He strolled the beach, and it calmed him. It was quiet, restful, the strains of calypso music gently weaving through the night air. 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.”