Age of Heroes (5 page)

Cynthia flapped a heavily bangled forearm. “Forget that BS. Literary respectability? Hah! If you’re making it big time in genre, who needs reviews in the
New Yorker
? Believe me, those guys churning out the Great American Novel every five years, they’d kill for your sales figures.”

Food arrived: great rectangular slabs of marinated sirloin and cubic chunks of boneless rib, along with a selection of
banchan
, little vegetable side dishes. As Theo and Cynthia tucked in, his phone rang. He checked the screen and thumbed Reject. It probably wasn’t important. Voicemail would do.

“Glad to know I take priority over whoever that was,” Cynthia said.

“Always, Cynth. So, don’t keep me in suspense. How did it go with Simon & Schuster?”

“Congratulations, Mr Stannard. You are now in possession of a brand spanking new two-book deal.”

She raised her glass of mineral water, and Theo clinked it with his diet soda. Cynthia was a recovering alcoholic, ten years sober, and out of deference to her Theo only ever ordered soft drinks in her presence.

“Advance?”

“Mid-six-figures per book is the offer, but I’m going to hold out for an extra hundred K for each. They want to keep you, and they know Random House are sniffing around. That’s mainland only. We retain overseas rights, of course.”

“Of course. And they don’t mind that only one of the books is a Jake Killian novel?”

“Jake’s the moneymaker, no question, but S&S like the synopsis for
The Golden Thread
very much, and they’re willing to take a gamble. The idea of an Ancient Greek murder mystery tickles them. They think it could turn into a series – a second string to your bow. Something maybe to fall back on, if the Jake Killians ever start losing traction, which they won’t. I’ve got to ask, though. We know you’re a god among contemporary crime writers...”

“Well, not quite.”

“Ah, modesty. I used to know what that was. Good thing you have me to blow your trumpet for you.” She had a dirty laugh. “That came out wrong.”

“It’s easier someone else blowing your trumpet than blowing it yourself.”

Now her laugh was positively filthy. “The issue I’m trying to address here is, you’ve not done historical fiction before. Between us, are you sure you’re up to it?”

“Pretty sure,” Theo said. “I can do the research. And like I always say when giving pro tips, if you can’t find a suitable fact, just make one up. Nobody –”

His phone rang again. He checked. Same caller. As before, he rejected.

“I’m not normally this popular,” he said.

“Did I see that name right?” Cynthia had glimpsed the caller ID. “Chase Chance?”

“Yup.”

“As in
the
Chase Chance? The
Monster Hunter
fella? From TV?”

“Yup.”

“I didn’t know you knew him.”

“I do.”

“How long?”

Almost my entire life, and that’s longer than you think
. “A while.”

“Good friends?”

“Guess you could say so.”

Cynthia leaned a little closer, dropping her voice. “Does he have representation? I mean, he must do. He’s had at least three tie-in titles published. What I’m asking is, is he happy with his agency? Maybe he’d like to step things up, take it to the next level.”

That was Cynthia. Forever hustling.

“Lucky I’m used to you, Cynth,” Theo said. “Otherwise I might take offence, you working me to get another client.”

“Girl’s gotta make her targets.”

His phone beeped. Now a text. From Chase Chance.

“Shit. Look, I’ll turn it off.”

“Is that him again?”

“Yes.”

“Well, see what he has to say. He obviously needs to talk with you.”

“Okay.”

Theo pulled up the text.

Call me. Urgent.

He frowned.

“What’s he after?” Cynthia said.

“Don’t know. Mind if I deal with it?”

She waved assent. “Just don’t forget to ask him about his agent. You know he can’t do better than me.”

Theo exited the restaurant, and the humid Manhattan heat hit him like a wall, stifling after Seoul Food’s air-conditioned interior. The street outside was busy as only Greenwich Village at midday in the summer could be – nose-to-tail taxis, swerving bike messengers, sidewalks crammed with hipsters, wage slaves and tourists. He punched up Chase’s name from his contacts list and pressed Call.

“Yeah, