Age of Heroes (17 page)

Chase eyed him over the rim of his tumbler. “The fact is, as civilisation spreads, there are fewer places for monsters to hide in. Their habitats are being encroached on. But you can’t keep them in a game reserve, like lions or elephants; they have to stay in the wild. Upshot is you’re going to get more clashes between them and humans, and one or other side is going to regret it.”

“So it’s better that you kill them first, is that it? A kind of pre-emptive strike.”

“That’s it. Simplifies things, too. This is an age that doesn’t have room for anything people can’t identify or classify. It’s an age of rationalism, and monsters have no place in it.”

“Rationalism?” Gottlieb laughed hollowly. “Have you not noticed how many religious zealots there are out there? All those monotheist fundamentalists obeying the edicts of their One True God? Washington has more than its fair share.”

“And they don’t want monsters in the world either. I’m performing a useful community service, Harry. I’m getting rid of the last few vestiges of the past –
our
past, when heroes and monsters were commonplace. I’m sweeping away the things that no longer belong.”

“Well, if you insist.”

“I do.” Chase finished off his drink.

Gottlieb held up two fingers, attracting the attention of a waitress. “Over here, my dear.” To Theo and Chase: “My round. What’ll it be?”

Yet another whisky sour for Chase, a second rum and Coke for Theo, and a gimlet for Gottlieb.

After the drinks came, Theo said, “So, what’s the news?”

“No more small talk?” said Gottlieb. “You really do have the bit between your teeth, Theo.”

“I’m taking what’s happening very seriously.”

“You’re a very serious person. Always have been. Like Chase here, you can’t seem to escape who you were.”

“Nor, for that matter, can you.”

“Fair point. We are set in our ways, aren’t we? You’d think, after all this time, we’d have changed. Perhaps we can’t.”

“Isaac Merrison did,” said Chase.

“Who? Oh, yes. Orion. But then he had to. He couldn’t go on the way he was, so angry, so consumed by the desire to conquer and dominate. The rest of us, we just tread over the same old ground, wearing new boots.”

“You’ve made enquiries, I take it,” said Theo.

“Patience, patience,” said Gottlieb. “Yes, I have. I’ve placed a few calls, set wheels in motion. Principally I’ve pulled some strings with the Director at Langley. As we speak, CIA drones are winging their way from various US airbases around the world to the places where I buried divine artefacts. The pilots’ brief is to reconnoitre only, look for signs of disturbance at the sites. The pilots have been told that these may be the locations of terrorists arms caches. Beyond that, they are in ignorance, as is the Director. I don’t anticipate anyone reporting back until tomorrow morning at the earliest. I chose each site for its remoteness and inaccessibility, after all. That was the whole point, putting the things where they wouldn’t be stumbled upon by accident.”

“And booby-trapping them, for anyone retrieving them on purpose.”

“Daedalus himself would have envied the job I did,” said Gottlieb. “I spent months devising and perfecting those traps. Tripwires, crossbows triggered by pressure plates. Pools of mercury, sliding portcullis blocks. Deluges of sand. Water-activated counterweights. Fragile plugs of concrete stopping up channels connected to underground reservoirs. I used as little metal as possible in the construction, and any I did use I coated with chromate to prevent it rusting. The traps were intended to remain dormant but effective for centuries.”

“Until Lara Croft comes along and somersaults past the lot of them,” said Chase.

“Who is Lara Croft?”

“You’re kidding me. Seriously? You’ve never heard of
Tomb Raider
?”

“Is it another lowest-common-denominator television show, like yours?”

Chase, ignoring the barb, shook his head wonderingly. “You probably don’t know who Indiana Jones is either.”

“Him I’m familiar with. Reagan was a big fan of the films. He would sometimes act out scenes for me while we were in conference. It was... tiresome.”

“Trying to keep us focused...” said Theo.

Chase shot him a you’re-no-fun look.

“Chase may not realise it, but he has a point,” Theo continued. “Let’s presume someone was able to beat all the traps, cunning as they are.”

“Not beyond the bounds of possibility, I suppose,” Gottlieb said.

“Would the artefacts still be potent, after all this time?”

