Age of Heroes

by James Lovegrove

  “With those silly little potboilers you turn out? I doubt it. Authors, however well they sell, aren’t in our league. Even the British wizard woman is a pauper by our standards. Evander has had centuries to amass his fortune. If you started now, you might just catch up sometime around the year 4000 – but by then he’d have increased his worth further, so you’ll never actually be his equal. Chase wasn’t wrong to say it’s like being a god. When you can command any luxury, any possession, any object, anyone, without even having to think about it. Throw in immortality as well, and... If the gods on Olympus were watching us now, they’d be spitting with envy.”

  “But they aren’t watching, are they?” said Chase. “They’re dead. Dead and gone. We know that because if they weren’t they’d still be meddling in our affairs.”

  “Quite,” said Hélène. “If they were around nowadays, they surely wouldn’t allow someone like Evander to prosper to the extent that he has. Jealousy alone would spur them into action. There’s always a punishment for those would rival them.”

  “Aren’t you doing that right now?” said Theo. “By saying what you’re saying, you’re all but daring the gods to smite you.”

  “And where’s my bolt of lightning?” Hélène looked around her theatrically. “Where’s my just desserts, my ironic doom? Let’s see if I’m turned into a stag and ripped apart by my own hunting hounds, like Actaeon. Or maybe into a cow and have a gadfly sting my backside forever, like poor Io. Or blinded like Tiresias, or have my liver pecked out daily like Prometheus. Hmmm. No? Nothing? Guess nobody up there is paying attention.”

  A tiny part of Theo was appalled. As a youth he had been taught to respect and dread the gods. You didn’t provoke them, not if you knew what was good for you. Stories of their almost whimsical cruelty abounded, and had left their mark on him. No matter how old and jaded he became, he couldn’t entirely shake off the notion that it was a mistake to flout their will.

  Not that he believed the gods were still alive. Far from it. Hercules’ description of a desolate, skeleton-strewn Olympus was, though speculation, all too plausible.

  At the same time, Hélène’s open defiance touched a nerve. It was weirdly thrilling. Here she was, inviting her own downfall. Clearly it would never come, but still, it felt bold, transgressive. Three thousand years ago Theo would have run for cover if anyone had spoken like this in his earshot, for fear of being caught in the fallout of the inevitable divine retribution. For all that the times had changed, the instinct remained ingrained.

  There were footfalls on the stairs from the atrium, and in came Evander Arlington.

  His first words were, “Now, now, Hélène my love. Such hubris in front of our guests? You must stop showing off.”

  His tone was gently chiding. Hélène preened in pleasure and sidled up to him, nuzzling her head against his. Arlington snaked an arm around her waist. Stocky, besuited, hair tidily trimmed, he looked every inch the plutocrat, right down to the manicured tips of his stubby fingers. There was the froglike jawline Theo remembered, and the pouchy-lipped mouth and the surprisingly small teeth, and the grin that appeared welcoming but also seemed hungry, as though the world was a feast and he was ready to eat his fill.

  He was hardly handsome, the man who had been King Minos, and a couple of dozen extra pounds around the midriff didn’t help. But like many a tycoon, Evander Arlington knew that homeliness didn’t matter if you had a fantastically glamorous woman by your side. Her beauty reflected on you. Hélène, more than anything else in Arlington’s life, was a symbol of his status. Perhaps that was why he gripped her waist so hard; it was a display of ownership, a man staking his claim.

  He acknowledged each of the three visitors with a nod, saving the last and least courteous for Theo.

  “How good of you all to journey here,” he said. “I trust it wasn’t an inconvenience, the Mohammeds coming to the mountain, as it were. I can only say that if you’re intending to stay, you’ll be well looked after. Enough to recompense you for the trouble you’ve gone to. We have several guest cottages on the island, all quite superb. It’s not quite the old palace at Knossos, but you’ll want for nothing.”

  “No plans to stay,” Theo said. “A few moments of your time, that’s all we’re after.”

