Age of Heroes

by James Lovegrove

  DEL’S MEANDERING TOUR through the mansion took him to the kitchen. Perhaps if he fixed himself something to eat, he might feel better. Food was nearly as good at quelling inner disquiet as music. His Polish housekeeper, Bronislawa, kept the fridge well stocked, and mostly stayed out of his way. He got the impression she did not approve of his decadent lifestyle, but she did approve of the huge salary she received from him to keep the place tidy and make sure the bills were paid and any maintenance work done.

  The Smeg fridge hummed alluringly. He selected some cold meats and cheeses, and began slicing up a baguette.

  He stopped, breadknife poised, the moment he became aware of a presence in the room.

  It was a woman.

  But not one of his women.

  She was dressed like a soldier, a paramilitary, with a helmet whose crested design put him in mind of something a Myrmidon or a Macedonian might have worn, or perhaps an Athenian hoplite.

  She had a submachine gun. Aimed at Del.

  Two more people entered, clad identically to her. The clothes of all three were dripping wet. One of them also had a submachine gun.

  The other carried a spear.

  The spear had a wooden shaft and an iron head; its butt was capped with a secondary spike, so that the spear could be planted in the earth and to serve as a back-up head should the spear break.

  The name for this type of spear was a dory.

  Del knew that, and knew that this particular dory was no ordinary weapon. It had been gifted with power, imbued with divine essence. Del could almost hear the ringing of the anvil as the iron was forged and beaten, as a blacksmith god’s fist had raised a mighty hammer and brought it down, adding his own sweat and strength to the metal.

  “That’s...” Del’s mouth was oddly dry. “That’s Achilles’s spear. Made for his father Peleus by Hephaestus. I know it is.”

  “Don’t move,” said the man with the spear. “Not a muscle.” His accent was Irish, a soft southern burr.

  Del nodded numbly. “All right. Whatever you say.”

  “Cover him,” the man said to his two colleagues. They fanned out to either side, guns levelled.

  The man looked back at Del. “There are two ways we can do this,” he began.

  Del raised a finger to interrupt. “You don’t have to go on. I understand. I submit.”

  The man cocked his head quizzically.

  “I could sing to you,” Del went on. “I could stop you all in your tracks in seconds. It might be a lullaby. It might be fucking ‘Happy Birthday to You’. Wouldn’t matter. You’d be my slaves. Eager as dogs to do my bidding.”

  The man shrugged. “You’ll have to forgive me, pal. I can’t actually make out a word you’re saying. Right now we’ve all of us got one ear blocked up and the other with a monaural comms set plug so that we can hear one another speak through these here throat mics, but nothing else. I’m just going on your body language and the way your lips are moving. I’m assuming you’re bargaining for your life. That’s not going to fly. We’ve been told you can be mightily persuasive, so you can, and we’re not taking any chances. Keep talking. It won’t help.”

  Del spread out his arms. The gesture was unmistakably one of surrender.

  “Here I am, then,” he said. “Come and get me. You won’t have realised, but I’ve been telling you: I’m not going to resist.”

  The man with the spear took a couple of steps forward.

  Del puffed out his chest, making himself an easier target.

  There was no point fighting. He was never a warrior. Even when he had served in the military, he had chosen non-combat roles – medic, messenger, reconnaissance.

  Besides, he was weary. He had had enough. The time seemed right. Here was his opportunity, the one he didn’t know he had been waiting for until now.

  He missed his wife. After all this time, the centuries of separation, he missed his Eurydice. The love of his life, taken from him long before she should have been.

  Now, at last, they could be reunited.

  The man with the spear hesitated. This was too easy.

  Del nodded graciously.

  The man made up his mind and lunged.

  The spear tip sank in, piercing Del’s heart.

  Eurydice.

  Belatedly, gratefully, the demigod who had once been known as Orpheus went to join his long-dead wife in the afterlife.

  NINE

  Lower East Side, Manhattan

  THEO ROUSTED CHASE from the guest room first thing the next morning.

  “Jet lag,” Chase protested.

  “Breakfast,” Theo insisted.

