Age of Heroes

by James Lovegrove

  “As it is a Yellow Day,” said Benedikt, “I feel it would do no harm to ask if you have heard from either of your parents recently. I know it is a sticky topic, but...”

  “Mum Skyped last week. We spoke for an hour. She’s doing okay. My dad...” Josie frowned. “He’s not been in touch for a while. I think he’s working. He works abroad a lot, off doing... stuff.”

  “I like him. He seems like a nice man, the times we’ve met.”

  “Yeah, well, he’s not your dad, is he?”

  “He is a computer consultant, yes?”

  “Troubleshooter, he calls it. He’s ex-service. After the Army he re-skilled, took some courses, and now does IT stuff for the rich and stupid. He has international clients. They pay him to sort out their systems, fix bugs, get everything running smoothly.”

  “So he is very busy.”

  “He is. I never saw much of him even when I was living at home. He kept getting posted to places. And him being away so much was why he and Mum split up. It wasn’t the only reason, obviously. I’m...”

  She faltered.

  Benedikt did not touch her; physical contact was not permitted. But he gestured as though he would have patted her hand sympathetically if he could.

  “I am glad it is a Yellow Day,” he said. “You seem to be having more of them. And more Green and Red too; and Black, not so many. Have you noticed that?”

  Josie had, sort of. She didn’t keep track of the day colours. She didn’t write them down in a journal or anything. Looking back, though, she could see that the Black Days, and the Blues and Browns as well, had been getting fewer and further between.

  “Progress,” said Benedikt.

  “Progress,” Josie agreed.

  And then there was a tiny wet sound, like a fly splatting against a car windscreen, and Benedikt started staring at her in a curious way, as though he had something important he wished to share.

  Whatever it was, he failed to say it. Instead, he slumped backwards onto the grass, and Josie wondered if he was being cute, if he was trying to be funny, and she laughed, but nervously, because she didn’t quite get the joke, assuming it was a joke. Was he pretending to have fallen asleep? Was it some sort of comment about her boring him so much he had sunk into a coma? No, Benedikt hadn’t a mean bone in his body. He wouldn’t tease her like that.

  Only when she saw the small fluff of cotton protruding from the front of his white tunic did Josie realise that Benedikt was not being witty or silly. He was... unconscious? Dead?

  She looked up. Looked round. Panic stopped her throat. Her stomach lurched.

  Men were coming.

  Not orderlies. Not any kind of clinic employee. Nor her fellow patients.

  Men in black jumpsuits and balaclavas. Crossing the lawn towards her. Running low and softly.

  They had guns. Pistols with oddly long, thin barrels.

  One of them pointed his gun at her and pulled the trigger.

  There was a spike of pain in Josie’s chest.

  And her Yellow Day went completely dark.

  NINETEEN

  Benito Juárez Airport, Mexico City

  WITH A COUPLE of hours to kill until their flight was scheduled to depart, the three demigods – Theo, Chase and Salvador – made their way to one of the premium lounges at Benito Juárez for an early lunch. Chase had been disappointed that Theo was not springing for another private jet. “Once you’ve travelled in that kind of luxury,” he’d said, “it’s hard to go back.” But when Theo had suggested that Chase stump up the thirty grand charter fee this time, his cousin had been forced to admit that flying by mainstream air carrier wasn’t so bad. They would still be turning left when they boarded the plane, after all. It could be worse.

  Salvador helped himself to everything the lounge’s lavish buffet bar had to offer. The attractive hostess staffing the counter made some remark about how she liked to see a man with a hearty appetite, and that was the cue for ten minutes of relentless and unsubtle flirting. Observing this, Chase said to Theo, “You’ve got to admire the guy. The way he goes on around women, you’d almost think he’s straight.”

  “He is straight,” Theo replied. “Basically. He just strays in the other direction from time to time.”

  “Um, Hylas? Philoctetes? Iolaus? And all the other, ahem, ‘squires’ he dragged around with him on his adventures? And the younger Argonauts he kept hounding after? That’s a heck of a lot of straying.”

