Private Games

by James Patterson

  Marta paid Knight no mind, as if he and everyone else in the room were afterthoughts. She set the Coke bottles on a dresser, then cradled the gun and went to Daring’s side. She set the gun down, picked up a hypodermic needle and shot it into the IV line that had been inserted into the museum curator’s arm.

  ‘Time to wake up,’ she said, and gathered up the gun again.

  She fished an apple from her pocket and bit into it. Her attention shifted lazily to the marathon coverage.

  Luke stirred and opened his eyes, looking right at his father. His eyes went wide. Then his brows knitted, his face grew beet-red and he began making whining noises, not of fear but as if he desperately wanted to tell his father something. Knight recognised that red-faced expression and understood the meaning behind the stifled cries immediately.

  At the noise, Marta looked over with such a cold expression on her face that Knight’s pounding brain screamed at him to make her look at him and not at his son.

  Knight began to moan behind his tape. Marta glanced over, chewing her apple, and said, ‘Shut up. I don’t want to hear you cry like your little boy.’

  Instead of complying, Knight moaned louder and smashed his feet against the floor, trying not only to alert someone below but to bother Marta. He wanted to get her talking. He knew enough about hostage negotiation to understand how crucial it was to get a captor talking.

  Isabel woke up and started to cry.

  Marta took up the gun, stomped over to Knight, and laughed. ‘We own the flat below, too. So go ahead, make noise. No one hears you.’

  With that she kicked him in the stomach. Knight doubled up and rolled over on his back, gasping and feeling glass from the shattered fruit-juice tumbler crunch beneath him. Luke began to wail. Marta glared at the children. Knight was sure that she was going to kick them. But then she squatted down and ripped the tape off Knight’s mouth. ‘Tell them to shut up or you’re all dead right now.’

  ‘Luke wants to use the loo,’ Knight said. ‘Take the tape off. Ask him.’

  Marta shot him a foul look, then scuttled across to his son and peeled off the tape over his mouth. ‘What?’

  Knight’s son shrank away from Marta, but looked at his father and said, ‘Lukey need go poop. Big-boy loo.’

  ‘Crap in your pants for all I care.’

  ‘Big-boy loo, Marta,’ the boy insisted. ‘Lukey go big-boy. No nappy.’

  ‘Give him a chance,’ Knight said. ‘He’s just three.’

  Marta’s expression turned into a disgusted sneer. But she got out a knife and cut free Luke’s ankles. Gun in one hand, she hauled Knight’s son to his feet and snarled, ‘If this is another false alarm, I’ll kill you first.’

  They moved past Daring and disappeared through the door into the hallway. Knight glanced all around, rolled back slightly, and heard glass crunch again, felt tiny shards of it pricking his arms and back.

  The pain jolted his brain into realising his opportunity, and he began frantically arching his back and moving around, fingers groping desperately beneath him. Please, Kate. Please.

  The index finger of his right hand felt the keen edge of a larger shard of glass, perhaps two inches long, and tried to coax it into his hand. But he fumbled and dropped it. Cursing under his breath, Knight groped again. But he hadn’t found it when he heard Luke cry, ‘See, Marta? Big boy!’

  A second later, he heard a toilet flush. Knight’s fingers searched in a frenzy. Nothing. He heard footsteps, arched his hips one more time and pushed himself back closer to where the glass had shattered. Then Luke walked in, wrists still taped in front of him, beaming at his father.

  ‘Lukey big boy now, Daddy,’ he said. ‘Lukey three. No nappies.’

  Chapter 104

  ‘GOOD JOB, LAD,’ Knight said, lying back, smiling at his son, glancing at Marta – who was still cradling the gun – and feeling a thick chunk from the bottom of the juice glass lying on the floor just below the small of his back.

  The fingers of his right hand closed round it just as Marta said to Luke, ‘Go and sit down next to your sister – and don’t move.’ She turned to inspect Daring, who was now shifting on the bed.

  ‘Wake up,’ she said again. ‘We have to go soon.’

  Daring moaned as Knight twisted the chunk of glass into the duct tape around his wrists and began to saw at it. Luke came dutifully towards his father, smiling and saying, ‘Lukey big boy.’

