Age of Heroes

by James Lovegrove

  “Yes. The twelve artefacts. The divine weapons and protections. Gifts variously given to demigods to aid them in their quests or as a token of parental affection.”

  “Which you stowed somewhere safe.”

  “I did,” said Gottlieb. “And they should still be there, where I left them. They cannot have been recovered. I went to great pains to ensure that.”

  “But what if they have been? What if someone has gotten hold of them and is using them against us?”

  Gottlieb, for the first time during the conversation, sat down. Up until then he had been pacing the room, while Theo and Chase remained perched on a brocade-upholstered sofa, lecturing them like a pair of wayward pupils.

  Now, at eye level with them in an armchair that matched the sofa, he said, “Tell me everything.”

  TWELVE

  Southern Somalia

  THE BUS RUMBLED along unmarked two-lane tarmac under a pitiless late-afternoon sun. The vehicle was reputed to have air-conditioning, but if the rumour was true, Roy wasn’t feeling any of the benefits. His jeans were adhering to the vinyl seat covering and his shirt was piebald with patches of sweat.

  He was sitting at the rear of the bus, next to Gavin Martin. All the other Myrmidons were ranged before him, the entire complement, with Badenhorst at the front next to the driver. Every time the wheels hit a pothole in the road – which was more or less once a minute – Roy saw their heads bounce in unison, as though they were agreeing avidly with something someone had said.

  Outside the dust-caked windows, the landscape alternated between countryside and farmland. There was the occasional breezeblock smallholding or ramshackle village, but otherwise it was scrubby savannah broken up by banana plantations, sorghum fields and swathes of parched pasture. The southern region of Somalia was the country’s agricultural hub, reliant on two major rivers, the Jubba and the Shebelle, for irrigation. It was also the area most affected by civil war and sectarian bloodshed. Every so often the bus passed the blackened shell of a building, either burnt out or bombed. At one point an open-back Land Rover came trundling the other way laden with ragtag paramilitaries, their rifles jutting out at all angles like the quills of a gunmetal porcupine. Islamist slogans were spray-painted on walls, mostly in Arabic script, but now and then an Allahu Akbar in the Roman alphabet.

  The locals, nonetheless, went about their business as normal. Here were some kids scurrying around after a football; there a goatherd driving his flock along the roadside. Two women waddling homeward with string bags full of groceries. Either they were so accustomed to the background presence of violence they no longer noticed it, or they had taught themselves to behave as if it didn’t exist.

  Roy nudged Gavin. “Mate? You got a moment?”

  Gavin looked up from the game he was playing on his phone. “Sure. What is it?”

  The bus’s diesel engine gave off a continuous churning growl, loud enough that Roy would have had to shout to be heard by the people sitting in the next row of seats. Still, he kept his voice low.

  “What are we doing?” he said.

  “Travelling to an anti-insurgency training camp, where we’re going to take down target number four.”

  “Yes, thank you for being so literal.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “But what are we doing? This whole project. What’s it all in aid of?”

  “It’s in aid of me making enough dosh so that the missus and I can move to Malaga with the kids and live out the rest of our days drinking sangria by the side of our own swimming pool. That’s what.” Gavin returned his attention to the phone.

  “Fair enough,” said Roy. “Let me put it another way. What is it with these antique weapons? What’s the story there? Why do we have to use them? Why are we having to get up close and personal with the targets, when a sniper round to the head from five hundred metres away ought to do the trick?”

  Gavin paused the game. Candy Crush Saga could wait.

  “You have a lot of questions, Roy,” he said. “Ever hear that saying about gift horses?”

  “Well, here’s one more question. Who are these people we’re eliminating? They don’t seem to have anything in common. They’re complete randoms: a travel writer, a dive tour guide, a former pop star, now a mercenary. It’s like someone’s sticking a pin in an international phone directory. They must all be connected in some way, but how?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to know; I don’t need to know. A job is a job. If you start wondering about it, you’re not going to be able to do it. Don’t think about the who. Just think about the dough.” Gavin motioned at his phone. “Now, can I finish this?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Cheers.”

