Private Games (Private 3)

‘Well,’ Nell said, miffed. ‘If your secret is a no-show, come back.’

Farrell blew Nell a kiss before setting off, feeling anticipation make her heart beat along with the dance music thudding up from the basement. She peered into the nooks and crannies of the ground floor before heading upstairs where she scanned the crowd gathered around the pink pool table. No luck.

Farrell was beginning to think she’d been stood up until she went to the basement where a femme kink performer was pole dancing to the riffs and dubs of a disc jockey named V. J. Wicked. Pink sofas lined the walls facing the stripper.

The professor spotted her quarry on one of those sofas in the far corner of the room, nursing a flute of champagne. With jet-black hair pulled back severely, she was elegantly attired in a black cocktail frock and a pill hat with a black lace veil that obscured the features of her face except for her dusky skin and ruby lips.

‘Hello, Marta,’ Farrell said, sliding into a chair beside her.

Marta took her attention off the dancer, smiled and replied in a soft East European accent. ‘I had faith I’d see you here, my sister.’

The professor smelled Marta’s perfume and was enthralled. ‘I couldn’t stay away.’

Marta ran her ruby fingernails over the back of Farrell’s hand. ‘Of course you couldn’t. Shall we let the games begin?’

Chapter 37

BY SEVEN THAT evening the world’s eyes had turned to five hundred-plus acres of decaying East London land that had been transformed into the city’s new Olympic Park, which featured a stadium packed with ninety thousand lucky fans, a teeming athletes’ village, and sleek modern venues for cycling, basketball, handball, swimming and diving.

These venues were all beautiful structures, but the media had chosen British sculptor Anish Kapoor’s ArcelorMittal Orbit as the park’s and, indeed, the Games’s signature design achievement. At three hundred and seventy-seven feet, the Orbit was taller than Big Ben, taller than the Statue of Liberty, and soared just outside the east flank of the stadium. The Orbit was rust red and featured massive hollow, steel arms that curved, twisted and wove together in a way that put Knight in mind of DNA helices gone mad. Near the top, the structure supported a circular observation deck and restaurant. Above the deck, another of those DNA helices was curved into a giant arch.

From his position high on the west side of the stadium, at the window of a lavish hospitality suite set aside for LOCOG, Knight trained his binoculars on the massive Olympic cauldron, which was set on a raised platform on the roof of the observation deck. He wondered how they were going to light it, and then found himself distracted by a BBC broadcaster on a nearby television screen saying that nearly four billion people were expected to tune in to the coverage of the opening ceremonies.

‘Peter?’ Jack Morgan said behind him. ‘There’s someone here who would like to talk to you.’

Knight lowered his binoculars and turned to find the owner of Private standing next to Marcus Morris, the chairman of LOCOG. Morris had been a popular Minister of Sport in a previous Labour government.

The two men shook hands.

‘An honour,’ Knight said as he shook Morris’s hand.

Morris said, ‘I need to hear from you exactly what Richard Guilder said before he died regarding Denton Marshall.’

Knight told him, finishing with, ‘The currency scam had nothing to do with the Olympics. It was greed on Guilder’s part. I’ll testify to that.’

Morris shook Knight’s hand again. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want there to be any hint of impropriety hanging over these Games. But it does nothing to make any of us feel any better about the loss of Denton. It’s a tragedy.’

‘In too many ways to count.’

‘Your mother seems to be holding up.’

Indeed, upon their arrival Amanda had been showered with sympathy and was now somewhere in the crowd behind them.

‘She’s a strong person, and when this Cronus maniac claimed that Denton was crooked she got angry, very angry. Not a good thing.’

‘No, I suppose not,’ Morris said, and smiled at last. ‘And now I’ve got a speech to give.’

‘And an Olympics to open,’ Jack said.

‘That too,’ Morris said, and walked away.

Jack looked out the window at the huge audience, his eyes scanning the roofline.

Knight noticed and said, ‘Security seems brilliant, Jack. It took more than an hour for my mother and I to get through screening at Stratford. And the blokes with the weapons were all Gurkhas.’

‘World’s most fearsome warriors,’ Jack said, nodding.

‘Do you need me somewhere?’