  His attention jumping back to Marta, Knight said, ‘Brilliant. Now sit down like Marta told you too.’

  But his son didn’t budge. ‘We go home, Daddy?’ Luke said, and Bella began to whine in agreement behind her gag. ‘We go and have party?’

  ‘Soon,’ Knight said, feeling the tape begin to part. ‘Very soon.’

  But then Marta snatched up the gun and a roll of duct tape and started towards Luke. His son took one look at the tape and cried, ‘No, Marta!’

  Luke ducked and started to run. Marta became infuriated. Pointing the gun at Knight’s son, she barked, ‘Sit down. Now. Or you die.’

  But Knight’s son was too young to understand fully the implications of having a loaded weapon aimed at him. ‘No!’ Luke said impudently, and jumped onto the mattress beside Isabel, his eyes darting around, looking for escape.

  ‘I’ll teach you, then,’ Marta said, stalking towards Luke, her stare fully on the boy and not on Knight who felt his wrists come free.

  As she passed him, looking to corner his son, Knight lashed out with his bound feet.

  They connected hard with Marta’s Achilles tendons. She cried out as her legs buckled and she fell sideways to the floor. The gun clattered away.

  Knight twisted around, clutching that chunk of glass, and tried to slash her with it. But her reaction time was stunningly fast and practical. She threw up her forearm, taking the cut there before kneeing Knight hard in the chest.

  The wind knocked out of him, Knight let go of the glass shard.

  Insane with fury, Marta jumped to her feet and snatched up the gun. She marched over to one of the Coke bottles, opened it, and stuffed the muzzle inside and down into the liquid before saying, ‘I don’t care what Cronus wants. I have had enough of you, and your bastard children.’

  Marta deftly wrapped duct tape around her bleeding arm, and then around the gun barrel and the mouth of the bottle before swinging around the crudely silenced weapon. Her eyes had gone dark and dead, and Knight had a glimpse of what all those Bosnian boys must have seen when the Brazlic sisters had come calling. With grim intent, Marta marched towards Luke who still sat beside his sister. She said to Knight, ‘The boy goes first. I want you to see how it’s done.’

  ‘Lancer is going to kill you!’ Knight shouted at her. ‘Just like he killed your sisters!’

  That stopped her progress. She turned to him and said, ‘My sisters are very much alive. They have already escaped from London.’

  ‘No,’ Knight said. ‘Lancer killed them both. He broke Andjela’s neck, and then cut off her hands and sent them to me. Nada’s throat was cut from ear to ear.’

  ‘That’s a lie!’ Marta snarled as she came at him, raising the gun.

  ‘They were found in the same abandoned factory near the gasworks where you kept Selena Farrell.’

  That information made Marta pause briefly. ‘How come it hasn’t been on the news?’

  ‘They probably haven’t alerted the media,’ Knight said, fumbling for an answer. ‘They do that, you know – hide things.’

  ‘You’re lying,’ she said. Then she shrugged. ‘And even if it is true, so much the better for me. I am sick of them. I think of killing them myself from time to time.’

  Marta clicked off the rifle’s safety catch.

  Chapter 105

  SUDDENLY SIRENS WAILED nearby, coming closer, and Knight’s spirits surged with renewed hope.

  ‘They’re coming for you now,’ he said, grinning insanely at Marta and the bottom of the Coke bottle. ‘You’re going to the gallows, no matter what you d
o to me and my children.’

  ‘No.’ She laughed caustically. ‘If they go anywhere, they go next door, not here. In the meantime, I kill you and then use the tunnel to escape.’

  She tried to press the Coke bottle against Knight’s head. But he batted at it with his hand and jerked around as the sirens came closer and louder. He thought: Buy time. At least the twins will be saved.

  But then Marta stepped on the side of Knight’s neck with her boot, choking him as she lowered the silenced gun.

  He looked up at her cross-eyed and grabbed at her ankles, trying to upset her balance. But she just ground her boot deeper and harder into his neck until his strength was gone.

  Marta peered down at him. ‘Goodbye, Mr Knight. Too bad I don’t have a pickaxe.’

