Private Games Read online

  To keep the infernal singing from getting to me, I focus on the fact that, just a few minutes from now, I will reveal myself. And when I do I’ll be able to rejoice in their shared horror: McCartney, John, and Faithfull too. I’ll watch them all trampling over Mundaho as they run for the exits and I joyously make one final sacrifice in the name of every true Olympian who ever lived.

  Chapter 113

  HEARING THE CROWD in the stadium singing ‘Let it Be’, Knight raced towards the base of the Orbit, seeing Jack already there ahead of him, interrogating the Gurkhas guarding the staircase that wound its way up the tower’s DNA-like superstructure towards the circular observation deck.

  When Knight arrived, legs cramping and head splitting, he gasped, ‘Was Lancer up there?’

  ‘They say the only people who went up after three-thirty were some SAS snipers, a dog team, and the two Queen’s guardsmen protecting the—’

  ‘Can we alert them, the men on the roof?’ Knight said, cutting Jack off.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Jack said. ‘I mean, I don’t think so.’

  ‘I think Lancer plans to blow up the cauldron, maybe this entire structure. Where’s the propane tank and feeder line that keep the flame alight?’

  ‘It’s over this way,’ called the strained voice of a man hurrying them.

  Stuart Meeks was head of facilities at the Olympic Park. A short man in his fifties who sported a pencil-thin moustache and slicked-back hair, he carried an iPad and sweated profusely as he used an electronic code to open a door set flush in the concrete floor. The steps beneath the door led down into a massive utility basement that ran beneath the western legs of the Orbit and out under the river and the plaza towards the stadium.

  ‘How big is the tank down there?’ Knight asked as Meeks lifted the door.

  ‘Huge – five hundred thousand litres,’ Meeks said, holding out the iPad, which showed a schematic of the gas system. ‘But as you can see here it serves all the propane needs in the park, not just the cauldron. The gas is drawn from the main reservoir here into smaller holding tanks at each of the venues – and in the athletes’ village, of course. It was designed, like the electrical station, to be self-sufficient.’

  Knight gaped at him. ‘Are you saying if it blows, everything blows?’

  ‘No, I don’t …’ Meeks stopped. He turned pale. ‘I honestly don’t know.’

  Jack said, ‘Peter and I were with Lancer ten days ago up on the observation deck shortly after he’d finished inspecting security on the cauldron. Did Lancer go down into this basement during that inspection, Stu?’

  Meeks nodded. ‘Mike insisted on looking at everything one last time. From the tank and up the line, all the way to the coupling that connects the piping to the cauldron. It took us more than an hour.’

  ‘We don’t have an hour,’ Knight said.

  Jack was already on the steep ladder, preparing to climb down to inspect the giant propane tank. ‘Call in the dogs again, Stu. Send them down as soon as they get here. Peter, trace the gas line up to the roof.’

  Knight nodded before asking Meeks if he had any tools with him. The facilities director unsnapped a Leatherman from a pouch on his hip and told Knight he’d send the schematic of the gas-line system to his phone. No more than twenty yards up the spiral staircase that climbed the Orbit, Knight felt his phone buzz, alerting him to the arrival of the schematic.

  He was about to open the link when he thought of something that made the diagram seem irrelevant at this point. He keyed his microphone and said, ‘Stuart, how is the gas line to the cauldron controlled? By that I mean is there a manual valve up there that controls the gas flow that will have to be moved for the flame in the cauldron to go out, or will it be done electronically?’

  ‘Electronically,’ Meeks replied. ‘Before it connects to the cauldron the line runs through a crawl space that’s part of the ductwork in the ceiling above the restaurant and below the roof.’

  Despite the pounding in his skull and his general sense of irritability, Knight was picking up the pace as he climbed. The wind was strong now. In the distance he thought he heard the rumble of thunder.

  ‘Any way to get on the roof?’ he asked.

  ‘There are two hatches with retractable doors and staircases on opposite sides of the roof,’ Meeks said. ‘That’s how the guardsmen have been climbing up and down for their shifts. There’s also an exhaust grate in the ductwork several feet from that valve you asked about.’

