The Age Of Zeus

by James Lovegrove

  "I believe you're already getting paid a lot more than that. How heavy are you? Gold's at around a thousand dollars per troy ounce, so if we multiply that by -"

  "Funny," Sam cut in. "My point is, I can't be a part of this, now that I know what 'this' really is. Up 'til now I was glad to be a Titan because I felt we were better than the Olympians. We were everything they weren't - united, noble, morally superior. Turns out that we're not, though. Turns out our boss is as venal and corrupt as any of them."

  "Harsh."

  "A user. An exploiter. Self-interested. Prepared to say anything to get his way. Stop me when the description doesn't fit."

  "Self-interested? And there's no self-interest for you in being a Titan, Sam? Not even punishing the Olympians for the death of your beloved Adrian?"

  A low blow, mentioning Ade, as Landesman well knew. Sam was incensed enough, however, not to feel it strike home. She had a battlesuit of emotion on.

  "Maybe revenge isn't a worthwhile reason after all," she said. "For doing anything. I could lose more chasing after it than I could ever hope to gain. I already feel I'm missing a lot of what used to make me me. I'd like to leave before I completely lose sight of who I am."

  "But who were you, Sam, before? Be honest. Until you came here, you were nobody. Nothing. You were adrift, an empty lifeboat. Being Tethys has given you strength and purpose like you've not known in a long time, and perhaps like you've never known. I've seen that. I look at how you are, and I think back to the woman who came to this island at the beginning of this year, and there's no comparison. It's a tiger next to a cat, a shark next to a minnow. You have become... incredible. No other word for it. And now you just want to pack it all in? Now, when we - when you - have come so far?"

  Oh, it was silver-tongued stuff, but she was not going to be swayed. She was immune to smarm. Impervious to charm.

  "My mind's made up," she said.

  "What about the others?"

  "They're grown-ups. They can make their own decisions. Stay, leave - whatever they choose is up to them and fine by me."

  "But surely they won't want you to go."

  "They can manage without. It's not like I'm team leader now or anything. Cronus runs the ops." She nearly added, "Runs from the ops," but unlike Landesman she wasn't going to stoop to taking cheap shots.

  "Everything may fall apart without you," Landesman pleaded.

  "If it does, it does. Not my responsibility. I'm done."

  She headed for the door.

  "Sam!"

  The Minotaur lowed, echoing the tone of Landesman's cry.

  Outside the refectory she shoulder-butted past Lillicrap and kept on walking.

  PART 2

  ONE MONTH LATER

  52. COLD TURKEY IN KENSAL RISE

  It seemed that she had had a family for a while, briefly. A man who'd shared her bed, a childlike thing that had been dependent on her, partners who'd been like brothers and sisters, even a father figure, self-serving and untrustworthy though he'd turned out to be. It seemed that she had been happy in her life with these quasi-kin, although some of them had died and that had brought a measure of sadness.

  Their home had been an underground warren, the polar opposite of the Olympians' mountaintop eyrie. From the darkness they had emerged to scrap with that other ersatz family and had shown them they were not the apex predators they thought they were. Those weeks of that existence, it had been a grand time. Often terrifying, just as often exhilarating. There had been laughter and despair.

  It had been like living.

  But now it was all over.

  It was definitely all over.

  Kensal Rise was grey and stagnant. Summer kept not quite coming to London. Every day began with a warm morning which never managed to catch alight and blaze. Noon clouds would gather, the sunshine would fade, the air would cool. The Met Office put on a brave face, cheerily promising better weather ahead, but it didn't come and behind the forecasters' grins there was desperation and disappointment. They took it personally. They wished they could do better. Like the national cricket team, currently getting trounced in the Ashes. Like Catesby Bartlett's government, already starting to renege on last year's election promises. Letting the country down.

  As if any of these things were surprises.