  Chapter 106

  KNIGHT THOUGHT OF Kate in the instant before Marta’s eyes snapped wide open. She screamed in agony, yanked the Coke bottle away from his head and her boot off his neck, and fired the rifle. With a weird wet thud, the silenced gun blew a hole in the wall just above Knight’s head. Coke and plastic fragments showered down on him as Marta screamed in agony once more. Frenzied, she spun away from Knight, groping wildly behind her.

  Luke had bitten into Marta’s hamstring, and was holding on like a little bulldog while his nanny furiously pounded against him, screaming again and again. Knight kicked her hard in the shin and she dropped the gun before ramming her elbow hard into Luke’s side.

  The boy slammed against the wall and lay still.

  Knight crawled after the gun while Marta glared at Luke and felt down her leg for the gaping wound he’d left. She didn’t notice his father until he was inches from the rifle.

  She cursed and lunged towards Knight as his finger found the trigger and he tried to swing the gun to point it at her. She swept her other arm round and struck the side of the barrel, deflecting his aim even as the now unsilenced rifle went off again, this time with a deafening boom that disorientated Knight for a second. He looked around, dizzy, praying that he’d managed to shoot Marta somehow.

  But then the oldest Fury kicked him in the ribs and ripped the gun from his hands. Gasping – and grinning in triumph – she aimed the muzzle at Knight’s unconscious son.

  ‘Watch him die,’ she snarled.

  The shot this time sounded distant and otherworldly to Knight, but it was aimed perfectly at his breaking heart. He fully expected Luke’s small body to jump at the bullet’s impact.

  Instead, Marta’s throat exploded in a slurry of blood before the war-criminal nanny crumpled and sprawled dead between Knight and his son.

  Dumbfounded and slack-jawed, Knight twisted his head around and saw Kate’s older sister rising from a shooting crouch.

  Part Five

  THE FINISH LINE

  Chapter 107

  TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES AFTER Pottersfield had shot and killed the wanted war criminal Senka Brazlic, the police inspector and Knight were in her car, sirens and lights on, racing through the streets of Chelsea and heading towards The Mall where the top runners were well into their fourth and final lap of the marathon route.

  Ordinarily, the men’s marathon, the final event of the summer Games, would end in the host city’s Olympic stadium. But the London organisers – largely at Lancer’s urging, it turned out – had decided that sending the runners through the scruffy East End was not the best way to sell the city’s stunning attributes to the world.

  Instead, the organisers opted to have the marathon contestants run four 6.5-mile laps, each of them featuring some of London’s most notable landmarks as telegenic backdrops for the race: from Tower Hill to the Houses of Parliament along the Thames, past the London Eye and Cleopatra’s Needle. The start and finish would take place on The Mall, well in sight of Buckingham Palace.

  ‘I want his picture in everyone’s mobile, iPhone, BlackBerry,’ Pottersfield shouted into her radio. ‘Find him! Having the marathon here was his idea!’

  Knight was thinking about how bloody brilliant she was at her job. She’d called up the Trace Angels site, seen that the children had been put on trains, but then thought to look at their whereabouts earlier and saw the address on Porchester Terrace.

  After contacting the trains and getting word from conductors that there was no one matching the Knight children’s description aboard, she’d led the police contingent to the building near Lancaster Gate. They’d been in the Furies’ flat when the crudely silenced gun had gone off next door and they’d heard it. They’d discovered the entrance to Lancer’s place behind that tapestry on the wall, and had then thrown a stun grenade a moment after Knight had fired the weapon.

  Setting down her radio, Pottersfield said shakily, ‘We’ll get him. Everybody’s hunting him now.’

  Knight grunted, staring out the window into the glaring sunlight, still feeling dizzy and sore from the blows he’d taken. ‘You okay, Elaine? Having to shoot?’

  ‘Me? You shouldn’t even be here, Peter,’ Pottersfield scolded. ‘You should be back there in that ambulance with your kids, going to hospital. You need to be looked at yourself.’

  ‘Amanda and Boss are on their way to meet Luke and Bella. I’ll get examined when Lancer’s stopped.’

  Pottersfield changed down and shot out onto Buckingham Palace Road. ‘You’re sure Lancer said the attack was on the marathon?’