  Before Knight could think about that, he heard Jack say, ‘Main tank appears clear. Stuart, we know the max volume and what it’s holding?’

  There was long pause before the Olympic Park’s facility supervisor said in a hoarse voice, ‘It was filled again at dawn, day before yesterday, Jack.’

  Two hundred feet above the Olympic Park, Knight now understood that underground between the Orbit and the stadium was a mega-explosive device certainly capable of toppling the tower, but also of causing tremendous damage to the south end of the stadium and everyone seated there. Not to mention what might happen if a central explosion set off other detonations around the venue.

  ‘Evacuate, Jack,’ Knight said. ‘Tell security to stop the ceremony and get everyone out of the stadium, and out of the park.’

  ‘But what if he’s watching?’ Jack said. ‘What if he can trigger it remotely?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Knight said, feeling torn. His personal inclination was to turn around and get the hell out of there. He was a father. He’d already almost died once today. Could he dare tempt fate twice?

  Still climbing, Knight toggled on the schematic on his phone, looking for the digitally controlled cauldron valve that was somewhere between the roof and the restaurant ceiling. At a glance, he felt almost sure that that control valve was the most likely place for Lancer to attach a triggering device to the main gas line.

  If he could reach it, he could defuse it. If he couldn’t …

  Chapter 114

  LIGHTNING FLASHED IN the near distance and the wind began to gust as Knight reached the entrance to the observation deck of the Orbit. Samba music blared from inside the Olympic stadium as part of Brazil’s tribute to the 2016 games.

  Though they’d been warned that he was coming, the Gurkhas at the entry insisted on checking Knight’s ID before allowing him to enter. Inside he was met by the senior SAS man, a guy named Creston, who said that he and his team and the skeleton television camera crew had been on the deck since roughly five o’clock when the restaurant had been closed to everyone but the Queen’s guardsmen who were using the gents’ inside to change in and out of uniform.

  Queen’s Guard, Knight thought. Lancer’s regiment served in the Guard. Hadn’t he said that?

  ‘Get me in that restaurant,’ Knight said. ‘There might be a triggering device tied into the gas line above the kitchen.’

  In seconds, Knight was running through the restaurant towards the kitchen with the SAS man in tow. Knight looked over his shoulder at him. ‘Are the roof hatches open?’

  ‘No,’ Creston said. ‘Not until the end of the ceremony. They’re timed.’

  ‘No way to talk to the guardsmen up there?’

  He shook his head. ‘They aren’t even armed. It’s a ceremonial bit.’

  Knight pressed his microphone. ‘Stuart, where do I go up through the ceiling?’

  ‘In the kitchen, left of the oven hood,’ Meeks replied. ‘The kitchen is past the toilets and through the double doors.’

  As Knight went into the hallway towards the kitchen, he saw the gents’, remembered that the guardsmen got changed there, and had a sudden strange intuition. ‘When did the relieved guards leave?’ he asked the SAS man.

  Creston shrugged. ‘Right after their shift. They had seats inside the stadium.’

  ‘They changed and left?’

  He nodded.

  Still, rather than barge on into the kitchen, Knight stopped and pushed on the door of the ladies’ toilet.

  ‘What are y
ou doing?’ Creston asked.

  ‘Not sure,’ Knight said, seeing it empty and then squatting to peer under the stalls. All empty.

  He quickly crossed to the gents’ and did the same, finding a black man’s naked body stuffed into the farthest stall.

  ‘We have a dead guardsman in the men’s loo up here,’ Knight barked into his radio as he headed towards the kitchen. ‘I believe Lancer has taken his uniform and is now on the roof.’

  He looked at the SAS man. ‘Figure out how to get those hatch doors open.’

  Creston nodded and took off, with Knight going in the opposite direction, bursting into the kitchen and quickly spotting the trapdoor in the ceiling left of the restaurant’s oven hood and vent. Dragging a stainless steel food-preparation table over beneath the trapdoor, he triggered his mike and said, ‘Can we get a visual on the guards to confirm that one of them is Lancer?’

