Even in Knight’s blurry state, it didn’t sound right, and he said, ‘Bullshit. I don’t believe you.’
Lancer glared at him before whipping the glass at Knight. It missed and shattered against the wall behind him. ‘Who are you to question my motives?’ Lancer roared.
Concussion or not, threat or not, things were becoming clearer to Knight, who said, ‘You didn’t do this just to expose the Games. You sacrificed them in front of a world audience. There has to be a warped sense of rage behind that.’
Lancer got angrier. ‘I am an emanation of the Lord of Time.’ He looked over at the twins. ‘Cronus. Devourer of children.’
The implied threat terrified Knight. How far gone was the man?
‘No,’ Knight said, following his foggy instincts. ‘Something happened to you. Something that filled you with hatred and made you want to do all this.’
Lancer’s voice rose. ‘The Olympics are supposed to be a religious festival, one where honourable men and women compete in the eyes of heaven. The modern Games are its exact opposite. The gods were offended by the arrogance of men, the hubris of mankind.’
Knight’s vision blurred slightly, and he felt sickened again, but his brain was working better with each passing second. He shook his head. ‘The gods weren’t offended. You were offended. Who were they? The arrogant men?’
‘The ones that have died in the last two weeks,’ Lancer retorted hotly. Then he smiled. ‘Including Dan Carter and your other dear colleagues.’
Knight stared at him, unable to comprehend the depths of the man’s depravity. ‘You bombed that plane?’
‘Carter was getting a little too close,’ Lancer replied. ‘The others were collateral damage.’
‘Collateral damage!’ Knight shouted, feeling like he wanted to kill the man standing before him, ripping him limb from limb. But then his head began to throb again and he lay there panting, looking at Lancer.
After several moments he said, ‘Who offended you?’
Lancer’s expression went hard as he stared off into the past.
‘Who?’ Knight demanded again.
The former decathlon champion glared at Knight in utter fury, and said, ‘Doctors.’
Chapter 99
IN BROAD, BITTER strokes, I tell Knight a story that no one except the Brazlic sisters has ever heard in its entirety, starting with the hatred I was born with, right through stabbing my mother and killing the monsters who stoned me after I went to live with Minister Bob in Brixton, the roughest neighbourhood in all of London.
I tell Knight that after the stoning, in the spring of my fifteenth year, Minister Bob had me enter for a track meet because he thought I was stronger and faster than most boys. He had no idea what I was capable of. Neither did I.
During that first meet I won six events: the 100, 200, javelin, triple jump, long jump and discus. I did it again in a regional competition, and a third time at a junior national meet in Sheffield.
‘A man named Lionel Higgins approached me after Sheffield,’ I tell Knight. ‘Higgins was a private decathlon coach. He told me I had the talent to be the greatest all-around athlete in the world and to win the Olympic gold medal. He offered to help me figure out a way to train full-time, and filled my head with false dreams of glory and a life lived according to Olympic ideals, of competing fairly, may the best man win, and all that nonsense.’
Snorting scornfully, I say: ‘The monster slayer in me bought the phoney spiel hook, line and sinker.’
I go on to tell Knight how I lived the Olympic ideals for the next fifteen years of my life. Despite the headaches that would lay me low at least once a month, Higgins arranged for me to join the Coldstream Guards, where in return for a decade of service I’d be allowed to train. I did so, furiously, single-mindedly, some say maniacally for a shot at athletic immortality that finally came for me at the Games in Barcelona in 1992.
‘We expected the oppressive heat and humidity,’ I say to Knight. ‘Higgins sent me to India to train for it, figuring that Bombay would be worse than Spain. He was right. I was the best prepared, and I was mentally ready to suffer more than anyone else.’
Wrapped in the darkest of my memories, I shake my head like a terrier breaking a rat’s spine, and say, ‘None of it mattered.’
I describe how I led the Barcelona decathlon after the first day, through the 110-metre hurdles, high jump, discus, pole vault, and the 400. Temperatures were in the upper nineties and the oppressive, saturated air took its toll on me: I cramped up and collapsed after placing second in the 400.
‘They rushed me to a medical tent,’ I tell Knight. ‘But I wasn’t concerned. Higgins and I figured I would need a legal electrolytic boost after day one. I ke
pt calling for my coach, but the medical personnel wouldn’t let him in. I could see they were going to put me on an IV. I told them I wanted my own coach to replenish the fluids and minerals I lost with a mixture we’d fine-tuned to my metabolism. But I was in no condition to fight them when they put the needle in my arm and connected it to a bag of God only knows what.’
Looking at Knight, feeling livid, I’m reliving the aftermath all over again. ‘I was a ghost of myself the next day. The javelin and the long jump were my best events, and I cratered in both. I didn’t finish in the top ten and I was the reigning world champion.’
The anger in me is almost overwhelming when I say, ‘No dream realised, Knight. No Olympic glory. No proof of my superiority. Sabotaged by what the modern Games have become.’