Goldengirl

‘That is exactly what they have, Mr. Sternberg,’ Serafin acidly said. ‘Need I say that if Goldengirl were ordered to appear before such a commission, the consequence would be disastrous? We could hire a good lawyer to argue her case, quote precedents, and so on. There are hundreds, thousands of Olympic athletes receiving sponsorship of one sort or another. But the publicity, you see, the private training camp, the personal coaches, the psychologist, would destroy the image we are trying to create. Commercially, it would sink us. And, of course, names would be published—’

‘Okay, okay, we follow you,’ squeaked Sternberg. ‘If we got a fink in this operation, we take care of the problem. I move next business.’

When Dryden came to load his suitcase into the Excalibur at the end of the afternoon, Dick Armitage was standing there, the look of self-reproach restored on his features.

‘Thanks, Jack. I guess I owe you an apology.’

‘What for?’

‘Not telling you what I was letting you in for.’

‘A two-million-dollar ripoff?’ said Dryden. ‘Skip it, Dick. Go and practice shots. We need a little prize money on the side.’

‘You haven’t come in just on account of me?’

Dryden switched on the ignition. ‘Forget it. Mind you win Wimbledon.’

Eleven

‘Hi, Mr. Dryden. Good weekend?’

‘Middling’

Zena on Reception pulled a face at the doorman.

Dryden stepped into the elevator. The morning routine — KNX/CBS News, coffee, Los Angeles Times, San Diego Freeway, parking lot, familiar faces on the sidewalk — had reinstated the world he had stepped out of on Thursday. The loose ends of last week waited on his desk. A stack of unanswered mail, the Colgate contract for Hansenburg, half-yearly figures from London. He applied himself to them, deliberately insulating himself from Project Goldengirl.

He didn’t give it a thought till three-thirty, when he finished dictating correspondence. He looked at his personal secretary as she glanced up to see if there was another letter.

‘My calendar, Jackie. What’s it like for the next three weeks?’

‘Busy, Mr. Dryden. There’s the trip to New York Thursday, and Tokyo next week. Most other days I have lunch dates written in. Would you care to see it?’

‘Later. I’ll have to cancel New York and Tokyo. Something has come up. Would you have a look through and see which of those lunches I can put off? I shall need some afternoons clear.’

She widened her eyes slightly. ‘I’ll see what I can do, Mr. Dryden.’ She got up, a tall, bright-eyed girl in her twenties, never off work.

‘Thanks. What’s the secret, Jackie? How do you keep so fit? Sports, is it?’

She laughed. ‘My idea of sports is to have my guy Hal take me shopping in Beverly Hills. I keep in condition that way.’

‘Sensible.’

When she had closed the door, he allowed the weekend to resurface. He wouldn’t say he had it in perspective yet — it was too close for that — but he could begin to get a few things straight. By committing the agency to an agreement with the consortium, he had gone clean against his first intentions, performed an about-face he would hate to admit to any of the earnest young executives on the next floor.

What had influenced his change of mind? Two things: Goldine’s running in San Diego, and the couple of hours he had spent with her at La Jolla.

He examined the reasons. Something in the way she had run in those two finals he had watched had convinced him she was a world-class athlete. The opposition had been mediocre; Debbie Jackson was the only runner there with any reputation, and she might simply have had a bad day. He was no authority on track. He couldn’t tell you the world record for 100 metres, let alone the Olympic qualifying standard. All it came down to was a hunch that through that rain in San Diego he had seen the glint of gold.

And La Jolla? He was hard put to analyze that with any detachment. It had started so promisingly, as each development slotted into his plan. And ended in that grotesque coupling in the sand. Really, it was what she had said that influenced him: her statement of helplessness. That was all it had been — a statement. She hadn’t asked for help or sympathy. She just believed her only chance of self-preservation was to win in Moscow. If that was her conviction, it was probably true. What Dryden knew was that when she won — if she won — she would need support of a kind he was uniquely placed to give. There was nothing he could do yet to preserve her from humiliation and perverted science, but when the time came he could save her from annihilation by the media.

The possibility that he was rationalizing, that his concern about the girl arose from the hunch that she was a winner, he put in the back of his mind. It was a practical decision. He could help Goldine survive as a personality. Nobody else would.