  The advice was sound, but Roy somehow couldn’t take it. He couldn’t overlook the fundamental strangeness of the project. Not any more.

  The weapons were the weirdest part. What did it mean, dispatching the targets with spears and axes and so forth? What was it supposed to signify? There was something almost ritualistic about it, as if the targets were sacrifices. Was that it? Was that the point? Or was it to send some oblique message? Make some statement that could be understood only by a specific audience?

  Then there were Anthony Peregrine’s last words: This won’t kill me. Can’t. Said after he had taken two 5.56mm bullets in the torso. And after that weird, long speech of his, in some unfamiliar, primordial language.

  On the flight from England to Somalia’s Kismayo International Airport, Sean Wilson had described Del Karno’s final moments to the rest of the team. He had told them, with relish, how Karno submitted to the spear thrust, not resisting, as if welcoming it. “I couldn’t hear a thing the eejit was saying, but he just held out his arms, he did, like fecking Jesus Hisself, and I stepped in, and that was that. Easiest kill ever.”

  Why had Badenhorst insisted on the strike team wearing earplugs for that job? What difference would it have made, them being able to hear Karno speak? And why had Karno greeted death so willingly, with open arms?

  Roy was becoming more than curious. He didn’t mind Badenhorst keeping secrets from them; that was standard procedure. It didn’t do to know everything. As long as you had all the facts that were relevant, the rest was superfluous.

  But he was starting to think that he and the other Myrmidons were being kept too much in the dark, that Badenhorst was withholding certain vital pieces of intel. The secrets were big ones. And big secrets made for big threats.

  THIRTEEN

  Washington, D.C.

  THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT, the cocktail bar where Gottlieb had suggested they meet, sat on the corner of an intersection a half-dozen blocks east of the White House. At first glance Theo judged it a poor choice of venue: it was crowded, the clientele almost exclusively political advisors, lobbyists and journalists. There was little elbow room and seemed to be even less privacy.

  He quickly gathered, however, that the bar-goers were paying attention to nothing except the sound of their own voices. Everyone was too busy braying and whinnying at everyone else, as drunk on self-importance as they were on alcohol. You could hold a conversation here in the absolute certainty that it wouldn’t be snooped on. These people were barely listening to one another.

  Gottlieb arrived shortly after 10PM, an hour later than he had said he would. He sailed through the throng unremarked and unhindered. Possibly the most powerful person on the premises, yet he was anonymous.

  “Kal’espera, o kyrioi,” he said to Theo and Chase.

  “Perhaps we should stick with English,” said Theo.

  “I thought ancient Hellenic might be prudent,” said Gottlieb. “So that we may talk freely.”

  “I don’t think that’s a precaution we need to take here. More to the point, if someone does tune in to our conversation and can’t understand a word, they might assume the worst. Three men speaking in a foreign language, with pretty swarthy complexions, a stone’s throw from Pennsylvania Avenue. This is America. There will be profi
ling. There will be police called.”

  “Very well,” said Gottlieb. “At any rate, I trust you’ve made the most of your time in our fine city. So many sights to see. The Smithsonian, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial...”

  “Do we look like tourists?” Chase snapped. He was well into his third whisky sour.

  “Chase took the car and left me stranded for the afternoon,” said Theo. “I found a coffee shop and caught up on correspondence. Fanmail, business stuff, social media.”

  “The life of the author of potboilers,” said Gottlieb. “So banal.”

  Theo smiled as though he had the words FUCK YOU etched into his incisors.

  “And where did you go, Chase?” Gottlieb asked indifferently.

  “Out in the hills to the north, just over the state line.”

  “Maryland? Whatever for?”

  Theo said, “He wanted to see if he could pick up any trace of the... What did you call it, Chase? Sounds like a character off of Sesame Street?”

