Going for the Gold

by Emma Lathen

  Watching the first three women contestants was undiluted pleasure for Thatcher. He had always enjoyed the spectacle of experts at work, even when the physical manifestation was as pedestrian as an auditor checking a ledger. But here, coupled to the precision of turning, was the excitement of speed and the grace of skis carving the snow as surely as a baker frosting a cake. He was so absorbed he did not even notice the first flakes as they began to fall.

  The fourth starter was Tilly Lowengard. From the moment her name was announced, Dick Noyes made such a racket that Thatcher was barely able to hear anything else. He was dimly conscious of the usual chorus of yells from above, the constant shifting of spectators seeking a better view, the crackling of the announcer. Left to his own devices, he would have suspected nothing. But he was standing between two competitors who carried their own internal stop watches.

  Dick Noyes stopped dead in the middle of one of his encouraging war cries and cocked his head.

  “What’s going on?” he asked uneasily. “She’s terribly uneven. You can tell by the way they’re shouting at the gates.”

  “They’ve been shouting all along,” Thatcher said.

  Noyes brushed the remark aside impatiently. “There’s a different quality when she passes by them. She’s been fast and then slow and then fast.”

  Antonelli agreed with him. “Maybe it’s the snow,” he offered without much conviction. “It’s thickening up. Maybe the track is changing.”

  Thatcher refused to join fruitless speculation. “Well, whatever it is, we’ll see in a minute.”

  The words were barely out of his mouth when Tilly appeared around the turn.

  “Something’s wrong!” Noyes cried.

  Even to Thatcher that much was clear. Tilly was all over the place, her skis splayed, her balance maintained only by her plunging sticks. Her first swing was so wide that she was actually canted along the side wall, her second was so tight that she clipped the gate. With one ski in the air, her belated attempt to straighten seemed doomed.

  “She’s out of control, she’s going to crash,” Noyes moaned. —

  But with a desperate heave Tilly delayed the inevitable long enough to skid ingloriously across the finish line. There, stewards and judges scuttled hastily out to her erratic path. Still speeding, she headed toward a knot of bystanders, managed to jump-turn at the last moment, then failed to recover. With one tip dragging disastrously, she buckled up, slammed into a snow bank, and the run was finally over.

  Fortunately, before Dick Noyes could do much damage to the spectators he was manhandling aside, Tilly began struggling to her feet.

  “She’s not hurt,” Thatcher and Antonelli said simultaneously.

  But it was the sight of the Swiss coach and the stewards hurrying forward, rather than his companions’ words, that halted Noyes’ impetuous rush.

  “I guess Tilly wouldn’t thank me for stampeding out there,” he said, reminding himself of Olympic niceties.

  Antonelli answered with the frankness of an old hand. “She certainly would not. Her performance was bad enough. Leave her what dignity she has left. Anyway, she’s all right. Look, she’s walking under her own power.”

  For the onlookers, the suspense was over as soon as they saw Tilly groggily weave her way off the field, surrounded by a cloud of attendants. For Tilly the ordeal was just beginning.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, conscious of a hand steering her away from an inviting bench. “I want to sit down.”

  “You have to go to the Medical Center to be checked out.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with me,” she protested. “I got shaken up, that’s all.”

  “It’s just a precaution,” said a detestably persistent voice.

  Tilly had enough experience with crashes to diagnose her own complaints. She would be black and blue all over tomorrow. Her painful left shoulder was merely suffering from a minor wrench. No bones were broken.

  None of these facts explained her languid disassociation from the scene of which she was the center. Why did all sounds appear muffled and far away? Why did everyday objects keep going out of focus? For that matter, what were the Swiss coach and the stewards arguing about so heatedly over her head? For the moment Tilly simply did not care. She wanted to sit down, to lean back, to close her eyes.