  “Yes. And I wonder what that would be about, eh? What is it that has brought Theseus, Perseus and Queen Hippolyta to my door? What has prompted this unexpected reunion of the Class of 1500 BCE?”

  “You sound like you already know.”

  “I do. I do. But not for the reason you might assume.”

  “Oh?” said Theo. “And what reason would that be?”

  “The wrong one,” Arlington said adamantly. “I know why you’re here simply because I have been told about it. The artefacts, the killings, everything.”

  “By?”

  “Me,” said a cultured, urbane voice. A very familiar voice.

  And in walked Harry Gottlieb.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Vienna

  “YOU DO NOT have to do this,” Benedikt said. “In fact, I insist you do not. I say that both as your medical caregiver and your friend. It is craziness. What you are risking...”

  “I know what I’m risking,” said Josie. “You’ve only told me a hundred times. Permanent kidney dysfunction, seizures that could leave me with tissue and nerve damage. What’s the other one? Cognitive impairment, that’s it. Brain fucked. But it’s got to be done. There’s no other way.”

  “There is. There must be. Why not let me be the one? Why don’t I do it?”

  “Sweet of you, but no. It’s me those bozos out there have to look after. You said it yourself: you’re not nearly so valuable to them. If something serious happened to me, I don’t think their lives would be worth living. And that’s what we’re counting on. We need them to start freaking out, headless-chicken style. Now come on, hand ’em over.”

  Reluctantly Benedikt passed her four tablets. Josie cupped them in the palm of her hand, one eye on the door connecting the bedroom to the suite’s main room. As ever, a football match was blaring on the TV. It was late afternoon and her daytime jailers were coming to the end of their shift. They would be replaced in an hour or so. At this point, after twelve hours on duty, they would be bored and inattentive, thinking about getting outside, fresh air, how to spend their evening. The last thing they would be expecting, or prepared for, was an emergency. They would not handle it as well as they would if they were at the beginning of their shift.

  It was now or never.

  Josie tossed the tablets into her mouth and washed them down with a swig of water.

  “Okay,” she said. “Okay. No going back. You’ve got this, haven’t you, Benedikt? Tell me you have.”

  “I have.”

  “You can cope?”

  “I can.”

  “What’s my dad’s number?”

  Benedikt reeled off the digits from memory.

  “No. You’ve got the five and the seven the wrong way round.”

  “Sorry. I am so nervous.”

  “Try again.”

  He recited the number, this time correctly.

  “You’ve only got one shot,” Josie said. “You can’t blow it.”

  “I shan’t. But... What if it goes bad?”

  “You mean what if I’ve just taken too much lithium? But you said you’ve gauged it. A non-fatal overdose.”

  “Yes. I am sure it will not kill you. Pretty sure.”

  “Pretty sure?”

  “No. Sure.”

  “You better be.”

  “The worst thing that can happen, I think, is you will fall into a coma.”

  “Oh, is that all? Well, as long as that’s the worst thing that can happen.”

  “Josie, du gehst mir voll auf den Sack.”

  “What?”

  “I said you’re really busting my balls here.”

  “Too right I am,” she said. “Because we’re committed now, and I was fine until a moment ago, but now I’m
worried. This is the plan we agreed on.”

  “And it is a poor plan.”

  “Maybe, but it’s also our only plan, and it’s too late for you to go all wobbly on me. Promise me you won’t. Swear to me you’ll keep your shit together.”

  Benedikt took a deep breath. “I swear I will keep my shit together.”

  “Good, because it’s all on you from this point forward, Benedikt. I’ve done my bit. You have to – Ow.”

  “What is the matter?”

  Josie clutched her stomach. “Cramp.”

  “It is starting already.”

  “All right. Action stations.”

  Benedikt moved off towards the other side of the room.

  Josie caught his wrist.

  “If this doesn’t work...”

  “Don’t.”

  “But if it doesn’t, I just want to say thanks. For being with me.”

  He glanced around the room. “As if I had a choice.”

  “Not just here. At the clinic too. You’re a nice man, Benedikt. You have such a good heart. You’ve helped me as much as Dr Aeschbacher and the medication. I’m glad to have known you.”

