Age of Legends

by James Lovegrove

  Her hand roved down the ridge of his abdominals.

  “Is it too soon?” she said.

  “Have a look. I think you’ll find the answer’s no.”

  “Oh good,” said Harriet. “Because, now that I think about it, I reckon you have been neglectful in your work. You haven’t been covering my rear.”

  “And what kind of bodyguard would I be if I didn’t guard your entire body?” said Wynne, turning her over.

  MEANWHILE, RECORDING OF the interview was under way.

  “Derek,” said Tatjana Bazanova, “you have described yourself as ‘a pretty ordinary bloke’. Did I say that right? My English is not so good, and my accent…”

  “Tatjana, your English is perfect, and your accent exquisite. And to answer your question, I think I am a pretty ordinary bloke. I may be the prime minister of Great Britain, with all the baggage that comes with that, but at heart I’m still just good old Derek, the type of chap, if you met me in the street, you’d think, ‘He’s okay. He looks like someone I could have a natter and get along with.’”

  “You went to a private school. Not everybody in the UK does. That is not ‘ordinary’.”

  “True, true, but a very minor private school, and my parents scrimped and saved to send me there. You understand that expression? Scrimped and saved?”

  “I know this phrase, yes.”

  “And after school, I went straight into a job. Didn’t go to university, get a degree, any of that. Started working in the City, and pulled myself up through the sweat of my brow. By twenty-five I was running my own hedge fund. By thirty I was a millionaire several times over. All my own work. Nobody helped me. That’s the kind of can-do attitude I have. My net worth is a lot higher than that now, by the way.”

  “You are a Christian.”

  “Very much so. Regular churchgoer and proud of it.”

  “Can you make so much money and have Christian values?”

  “Don’t see why not,” said Drake. “I have been as ethical in my business dealings as is humanly possible.”

  “But Jesus and the bankers in the temple…”

  “The money lenders. And put it this way: if God hadn’t wanted me to prosper the way I have, He’d have made me a pauper.”

  “Let us turn to your rise to power, then. Our viewers at home in Russia will be very interested in this. You had a moment of, how do you say? Clarity?”

  “Well put,” said Drake. “One might even call it a Damascene conversion. I was in a helicopter crash, as you probably are aware.”

  “I know. I have seen the footage of the wreck. You were lucky to survive.”

  “I was. Oh so lucky. My Bell 407 came down as we were flying back from Spain. We were over the Channel, literally just in sight of the English coast, when there was an engine malfunction. Sudden, catastrophic. The pilot, Captain John Unsworth, did his best. Brave man, he fought to keep us airborne as long as he could. Got us over land, so we didn’t come down in the sea. We’d probably have drowned otherwise. Got us past Portsmouth, so we didn’t hit any buildings. Brought us down in a cornfield. Hell of a landing, it was. I don’t honestly remember much about it. I remember the rotors screaming. I remember warning lights flashing and a computer voice saying, ‘Warning: excessive rate of descent’, over and over. I remember the chopper being shaken around like a baby’s rattle. I remember an almighty, thunderous thump as we hit the ground. After that, it’s all a blank.”

  Drake shrugged, as though the accident was in the past, no big deal, he had moved on; but he allowed himself a tiny wince of distress, so that anyone watching would know it was not the sort of thing a man ever quite got over. It was never a bad idea to show a hint of vulnerability, to let people think they were peeking through a chink in the armour to the person beneath.

  “You survived,” Tatjana said.

  “I did. Captain Unsworth, God rest his soul, did not. Neither did my long-time friend and adviser Emrys Sage, who was a passenger with me. Somehow, by some miracle, I was the only one of the three of us who wasn’t killed instantly, and even then it was touch-and-go for a while. I was in a coma, near dead for several hours, and the doctors weren’t sure I would pull through. But I did, I did, and that’s wonderful because, if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have had the honour and the pleasure of being interviewed by you right now, Tatjana.”

  She blushed fetchingly, tossing her hair. Drake liked a woman who could take a compliment.