  “For every one of those boys there’s been at least three women. He had forty-nine of King Thespius’s fifty daughters, for heaven’s sake, and would have made it a clean sweep if the fiftieth hadn’t been so shy. That’s in addition to his wives and his concubines, and more princesses and slave girls than you can count.”

  “He used to like fathering kids, that’s for sure, but I never saw any woman who could make his face light up the way a pretty boy could.”

  “I guess in a place like Mexico, he’s playing safe by staying vigorously hetero. Can’t blame him for that.”

  “And the wrestling gets the other stuff out of his system,” said Chase with a nod. “As long as he doesn’t mistakenly pop a boner while he’s –”

  A ping from Theo’s phone interrupted Chase, preventing him from taking this line of thought any further, perhaps mercifully.

  “Email,” said Theo. “Anonymous sender address. No subject heading.”

  “Spam. Delete it. Unless you want your user ID hacked.”

  “No, I don’t, but...” On a hunch, Theo opened the email.

  It read:

  Not all twelve sites ransacked. One still intact: Novy Tolkatui.

  HG

  Beneath the text was a link which, when Theo tapped it, opened up a new tab showing a map location – a tiny village in the Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia.

  “Gottlieb,” said Chase. “Quick, hit reply. Ask for more details.”

  “No use. It’s one of those one-shot disposable email service providers. The address expires the moment you use it.”

  “So what’s he telling us?”

  “What it says. Whoever has the artefacts missed one out.”

  “Probably because it’s in Russia’s answer to Buttfuck, Idaho, and whoever has the artefacts couldn’t face going there and bailed. But what good is that info to us?”

  “Depends.” Theo delved in his pocket for the cocktail napkin from the Eighteenth Amendment. Novy Tolkatui was where Gottlieb had hidden Hades’s Helm of Darkness.

  “Hey, that was mine,” said Chase. “My artefact. The invisibility helmet I wore when I went after Medusa. That’s the only one of the twelve nobody wanted? I’m kind of insulted. I take that personally.”

  “Seems like Gottlieb wants us to have it,” said Theo. “That’s how I interpret this.”

  “Or he’s setting us up. Laying a trap.”

  “A valid interpretation.”

  “I’ve a third. He’s sending us on a wild goose chase, to keep us out of the way so he can carry on killing demigods without interference.”

  “Also valid.”

  “Maybe he and Evander Arlington are in cahoots. I love that word. Cahoots. It’s always good to have a legitimate excuse to say it. They’re in cahoots, scheming together against the rest of us.”

  “Unlikely, but not beyond the realms of possibility.”

  A thought occurred to Chase. “Hey, could this be a whole Highlander thing?”

  “What?”

  “Highlander. The movie. Think about it. Immortals killing other immortals. ‘There can be only one.’ Life imitating art – or rather life imitating ’eighties Hollywood sci-fi trash.”

  “As I recall, in Highlander the villain beheads the other immortals to harvest their power. I don’t see how that could apply here. Our divinity isn’t a transferrable resource.”

  “Transferrable resource?” said Salvador, re-joining them after his dalliance with the hostess, which had culminated in an exchange of phone numbers. “What are you talking about?”r />
  Theo filled him in on the latest development.

  “We must go,” Salvador said simply.

  “Huh?” said Chase. “Just like that? ‘We must go’? Because Harry Gottlieb – who, let’s not forget, may well be our Big Bad – says so?”

  “If it’s a trap, we spring it deliberately. Our enemy ambushes us, we get to see him face to face, we learn who he is, we have an opportunity to turn the tables and defeat him. Advantage us. If it isn’t a trap, we gain the last remaining artefact. Advantage us again. A win-win.”

  “Yeah, unless our enemy kills us. Then it’s more a die-die.”

  “Kills us? Us?” Salvador let out a roar of laughter, startling several of the other travellers in the lounge, most of whom were sedate executive types or brittle rich folk. “How can they kill three of the foremost champions of the Age of Heroes?” he continued at a more subdued volume. “We’re more than a match for anyone, surely.”

