Private Games

Chapter 66

AT TWENTY TO noon that same Wednesday, Knight pushed Isabel in the swing at the playground inside the gardens of the Royal Hospital. Luke had figured out the swing on his own, and was pumping wildly with his feet and hands, trying to get higher and higher. Knight kept slowing him down gently.

‘Daddy!’ Luke yelled in frustration. ‘Lukey goes up!’

‘Not so up,’ Knight said. ‘You’ll fall out and crack your head.’

‘No, Daddy,’ Luke grumbled.

Isabel laughed. ‘Lukey already has a cracked head!’

That did not go over well. Knight had to take them off the swings and separate them, Isabel in the sandbox and Luke on the jungle gym. When they’d finally become absorbed in their play, he yawned, checked his watch – another hour and a quarter until Marta was scheduled to return — and went to the bench and his iPad, which he’d been using to track, the news coverage.

The country, and indeed the entire world, was in an uproar over the slayings of Gao Ping, An Wu and Win Bo Lee. Heads of state around the globe were condemning Cronus, the Furies, and their brutal tactics. So were the athletes.

Knight clicked on a hyperlink that led him to a BBC news video. It led with reaction to the killings of the Chinese coaches, and featured parents of athletes from Spain, Russia, and the Ukraine who fretted about security and wondered whether to dash their children’s dreams and insist that they leave. The Chinese had protested vigorously to the International Olympic Committee, and issued a release stating their frustration that the host nation seemed unable to provide as safe a venue for the Games as Beijing had four years before in Beijing.

But the BBC story then tried to lay blame for the security breaches. There were plenty of targets, including F7, the corporate-security firm hired to run the surveillance equipment at the venues. An F7 spokesman vigorously defended their operation, calling it ‘state of the art’ and run by ‘the most qualified people in the business’. The BBC piece also noted that the computer-security system had been designed by representatives of Scotland Yard and MI5 and had been touted as ‘impenetrable’ and ‘unbeatable’ before the start of the Games. But neither law-enforcement organisation was responding to questions about what were obviously serious breaches.

That left the focus on ‘an embattled Mike Lancer’ who’d faced the cameras after several members of Parliament had called for him to step down or be fired.

‘I’m not one to dodge blame when it’s warranted,’ Lancer said, sounding alternately angry and grief-stricken. ‘These terrorists have managed to find cracks in our system that we could not see. Let me assure the public that we are doing everything in our power to plug these cracks, and I know that Scotland Yard, MI5, F7 and Private are doing everything they can to find these murderers and stop them before any other tragedy can befall what should rightly be a global celebration of youth and renewal.’

In response to the calls for Lancer’s head, LOCOG chairman Marcus Morris was playing the stiff-upper-lip Brit, adamantly opposed to giving ground to Cronus and positive that Lancer and the web of UK security forces in place would prevent further attacks, find the killers, and bring them to justice.

Despite the overall gloomy tone of the piece, the video closed on something of a positive note. The scene was the Olympic Village, where shortly after dawn hundreds of athletes poured out onto the lawns and pavements. They burned candles in memory of the slain. American diver Hunter Pierce, Cameroonian sprinter Filatri Mundaho, and the girls of the Chinese gymnastics team had spoken, denouncing the murders as an ‘insane, unwarranted, and direct assault on the fabric of the games’.

The piece closed with the reporter noting that police divers were continuing to probe the murky depths of the Thames near its confluence with the River Lea. They had found evidence that the speedboat that had slammed into the river wall had contained explosives. No bodies had turned up.

‘These facts do not bode well for an already shaken London Olympics,’ he’d intoned, ending the story.

‘Knight?’

Sun reporter Karen Pope was coming through the gate into the playground, looking anxious and depressed.

Knight frowned. ‘How did you find me here?’

‘Hooligan told me you like to come here with your kids,’ she replied and her unease deepened. ‘I tried your house first, then came here.’

‘What’s wrong?’ Knight asked. ‘Are you all right?’

‘No, I’m not, actually,’ the reporter said in a shaky voice as she sat down on the bench with him. Tears welled in her eyes. ‘I feel like I’m being used.’

‘Cronus?’

‘And the Furies,’ she said, wiping angrily at her tears. ‘I didn’t ask for it, but I have become part of their insanity, their terror. At first, you know, I admit it: I welcomed the story. Bloody brilliant for the career and all that, but now …’

Pope choked up and looked away.

‘He’s written to you again?’

She nodded and in a lost voice said: ‘I feel like I’ve sold my soul, Knight.’

At that he saw the reporter in an entirely new light. Yes, she was abrasive and insensitive at times. But deep down she was human. She had a soul and principles; and this case tore at both. His estimation of Pope rose immeasurably.

‘Don’t think that way,’ Knight said. ‘You don’t support Cronus, do you?’

‘Of course not,’ she sniffed.

‘Then you’re just doing your job: a difficult thing, but necessary. Do you have the letter with you?’

Pope shook her head. ‘I dropped it off with Hooligan this morning.’ She paused. ‘A messenger brought it to me last night at my flat. He said two fat women met him in front of King’s College and gave him the letter to deliver. They were wearing official Olympic volunteer uniforms.’

‘It fits,’ Knight said. ‘What reason did Cronus give for killing the Chinese?’

‘He claims that they were guilty of state-sponsored child enslavement.’

Cronus claimed that China routinely ignored Olympic age rules, doctoring birth certificates in order to force children into what was effectively athletic servitude. These practices were also fraud. Ping and Wu knew that sixty per cent of the Chinese women’s gymnastics team was underage. So did Win Bo Lee, who Cronus claimed was the architect of the entire scheme.

‘There are plenty of supporting documents,’ Pope said. ‘Cronus makes the case quite well. The letter says the Chinese “enslaved underage children for state glory”, and that the punishment was death.’

She looked at Knight, crying again. ‘I could have published it all last night. I could have called my editor and made the deadline for today’s paper. But I couldn’t, Knight. I just … They know where I live.’

‘Lukey wants milk, Daddy,’ Luke said.

Knight turned from the distraught reporter to find his son staring at him expectantly. Then Isabel appeared. ‘I want milk too!’

‘Bollocks,’ Knight muttered, and then said apologetically, ‘I forgot the milk, but I’ll go and get some right now. This is Karen. She works for the newspaper. She’s a friend of mine. She’ll sit with you until I get back.’

Pope frowned. ‘I don’t think …’

‘Ten minutes,’ Knight said. ‘Fifteen, tops.’

The reporter looked at Luke and Isabel who studied her, and said reluctantly, ‘Okay.’

‘I’ll be right back,’ Knight promised.

He ran across the playground and out through the Royal Hospital grounds towards his home in Chelsea. The one-way trip took six minutes exactly and he arrived sweating and breathing hard.

Knight put his key in the lock and was upset to find the door unlocked. Had he forgotten to secure it? It was completely unlike him, but he was operating on limited, broken sleep, wasn’t he?

He stepped inside the front hallway. A floorboard creaked somewhere above him. And then a door clicked shut.