Age of Heroes

by James Lovegrove

  When she was younger, just a kid, and her parents were still together, she had watched her father leave on his business trips. Every couple of months he would disappear for a week or so, and each time there was something about the grimness of his expression that made her feel he wasn’t simply going off to fix some company’s software bugs or set up an intranet, whatever he claimed. He looked like a soldier going into battle. Her mother, too, became tense whenever he was away. She tended to drink more wine than usual, and every now and then Josie would hear her crying in the night.

  Then there were the arguments. Her parents would start rowing over stupid things, inconsequential things, and sometimes it would escalate and Josie would overhear comments she was not supposed to. Once, her mother said, “If you just had a bloody normal job, Roy, I could be a normal wife to you, the wife you want. But you don’t. You go abroad and you, you... do what you do... and how am I meant to deal with that? How am I meant to look you in the eye when you get back, knowing where you’ve been and why?” To which her father replied, “I was straight with you from the start, Alison, when I got into this. Maybe I should have just kept schtum. I thought you deserved to know everything. You didn’t seem to mind back then. But now it bothers you? How I keep a roof over our heads and food on the table? How I pay for a big house in Highgate and the lifestyle you enjoy so much? My mistake. What a fool I was. I apologise.” It didn’t sound like an apology to Josie, lying in bed upstairs; it sounded pained and angry.

  The first time Josie attempted suicide, her mother managed to pin the blame for it on her father. As Josie lay in a cubicle in A&E, sedated, wrist bandaged, she was dimly aware of her parents holding a whispered conversation at her bedside. The specifics were unclear, but at one point her mother, between muffled sobs, said to her father that it was hardly surprising the daughter of a man like him would try to kill herself. “It’s in the blood,” she said. “Death is in the blood.” Josie realised later that, woozy and groggy as she had been, she might have imagined this. Why would death be in her blood? What could that possibly mean? There was every chance she had misheard, or misunderstood. But the phrase stayed with her nonetheless. In the blood.

  When her parents finally divorced and her father moved out, her mother went into a spiral of depression, becoming a borderline alcoholic. One evening, well into a second bottle of prosecco, she wandered into Josie’s room and ranted about her ex-husband, calling him destructive and false. “Everything about him is tainted, Josie,” she said. “I can’t stand to be in this house, knowing how the mortgage is paid for. Our home is huge and beautiful and horrible. I’m surprised the taps don’t drip blood. These clothes I’m wearing, the car I drive, my own body... Everything he touches is polluted by him. Polluted. Except you, my sweet,” she added, enfolding Josie in a wine-pungent hug. “You’re perfect. You’re holy. Never forget that. You mustn’t let his stain infect you. You must stay pure. It’s too late for me, but not for you.”

  The truth was, no parent could ever wholly keep secrets from their child. Everything came out in the end. Father Christmas, the Tooth Fairy, where babies came from, the cracks in a marriage, problems with domestic finances – parents could lie about these to their kids, but the kids would figure it out for themselves sooner or later. They picked up the clues, put them together, made sense of them, drew conclusions. It was inevitable.

  Josie knew there was more to her dad than met the eye. She knew there was something dark and dangerous about him, a side to him that he did his best to disguise. She colluded in the deception. She didn’t want him to know that she knew. He pretended he was an IT specialist, and she pretended to believe him.

  “HE WAS IN the Army,” she said to Benedikt. “He served overseas. Afghanistan. I guess he must have killed people there. But that was when I was tiny, a baby. After he re-trained, he became a civilian. No more killing. Or so I thought.”

  “But these arguments you have just told me about,” said Benedikt, “they took place after he was not in the Army any more.”

  “Exactly. Mum was talking about his work in the present, not the past. When she was referring to how the mortgage was paid for, she meant right then. Besides, she’s never described Dad’s military life in negative terms. She was always proud of him being a soldier, serving Queen and country. What she hated – still hates – is whatever he’s been doing since. That’s where all the ‘tainted,’ ‘polluted’ stuff comes in.”

  “Unless she has a real loathing of computers.”

  Josie laughed, perhaps louder than the quip deserved. Benedikt ought to be rewarded for trying to joke, under the circumstances.

  “It’s obvious my dad is no saint,” she said. “I can only assume that that’s what’s got me into this mess and, I’m sorry to say, you too.”

  Benedikt gave a little bow, both acknowledgement and absolution.

  “But,” she went on, “you can bet your arse that if he knew where I am, he’d come and get me. He’s not one of those dads who stop caring about their kids. He’d do anything for me. Hence him paying an arm and a leg to keep me at the clinic. I’m still his princess. And if he’s even half what I think he is, he’ll stop at nothing until I’m safe. Whoever’s behind this knows that too. Why else are those men out there, those brick-shithouse doormen types? Why else are there so many of them on call?”

  “They have guns, too. I’ve seen them. In holsters under their armpits.”

  “Tranquilliser-dart guns? Like the ones they knocked us out with?”

  “The other kind.”

  Josie suppressed a shiver of dread, although she was not wholly surprised. “There you go,” she said. “They don’t need those for you and me. I’m just a girl and you, no offence, aren’t Arnold Schwarzenegger. You’re lovely but I don’t see you kicking their butts all over the place.”

