Rush for the Gold: Mystery at the Olympics by John Feinstein

Author:John Feinstein [Feinstein, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-375-98455-6
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2012-05-22T04:00:00+00:00

16: LONDON CALLING

Stevie hadn’t thought it possible that a city could feel more crowded and more intense than New York. But London quickly proved him wrong.

Maybe it was just the out-of-sorts feeling he had watching traffic go by on the wrong side of the road during the cab ride from Heathrow Airport to the Gloucester Hotel.

“Do you get used to it?” he asked Bobby Kelleher, who had covered fourteen Wimbledons and had spent a good deal of time in Great Britain.

“No,” Kelleher answered. “Every instinct you have driving a car or even crossing a street is wrong when you’re here. You have to stop and think about it all the time.”

Most of the media were staying in rooms set aside by the International Olympic Committee, which, according to Bobby, were little more than glorified dorm rooms.

“The media isn’t exactly the IOC’s main priority, so the accommodations are usually lousy,” Kelleher had said. “If it’s a night or two, no big deal, but when you’re going to be someplace for a couple weeks, it makes a difference.”

Kelleher always stayed at the Gloucester when he covered Wimbledon and had become friends with the general manager over the years. He’d made arrangements a long time ago for him and Tamara to stay there during the Olympics. And when Stevie had been added to the traveling party, he had been able to get bumped to a junior suite, meaning Stevie would be sleeping on a pullout couch in a sitting room—which was fine with him. He was just excited to be here.

“Once we get to the hotel, we’ll take the subway to Olympic Park every day,” Kelleher had explained. “The Gloucester is a block from the Gloucester Road underground station. That’s what’s great about it—location. It’s right in Kensington: lots of restaurants, not too far from Harrods, where we’ll have to shop at some point so you can tell people you were there, and, most important for you, twenty-four-hour room service.”

That sounded perfect to Stevie.

The first thing he wanted to do when they got to the hotel was eat. The plane had left New York just after 10 a.m., and with the five-hour time change they had landed at Heathrow at a few minutes before 10 p.m. It had been close to 11 by the time they had wended their way through customs, gotten their luggage, and found the taxi line—or, as Kelleher explained, the taxi queue. “In London there are no lines,” he said. “But there are plenty of queues.” By the time they pulled up to the Gloucester, Stevie was starved.

He knew he would have to wait until morning to call Susan Carol. She had flown over with the rest of the American swim team a week earlier, on July 18. The opening ceremony was now just two days away, and Susan Carol would swim her first race—a 100-butterfly heat—the day after that.

There had been many scuffles with her dad and the Lightning Fast people since the trials, and many desperate emails and texts and phone calls as she vented her frustrations.

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