Private Games-Jack Morgan 4

‘He certainly thinks so,’ Knight said.

Filatri Mundaho had appeared out of nowhere on the international track scene at a race in Berlin only seven months before the Olympics. Mundaho was a big, rangy man built along the same lines as the supreme Jamaican sprinter Zeke Shaw.

Shaw had not been in Berlin, but many of the world’s other fastest men had. Mundaho ran in three events at that meet: the 100-metre, 200-metre, and 400-metre sprints. The Cameroonian won every heat and every race convincingly, which had never been done before at a meet that big.

The achievement set off a frenzy of speculation about what Mundaho might be able to accomplish at the London Games. At the 1996 Atlanta Games, American Henry Ivey gold-medalled and set world records in both the 400-metre and 200-metre sprints. At Beijing in 2008, Shaw won the 100 and 200-metre sprints, also setting world records in both events. But no man, or woman for that matter, had ever won all three sprint events at a single Games.

Filatri Mundaho was going to try.

His coaches claimed that Mundaho had been discovered running in a regional race in the eastern part of their country after he’d escaped from rebel forces who had kidnapped him as a child and turned him into a boy soldier.

‘Did you read that article the other day where he attributed his speed and stamina to bullets flying at his back?’ Jack asked.

‘No,’ Knight said. ‘But I can see that being a hell of a motivator.’

Chapter 40

TWENTY MINUTES LATER, with The Who and the Stones still counterpunching with songs from their greatest-hits collections, the contingent from the United States entered the stadium led by their flag-bearer Paul Teeter, a massive bearded man whom Jack knew from Los Angeles.

‘Paul went to UCLA,’ Jack said. ‘Throws the shot and discus – insanely strong. A really good guy, too. He does a lot of work with inner-city youth. He’s expected to go big here.’

Knight took his eyes off Teeter and caught sight of a woman he recognised walking behind the flag-bearer. He’d seen a picture of her in a bikini in The Times of all places the week before. She was in her late thirties and easily one of the fittest women he’d ever seen. And she was even better-looking in person.

‘That’s Hunter Pierce, isn’t it?’ Knight said.

Jack nodded in admiration. ‘What a great story she is.’

Pierce had lost her husband in a car accident two years before, leaving her with three children under the age of ten. Now an emergency-room doctor in San Diego, she’d once been a twenty-one-year-old diver who’d almost made the Atlanta Olympic team, but had then quit the sport to pursue a career in medicine and raise a family.

Fifteen years later, as a way to deal with her husband’s death, she began diving again. At her children’s insistence, Pierce started competing again at the age of thirty-six. Eighteen months later, with her children watching, she’d stunned the American diving community by winning the ten-metre platform competition at the US Olympic qualifying meet.

‘Absolutely brilliant,’ Knight said, watching her waving and smiling as the team from Zimbabwe entered the stadium behind her.

Last to enter was the team from the UK – the host country. Twenty-three-year-old swimmer Audrey Williamson, a two-time gold medallist at Beijing, carried the Union Jack.

Knight pointed out to Jack the various athletes from the British contingent who were said to have a chance to win medals, including marathon runner Mary Duckworth, eighteen-year-old sprint sensation Mimi Marshall, boxer Oliver Price, and the nation’s five-man heavyweight crew team.

Soon after, ‘God Save the Queen’ was sung. So was the Olympic Hymn. The athletes recited the Olympic creed, and a keen anticipation descended over the crowd, many of who were looking towards the tunnel entry below Knight and Jack.

‘I wonder who the cauldron lighter will be,’ Jack said.

‘You and everyone else in England,’ Knight replied.

Indeed, speculation about who would receive the honour of lighting the Olympic cauldron had only intensified since the flame had come from Britain to Greece earlier in the year and been taken to Much Wenlock in Shropshire, where Pierre de Coubertin, the father of the modern Olympics, had been guest of honour at a special festival in 1890.

Since then, the torch had wound its way through England, Wales and Scotland. At every stop, curiosity and rumour had grown.

‘The odds-makers favour Sir Cedric Dudley, the UK’s five-times gold medallist in rowing,’ Knight told Jack. ‘But others are saying that the one to light the cauldron should be Sir Seymour Peterson-Allen, the first man to run a mile in under four minutes.’

But then a roar went up from the crowd as the theme from the movie Chariots of Fire was played and two men ran into the stadium directly below Knight and Jack, carrying the torch between them.

It was Cedric Dudley running beside …

‘My God, that’s Lancer!’ Knight cried.

It was Mike Lancer, smiling and waving joyously to the crowd as he and Dudley ran along the track towards the spiral staircase that climbed the replica of the Tower of London at the bottom of which stood a waiting figure in white.

Chapter 41

AT THAT VERY moment, Karen Pope was in the Sun’s newsroom on the eighth floor of a modern office building on Thomas More Square near St Katharine Docks on the Thames’s north bank. She wanted to go home to get some sleep, but could not break away from the coverage of the opening ceremonies.

Up on the screen, Lancer and Dudley ran towards that figure in white standing at the bottom of a steep staircase that led up onto the tower. Seeing the joy on the faces all over the stadium, Pope’s normal cynicism faded and she started to feel weepy.

What an amazing, amazing moment for London, for all of Britain.

Pope looked over at Finch, her editor. The crusty sports veteran’s eyes were glassy with emotion. He glanced at her and said, ‘You know who that is, don’t you? The final torch-bearer?’

‘No idea, boss,’ Pope replied.

‘That’s goddamn—’

‘You Karen Pope?’ a male voice behind her said, cutting Finch off.