  His favourite diner was on Essex Street, twenty blocks from his apartment. He managed to persuade Chase that they should walk the entire way, to work up an appetite. Chase ordered the mac and cheese pancake; Theo an omelette with bacon, home fries and wheat toast. The waitress – Imelda – knew Theo, but only as a regular; she had no idea that he was a respectable well-known novelist. Whereas Chase was a face off television, and that made him special. He got the full buxom-middle-aged-lady-flirtation treatment with extra helpings of sass and innuendo. Her husband Diego looked on from behind the griddle with an indulgent smile. Imelda knew how to keep the customers coming back.

  A morning news show played on a wall-mounted TV set in the corner. The two demigods ate.

  “Still stressing about Anthony Peregrine and Isaac Merrison?” said Chase. It wasn’t a question, not really. Chase could see that his cousin was distracted, preoccupied.

  “Trying not to,” said Theo, “but it keeps going round and round in my head. There’s a part of me that can’t help looking for patterns. I can’t switch it off.”

  He thought of the “mugging” he had intervened in just the other day. About the risk of jumping to conclusions.

  “There is such a thing as coincidence,” Chase said.

  “There’s also such a thing as gut instinct,” Theo replied, “and mine’s saying something more is going on here.”

  Chase glanced around. None of the nearby booths was occupied. Imelda was kibitzing with Diego behind the counter; the TV supplying background noise. They couldn’t be overheard.

  “I’d be willing to respect that, cuz, but when was the last time you were an actual crimefighter? How long ago has it been since you were out there making the mean streets safe for law-abiding folk to walk down?”

  “The ’seventies.”

  “Exactly. The ’seventies. Forty years. Now you write about people righting wrongs, instead of doing it yourself. No offence, but maybe your crime radar is malfunctioning. I see two unrelated, possibly unsuspicious events; you see a conspiracy. It’s called catastrophising. It’s what people with anxiety disorders do, put the worst conceivable spin on a situation and act as if that’s what’s bound to happen.”

  “It’s what authors do too, only we call it drama.”

  “Same difference. I’m just putting it to you that Aeneas is dead, yes, but maybe there’s a simple, reasonable explanation for that.”

  “And Orion?”

  “Your half-brother has pulled a disappearing act, not the subtlest or cleverest of ones, but that’s all.”

  “How do you account for the two incidents occurring so close in time to each other?”

  “Sheer dumb luck. The bad kind.”

  “Okay, but weren’t you the one who volunteered to go down to Argentina to check things out?”

  “I did that mostly as a favour to you.”

  “And now you’re saying there’s nothing to worry about?”

  “I’m saying there’s nothing to be gained by worrying,” said Chase. “All the same,” he added, “when I look at you now, with that little knot between your eyebrows, hardly touching your meal...”

  Theo glanced down at his plate. He had had only three meagre mouthfuls and been toying with the food the rest of the time.

  “... I have to admit I think it’s pretty cool.”

  “My lack of appetite impresses y
ou?”

  “No, what it signifies. The old Theo. The guy who used to be so driven, used to have such a firm sense of purpose. Theseus once more. You haven’t had a crime to solve, an enemy to fight, for four decades – apart from the ones you make up stories about.”

  “Just because I haven’t been active on the vigilante front...”

  “That’s it. In a nutshell. You haven’t been. And I don’t think it was good for you, retiring from all that. You were, what, a ‘consulting detective’ in London in the late Victorian era?”

  “I was.”

  “Locating Lady Ponsonby-Wildebeest’s missing pearls and figuring out if it was Colonel Mustard, in the library, with the lead pipe.”

  “More like catching child abductors and foiling inheritance swindlers.”

  “Then you came to America in the ’thirties and set up shop in LA as a private investigator.”

  “Had a licence and everything.”

  “Everything except the whisky habit. Then you moved east and became a masked urban avenger, putting on a balaclava and busting crooks’ heads from Times Square to Coney Island.”

  “It needed to be done. New York was a cesspool back then.”

  “So you cleaned it up. Rudy Giuliani with a baseball bat.”

  “Made it a little less messy.”

  “And those are just your most recent exploits, the tail end of a long, long list going back through history. You put in the hours, Theo. You did good. There are thousands of mortals, alive and dead, who have you to thank for making their lives that little bit better, saving them from predators and scumbags. But then you gave up and you became just... aimless.”

