There was a surprise when the line-up for the second Semi-Final of the 400 meters was announced, for it included both Ursula Krüll and Goldine. The crowd needed no prompting at the significance of this; the news reverberated around the Stadium in scores of languages.
The clash raised the possibility that the two would be drawn into a struggle to gain the psychological prize of finishing ahead. It did not materialize. As if by tacit agreement, they ran side by side to the line, aligning so closely that they shared the same time of 50.43 secs. The photo finish gave Krüll the edge because technology will not admit that ties are possible in the modern Olympics, but nobody seemed to mind. The girls posed for pictures with their arms around each other’s shoulders, giving caption writers the world over the opportunity to comment that sport is about friendship, not international rivalry.
*
Tuesday, August 19, was the rest day from track and field. Dryden planned to use the morning to confer with the NBC-TV team about the linkup with the White House. He would also find out what he could about GOLD TOMORROW? He hoped to wangle an invitation, if only to watch it live on a monitor.
Before leaving the Ukraina he was handed a message asking him to meet a Mr. Ford in the lobby. He was suspicious. Every traveler to Russia hears stories about tourists who inadvertently offend the authorities by photographing military personnel or violating travel regulations, but Dryden hadn’t stepped out of line. He hadn’t even checked his room for listening devices. Yet a message to meet someone with one of the best-known names in America was odd, particularly as he didn’t know a Mr. Ford.
The man was U.S.-raised, whatever he was called. Tall, gray-haired, in a brown lightweight, he greeted Dryden in an elegant Boston accent. “Hope I didn’t interrupt breakfast, Mr. Dryden. James Ford.” He gripped Dryden’s hand firmly. “U.S. Embassy staff. Don’t let that alarm you. This isn’t official. It just happens that you might be able to help someone over a small problem. Not concerning you directly at all. It’s, er, kind of confidential, not for discussion in a Soviet hotel lobby. I have an Embassy car outside, if, er …”
“Do you have any form of identity, Mr. Ford?” Dryden asked. “One hears stories …”
“But of course.”
Dryden wasn’t used to examining diplomatic identity cards, but the photo matched and the bald eagle was prominent.
“I also have an American Express Card,” said Ford with a half-smile.
“That won’t be necessary. You don’t wish to see my papers?”
“We just want your advice,” said Ford, leading the way across the lobby.
The car was chauffeur-driven and bore the U.S. insignia. If this turned out to be a KGB trick, at least he would arrive at the collective labor camp in style. But they headed in the right direction, across the Moskva by Novo-Arbatsky Bridge, up Kalinin Prospect and into Tchaikovsky Street. There was a moment of unease when they pulled up at a gray stone building with Soviet soldiers on guard at the gates, but the eagle was over the door and the Stars and Stripes fluttered overhead. James Ford was on the level.
Dryden followed him up the Embassy steps, across the small entrance hall and into an elevator. They got out on the second floor. Ford stopped at a door and said, “This is where I leave you, Mr. Dryden. This isn’t official business at all, you understand. You’ve met two of the people inside, so introductions aren’t necessary.” He held open the door.
Dryden walked in, still mystified. And though two of the faces that looked his way were familiar, he couldn’t immediately place them. It was a fairly ordinary office, not the Ambassador’s suite for sure.
The man he hadn’t seen before stood up to welcome him.
“So good of you to come, Mr. Dryden. I’m Don McCorquodale of the U.S. Olympic Committee. I believe you already met Doctors Dalton and Nagel.”
Doctors. Of course. They were the two he had seen with Goldine in the Lenin Stadium. He nodded at them, finding no clue in their faces to explain what this was about.
McCorquodale had an easy style of speech and made it plain from the beginning that he was seeking co-operation. In his mid-fifties, he carried enough weight to suggest that relaxation was intrinsic to his way of life, not staged for the occasion. “You’ll have guessed that we want to talk about young Goldine Serafin,” he said. “Quite some runner. Surprised a lot of people Saturday, me included. It’s raised her into the superstar class, that gold medal.” He smiled. “Given us a few problems, keeping the media out of her hair, but that’s one of our functions as I see it, ensuring that an athlete has the chance of getting through the Games without undue harassment. I believe you heard we had to move her out of the Village.”
