Authors: James Patterson
‘Exactly,’ Knight said.
The LOCOG member shook his head. ‘Nothing. It’s been empty for almost a year, I believe. I mean, I haven’t seen anyone on the balcony for almost that long.’
‘Someone’s in there now,’ Knight said, and then gestured at the blue cable. ‘Is that a CAT 5e line linked to the Internet?’
Lancer seemed to be struggling to understand where Knight was going with all these questions. ‘Yes, of course.’
‘No Wi-Fi?’ Knight asked.
‘The CAT has much higher security. Why are you so interested in the flat in the building next door?’
‘Because I believe that Cronus or one of his Furies has rented it so they could tap into your computer line.’
Lancer’s jaw dropped. ‘What?’
‘That’s how they were able to crack the Olympic security system,’ Knight went on. ‘They tapped into your line, stole your passwords, and in they went.’
The former decathlon athlete looked at his computer, blinking. ‘How do you know all this? How do you know they’re next door?’
‘Because my children are in there.’
‘Your children?’ Lancer said, shocked.
Knight nodded, his hands balled into fists. ‘A woman named Marta Brezenova, a nanny I hired recently, kidnapped them on Cronus’s behalf. She doesn’t know that the twins are wearing pieces of jewellery fitted with a GPS transmitter. Their signals are coming from that flat.’
‘Jesus,’ Lancer said, dumbstruck. ‘They were right next to me the whole … we’ve got to call Scotland Yard, MI5. Get a special-weapons unit in here.’
‘You do that,’ Knight said. ‘I’m going to see if I can look into that flat from your balcony. And tell them to come in quiet. No sirens. I don’t want my kids getting killed on a knee-jerk reaction.’
Lancer nodded emphatically, pulled out his mobile, and began punching in numbers as Knight slipped out through the French window onto the rain-soaked balcony. He moved past wet patio furniture and tried to see into the other flat.
The other balcony was less than six feet away, featured an iron balustrade, and was empty, apart from some old wet leaves. The French window had gauzy white curtains hanging over it that let light out, but gave Knight no clear idea of the interior layout. To his right, Knight could hear Lancer talking on his phone, explaining what was going on.
A wind came up. The French window on the far balcony blew open several inches, revealing a stark white carpet and a white country-style table on which several computers stood glowing, all connected to blue CAT 5e lines.
Knight was about go back into Lancer’s apartment to tell him what he’d seen when he heard his son whine from somewhere in the adjacent flat: ‘No, Marta! Lukey want to go home for birthday party!’
‘Shut up, you spoiled little bastard,’ Marta hissed before Knight heard a loud slap and Luke went hysterical. ‘And learn to use the loo!’
THE PRIMAL INSTINCT
of a father wanting to protect his child seized Knight so completely that without considering the consequences he climbed up on Lancer’s railing thirty feet above the ground, crouched, and dived forward.
As Knight pushed off from the wet rail his shoes slipped ever so slightly, and he knew in an instant that he wasn’t going to make it onto the floor of the balcony next door. He wasn’t even going to reach the railing, and he thought for sure that he was going to plunge and break every bone in his body.
But somehow his fingers snagged the bottom of the iron balustrade where it met the balcony floor and he grabbed at it for dear life, dangling and wondering how long he could hold on.
‘Shut up!’ Marta snapped inside, and slapped Luke again.
The little boy’s sobs turned bitter, and that was enough to trigger a massive surge of adrenalin in Knight. He swung his body left and right like a pendulum, feeling the iron biting into his hands, but not caring because on the third swing he was able to catch the edge of the balcony floor with the toe of his right shoe.
Seconds later he was over the railing and onto the balcony itself, his muscles trembling and a chemical taste in his mouth. Luke’s crying had become muffled and nasal, as if Marta had gagged Knight’s son.
Ignoring the stinging in his hands, Knight gripped his Beretta and eased up to the half-open French window. He peeked inside and saw that the living area was similar in layout to Lancer’s place. The furnishings were wildly different, however, with a much colder touch. Everything in the room, except a gold and red tapestry that hung on the right-hand wall, was the same stark white as the carpet. Luke’s muffled cries were coming from a hallway by the kitchen.
