Age of Legends

by James Lovegrove

  “I must admit, I didn’t realise you had my private number.”

  “You don’t recall giving it to me at Davos last year? Well, perhaps not, but my foreign intelligence service is very efficient.”

  “I imagine so. To what do I owe the honour, Vasily Vasilyevich?” Drake used Vasilyev’s given name and patronymic of out both politeness and deference. He considered the Russian a friend but was less certain if the two of them were equals.

  “Can the leaders of great nations not pick up the phone and call one another when the mood takes them?”

  “Don’t see why not.”

  “And Britain, now, she does not have so many comrades, does she?” Vasilyev said. “The old relationships have failed her and she has had to form new ones.”

  This was a truth that could not be denied. Drake’s domestic policies had proven unpalatable to the countries Britain had once been able to count on for support. Shunned on all sides by former allies, even by longstanding pal America, Britain’s only option had been to turn to states it had previously dealt with only at arm’s length and with a certain amount of nose-holding, states whose regimes had an elastic approach to democracy and whose human rights records were, to put it mildly, questionable. Russia was foremost among them. If anything, Russia was now Britain’s staunchest affiliate. Tariff-exempt trade flowed between the two, their militaries undertook joint training exercises, and in UN Security Council decisions, the UK’s representative was apt to vote whichever way his Russian counterpart voted.

  “Relationships,” Vasilyev continued, “which she would do well to cultivate, no?”

  “Is that what this is?” said Drake. Vasilyev was a shrewd operator, and Drake knew he should tread with caution. “Relationship cultivation?”

  “Yes. Why not? Of course, above all else I am keen to congratulate you on your television interview. It has gone down very well over here.”

  “Thank you. You’ll note I said nice things about you.”

  “About Russian leaders in general.”

  “Surely the subtext was apparent.”

  “And Ms Bazanova, she sang your praises.”

  “Did she?” said Drake, recalling the lubricious journalist. He glanced towards the glass partition which separated him from the Paladin driving the limousine. It was not only tinted but soundproofed. Nonetheless he lowered his voice somewhat. “Well, she was… a nice surprise. It was a pleasure making her acquaintance.”

  “I have no doubt.”

  “I wish I could reciprocate one day, but I’m not sure I could find a television presenter here quite so accommodating.”

  “I understand,” said Vasilyev. “The British woman does not have quite the same grasp of what is meant by service to the motherland as the Russian woman does. It can’t be denied that you have, Derek, something of a way with the ladies. At Davos, you and that hostess. Remember?”

  “How did you…? No, never mind.” My foreign intelligence service is very efficient. In other words: I have spies everywhere.

  “And then the waitress at the G7 summit.”

  A bitter occasion, that summit. The other nations in the group had voted unanimously to strip the UK of its membership of their elite club, and at the same time had reinstated Russia in its place. The waitress had been a consolation prize from Drake to himself but also an act of defiance, a way of mitigating the humiliation he’d felt.

  “At least with Ms Bazanova there will be no need to pay her for her silence,” Vasilyev went on. “You can rest assured on that front.”

  “Never crossed my mind,” Drake said. “I imagine she has been amply rewarded for her work by you.”

  “Yet there is still, as so often, a price to be paid.”

  “I’m not sure I follow.”

  “How is Mrs Drake?” Was this a change of subject? “Such a remarkable-looking woman. My Viktoriya, though much the same age, cannot compare. Dumpy as a pig, is Viktoriya, whereas your Harriet––exquisite, still. And yet she is clearly not enough for you.”

  It sounded like locker-room banter, and Drake decided to treat it as such. “Well, you know how it is, Vasily Vasilyevich. The comforts of a home game versus the excitement of an away fixture. One can enjoy both.”

  “Quite so. You may expect a text from me shortly, with an attachment. Goodbye, Derek.”

  Vasilyev hung up before Drake had a chance to respond. Rather rude, but then Russians weren’t renowned for their manners.

