Private Games

Chapter 40

TWENTY MINUTES LATER, with The Who and the Stones still counterpunching with songs from their greatest-hits collections, the contingent from the United States entered the stadium led by their flag-bearer Paul Teeter, a massive bearded man whom Jack knew from Los Angeles.

‘Paul went to UCLA,’ Jack said. ‘Throws the shot and discus – insanely strong. A really good guy, too. He does a lot of work with inner-city youth. He’s expected to go big here.’

Knight took his eyes off Teeter and caught sight of a woman he recognised walking behind the flag-bearer. He’d seen a picture of her in a bikini in The Times of all places the week before. She was in her late thirties and easily one of the fittest women he’d ever seen. And she was even better-looking in person.

‘That’s Hunter Pierce, isn’t it?’ Knight said.

Jack nodded in admiration. ‘What a great story she is.’

Pierce had lost her husband in a car accident two years before, leaving her with three children under the age of ten. Now an emergency-room doctor in San Diego, she’d once been a twenty-one-year-old diver who’d almost made the Atlanta Olympic team, but had then quit the sport to pursue a career in medicine and raise a family.

Fifteen years later, as a way to deal with her husband’s death, she began diving again. At her children’s insistence, Pierce started competing again at the age of thirty-six. Eighteen months later, with her children watching, she’d stunned the American diving community by winning the ten-metre platform competition at the US Olympic qualifying meet.

‘Absolutely brilliant,’ Knight said, watching her waving and smiling as the team from Zimbabwe entered the stadium behind her.

Last to enter was the team from the UK – the host country. Twenty-three-year-old swimmer Audrey Williamson, a two-time gold medallist at Beijing, carried the Union Jack.

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.