Knight pushed open the French window and stepped inside. He kicked off his shoes and stalked quickly to the hallway. He had no illusions about what he was doing now. Marta was a part of the death of Denton Marshall. She’d helped destroy his mother’s happiness. She had tried to destroy the Olympics, and she’d taken his children. He would not hesitate to kill her to save them.
Luke’s cries softened enough for Knight to be able to hear Isabel weeping too, and then a deeper groaning. All of it was coming from a room on the left, its door open and lights on. Knight hugged the wall and reached the doorway. He looked down the hallway beyond and saw two doors, both open, lights off.
It was all going down in the room right next to him. He thumbed the Beretta’s safety.
Gun held out in front of him, Knight stepped into the doorway, sweeping his weapon around the room. He spotted Isabel lying on her side on a bare mattress on the floor to his right, tied up, tape across her mouth, looking towards Marta.
The nanny was about fifteen feet from Knight, her back turned to the door, and she was changing Luke’s nappy on a table against the wall. She had no idea that he was standing in the doorway behind her, searching for a clear shot.
But James Daring did.
The museum curator and television star was staring at Knight, who understood much of the situation in a heartbeat. Knight stepped forward, aiming the pistol, and said, ‘Get away from my son, you war-criminal bitch, or I will head-shoot you and enjoy doing it.’
The nanny pivoted in disbelief towards Knight, her attention darting to a black assault rifle standing in the corner several feet away.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ Knight said, taking another step towards her. ‘Get down on your belly, hands up behind your head, or I will kill you. Right now.’
Marta’s eyes went dead and vacant, but she started to comply slowly, lowering her centre, watching Knight the way a cornered lioness might.
Knight took another step forward, gripping the Beretta two-handed, seeing her framed in his pistol sights. ‘I said get down!’ he yelled.
Marta went flat, and put her hands up behind her head.
Glancing at Daring, Knight said, ‘Cronus?’
The television personality’s eyes glazed before Knight heard a nearby thudding noise and something viciously hard hit his head.
It was like storms he’d seen come up over dry lowlands in Portugal: thunder boomed so loud that it deafened Knight even as heat lightning crackled, sending electric tentacles through his brain, so brilliant that they blinded him into darkness.
Sunday, 12 August 2012
THE SOUNDS OF
hydraulic doors opening and shoes slapping on tile stirred Karen Pope from an edge-of-consciousness sleep.
The
Sun
reporter lay on a sofa in Private London’s lab, feeling wrecked by a fatigue that was compounded with worry. No one had heard from Knight since he’d walked out the rear door of his house. Not Pottersfield, not Hooligan, not Pope, not Morgan, nor anyone else at Scotland Yard or Private.
They’d waited for him at his home until shortly after dawn when Pottersfield had left to examine the bodies of the two dead women found in the abandoned factory. Pope and Hooligan returned to Private to run the fingerprints that Hooligan had taken at Knight’s house through the Balkan War Crimes database.
They’d got a hit almost immediately: Senka, the oldest of the Brazlic siblings, had been all over the place. When Hooligan informed Pottersfield, the inspector told them that preliminary fingerprint work on the more recently slain woman positively identified her as Nada, the middle Brazlic sister.
At that point, around eight a.m. that Sunday, Pope had hit a wall of exhaustion and had lain down on the couch, using one of Hooligan’s lab coats for a blanket. How long had she slept?
‘Hooligan, wake up,’ she heard Jack say. ‘There’s a beat-up Rasta at the front desk looking for you. He says he’s got something that he was supposed to hand-deliver to you for Knight. And he refuses to give it to me.’
At that Pope opened an eye to see the American standing at Hooligan’s desk and Private London’s chief scientist rousing from a nap. Above him, the clock read 10:20.