  “Josie...”

  She let go of him. “That’s all. Now please...” Her stomach cramped again, painful enough to make her hiss and double over. “Let’s do this fucking thing.”

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Josie began convulsing. She heard Benedikt let out a cry of alarm. After that, she blacked out.

  The next thing she was aware of was someone patting her cheek.

  She prised her eyes open to see Benedikt leaning over her.

  “Benedikt. Did...?”

  “Be calm. Do not try to speak. You are okay. You are going to be fine.”

  He flicked his eyes sideways. Josie understood this to mean they weren’t alone in the room. She turned her head to see one of the day-shift jailers loitering by the doorway. He had red hair and a huge droopy moustache like a walrus.

  All at once she felt an overpowering urge to vomit. She ran to the bathroom.

  When she was finished, she flushed the toilet, rinsed her mouth out and staggered back to the bed. She felt wretched. Her ears were ringing, her head ached, her throat was sore and her insides roiled.

  “That’s a good sign, yeah?” said Ginger Walrus. “The puking?”

  “It means she is getting the last of the salt water out of her, that is all,” Benedikt replied. “I cannot yet tell how badly she has been affected. I will have to keep monitoring her.”

  “Stupid girl,” Ginger Walrus muttered. “Taking an overdose. Silly little bitch. What was she thinking?”

  “Salt water?” Josie said. Benedikt had told her he would have to bring her round somehow. He hadn’t mentioned anything about salt water.

  “I had to get the lithium out of you,” said Benedikt. “This man and his friends would not let me call for an ambulance. They refused. They told me I must fix you. They said if you died, I would too. So I – what is the word? Improvised. I got them to fetch some rubber tubing, a bucket and some table salt, and I performed a gastric lavage.”

  “A what?”

  “A stomach pump. I passed warm salty water down your oesophagus into your stomach and siphoned it out again.”

  “That’ll be why my throat hurts.”

  “I think it did the trick.” Benedikt took her pulse. “Your heartrate is steady. Strong. It was touch-and-go, but I think the danger has passed.”

  “Thank you,” Josie said thickly. She wanted to ask about the landline phone next door. Had he managed to get to it? Had he contacted her father? The purpose of her apparent suicide attempt was to cause panic and confusion. While the guards were preoccupied with her, Benedikt could sneak into the other room and quickly make the call. She was desperate to know if he’d succeeded.

  As long as Ginger Walrus was present, however, Benedikt could not tell her. She searched his face for clues, but he was keeping his expression impassive, giving nothing away.

  Drowsiness closed in on her. She felt wrung-out, exhausted. Sleep offered a refuge from pain. Unwilling, but grateful all the same, Josie sank into it.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Kardionisi

  THEY DINED ON a terrace jutting out a hundred metres above the sea. A warm breeze stirred the damask napery and the leaves and flowers of the jasmine trellis that lined the parapet. A crescent moon rose into the dusky sky, seeming to ignite the stars as it passed.

  The wine was a pale Boeotian retsina, nicely chilled, not too coarse or sharp. The food was meze. The conversation was stilted. Hélène did most of the talking, keeping to generic, inoffensive topics: celebrity scandals, property prices, political elections. She played the perfect hostess, making sure her guests were well looked after and wanted for nothing.

  Theo wasn’t even sure why he, Chase and Sasha were still there. By now, they could have got what they’d come for and be sailing back to the mainland. An hour ago he had had not one but both of his main suspects – Evander Arlington and Harry Gottlieb – standing right in front of him, ripe for interrogation. Before he had been able to open his mouth to begin, however, Hélène had butted in. It was getting late. Nearly time to eat. Why didn’t they do this like civilised people? All sit down together and have a meal? There were important matters to discuss, no question, but wouldn’t it go better around a table, with bellies full?

  “An excellent suggestion, my dear,” Arlington had said, stroking his rounded gut like a favoured pet.