  “Uh, divine weapons, remember?” said Chase.

  “Pfah!”

  “And so far they’ve managed to wipe out Aeneas and Orion, neither of whom was a slouch in the combat department. Orpheus, I grant you, easier meat – but Aeneas and Orion? That takes some doing.”

  “Even so, each died singly, alone. I defy any foe, however well armed, to overwhelm us three together. At worst, even if they prevailed, it would be greatly to their cost.”

  “He has a point,” said Theo.

  “He has?” said Chase.

  “What else were we planning to do? We were going to go back to NYC and maybe start attempting to track down Evander Arlington. Gottlieb has landed something in our laps that we can use, something we can get proactive on, something tangible. I say we take the gamble and go for it.”

  “Well...” Chase deliberated. “All right. I’m going to bow to your judgement on this one, cuz. Being as it’s my Helm of Darkness, that kind of influences my decision. One small hitch: travel visas to Russia are a bitch to get hold of. They take ages to come through. That said, I know someone at the Russian Consulate in San Francisco who might be able to speed things up for us.”

  “You are a mine of useful contacts, Chase,” said Theo.

  “This guy, Yakov, he helped when I wanted to make an episode about the Alkonost and the Sirin; they’re these Russian monsters with the bodies of birds but the heads and chests of women.”

  “Or harpies, as they’re better known,” said Salvador.

  “Similar, but with added Slavic bad temper. Yakov arranged permits and transportation for me and the crew to go all sorts of places, deep in the Russian interior. Can’t say he came cheap, but if it’s a quick turnaround you’re after...”

  “Call him,” said Theo. “I’ll start booking flights.”

  TWENTY

  Kismayo, Somalia

  BADENHORST HAD MADE himself scarce. It was almost as though he knew Roy was on the warpath and was avoiding him. When the Myrmidons got back to the hotel in Kismayo, Badenhorst wasn’t there. He had left a message for them at the reception desk, telling them that he was off taking care of some business, they should stay put, he would be back soon.

  So the Myrmidons had no choice but to hang around and wait. Mayson and Corbett were tended to by a local doctor who was willing to clean and sew up bullet wounds for cash, no questions asked. He gave them antibiotics and painkillers, strong enough to stun an elephant. They spent the time in their rooms, dazedly flicking through the blurry, badly-tuned TV channels, watching any British and American shows they could find even though the dialogue was invariably dubbed into Somali or Arabic.

  The rest of the Myrmidons made the most of what the hotel had to offer, which wasn’t much. The place, consisting of a set of two-storey concrete buildings arranged around a central courtyard, was reasonably clean and accommodating. Bright paintwork and some gaudy murals of animals lent it a certain amount of jollity but also couldn’t quite disguise its fundamental resemblance to a prison camp. There was a swimming pool, half full of pale green, slightly stagnant water and home to frogs and lizards; the cabana bar served no alcoholic beverages whatsoever, only black tea and sodas.

  After two days of tedium and stasis, Roy had built up a good pressure of steam. Who the hell did Badenhorst think he was, leaving them here to stew? How dare he just waltz off like that, not even staying to find out how the mission had gone? What kind of a boss was he? When he got back, there was going to be a reckoning. Oh, yes. Badenhorst had no idea of the shitstorm he would be facing when he returned. He would cough up some answers, or else.

  Roy did try calling him a few times, but always it went to voicemail. He didn’t leave a message. He didn’t trust himself to stay coherent; and besides, what he wanted to say to Badenhorst needed to be said in person.

  He also tried calling Josie, but met with a similar lack of success. With her, he did at least leave messages, saying to ring him back when she had a moment, but she didn’t respond. He wanted to talk to her, to prepare her for the possibility that she might have to leave the Gesundheitsklinik. He had enough money saved up to keep her at the clinic for another couple of months, but if he lost this job – which was not inconceivable if things did not go well with Badenhorst – he wouldn’t have a penny to show for it. Worse, he’d be blacklisted, unemployable.

