“Why wouldn’t that work?” said Chase.
“For the same reason phoning him hasn’t worked. He can just ignore us.”
“We can always sneak in round the back.”
According to the images on Google Earth, the rear of the property overlooked parkland. Theo reckoned it was possible they could steal up on the house from there unobserved, using trees and undergrowth for cover, but their final approach would be across open lawn, and if there were cameras out front, there would be cameras out back. The homeowner would see them coming and almost certainly had countermeasures he could implement. It would get messy.
“It wouldn’t help our case,” he said. “It’d make us look shifty and duplicitous.”
“This is Odysseus we’re talking about here,” said Chase. “Shifty and duplicitous are his middle names.”
“Meaning we’d be more likely to ingratiate ourselves with him if we behave the same as he does?”
“Endear ourselves, even.”
“I don’t know.” Theo shook his head. “I’m beginning to think this was a mistake. The whole thing. Perhaps we don’t really need him.”
“Hey, I didn’t drive two hundred miles only to turn around and go back empty-handed.”
“You didn’t drive two hundred miles. I did.”
“Whatever. Hang on. What’s this?”
A three-vehicle motorcade was wending its way towards them up the street: two identical black Cadillac limousines, followed by a black Chrysler SUV. All three cars had impenetrably black-tinted windows, and all three slowed as they neared the house.
Simultaneously, a quartet of black-suited, sunglassed security men emerged from the building – a personal protection detail. The gate rolled open. The motorcade turned in. The protection detail waved the limos to a triple garage, the doors of which closed immediately they were inside. The SUV stayed out front. The gate rolled shut.
“Holy crap,” said Chase. “What was that?”
“Visiting dignitary, obviously. Somebody fairly important, given there were two limos: one of them’ll be a decoy. The SUV’s got a bunch of Secret Service guys inside. This is a senator, a congressman, somebody at that level.”
An hour later the motorcade departed, crawling along the street in the direction it had come like some sinister giant caterpillar.
“Right,” said Chase. “So he’s had his political heavyweight chum over for lunch. Now it’s our turn.”
“Wait. Wait!”
But Chase was already out of the car and crossing the road. Theo could see no alternative but to follow him.
Chase prodded the button marked Callers on the entry console inset into the left-hand gate pillar.
From the speaker, a gravelly voice growled, “Who’s this?”
“Yeah, hello, is that Harry Gottlieb?” said Chase.
“No.”
“Didn’t think so. Well, we’re pals of Harry’s. Old pals. We just happened to be passing by and we thought we’d come and say hi. He in?”
“State your names.”
“Dick Zuckerman and Phil Macavity. We’re gay porn stars. You’ll definitely be familiar with our work.”
“All right, wiseass,” said the man at the other end of the voice feed. “You have five seconds to get your butts back to whatever goddamn rock you crawled out from under. Otherwise we’ll come out there and deal with you, and you seriously do not want that to happen.”
Theo shouldered Chase aside. “Okay, sorry about that,” he said into the console. “My associate has a sense of humour – or what he thinks passes for one.”
“I resent that!” Chase said.
“We are, genuinely, old friends of Mr Gottlieb,” Theo said. “Distant relatives might be more accurate. Anyway: Theo Stannard and Chase Chance. If he doesn’t recognise the names, tell him... Tell him we were around in his travelling days.”
“Mr Gottlieb does lots of travelling.”
“It’s a particular Mediterranean voyage I’m referring to. He’ll know exactly what I mean. He kind of got lost.”
There was silence from the console. It dragged on for a minute. Two minutes.
“Well, that was successful,” said Chase.
Then the front door of the mansion opened and out stepped the protection detail again. The four men strode down the driveway with purpose. They were uniformly thick-necked and bulky, and the cut of their suit jackets only partially disguised the sidearms holstered at their armpits.
“This looks like it’s going to get interesting,” said Theo.
“I hope ‘interesting’ is another word for ‘fun’,” said Chase.
“Please let’s do this my way. We should at least try to negotiate.”