  For two minutes Drake waited, curious to know what the attachment Vasilyev had referred to might be. Perhaps a picture of Viktoriya Vasilyeva, to remind Drake of her porcine charms? Or maybe it was some silly gif or a cat video. Even leaders of superpowers weren’t above sending one another such nonsenses.

  He felt a vague apprehension but could not quite put a finger on why.

  At last his inbox pinged. The text came from the same number as the call, unrecognised by his contacts directory and prefixed with the international dialling code for Russia.

  It said, simply, “Just a taster. Best wishes to yourself and Mrs Drake.” Attached to it was a 500kb jpeg, around thirty seconds of video footage. Drake opened the file.

  He stared at his phone screen, first with perplexity, then with mounting dismay.

  Drake’s extramarital flings, of which he’d had several since becoming prime minister, had often been tawdry but they had never been cheap. He’d always offered sizeable amounts in hush money, with the implicit threat that if a six-figure sum didn’t suffice, then the woman was too greedy for her own good and her avarice would come round to bite her. It was a good thing he was a very rich man, and so far the bribes had been effective.

  This, now, was something else. Something new. This was a predicament he could not spent his way out of.

  The clip showed him and Tatjana Bazanova in the Downing Street master bedroom. The quality was poor––the image grainy, the lighting murky––but there was no mistaking what was going on or who the participants were.

  He remembered Tatjana’s Louis Vuitton handbag and the way she had placed it on a side-table. She had, now that he thought about it, been oddly fastidious with regard to its positioning. And no wonder. She’d had to get just the right angle for the camera concealed in it. The camera which would have recorded their tryst in its entirety, from its brisk beginning to its frenetic, thrashing, taking-the-Lord’s-name-in-vain climax.

  He watched the clip a second time, remarking on the fact that Tatjana’s facial expressions did not really match the enthusiastic noises she was making. He hadn’t noticed this at the time.

  Then he called Vasilyev back.

  Somehow he was not surprised to discover that the number had been disconnected.

  So, the bastard wanted to play games, did he?

  But Drake knew there was more to it than that. This wasn’t a joke. This was blackmail, pure and simple. The famous Russian kompromat. President Vasily Vasilyevich Vasilyev now had absolute power over him. He could use the video as leverage to ensure Drake did his bidding at all times. He was the puppetmaster and Drake the marionette.

  Or so he thought.

  Drake, however, was determined to remedy the situation, maybe even turn it around to his advantage. All he had to do was think.

  The queasy, tightening sensation in his stomach, however, made it very difficult to think––and very easy to panic.

  Chapter 14

  THE PLAN WAS to drive through the night, but that was scuppered by the weather. The rain went from merely heavy to downright torrential, beyond the power of the Land Rover’s disproportionately small windscreen wipers to cope with. Mr LeRoy grew more and more fretful at the wheel. “Can’t see a damn thing,” he complained several times. “Especially with half the windscreen covered up with metal.”

  Nor was he sure whether they were going in the right direction. Signposts on those Dorset country lanes were few and far between, and whichever way Mr Le Roy turned, the car seemed to be getting no nearer a major road. In the end
he was forced to admit that he was lost.

  “Fuel situation is looking a bit unhappy, too,” he said, tapping the gauge. “Do you know what? I reckon we should find somewhere to park and carry on at first light.”

  He diverted down a track that meandered through woodland, drawing to a halt in a densely forested section. When he killed the engine, the sound of the rain battering down on the Land Rover’s roof rushed to fill the vacuum, so loud it was almost deafening.

  The three of them––Ajia, Smith, Mr LeRoy––sat there in the dark, each lost in morose thought. In time, Smith dozed off, snoring softly. Ajia was so wired, she didn’t think she would ever sleep again. She crawled forward into the passenger seat next to Mr LeRoy.

  “I’m sorry about Perry,” she said. She was well aware how paltry such commiserations sounded. She had heard enough of them in the wake of her father’s death. They might be sincerely meant but they were also, to the bereaved, virtually meaningless.

  Mr LeRoy grunted something resembling a thank-you.

  “I was wondering,” she went on. “There’s something I don’t understand.”

  “And what is that?”

