Private Games Read online

  ‘Fuck,’ Hooligan grunted. He snatched the remains of Knight’s phone from Oladuwa, spun around and took off for the lab with Pope and Jack close on his heels.

  ‘Hey!’ Oladuwa yelled after them. ‘Him say I get reward!’

  Chapter 98

  KNIGHT SURFACED FROM oblivion slowly, starting deep in the reptilian part of his brain with a sense of the smell of meat frying. At first he had no notion of who he was, or where he was, just that odour of meat frying.

  Then he understood that he was lying prone on something hard. His hearing returned next, like pounding surf that cleared to static and then to voices, television voices. Knight knew who he was then, and dimly recalled being in the bedroom with his children, Marta, and Daring before it had all gone blank. He tried to move. He couldn’t. His wrists and hands were bound.

  The flute began, airy and trilling, and Knight forced his eyes open, seeing blurrily that he was not in that bedroom in the white flat any more. The floor below him was hardwood, not carpeted. And the walls around him were dark-panelled and heaved to and fro like the sea churning.

  Knight felt nauseated and shut his eyes, still hearing the flute music, and the broadcast announcers arguing before he moved his head and felt a terrible throbbing at the back of his skull. After several seconds he opened his eyes a second time, finding that his focus was now better. He spotted Isabel and Luke unconscious on the floor not far away, still bound and gagged.

  Then he twisted his head, trying to locate the source of the music, seeing the side of a four-poster bed at the centre of the room and, on it, James Daring.

  Dazed as he was, Knight understood Daring’s predicament at a glance. It was the same predicament in which he’d seen the museum curator before it had all gone to blackness: the television star lay spread-eagle on the mattress, lashed to the bedposts and wearing a hospital gown. His mouth was taped shut. An IV line ran into his wrist from a bag hanging on a rack by the bed.

  The flute music stopped and Knight saw someone backlit by brilliant sunlight coming towards him across the room.

  Mike Lancer carried a black combat shotgun loosely in his left hand, and a glass of orange juice in his right. He set the juice down on a table and squatted down near Knight, gazed at him in amusement, and said, ‘Awake at last. Feel like things got rearranged upstairs, did you?’ He laughed and displayed the weapon. ‘Brilliant, these old riot guns. Even air-driven, the beanbags really pack a wallop, especially if delivered to the head at close range.’

  ‘Cronus?’ Knight said, still hazy. He could smell alcohol on Lancer’s breath.

  Lancer said, ‘You know, I had a feeling about you right from the beginning, Knight, or at least since Dan Carter’s untimely death: a premonition that you would come closest to figuring me out. But I took the necessary precautions, and here we are.’

  Deeply confused, Knight said: ‘The Olympics were your life. Why?’

  Lancer rested the riot gun against the inside of his knee and reached back to scratch the side of his head. As he did, Knight saw his face flush with anger. He stood up, grabbed the juice glass, and drank from it before saying, ‘The modern Games have been corrupt since the beginning. Bribed judges. Genetic freaks. Drug-fuelled monsters. It needed to be cleaned up, and I was the one to …’

  Even in Knight’s blurry state, it didn’t sound right, and he said, ‘Bullshit. I don’t believe you.’

  Lancer glared at him before whipping the glass at Knight. It missed and shattered against the wall behind him. ‘Who are you to question my motives?’ Lancer roared.

  Concussion or not, threat or not, things were becoming clearer to Knight, who said, ‘You didn’t do this just to expose the Games. You sacrificed them in front of a world audience. There has to be a warped sense of rage behind that.’

  Lancer got angrier. ‘I am an emanation of the Lord of Time.’ He looked over at the twins. ‘Cronus. Devourer of children.’

  The implied threat terrified Knight. How far gone was the man?

  ‘No,’ Knight said, following his foggy instincts. ‘Something happened to you. Something that filled you with hatred and made you want to do all this.’

  Lancer’s voice rose. ‘The Olympics are supposed to be a religious festival, one where honourable men and women compete in the eyes of heaven. The modern Games are its exact opposite. The gods were offended by the arrogance of men, the hubris of mankind.’