“Aw, you’re such a spoilsport, cuz.”
So saying, Chase grasped two of the spikes surmounting the gate. It was eight feet tall but he vaulted over it at a single bound.
“Sir!” yelled the nearest of the men. “Sir, stand down immediately! Do not come any nearer. This is private property and I am authorised and legally within my rights to deploy lethal force against you.”
Chase charged, ramming the heel of his palm into the security man’s throat, poleaxing him instantly. He’d gauged the blow so that it incapacitated rather than killed; the guard might have to breathe through a tube and be fed intravenously for the next few weeks, but he would live.
Handguns were drawn. Chase was already moving to the next target. Theo, heaving a sigh, leapt lightly over the gate himself. His cousin could be so damn hot-headed at times. Like a teenager in a three-thousand-year-old body.
The remaining security men tried to draw a bead on Chase, but he was too quick. He dispatched the second of them at a run with an outstretched arm, like a WWE wrestler clotheslining an opponent. The man went down so hard his scapula and collarbone snapped.
The third guard managed to loose off a round before Chase caught up with him, but the shot hit nothing but shrubbery. Then the gun, a Ruger SR9, was no longer in his hand. Chase snatched it from him by the muzzle, reversed it, and used the butt to club him into insensibility before tossing the weapon aside.
Meanwhile Theo was zeroing in on the fourth and final member of the protection detail. The man saw him coming; he pivoted; his gun swung up.
To Theo’s eyes, he did all this in slow motion, like something out of a movie dream-sequence. There was time for Theo to skirt around his field of aim, to dart in from the side, to knock him cold with a single right hook to the jaw, all before the man’s finger could even tighten on the trigger. He pulled the punch, using only a small fraction of his deity-derived strength. Even so, the man’s head rocked to the side and Theo felt bone splinter under the impact. Any harder and he might have left him with permanent brain damage. You had to be so careful with mortals. They were so frail, even the tough ones.
In total, from Chase jumping the gate to Theo taking care of the fourth security man, the fight lasted just under ten seconds.
In the aftermath, the two demigods looked at each other. Neither was even panting. Chase offered his cousin a loopy, doglike smile. Theo, refusing to be won over, responded with a stern stare.
“Oh, bravo.”
The voice came from the top of the steps leading up to the mansion’s main entrance, where stood a dapper, distinguished-looking man who appeared to be in his mid-fifties, beautifully turned out in a tailored suit, liquorice-black Oxfords and a Windsor-knotted striped silk tie. He gave a round of sardonic applause.
“Well, you’ve succeeded in getting my attention,” said Harry Gottlieb, the political strategist formerly known as Odysseus. “You may as well come inside.”
GOTTLIEB SETTLED THEM in the living room and went to make a couple of phone calls. Within half an hour the injured security men had been removed from the front lawn and whisked off to a private hospital, and a new protection detail had arrived to take their place. Washington’s Metropolitan PD had been placated at the very highest levels, with any police officers who had responded
to reports of a gunshot in the Georgetown area now assured that it had been a prank, kids letting off a firework somewhat in advance of the Fourth of July. The whole incident was wiped away as though nothing had happened.
“Couldn’t take a hint, could you?” Gottlieb said after he had returned from fixing the situation.
“Couldn’t answer a simple voicemail, could you?” Chase shot back.
“I would have gotten round to it eventually.”
“So you did receive the messages.”
“Oh, I received them. You weren’t terribly specific, though, were you? All you said was you had something of great urgency to discuss with me, or words to that effect, and you became increasingly irked and curt each time you rang; which frankly made me less inclined to pay attention. Besides, I had important matters to attend to.”
“That motorcade we saw go in and leave,” said Theo.
“My regular monthly lunchtime meeting; I was devoting all my energies to that. Foreign policy and deficit reduction were both on the agenda, and I had to research and prepare accordingly. I like to be up on my brief going in.”
“How high-up is your lunch buddy?”
“Very high.”