  Sam, in a desultory fashion, busied herself. The house, neglected and unoccupied since January, needed spring cleaning and sprucing up. The neighbours hadn't kept an eye on the back garden as they'd agreed to, so it was now a mass of weeds and parched unwatered plants and the shaggy lawn was dotted with half a ton, give or take, of fox excrement. She was out there every morning with hoe and rake and rubber gloves, restoring life and order and hygiene. She read books. She watched too much daytime TV, "too much" meaning "any." She trudged along to the shops on Chamberlayne Road and trudged back again with just enough groceries for today and tomorrow. On several occasions she picked up her mobile and speed-dialled DI Prothero's private line, only to stop before the number reached its last digit. Once, she got as far as listening to the dial tone trill twice, before hitting Disconnect. She wouldn't have minded hearing his voice, even if it had only been his voicemail message. Those roundly singsong Swansea syllables that conveyed a lilt of warmth, however chilly the message of the words they comprised. She missed it. Missed him. Prothero, however, she was sure, had moved on. She doubted he ever even thought about his one-time protégée now. He had a new DS, someone else to chide and coax and mould. She was on her own. As she had been before. As, perhaps, she had always been.

  She watched the news. Of course she did. Assiduously, religiously. BBC Breakfast, the ITN lunchtime bulletin, Channel 4 News in the evening. Like a monk observing matins, sext and vespers.

  Nothing.

  Nothing about the Titans.

  The Olympians were keeping quiet too. There would the odd sighting of one of them every now and then. Hephaestus, say, visiting an Athens scrapheap to gather car parts and other metal detritus, for reasons he wouldn't divulge; Artemis fulfilling a longstanding commitment to attend the ceremony announcing the winner of the bid to hold the next Olympic Games (this time round, as it happened, the lucky bidder was the New Democratic People's Republic of North Korea). Other than that, they maintained a low profile, and some observers commented and other commentators observed that with Hermes still missing in action the Olympians were getting out and about much less. Not for them any more the luxury of instantaneous teleportational travel to any point on the globe. Instead, the slight indignity of flights on private chartered aircraft, although at least they were always waved straight through at customs and never asked to present passports or visas. They were Olympians. Who was going to query their travel credentials?

  The Japanese navy, such as it was, completed its exercises in the Med. As Landesman had predicted, all five ships travelled far up into the Aegean to the Thermaikos Gulf, bringing them within spitting distance of Olympus. A well-aimed missile from the Takanami-class destroyer the JDS Inazuma Maru could have reached the Pantheonic stronghold some 20-odd kilometres inland, not that the weapon would have been permitted to complete its journey had it been fired. After sailing in circles for several days without getting sunk, the fleet turned for home with everyone on board, from admiral to lowliest rating, astonished and delighted to still be alive. The Greek navy - one frigate, the HS Plataia - played escort down through the Cyclades, politely but pointedly showing the Japanese the way out.

  At the newsagent's on the corner, Sam's eye was caught by a headline one morning. It was on the front cover of the Daily Mail, a paper that liked to take an occasional libertarian poke at the Pantheon when it was feeling brave.

  CHASTENED?

  The headline ran, in 40-point capitals, above a library photo of Zeus looking curmudgeonly and disgruntled. Against all her better judgement Sam bought a copy, but the article turned out to be nothing more than a few paragraphs insinuating that the Olympians might be a little cheesed off about losing their monsters
, Hercules, and Hermes. All of it was furtively and carefully worded so that there was no reasonable way anybody could take offence. The copy got no further from the newsagent's than the litter bin on the pavement outside.

  She was bored, she had to admit it. Day merged into day and nothing much changed. As her time as a Titan receded further into memory, she found it harder and harder to believe that she had wielded guns, punched through walls, run at extraordinary speeds, and stood face-to-fang with nightmarish creatures and expunged them from the world. But if that all seemed so dreamlike and unreal now, how come ordinary life wasn't acceptable? Why was everything drab and pointless here in Kensal Rise? Why, having been Tethys, was it so difficult to go back to being just plain Sam?

  A phrase came to mind: cold turkey.

  She'd been on a wild, dizzying trip. She'd come back down to earth with a bump.

  It had been her choice to end it, though. She had to keep remembering that. No one had forced her out. She'd taken that step entirely on her own and, indeed, against everyone else's wishes.

  And so, like a habit-kicking junkie, a reformed alcoholic, she was having to learn not to look too far ahead or expect too much, to take each day as it came.

  Until the day they came.

  Ramsay and Mahmoud.

  53. DRIFTING SHIPS

  She was making lunch - chicken salad - when they appeared on her doorstep.