“Pete Klugman told me,” Dryden confirmed.
“Klugman, yeah,” repeated McCorquodale without showing interest. “Do you smoke? I’m getting quite a taste for these Soviet cigarettes with the cardboard filters, Papirosi. Care to try one? Don’t suppose you medics would.”
The doctors looked on while McCorquodale and Dryden lit up.
“The press aren’t the only problem,” McCorquodale resumed. “You know about the medical complication? That’s another thing we have to take care of, which is why we have a team of first-class physicians with us — for all the athletes on the squad, I mean. When you take close to three hundred sportsmen and women abroad, you’re going to have a few problems. You need an expert on hand to cope with emergencies. Goldine’s condition isn’t new in our experience, Mr. Dryden. We’ve had diabetics on the team before, not in track that I recall, but other sports. We can handle it. That is, Ben Dalton can. When we knew about Goldine, we assigned him to monitor her condition throughout the Games. It may look to an outsider like she’s being singled out for special treatment, but, hell, she is special. Between ourselves, there’s a lot more on tomorrow’s Finals than Goldine herself realizes. If she comes up with more gold medals, she could find herself on the hot line to Washington. It’s as big as that.” He drew on his Papirosa, letting the information sink in. “Could do us all a lot of good — Goldine, the team, the Committee and good old Uncle Sam himself.”
Dryden noticed McCorquodale didn’t include him in the list. He was surprised. This had to be leading up to something, and a charge of jeopardizing the amateur status of an Olympic athlete seemed likely. But if this was in McCorquodale’s mind, he wasn’t pouncing yet.
“So we all want her to go out there tomorrow and leave scorch marks on the track for those Russians to remember,” McCorquodale went on. “And you guessed it — there’s a complication, which is why we brought you here. You’re a personal friend of Goldine’s. She told us that herself. Mr. Dryden, we know damn all about the girl. She’s new on the track scene, and one thing and another prevented us from getting to know her before we flew out here. We figure you may be able to help us understand what’s going wrong.”
“Something’s wrong?”
“Ben, would you explain?”
Dr. Dalton took over. His manner was direct. “Two problems, Mr. Dryden. One concerns the diabetes. You understand that we control it by balancing the carbohydrate intake with insulin injections? Before we left New York, Goldine told us her normal requirement. It should simply be a matter of adjusting that to the lowering of the blood sugar due to severe exercise. You follow me?”
“I think so. If you exercise, you need less insulin.”
“Right. The difficulty is that since we got here, Goldine’s blood-sugar readings have been extremely erratic. If she hadn’t told me she was a long-term diabetic, I’d think she had recently contracted the disease. If she did, she shouldn’t be running at all. In treating diabetes, you have to get the patient stabilized. If she isn’t, it’s goddamned dangerous to take any excessive exercise. There’s a high risk of inducing a coma, and that could mean brain damage. At worst, death. I understood the condition was mild, and my readings confirmed that earlier in the week. This morning I had to administer an injection fifteen units up on the figure she’s supposed to be
stabilized on. Question one: are you able to confirm Goldine’s own statement that she has been a diabetic more than two years?”
“If you are, no trouble. We’ll instruct the doctors to cope,” emphasized McCorquodale. “I regard this as a management decision.”
“You’ve explained the problem to her?” said Dryden. “Does she understand the danger?”
Dr. Dalton turned to McCorquodale. “This is bringing us to question two. Could we first establish his answer to my first question?”
Dryden had to stall. “It’s somewhat irregular, isn’t it, questioning Miss Serafin’s statements like this?”
McCorquodale said, “He’s right, Ben. Make your second point.” Turning to Dryden, he added, “This is why we’re asking you.”