  Knight struggled to remember before replying: ‘Before he left, I told him that no matter what he might do, the Olympic spirit would never die. I told him that Mundaho had proved it, and Shaw, and Dr Pierce. That got him insanely angry, and I was certain he would kill me. But then the starting gun for the marathon went off. And he said something like: “The men’s marathon. The final game has begun. And because I’m the superior man, I’m going to let you live to see the ending. Before Marta kills you, she’s going to let you witness exactly how I snuff out that Olympic spirit once and for all.” ’

  Pottersfield skidded the car to a stop in front of the police barrier opposite St James’s Park and got out, holding up her badge to the officers guarding it. ‘He’s with Private and with me. Where’s Inspector Casper?’

  The policeman who looked miserable in the stifling heat, pointed north towards the roundabout in front of Buckingham Palace, and said, ‘You want me to call him?’

  Knight’s sister-in-law shook her head before vaulting the barrier and battling her way through the crowd onto Birdcage Walk with Knight following somewhat woozily right behind her. Runners who were well behind the leaders were heading painfully towards the Queen Victoria Memorial at the centre of the roundabout.

  Billy Casper was already hustling towards Knight and Pottersfield. ‘Sweet Jesus, Elaine,’ he said. ‘I had the bastard right in front of me not an hour ago. He went into St James’s Park.’

  ‘Did you get Lancer’s picture?’

  ‘Everyone in the force got it ten seconds ago,’ Casper replied, and then looked grim. ‘The route is more than ten kilometres long. There’s half a million people – maybe more – lining the route. How the hell are we going to find him?’

  ‘At the finish, or somewhere near it,’ Knight said. ‘It fits his flair for the dramatic. Have you seen Jack Morgan?’

  ‘He’s way ahead of you, Peter,’ Casper said. ‘As soon as he heard Cronus was Lancer and that he was still on the loose, he went straight to the finish arena. Smart guy for a Yank.’

  But twenty-six minutes later, as roars went up from back along the marathon route south of St James’s Park, Lancer had still not been sighted, and every aspect of the timing system had been re-examined for possible booby traps.

  Standing high atop stands erected along The Mall, Knight and Jack – who had shown up minutes after Knight had asked after him – were using binoculars to look up into the trees to see if Lancer had climbed one and taken up position as a sniper. Casper and Pottersfield were doing much the same on the other side of the street. But their views were hampered by scores of large Union Jack and Olympic flags fluttering on poles
running westward towards Buckingham Palace.

  ‘I checked him out myself,’ Jack said sombrely, lowering his binoculars. ‘Lancer, I mean. When he did some work for us a few years back in Hong Kong. He was squeaky clean, nothing but raves from everyone who’d ever known him. And I don’t remember ever seeing that he’d served in the Balkans. I’m sure I would have remembered that.’

  ‘He was there for less than five weeks,’ Knight said.

  ‘Long enough to recruit bloodthirsty bitches as mad as he is,’ Jack said.

  ‘Probably why he left the deployment off his C.V.,’ Knight said.

  Before Jack could reply, the roar of the crowd came closer and people in the stands around the Queen Victoria Memorial leaped to their feet as two policemen on motorcycles appeared about a hundred yards in front of the same four runners who’d broken free of the main pack back at mile twelve.

  ‘The motorcyclists,’ Knight said, and threw up his binoculars, trying to see the faces of the officers. But he could tell quickly that neither man was Lancer.

  Behind the motorcycles, the top four runners appeared – the Kenyan, the Ethiopian, the barefoot Mexican, and that lad from Brighton – each of them carrying Olympic and Cameroonian hand flags.

  After twenty-six miles, three hundred and eighty-five yards, after forty-two thousand, one hundred and ninety-five metres, the Kenyan and the Brit were leading, sprinting side by side. But at the two-hundred-yard mark and hard behind the leaders, the Ethiopian and the Mexican split and sprinted to the leaders’ flanks.

  The crowd went wild as the whippet-thin runners churned down the final straight towards gold and glory, four abreast and none of them giving ground.

  Then, twenty yards from the finish, the lad from Brighton surged forward, and it looked as if the UK was going to have its first men’s-marathon gold to go with the historic win by Mary Duckworth in the women’s race the previous Sunday.