  “The Snallygaster,” said Chase. “It’s a cryptid that was named by German immigrants back in the seventeen hundreds – Schneller Geist, ‘quick spirit’. It’s a cross between a bird and a reptile, with steel claws and beak and a demonic face. Plucks you up off the ground and flies off with you to its roost where it sucks your blood at its leisure.”

  “And did you meet with success?” said Gottlieb.

  “I drove around a bit. Headed on foot into the woods around the Patuxent River. Not a thing. It was kind of a long shot, but it never hurts to try. If I’d had time I might have looked for the Dewayo as well, up in Frederick County. It’s the Snallygaster’s mortal enemy. Something like a werewolf. But I had to get back here.”

  “You and your monsters. It’s quite the obsession. Are there still any left? You seem to have done a pretty thorough job of making them extinct.”

  “Some remain. And they bite.” Chase revealed his bandaged arm for Gottlieb to see. “Proof.”

  Gottlieb twisted the corners of his mouth down, a half-hearted stab at an expression of empathy. “Poor you. I presume your motives are purely altruistic.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “You kill monsters so as to keep the public safe.”

  “Of course. Why else?”

  “And not because you get a thrill out of it.”

  Chase eyed him over the rim of his tumbler. “The fact is, as civilisation spreads, there are fewer places for monsters to hide in. Their habitats are being encroached on. But you can’t keep them in a game reserve, like lions or elephants; they have to stay in the wild. Upshot is you’re going to get more clashes between them and humans, and one or other side is going to regret it.”

  “So it’s better that you kill them first, is that it? A kind of pre-emptive strike.”

  “That’s it. Simplifies things, too. This is an age that doesn’t have room for anything people can’t identify or classify. It’s an age of rationalism, and monsters have no place in it.”

  “Rationalism?” Gottlieb laughed hollowly. “Have you not noticed how many religious zealots there are out there? All those monotheist fundamentalists obeying the edicts of their One True God? Washington has more than its fair share.”

  “And they don’t want monsters in the world either. I’m performing a useful community service, Harry. I’m getting rid of the last few vestiges of the past – our past, when heroes and monsters were commonplace. I’m sweeping away the things that no longer belong.”

  “Well, if you insist.”

  “I do.” Chase finished off his drink.

  Gottlieb held up two fingers, attracting the attention of a waitress. “Over here, my dear.” To Theo and Chase: “My round. What’ll it be?”

  Yet another whisky sour for Chase, a second rum and Coke for Theo, and a gimlet for Gottlieb.

  After the drinks came, Theo said, “So, what’s the news?”

  “No more small talk?” said Gottlieb. “You really do have the bit between your teeth, Theo.”

  “I’m taking what’s happening very seriously.”

  “You’re a very serious person. Always have been. Like Chase here, you can’t seem to escape who you were.”

  “Nor, for that matter, can you.”

  “Fair point. We are set in our ways, aren’t we? You’d think, after all this time, we’d have changed. Perhaps we can’t.”

  “Isaac Merrison did,” said Chase.

  “Who? Oh, yes. Orion. But then he had to. He couldn’t go on the way he was, so angry, so consumed by the desire to conquer and dominate. The rest of us, we just tread over the same old ground, wearing new boots.”

  “You’ve made enquiries, I take it,” said Theo.

  “Patience, patience,” said Gottlieb. “Yes, I have. I’ve placed a few calls, set wheels in motion. Principally I’ve pulled some strings with the Director at Langley. As we speak, CIA drones are winging their way from various US airbases around the world to the places where I buried divine artefacts. The pilots’ brief is to reconnoitre only, look for signs of disturbance at the sites. The pilots have been told that these may be the locations of terrorists arms caches. Beyond that, they are in ignorance, as is the Director. I don’t anticipate anyone reporting back until tomorrow morning at the earliest. I chose each site for its remoteness and inaccessibility, after all. That was the whole point, putting the things where they wouldn’t be stumbled upon by accident.”

  “And booby-trapping them, for anyone retrieving them on purpose.”