  Knight’s vision blurred slightly, and he felt sickened again, but his brain was working better with each passing second. He shook his head. ‘The gods weren’t offended. You were offended. Who were they? The arrogant men?’

  ‘The ones that have died in the last two weeks,’ Lancer retorted hotly. Then he smiled. ‘Including Dan Carter and your other dear colleagues.’

  Knight stared at him, unable to comprehend the depths of the man’s depravity. ‘You bombed that plane?’

  ‘Carter was getting a little too close,’ Lancer replied. ‘The others were collateral damage.’

  ‘Collateral damage!’ Knight shouted, feeling like he wanted to kill the man standing before him, ripping him limb from limb. But then his head began to throb again and he lay there panting, looking at Lancer.

  After several moments he said, ‘Who offended you?’

  Lancer’s expression went hard as he stared off into the past.

  ‘Who?’ Knight demanded again.

  The former decathlon champion glared at Knight in utter fury, and said, ‘Doctors.’

  Chapter 99

  IN BROAD, BITTER strokes, I tell Knight a story that no one except the Brazlic sisters has ever heard in its entirety, starting with the hatred I was born with, right through stabbing my mother and killing the monsters who stoned me after I went to live with Minister Bob in Brixton, the roughest neighbourhood in all of London.

  I tell Knight that after the stoning, in the spring of my fifteenth year, Minister Bob had me enter for a track meet because he thought I was stronger and faster than most boys. He had no idea what I was capable of. Neither did I.

  During that first meet I won six events: the 100, 200, javelin, triple jump, long jump and discus. I did it again in a regional competition, and a third time at a junior national meet in Sheffield.

  ‘A man named Lionel Higgins approached me after Sheffield,’ I tell Knight. ‘Higgins was a private decathlon coach. He told me I had the talent to be the greatest all-around athlete in the world and to win the Olympic gold medal. He offered to help me figure out a way to train full-time, and filled my head with false dreams of glory and a life lived according to Olympic ideals, of competing fairly, may the best man win, and all that nonsense.’

  Snorting scornfully, I say: ‘The monster slayer in me bought the phoney spiel hook, line and sinker.’

  I go on to tell Knight how I lived the Olympic ideals for the next fifteen years of my life. Despite the headaches that would lay me low at least once a month, Higgins arranged for me to join the Coldstream Guards, where in return for a decade of service I’d be allowed to train. I did so, furiously, single-mindedly, some say maniacally for a shot at athletic immortality that finally came for me at the Games in Barcelona in 1992.

  ‘We expected the oppressive heat and humidity,’ I say to Knight. ‘Higgins sent me to India to train for it, figuring that Bombay would be worse than Spain. He was right. I was the best prepared, and I was mentally ready to suffer more than anyone else.’

  Wrapped in the darkest of my memories, I shake my head like a terrier breaking a rat’s spine, and say, ‘None of it mattered.’

  I describe how I led the Barcelona decathlon after the first day, through the 110-metre hurdles, high jump, discus, pole vault, and the 400. Temperatures were in the upper nineties and the oppressive, saturated air took its toll on me: I cramped up and collapsed after placing second in the 400.

  ‘They rushed me to a medical tent,’ I tell Knight. ‘But I wasn’t concerned. Higgins and I figured I would need a legal electrolytic boost after day one. I ke
pt calling for my coach, but the medical personnel wouldn’t let him in. I could see they were going to put me on an IV. I told them I wanted my own coach to replenish the fluids and minerals I lost with a mixture we’d fine-tuned to my metabolism. But I was in no condition to fight them when they put the needle in my arm and connected it to a bag of God only knows what.’

  Looking at Knight, feeling livid, I’m reliving the aftermath all over again. ‘I was a ghost of myself the next day. The javelin and the long jump were my best events, and I cratered in both. I didn’t finish in the top ten and I was the reigning world champion.’

  The anger in me is almost overwhelming when I say, ‘No dream realised, Knight. No Olympic glory. No proof of my superiority. Sabotaged by what the modern Games have become.’

  Knight stares at me with the same distrustful and fearful expression that Marta gave me when I offered to save her and her sisters in that police station in Bosnia.

