Private Games (Private 3)

‘Where does that go?’ he asked Jack.

‘The practice track,’ Jack replied. ‘That’s where the teams are getting ready for the parade of nations.’

For reasons that Knight could not explain he felt drawn to that part of the stadium. ‘I want to take a look,’ he said.

‘I’ll walk with you,’ Jack said. They crossed the stadium as the lights dimmed yet again except for a spotlight aimed at that Robin Hood figure who was now perched high above the stage at the venue’s south end.

The actor was pointing up at the top of the Orbit, above the observation deck where more spotlights revealed two armed members of the Queen’s Guard marching stiffly towards the cauldron from opposite sides of the roof. They pivoted and stood at rigid attention in their red tunics and black bearskin hats, flanking the cauldron.

Two more guardsmen appeared in the stadium at either side of the main stage. The music faded and an announcer said, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, Mesdames et Messieurs: Queen Elizabeth and the Royal Family.’

Chapter 39

THE LIGHTS ON the stage came up to reveal Queen Elizabeth the Second in a blue suit. She was smiling and waving as she moved to a microphone while Prince Philip, Charles, William, Kate, and various other members of the Windsor family flanked and followed her.

Knight and Jack slowed to gawk for several moments while the queen gave a short speech welcoming the youth of the world to London. But then they moved on towards that entryway.

As more dignitaries gave speeches, the two Private operatives reached the grandstand above the tunnel entry and had to show their corporate badges and IDs to get to the railing. Teams of armed Gurkhas flanked both sides of the tunnel below them. Several of the Nepalese guards immediately began studying Knight and Jack, gauging their level of threat.

‘I absolutely would not want one of those guys pissed-off at me,’ Jack said as athletes from Afghanistan started to appear in the entryway.

‘Toughest soldiers in the world,’ Knight said, studying the traditional long, curved and sheathed knives several of the Gurkhas wore at their belts.

A long curved knife cut off Denton Marshall’s head, right?

He was about to mention this fact to Jack when Marcus Morris shouted in conclusion to his speech: ‘We welcome the youth of the world to the greatest city on Earth!’

On the stage at the south end of the stadium, the rock band The Who appeared, and broke into ‘The Kids Are Alright’ as the parade of athletes began with the contingent from Afghanistan entering the stadium.

The crowd went wild and wilder still when The Who finished and Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones appeared with Keith Richards’ guitar wailing the opening riff of ‘Can’t You Hear Me Knocking?’

With a thousand camera flashes, London went into full Olympic frenzy.

Below Jack and Knight, the Cameroon team filed into the stadium.

‘Which one’s Mundaho?’ Jack asked. ‘He’s from Cameroon, right?’

‘Yes, indeed,’ Knight said, searching among the contingent dressed in green and bright yellow until he spotted a tall, muscular and laughing man with his hair done up in beads and shells. ‘There he is.’

‘Does he honestly reckon he can beat Shaw?’

‘He certainly thinks so,’ Knight said.

Filatri Mundaho had appeared out of nowhere on the international track scene at a race in Berlin only seven months before the Olympics. Mundaho was a big, rangy man built along the same lines as the supreme Jamaican sprinter Zeke Shaw.

Shaw had not been in Berlin, but many of the world’s other fastest men had. Mundaho ran in three events at that meet: the 100-metre, 200-metre, and 400-metre sprints. The Cameroonian won every heat and every race convincingly, which had never been done before at a meet that big.

The achievement set off a frenzy of speculation about what Mundaho might be able to accomplish at the London Games. At the 1996 Atlanta Games, American Henry Ivey gold-medalled and set world records in both the 400-metre and 200-metre sprints. At Beijing in 2008, Shaw won the 100 and 200-metre sprints, also setting world records in both events. But no man, or woman for that matter, had ever won all three sprint events at a single Games.

Filatri Mundaho was going to try.

His coaches claimed that Mundaho had been discovered running in a regional race in the eastern part of their country after he’d escaped from rebel forces who had kidnapped him as a child and turned him into a boy soldier.

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nbsp; ‘Did you read that article the other day where he attributed his speed and stamina to bullets flying at his back?’ Jack asked.

‘No,’ Knight said. ‘But I can see that being a hell of a motivator.’