.'

  I recognized the phrase of speech. The double pronoun represented the speaker and God, who live together in each person.

  'Patrick Moss is in jail. I'm Detective Anthony from Kingston. This is Detective Sampson and Detective Cross. You have a woman here. You call her Beatitude.'

  Beatitude? Could it be Christine?

  One of the men with a machete hanging from one hand glared and spoke to Anthony. 'Galang 'bout yuh business. Lef me nuh. Nah woman here. Nah woman.'

  'This is my business and we won't leave you alone.' I said, surprising the man that I understood his dialect. But I know Rastaman from DC.

  'Nah woman here. Nah American.' the man repeated angrily, looking directly at me.

  Andrew Jones spoke up. 'We want the American woman, then we'll leave. Your friend Patrick Moss will be home by tonight. You can deal with him in your own way.'