‘That little girl crushed that,’ Jack said.
‘Did she?’ Knight said, lowering his binoculars. ‘I was watching Ping.’
‘The Joe Cocker of gymnastics?’ Jack remarked.
Knight laughed, but then saw the Chinese coach rubbing at his neck before starting his histrionic ritual all over again as his next athlete got set to vault.
‘I think Joe Cocker got stung,’ Knight said, raising his binoculars again.
‘By what, a bee? How can you see that from here?’
‘I can’t see any bee,’ Knight said. ‘But I saw his reaction.’
Behind them, Knight heard Lancer talking in a strained voice into his radio to the arena’s internal and external security forces, fine-tuning how they were going to handle the medal ceremony.
Knight felt uneasy. He raised his binoculars and watched the Chinese coach cheer three more women through their vaults. As his last athlete took off down the runway, Ping danced like a voodoo man. Even his taciturn assistant, An Wu, got caught up in the moment. She was on her feet, hand across her mouth as the last girl twisted and somersaulted off the horse.
An Wu suddenly slapped at her neck as if she’d been stung.
Her athlete stuck her landing perfectly.
The audience erupted. The Chinese had won gold, and the UK silver, the best finish ever for a British gymnastics team. The coaches and athletes from both nations were celebrating. So were the Americans, who’d taken bronze.
Knight was aware of it all while using his binoculars to scan the raucous crowd cheering and aiming cameras above the vaulting pit. With Ping doing a high-step dance and his girls celebrating with him, the attention of virtually everyone at that end of the arena was on the victorious Chinese team.
Except for a heavyset platinum-blonde Game Master. She had her back turned to the celebration and was hurrying with an odd gait up the stairs away from the arena floor. She disappeared along the walkway, heading for the outer halls.
Knight felt suddenly short of breath. He dropped his binoculars and said to Jack and Lancer, ‘There’s something wrong.’
‘What?’ Lancer demanded.
‘The Chinese coaches. I saw them both slap at their necks, as if they’d been stung. Ping and then Wu. Right after the assistant coach slapped her neck, I saw a chunky platinum-blonde female Game Master hurrying out when everyone else was focused on the Chinese, cheering that last vault.’
Jack closed one eye, as if aiming at some distant target.
Lancer pursed his lips, ‘Two slaps, and an overweight usher moving to her post? Nothing more than that?’
‘No. It just seemed out of synch with … out of synch, that’s all.’
Jack asked, ‘Where did the volunteer go?’
Knight pointed across the arena. ‘Out the upper exit between sections 115 and 116. Fifteen seconds ago. She was moving kind of funny, too.’
Lancer picked up his radio and barked into it. ‘Central, do you have a Game Master, female, platinum-blonde hair, heavyset, on camera up there in the hallways off 115?’
Several tense moments passed as Olympic workers moved the medals podium out onto the arena floor.
At last Lancer’s radio squawked: ‘That’s a negative.’
Knight frowned. ‘No, she has to be there somewhere. She just left.’
Lancer looked at him again before saying into his radio: ‘Tell officers if they see a Game Master in that area, chubby female with platinum-blonde hair, she is to be detained for questioning.’
‘We might want to get a medic to look at the coaches,’ Knight said.
Lancer replied, ‘Athletes frown on being treated by strangers, but I’ll alert the Chinese medical teams at the very least. Does that cover it?’
Knight almost nodded before saying, ‘Where are those security cameras being monitored?’
Lancer gestured up towards a mirror-faced box in the balcony above them.
‘I’m going up there,’ Knight said. ‘Get me in?’
Chapter 60
PETRA FOUGHT NOT to hyperventilate as she closed the door to the middle stall in the ladies’ loo just west of the high north entry to the arena. She took a deep breath and felt like screaming with the sense of power surging through her, a power that she’d long forgotten.
See? I am a superior being. I have slain monsters. I have meted vengeance. I am a Fury. And monsters don’t catch Furies. Read the myths!
Shaking with adrenalin, Petra ripped off her platinum-blonde wig, revealing her ginger hair pinned against her scalp. She dug the plastic barrettes out and let her short locks fall free.
Petra reached up and grabbed hold of the outer metal edges of the seat-cover dispenser. She tugged and the entire unit came free of the wall. She set it on the seat, then reached deep into the dark cavity she’d exposed and came up with a knapsack made of dark blue rubber, a dry bag that contained a change of clothes.
She set the bag on top of the dispenser, stripped off her volunteer’s uniform, and hung it on a peg on the stall door. Then she peeled off the rubber prostheses that she’d glued to her hips, belly and legs to make herself look chubby. She looked at the dry bag, thinking how much more heavy and cumbersome it would be, given their anticipated escape route, and then dropped the rubber prostheses inside the hollow wall along with the wig.
Four minutes later, the seat-cover dispenser back in place and her uniform concealed in the dry bag, Petra left the loo stall.
She washed her hands and took stock of her outfit: low blue canvas sneakers, snug white jeans, a sleeveless white cotton sweater, a simple gold necklace, and a blue linen blazer. She added a pair of designer spectacles with clear lenses and smiled. She could have been any old posh now.
The stall to Petra’s immediate right opened.
‘Ready?’ Petra asked without looking.
‘Waiting on you, sister,’ Teagan said, coming to the mirror beside Petra. Her dark wig had gone, revealing her sandy hair. She was dressed in casual attire and carried a similar knapsack-style dry bag. ‘Success?’
‘Two,’ Petra said.
Teagan tilted her head in reappraisal. ‘They’ll write myths about you.’
‘Yes, they will,’ said Petra, grinning, and together the two Furies headed for the lavatory door.
Over loudspeakers out in the hall, they heard the arena announcer say, ‘Mesdames et Messieurs, Ladies and Gentlemen, take your seats. The medal ceremonies are about to begin.’
Chapter 61
KNIGHT’S ATTENTION ROAMED over various split images on the security monitors in front of him, all showing camera views of the upper hallway off the O2 building’s sections 115 and 116, where fans were hurrying back into the arena.
Two women, one slender with stylish sandy hair and the other equally svelte with short ginger hair, came out of the women’s lavatory and merged with pedestrian traffic returning to the inner arena. Knight considered them only briefly, still searching for a brassy, beefy blonde in a Games Master uniform.
But something about the way the redhead had walked when she left the toilet nagged at Knight, and he looked back to the feed on which he’d seen them. They were gone. Had she been limping? It had looked that way, but she was slender, not fat, and a redhead, not a blonde.
The medal ceremony began with the awarding of the bronze medals. Knight trained his binoculars north from the security station, looking for the redhead and her companion among the fans still hurrying back to their seats.