  "Dead posh round here, isn't it?" was the first thing Mahmoud said when Sam opened the door.

  Sam immediately went on the defensive. "Didn't use to be. Past ten years, we've been getting the overspill from Notting Hill and Ladbroke Grove. People priced out of the market there but still wanting to be close to all the trendiness. All the bloody celebs as well. When I was young, Kensal Rise was famous for was murders and Irish navvies. Now it's all gastropubs and organic greengrocers. I keep meaning to sell up and move." She avoided meeting Ramsay's gaze. "So, to what do I owe the pleasure?"

  "Oh come on," said Mahmoud. "Isn't it nice to see us? It's nice to see you."

  "Did Landesman send you?"

  Ramsay snorted. "Nope."

  Sam relented, a little. "Then it is nice to see you. Come on in."

  She made lunch for them too. Mahmoud explained that they had come entirely off their own bat. Landesman didn't even know they were here. In fact, not having Sam's address, and not wanting to ask Landesman or Lillicrap for it, Mahmoud had had to ring an old friend on the force and ask him to look it up for her on the internal police database.

  "Mr Landesman thinks I'm just taking Rick sightseeing for a couple of days."

  "Shucks, I just lurve your quaint li'l ole country, ma'am," said Ramsay.

  "He must suspect something, though," Sam said.

  "Well, if he does, so?" said Mahmoud. "Sam, I won't beat around the bush. We want you back. Please. It's not been going all that brilliantly without you, duck. Not to put any pressure on you or anything, but... No, I will put pressure on you. Frankly, it's been crap at Bleaney lately."

  "What's happened? What have you been up to, mission-wise?"

  "Zip," said Ramsay. "And that's just the problem. We've been sitting spinning our wheels. Getting on one another's nerves, and worse. Kayla and Thérèse - Christ, we've had to separate those two a coupla times. Going at it like cat and dog. Once they nearly came to blows, and believe me, angry like they were, I did not much want to have to step between them and break it up."

  "Kayla's been starting it," said Mahmoud.

  "Yeah, but Thérèse ain't exactly been turning the other cheek. The least thing can set them off. And then there's Dez."

  "Dez has been..." Mahmoud mimed tipping a bottle to her lips. "A lot. Upset about Anders, but also just bored. We've been hiding the booze, and confiscating his own stash of it when he's not looking, but he always seems to be able to get his paws on more. Cadges off the techs, we think, or maybe bribes Captain Fuller to bring him some over from the mainland. Every night he's sloshed, every morning he's in agony from a hangover. Neither's pretty."

  "Why no ops?" Sam asked.

  "Landesman," said Ramsay. "Says leave it be for now."

  "But he was all about keeping the momentum going."

  "Was. Now? My guess is he's lost his nerve. New York, then you, and all that stuff about his son. Not that he shows it, but he's rattled as all hell."

  "And the Minotaur? Is it OK?"

  "Pining," said Mahmoud. "Sits in his pen, eats just enough to keep going, but he looks so sad all the time. Bereft. He tolerates me feeding him, but he'd rather it was you."

  "It's a he now?"

  "I'm kind of fond of him. And with privates like those - I mean, how can he not be a he?"

  "Ah, they're not so impressive," Ramsay quipped. "I've seen bigger. In the shower this morning, as a matter of fact."

  "Oh?" said Sam. "So who were you sharing the shower cubicle with?"

  "Oof! The Akehurst slam dunks another one!"

  Sam did not smile. "Nobody else quit? It was just me?"

  "You upset about that?"

  "No. I just thought, once you all knew who Zeus really is and why Landesman wants to topple the Olympians so badly..."

  "...we'd turn our noses up and walk away?" said Mahmoud. "I can't say the idea never crossed my mind. But having sat and thought about it, I decided Landesman's motives aren't so different from my own. It'd be hypocritical for me to pull out just because he turns out to have a personal involvement in the campaign too."

  "Also, he upped our pay," Ramsay said, "and I'm sorry but I don't have your high standards when it comes to money, Sam." His quick glance round her modest but well-fitted kitchen was a kind of footnote: We don't all have terraced houses in central London with no mortgage.

