Private Games

by James Patterson

  Knight pointed out to Jack the various athletes from the British contingent who were said to have a chance to win medals, including marathon runner Mary Duckworth, eighteen-year-old sprint sensation Mimi Marshall, boxer Oliver Price, and the nation’s five-man heavyweight crew team.

  Soon after, ‘God Save the Queen’ was sung. So was the Olympic Hymn. The athletes recited the Olympic creed, and a keen anticipation descended over the crowd, many of who were looking towards the tunnel entry below Knight and Jack.

  ‘I wonder who the cauldron lighter will be,’ Jack said.

  ‘You and everyone else in England,’ Knight replied.

  Indeed, speculation about who would receive the honour of lighting the Olympic cauldron had only intensified since the flame had come from Britain to Greece earlier in the year and been taken to Much Wenlock in Shropshire, where Pierre de Coubertin, the father of the modern Olympics, had been guest of honour at a special festival in 1890.

  Since then, the torch had wound its way through England, Wales and Scotland. At every stop, curiosity and rumour had grown.

  ‘The odds-makers favour Sir Cedric Dudley, the UK’s five-times gold medallist in rowing,’ Knight told Jack. ‘But others are saying that the one to light the cauldron should be Sir Seymour Peterson-Allen, the first man to run a mile in under four minutes.’

  But then a roar went up from the crowd as the theme from the movie Chariots of Fire was played and two men ran into the stadium directly below Knight and Jack, carrying the torch between them.

  It was Cedric Dudley running beside …

  ‘My God, that’s Lancer!’ Knight cried.

  It was Mike Lancer, smiling and waving joyously to the crowd as he and Dudley ran along the track towards the spiral staircase that climbed the replica of the Tower of London at the bottom of which stood a waiting figure in white.

  Chapter 41

  AT THAT VERY moment, Karen Pope was in the Sun’s newsroom on the eighth floor of a modern office building on Thomas More Square near St Katharine Docks on the Thames’s north bank. She wanted to go home to get some sleep, but could not break away from the coverage of the opening ceremonies.

  Up on the screen, Lancer and Dudley ran towards that figure in white standing at the bottom of a steep staircase that led up onto the tower. Seeing the joy on the faces all over the stadium, Pope’s normal cynicism faded and she started to feel weepy.

  What an amazing, amazing moment for London, for all of Britain.

  Pope looked over at Finch, her editor. The crusty sports veteran’s eyes were glassy with emotion. He glanced at her and said, ‘You know who that is, don’t you? The final torch-bearer?’

  ‘No idea, boss,’ Pope replied.

  ‘That’s goddamn—’

  ‘You Karen Pope?’ a male voice behind her said, cutting Finch off.

  Pope turned to see – and smell – a scruffy bicycle messenger who looked at her with a bored expression on her face.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m Pope.’

  The messenger held out an envelope with her name on it, spelled out in odd block letters of many different fonts and colours. Pope felt her stomach yawn open like an abysmal pit.

  Chapter 42

  AS THE FINAL torch-bearer climbed the Tower of London replica, the entire crowd were cheering and whistling and stamping their feet.

  Knight frowned and glanced up at the roof of the Orbit and the guardsmen flanking the cauldron. How the hell were they going to get the flame from the top of the Tower of London replica to the top of the Orbit?

  The final torch-bearer raised the flame high overhead as the applause turned thunderous and then cut to a collective gasp.

  Holding his bow, an arrow strung, Robin Hood leaped into the air off the scaffolding above the south stage and flew out over the stadium on guy wires, heading for the raised Olympic torch.

  As the archer whizzed past, he dipped the tip of his arrow into the flame, igniting it. Then he soared on, higher and higher, drawing back his bowstring as he went.

  When he was almost level with the top of the Orbit, Robin Hood twisted and released the fiery arrow, which arced over the roof of the stadium, split the night sky, and passed between the Queen’s guardsmen, inches over the cauldron.

