Age of Heroes

by James Lovegrove

  “I’m going to stop you there. You seem like you have something to get off your chest. We’ll come to that. First, there’s this.”

  He held up a phone.

  “A little clip I want to show you. Our last little chat – well, it didn’t end altogether satisfactorily from my point of view. I got the feeling you were being insubordinate, and we all know where insubordination leads to, if it isn’t taken care of. So watch the clip, then decide where you want to take things from here.”

  He tapped the Play symbol.

  On the phone, Josie’s face appeared in tight close-up.

  Roy’s breath caught in his throat.

  Josie had been crying. Eyes puffy and wet.

  She looked pale and terrified.

  “Dad?” she said. “Dad. These people... I don’t know who they are. I don’t know where I am. They’re recording this. They want me to give you a message. They’ve told me to tell you I’m fine. I’m being looked after. I’m not a prisoner, but they’re not going to let me go. Not yet.”

  She sniffed hard, damply, tremblingly.

  “I’m scared, Dad. Really scared. What’s happening? What is this? They – they took me. From the clinic. Knocked me out with a tranquilliser dart or something, and... And Benedikt. They got Benedikt too. Dad, please do whatever they ask. Please, Dad. I really think –”

  The clip ended abruptly, cutting her off mid-sentence.

  Ray made a grab for the phone.

  Badenhorst snatched it out of his reach.

  “Uh-uh, Roy. I’m allowing you one look at it, and one look only. That’s your daughter, nè? Your Josie. We’re not disputing that, right?”

  Numbly Roy shook his head.

  “Good. Okay. So you know we have her and she’s well – as well as can be expected – and we’re not mistreating her. Ja? I was there when we snatched her. It was quick and clean and no one got hurt. Do you believe me?”

  Numbly Roy nodded.

  “So here’s the reasoning behind this,” said Badenhorst. “You’re a valuable asset, Roy. You’re a natural leader, and the other Myrmidons respond well to you. They’re happy to have you telling them what to do.”

  Roy said nothing.

  “What it boils down to is: I can’t afford to lose you. The team can’t. You’ve made yourself indispensable. So in order to guarantee you stay on board and don’t rock the boat, I’ve had to take out a little insurance policy. I’ve got hold of the one thing in your life you can’t do without, the one thing you cannot afford to lose. Lovely young choty goty Josie. And I’m going to keep her until the project is done. I promise you – cross my heart, swear to God – no harm will come to her. She is completely safe. Look into my eyes and know that that is true. I will make sure she continues to get her pills and is looked after properly. I have seen to that. But know this too.”

  Badenhorst’s face hardened.

  “If you do not play ball, if you misbehave in any way from now on, you will never see her again. I can’t put it any more plainly than that. There are places where pretty teenage girls can disappear to. Places they can be sent where they’ll never be found. People who will pay good money for them.”

  A cracking, grinding sound. Roy clenching his teeth.

  “In a way, my friend, this is your own fault. If you weren’t so damn good at what you do, it wouldn’t matter to me if you stay or you go. Any of the others, they spoke to me the way you did back in England, I’d’ve cut them loose, no problem. So long, totsiens. But you – you’re the alpha dog in the pack, and if I have to give the leash a good hard yank to keep you in line, I don’t mind. That’s just how it has to be, hey?”

  Badenhorst shrugged.

  “You could say this is kind of an extreme step to be taking, and I agree. But there’s a proverb in Afrikaans: Wie nie waag nie wen nie. ‘He who doesn’t take risks doesn’t win.’ And that’s me. A winner.”

  Now Badenhorst smiled.

  “You’ve been quiet for so long, I’m starting to get uncomfortable, Roy. What do you have to say to all this? Any thoughts?”

  “I suppose,” Roy said eventually, “that if I kill you now, Josie will die too.”

  “I think that’s taken as read. If I fail to check in with the men looking after her at a set time every day, a command will be executed, blah-blah-blah, you know the drill.”

  “Then rest assured, when all this is over, then I will kill you. With my bare hands. I will beat the life out of you, slowly, bit by bit, and I will relish every fucking second of it.”