Dr. Dalton shrugged and said, “Okay, then. The fact is, Mr. Dryden, that we are concerned about Goldine’s behavior. I was commissioned to monitor her diabetes, and I’m quite well up on the disease. I can tell you patients often react emotionally when their balance of insulin isn’t right. Nervousness is common. Irritability, emotional upset, this kind of thing. But this young woman is displaying behavior that has me baffled. It’s new in my experience. To be candid, I don’t think it is related to the diabetes.”
“What kind of behavior?”
The other doctor spoke: “We had an example the other afternoon when you visited her after her victory in the one hundred meters. The way she acted — didn’t you think it was odd?”
“Is that the problem?” said Dryden mildly. “She has a few delusions of grandeur, that’s all. Goddamn it, she had just won a gold medal.”
“It goes deeper than that,” said Dr. Dalton. “I’ve been with her a good deal over the last few days, remember. For much of the time she is perfectly rational, a sweet-natured girl, almost an innocent, to use an old-fashioned word. Then there are quite different phases of behavior, when she becomes aggressive, domineering and disturbingly irrational. For example, till Sunday she was sharing a room in the Village with two other girls, Janie Canute and Mary-Lou Devine. Sunday morning she accused Janie quite unjustly of having taken her gold medal from its case and tried it on around her neck. Both the others insisted nothing like that had happened. Goldine said Janie was trying to take away her power, something like that, quite weird. She insisted they should call her Goldengirl in the future.”
“She came to see me,” put in McCorquodale, “and told me this story, demanding that I move her into a single room, which is one reason why she’s now billeted here.”
“She has also made complaints to the team manager that Dr. Nagel and I are not treating her with the respect due to a golden girl,” said Dr. Dalton. “Apparently it offends her to be touched. At times she is highly abusive to us both, demanding a kind of servile approach.”
“Which is what made me mention the incident with you,” said Nagel.
“Yet, as I say, on other occasions she’ll treat us normally, as if the hostile scenes had never happened,” said Dalton. “Mr. Dryden, I’m no psychoanalyst, but I’m afraid this girl may be manifesting a split personality.”
“Schizophrenia,” said Nagel.
“Which is why we venture to question her statements about the origin of her diabetes,” said Dalton.
“So you see why we want you to tell us some more about Goldine,” said McCorquodale. “You’ve known her some time, I understand. We haven’t, and we have the responsibility of deciding what to do about tomorrow. She is determined to run, but we can’t put her in danger. What it comes down to is whether we can place any reliance on her statement that she has been diabetic for two years.”
So Dryden felt another clamp tighten. There was no escape from involvement in this nightmare. “May I ask you a question? Who suggested you should talk to me about this?”
Dr. Dalton glanced toward McCorquodale. “Shall I answer this? Mr. Dryden, I questioned Goldine pretty closely. She said you would verify it. She doesn’t know we’re also consulting you about her mental state.”
That was it, then. Goldine herself had put them on to him. The suggestion to mislead the doctors about the onset of the diabetes had come from him. She had returned the pass. “I don’t know that I can comment on her behavior. Certainly it was strange the other afternoon after the one hundred meters, although the circumstances were exceptional.” He flicked ash from the cigarette. “Goldine has been under tremendous pressure, with the kidnaping, all the interest of the media, the decision whether to compete. I was surprised, yes, but on reflection I can understand that the stress of that Final brought her to a mental crisis point. What you say is disturbing. I hope she can get over this. Looking at it as a non-specialist, I’d say the important thing now is not to interfere any more with her expectations.”
“To let her run?” said McCorquodale, beaming.
Dryden nodded.
Dalton said, “There’s still the question of her diabetes.”
McCorquodale turned to Dryden. “Well?”
“I can’t say for sure when she contracted it, but it must have been established way back. If she says two years …”
“That’s good enough for me,” said McCorquodale firmly. “Gentlemen, Goldine runs tomorrow.”
*
They had put Serafin in a high-backed armchair like a throne. He was pale under the arc lamps, but there was no trace of nervousness in his expression. Behind him was a blowup of Goldine winning the 100 meters. Facing him, unobtrusively, on a low chair, his interviewer, clipboard in hand.