  Not until she was decanted from the first-aid truck at the Medical Center did she consider the possibility of concussion. Eut she had been wearing a helmet throughout her run, it was still in place, and she could not remember hitting her head against anything harder than snow. All these thoughts she presented, in disjointed phrases, to the doctor who poked and prodded, then grunted as he came to her shoulder. Throughout the routine of X-rays and ophthalmoscopes, Tilly grew more detached, hearing directives only when they had been repeated several times, then often misunderstanding them. The world had shrunk to a series of meaningless imperatives:

  “Bend your knee!”

  “Don’t close your eyes!”

  “Tell me when the lines cross!”

  Then, like a burst of machine gun fire, two words penetrated the fog.

  “Urine sample!” she repeated with something approaching her usual energy. “What are you trying to say?”

  An Olympic athlete would have to be dead before he failed to recognize the implications of this phrase.

  “You think I’m taking drugs,” Tilly raved. “Well, you’re crazy! I’ve never taken an amphetamine in my life.”

  But the period of lucidity blurred under the onslaught of official voices cajoling, ordering, reasoning. They were citing regulations, urging her not to take offense, advising her to prove her innocence.

  Then the face of the Swiss coach swam into focus.

  “Tell them they’re wrong, Wolfgang,” she pleaded.

  “Under the circumstances,” he replied stiffly, “I have agreed they are justified.”

  There followed the whole humiliating procedure of the little cubicle, the jar, the label affixed by a white-coated technician, the lofty pretense that this was a normal medical test. Normal! Tilly shivered to think of the consequences of a positive result. Disqualification, expulsion from the Olympics, disgrace!

  “You’ll see,” she warned them, very close to tears. “And you’ll apologize.”

  “Perhaps,” the doctor said unsympathetically, “but you’d better go now. The tests take more than an hour, and there’s an American boy waiting for you outside.”

  “To hell with American boys!” snapped Tilly. She could see that the doctor had already made up his mind. Did he think that competition skiers drugged themselves to do worse than usual? “I’m not budging until the results come through. I’m staying right here.”

  The doctor shrugged. “For the time being,” he said ominously.

  An hour later he not only had the results, he had a speech ready for delivery to the delinquent. He was in full flight as he entered the waiting room.

  “

  There is no longer any question. You have only yourself to thank for this situation, but it would have been pleasanter for both of us if you had received this notification through your team manager. . . .” He stopped when he realized that his words were being wasted on empty air.

  Tilly Lowengard was sound asleep.

  The ordeal had not ended for John Thatcher either. He had forgotten his semi-official capacity until the stewards sought him out. As Dick Noyes was standing by his side during the explanations, Thatcher’s first duty became tamping down an incipient explosion. He did not delude himself that he had succeeded. It was Carlo Antonelli’s happy suggestion that Dick’s place was by Tilly’s side which had prevented an assault on the officials.

  Then Thatcher had returned to the motel with a budget of bad news for Brad Withers.

  “I’m afraid the women’s slalom can be regarded as a shambles, Brad,” he reported. “The stewards canceled after only five runs. The snow’s so thick up there, the skiers can’t see where they’re going.”

>   “But that will upset the whole schedule,” Withers objected.

  Thatcher had formed his own opinion about the forthcoming schedule during the thrilling ride back from Whiteface Mountain.

  “What’s more,” he continued remorselessly, “the judges have demanded a urine sample from one of the competitors. They’re convinced she was skiing under the influence of drugs.”

  “Good God! Think of the publicity that’s going to cause!” Brad exclaimed. “We’ll have to tell Melville right away.”

  “You’ll have to tell him,” Thatcher corrected. “Hathaway just called. The Sloan has dispatched five people to trace back those fake traveler’s checks, and I have to get the procedure organized.”

  Brad Withers’ incomprehension proved one thing, Thatcher decided. Dick Noyes had been right. In the eyes of the IOC, there was only one kind of scandal worthy of the name.

  Chapter 9

  Cold Canadian Air

  THE first sound to penetrate Thatcher’s sleep-clogged brain the next morning was the voice of Brad Withers.

  “Good Lord, where did you get an idea like that? Of course I’m all right.”

