Pope said, ‘Crazy like a fox, then, especially those bits about Marshall and his former partner, Guilder. The documents back his allegations.’
‘I don’t believe those documents,’ Knight said. ‘I knew Denton Marshall. He was a supremely honest man. And even if the allegations were true, it’s hardly justification for cutting the man’s head off. Jack’s right. This guy is seriously unbalanced, and supremely arrogant. The tone is taunting. He’s telling us that we can’t stop him. He’s saying this is not over, that it could be just the beginning.’
Jack nodded, and said, ‘When you start with a beheading, you’re taking a long walk down Savage Street.’
‘I’ll start running tests,’ Hooligan said. He was looking at the card that played the music. ‘These chips are in a lot of greeting cards. We should be able to trace the make and model.’
Knight nodded, saying, ‘I want to read through the letter one more time.’
While Pope and Jack watched Hooligan slice out the working components of the musical greeting card, Knight returned to the letter and began to read as the flute music died in the lab.
The first sentence was written in symbols and letters that Knight did not recognise but guessed was ancient Greek. The second and all subsequent sentences in the letter were in English.
The ancient Olympic Games have been corrupted. The modern Games are not a celebration of gods and men. They are not even about goodwill among men. The modern Games are a mockery, a sideshow every four years, and made that way by so many thieves, cheats, murderers, and monsters.
Consider the great and exalted Sir Denton Marshall and his corpulent partner Richard Guilder. Seven years ago, Marshall sold out the Olympic movement as a force for honest competition. From the documents that accompany this letter, you will see that they suggest that in order to ensure that London would be selected to host the 2012 games, Marshall and Guilder cleverly siphoned funds from their clients and secretly moved the money into overseas bank accounts owned by shell corporations that were in turn owned by members of the International Olympic Selection Committee. Paris, runner-up in the selection process, never had a chance.
And so, to cleanse the Games, the Furies and I found it just that Marshall should die for his offences, and so that has come to pass. We are unstoppable beings far superior to you, able to see the corruption when you cannot, able to expose the monsters and slay them for the good of the Games when you cannot.
– Cronus
Chapter 16
AS HE FINISHED reading the letter a second time, Knight felt more upset, more anxious than before. Thinking of the letter in the light of what had been done to Marshall, Cronus came across as a madman – albeit a rational one – who made Knight’s skin crawl.
Making it worse, the creepy flute melody would not leave Knight’s thoughts. What kind of mind would produce that music and that letter? How did Cronus make it work together to produce such a sense of imminent threat and violation?
Or was Knight too close to the case to feel any other way?
He got a camera and began shooting close-ups of the letter and the supporting documents. Jack came over. ‘What do you think, Peter?’
‘There’s a good chance that one of the Furies, as he calls them, tried to run Lancer down this afternoon,’ Knight replied. ‘A woman was driving that cab.’
‘What?’ Pope exclaimed. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that?’
‘I just did,’ Knight said. ‘But don’t quote me.’
Hooligan suddenly brayed, ‘Big mistake!’
They all turned. He was holding something up with a pair of tweezers.
‘What’ve you got?’ Jack asked.
‘Hair,’ Hooligan said in triumph. ‘It was in the glue on the envelope flap.’
‘DNA, right?’ Pope asked, excited. ‘You can match it.’
‘Gonna try, eh?’
‘How long will that take?’
‘Day or so for a full recombinant analysis.’
Pope shook her head. ‘You can’t have it for that long. My editor was specific. We had to turn it all over to Scotland Yard before we publish.’
‘He’ll take a sample and leave them the rest,’ Jack promised.
Knight headed towards the door.
‘Where are you going?’ Pope demanded.
Knight paused, not sure of what to tell her. Then he gave her the truth. ‘I’m guessing that first sentence is written in ancient Greek so I’m going to pay a call on that bloke James Daring – you know, the fellow who has that show Secrets of the Past on Sky – see if he can decipher it for me.’
‘I’ve seen him,’ Pope snorted. ‘Nattering boob thinks he’s Indiana Jones.’
Hooligan shot back, ‘That “nattering boob”, as you call him, holds doctorates in anthropology and archaeology from Oxford and is the bloody curator of Greek Antiquities at a famous museum.’ The science officer looked at Knight. ‘Daring will know what that says, Peter, and I’ll wager he’ll have something to say about Cronus and the Furies too. Good call.’
Through the glass plate of her hood Knight could see the reporter twist her lips, as if she was tasting something tart. ‘And then?’ Pope asked at last.
‘Guilder, I suppose.’
‘His partner?’ Pope cried. ‘I’m coming with you!’
‘Not likely,’ Knight said. ‘I work alone.’
‘I’m the client,’ she insisted, looking at Jack. ‘I can trot along, right?’
Jack hesitated, and in that hesitation Knight saw the weight of concern carried by the owner of Private International. He’d lost five of his top agents in a suspicious plane crash. All had been integral players overseeing Private’s role in security at the Olympics. And now Marshall’s murder and this lunatic Cronus.
Knight knew he was going to regret it but he said, ‘No need for you to be on the spot, Jack. I’ll change my rules this once. She can trot along.’
‘Thanks, Peter,’ the American said, with a tired smile. ‘I owe you once again.’
Chapter 17
IN THE DEAD of night, forty-eight hours after I opened fire and slaughtered seven Bosnians sometime in the summer of 1995, a shifty-eyed and swarthy man who smelled of tobacco and cloves opened the door of a hovel of a workshop in a battle-scarred neighbourhood of Sarajevo.
He was the sort of monster who thrives in all times of war and political upheaval, a creature of the shadows, of shifting identity and shifting allegiance. I’d learned of the forger’s existence from a fellow peace keeper who’d fallen in love with a local girl who was unable to travel on her own passport.
‘Like we agree yesterday,’ the forger said when I and the Serbian girls were inside. ‘Six thousand for three. Plus one thousand rush order.’
I nodded and handed him an envelope. He counted the money, and then passed me a similar envelope containing three fake passports: one German, one Polish and one Slovenian.
I studied them, feeling pleased at the new names and identities I’d given the girls. The oldest was now Marta. Teagan was the middle girl, and Petra the youngest. I smiled, thinking that with their new haircuts and hair colours, no one would ever recognise them as the Serbian sisters that the Bosnian peasants called the Furies.
‘Excellent work,’ I told the forger as I pocketed the passports. ‘My gun?’
We’d left my Sterling with him as a good-faith deposit when I’d ordered the passports. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I was thinking just that.’