“Still imbued with divine essence, still deadly to us? I don’t see why not. We are, aren’t we? The divinity in us, such as it is, has preserved us well past man’s allotted threescore and ten. We remain in a state of perpetual youthfulness. Some of us more than others.” He aimed a wry sidelong glance at Chase. “Why shouldn’t it be the same for the twelve artefacts?”

“The gods are no longer around, that’s all.”

“And the artefacts need constantly topping up with power, like a laptop’s battery needs charging? I don’t think it works that way. Once each of them was bestowed its godly imprimatur, it had it in perpetuity. That’s why they struck me as so hazardous, why they had to be collected and buried, like toxic waste. They would always pose a risk.”

“And only you know where they were.”

“Only me,” Gottlieb said with a nod. “That is the status quo, and it has served us well so far.”

Something jangled in Theo’s mind, like a tiny, distant alarm. What Gottlieb had just said didn’t ring entirely true, but he was damned if he could figure out at that moment what was bothering him. He had so many memories, too many to search easily. It was like finding a specific tree in a vast forest. He shook his head; it would come to him.

“I believe, under the circumstances, that the status quo should be revised,” he said.

Gottlieb eyed him with scepticism and a touch of indignation. “You’re asking me to divulge the locations of the artefacts to you? To break a sacred trust I have held for three thousand years?”

“Yes.”

“Whatever for?”

“Because it’s about time. Because we deserve to know.”

“You deserve to know!” Gottlieb echoed with sharp disdain. “You don’t deserve anything of the sort.”

“It’s a big damn secret for one individual to keep. Sharing it is long overdue.”

“Preposterous. Never.”

“Look at it this way. If it does turn out that the artefacts have been unearthed, then the point’s moot anyway.”

“And if they haven’t been, you’ll have got me to surrender up knowledge I have assiduously kept to myself my entire life, for nothing.”

“I’m insisting that you do this, Harry,” Theo said. “Whether or not Aeneas, Orion and Orpheus were killed with the artefacts, the rest of us have a right to be told where you stashed them. We may have accepted, back then, that it was sensible for wise Odysseus to be the artefacts’ sole custodian. But the world has moved on. Things are different now.”

Gottlieb squinted at him askance. “If I didn’t know better, I might infer that you have your suspicions about me, Theo Stannard. That you think I me the culprit behind the deaths.”

“No,” Theo said firmly – maybe a little too firmly. “That’s not my reasoning at all.”

“I very much hope it isn’t. I would be deeply disappointed if it was. I would also become thoroughly uncooperative, which I am sure you would not wish.”

“All the same, I’m still insisting.”

“With the implication that – what? If I don’t comply you’ll hurt me? Here? In full view of all these people? Dozens of witnesses, some of them members of the national and international press?” Gottlieb snorted.

Theo realised then that the choice of venue for this meeting had been neither accident nor miscalculation. Gottlieb had prepared for a clash; worse, he had his own suspicions about Theo and Chase.

It was paranoid. But then Theo was starting to feel a tinge of paranoia himself.

“Look,” Theo said. His tone was as mollifying as he could make it. “I’m not asking much.” He slid a cocktail napkin across the table to Gottlieb. “Just jot them down on this. The what and the where. Then we’re all on an equal footing.”

“Why does it matter to you, this knowledge? How is it going to help?”

“At the risk of sounding bleak, what if something happens to you? What if, heaven forfend, you go the way of the other three?”

“I’m too wily for that.”

“One can’t be too careful. I’m asking you for a gesture of trust.”

“Trust? Seems more like mistrust to me. You don’t think I’m being straight with you. You don’t think I’ve arranged for those drones at all.”

“Perhaps I like to cover all the bases.”

“And should I agree to do as you ask, what will you do with it? This could all be a charade, a scheme to wheedle the locations out of me, enabling you to get your own hands on the artefacts.”

“You know me,” said Theo. “You said just now that we don’t change, and you know the sort of person I am. I’m not a murderer.”

“You’ve killed.”

“Those who deserved it. Thieves, extortionists, torturers. And, yes, murderers. But not fellow demigods.”

“Some demigods have been thieves, extortionists, murderers and worse. Orion was no saint. Neither was Aeneas, for all that called him Pious. He mistreated Dido of Carthage egregiously, his conquest of the Latins was far from peaceful, and he didn’t show the warlord Turnus any mercy when they duelled. Orpheus too was hardly a paragon of good behaviour.”