First they had asked him to talk through the videotape of the gold-medal performance as they ran it through in slow motion. He had done it confidently, commenting with technical know-how on the minutiae of the start, pickup and sprint.
Then the interviewer had taken him over the salient events in Goldine’s childhood: the accident on Huntington State Beach, her time in Tamarisk Lodge, the adoption. Clearly everything was on the clipboard. Stills were shown of Trudi in TWA uniform, Goldine at three, the Los Angeles Times report on the drowning.
The first indication that Serafin had his own ideas about the direction of the interview had come when the adoption was mentioned. He had insisted on outlining his research project. The interviewer had gone along with him for a short while, then put in a mild inquiry about the relevance of this to Goldine’s track career, but Serafin had refused to be sidetracked. He had gone on for another half minute. Then he had brought it around to Goldine: “The research involved tracing people, you see. Goldine’s mother was one of them. She had emigrated to California. When I tried to locate her, I learned about the accident. Out of compassion, my wife and I decided to adopt the child.”
“Out of compassion,” repeated the interviewer without emphasis.
“That was what I said.”
“She had this exceptional physique, you said.”
Serafin refused to be drawn. “That did not influence our decision.”
They moved on to Goldine’s upbringing.
“She went to school?”
“She was educated at home.”
“Why was that, Dr. Serafin?”
“I wanted to be sure her physical potential was not neglected.”
“It had, er, come to your notice by then?”
“As a physiologist, I recognized that she was exceptionally advanced in muscular and skeletal development.”
“You figured she was a future sports star?”
“I suspected she could be, with the right encouragement.”
“The right encouragement. That meant home schooling. Anything else?”
“Physical exercise. I fitted up a home gymnasium.”
“Vaulting boxes, wall bars, weights — that kind of thing?”
“That kind of thing,” Serafin repeated with a slight hesitation, as if uncertain whether he was being led into a trap.
A pause.
“Quite an outlay, I guess, Dr. Serafin — home tutors and all that apparatus?”
“It was worth it to me. As
an investment.”
The shot switched to the interviewer, his eyebrows lifted inquiringly. “You mean a profit-making venture?”
Serafin shifted in his chair. “No, no. I used the word in a figurative sense. By providing facilities I was investing in Goldine’s health, her physical development. At the time we are talking about, when I installed the home gym, the Olympics were twelve or thirteen years ahead. Surely you must see that all those years ago I could not have been thinking in terms of financial reward.” Sensing that in avoiding one snare, he was stepping into another, Serafin drew back. Too obviously. “Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not suggesting athletes gain anything financially from winning the Olympics.” Now the camera zoomed in to see how he was holding up. The sweat was beading on his forehead and his eyelids flickered as he stated, “Goldine is strictly an amateur. She runs for love of the sport.”
The interviewer let that hang in the air a moment.
“Okay, let’s get back to the time when you first learned she could run fast. How exactly did you discover she had this superlative speed?”
“Not merely speed. A superlative physique,” said Serafin, riding that one smoothly. “That was obvious to me when she was a child.”
“The running,” gently pressed the interviewer. “When did the Olympic idea take root?”
“I wish you wouldn’t single out the running as if that is the only manifestation of her ability,” said Serafin, recouping some confidence. “She would excel in any sport involving agility, given time to acquire the necessary skill. On the Sheldon classification she rates as a mesomorph, despite her unusual height —”
The interviewer wasn’t being bulldozed. “You hired one of the best track coaches in America to help Goldine acquire the necessary skill for Moscow. That was two years ago, wasn’t it?”
“Where is this leading?” demanded Serafin, folding his arms defiantly. “You want me to admit I staked thousands of dollars to help Goldine win the Olympics? Well, I don’t deny it. I provided every facility I could afford. Not for profit.” He leaned forward in the chair. “I did it in the interest of science. Such is the stranglehold of the media that even scientists are compelled to resort to publicity to get their research noticed.”
Goldengirl Page 37