  When Josie was having one of her bad spells, she tended to shut down, refusing to speak, neglecting her phone and falling off social media. Roy checked her Facebook: she had last posted on it over a week ago, some innocuous status update about a Pixar movie she had just watched. Her Twitter and Instagram accounts had lain fallow for nearer a month. With any ordinary teenage girl this would have been a cause for concern; in Josie’s case it wasn’t unusual. Even if she was doing well with her treatment, the Gesundheitsklinik’s administration frowned on patients being too active in cyberspace or interacting too freely with people beyond its walls. In order to heal soonest, they needed to think less about the outside world and more about themselves. Some of the clinic’s clientele were high-profile CEOs and celebrities who needed to remain contactable, so phones, laptops and tablets weren’t banned outright, but their use was discouraged. Exposure to external influences could be a distraction, placing speed bumps on the road to recovery.

  On the second evening, Roy ended up having a late-night drinking session with Gavin, Jeanne, Sean Wilson and Travis Laffoon. The sale of alcohol was banned in Somalia, and unlike in some other Muslim countries there were no exceptions to this rule, not even in hotels and restaurants frequented by Westerners. Black market booze could still be bought, however, and Wilson and Laffoon had enterprisingly gone out and sourced some generic-brand rum and vodka, which they mixed with coconut milk and pineapple juice to create an approximation of a piña colada. The concoction was both sickly sweet and frighteningly potent. By the third glass Roy was hammered, and by the fifth he was having something like an out-of-body experience. For a time his anger at Badenhorst seemed far removed and ill advised. Shouldn’t he drop it? Shut up and just do the job? Weren’t there more important things to care about?

  He barely remembered getting to his room. Jeanne helped him, though. He was sure of that. He had a clear recollection of finding the stairs very difficult to climb and Jeanne holding his arm and instructing him to keep putting one foot in front of the other. He recalled, too, her steering him to his bed and forcing him to drink water even though he was not at all thirsty. He then made a pass at her, telling her she was amazing and he was lonely. She turned him down flat, but in a way that implied that another time, perhaps when he was a tad soberer, she might consider it.

  His dreams were feverish, hellish. A parade of paid murders; his greatest hits. Bullets smacking into heads from afar, splitting them open like watermelons, as seen through the reticle of a sniper scope. Knives sneaking across throats or slipping through intercostal muscles, a hand over a mouth. The snicker of a suppressor in an elevator. A hanging, once, dangling an obese tinpot dictator from a rafter by a rope, then watchin
g as the man’s neck began to elongate, the sheer weight of his body stretching it and stretching it until, with a sound like tearing canvas, the neck snapped in two and the body collapsed to the floor, leaving the head wrapped snugly in the noose, penduluming to and fro, dripping gore in a monochrome Jackson Pollock on the terracotta floor tiles. A couple of drownings: elbow-deep in bathwater, holding the person down, waiting for the thrash and gargle to subside, the last few air bubbles to leak from the mouth, the stillness to settle in.

  How could he do this, year in, year out, and still stand before a mirror and look himself in the eye?

  Why was he not screaming all the time?

  BADENHORST APPEARED SHORTLY after breakfast the next morning, sauntering into the hotel insouciantly, as if to say, So what if I’ve been away? Fuck you.

  Roy, in the grip of a wretched hangover, happened to be looking out of the window of his room when a taxi pulled in below and the Afrikaner stepped out. Badenhorst under-tipped the driver and swaggered through the lobby entrance, and Roy stumbled downstairs to intercept him.

  He was coming nicely to the boil by the time he reached the lobby. Badenhorst had no idea what he was in for. Badenhorst had some questions to answer. Badenhorst was going to come clean, whatever it took.

  “Ah, Roy. Just the man I wanted to see. Come to my room.”

  Roy was brought up short. This wasn’t how he had foreseen the confrontation playing out.

  But Badenhorst’s room? Why not? His grievances were better aired in private than in public anyway.

  “You’re looking rough, may I say.” Badenhorst shut the room door behind them. “Slept well?”

  “Listen, Badenhorst...”