It is not possible with mortal mind to search out the purposes of the gods
– Pindar
For then, in wrath, the Olympian thundered and lightninged, and confounded Greece
– Aristophanes
Prologue
Wednesday, 25 July 2012: 11:25 p.m.
THERE ARE SUPERMEN and superwomen who walk this Earth.
I’m quite serious about that and you can take me literally. Jesus Christ, for example, was a spiritual superman, as was Martin Luther, and Gandhi. Julius Caesar was superhuman as well. So were Genghis Khan, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Adolf Hitler.
Think scientists like Aristotle, Galileo, Albert Einstein, and J. Robert Oppenheimer. Consider artists like da Vinci, Michelangelo – and Vincent Van Gogh, my favourite, who was so superior that it drove him insane. And above all, don’t forget athletically superior beings like Jim Thorpe, Babe Didrikson Zaharias and Jesse Owens.
Humbly, I include myself on this superhuman spectrum as well – and deservedly so, as you shall soon see.
In short, people like me are born for great things. We seek adversity. We seek to conquer. We seek to break through all limits, spiritually, politically, artistically, scientifically and physically. We seek to right wrongs in the face of monumental odds. And we’re willing to suffer for greatness, willing to embrace dogged effort and endless preparation with the fervour of a martyr, which to my mind are exceptional traits in any human being from any age.
At the moment I have to admit that I’m certainly feeling exceptional, standing here in the garden of Sir Denton Marshall, a snivelling, corrupt old bastard if there ever was one.
Look at him on his knees, his back to me and my knife at his throat.
Why, he trembles and shakes as if a stone has just clipped his head. Can you smell it? Fear? It surrounds him, as rank as the air after a bomb explodes.
‘Why?’ he gasps.
‘You’ve angered me, monster,’ I snarl at him, feeling a rage deeper than primal split my mind and seethe through every cell. ‘You’ve helped ruin the Games, made them an abomination and a mockery of their intent.’
‘What?’ Marshall cries, acting bewildered. ‘What are you talking about?’
I deliver the evidence against him in three damning sentences whose impact turns the skin of his neck livid and his carotid artery a sickening, pulsing purple.
‘No!’ he sputters. ‘That’s … that’s not true. You can’t do this. Have you gone utterly mad?’
‘Mad? Me?’ I say. ‘Hardly. I’m the sanest person I know.’
‘Please,’ he says, tears rolling down his face. ‘Have mercy. I’m to be married on Christmas Eve.’
My laugh is as caustic as battery acid: ‘In another life, Denton, I ate my own children. You’ll get no mercy from me or my sisters.’
As Marshall’s confusion and horror become complete, I look up into the night sky, feeling storms rising in my head, and understanding once again that I am superior, a superhuman imbued with forces that go back thousands of years.
‘For all true Olympians,’ I vow, ‘this act of sacrifice marks the beginning of the end of the modern Games.’
Then I wrench the old man’s head back so that his back arches.
And before he can scream, I rip the blade furiously back with such force that his head comes free of his neck all the way to his spine.
Part One
THE FURIES
Chapter 1
Thursday, 26 July 2012: 9:24 a.m.
IT WAS MAD-DOG hot for London. Peter Knight’s shirt and jacket were drenched with sweat as he sprinted north on Chesham Street past the Diplomat Hotel and skidded around the corner towards Lyall Mews in the heart of Belgravia, one of the most expensive areas of real estate in the world.
Don’t let it be true, Knight screamed internally as he entered the Mews. Dear God, don’t let it be true.
Then he saw a pack of newspaper jackals gathering at the yellow tape of a Metropolitan Police barricade that blocked the road in front of a cream-coloured Georgian town house. Knight lurched to a stop, feeling as though he was going to retch up the eggs and bacon he’d had for breakfast.
What would he ever tell Amanda?
Before Knight could compose his thoughts or quieten his stomach, his mobile rang and he snatched it from his pocket without looking at the caller ID.
‘Knight,’ he managed to choke. ‘That you, Jack?’
‘No, Peter, it’s Nancy,’ a woman with an Irish brogue replied. ‘Isabel has come down sick.’
‘What?’ Knight groaned. ‘No – I just left the house an hour ago.’
‘She’s running a temperature,’ his full-time nanny insisted. ‘I just took it.’
‘How high?’
‘One hundred. She’s complaining about her stomach, too.’
‘Lukey?’
‘He seems fine,’ Nancy said. ‘But—’
‘Give them both a cool bath, and call me back if Isabel’s temp hits one oh one,’ Knight said. He snapped shut the phone, swallowed back the bile burning at the base of his throat.
A wiry man about six foot tall, with an appealing face and light brown hair, Knight had once been a special investigator assigned to the Old Bailey, England’s Central Criminal Court. Two years ago, however, he had joined the London office of Private International at twice the pay and prestige. Private has been called the Pinkerton Agency of the twenty-first century, with premises in every major city in the world, its offices staffed by top-notch forensics scientists, security specialists, and investigators such as Knight.
Compartmentalise, he told himself. Be professional. But this felt like the last straw breaking his back. Knight had already endured too much grief and loss, both personally and professionally. Just the week before, his boss, Dan Carter, and three of his other colleagues had perished in a plane crash over the North Sea that was still under investigation. Could he live with another death?
Pushing that question and his daughter’s sudden illness to one side, Knight forced himself to hurry on through the sweltering heat towards the police barrier, giving the newspaper crowd a wide berth, and in so doing spotted Billy Casper, a Scotland Yard inspector he’d known for fifteen years.
He went straight to Casper, a blockish, pock-faced man who scowled the second he saw Knight. ‘Private’s got no business in this, Peter.’
‘If that’s Sir Denton Marshall dead in there, then Private does have business in this, and I do too,’ Knight shot back forcefully. ‘Personal business, Billy. Is it Marshall?’
Casper said nothing.
‘Is it?’ Knight demanded.
Finally the inspector nodded, but he wasn’t happy about it, and asked suspiciously, ‘How are you and Private involved?’
Knight stood there a moment, feeling stunned by the news, and wondering again how the hell he was going to tell Amanda. Then he shook off the despair, and said, ‘London Olympic Organising Committee is Private London’s client. Which makes Marshall Private’s client.’