  A great billowing flame exploded inside the cauldron, turning the stadium crowd thunderous once more. The voice of Jacques Rogge, the chairman of the International Olympic Committee rang out over the public address system:

  ‘I declare the 2012 London Games open!’

  Fireworks erupted off the top of the Orbit and exploded high over East London while church bells all over the city began to ring. Down on the stadium floor, the athletes were all hugging each other, trading badges, and taking pictures and videos of this magical moment when each and every dream of Olympic gold seemed possible.

  Looking at the athletes, and then up at the Olympic flame while chrysanthemum rockets burst in the sky, Knight got teary-eyed. He had not expected to feel such overwhelming pride for his city and for his country.

  Then his mobile rang.

  Karen Pope was near-hysterical: ‘Cronus just sent me another letter. He takes credit for the death of Paul Teeter, the American shot-putter!’

  Knight grimaced in confusion. ‘No, I just saw him – he’s …’

  Then Knight understood. ‘Where’s Teeter?’ he shouted at Jack and started running. ‘Cronus is trying to kill him!’

  Chapter 43

  KNIGHT AND JACK fought their way down through the crowd. Jack was barking into his mobile, informing the stadium’s security commander of the situation. They both showed their Private badges to get onto the stadium floor.

  Knight spotted Teeter holding the US flag and talking to Filatri Mundaho, the Cameroonian sprinter. He took off across the infield just as the American flag began to topple. The flag-bearer went with it and collapsed to the ground, convulsing, bloody foam on his lips.

  By the time Knight reached the US contingent, people were screaming for a doctor. Dr Hunter Pierce broke through the crowd and went to the shot-putter’s side while Mundaho watched in horror.

  ‘He just falls,’ the ex-boy soldier said to Knight.

  Jack looked as stunned as Knight felt. It had all happened so fast. Three minutes’ warning. That’s all they’d been given. What more could they have done to save the American?

  Suddenly, the public address system crackled and Cronus’s weird flute music began playing.

  Panic surged through Knight. He remembered Selena Farrell turning crazed in her office, and then realised that many of the athletes around him were pointing up at the huge video screens around the Olympic venue, all displaying the same three red words:

  OLYMPIC SHAME EXPOSED

  Part Three

  THE FASTEST MAN ON EARTH

  Chapter 44

  KNIGHT WAS INFURIATED. Cronus was acting with impunity, not only managing to poison Teeter but somehow hacking into the Olympic Park’s computer system and taking over the scoreboard.

  Could Professor Farrell do such a thing? Was she capable?

  Mike Lancer ran up to Knight and Jack, looking as if he had aged ten years in the past few moments. He pointed at the screens. ‘What the hell does that mean? What’s that infernal music?’

  ‘It’s Cronus, Mike,’ Knight said. ‘He’s taking credit for the attack.’

  ‘What?’ Lancer cried, looking distraught. Then he spotted Dr Pierce and the paramedics gathered around the US shot-putter. ‘Is he dead?’

  ‘I saw him before Dr Pierce got to him,’ Knight said. ‘He had bloody foam around his mouth. He was convulsing and choking.’

  Shaken, bewildered, Lancer said, ‘Poison?’

  ‘We’ll have to wait for a blood test.’

  ‘Or an autopsy,’ Jack said as paramedics put an unconscious Teeter on a gurney and rushed towards the ambulance with Dr Pierce in tow.

  Some in the remaining crowd at the Olympic stadium were softly clapping for the stricken American. But mo
re were heading for the exits, holding their hands to their ears to block out the baleful flute music, and shooting worried glances at Cronus’s message still glowing up there on the screens.

  Olympic Shame Exposed

  Jack’s voice shook as the ambulance pulled away: ‘I don’t care what claim Cronus might have. Paul Teeter was one of the good guys, a gentle giant. I went to see one of his clinics in LA. The kids adored him. Absolutely adored him. What kind of sick bastard would do such a thing on a night like this to such a good person as him?’

  Knight recalled Professor Farrell fleeing her office the day before. Where was she? Did Pottersfield have her in custody? Was she Cronus? Or one of the Furies? And how did they poison Teeter?