  “You say the crash helped you come to the decision to go into politics,” she said. “Is that so?”

  “It was a wake-up call,” Drake said. “In the aftermath I kept asking myself, ‘Derek, what do you want to do with the rest of your life? Do you want to carry on making vast sums of money? Is that all there is? Or would you like to channel that drive of yours, that ambition, that enormous reserve of get-up-and-go, into helping others?’ Our country was in a right old state just then. An absolute shambles. I could see it all around me. People so unhappy, so disgruntled and resentful. Nothing functioning as it should. Public transport, healthcare, welfare, schools, the criminal justice system, all overburdened and on the brink of collapse. Too many workers, not enough jobs. And foreigners––so many foreigners over here who had no right to be here, causing trouble, putting a strain on the fabric of society, not to mention committing acts of violence. Terrible, terrible violence. You have no idea. Or perhaps you do. Your homeland has had its dark times in the past.”

  “It has,” Tatjana agreed.

  “In fact, it was seeing the Russian economy fall apart in the wake of the Soviet Union collapsing, and what it took to pull it back together, which inspired me. Strong leadership. That was the answer.”

  “That has always been Russia’s answer to its problems.”

  “Yes! And we didn’t have strong leaders in Britain at the time. We had pathetic, snivelling brats who were completely incapable of making a decision, not a statesman among them. Someone had to take the bull by the horns. That’s another of our British sayings, ‘take the bull by the horns’. It means––”

  “Yes, to do a difficult thing, even though it is a risk to yourself.”

  “Exactly. And I said to myself, ‘I like how the people in charge of Russia do business. I like how they’re focused and don’t let sentiment or finer feelings stand in the way of getting the job done. I want a leader like that for this country. I want to be that leader.’ Then, of course, we had the atrocities.”

  “The Summer of Terror,” said Tatjana.

  “So they call it. We’d had attacks in public spaces before. People running rampant with knives. People driving vans into crowds. People blowing themselves up in busy streets. And always there’d been this sense of, ‘Well, that was bad, but it’s a rarity, an isolated incident, it won’t happen again, it won’t happen to me.’ But this time it was constant. One horror after another, on a seemingly daily basis. The death toll inexorably rising. And all these politicians wringing their hands and saying something should be done, but no one doing anything! It was our country’s hour of need, and our leaders were failing us!”

  Drake gritted his teeth and pumped his fist. His voice had dropped to a growl. Here was righteous Derek Drake. Forceful Derek Drake. Man of power.

  “Enough is enough,” Drake said. “That’s what I thought. That’s what I said while campaigning. We couldn’t have these outsiders taking diabolical liberties. We all knew who they were, and it seemed to me the easiest way of dealing with them was simply to get rid of them. Them and anyone like them. Send them packing. And if the human rights lawyers should object, and the carpers should carp, and the liberals should whinge, so be it. Let them. That was my policy, and I’m glad to say it’s what got me appointed as an independent constituency MP in a local by-election and what swept my Resurrection Party into power a year later in a landslide victory, with me at the forefront.”

  “A landslide of populism.”

  “You say populism, Tatjana, I say popularity.”

  “
Derek, is the country better for having you in charge?”

  “Of course it is.” Drake snorted as though he had never heard anything so preposterous. “We are a leaner, fitter Britain now. We have carved away the dead wood. We have shed the undesirable elements who were weighing us down. We have cast off the shackles of excessive, overprotective external legislation that were holding us back. Things work the way they used to, and that’s good.”

  “Do they? Some would say Britain is no longer a player. Your economy is suffering due to lack of external investment. Multinationals have pulled out, taking their business elsewhere. Your GDP is down, so is your trade surplus, while inflation is rising and the pound is at an all-time low. Shops do not stock enough food. Doctors and teachers struggle with antiquated equipment and too little funding. The trains do not even run on time.”

  Ah, thought Drake. The old butter-them-up-then-stick-the-boot-in tactic. Inevitable.