  "Fred did almost bail," Mahmoud added. "He was in two minds for a while, but then he said something like, 'Leaving won't change anything. Staying, I can still do some good.' I think, like the rest of us, he hasn't got a lot to go back to. Bleaney's as much home to him as anywhere."

  "Landesman hired himself a bunch of drifting ships," said Ramsay, "and gave us fuel for our tanks. Whatever his flaws, whatever kind of a man he really is, we owe him for that. Myself, I still want to see this thing through to the end. I couldn't stand to leave the job half finished. That'd be harder for me than pulling out. I respect what you did, Sam, and I know you did it 'cause you felt you had to. But I'm here - we're both here - to ask you to reconsider. As a friend," he said, "and I think we are friends if nothing else, I'm asking you to get back with us and give Titanomachy II a kick-start to get it going again."

  "You seriously think Landesman will have me back?" Sam said. "After the way I dealt with him?"

  "I seriously think he doesn't have a choice. He's waiting for you. That's why nothing's happening. He knows the Titans aren't half as good without you. We could try but it wouldn't be the same, and it'd probably only lead to another New York. He'll swallow his pride if you come back, I know he will. He's a pragmatic man. One eye on the bigger picture and all that."

  "What if I can't swallow my pride?"

  "You don't have to. Just come waltzing in to base, swagger around a bit, make as if you own the place - you'll get a hero's welcome, and no one'll even mention about you being gone, they'll just be so damn glad to have you there again and to have things return to normal."

  "No."

  "That's it? Your final answer?"

  "You wouldn't like to phone a friend?" said Mahmoud. "Ask the audience?"

  "Zaina, I can't carry on working for a man without conscience or scruples - a man who's planning on killing his own son, for God's sake!"

  Ramsay had had enough. "This is not the time to come over all pious!" he snapped. "We Titans are the best - the only - chance mankind has got against the Olympians. And thanks to you, we're about to blow that chance for good."

  Mahmoud shot him a look. "What Rick is trying to say is we appear to have them on the back foot still. Plus, we've got global goodwill behind us. Everyo
ne wants us to win, and we can, the eight of us, still. Especially with Hermes out of the running, no pun intended. The eight of us, including you. It's still not too late."

  Sam knew what lay behind Ramsay's outburst. He was hurt by how easily she'd been able to leave Bleaney, how casually she'd been able to turn her back on them, the two of them, as an item. It was clear he hadn't managed to compartmentalise the way she had. She felt sorry. Guilty, too, which suggested that her own compartmentalisation hadn't been entirely successful.

  "Look," she said, "I've no wish to fall out over this. I just don't believe in Titanomachy II any more. I don't believe in what we were doing, because we were doing it for all the wrong reasons. We were misled from the start. We were even misled into thinking that revenge would make us feel better. Does it? Has it, Rick? Now that the Lamia is dead, is your life complete? Are you calm at heart? Has your pain over Ethan gone?"

  "It ain't any worse," he mumbled.

  "If we've managed to give the Olympians a bloody nose," Sam went on, "and if, as a result, they're going to behave more leniently, as they seem to be doing right now, then maybe we've done all we can and all we needed to. We've restrained them. Under the circumstances, I'd call that a win."

  "I can't believe you're saying that. You're no better than your prime minister."

  "There's no call for insults. I'm only making the point, Rick, that killing all the Olympians, even if we could, isn't going to help us and might not help anyone else either."

  "All right then," said Mahmoud, nodding. "We go to Plan B."

  "And what's Plan B? Clonk me on the head and drag me back to Bleaney kicking and screaming?"

  "Nope," said Ramsay. "From what you've just been saying, I reckon Plan B might be right up your alley."

  54. THE LOTUS EATERS

  The black cab dropped them off in the southern part of Mayfair, between Piccadilly and Pall Mall, outside a Georgian building with a discreet brass plaque that read The Hellenium - Members Only. A white-gloved doorman greeted them with a tip of his top hat, polite because they looked the part. Ramsay wore a Savile Row suit and hand-stitched shoes. Sam and Mahmoud were in Donna Karan evening gowns cut in the fashionable Doric chiton style and accessorised with Louboutin ribbon sandals and Givenchy clutch bags. To the casual passer-by they certainly were dressed like people who would belong to a club like the Hellenium, or at any rate be friends with someone who did.