Theo almost laughed. “Come on. If I’m the guy who killed them, why would I have come to you for help?”

“As a ruse, to allow you to add me to the tally. I’m sure there are things I’ve done that the self-righteous Theseus would disapprove of.”

“That’s crazy. Besides, if I’m already using the divine artefacts to go on a slaughter spree, why would I be asking you to tell me where they are?”

“Another ruse. You don’t have them yet. You want them, and you’ve set this all up to get hold of them.”

“Crazier still. What’s it like in your head, Harry? All these thoughts going round in circles, chasing their tails, eating themselves? You’ve been in politics too long. You can’t see anything for what it is any more. You can only see motives behind motives, wheels within wheels, plots inside plots. Just write down where the artefacts are. For my sake, for yours. Think of it as an insurance policy. You must see the sense in that.”

Gottlieb was silent for a long while. Cogs were turning in his intricate brain. Theo wondered if he had pushed him too hard. It was conceivable Gottlieb might just stand up and walk away, and then what? Could Theo pursue him and beat the information out of him? Of course he couldn’t.

He didn’t even want to know where the artefacts had been stowed, not that badly. He was just keen for Gottlieb to give some indication that he was on the side of right. With a man as slippery as Odysseus, you needed a show of earnest, a bargaining chip, to keep him honest. Otherwise he would treat you as just another malleable fool to toy with and manipulate. Gottlieb would not be a reliable ally until he had proved beyond all doubt that he could be.

Slowly, reluctantly, the self-styled Sage of Georgetown reached into an inside jacket pocket and produced a beautiful fountain pen, a Montblanc Meisterstück with solid gold nib and black resin barrel. He applied it to the humble cocktail napkin, writing neatly for a couple of minutes. Then, capping the pen, he slid the napkin back to Theo.

“There. Happy?”

Theo scanned the list of artefacts and their locations:

In no particular order:

Trident (Poseidon) — Deception Island, Antarctica

Bident (Hades) — Atacama Desert, Bolivia

Bow (Apollo) — Svalbard, Norway

Bow (Artemis) — Pitcairn Island, South Pacific

Hammer (Hephaestus) — Kerguelen Archipelago, South Indian Ocean

Axe (Ares) — Tristan de Cunha, South Atlantic

Helm of Darkness (Hades) — Novy Tolkatui, Siberia

Spear (Hephaestus) — Motuo, China

Sickle (Hermes) — Taklamakan Desert, China

Aegis (Zeus) — Socotra Island, Yemen

Scythe (Kronos) — Cape York Peninsula, Australia

Club (Dionysus)— Ittoqqortoormiit, Greenland

Chase, peering over his shoulder, let out a whistle. “Holy shit. I’ve been remote places, but there’s some there even I haven’t heard of. Novy Tolkatui? Socotra Island? And I’m not even going to try to pronounce that last one.”

“Imagine travelling to such far-flung destinations in the days before airliners,” said Gottlieb. “Before helicopters. Before even steam. Imagine how damn long and arduous the voyages were. Sail, then mule train, slogging across ice or sand dune or mountainside for mile after mile, lugging building materials and urging on slaves who were reluctant at best, at worst mutinous... Made my ten-year journey home from Troy look like a two-week pleasure cruise.”

“Is this all true?” Theo said, indicating the list.

“You mean have I made any of it up? No. Do you think me capable of coming up with a dozen obscure place names right off the top of my head?”

“Look on it as a compliment that I do. I have to point out, too, that you’ve not been very specific. The Atacama Desert, for instance – that’s big. Where in the Atacama Desert?”

“You were hoping for GPS coordinates, perhaps?” Gottlieb’s smile was smug. “I’m not going to give away
everything
, Theo. You’ve plenty there to be getting on with, and it’s all you’re going to have, for now.” He stood to leave. “I would say that it’s been a pleasure, but I doubt you’d believe me. I will be in touch as and when I have anything further to impart. Goodnight.”

L
ATER, LYING IN
bed in his hotel room, wakeful, Theo mulled over the conversation. Typical Odysseus, laying down his hand while keeping some up his sleeve.

Then, all at once, it hit him. He remembered.

“And only you would know where they were.”

“Only me.”

But that wasn’t quite accurate, was it?