  Listening to Jack relay the request to snipers high atop the stadium, Knight noticed the padlock on the trapdoor for the first time. ‘I need a combination, Stuart,’ he said into his radio.

  Meeks gave it to him, and with shaking hands Knight spun the dial and felt the lock give. He used a broom to push the trapdoor open, then looked around the kitchen one last time to see if there was anything he might be able to use or might need to shut down a gas line. A self-igniting blowtorch of the kind that chefs use to caramelise sugar caught his eye. He snatched it up.

  Knight tossed the torch up into the crawl space, and then swung his arms twice to loosen them before jumping up and grabbing the sides of the trapdoor frame. He hung there a second, took a deep breath, and raised his legs in front of him before driving them backward with enough force for him to be able to lurch his way up into the cavity between the restaurant ceiling and the roof of the Orbit.

  Knight pulled out a slim torch, flipped it on and, pushing the blowtorch in front of him, wriggled towards a piece of copper pipe that bisected the ductwork about six feet away. Knight didn’t have to get much closer to see the bumpy black electrical tape wrapped around it, securing a mobile phone and something else to the gas line.

  ‘I’ve got the trigger. It’s a small magnesium bomb taped to the gas line,’ he said. ‘It’s not on a timer. He’s going to blow it remotely. Shut down the entire gas system. Put out the Olympic flame. Now.’

  Chapter 115

  BLOW, WINDS, BLOW.

  Lightning flashes and thunder blasts north-west towards Crouch End and Stroud Green, not far at all from where my drug-addled parents gave birth to me. It is fitting. It is fated.

  Indeed, as the jackass who runs the International Olympic Committee prepares to have the flags lowered, declare the Games over, and order the flame extinguished, I fully embrace my destiny. Breaking from my stance of rigid attention, I gaze into the black wall of the oncoming storm, thinking how remarkable it is that my life has been like a track oval, starting and finishing in much the same place.

  Pulling out a mobile phone from my pocket, I hit a number on speed dial and hear it connect. Pocketing the phone, I take up my rifle, take two strides forward and pivot to my right. Towards the cauldron.

  Chapter 116

  A FEW MINUTES earlier, Karen Pope trudged out into the west stands of the Olympic Stadium just as IOC President Jacques Rogge, looking haggard and grave, walked to the lectern on the stage. The reporter had just filed her latest update to the Sun’s website, describing the escape of Knight and his children, the death of Marta and her sisters, and the global manhunt for Mike Lancer.

  As Rogge spoke over the noise of a rising wind and against the building rumour of thunder, Pope was thinking that these cursed Games were finally almost over. Goodbye and good riddance as far as she was concerned. She never wanted to write about the Olympics again, though she knew that was an impossible dream. She felt depressed and lethargic, and wondered if what she was feeling was as much battle fatigue as the desperate need to sleep. And Knight wasn’t answering his phone. Neither was Jack Morgan, or Inspector Pottersfield. What was going on that she didn’t know about?

  As Rogge droned on, preparing to declare the Games at an end, Pope happened to look up at the cauldron atop the Orbit, seeing the flame billow in the wind. She admitted that she looked forward to seeing it extinguished while feeling somewhat guilty about the—

  The Queen’s guardsman to the cauldron’s left suddenly lifted his gun, threw off his bearskin hat, walked out in front of the Olympic flame, pivoted and opened fire. The other guard jerked, staggered, and fell to his side and off the platform. His body hit the roof, slid and slipped off the Orbit, plunging and then gone.

  Pope’s gasp of horror was obliterated by the screams of the multitude in the stadium rising into one trembling cry before a booming voice coming over the public address system drowned it out: ‘You sorry inferior creatures. You didn’t think an instrument of the gods would let you off that easily, did you?’

  Chapter 117

  I CLUTCH THE mobile phone in my left hand, speaking into it, and hearing the power in my voice echo back to me. ‘All you SAS snipers out there in the park, don’t be stupid. I’m holding a triggering device. If you shoot me, this entire tower, much of the stadium, and tens of thousands of lives will be lost.’

  Below me, the crowd erupts and turns as frenzied as rats fleeing a sinking ship. Seeing them scurry and claw, I smile with utter satisfaction.

