Authors: James Patterson
Some fools are comparing us to the Palestinians who kidnapped and murdered Israelis during the 1972 summer
Games
in Munich. They keep describing us as terrorists with unknown political motives.
Those idiots aside, I feel as though the world is beginning to understand me and my sisters now. A thrill goes through me when I realise that people everywhere are sensing our greatness. They are questioning how it could be that such beings walk among them, holding the power of death over deceit and corruption, and making sacrifices in the name of all that is good and honourable.
In my mind I see the monsters that stoned me, the dead eyes of the Furies the night I slaughtered the Bosnians, and the shock on the faces of the broadcasters explaining Teeter’s death.
At last, I think, I’m making the monsters pay for what they did to me.
I’m thinking the same thing as dawn breaks and bathes the thin clouds over London in a deep red hue that makes them look like raised welts.
I knock on the side entrance of the house where the Furies live, and enter. Marta is the only one of the sisters still awake. Her dark agate eyes are shiny with tears and she hugs me joyfully, her happiness as burning as my own.
‘Like clockwork,’ she says, closing the door behind me. ‘Everything went off perfectly. Teagan got the bottle to the American, and then changed and slipped out before the chaos began, as if it were all fated.’
‘Didn’t you say the same thing when London got the Olympics?’ I ask. ‘Didn’t you say that when we found the corruption and the cheating, just like I said we would?’
‘It’s all true,’ Marta replies, her expression as fanatical as any martyr’s. ‘We are fated. We are superior.’
‘Yes, but make no mistake: they will hunt us now,’ I reply, sobering. ‘You said we were fine on all counts?’
‘All counts,’ Marta confirms, all business now.
‘The factory?’
‘Teagan made sure it’s sealed tight. No possibility of discovery.’
‘Your part?’ I ask.
‘Went off flawlessly.’
I nod. ‘Then it’s time we stay in the shadows. Let Scotland Yard, MI5 and Private operate on high alert long enough for them to tire, to imagine that we’re done, and allow themselves to let their guard down.’
‘According to plan,’ Marta says. Then she hesitates. ‘This Peter Knight – is he still a threat to us?’
I consider the question, and then say, ‘If there is one, it’s him.’
‘We found something, then. Knight has a weakness. A large one.’
KNIGHT JERKED AWAKE
in the twins’ nursery. His mobile was ringing. Sun flooded the room and blinded him. He groped for the phone and answered.
‘Farrell’s gone,’ Inspector Elaine Pottersfield said. ‘Not at her office. Not at her home.’
Knight sat up, still squinting, and said, ‘Did you search both of them?’
‘I can’t get a warrant until my lab corroborates the match that Hooligan got.’
‘Hooligan found something more last night in Cronus’s second letter.’
‘What?’ Pottersfield shouted. ‘What second letter?’
‘It’s already at your lab,’ Knight said. ‘But Hooligan picked up some skin cells in the envelope. He gave you half the sample.’
‘Goddamn it, Peter,’ Pottersfield cried. ‘Private must not analyse anything to do with this case without—’
‘That’s not my call, Elaine,’ Knight shot back. ‘It’s the
Sun
’s call. The paper is Private’s client!’
‘I don’t care who the—’
‘What about your end?’ Peter demanded. ‘I always seem to be giving you information.’
There was a pause before she said, ‘The big focus is on how Cronus managed to hack into the …’
Knight noticed that the twins weren’t in their cots and stopped listening. His attention shot to the clock. Ten a.m.! He hadn’t slept this late since before the twins were born.
‘Gotta go, Elaine! Kids,’ he said and hung up.
Every worrying thought that a parent could have sliced through him, and he lurched through the nursery door and out onto the landing above the staircase. What if they’ve fallen? What if they’ve mucked around with …?
He heard the television spewing coverage of the 400-metre freestyle relay swimming heats, and felt as if every muscle in his body had changed to rubber. He had to hold tight to the railings to get down to the first floor.
Luke and Isabel had pulled the cushions off the sofa and piled them on the floor. They were sitting on them like little Buddhas beside empty cereal and juice boxes. Knight thought he’d never seen anything so beautiful in his life.
He fed, changed and dressed them while tracking the broadcast coverage of Teeter’s murder. Scotland Yard and MI5 weren’t talking. Neither was F7, the company hired by LOCOG to run security and scanning at the Games.
But Mike Lancer was all over the news, assuring reporters that the Olympics were safe, defending his actions but taking full responsibility for the breaches in security. Shaken and yet resolved, Lancer vowed that Cronus would be stopped, captured, and brought to justice.
Knight, meanwhile, continued to struggle with the fact that he had no nanny and would not be actively working the Cronus case until he could find one. He’d called his mother several times, but she hadn’t answered. Then he called another of the agencies, explained his situation, and begged for a temp. The manager told him she might be able to recruit someone by Tuesday.
‘Tuesday?’ he shouted.
‘It’s the best I can do – the Games have taken everyone available,’ the woman said and hung up.
The twins wanted to go to the playground around noon. Figuring it would help them to nap, he agreed. He put them in their buggy, bought a copy of the
Sun
, and walked to a playground inside the Royal Hospital Gardens about ten minutes from his house. The temperature had fallen and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. London at its finest.
But as Knight sat on a bench and watched Luke playing on the big-boy slide and Isabel digging in the sandbox, his thoughts weren’t on his children or on the exceptional weather for the first full day of Olympic competition. He kept thinking about Cronus and wondering if and when he’d strike again?
A text came in from Hooligan: ‘Skin cells in second letter are male, no match yet. Off to Coventry for England-Algeria football match.’
Male? Knight thought. Cronus? So Farrell was one of the Furies?
In frustration, Knight picked up the newspaper. Pope’s story dominated the front page under the headline:
Death Stalks The Olympics
.
