Thirteen
Goldengirl came off the bend well clear, beginning the final phase of her run, hair fanned on the still air, limbs moving in parallel planes. Ninety metres to the finish. The muscles contracted on her neck as she gathered herself. The change from coast to maximum effort was smooth. Sixty metres out, she was still ahead, but not secure. The figure behind was cutting her down like a falcon. At thirty metres, there was space between them. At twenty, they were locked. From somewhere, she summoned the strength to raise her knees a fraction higher, stretch her stride by the margin necessary to meet the challenge. Then metres from the line she had powered herself centimetres ahead. As they crossed, she forced her torso forward, but she had got it wrong. The black runner beside her had dipped a microsecond earlier and stolen it.
‘So where do we go from here?’ Klugman demanded of Goldine’s bowed, gasping form. ‘Back to forty-metre dashes, or what? We spend three weeks perfecting that dip. Three weeks. And for what? The first time we try it in a routine repetition session, you blow it. Okay, so we write that off to experience and try again. And again. And again. Harry takes you on the dip every goddamn time. If you got it right once, I wouldn’t mind, but how many two hundreds is that now? Four? Five? Half of them you dip too late; the rest, it could be Groucho Marx running the last ten metres. We’ll try it one more time.’
Harry Makepeace straightened to his six foot three and shook his head. ‘Not with me, you won’t. That time I bust my hump catching her. Oh boy, I really must be getting old.’
Klugman turned his contempt on Makepeace. ‘You mean you can’t give fifteen metres in two hundred to a dame?’
‘Four times, yes. I can lay back and leech off her, but that one hurt. It’s the altitude, Pete. Right now I have spaghetti legs. What did she clock? Man, she was burning the last fifty.’
Klugman glanced at the stopwatch in his hand. ‘Inside twenty-four again. The time’s insignificant. We’re working on technique.’
‘Five runs inside twenty-four — that’s going some,’ said Makepeace. ‘I tell you, Pete, I’m screwed.’
‘Okay,’ conceded Klugman. ‘You take the gun. We’ll give Brannon a workout. He’d better start level with her. I don’t see him breaking twenty-four from fifteen metres back. Have him use lane one. We’ll put her in three.’
‘Go easy on her,’ said Makepeace. ‘It’s not easy judging it from up front. In a dip finish, the runner from behind has the edge.’
‘You’re telling me nothing,’ said Klugman acidly.
He waited till Makepeace had started across the compound to give Brannon his orders, then told Goldine, ‘All right, Makepeace is no pushover. He learned his finishing on the boards, sixty-metre dashes with people like Williams and Borzov. We’ll work on this some more and you’ll take him. Elmer Brannon you can take right now. Treat it as a routine two hundred. Put him out of your mind till you’re in the stretch. You can ease a little up to 115 metres, if you like, then turn on your burner. He’ll come at you hard. Hold him level if you can. Make the dip just where you did this time, but make it like you mean it. Give it everything. Slam your boobs against your knees. Got it?’
Goldine stood upright, straightened her hair, looked evenly at Klugman, and gave a nod.
‘You okay?’ asked Klugman.
‘Sure.’
‘Want to tell me something?’
She hesitated, unsure of him. ‘I’m putting plenty into this, Pete. It’s not like it was six months back, when everything was a drag. I sometimes think you read me all wrong. I’m not a quitter. I’m going for gold, and nothing, but nothing, will stop me. I could just use a little encouragement now and then. There isn’t much joy in training with guys and getting beat each time.’
‘You like to be a winner, you mean?’
The way her eyes shone answered that question.
‘Like in San Diego?’
She was beginning to smile.
‘That made you feel good, huh, queening it over a bunch of no-hopers? You’d like some more? Maybe I should tell Makepeace and Brannon to ease up a little, give Goldengirl another ego trip.’
Her smile dissolved.
Klugman hadn’t finished. ‘Get this straight in your head, chick. You blew it in Diego in that hundred heat, remember? Whipped by some lousy club runner because you looked the wrong way. By rights, you should have missed the final. When you think about Diego, remember that one. In this game, you learn more from one defeat than ten straight wins — if you’ve got sense. We’re going to see you get it right in Eugene, understand? With the schedule you have, you could destroy yourself in the heats, no trouble. We have to play it cool, keep something back. That makes the last thirty metres crucial. You have to be sharp enough to read the race, inject a little speed if necessary, and dip for the line like there’s a Samurai swiping at your head. That’s what you could have learned in competition, what Makepeace picked up dashing sixties through six or seven indoor seasons. It doesn’t just happen. The doc insists we keep you under wraps. Great, but someway we have to teach you to take hold of a race. I don’t know what San Diego did for you, but it scared me out of my shoes. So we’ll try another finish, if it’s all the same to you, and keep the ego trips for sometime after Moscow.’
Her cheeks had reddened. She faced him, studying his eyes, as if seeking some clue to the bitterness simmering there. ‘And if Elmer edges me this time? What will you do about that — kick my butt?’
Quietly Klugman said, ‘Try me.’
She turned and began walking to where the others were waiting. Klugman took a memo pad from his pocket, noted the time shown on his Accusplit and touched the button that returned the display to zero.
When the gun fired, her quick reaction stole a metre from Brannon, starting behind on the stagger, but he was soon into a strong rhythm, holding her pace.
They took the turn with five metres between them, Brannon clearly poised for the hairline finish this exercise was contrived to produce. As a sprinter, he was over the hill, but he could still get close to twenty-two seconds, fast enough to pass Goldine or any other girl. This was not a test of speed over the full distance, however. His instructions were to snatch the race by the narrowest margin, judging it on the run-in, as racing cyclists do.
As they came off the bend, he drew closer, playing it less adventurously than the younger man had. Makepeace was a lean, resilient sprinter, capable of controlling a duel of this kind from the rear, striking in the final second. That wouldn’t work for Brannon, a one-gear man, used to holding on by sheer strength. Forty metres from the line, he drew level, his face a mask of resolution.
Goldine held her form, resisting Brannon’s pressure, denying him any advantage in the run-in. When the moment came, and they dipped, her movement was so sharp that her hair stood momentarily on end. The judgment was exact, Brannon decisively beaten, in spite of ending face down on the track.
Nothing was spoken between Goldine and Klugman. It had all been said on the track.
After she had showered and changed, there was a session with Lee, listed ‘Assessment’ on the schedule. It took place in a small room used by Lee as an office, and decorated to provide a relaxing setting for their conversations. The walls were ocher-coloured, warm but unobtrusive. There was an olive-green carpet, suede-covered chairs, velvet curtains. The lighting was provided by an old-fashioned table lamp with a large red shade that gave both faces a pink glow.
Between them Lee’s desk, the only thing on it a pack of Kleenex. Goldine was pressing one to her nose. Her eyes were moist at the lids.