  ‘Tonight marks the end of the modern Olympics,’ I thunder. ‘Tonight we snuff out the flame that has burned so corruptly since that traitor de Coubertin came up with this mockery of the true Games more than a century ago!’

  Chapter 118

  KNIGHT HEARD THE gunshots and Lancer’s booming threat through an exhaust grate in the ceiling of the ductwork several feet beyond the gas line and the triggering device.

  He didn’t have time to try and defuse the trigger, and for all he knew Lancer had booby-trapped it to go off if it was tampered with.

  ‘How about cutting off the tanks?’ he asked over his radio.

  ‘It’s a disaster, Peter,’ Jack shot back. ‘He’s welded the valves open.’

  Above him, Lancer launched into a longer tirade, beginning with the doctors in Barcelona who had drugged him to prevent him from winning gold in the decathlon, from being named the greatest all-around athlete in the world. And in the background, Knight could hear the petrified crowd trying to escape the stadium. He understood he had only one chance.

  He pushed the blowtorch forward and crawled after it, past the gas line and the triggering device, until he lay beneath the exhaust grate.

  Through the slats he saw flashes of approaching lightning and the billowing glow of the Olympic flame still burning.

  Four bolts held the grate in place. All of them looked sealed in some kind of chemical resin. Maybe he could melt it.

  Knight grabbed the blowtorch and ignited it. As fast as he could, he heated the resin until it melted. Then he grabbed the nearest bolt head with the pliers on the Leatherman tool that Meeks had given him and wrenched at it. He felt thrilled when it gave.

  Chapter 119

  LIGHTNING INSCRIBES THE sky and thunder booms like close cannon fire as I bellow at the crazed crowd trying to escape the stadium, ‘For these reasons and a thousand others, the modern Games must end. Surely you understand!’

  But instead of screams of terror, or even calls of agreement, I’m hearing something I did not expect in return. The monsters are booing me. They’re catcalling, and casting filthy slurs on my genius, my superiority.

  These are the final indignities of a martyr for a just cause – stabbing, hurtful. But nothing like a roadside bomb, or even a rock, nothing that can stop me from seeing my fate fulfilled.

  Still, this rejection is enough to raise a wave of hatred in me like no other, a tsunami of loathing for all the monsters in the stadium before me.

  Looking up into the thundering dark sky that is now spitting lightning and hurling rain, I cry, ‘For you, Gods of Olympus. I do this all for
you!’

  Chapter 120

  KNIGHT WAS ALREADY well beyond the exhaust vent, up on the raised platform surrounding the cauldron, and now charging at full tilt through the pouring rain.

  Before the madman’s thumb could hit the mobile’s send button, Knight hit Lancer low, hard, and from the side, a stunning blow that caused the crazed Olympian to lurch and fall to the floor of the platform. His automatic weapon skittered away.

  Knight landed on top of Lancer, who was still clutching the mobile phone. The former decathlon champion was some ten years older than Knight. But he quickly proved bigger, stronger, and more skilled as a fighter.

  Lancer backhanded Knight so hard that the Private London agent was thrown off, and almost slammed his face against the searing wall of the cauldron. The infernal heat and the drenching rain revived him almost instantly.

  He twisted, seeing that Lancer was trying to regain his feet. But Knight kicked viciously at the madman’s ankle and connected. Lancer howled, stumbled to one knee and was rising again when Knight got his right forearm around the man’s bull neck from behind, trying to get a choke hold on him and seize the mobile before the gas bomb could be triggered.

  He squeezed Lancer’s throat and grabbed at his thumb, trying to pry loose his grip on the phone. But then Lancer jammed his chin down on Knight’s forearm, twisted his torso, and threw elbow punches that struck Knight hard on ribs still bruised from the Fury’s attempt to run him down.

  The Private London agent grunted in dire pain but held on, thinking of Luke and Isabel before taking a cue from his son. He bit brutally at the back of the insane man’s head, feeling a chunk of thick scar tissue tear away from Lancer’s scalp. Lancer screamed in agony and rage.