The crowd exploded. Pierce’s son and daughters began dancing and hugging each other.
‘She did it!’ Knight cried and felt tears in his eyes and then confusion: why was he getting so emotional about this?
He couldn’t answer the question, but he had goose bumps when Pierce ran to her children amid applause that turned deafening when the scores went up, confirming her gold-medal win.
‘OK, so she won,’ Pope said snippily. ‘Please, Knight. Help a girl out.’
Knight had an angry look about him as he yanked out his phone. ‘I’ve got a copy of the complete inventory of items they found at Farrell’s flat and her office.’
Pope’s eyes grew wide. Then she said, ‘Thanks, Knight. I owe you.’
‘Don’t mention it.’
‘It is over, then, really?’ Pope said, with more than a little sadness in her voice. ‘Just a manhunt from here on out. With all the beefed-up security, it would be impossible for Farrell to strike again. I mean, right?’
Knight nodded as he watched Pierce holding her children, smiling through her tears, and felt thoroughly satisfied. Some kind of balance had been achieved with the American diver’s performance.
Of course, other athletes had already shown remarkable fortitude in the last four days of competition. A swimmer from Australia had come back from a shattered right leg last year to win swimming gold in the men’s 400-metre freestyle race. A flyweight boxer from Niger, raised in abject poverty and subjected to long periods of malnourishment, had somehow developed a lion’s heart that had allowed him to win his first two boxing matches with first-round knockouts.
But Pierce’s story and her vocal defiance of Cronus seemed to echo and magnify what continued to be right with the modern Olympic Games. The doctor had shown grace under incredible pressure. She’d shaken off Teeter’s death and had won. As a result the Games no longer felt as tainted. At least to Knight.
Then his mobile rang. It was Hooligan.
‘What do you know that I don’t, mate?’ Knight asked in an upbeat voice, provoking a sneer from Pope.
‘Those skin cells we found in the second letter?’ Hooligan said, sounding shaken. ‘For three days, I get no match. But then, through an old fr
iend from MI5, I access a NATO database in Brussels. And I get a hit – a mind-boggling hit.’
Knight’s happiness over Pierce’s win subsided, and he turned away from Pope, saying, ‘Tell me.’
‘The DNA matches a hair sample taken in the mid-1990s as part of a drug-screening test given to people applying to be consultants to the NATO peacekeeping contingent that went to the Balkans to enforce the ceasefire.’
Knight was confused. Farrell had been in the Balkans at some point in the 1990s. But Hooligan had said his initial examination indicated that the skin cells in the second letter from Cronus belonged to a male.
‘Whose DNA is it?’ Knight demanded.
‘Indiana Jones,’ Hooligan said, sounding very disappointed. ‘Indiana Fuckin’ Jones.’
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?’