  Knight went to Mundaho, introduced himself, and asked him what had happened. The Cameroonian sprinter said in broken English that Teeter was sweating hard and had looked flushed in the minutes before he collapsed.

  Then Knight grabbed other American athletes and asked whether they’d seen Teeter drink anything before the start of the opening ceremony. A high-jumper said he had seen the shot-putter drinking from one of the thousands of plastic water bottles that London Olympic volunteers, or Game Masters, were handing out to athletes as they lined up for the parade of nations.

  Knight told Jack and Lancer who went ballistic and barked into his radio, ordering all Game Masters held inside the Olympic Park until further notice.

  The security commander, who had arrived on the scene a few minutes earlier, glared up at the glowing screens and bellowed into his radio, ‘Shut down the PA system and end that goddamn flute music! Get that message off the scoreboards, too. And I want to know how in the bloody hell someone cracked our network. Now!’

  Chapter 45

  Saturday, 28 July 2012

  PAUL TEETER, LEADING FIELD athlete and tireless advocate for disadvantaged youth, died en route to hospital shortly after midnight. He was twenty-six.

  Hours later, Knight suffered a nightmare that featured the flute music, the severed head of Denton Marshall, the blood blooming on Richard Guilder’s chest, Joe Mascolo crashing through the cocktail table at the Lobby Bar, and the bloody foam on the shot-putter’s lips.

  He awoke with a start, and for several heart-racing moments the Private investigator had no idea where he was.

  Then he heard Luke sucking his thumb in the darkness and knew. He began to calm down and pulled the sheets up around his shoulders, thinking of Gary Boss’s face when Knight had arrived home at three in the morning.

  The place had been a shambles and his mother’s personal assistant vowed to never, ever babysit Knight’s insane children again. Even if Amanda quintupled his salary he would not do it.

  His mother was upset with Knight as well. Not only had he cut out on her the night before, he hadn’t responded to her calls after Teeter’s death had been announced. But he’d been swamped.

  Knight tried to doze again, but his mind lurched between worry about finding a new nanny for his kids, his mother, and the contents of Cronus’s second letter. He, Jack and Hooligan had examined the letter in the clean room at Private London shortly after Pope brought them the package at around one a.m.

  ‘What honour can there be in a victory that is not earned?’ Cronus had written at the start of the letter. ‘What glory in defeating your opponent through deceit?’

  Cronus claimed that Teeter was a fraud ‘emblematic of the legions of corrupt Olympic athletes willing to use any illegal drug at their disposal to enhance their performance.’

  The letter had gone on to claim that Teeter and other unnamed athletes at the London Games were using an extract of deer and elk antler ‘velvet’ to increase their strength, speed, and recovery time. Antler is the fastest growing substance in the world because the nutrient-rich sheathing, or velvet, that surrounds it during development is saturated with IGF-1, a super-potent growth hormone banned under Olympic rules. Under careful administration, however, and delivered by mouth spray rather than direct injection, the use of antler velvet was almost impossible to detect.

  ‘The illicit benefits of IGF-1 are enormous,’ Cronus wrote. ‘Especially to a strength athlete like Teeter because it gives him the ability to build muscle faster, and recover faster from workouts.’

  The letter had gone on to accuse two herbalists – one in Los Angeles and another in London – of being involved in Teeter’s elaborate deception.

  Documents that accompanied the letter seemed to shore up Cronus’s claims. Four were receipts from the herbalists showing sales and delivery of red-deer velvet from New Zealand to the post-office box of an LA construction company that belonged to Teeter’s brother-in-law Philip. Other documents purported to show the results of independent cutting-edge tests on blood taken from Teeter.

  ‘They clearly note the presence of IGF-1 in Teeter’s system within the last four months,’ Cronus wrote before concluding. ‘And so this wilful cheat, Paul Teeter, had to be sacrificed to cleanse the Games and make them pure again.’

  On the couch in the twins’ nursery, several hours after reading those words, Knight stared at the dim forms of his children, thinking, is this how you make the Olympics pure again? By murdering people? What kind of insane person thinks that way? And why?

