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 turning 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.