  “You are harsh but unfortunately accurate.” Benedikt held up a slender hand. “I once punched a boy at school. He was a bully and he called me Schwuler. It means ‘faggot’. I broke my finger on his jaw. See?” The top joint of his index finger was slightly crooked. “It did not set straight. Also, he then beat the hell out of me. That was the first and the last time I ever hit anyone. I learned my lesson.”

  She took the finger and kissed it, as though a kiss might retroactively heal the injury.

  He smiled. “I suppose we are past the clinic’s rules about no physical contact between patients and staff.”

  “We are. And if the guys out there have no reason to feel threatened by you and me, which they don’t, then what are the guns for? More to the point, who?”

  “You think your father.”

  “I think it’s the only explanation.”

  “Josie, do you have a plan?” He sounded heartbreakingly hopeful. “Do you believe you can get us out of this?”

  “I believe my dad can. We just have to get a message out to him somehow. Give him our location. He’ll do the rest.”

  “But how to do that? They have confiscated my phone.”

  “Mine too.”

  “And we don’t know where this place is, this building.”

  “It’s in a major European city.”

  “That does not narrow it down.”

  “One where German’s the main language, judging by the shop signs out there.”

  “Still not much help. It could be Germany, the German-speaking parts of Switzerland, Austria...”

  “Trams.”

  “I am no expert on European cities, but many of them have tram systems.”

  “Do you think you’d recognise it if you saw it?”

  “You are asking me to look out of the window.”

  “Quick peek.”

  “But they have told us never to open the curtains.”

  “Technically it’s not opening them.”

  “All the same...”

  “There are offices opposite. They don’t want us standing at the windows trying to signal someone over there for help. That’s all. They can’t really expect
us not to at least get a little curious about where we are.”

  “Did I not mention the guns?”

  “If we’re not meant to look out, they’d have stuck newspaper over the panes or something.”

  “They have not done that because it might alert people that something strange was going on in here.”

  “I still reckon the curtain thing is more a guideline than a rule.”

  Benedikt sighed. “Josie, I don’t know that I would be able to tell what city it is, just by looking.”

  “You stand a better chance than me. You’re from round these parts.”

  “Even if I can tell, how does it make any difference?”

  “Just trust me,” she said. “I’ll be standing guard by the doors, listening. If I hear anyone coming, I’ll warn you. Five seconds. That’s all I’m asking. Please, Benedikt?”

  She wore him down, stubborner than he was circumspect. He gave in eventually. He snatched a look outside, and they reconvened on the four-poster.

  “Well?”

  “Let me catch my breath. My heart is beating so fast.”

  “Mine too.”

  “I do not like fear.”

  “I’m so used to it, I’m beginning to get sick and tired of it. All my life I’ve been scared of something. My parents splitting up, not meeting up to people’s expectations, my reflection in the mirror. Now, when I’ve got a genuine reason to be frightened, all I am is pissed off. I want to do something about it.”

  “Being kidnapped is a form of therapy?” Benedikt said. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  “I wouldn’t recommend it as a treatment,” she said, “but it does sort of put things into perspective.”

  “Well, for what it is worth, I believe we are in Vienna.”

  “Vienna?”

  “Capital of Austria.”

  “I know what Vienna is. How can you tell?”

  “Not far from here I saw a... Kirchturm, in German. What is the English word for the tower on top of a church?”

  “Steeple?”

  “Yes. Steeple. I also saw some of the roof of this church. It has very colourful tiles which form a pattern – diamond shapes and zigzags, green, gold and purple. I may be mistaken, but there is only one church with a roof like that. St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna. And did you not see the flag flying on a building not far from there?”

  “A red and white one with an eagle in the middle?”

  “That is the Austrian flag. Ninety-nine per cent, I am sure this is Vienna.”

  “Vienna,” Josie said. “Is Vienna a big city?”

  “Not so big, I think. Not on the scale of London or Paris. Why?”

  “There can’t be many smart districts in it like this one.”

  “Probably not. Maybe no others apart from this.”

  “Good. That narrows it down.”

  “You hope that your father will be able to find this place somehow? This building we’re in? This room?”

  “If we give him all the clues we can.”

  “And then he will come for us, and fight his way through those men next door, and rescue us?”

  “He’ll do something, that’s for sure.”

  “Josie, believe me, I want to be out of here as much as you do. I want your father to be some one-man army who can save the day, like Bruce Willis or Liam Neeson. But we must be practical. We must not dream. We must face facts. This is real life. We should just leave our captors to go through the process of ransoming you, if that is the point of all this. We should sit tight and behave and wait for money to change hands or your father to do whatever these people demand. Let it play out. That, for sure, is better.”

  Josie gnawed her lip. “I’m not prepared to do nothing. For so long I’ve done nothing, except feel sorry for myself. Enough’s enough.”

  “Fine,” said Benedikt. “But we still have the same problem. No phones. Even if your father can do all you think he can, it’s no good when we have no way of contacting him.”

  “There is a way.”

  “How?”

