London Bridges
hello to your dear old dad. I’ve come a long ways to see you. All the way from America.”
His twin girls, his sweet daughters, started to cry, so Shafer did the only thing he could think of to restore order: he pointed his gun straight at Judi’s tear-stained face and walked closer to her. “Make them stop whining and screeching. Now! Show me you deserve to be their keeper.”
The aunt bent low and pressed the girls to her chest, and while they didn’t actually stop crying, the sound was at least muffled and subdued.
“Judi, now listen to me,” Shafer said as he moved behind her and pressed the barrel of the Beretta to the back of her head. “As much as I would like to, I’m not here to fuck and murder you. Actually, I have a message for you to be passed on to the home secretary. In a strange, ironic twist, your absurd, pitiful life actually matters for now. Can you believe it? I can’t.”
Aunt Judi seemed confused, her natural state as far as Shafer could tell. “How would I do that?” she blubbered.
“
Just call the sodding police!
Now shut up and listen. You’re to tell the police that I came to visit, and I told you that no one is safe anymore. Not the police, not their families. We can go to their houses, just like I came to your house today.”
Just to make sure she got it, Shafer repeated the message twice more. Then he turned his attention back to Tricia and Erica, who interested him about as much as the ridiculous porcelain dolls covering the mantel in the room. He hated those silly, frilly porcelain doodads that had once belonged to his wife and that she had doted on as if they were real.
“How is Robert?” he asked the twins, and received no reaction.
What is this?
The girls had already mastered the hopelessly lost and confused look of their mother and their blubbering auntie. They said not a word.
“Robert is your
brother!
” Shafer yelled, and the girls started to sob loudly again. “How is he? How is my son? Tell me something about your brother! Has he grown two heads? Anything!”
“He’s all right,” Tricia finally simpered.
“Yes, he’s all right,” Erica repeated, following her sister’s lead.
“He’s all right, is he? Well, that’s all right, then,” Shafer said with utter disdain for these two clones of their mother.
He found that he was actually missing Robert, though. He rather enjoyed the mildly twisted lad at times. “All right, give your father a kiss,” he finally demanded. “I am your father, you pitiful twits,” he added for good measure. “In case you’ve forgotten.”
The girls wouldn’t kiss him, and he wasn’t permitted to kill them, so Shafer finally had to leave the dreadful house. On the way out, he swept the porcelain dolls off the mantel, sending them crashing to the floor.
“In memory of your mother!” he called back over his shoulder.
Chapter 59
THE MOST COMMON complaint from soldiers serving in Iraq is that they feel that everything around them is absurd and makes no sense. More and more, this is the way of modern-day warfare. I felt it now myself.
We were past the deadline and living on borrowed time. That’s how it seemed to me. Feeling as if I hadn’t been able to catch my breath in days, I was on my way to London with two agents from our International Terrorism Section.
Geoffrey Shafer was in England. Even more insane, he wanted us to know he was there. Someone did.
The flight into Heathrow Airport arrived at a little before six in the morning and I went straight to a hotel just off Victoria Street and slept until ten. After that short rest, I made my way to New Scotland Yard, just around the corner, on Broadway. It was great to be so near Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, and the Houses of Parliament.
Upon arrival, I was taken to the office of Detective Superintendent Martin Lodge of the Met. Lodge told me, modestly enough, that he kept the Anti Terrorist Branch, called SO13, running smoothly. On our way to the morning’s briefing he gave me a thumbnail sketch of himself.
“Like you, I came up through the police ranks. Eleven years with the Met after a stint with SIS in Europe. Before that I trained at Hendon, then a constable on the beat. Chose the detective track and was moved into SO13 because I have a few languages.”
He paused, and I spoke at the first break. “I know about your AT squad—the best in Europe, I’ve heard. Years of practice with the IRA.”
Lodge gave me a thin smile, a
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