Marta clicked off the rifle’s safety catch.
Chapter 105
SUDDENLY SIRENS WAILED nearby, coming closer, and Knight’s spirits surged with renewed hope.
‘They’re coming for you now,’ he said, grinning insanely at Marta and the bottom of the Coke bottle. ‘You’re going to the gallows, no matter what you do to me and my children.’
‘No.’ She laughed caustically. ‘If they go anywhere, they go next door, not here. In the meantime, I kill you and then use the tunnel to escape.’
She tried to press the Coke bottle against Knight’s head. But he batted at it with his hand and jerked around as the sirens came closer and louder. He thought: Buy time. At least the twins will be saved.
But then Marta stepped on the side of Knight’s neck with her boot, choking him as she lowered the silenced gun.
He looked up at her cross-eyed and grabbed at her ankles, trying to upset her balance. But she just ground her boot deeper and harder into his neck until his strength was gone.
Marta peered down at him. ‘Goodbye, Mr Knight. Too bad I don’t have a pickaxe.’
Chapter 106
KNIGHT THOUGHT OF Kate in the instant before Marta’s eyes snapped wide open. She screamed in agony, yanked the Coke bottle away from his head and her boot off his neck, and fired the rifle. With a weird wet thud, the silenced gun blew a hole in the wall just above Knight’s head. Coke and plastic fragments showered down on him as Marta screamed in agony once more. Frenzied, she spun away from Knight, groping wildly behind her.
Luke had bitten into Marta’s hamstring, and was holding on like a little bulldog while his nanny furiously pounded against him, screaming again and again. Knight kicked her hard in the shin and she dropped the gun before ramming her elbow hard into Luke’s side.
The boy slammed against the wall and lay still.
Knight crawled after the gun while Marta glared at Luke and felt down her leg for the gaping wound he’d left. She didn’t notice his father until he was inches from the rifle.
She cursed and lunged towards Knight as his finger found the trigger and he tried to swing the gun to point it at her. She swept her other arm round and struck the side of the barrel, deflecting his aim even as the now unsilenced rifle went off again, this time with a deafening boom that disorientated Knight for a second. He looked around, dizzy, praying that he’d managed to shoot Marta somehow.
But then the oldest Fury kicked him in the ribs and ripped the gun from his hands. Gasping – and grinning in triumph – she aimed the muzzle at Knight’s unconscious son.
‘Watch him die,’ she snarled.
The shot this time sounded distant and otherworldly to Knight, but it was aimed perfectly at his breaking heart. He fully expected Luke’s small body to jump at the bullet’s impact.
Instead, Marta’s throat exploded in a slurry of blood before the war-criminal nanny crumpled and sprawled dead between Knight and his son.
Dumbfounded and slack-jawed, Knight twisted his head around and saw Kate’s older sister rising from a shooting crouch.
Part Five
THE FINISH LINE
Chapter 107
TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES AFTER Pottersfield had shot and killed the wanted war criminal Senka Brazlic, the police inspector and Knight were in her car, sirens and lights on, racing through the streets of Chelsea and heading towards The Mall where the top runners were well into their fourth and final lap of the marathon route.
Ordinarily, the men’s marathon, the final event of the summer Games, would end in the host city’s Olympic stadium. But the London organisers – largely at Lancer’s urging, it turned out – had decided that sending the runners through the scruffy East End was not the best way to sell the city’s stunning attributes to the world.
Instead, the organisers opted to have the marathon contestants run four 6.5-mile laps, each of them featuring some of London’s most notable landmarks as telegenic backdrops for the race: from Tower Hill to the Houses of Parliament along the Thames, past the London Eye and Cleopatra’s Needle. The start and finish would take place on The Mall, well in sight of Buckingham Palace.
‘I want his picture in everyone’s mobile, iPhone, BlackBerry,’ Pottersfield shouted into her radio. ‘Find him! Having the marathon here was his idea!’
Knight was thinking about how bloody brilliant she was at her job. She’d called up the Trace Angels site, seen that the children had been put on trains, but then thought to look at their whereabouts earlier and saw the address on Porchester Terrace.
After contacting the trains and getting word from conductors that there was no one matching the Knight children’s description aboard, she’d led the police contingent to the building near Lancaster Gate. They’d been in the Furies’ flat when the crudely silenced gun had gone off next door and they’d heard it. They’d discovered the entrance to Lancer’s place behind that tapestry on the wall, and had then thrown a stun grenade a moment after Knight had fired the weapon.
Setting down her radio, Pottersfield said shakily, ‘We’ll get him. Everybody’s hunting him now.’
Knight grunted, staring out the window into the glaring sunlight, still feeling dizzy and sore from the blows he’d taken. ‘You okay, Elaine? Having to shoot?’
‘Me? You shouldn’t even be here, Peter,’ Pottersfield scolded. ‘You should be back there in that ambulance with your kids, going to hospital. You need to be looked at yourself.’
‘Amanda and Boss are on their way to meet Luke and Bella. I’ll get examined when Lancer’s stopped.’
Pottersfield changed down and shot out onto Buckingham Palace Road. ‘You’re sure Lancer said the attack was on the marathon?’
Knight struggled to remember before replying: ‘Before he left, I told him that no matter what he might do, the Olympic spirit would never die. I told him that Mundaho had proved it, and Shaw, and Dr Pierce. That got him insanely angry, and I was certain he would kill me. But then the starting gun for the marathon went off. And he said something like: “The men’s marathon. The final game has begun. And because I’m the superior man, I’m going to let you live to see the ending. Before Marta kills you, she’s going to let you witness exactly how I snuff out that Olympic spirit once and for all.” ’
Pottersfield skidded the car to a stop in front of the police barrier opposite St James’s Park and got out, holding up her badge to the officers guarding it. ‘He’s with Private and with me. Where’s Inspector Casper?’
The policeman who looked miserable in the stifling heat, pointed north towards the roundabout in front of Buckingham Palace, and said, ‘You want me to call him?’
Knight’s sister-in-law shook her head before vaulting the barrier and battling her way through the crowd onto Birdcage Walk with Knight following somewhat woozily right behind her. Runners who were well behind the leaders were heading painfully towards the Queen Victoria Memorial at the centre of the roundabout.
Billy Casper was already hustling towards Knight and Pottersfield. ‘Sweet Jesus, Elaine,’ he said. ‘I had the bastard right in front of me not an hour ago. He went into St James’s Park.’