  “You’ve been in that other room.”

  “I have. So?”

  “Am I right in thinking there’s a phone in there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’m sure I saw one, through the doorway. Over in the corner on a sideboard.”

  “A sideboard is...?”

  “A table against the wall. You know the one I’m talking about. It’s wooden, varnished. Has curved legs and clawed feet.”

  “Okay, I know the table. A phone?”

  “A landline. Handset, base unit, maybe with an answering machine. Old-fashioned setup.”

  “We call your father with it?”

  “One of us does.”

  “And the men stand aside and permit this?”

  “Of course not,” said Josie. “The other of us gives them something else to think about. A distraction.”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “You’re not going to like it. Professionally, personally, on every level.”

  “This does not surprise me,” said Benedikt, resigned. “The new Josie Young I am seeing appears to be a crazy woman.”

  “Wasn’t I always crazy? Isn’t that why I was at the Gesundheitsklinik?”

  “I apologise.” He shot her a look of contrition. “It was a wrong thing to say.”

  “I’m only teasing,” Josie said. “There’s bad crazy and there’s good crazy. I’ve done the first. Been there, got the T-shirt. It’s about time I tried the second.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Central Krasnoyarsk

  “HE SHOULD BE dead. Why isn’t he dead?”

  These were the first words Roy heard as he came to. The voice was a woman’s, unfamiliar, dripping with disgust.

  “Good question,” said a man’s voice, also unfamiliar. “If I’d had my way, he would be. But old Peter Purepants here stopped me before I could finish him off.”

  “With justification,” said a third voice: Theo Stannard. “He’s not our enemy.”

  “Could have fooled me,” said the woman. “There were a dozen of them, you said. All dressed like him, all armed like him. They murdered Heracles. How is he not our enemy?”

  Heracles?

  “Because,” said Stannard, “before Chase so rudely interrupted, Mr Young and I were establishing a rapprochement.”

  “Big word,” said the other man, presumably Chase. “Is that a fancy way of saying you were going to let the bastard go?”

  “It’s a fancy way of saying he could be useful to us. Isn’t that right, Mr Young? I know you’re conscious. Your breathing has changed.”

  Slowly Roy raised his head. His thoughts were sluggish.

  He was in what appeared to be a hotel room – functionally furnished, décor making a stab at tasteful. He was tied with strips of torn-up towel to a tubular-steel chair. Stannard was perched opposite him on the end of the bed, elbows on knees, chin on fists. The woman, austerely beautiful, leaned against the windowsill, arms folded below her breasts. The third – Chase – was pacing agitatedly to and fro. Roy had the nagging feeling he knew his face from somewhere.

  Heracles, though. Unless he had misheard, the woman had said, They murdered Heracles.

  The big man with the beard; the target. Salvador Vega, also known as the luchador El León.

  Heracles?

  “Shit,” said Roy thickly, croakily. “Is that who you people are? It can’t be. You can’t be. That’s just not...”

  “Not what?” said Stannard. “Who are we, Young?”

  “It’s insane. It’s impossible.”

  “What’s he yammering on about?” said Chase.

  “I believe he overheard Sasha referring to Salvador by his original name just now. I believe the penny is dropping.”

  “He knows? About us?”

  “Sure. Why not?” said the woman called Sasha. “He must do, or why would they have the artefacts?”

  “No,” said Stannard. “Remember w
hat I told you? Young and his fellow Myrmidons are pawns. They’ve been kept in the dark about the true nature of their victims. Only now, right now, is he putting it all together.”

  “And you’re cool with this?” said Chase. “That he’s rumbled us?”

  “I would be concerned had he not shown himself to be an intelligent, reasonable man, someone who’s willing to listen and compromise.”

  “I still say we should kill him.” Chase took a step towards Roy, and Stannard restrained him with a hand.

  “I say we should interrogate him first,” Sasha chimed in. “Pump him for information – don’t have to be nice about it. Then kill him. There was little love lost between Heracles and me, but still he was one of us. This man should be held to account for his death. An example should be set.”

  “Heracles was closer to me than he ever was to you,” said Stannard, “and I say Roy Young should not be harmed.”

  “Demigods,” Roy said. “Greek demigods.” His head was gradually clearing, like a fog lifting. “Or else you’re pretending to be Greek demigods.”

  “I suspect you know we’re not doing that,” Stannard said.

  “No. As explanations go, it’s nuts, but it’s still an explanation, as good as any. And the four before Vega – Peregrine, Merrison, Karno, Munro...”

  “Munro?” said Chase. “Daniel Munro? You got him too?”

  Stannard raised an eyebrow.

  “Achilles,” Chase said, shaking his head. “Fuck me. Fucking Achilles.”

  “Right,” said Roy. “They’re all demigods too.”

  “Were all,” Stannard corrected.

  “Until you people decided to start bumping them off,” said Chase.

  “What, for kicks? I don’t think so,” said Roy.

  “What, then? Just a job?”

  Roy held Chase’s angry glare calmly. “Of course it’s just a job. I’m a soldier. A pawn, like Stannard said.”

  “Henchman, to use your own word,” said Stannard.