  There was a back-to-the-wall exasperation in these remarks that could only mean he was speaking with his wife. One fact regularly threatened the harmony of Brad’s home life. Whenever it became necessary to breach his ivory tower with news of the real world, the unwelcome messenger was almost always Mrs. Caroline Withers.

  Blinking drowsily, Thatcher strolled into the living room of their suite to discover that his guess was right. Brad, wrapped in yards of Sulka silk, was pacing the floor while he clutched the telephone with a strangulation grip.

  “For heaven’s sake, Carrie, have you gone crazy? . . . I don’t know what’s gotten into you. . . . Naturally we’re going ahead as planned. . . . Good-by!”

  Slamming down the receiver, he was gratified to find an audience at hand. Thatcher had sunk into a chair and was flicking on the news.

  “Women!” Brad fumed. “They can’t seem to understand what’s important and what isn’t. Carrie expects us to call off the Olympics because of a little snow. Where does she think we should hold the Winter Games? In Florida?”

  His final snort was almost drowned out as the TV set came to life.

  “. . . whiteouts of exceptional ferocity throughout our viewing area. State Police in northern New York and Vermont have closed all major thoroughfares. Only rescue vehicles are being permitted on the roads as the hunt for stranded motorists continues. A state of emergency has been declared in the cities of Plattsburg and Burlington, and authorities urge everyone to stay indoors until the storm eases. Medical hotlines have been established for those requiring hospitalization. The number to call in New York State is . . .”

  At least, thought Thatcher with relief, that explained why he felt he was living underwater. Those thick muffling curtains were on the outside of the windows, not the inside.

  “I believe we’re in the middle of what they call a whiteout, Brad,” he began cautiously. Now was certainly not the time to explain that a suspension of Olympic activities might operate in the interests of the Sloan Guaranty Trust. “It means that there’s no visibility and—”

  “I know what a blizzard is like,” Brad grumbled. “It’s simply saving us the trouble of using the snow-making equipment on the downhill runs. If only people wouldn’t try to blow up a simple problem—”

  Before he could continue his denunciation of all those people he happened to be married to, the phone was once again luring him into an unwelcome dialogue. This time it was the head of the IOC, and his opening remarks were enough to turn Brad into a tower of outrage.

  “Cancel!” he cried. “Look here, Melville, I can’t go along with that. This isn’t some high school basketball game, this is the Olympics!”

  The reply did not make things any better.

  “You’ve already made the announcement!” A touch of hauteur became evident. “Well I must say, Melville, that’s pretty high-handed.”

  As the conversation progressed, Thatcher found it hard not to sympathize with the acting president of the IOC. If his call had only come first, Brad might have been reasonable. But with that strange perversity which invests all marital struggles, Brad now regarded any concession to Melville as a point scored for Carrie. Under these circumstances he was ready to argue until doomsday. Only the introduction of a new subject moderated his stiffness.

  “I don’t see much point to a conference as you’ve gone ahead on your own,” he concluded, still huffy. “But if you want to talk about that girl, too, then I’ll come. And what’s more, I’ll bring Thatcher with me. He’s met her and he’ll be able to tell us about her.”

  Little as Thatcher cared for being presented to the IOC as an intimate of the Olympics’ most recent drug imbiber, he realized as they marched down the long corridor that he was in the enviable position of having something to do. From every door came the static-riddled voice of a newscaster; at regular intervals there were knots of disconsolate residents lamenting the vital tasks going unperformed because of the storm.

  In Suite 301 they found the plenipotentiaries of the Olympic Games in full array. Brad was inspired to remark, “No wonder we’re all on time. We’re all under the same roof.”

  “If we weren’t all staying in the same motel, we couldn’t be having this conference,” Anthony Melville snapped back instantly.

  He sounded like a bear at stake. It was no surprise to learn others were deploring his early morning announcement.

  “In order to have a conference, it is necessary to confer,” said a legalistic German. “How can we confer about a decision that has already been taken, and implemented?”