  ‘But you were world champion,’ Knight says. ‘Twice.’

  ‘The immortals win Olympic gold. The superior wins gold. I was robbed of my chance by monsters. It was premeditated sabotage.’

  Knight gazes at me in disbelief now, ‘And so you started plotting your revenge right then – eighteen years ago?’

  ‘The scope of my revenge grew over time,’ I admit. ‘It began with the Spanish doctors who doped me. They died of supposedly natural causes in September ’93. The referees who oversaw the event were killed in separate car crashes in ’94 and early ’95.’

  ‘And the Furies?’ Knight asks.

  I sit on a stool a few feet from him. ‘Hardly anyone knows that after my regiment ended its service in the Queen’s Guard, we were sent into Sarajevo for a rotation with the NATO peacekeeping mission. I lasted less than five weeks due to a roadside bomb that cracked my head for the second time in my life.’

  Knight’s words were less slurred now, and his eyes less glassy when he said ‘Was that before or after you helped the Brazlic sisters escape from that police station near Srebrenica?’

  I smile bitterly. ‘After. With new passports and new identities, I brought the Furies to London and set them up in a flat next door. We even cut a secret door behind my armoire and their tapestry so we could appear to live separate lives.’

  ‘Dedicated to destroying the Olympics?’ Knight asks acidly.

  ‘Yes, that’s right. As I said, the gods were behind this, behind me. It was fate. How else do you explain that very early on in the process I was asked to be a member of the organising committee and, lo and behold, London won the bid. Fate allowed me to be on the inside from the start, hiding things where I needed them, altering them if they suited my purpose, given full access to every inch of every venue. And now with everyone hunting you and your children, fate will allow me to finish what I’ve begun.’

  Knight’s face contorts. ‘You’re insane.’

  ‘No, Knight,’ I reply. ‘Just superior in ways you can’t understand.’

  I stand up and start to walk away. He calls after me, ‘So are you going to wipe out all the Furies before your big finale? Kill Marta and then escape?’

  ‘Not at all,’ I chuckle. ‘Marta’s out putting your daughter’s necklace and your son’s watch on trains to Scotland and France respectively. When she’s done, she’ll return here, release Mr Daring and then kill your children. And then you.’

  Chapter 100

  KNIGHT’S POUNDING HEAD felt battered, as if it had been struck again. His attention lurched to his sleeping children. The necklace and wristwatch were gone. There was no way to trace them now. And what about the taxi driver? Why hadn’t he given the phone to Hooligan or Pottersfield? Why hadn’t they come for him? Were they tracking Marta to the trains?

  Knight looked back to Lancer, who was gathering up a bag and some papers.

  ‘My kids have done nothing,’ Knight said. ‘They’re just three years old. Innocent.’

  ‘Little monsters,’ Lancer said flatly, turning for the door. ‘Goodbye, Knight. It was nice competing with you, but the better man has won.’

  ‘No, you haven’t!’ Knight shouted after him. ‘Mundaho proved it. You haven’t won. The Olympic spirit lives on whatever you do.’

  That hit a nerve because Lancer turned and marched back towards Knight – only to flinch and stop at the sound of a gunshot.

  It came from the television and caused Lancer to relax, a smirk on his face.

  ‘The men’s marathon has started,’ he said. ‘The final game has begun. And you know what, Knight? 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.’

  Chapter 101

  A HALF-HOUR LATER, approaching noon, Pope glanced nervously from coverage of the men’s marathon to Hooligan, who was still hunched over the shards of the iPhone, trying to coax Knight’s whereabouts from them.

  ‘Anything?’ the reporter asked, feeling completely stymied.

  ‘Sim card’s pretty fuckin’ hammered, eh?’ Private London’s chief scientist replied without looking up. ‘But I think I’m getting close.’

  Jack had left to oversee security at the finish line of the men’s marathon. Elaine Pottersfield was in the lab, however. The police inspector had arrived only a few moments before, agitated and exhausted by the pressures of the preceding twenty-four hours.

  ‘Where did this cabbie say he picked up Peter?’ she asked impatiently.