“Senate high?”
“Higher. As high as you can go. Let me put it this way; normally his car has flags on the front.”
Theo chuckled in disbelief. “You and the President of the United States meet privately every month?”
“We do,” Gottlieb replied equably. “More, during a crisis. It’s been that way since the early ’eighties, with successive incumbents of the Oval Office. Before then, it was my father Solomon Gottlieb they saw.”
“Also you.”
“Also me. The handover occurred right in the middle of the Reagan administration. I had been gradually dyeing my hair white, like now; then I left on sabbatical for a few months, let my normal hair colour grow back in, and returned as Solomon’s son and heir. Dear old Ronnie, bless his limited mental capacity, was none the wiser. At first he was wary about dealing with Gottlieb Junior rather than Senior, but soon as he realised he was getting the same sound counsel, he stopped worrying. I doubt I could pull that trick with the present Commander-in-Chief. He is far sharper-witted.”
“I’m surprised he needs your advice at all.”
“Oh, they come,” said Gottlieb airily. “Democrat or Republican, they come, month in, month out. It’s a kind of pilgrimage, and just as much a part of Presidential tradition as the Correspondents’ Dinner or the Thanksgiving turkey pardoning. I’m a Beltway fixture, the Sage of Georgetown. I have sway. Any POTUS shuns me at his peril. Or her peril,” he added, “mustn’t rule anything out.”
“I knew you were a mover and shaker, but...” Chase sounded impressed, in spite of himself.
Theo chose to be more phlegmatic than his cousin. “Is that the only reason you refused to see us? Because you had a date with the President?”
“Well, no. Frankly, I couldn’t stir myself to be interested. I don’t really belong to your little club, do I? Why should I be bothered if you’ve got some sort of flap going on? I have worldwide concerns. I have the ear of the most powerful man on the planet. Decisions I make ripple out from here across the globe. I work on the broadest imaginable canvas, and your concerns are – no offence – petty.”
Gottlieb said this evenly, with no discernible spite. Chase bristled, and Theo put a hand on his shoulder to restrain him. You handled a man like Harry Gottlieb diplomatically. Rising to his bait simply affirmed his superiority and lowered you in his estimation. You played him at his own game or not at all. It was the only way to win, or at least draw.
“You say you don’t belong to our club,” he began.
“I am not, by the strictest definition, a demigod,” Gottlieb said. “My paternal grandfather is Zeus and my maternal great-grandfather is Hermes. Via them I have been bestowed, like you two, with immortality; but I lack your physical prowess and vigour. I am not able to leap and run and perform feats of strength above and beyond the capacity of any mortal. It is my mind that is extraordinary – cunning and intelligence.”
“The cunning and intelligence which came up with the Wooden Horse of Troy, and which saved your ship’s crew from countless deadly hazards on your way home to Ithaca.”
“Your point being...?”
“Nothing. I was just –”
“Just trying to soft-soap me by listing my best-known accomplishments?”
“There was also the theft of the palladium from Troy.”
Gottlieb smirked. “Ah, yes. Crawling through the city’s sewers to retrieve the little olive-wood thing. The oracles had said Troy would not fall as long as the palladium remained within its walls; true or not, I figured the Myrmidons would be disheartened by the loss of their sacred trinket. It was psychological warfare long before anyone coined the term.”
“Wasn’t Diomedes with you?” said Chase.
Gottlieb fixed him with a steely-eyed glare.
“Yeah, and you tried to kill him on the way out. So’s you could claim the credit all for yourself?” Chase went on.
“Yes, now is probably not the time to bring that up,” said Theo.
“Why not? It’s true. He’s a big old glory-hound.”
“We’ve come to him for help, not to piss him off.”
“Oh, it’s quite all right,” said Gottlieb, breezily. “For the record, I didn’t actually try to kill him. That is a calumny perpetrated by both Homer and Apollodorus of Athens. I may have drawn my sword as we were returning to camp and Diomedes may happen to have looked over his shoulder and seen the glint of moonlight reflecting off the blade, but the truth was I had heard a noise and unsheathed my sword to defend myself. Not that I was preparing to stab him in the back and bring the palladium to the Greeks on my own. How treacherous and self-serving would that have been!”