  “For God’s sake, what was there to confer about?” demanded Melville. “I’m not talking about a matter of judgment. I’m talking about a matter of physical impossibility.”

  The jabber of voices was deafening.

  “Listen to me!” Melville glared them all down. “In the first place, the engineers on Whiteface say the downhill runs won’t be usable for two days. The cables and the pylons for the lifts are iced over, they’ve got steady winds of 60 miles an hour with gusts up to ninety, and nobody’s even tried to measure the drifting. Second, the traffic supervisor says there’s no hope of opening the road to Olympic Village before nightfall.” He swallowed painfully before continuing. “And, if you must know, the network people called me at six o’clock this morning. They can’t transmit up to commercial standards.”

  There was an appalled silence. ABC’s purchase of television rights was all that made the Olympics financially feasible. But it was well known that Anthony Melville, a lifelong foe of commercialism in sports, preferred to ignore that unpalatable fact.

  The Japanese delegate rescued them. Returning to fundamentals, he said, “So, it is exactly as you have stated. This is a matter of physical impossibility.”

  “And now that we have that cleared up, perhaps we could go on to the next point,” Melville said gruffly. “I have here the official medical report certifying the presence of a foreign substance in the urine sample from Mathilde Lowengard. She’s the Swiss girl who put on that shameful performance yesterday. I assume we’re unanimous on withdrawing her accreditation. If so, we’ll notify the head of the Swiss delegation that she’s to be expelled.”

  The Swiss at the end of the table coughed. “In principle I agree. But I understand that Miss Lowengard is very popular and claims that there are extenuating circumstances. Therefore—”

  “If the girl is popular and influential, that makes her conduct even more outrageous!”

  “I agree, I agree. It is not the girl I am thinking of, but her teammates. They are shocked and disturbed. I would not like them to think we had acted summarily. If we could explain the situation to them . . .”

  “The IOC does not speak with mere athletes.” Melville was shocked.

  “But surely these are exceptional circumstances. The team is so upset that a nu
mber of the contestants are threatening to leave in sympathy. What if they all go?”

  Melville made a mighty effort to sound reasonable. “Now look, Schoenburg, we’ve faced this situation before and the same thing always happens. The trouble lasts only as long as the transgressor is here. We ship him out, he goes home, and gets a hero’s welcome, and everybody in Olympic Village forgets about him as soon as the next world record is broken. We’ve got a tried-and-true method that works, and I say we should stick with it.”

  “I am not quarreling with the decision, merely with the way it is announced,” Schoenburg said doggedly. “Perhaps there is another way to sugarcoat the pill. Instead of the team, what if you met with the head of the Swiss delegation?”

  A thin triumphant smile appeared. “Impossible. Because he’s in Olympic Village and there’s no way to get there. And this is certainly not a subject I care to discuss on the phone. No, we’ll follow our standard procedure. My secretary will call his secretary, relaying our decision and demanding that Mathilde Lowengard be expelled forthwith.”

  This imperial fiat remained unchallenged for all of ten seconds.

  “How?”

  Taken by surprise, Melville swung around almost threateningly. He had been so intent on his dispute with the Swiss that he was baffled by this intervention.

  “What do you mean by that?” he growled.

  The Japanese stood his ground. “If there is no way into Olympic Village, then there is no way out. How is Miss Lowengard to be expelled?”

  Thatcher appreciated the struggle reflected on Melville’s features. What the acting head of the IOC wanted to say was all too clear. But he was not completely blind to the forces of publicity. Already he could see the cartoon that would appear in every major capital of the world—Tilly Lowengard wrapped in a shawl with her bundle of shame, Melville as the stern father pointing into the stormy night, the immortal phrase floating overhead: Never darken my doorway again.

  Melville took a deep breath. “Naturally when I said forthwith, I meant with all reasonable dispatch. As soon as the roads are open, she has to go.” But the concession had been so painful he could not forego one last ill-advised comment. “This is what comes of continuing with the Winter Games. They’re infected with commercialism and we’d be better off without them.”