Private Games

Chapter 53

FIVE MILES AWAY, and several hundred yards south of the Thames in Greenwich, Petra and Teagan walked under leaden skies towards the security gate of the O2 Arena, an ultra-modern white-domed structure perforated by and trussed to yellow towers that held the roof in place. The O2 Arena sat at the north end of a peninsula and normally played host to concerts and larger theatrical productions. But for the Olympics it had been transformed into the gymnastics venue.

Petra and Teagan were dressed in official Games Master uniforms, and carried official credentials that identified them as recruited and vetted volunteers for that evening’s Olympic highlight event: the women’s team gymnastics final.

Teagan looked grim, focused, and determined as they walked towards the line of volunteers and concessionaires waiting to clear security. But Petra appeared uncertain, and she was walking with a hesitant gait.

‘I said I was sorry,’ Petra said.

Teagan said icily: ‘Hardly the actions of a superior being.’

‘My mind was elsewhere,’ her sister replied.

‘Where else could you possibly be? This is the moment we’ve waited for!’

Petra hesitated before complaining in a whisper: ‘This isn’t like the other tasks that Cronus has given us. It feels like a suicide mission. The end of two Furies.’

Teagan halted and glared at her sister. ‘First the letter and now doubts?’

Petra’s attitude hardened. ‘What if we get caught?’

‘We won’t.’

‘But—’

Teagan cut her off, asking archly, ‘Do you honestly want me to call Cronus and say that now, at the last minute, you are leaving this to me? Do you really want to provoke him like that?’

Petra blinked and then her expression twisted towards alarm. ‘No. No, I never said anything like that. Please. I’ll … I’ll do it.’ She straightened and brushed her jacket with her fingers. ‘A moment of doubt,’ she added. ‘That’s all. Nothing more than that. Even superior beings entertain doubt, sister.’

‘No, they don’t,’ said Teagan, thinking ‘impetuous’ and ‘lacking in attention to detail’ – wasn’t that how Cronus had described her younger sister?

Some of that was definitely true. Petra had just now proved it, hadn’t she?

As they’d waited on a pavement near King’s College, their only stop on the way to the gymnastics venue, the youngest of the Furies had forgotten to keep her gloves on when getting out the latest letter to Pope. Teagan had gone over the package with a disposable wipe, and had then held it with the wipe until she could pass the envelope to a bicycle messenger who gave them a sharp but cursory glance in their fat-women disguises.

As if in reaction to the same memory, Petra raised her chin towards Teagan. ‘I know who I am, sister. I know what fate holds for me. I’m clear about that now.’

Teagan hesitated, but then gestured to Petra to lead on. Despite her sister’s doubts, Teagan felt nothing but waves of certainty and pleasure. Drugging a man to death was one thing, but there was no substitute for looking the person you were about to kill in the eye, showing them your power.

It had been years since that had happened – since Bosnia, in fact. What she had done back then should have been fuel for nightmares, but it was not so for Teagan.

She often dreamed of the men and boys she’d executed in the wake of her parents’ death and the gang rape. Those bloody dreams were Teagan’s favourites, true fantasies that she enjoyed reliving again and again.

Teagan smiled, thinking that the acts she would commit tonight would ensure that she’d have a new dream for years to come, something to celebrate in the dark, something to cling to when times got rough.

At last they reached the X-ray screeners. Stone-faced Gurkhas armed with automatic weapons flanked the check-point, and for a moment Teagan feared that Petra might baulk and retreat at the show of force.

But her sister acted like a pro and handed her identification to the guard, who ran her badge through a reader and checked her face against computer records that identified her as ‘Caroline Thorson’. Those same records indicated that she was a diabetic and therefore cleared to bring an insulin kit into the venue.

The guard pointed to a grey plastic tub. ‘Insulin kit and anything metal in there. Jewellery, too,’ he said, pointing at the pitted silver ring she wore.

Petra smiled, tugged the ring off and set it beside the insulin kit in the tray. She walked through the metal-detectors without incident.

Teagan took off a ring identical to her sister’s and put it in the tray after her credentials checked out. ‘Same ring?’ the guard said.

Teagan smiled and gestured towards Petra. ‘We’re cousins. The rings were presents from our grandma who loved the Olympics. The poor dear passed on last year. We’re wearing them in her honour to every event we work.’

‘That’s nice,’ the guard said, and waved her through.