  Pope said, ‘Somewhere in Knightsbridge, I think. If Oladuwa had a mobile we could call him, but he said his wife’s got it.’

  Pottersfield thought a moment. ‘Milner Street in Kensington, perhaps?’

  ‘That was it,’ Hooligan grunted.

  ‘Knight was at his mother’s, then,’ the inspector said. ‘Amanda must know something.’ She yanked out her phone and started scrolling for her number.

  ‘Here we are,’ Hooligan said, raising his head from two sensors clipped to a surviving piece of Knight’s sim card to look at the screen, which was covered with the gibberish of code.

  He leaned over to a keyboard and began typing even as Pope heard Pottersfield say hello, identify herself as both a police detective and the sister of Knight’s dead wife, and ask to speak with Amanda Knight. Then the inspector left the lab.

  Two minutes later, Hooligan’s screen mutated from electronic hieroglyphics to a blurry screen shot of a website. Pope said, ‘What is that?’

  ‘Looks like a map of some sort,’ Hooligan replied as the inspector burst back into the lab. ‘Can’t read the URL, though.’

  ‘Trace Angels!’ Pottersfield shouted. ‘It says Trace Angels!’

  Chapter 102

  THE CROWD ALONG the south side of Birdcage Walk, facing St James’s Park, is bigger and deeper than I had anticipated. But then again, the men’s marathon is one of the final competitions of the Games.

  It’s beastly hot, half-past eleven, and the leaders are coming around to start the second of four long laps that constitute the racetrack. I hear the crowd’s roar, and spot the runners heading west towards the Victoria Memorial and Buckingham Palace.

  Carrying a small shoulder sack, I push to the front of the crowd, holding aloft my Olympic security pass, which was never taken from me. It’s critical that I be seen now, here, at this moment. I’d planned to find any policeman I could. But when I look down the side of the course, I see someone familiar. I duck the tape and walk towards him, holding up the pass.

  ‘Inspector Casper?’ I say. ‘Mike Lancer.’

  The inspector nodded. ‘Seems to me you got a raw deal.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I say, then add, ‘I’m no longer official, of course, but I was wondering if I could cut across the street when there’s a gap in the runners. I wanted to watch from the north side if I could.’

  Casper considered the request, then shrugged and said, ‘Sure, why not?’

  Thirty seconds later, I’m across the stre
et, pushing back through the crowd and into the park. Inside, I move east, glancing at my watch and thinking that Marta will release Daring in ninety minutes or so, right around the end of the marathon, a move that should attract heavy police attention and give me enough of an edge to ensure that I can’t possibly be beaten.

  I won’t be defeated today, I think. Not today. And never again.

  Chapter 103

  FOR THE LAST thirty minutes, his mouth taped shut, his head pounding and painful, Knight had alternated between trying to break free of his bonds, gasping in frustration, and looking longingly at his comatose children, dully aware of the marathon coverage blaring from the television in Lancer’s spare bedroom.

  It was 11:55. In mile eleven – kilometre nineteen – just shy of an hour into the race, runners from the UK, Ethiopia, Kenya and Mexico had broken away from the main pack along the Victoria Embankment. They were using each other to chew up ground as they headed past the London Eye towards Parliament at sub-Olympic-record pace despite the blistering heat.

  Knight wondered grimly what atrocity Lancer had waiting somewhere along the marathon route. But he refused to contemplate what Marta might have in store for him and the twins in the aftermath of the last race of the Games.

  He closed his eyes and began to pray to God and to Kate, pleading with them to help him save their children. He told them he’d be fine about dying if that meant he’d be with Kate again. But the children, they deserved to …

  Marta walked into the room, carrying the black assault weapon that Knight had seen the night before as well as a plastic bag containing three litre-sized Coke bottles. Her dark locks had been chopped and dyed, leaving her hair a violent blonde tipped with silver highlights that somehow matched the black leather skirt, tank top and calf-length boots she wore. Her heavy make-up changed her appearance still further. If Knight hadn’t spent so much time around her in the last two weeks he might never have recognised her as the plain nanny who’d first approached him at the playground.