  “About what happened to me, to all of us. We were brought back from the dead, right? All of us, the eidolons, the brownies and boggarts and elves. So…”

  Mr LeRoy anticipated her question. “So why doesn’t whatever is behind our resurrection simply bring us back to life when we die again?” His voice caught. “Why doesn’t the power bring Perry back?”

  Ajia nodded, watching Mr LeRoy as he shook his head, mystified.

  “That is something that has sorely vexed me over the months, girl. We had one or two deaths at Summer Land, accidents involving the boggarts, and the first time one happened… Well, I wondered the same thing.” He shrugged his his great shoulders. “But the dead remained dead, so I could only surmise that whatever is responsible for what is happening has limited… powers, let’s say. And can only bring the dead back to life the once.”

  Ajia nodded. “I see.”

  He smiled at her. “So don’t go thinking that you’re invincible. Life is precious, so take care.”

  “I’ll do that, Mr LeRoy.”

  She fell silent, but a little later said, “I’m sorry about Summer Land too. For what it’s worth, I haven’t felt as at home anywhere in a long time as I did there.”

  “You’re kind to say such things, Puck,” said Mr LeRoy, absently patting her arm. “I mean Ajia. I mustn’t forget. Not Puck. Ajia. Although,” he added, “Smith gets to call you Goodfellow, doesn’t he?”

  “I’ve asked him not to but it seems, with him, it’s too late to change,” Ajia said. “Maybe, I don’t know, some of the others got away.” The remark carried far more hope than conviction.

  “It would be nice to think so, but the Paladins seemed rather too thorough for that.”

  Ajia, recalling how Paladins had lined up and shot that group of pixies, nodded grimly. Who could do such a thing? Who could do it, moreover, to people who resembled children? What kind of cast-iron callousness did that take?

  She glanced round at Smith, who’d prevented her exacting revenge on the pixies’ killers. In hindsight, he had been right to do so. She might otherwise be dead herself. She almost certainly wouldn’t be in this car now, miles clear of the site of the massacre. Yet she still seethed inwardly at her own inaction.

  “What is it with Smith?” she asked Mr LeRoy.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He won’t kill. He won’t hurt anyone, even in self-defence. Is it because Wayland the Smith was a murderer? Because I’m not convinced by that.”

  “Is that what he said? That his pacifism is connected to the original Wayland the Smith’s behaviour?”

  “Well, not in so many words…”

  “It isn’t,” Mr LeRoy said. “And it’s not my place to tell you his story if he hasn’t told you himself. What I will say about Smith is he finds it hard to settle anywhere. He always has since becoming an eidolon. At Summer Land he would come and go. Sometimes he’d stay for weeks, other times just a few days. His life before was good, you see––right up until it wasn’t. Tragedy befell him, and it shook him to his core, leaving him the sensitive but broken creature that you know. Smith is looking for redemption but he seems unable to find it anywhere.”

  “I am listening, you know,” Smith intoned from the backseat.

  “Shit!” said Ajia, startled. “Sorry, Smith. Thought you were asleep.” That wasn’t an excuse in itself, so she added, “I was only making conversation.”

  “You were prying.”

  “Yes. Yes, I was.”

  “You could just come straight out and ask.”

  “When the subject came up last time––just after Jenny Greenteeth––you pretty much shut me down.”

  “Maybe I’d be more prepared to talk about it now.”

  “And are you?”

  “No,” said Smith. Then: “Perhaps. There isn’t much to tell. Some people died. I was responsible. I carry that burden around my neck. I refuse to add to it by causing any further harm to anyone.”

  “You were not responsible,” said Mr LeRoy.