  Chapter 46

  I ROAM THE city for hours after Teeter’s collapse on the global stage, secretly gloating over the vengeance we’ve taken, revelling in the proof of our superiority over the feeble efforts of Scotland Yard, MI5 and Private. They’ll never come close to finding my sisters or me.

  Everywhere I go, even at this late hour, I see Londoners in shock and newspapers featuring a photo of the Jumbotron in the stadium and our message: Olympic Shame Exposed!

  And the headlines: Death Stalks the Games!

  Well, what did they think? That we’d simply let them continue to make a mockery of the ancient rites of sport? That we’d simply let them defile the precepts of fair competition, earned superiority, and immortal greatness?

  Hardly.

  And now Cronus and the Furies are on the lips of billions upon billions of people around the globe, uncatchable, able to kill at will, bent on exposing and eliminating the dark side of the world’s greatest sporting event.

  Some fools are comparing us to the Palestinians who kidnapped and murdered Israelis during the 1972 summer Games in Munich. They keep describing us as terrorists with unknown political motives.

  Those idiots aside, I feel as though the world is beginning to understand me and my sisters now. A thrill goes through me when I realise that people everywhere are sensing our greatness. They are questioning how it could be that such beings walk among them, holding the power of death over deceit and corruption, and making sacrifices in the name of all that is good and honourable.

  In my mind I see the monsters that stoned me, the dead eyes of the Furies the night I slaughtered the Bosnians, and the shock on the faces of the broadcasters explaining Teeter’s death.

  At last, I think, I’m making the monsters pay for what they did to me.

  I’m thinking the same thing as dawn breaks and bathes the thin clouds over London in a deep red hue that makes them look like raised welts.

  I knock on the side entrance of the house where the Furies live, and enter. Marta is the only one of the sisters still awake. Her dark agate eyes are shiny with tears and she hugs me joyfully, her happiness as burning as my own.

  ‘Like clockwork,’ she says, closing the door behind me. ‘Everything went off perfectly. Teagan got the bottle to the American, and then changed and slipped out before the chaos began, as if it were all fated.’

  ‘Didn’t you say the same thing when London got the Olympics?’ I ask. ‘Didn’t you say that when we found the corruption and the cheating, just like I said we would?’

  ‘It’s all true,’ Marta replies, her expression as fanatical as any martyr’s. ‘We are fated. We are superior.’

  ‘Yes, but make no mistake: they will hunt us now,’ I reply, sobering. ‘You
said we were fine on all counts?’

  ‘All counts,’ Marta confirms, all business now.

  ‘The factory?’

  ‘Teagan made sure it’s sealed tight. No possibility of discovery.’

  ‘Your part?’ I ask.

  ‘Went off flawlessly.’

  I nod. ‘Then it’s time we stay in the shadows. Let Scotland Yard, MI5 and Private operate on high alert long enough for them to tire, to imagine that we’re done, and allow themselves to let their guard down.’

  ‘According to plan,’ Marta says. Then she hesitates. ‘This Peter Knight – is he still a threat to us?’

  I consider the question, and then say, ‘If there is one, it’s him.’

  ‘We found something, then. Knight has a weakness. A large one.’

  Chapter 47

  KNIGHT JERKED AWAKE in the twins’ nursery. His mobile was ringing. Sun flooded the room and blinded him. He groped for the phone and answered.

  ‘Farrell’s gone,’ Inspector Elaine Pottersfield said. ‘Not at her office. Not at her home.’

  Knight sat up, still squinting, and said, ‘Did you search both of them?’

  ‘I can’t get a warrant until my lab corroborates the match that Hooligan got.’

  ‘Hooligan found something more last night in Cronus’s second letter.’

  ‘What?’ Pottersfield shouted. ‘What second letter?’

  ‘It’s already at your lab,’ Knight said. ‘But Hooligan picked up some skin cells in the envelope. He gave you half the sample.’

  ‘Goddamn it, Peter,’ Pottersfield cried. ‘Private must not analyse anything to do with this case without—’