The sports reporter led with Teeter’s collapse and death in
a
terse, factual account of the events as they had unfolded at the opening ceremony. Near the end of the piece, she’d included a rebuttal of Cronus’s charges from Teeter’s brother-in-law who was in London for the Games. He claimed that the lab results Cronus had provided were phoney, and that he, in fact, was the person who had bought deer-antler velvet. Working on construction sites all day long as he did, he said it gave him relief from chronic back spasms.
‘Hello? Sir?’ a woman said.
The sunlight was so brilliant at first that Knight could only see the outline of a female figure standing in front of him holding out a flyer. He was about to say he wasn’t interested, but then he put his hand to his brow to block the sun’s glare from his eyes. The woman had a rather plain face, short dark hair, dark eyes, and a stocky athletic build.
‘Yes?’ he said, taking the flyer.
‘I am so sorry,’ she said with a humble smile, and he heard the soft East European accent for the first time. ‘Please, I see you have children and I was wondering do you know someone who needs or do you yourself need a babysitter?’
Knight blinked several times in astonishment and then looked down at her flyer, which read: ‘Experienced babysitter/nanny with excellent references available. Undergraduate degree in early-childhood development. Accepted into graduate programme in speech-language pathology.’
It went on, but Knight stopped reading and looked up at her. ‘What’s your name?’
She sat down beside him, with an eager smile.
‘Marta,’ she said. ‘Marta Brezenova.’
‘YOU’RE AN UNEXPECTED
answer to my prayers, Marta Brezenova, and your timing could not have been better,’ Knight announced, feeling pleased at his good fortune. ‘My name is Peter Knight, and I am actually in desperate need of a nanny at the moment.’
Marta looked incredulous and then happy. Her fingers went to her lips as she said, ‘But you are the first person I’ve handed my flier to! It’s like fate!’
‘Maybe,’ Knight said, enjoying her infectious enthusiasm.
‘No, it is!’ she protested. ‘Can I apply?’
He looked again at her flier. ‘Do you have a C.V.? References?’
‘Both,’ she said without hesitation, then dug in her bag and brought out a professional-looking C.V. and an Estonian passport. ‘Now you know who I am.’
Knight glanced at the C.V. and the passport before saying: ‘Tell you what. Those are my kids over there. Luke’s on the slide and Isabel is in the sandbox. Go and introduce yourself. I’ll look this over and give your references a call.’
Knight wanted to see how his kids interacted with Marta
as
a total stranger. He’d seen them revolt against so many nannies that he did not want to bother calling this woman’s references if she and the twins did not click. No matter how badly he needed a nanny it wouldn’t be worth the effort if they did not get along.
But to his surprise Marta went to Isabel, the more reserved of his children, and won her over almost immediately, helping her build a sandcastle and generating such enthusiasm that Luke soon left the slide to help. In three minutes, she had Lukey Knight – the big, bad, biting terror of Chelsea – laughing and filling buckets.
Seeing his children fall so easily under Marta’s sway, Knight read the C.V. closely. She was an Estonian citizen, mid-thirties, but had done her undergraduate studies at the American University in Paris.
During her last two years at the university, and for six years after graduating, she had worked as a nanny for two different families in Paris. The mothers’ names and phone numbers were included.
Marta’s C.V. also indicated that she spoke English, French, Estonian and German, and had been accepted into the graduate programme in speech-language pathology at London’s City University. She was due to join the course in 2014. In many ways, Knight thought, she was typical of the many educated women streaming into London these days: willing to take jobs beneath their qualifications in order to live and survive in the greatest city in the world.
My luck, Knight thought. He got out his mobile and started calling the references, thinking: Please let this be real. Please let someone answer the—
Petra DeMaurier came on the line almost immediately, speaking French. Knight identified himself and asked if she spoke English. In a guarded tone, she said that she did. When he told her that he was thinking of hiring Marta Brezenova as a nanny for his young twins, she turned effusive, praising Marta as the best nanny her four children had ever had, patient, loving, yet strong-willed if necessary.
‘Why did she leave your employ?’ Knight asked.
‘My husband was transferred to Vietnam for two years,’ she said. ‘Marta did not wish to accompany us, but we parted on very good terms. You are a lucky man to have her.’
The second reference, Teagan Lesa, was no less positive, saying, ‘When Marta was accepted for graduate studies in London, I almost cried. My three children
did
cry, even Stephan who is normally my brave little man. If I were you, I’d hire her before someone else does. Better yet, tell her to come back to Paris. We wait for her with open arms.’
Knight thought for several moments after hanging up, knowing he should check with the universities here and in Paris, something he couldn’t do until Monday at the earliest. Then he had an idea. He hesitated, but then called Pottersfield back.
‘You hung up on me,’ she snapped.
‘I had to,’ Knight said. ‘I need you to check an Estonian passport for me,’
‘I most certainly will not,’ Pottersfield shot back.
‘It’s for the twins, Elaine,’ Knight said in a pleading tone. ‘I’ve got an opportunity to hire them a new nanny who looks great on paper. I just want to make sure, and it’s the weekend and I have no other way to do it.’
There was a long silence before Pottersfield said, ‘Give me the name and passport number if you’ve got it.’
Knight heard the Scotland Yard inspector typing after he read her the number. He watched Marta get onto the slide, holding Isabel. His daughter on the slide? That was a first. They slid to the bottom with only a trace of terror surfacing on Isabel’s face before she started clapping.
‘Marta Brezenova,’ said Pottersfield. ‘Kind of a plain Jane, isn’t she?’
‘You were expecting a supermodel moonlighting as a nanny?’
‘I suppose not,’ Pottersfield allowed. ‘She arrived in the UK on a flight from Paris ten days ago. She’s here on an educational visa to attend City University.’