  “As good as,” said Smith. “Here’s how it was, Ajia. My architectural practice was working on a social housing project. Affordable accommodation. Developing a brownfield site in Bermondsey, in fulfilment of a government contract which pre-dated Derek Drake. We’d designed the housing to be sustainable, accessible and aesthetically pleasing, with plenty of green space. It was a big deal for us. The practice wasn’t huge––ten of us in all––but we were eager and competitive. Everything was going swimmingly, but then the time came to start building. We had the groundbreaking ceremony, and three days later Drake won his landslide victory, and all at once our budget was slashed. To the bone. Social housing was no longer a priority for the Resurrectionists. You know them. ‘Waste of taxpayers’ money’ and so on. ‘No one should have their rent subsidised by the state.’ What they meant was––”

  “People on low incomes can go fuck themselves,” said Ajia.

  “And the majority of people on low incomes were people only recently arrived in the country. We soldiered on anyway. We did what we could. Sourced the cheapest building materials, hired the lowest-bidding contractors, scrimped, skimped. I was damned if I was going to let Derek Drake and his minions destroy this project. Maybe if I hadn’t been so pig-headed, everything would have been fine. I should have just given up. That was what the Resurrection Party wanted. I should have admitted defeat and walked away.”

  “You say pig-headed,” said Mr LeRoy. “I would say determined.”

  “I knew we were building substandard accommodation,” Smith said. “I knew we were taking risks. But we got it done, and to me, in my arrogance, seeing those houses and blocks of flats finished and having people who needed them move in, that was the most important thing. That was a victory. There was a fire a month later.”

  Smith did not speak for a while. The rain pounded down on the Land Rover with renewed ferocity.

  “It was in one of the flats,” he went on at last. “A faulty microwave spontaneously caught alight. The fire suppression system could have handled it––would have if it hadn’t malfunctioned. There was a leak in the pipes due to incorrect installation and cheap couplings. Most of the sprinklers didn’t receive any water and so couldn’t operate. Eighteen people perished, including seven children.”

  “Jesus, yeah, I remember that,” said Ajia. “Bermondsey. It was on the news.”

  “The accident investigation report laid the blame squarely with my practice,” Smith said, “and I could hardly disagree. We had screwed up calamitously. For all the right reasons, we had done everything wrong. There was talk of legal action but I decided to pre-empt it. I wrote a note exonerating my employees. It was me, I said. All me. I had made the judgment calls. I had sanctioned the corner-cutting. Then I took myself to Tower Bridge, climbed up onto the parapet and threw myself off.”


  He laughed bitterly.

  “Couldn’t even get that right. Or so I thought as I came to, washed up on the Thames foreshore somewhere out by Wapping. Couldn’t build a safe building, couldn’t kill myself. Totally useless. It wasn’t until much later that I learned I had died and been brought back to life. At the time I simply felt I was every kind of failure, and so I took myself out of the world. I took myself out of it by living rough, drinking whatever alcohol I could lay my hands on, and not caring what happened to me. I got into a few scrapes, got out of them. If it hadn’t been for this man…”

  He indicated Mr LeRoy.

  “He found me. Summer Land had pitched close to where I was then shacked up––a shelter on the promenade in a seaside town––and one day Mr LeRoy paid a visit. Just sidled up with a smile on his face and told me he’d been looking for me. I thought, at first, he was a vicar or something.”

  “Hah!” Mr LeRoy snorted. “Hardly.”

  “Wanted to share with me the word of God,” Smith continued. “The way he was talking about being reborn, a new life, all of that.”

  “Funny, I thought the same about you,” Ajia said.

  Smith gave a wry nod. “But then he began to explain, and things just sort of fell into place. I had been having these dreams, you see. Dreams about being a metalsmith, a master craftsman. About smithing for giants and kings. About being married to a swan maiden, as my two brothers were likewise married to swan maidens, until our wives tired of us and stole back the coats of white feathers which we’d stolen from them so that they had to remain in human form. Dreams of a life I’d had never had, a surreal life that felt real. Naturally I blamed it on the booze.”

  “The dreams are the subconscious trying to communicate with the conscious mind,” Mr LeRoy cut in. “Every eidolon has them if they aren’t reconciled with their new selves soon. You would have too, Ajia, if Smith hadn’t found you so early on after your transformation and explained to you who you were. My own dreams were terrible. Feverish visions of castles and glades and flying above treetops and waylaying unwary travellers and taming wild beasts…”