  “I had a mission,” said Theo, “the same mission I’d been pursuing since the Age of Heroes. And I got tired. I felt I’d done enough. I’d had enough. All I could stomach. How it was in America in the nineteen-seventies, the way everything became seedy, more depraved than it ever used to be – innocents getting hooked on drugs, kids having awful things done to them, corruption in the highest places – I just got sick of it. After a while I felt I wasn’t making a difference any more. I was a Band-Aid on a haemorrhage. I hated it. It wasn’t satisfying. It was just a grind.”

  “Tell me about it. You became so grim. You hardly ever smiled or cracked a joke. Whenever we met up, your whole conversation was about this gang boss, that pimp, and how the cops were all morons or on the take and always got in your way. You never lightened up, dude. You made Christian Bale’s Batman look like Woody fucking Woodpecker. You were – I’m going to be frank here, maybe brutally so – not such a nice person to know back then.”

  “I wasn’t?”

  “You were kind of a douche, as a matter of fact.”

  Theo laughed, unamused.

  “I’m your cousin. Your family. Your friend. If I can’t say this sort of stuff to you, who can? You weren’t mean, you weren’t nasty. Not to me, at least. But jeez, your people skills sucked.”

  “Sugar-coat it, why don’t you?”

  “No one’s blaming you for it, but you weren’t you. Things got on top of you, and you were right to take a break from it all. It was almost like you had some kind of a breakdown – a midlife crisis. But now this guy” – Chase pointed his fork across the table – “this guy I’m looking at today, he’s refreshed and renewed and ready for the fray again, raring to go.”

  “So, if I’m following your logic,” Theo said, “being concerned about Aeneas and Orion, which you seem to think may be unnecessary, is a good thing?”

  “I’m saying it’s bringing your mojo back. Whether it turns out to be for no good reason doesn’t matter. Could be this is the long-awaited spark that reignites the purifying fire that is Theo Stannard.”

  “I don’t know. I’m pretty happy with the way things are.” Even as he said it, it didn’t ring true to Theo’s ears. “I’ve got my literary career. I’ve got a comfortable daily routine. I’ve got life pretty much how I could want it. If I start back down the road of crimefighting, wouldn’t that jeopardise everything I’ve...?”

  He realised Chase wasn’t listening.

  “Chase? Chase?”

  “Shhh.” Chase’s attention was on the TV. Rapt.

  Theo tuned in to the morning show’s burble. It was the top of the hour. The anchorman had reached the overseas segment of the round-up. In other news...

  “British police still aren’t saying if the fire was set deliberately or an accident,” the immaculately coiffed man said. “All that’s known, as this helicopter footage shows, is that the building was entirely engulfed in flames and has been gutted. So far, the death toll stands at seven. Controversial ’eighties pop star Karno had house guests staying, although the exact number is unclear, but it has been officially confirmed that he himself is among the victims. Meanwhile, over in China...”

  The topic switched to the cloud of severe toxic smog in Beijing which had claimed several lives.

  “Why did we have to listen to that?” Theo asked.

  “Karno,” said Chase. “Del Karno. He’s dead.”

  “I have no idea who...” The penny dropped. “Damn. One of us?”

  “Orpheus. Del Karno is – was – Orpheus.”

  “You’re shitting me.”

  “Come on, you must have known that was him. You must have seen him on TV back in the ’eighties. You’d have recognised him as Orpheus even with the guyliner and the Flock-of-Seagulls ’do.”

  “I was... elsewhere in the ’eighties.”

  “You’d have to have been hiding under a rock not to have heard of Del Karno.”

  “I was. Well, Ayers Rock. Near there, in the middle of the Australian Outback. No phone. No TV. Not even a radio.”

  “Oh, yeah. Your post-vigilantism drying-out hermit period. I forgot. But he was everywhere for about three, four years, was Orpheus. Hit the big time. Had a meteoric rise-and-fall pop career. Went out there after a lifetime of seclusion and just had a blast. You’d have disapproved, but he seemed to be enjoying himself while it lasted.”

  “He’s not enjoying himself anymore,” said Theo, stolidly. He clenched a fist on the tabletop. “Okay, so that makes three now. Three of us in a matter of days, either dead or apparently so. Don’t you tell me not to worry any more, Chase. Something is going on. This isn’t coincidence.”