Two hours and twenty minutes? Pope sat up groggily, then got to her feet and stumbled after Hooligan and Jack out of the lab to the reception area, where a Jamaican sat painfully in a chair by the lift. A large bandage covered his grossly swollen cheek. His arm was in a cast and secured by a sling.
‘I’m Hooligan,’ the scientist said.
The Rasta struggled up and held out his good hand, saying, ‘Ketu Oladuwa. I drive de cab.’
Hooligan gestured at the cast and bandage. ‘Crash?’
Oladuwa nodded. ‘Big time, mon. On my way to Heathrow. Broadsided by a panel van. I been in hospital all night.’
Pope said, ‘What about Knight?’
‘Ya, mon,’ the Rasta said, digging in his pocket and coming up with a smashed iPhone. ‘He gimme dis one here last night and tell me to drive it to Heathrow and then back to his home to find you or some inspector with da police. I went to Knight’s home when I got out of hospital dis morning, and police told me you gone, so I came here.’
‘To give us a smashed phone?’ Jack asked.
‘Wasn’t smashed before da accident,’ the Rasta said indignantly. ‘He said something on dat phone help you find his kids.’
‘Fuck,’ Hooligan grunted. He snatched the remains of Knight’s phone from Oladuwa, spun around and took off for the lab with Pope and Jack close on his heels.
‘Hey!’ Oladuwa yelled after them. ‘Him say I get reward!’
KNIGHT SURFACED FROM
oblivion slowly, starting deep in the reptilian part of his brain with a sense of the smell of meat frying. At first he had no notion of who he was, or where he was, just that odour of meat frying.
Then he understood that he was lying prone on something hard. His hearing returned next, like pounding surf that cleared to static and then to voices, television voices. Knight knew who he was then, and dimly recalled being in the bedroom with his children, Marta, and Daring before it had all gone blank. He tried to move. He couldn’t. His wrists and hands were bound.
The flute began, airy and trilling, and Knight forced his eyes open, seeing blurrily that he was not in that bedroom in the white flat any more. The floor below him was hardwood, not carpeted. And the walls around him were dark-panelled and heaved to and fro like the sea churning.
Knight felt nauseated and shut his eyes, still hearing the flute music, and the broadcast announcers arguing before he moved his head and felt a terrible throbbing at the back of his skull. After several seconds he opened his eyes a second time, finding that his focus was now better. He spotted Isabel and Luke unconscious on the floor not far away, still bound and gagged.
Then he twisted his head, trying to locate the source of the music, seeing the side of a four-poster bed at the centre of the room and, on it, James Daring.
Dazed as he was, Knight understood Daring’s predicament at a glance. It was the same predicament in which he’d seen the museum curator before it had all gone to blackness: the television star lay spread-eagle on the mattress, lashed to the bedposts and wearing a hospital gown. His mouth was taped shut. An IV line ran into his wrist from a bag hanging on a rack by the bed.
The flute music stopped and Knight saw someone backlit by brilliant sunlight coming towards him across the room.
Mike Lancer carried a black combat shotgun loosely in his left hand, and a glass of orange juice in his right. He set the juice down on a table and squatted down near Knight, gazed at him in amusement, and said, ‘Awake at last. Feel like things got rearranged upstairs, did you?’ He laughed and displayed the weapon. ‘Brilliant, these old riot guns. Even air-driven, the beanbags really pack a wallop, especially if delivered to the head at close range.’
‘Cronus?’ Knight said, still hazy. He could smell alcohol on Lancer’s breath.
Lancer said, ‘You know, I had a feeling about you right from the beginning, Knight, or at least since Dan Carter’s untimely death: a premonition that you would come closest to figuring me out. But I took the necessary precautions, and here we are.’
Deeply confused, Knight said: ‘The Olympics were your life. Why?’
Lancer rested the riot gun against the inside of his knee and reached back to scratch the side of his head. As he did, Knight saw his face flush with anger. He stood up, grabbed the juice glass, and drank from it before saying, ‘The modern Games have been corrupt since the beginning. Bribed judges. Genetic freaks. Drug-fuelled monsters. It needed to be cleaned up, and I was the one to …’