  The best response was always to go on the offensive.

  “Where are your figures?” he said, leaning a little closer to her. “Where are you getting these facts from? It’s all very well you sitting there and spouting this sort of stuff, but without hard data, it’s just so much hot air. I, on the other hand, have reliable statistics that prove Britain is a happier, wealthier, healthier place than ever it was. I could recite them all, but instead I’ll ask this simple question. If it wasn’t, would I be here, in Number Ten, talking to you? No. This being still a democracy, I would have been hounded out of office by now. Whereas I was recently re-elected with, once again, a substantial parliamentary majority.”

  “It has been suggested by some international observers that the election was not free and fair. Some citizens were turned away at the voting places. The––what is the name for them?––the ballot boxes, they were filled with false votes.”

  “Tatjana, Tatjana, it shames you to repeat these lies. Would you do that in Russia? No, you would not. As a great man once said, ‘The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.’ The votes were counted, and counted accurately. The voting was a fair reflection of the electorate’s will. That is the truth.”

  LATER, WHEN IT was over, Tatjana asked Drake if he would give her a private tour of the premises. Drake was only too happy to oblige.

  “You do not stay here, do you?” she said as he escorted her upstairs.

  “Not if I can help it. I prefer my own house out in the country.”

  “Not Chequers? Or your castle in Somerset?”

  “No. Charrington Grange is larger and much nicer. Fairleigh Castle is a little too far from London, and I find Chequers a fairly grim place. And there’s too much history there. All those previous prime ministers who’ve passed through those halls. No sense of permanence. Look, Tatjana, I feel I should apologise.”

  “What for?”

  “I got a little testy towards the end of the interview, and I shouldn’t have. I’m a passionate man, that’s all. Passionate about this country, and I get cross with people when they try to talk it down. I realise you have a job to do––and you do it, if I may say, very well––but some of your questions rather pushed my buttons. I hope you aren’t offended.”

  “Not at all,” said Tatjana. “To quote from Stalin, though… How bold.”

  “Thought it might play well with the viewers at home.”

  “It very well might. Where is the bedroom?”

  He showed her to the master suite, where she immediately set down her Louis Vuitton handbag on a side-table and began disrobing. Drake had anticipated this outcome but hadn’t thought it would occur quite so quickly and easily. He’d been expecting at least a little more flirtation beforehand. Perhaps even dinner at a restaurant. But she seemed keen to get down to business.

  “A gift,” Tatjana said, stretching out on the bed in her black, lacy lingerie. “From our leader to you. In admiration.”

  “The feeling is mutual,” Drake said, undoing his tie.

  Within moments he was hilt-deep inside her and thrusting. She was eager, or at any rate good at feigning it. The distinction didn’t matter to him.

  He rammed like a sword into a scabbard, over and over.

  The hard man of British politics.

  Hardest of the hard.

  Chapter 7

  AJIA AND SMITH headed west, leaving London. Smith had scrounged up some fresh clothing for her out of a recycling bin. None of it fitted, and the Justin Bieber T-shirt was mortifying, not least because she used to be a fan, back when she was too young to know better. The trainers were pretty decent, however, and she wasn’t going around in bloodstained biking gear any more, meaning she looked a whole lot more anonymous. So, overall, a win.

  They avoided main roads. Ajia had proposed the idea, and Smith agreed it was a good one. He himself was often harassed by the police, he said, and occasionally abused by civilians who would call him a layabout, a sponging bastard and, on account of his skin colour, a lot worse. There were other hazards as well, he added, although he did not specify what.

  “As a general rule, the fewer people we encounter,” he said, “the better.”

  Ajia had questions. Some of them were for Smith, but some of them were questions for herself. Such as: Why am I doing this? Why am I with this man I hardly know? Why am I accompanying him to God-knows-where when, if I had any sense, I should be running like fuck in the opposite direction? Why do I trust him?

  Because he had healed her. That was one answer. Unless it had been someone else who’d fixed up her bullet wound and Smith was lying about it, but he didn’t appear to be.