  “Roy.” Badenhorst was imperturbable. “When all this is over, you will be a very rich man and you will never have to worry about your daughter’s future again, and you and I will be living somewhere far, far away from each other and we won’t have to see each other or even think about each other ever again, and we will both be happy, and that is that.”

  “Want to bet?”

  “Not a gambling man, Roy. My father was; wager on anything, my ouballie would. Who could drink the most, who could piss against a wall the longest. He even once bet a friend which of us, me or one of my brothers, would start crying soonest when he leathered us. Anything. Kind of put me off the whole notion. So no, I don’t want to bet. Because also I know. I know that we are going to part as friends after we’re done with this business. Smile and shake hands and off we go our separate ways. Anything else would be an unwise move on your part.”

  Badenhorst let the sentence hang in the air for a moment. Then he said, brightly, “But enough of that. What is it you wanted to talk to me about? You’re the one who came to find me. Something to report? I’m all ears.”

  Roy was utterly defeated. Badenhorst had him firmly by the balls. Josie... The bastard had kidnapped her. Flown to Switzerland and abducted her from the Gesundheitsklinik and spirited her off to God-knows-where. From the sound of it he had also kidnapped the orderly, Benedikt Frankel, the one Josie liked best. That was something, at least. Someone to be with her, who was trained in psychiatric care and could oversee her wellbeing and medication.

  Clinging to this tiny piece of good news like a shipwrecked sailor clinging to a scrap of flotsam, Roy said, “Our targets.”

  “What about them?”

  “You haven’t told us everything you can. If I’m to continue to lead the Myrmidons, as I seem to be doing, and do it to the best of my ability, I need full operational intel.” Every word he spoke was sticking in his craw. It was difficult not to howl at the top of his voice, to resist the urge to bury his thumbs in Badenhorst’s eye sockets and gouge his eyeballs out. “They’re not normal, are they? There’s something unusual about them, exceptional. I need – we need – to know what it is.”

  Badenhorst cocked his head. “Hmm. Ja, this was bound to happen, wasn’t it? You were bound to notice sooner or later. I have two options here. Either I can explain in full, and you’ll have trouble believing me and you might even think I’ve gone off my rocker, or I can just say ‘Get on with the blerrie job, man’ and leave it at that. On balance, I’m going to go with number two. Do you really have to know everything? I think not. It’s far simpler if you just accept that these people are not your everyday hits. They are in a class of their own.”

  “But you know who – what – they actually are?”

  “I do, and let me tell you, it took a while getting used to the idea. It’s the sort of thing that entirely rewires your understanding of the world, and while I imagine you’re the kind of guy who could eventually get his head around it, I’m not sure I can say the same for some of the others. It might be too much for them, especially limited folks like Travis and Hans, you know what I’m saying?”

  “Then fill me in. Just me. I won’t share. I’ll simply factor it into the planning on future missions. We got our arses handed to us back there, courtesy of Daniel Munro. I don’t know if you’re aware of that.”

  “I had a feeling you might. I did warn you.”

  “We were lucky to get away with as few casualties as we did.
”

  “Lucky? Luck had nothing to do with it. It was skill, Roy. Your skill. Besides, you made the hit. You pulled it off. All’s well that ends well, eh? Everything’s hundreds.”

  “Still, wouldn’t it make sense to give me everything I need to prevent the same thing happening again? Or are we that expendable?”

  Badenhorst shook his head, none too convincingly.

  “That figures,” said Roy. “I know what a Myrmidon is, after all. I looked it up the day you first mentioned the name, while we were in training. A Myrmidon isn’t just the term for a kind of Ancient Greek infantryman. It’s based on the Greek word for ant. Ant person. Which is how much you value us. We’re insects.”

  “It was my employer’s choice. It seemed to tickle their fancy. Whatever the word means, though, don’t take that as a benchmark of my esteem for you. Quite the opposite. All of you Myrmidons, but you especially, Roy, have my full respect. Despite all this antagonism between us.”

  “If you respected me at all, you’d let my daughter go free.”