“Very,” said Theo. “Which is why we’re more than happy to accept your version of events. Aren’t we, Chase? You were there, after all. Homer and Apollodorus weren’t. What did they know?”
“Thank you, Theseus,” said Gottlieb.
“I’d prefer Theo, if you don’t mind.”
“Humble apologies. You stick with your aliases all the time, don’t you? So that you’re less likely to slip up when in mixed company.”
“It’s simpler that way.”
“Another reason I don’t associate with you lot. The etiquette you abide by. The painstaking efforts you make to blend in, to be as like mortals as you can.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“No, no, nothing whatsoever. There’s no harm in fitting in. It rather does a disservice to our heritage, though, doesn’t it? I like it that mortals come to consult me. I like having the most powerful of them at my beck and call. To be the unseen power behind the throne – that’s where the real ruling happens. That has been my calling ever since I was banished from Ithaca for killing my Penelope’s suitors.”
“Oh yeah,” Chase drawled, “you’ve been a major influence on all the greats.”
Gottlieb nodded. “I count history’s finest as my clients.” He began checking them off on his fingers. “Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, Queen Elizabeth, Lincoln...”
“Also Genghis Khan, Napoleon, and some guy called Hitler.”
“You have been keeping track, haven’t you? Clever fellow.” There was a steely edge beneath the compliment, a razor blade hidden in candy.
“Ear to the ground. I ask around. I make demigod business my business.”
“So you do. So you do. Well, as to the Hitler connection, I won’t deny it: I helped him on his rise to power, his self-described ‘struggle’. Adolf had some good ideas. He sincerely wished to rescue Germany from penury and shame. His was a noble goal. But when I realised how far he was going to take it, that was when I made my excuses and left. I spent the war flitting between Britain and America, chivvying Churchill and rallying Roosevelt.”
“Which makes everything okay.”
<
br /> “Why, Chase Chance, do you persist in antagonising me,” said Gottlieb, “when by your own admission you and your cousin are seeking my aid?”
“Maybe I can’t help it. Maybe you rub me up the wrong way. All your high-and-mighty talk.”
Theo jumped in. “Chase has strong feelings and isn’t always good at controlling them. To his credit, he was the one who suggested we meet up with you. I wasn’t completely in favour.”
“Be that as it may, you have put me to some trouble, the both of you,” said Gottlieb severely. “You have cost me a set of bodyguards, an appurtenance I have to have, not because I fear any attempt on my life but because someone like me must be seen to take his personal safety seriously. You have inconvenienced me and lobbed insulting insinuations at me. Why on earth should I extend you the benefit of my assistance?” He slapped the air with the back of his hand. “Some vague familial affinity? A commonality of origin that I tangentially share with you?”
“Because you are the man of stratagems,” said Theo, “and we need stratagems. Okay, cards on the table. Here’s how it is. Listen and then decide if we’ve wasted your time and ours.”
“Very well.”
“There’s a fairly good chance that someone is killing demigods. Someone is singling us out and murdering us. Trouble is, we have no clue who, why or even how. It’s a mystery. A conundrum. It demands a mind like yours to unravel it.”
“Killing demigods?” said Gottlieb. “Well, why didn’t you say so earlier?”
Theo observed a tiny spark in those bright, knowing eyes. Harry Gottlieb was intrigued.
“Chase didn’t want to get into it in a voicemail. Too complicated. Plus, you know, discretion. Anyone might be listening in. Also, we’re not even a hundred per cent sure that is what’s happening. It looks that way, though.”
“But killing demigods is impossible. Almost impossible. We can recover from virtually any injury you care to name.”
“But there is a way. One that doesn’t necessarily involve chopping us up into tiny pieces or burning us to cinders.”
Age of Heroes Page 11