  “Daedalus himself would have envied the job I did,” said Gottlieb. “I spent months devising and perfecting those traps. Tripwires, crossbows triggered by pressure plates. Pools of mercury, sliding portcullis blocks. Deluges of sand. Water-activated counterweights. Fragile plugs of concrete stopping up channels connected to underground reservoirs. I used as little metal as possible in the construction, and any I did use I coated with chromate to prevent it rusting. The traps were intended to remain dormant but effective for centuries.”

  “Until Lara Croft comes along and somersaults past the lot of them,” said Chase.

  “Who is Lara Croft?”

  “You’re kidding me. Seriously? You’ve never heard of Tomb Raider?”

  “Is it another lowest-common-denominator television show, like yours?”

  Chase, ignoring the barb, shook his head wonderingly. “You probably don’t know who Indiana Jones is either.”

  “Him I’m familiar with. Reagan was a big fan of the films. He would sometimes act out scenes for me while we were in conference. It was... tiresome.”

  “Trying to keep us focused...” said Theo.

  Chase shot him a you’re-no-fun look.

  “Chase may not realise it, but he has a point,” Theo continued. “Let’s presume someone was able to beat all the traps, cunning as they are.”

  “Not beyond the bounds of possibility, I suppose,” Gottlieb said.

  “Would the artefacts still be potent, after all this time?”

  “Still imbued with divine essence, still deadly to us? I don’t see why not. We are, aren’t we? The divinity in us, such as it is, has preserved us well past man’s allotted threescore and ten. We remain in a state of perpetual youthfulness. Some of us more than others.” He aimed a wry sidelong glance at Chase. “Why shouldn’t it be the same for the twelve artefacts?”

  “The gods are no longer around, that’s all.”

  “And the artefacts need constantly topping up with power, like a laptop’s battery needs charging? I don’t think it works that way. Once each of them was bestowed its godly imprimatur, it had it in perpetuity. That’s why they struck me as so hazardous, why they had to be collected and buried, like toxic waste. They would always pose a risk.”

  “And only you know where they were.”

  “Only me,” Gottlieb said with a nod. “That is the status quo, and it has served us well so far.”

  Something jangled in Theo’s mind, like a tiny, distant alarm. What
Gottlieb had just said didn’t ring entirely true, but he was damned if he could figure out at that moment what was bothering him. He had so many memories, too many to search easily. It was like finding a specific tree in a vast forest. He shook his head; it would come to him.

  “I believe, under the circumstances, that the status quo should be revised,” he said.

  Gottlieb eyed him with scepticism and a touch of indignation. “You’re asking me to divulge the locations of the artefacts to you? To break a sacred trust I have held for three thousand years?”

  “Yes.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “Because it’s about time. Because we deserve to know.”

  “You deserve to know!” Gottlieb echoed with sharp disdain. “You don’t deserve anything of the sort.”

  “It’s a big damn secret for one individual to keep. Sharing it is long overdue.”

  “Preposterous. Never.”

  “Look at it this way. If it does turn out that the artefacts have been unearthed, then the point’s moot anyway.”

  “And if they haven’t been, you’ll have got me to surrender up knowledge I have assiduously kept to myself my entire life, for nothing.”

  “I’m insisting that you do this, Harry,” Theo said. “Whether or not Aeneas, Orion and Orpheus were killed with the artefacts, the rest of us have a right to be told where you stashed them. We may have accepted, back then, that it was sensible for wise Odysseus to be the artefacts’ sole custodian. But the world has moved on. Things are different now.”

  Gottlieb squinted at him askance. “If I didn’t know better, I might infer that you have your suspicions about me, Theo Stannard. That you think I me the culprit behind the deaths.”

  “No,” Theo said firmly – maybe a little too firmly. “That’s not my reasoning at all.”

  “I very much hope it isn’t. I would be deeply disappointed if it was. I would also become thoroughly uncooperative, which I am sure you would not wish.”

  “All the same, I’m still insisting.”