  “Let’s not go there. I thought we’d settled that. No, my decision stands: you will have to make do with such intel as I give you each time. Like using ear plugs on the Del Karno mission. Any more than that is irrelevant. If you don’t like it... Well, I would say you can take a hike, but you can’t. Not you. So you’re just going to have to suck it up instead. Too bad for you.”

  If Roy had not turned around and left the room at that moment, he might not have been responsible for his actions. He would have vented every last bit of the white-hot fury he was feeling, and Badenhorst would have been lucky to survive the onslaught.

  OUTSIDE ON THE landing there was an elderly fridge-sized ice dispenser which served the entire floor. It buzzed and churned constantly but never seemed able to fulfil the purpose for which it had been built. Roy took out his frustration on it, pummelling the front of the machine with his fists until it was deeply dented and his knuckles were bleeding.

  Then he phoned the Gesundheitsklinik and asked to be put through to Dr Aeschbacher. She hesitantly confirmed that Josie had been absent from the clinic since yesterday morning.

  “Do you have some idea of her whereabouts then, Mr Young? Is that why you called?”

  “No.”

  “Then who told you she was gone?”

  “I... learned about it from a third party.”

  “Who?”

  “None of your business. I also know that a member of your staff, Benedikt Frankel, is absent too. What I’d like to know is why I wasn’t notified about any of this immediately.”

  “The management did not wish to alarm you unduly and, as the case may be, unnecessarily,” said Dr Aeschbacher. “Often in these instances, when patients abscond, they come back within twenty-four hours, forty-eight at most. The standard procedure is not to classify them as ‘missing’” – Roy could almost see her doing air quotes – “until at least three days have elapsed.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “Mr Young, patients at the Gesundheitsklinik are not inmates at a sanatorium, they are voluntary participants in a programme of wraparound, holistic therapy, and if one of them wishes to take a break from that at any time, unannounced or otherwise, we have no legal right to stop him or her.”

  “Legal right? What about moral duty?”

  “They are not prisoners. We are not their jailers.”

  “But Josie’s a fifteen-year-old girl, for fuck’s sake.”

  “There is no call for bad language. And Josie turned sixteen last month, actually. That seems to have escaped your notice.”

  It had. Roy cursed himself. He had been preoccupied. Idiot!

  “In some Swiss cantons,” Dr Aeschbacher said, “that makes her of age to vote in elections.”

  “All the same, she’s only a kid.”

  “And we are only a private mental health institution. We are not a school. We are not, as I have said, a prison. We provide a paid-for service which clients are free to opt out of whenever they wish.”

  “I’ve heard some mealy-mouthed bollocks in my time...”

  “We are concerned about Josie’s welfare, Mr Young,” Dr Aeschbacher said, silkily, professionally. “But since Mr Frankel disappeared at the same time as she did, our concern is mitigated.”

  “It should be heightened, surely.”

  “You think he and she have... eloped, is that the word? Unlikely, given Mr Frankel’s sexual orientation. I believe this is, if it is anything, a kind of Platonic folie à deux that they have concocted between them. In which case, if that is so, then rest assured we will be implementing the appropriate disciplinary sanctions against Mr Frankel when he and Josie return. We will –”

  Roy cut the connection. He couldn’t listen to Dr Aeschbacher trowel on this crap a moment longer. Fuck her, the smooth-talking corporate drone. Doling out bullshit on a spoon like it was honey, covering the clinic’s arse.

  The ice dispenser came in for further punishment. This time, to spare his hands, Roy gave it a thorough kicking.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Novy Tolkatui, Russia

  “WELL, HERE WE all are, freezing our asses off in Siberia,” said Chase as he removed yet another layer of clothing. He was now down to his undershirt, the armpits of which bore glassy blooms of sweat. He stuffed the baseball shirt into his backpack, where it joined a lightweight cotton tracksuit top.

  “Did you honestly think it snows here the whole year round?” said Theo. “Even in midsummer?”

  “No, but I didn’t think it’d be so damn hot either. I mean, Jesus, this is like California.”

