Private Games (Private 3)

Could Professor Farrell do such a thing? Was she capable?

Mike Lancer ran up to Knight and Jack, looking as if he had aged ten years in the past few moments. He pointed at the screens. ‘What the hell does that mean? What’s that infernal music?’

‘It’s Cronus, Mike,’ Knight said. ‘He’s taking credit for the attack.’

‘What?’ Lancer cried, looking distraught. Then he spotted Dr Pierce and the paramedics gathered around the US shot-putter. ‘Is he dead?’

‘I saw him before Dr Pierce got to him,’ Knight said. ‘He had bloody foam around his mouth. He was convulsing and choking.’

Shaken, bewildered, Lancer said, ‘Poison?’

‘We’ll have to wait for a blood test.’

‘Or an autopsy,’ Jack said as paramedics put an unconscious Teeter on a gurney and rushed towards the ambulance with Dr Pierce in tow.

Some in the remaining crowd at the Olympic stadium were softly clapping for the stricken American. But mo

re were heading for the exits, holding their hands to their ears to block out the baleful flute music, and shooting worried glances at Cronus’s message still glowing up there on the screens.

Olympic Shame Exposed

Jack’s voice shook as the ambulance pulled away: ‘I don’t care what claim Cronus might have. Paul Teeter was one of the good guys, a gentle giant. I went to see one of his clinics in LA. The kids adored him. Absolutely adored him. What kind of sick bastard would do such a thing on a night like this to such a good person as him?’

Knight recalled Professor Farrell fleeing her office the day before. Where was she? Did Pottersfield have her in custody? Was she Cronus? Or one of the Furies? And how did they poison Teeter?

Knight went to Mundaho, introduced himself, and asked him what had happened. The Cameroonian sprinter said in broken English that Teeter was sweating hard and had looked flushed in the minutes before he collapsed.

Then Knight grabbed other American athletes and asked whether they’d seen Teeter drink anything before the start of the opening ceremony. A high-jumper said he had seen the shot-putter drinking from one of the thousands of plastic water bottles that London Olympic volunteers, or Game Masters, were handing out to athletes as they lined up for the parade of nations.

Knight told Jack and Lancer who went ballistic and barked into his radio, ordering all Game Masters held inside the Olympic Park until further notice.

The security commander, who had arrived on the scene a few minutes earlier, glared up at the glowing screens and bellowed into his radio, ‘Shut down the PA system and end that goddamn flute music! Get that message off the scoreboards, too. And I want to know how in the bloody hell someone cracked our network. Now!’

Chapter 45

Saturday, 28 July 2012

PAUL TEETER, LEADING FIELD athlete and tireless advocate for disadvantaged youth, died en route to hospital shortly after midnight. He was twenty-six.

Hours later, Knight suffered a nightmare that featured the flute music, the severed head of Denton Marshall, the blood blooming on Richard Guilder’s chest, Joe Mascolo crashing through the cocktail table at the Lobby Bar, and the bloody foam on the shot-putter’s lips.

He awoke with a start, and for several heart-racing moments the Private investigator had no idea where he was.

Then he heard Luke sucking his thumb in the darkness and knew. He began to calm down and pulled the sheets up around his shoulders, thinking of Gary Boss’s face when Knight had arrived home at three in the morning.

The place had been a shambles and his mother’s personal assistant vowed to never, ever babysit Knight’s insane children again. Even if Amanda quintupled his salary he would not do it.

His mother was upset with Knight as well. Not only had he cut out on her the night before, he hadn’t responded to her calls after Teeter’s death had been announced. But he’d been swamped.

Knight tried to doze again, but his mind lurched between worry about finding a new nanny for his kids, his mother, and the contents of Cronus’s second letter. He, Jack and Hooligan had examined the letter in the clean room at Private London shortly after Pope brought them the package at around one a.m.

‘What honour can there be in a victory that is not earned?’ Cronus had written at the start of the letter. ‘What glory in defeating your opponent through deceit?’

Cronus claimed that Teeter was a fraud ‘emblematic of the legions of corrupt Olympic athletes willing to use any illegal drug at their disposal to enhance their performance.’

The letter had gone on to claim that Teeter and other unnamed athletes at the London Games were using an extract of deer and elk antler ‘velvet’ to increase their strength, speed, and recovery time. Antler is the fastest growing substance in the world because the nutrient-rich sheathing, or velvet, that surrounds it during development is saturated with IGF-1, a super-potent growth hormone banned under Olympic rules. Under careful administration, however, and delivered by mouth spray rather than direct injection, the use of antler velvet was almost impossible to detect.

‘The illicit benefits of IGF-1 are enormous,’ Cronus wrote. ‘Especially to a strength athlete like Teeter because it gives him the ability to build muscle faster, and recover faster from workouts.’