  “Hear, hear,” Chase had said. “Don’t know about anyone else, but I could eat a horse. Actually, we were just in Russia, so I probably have.”

  Theo had protested, knowing it was futile. Hélène’s mind was made up, and Helen of Troy always got her way.

  As servants gathered up the dessert course dishes, he laid a hand on the table, firmly enough to make a small thud.

  “Time we addressed the elephant in the room.”

  “Not that we’re in a room,” Chase chipped in.

  Hélène dismissed the servants.

  “So, we’re alone,” she said. “Theo has been itching to get to this point all evening. It’s quite rude of him, how unappreciative he’s been of Evander’s and my xenia. Sitting there all sulky and surly through dinner. But I’m prepared to forgive. Theo, the stage is yours. Speak. These so-called Myrmidons; tell us about them.”

  “I won’t beat around the bush,” Theo said. “Evander, Harry. I’m quite convinced one of you is responsible for the deaths of Aeneas, Orion, Orpheus, Achilles and Heracles.”

  Arlington spluttered. Gottlieb merely pursed his lips.

  “Really!” Arlington said. “That’s why you’re here? You come all this way, you take advantage of my hospitality, just to bandy about wild accusations? How insulting. I knew this was going to be about the killings, but I had no idea you’d be implicating me in them. I’d like to know what you base this – this preposterous allegation on.”

  “Simple. It requires a great deal of money and influence to mount the kind of paramilitary operation we’ve been seeing, to send a top-notch hit squad jetting all over the world. Money and influence are something you both have in abundance. Then there’s the twelve artefacts. Only two people have ever had access to the details of where they were buried: Harry, who did the actual hiding, and you, Evander, the guy he gave a list of the locations to as a failsafe.” Theo shrugged. “Honestly, it’s no more complicated than that. It’s got to be one or other of you. Unless...”

  “Unless what?”

  “The fact that Harry is here, when he told us he had gone to ground, opens up a new possibility. The pair of you have been conspiring together.”

  Gottlieb’s expression remained smugly, aggravatingly enigmatic, while Arlington grew redder in the face. He seemed to swell up in his indignation.

  “You can’t even decide which of us to pin the blame on, so you’re hedging your bets and going for both?” he said. “Why not bring Hélène in on it while you’re about it? Chase too?
And Sasha? Why not embroil all of us in this little paranoid fantasy of yours? I’m absolutely flabbergasted that you have the temerity to speak to me like this, in my house. I should have you thrown out, at the very least, although I can think of far worse fates I’d like to visit on you.”

  “The more you bluster and threaten, the more I think I’m right.”

  Arlington stood, shoving back his chair, bumping the table with his thighs, making the cutlery and glassware jump. “All you have done is insinuate,” he said, jabbing a forefinger at Theo. “Where is the proof? Bring it to me now. Show me, beyond any doubt, why you believe I have organised a campaign of murder against the demigods – against my own brethren.”

  “Other than the logical reasons I’ve just set out, I don’t have anything concrete linking you to the Myrmidons, Evander.”

  “Precisely. It’s all just circumstantial. Conjecture.”

  “But,” Theo continued, “what I would like you to tell me is where you keep the copper cylinders Harry gave you, the ones containing directions for finding the artefacts.”

  Arlington, still standing, narrowed his eyes. He was thinking.

  “Now that you ask, I’m not sure. It’s been ages since I last saw them.”

  “You’re kidding me. Perhaps the most important items you’ve ever had in your possession, and you don’t know where they are?”

  “Do you have any inkling how much stuff I own? How many works of art, pieces of memorabilia, treasures, trinkets?”

  “But the cylinders are none of those things. They’re life or death for us. They’re not something you just leave carelessly lying around. If you really have forgotten where they are, you’re either breathtakingly irresponsible or the biggest fool that ever lived.”

  “And you, sir, are as impertinent as they come!” Arlington thundered.

  “Oh, sit down, Evander,” said Hélène. “Stop beating your chest. Theo isn’t the slightest bit intimidated. We can work this out without slapping our dicks on the table, can’t we?”