  “Only with more flies,” said Salvador, swatting at the cloud of pests which had descended on them within twenty paces of leaving the Mil Mi-8 civilian transport helicopter and had accompanied them ever since.

  “And worse humidity,” Chase added.

  Salvador turned to Theo. “He complains all the time, doesn’t he? I forgot that about him.”

  “Not all the time,” Theo said. “Sometimes he gripes. Every so often he bitches.”

  “I do not,” said Chase. “I just point out when things aren’t going the way everyone would like. That’s performing a useful public service.”

  “Is it,” said Salvador, blandly.

  They had landed at the edge of a dense, sprawling forest, having flown across a vast expanse of scrubby barren steppe dotted with the occasional smallholding and flyspeck hamlet. This spot was the closest the pilot could get them to Novy Tolkatui. From there it was a five-mile trek through the forest to the village along a rutted, overgrown dirt track. Pines towered on either side of the route, and now and then the three demigods would see a small lake glimmering through the trees. Krasnoyarsk, the nearest true civilisation, lay 150 miles to the south. They had arrived at the city’s Yemelyanovo Airport the previous evening and spent the night at a hotel where every single member of staff, right down to the bellboy, had offered to fix them up with hookers and drugs.

  They walked on, still attended by the black flies that seemed to regard them as a mobile smorgasbord. After a while even Chase stopped talking. The silence of the forest was as oppressive as the heat and flies. No wind stirred the tree branches. A yawning primordial stillness held sway.

  During the helicopter flight, both the pilot and the co-pilot had been inquisitive, wanting to know why three Westerners were interested in Novy Tolkatui, of all places. The Krasnoyarsk region had so much to offer tourists: the granite rock formations of the Stolby Nature Reserve, the Paraskeva Pyatnitsa Chapel with its panoramic hilltop views, the hydroelectric dam on the Yenisei river at Divnogorsk. What was it about a tiny, incredibly remote, no-account village that attracted them? It wasn’t as if anybody even lived there any more, at least not to the pilot’s and co-pilot’s knowledge. Like many old settlements in the area, it was reputed to be deserted, its inhabitants abandoning their homes to find a livelihood and, indeed, a life. There might still be one or two families lingering on, but if so, they’d be hu
nters or subsistence farmers, grubby, inarticulate, inbred – not the sort of people who welcomed outsiders.

  Chase had spun them some yarn about scouting for a TV documentary on the subject of isolated, semi-abandoned communities, relics of a bygone age, untouched by the modern world, etc. This seemed to satisfy their curiosity. The word ‘television,’ properly wielded, had magical power. It could open doors, quell dissent, and make even the awkwardest customers pliable.

  The first sign that Theo, Chase and Salvador were nearing Novy Tolkatui was the rusted husk of a Soviet-era tractor sitting by the side of the track. Weeds had grown up through its engine block. Its tyres had perished away to nothing.

  Further on they came to a small shrine, a lopsided wooden thing that would have once housed an ikon for peasants to kneel before and venerate. A Russian Orthodox cross perched on its roof, and an orange-breasted barn swallow perched on one arm of the cross, flicking its tail as the three demigods went by.

  A minute or so after that, Chase addressed his two companions softly.

  “Don’t look round. Be cool. Just keep walking.”

  “What is it?” said Theo, equally softly.

  “We’re being followed.”

  Salvador turned his head.

  “I said don’t look round,” Chase hissed. “What part of that did you not understand, you big ape?”

  “But I can see no one.”

  “Doesn’t mean they’re not there. They’ve been behind us ever since the tractor. I wasn’t sure at first, so I didn’t say anything. I am now.”

  “How many?” said Theo.

  “Two, I think. They’re in the woods and they’re being very sneaky, and at the same time very careless.”

  “Both at once?”

  “I can’t quite make it out myself,” said Chase. “It’s like they can’t agree on how they’re supposed to be stalking us. I’ve only got the sound of their footsteps to go on, but one of them’s super stealthy, the other’s trampling like an elephant. I’ve been trying to catch a glimpse of them out of the corner of my eye, get a fix on where they are, but they’re not obliging.”