George Bayer had been an M man — MI6 — and he’d known Shafer in the service. He had come to Washington to check out Shafer firsthand. It was suspected by the other players that Geoffrey might have gone over the edge, that he was no longer playing by the rules and was a grave danger to them all. Since Bayer had once been stationed in Washington, and knew the town, he was the one to go there.

Bayer didn’t want to be seen at the British Embassy on Massachusetts Avenue, but he had spoken to a few friends who he knew would keep silent about having been contacted. The news about Shafer was as bad as he’d suspected. He was seeing women outside his marriage, and he wasn’t being discreet. There was a psychologist who was also a sex therapist, and he had been observed going over to her place several times a week, often during working hours. It was rumored that he was drinking heavily and possibly taking drugs. Bayer suspected the latter. He and Shafer had been friends and they had done their share of drugs while posted in the Philippines and Thailand. Of course, they were younger and more foolish then — or at least that was true of Bayer.

The D.C. police had recently put in a complaint to the embassy about a reckless-driving incident. Shafer might have been high at the time. His current assignments at the embassy were minimal, and he would have been dismissed, or sent back to England, if it weren’t for his wife’s father, General Duncan Cousins. What a terrible mess Shafer had made of his life.

But that’s not the worst of it, is it, Geoffrey? George Bayer was thinking as he drove into the Northeast section of Washington known as Eckington Place. There’s more, isn’t there, dear boy? It’s much worse than the embassy thinks. It’s probably the biggest scandal in the long history of the Security Service, and you’re right at the heart of it. But of course, so am I.

Bayer locked the doors of his car as he pulled up to a traffic light. The area looked highly suspicious to him, like so much of Washington these days. What a sad, totally insane country America had become. What a perfect refuge for Shafer.

Famine took in the sights on the mean streets as he continued through the decidedly lower-class neighborhood. There was nothing to compare with this in London. Row upon row of two-storied redbrick garden apartments, many of them in dreadful disrepair. Not so much urban decay as urban apathy.