  He had fed her, too, and he had saved her from Rich. And, what’s more, he was kind. Yes, there was that incident with the frying pan, but he had done it to make a point, that was all. No harm done. In general Ajia wasn’t getting any sort of rapey-creepy vibe from him. In fact, she rather liked him.

  He seemed to know what was happening. That was another reason. Everything Smith had been saying made a wacky kind of sense. Especially that stuff about her speed. Ajia remembered how she had stopped running when she was in Willesden and had wondered how she could have got there from Hackney in record time. She’d thought she had simply got it wrong; she hadn’t been in Hackney at all. But what if she had? And it wasn’t even as if Hackney had been her starting point. The industrial zone where the policemen had tried to kill her lay further east. At a rough estimate, she had travelled thirteen miles in ten minutes. Which worked out at 78 mph.

  No one could run that fast.

  Nor could anyone come back from the dead.

  Yet both things were apparently true of her.

  They were walking beside a canal, along a towpath overgrown with buddleia and brambles, when Ajia said, “Smith, if I did die––and believe me, it’s still a honking great if––might the fact that I can now move super fast have something to do with that?”

  “It might,” Smith replied.

  “How?”

  “The man we are going to meet will explain. I could paraphrase him, but it’s better if you get it straight from the horse’s mouth, as it were. He can articulate it far more neatly than I.”

  “Come on, give me a hint. Spoil the surprise.”

  “Really, you’ll have to ask him.”

  “Okay, so who’s Wayland the Smith? You called yourself that yesterday when you were putting that chair back together. I thought it was ‘just Smith’.”

  Smith shrugged. “Smith is both name and job description. I prefer it. ‘Wayland the Smith’ is too formal-sounding, too ostentatious. But if you must know, Wayland the Smith is a character from folklore. Icelandic folklore originally, but he was adopted into Britain’s. He was an elven prince.”

  “An elven prince? Like Legolas?”

  Smith frowned.

  “Legolas,” she said. “From Lord of the Rings.”

  “I know who you’re referring to,” Smith said. “But you’re confusing fiction and folklore, good fellow. Fiction
is a mere trickling stream. Folklore is a river that runs much deeper, with more powerful currents. It is an artery in the nation’s body. It holds the lifeblood. The Lord of the Rings is a story. Folklore is truth.”

  “Huh. Okay. So what did he do, this Wayland the Smith? What was his thing?”

  “He was a goldsmith of unparalleled skill. One time, a king hired him, promising him his daughter’s hand in marriage as the fee. The king reneged on the deal. He cut Wayland’s hamstrings, to hobble him, so that he could not go anywhere, he could work only for the king at the palace smithy.”

  “Nice.”

  “Wayland got his own back. The king’s sons wanted him to make weapons for them. Wayland killed the boys and made drinking vessels out of their skulls, which he gave to the king as a gift.”

  “Even nicer.”

  “Then he built himself some mechanical wings and flew away.”

  “And this guy was you?”

  “No. I am an incarnation of him.”

  “Okay. Got it. In that case, who am I an incarnation of?”

  “I have been telling you all this time,” said Smith. “Good fellow.”

  “No, you’ve been calling me that, but that isn’t telling me anything.”

  “That is who you are: Goodfellow. Robin Goodfellow.”

  Robin Goodfellow. The name was familiar to Ajia. Where did she know it from?

  Then she remembered. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The character, Puck, was also known by the name Robin Goodfellow. She even recalled a line addressed to Puck, in which he was referred to as “that shrewd and knavish sprite called Robin Goodfellow”.

  “I’m… Puck?”

  Smith nodded. “The penny drops.”

  Ajia recalled another line from the play. “The same Puck who could ‘put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes’?”

  “You know your Shakespeare.”

  “Not really, but we did Midsummer Night’s Dream for GCSE English. So I’m some sort of speed-demon fairy?”

  “You have Puck’s facility for moving faster than is humanly possible.”