  Chase sighed heavily. “I can’t disagree. I wish I could, but I can’t, not now. But what? What’s going on?”

  “We’re being picked off, one by one. Targeted and assassinated.”

  “Yeah, and whoever it is, they’re going for the big dogs too, aren’t they? Aeneas, Orion, Orpheus. The names. Not any of the small fry like, I don’t know, Asopos.”

  “Who?”

  “Exactly. One of Poseidon’s other kids, conceived with that nymph he couldn’t keep his hands off, what’s her name – Pero. Or my half-brother Zagreus, another of Zeus’s spawn. There’s a demigod languishing in the where-are-they-now file. Even I don’t know what’s become of Zagreus. But it doesn’t seem as though he should be looking over his shoulder right now. It’s only the likes of you and me who should be nervous. The ones with constellations named after them. Oh wait, that’s not you.”

  “Ha-ha.”

  Chase set his mouth firmly. “You know who I think we should go and talk with, cuz?”

  “No.”

  “Odysseus.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “He’s connected. He’s smart – smarter than either of us. He has channels.”

  “He’s also a class-A prick.”

  “Leaving that aside, if anyone can dig around and rustle up intel, it’s Odysseus. He is the ‘resourceful one’, after all. The ‘great tactician’. The ‘man of twists and turns’.”

  “Don’t come at me with your Homeric epithets. He’s also ‘hot-headed’, ‘the sacker of cities’ and ‘the man of pain’.” Theo drew a deep breath. “But I accept he could be useful to turn to in an emergency. Where does he call home these days?”


  “Where do you think?” Chase grinned. “Where all the conceited, conniving creeps hang out. Washington, D.C.”

  TEN

  Aylesbury, England

  AS HE HAD every single day for the past few years, without fail, Roy Young performed a half-hour exercise routine designed to keep him in shape and to quieten his inner demons. It was a mixture of Pilates and isometrics, using his own bodyweight for resistance and requiring an area of floorspace only one metre by two metres. It could be carried out anywhere: in a tent, on a balcony, in a ship’s cabin, even in a prison cell, should that eventuality arise.

  He finished off with a few rounds of nadi shodhana pranayama, a yoga breathing technique involving pinching off the nostrils alternately. This aligned and synchronised the two hemispheres of the brain and calmed the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. Roy had perfected it to the stage where even just five minutes spent sitting cross-legged, focusing on his inhalations and exhalations and nothing else, left him with a clearer mind and a strengthened sense of self-confidence. The doubts that plagued him and threatened to undermine him were, for the time being, held at bay.

  When he was done, he showered, dressed and headed out.

  Currently the Myrmidons were holed up in a pricey but nondescript chain hotel on the outskirts of Aylesbury, some forty-odd miles northwest of London. The three-person team, chosen by Badenhorst, had been scheduled to return from their mission sometime during the small hours, but Roy had had no contact with them since their departure at nightfall. In the meantime he had stayed in his room, keeping himself to himself. He assumed the operation had been a success. He would surely have been apprised if it had not.

  The strike team had consisted of Sean Wilson, Hans Schutkeker and the only other female Myrmidon apart from Jeanne, a brusque Scandinavian called Gunnvor Blomgren. Roy was not disappointed not to have been included. He had taken point on the first two executions; let someone else do the dirty work for a change.

  The hotel had a central lounge, a kind of hub from which three two-storey room blocks branched out. A bar and a restaurant abutted the lounge, with the reception lobby perched in front. The hotel was busy at present. A midsized firm of medical equipment suppliers was using it for its annual conference. The corridors teemed with suited men and women who seemed to be competing as to which of them could act the most businesslike and efficient. If they weren’t bent over their phones and tablets, they were huddled together discussing marketing strategies and sales targets. The Myrmidons, in their smart-casual civvies, didn’t quite blend in, but they too conducted themselves with an air of quiet professional competence. They might not have had seminars and presentations to attend, but they nonetheless looked as though they, like the white-collar brigade around them, were staying at the hotel for business. Last night Roy had overheard a middle-management type from the medical equipment company air the opinion that they were either international lawyers or members of an investment consortium, here for a team-building retreat. Miles wide of the mark, but as long as that was the impression the Myrmidons gave, they would pass unnoticed and remain forgettable.