Chapter 116
A FEW MINUTES earlier, Karen Pope trudged out into the west stands of the Olympic Stadium just as IOC President Jacques Rogge, looking haggard and grave, walked to the lectern on the stage. The reporter had just filed her latest update to the Sun’s website, describing the escape of Knight and his children, the death of Marta and her sisters, and the global manhunt for Mike Lancer.
As Rogge spoke over the noise of a rising wind and against the building rumour of thunder, Pope was thinking that these cursed Games were finally almost over. Goodbye and good riddance as far as she was concerned. She never wanted to write about the Olympics again, though she knew that was an impossible dream. She felt depressed and lethargic, and wondered if what she was feeling was as much battle fatigue as the desperate need to sleep. And Knight wasn’t answering his phone. Neither was Jack Morgan, or Inspector Pottersfield. What was going on that she didn’t know about?
As Rogge droned on, preparing to declare the Games at an end, Pope happened to look up at the cauldron atop the Orbit, seeing the flame billow in the wind. She admitted that she looked forward to seeing it extinguished while feeling somewhat guilty about the—
The Queen’s guardsman to the cauldron’s left suddenly lifted his gun, threw off his bearskin hat, walked out in front of the Olympic flame, pivoted and opened fire. The other guard jerked, staggered, and fell to his side and off the platform. His body hit the roof, slid and slipped off the Orbit, plunging and then gone.
Pope’s gasp of horror was obliterated by the screams of the multitude in the stadium rising into one trembling cry before a booming voice coming over the public address system drowned it out: ‘You sorry inferior creatures. You didn’t think an instrument of the gods would let you off that easily, did you?’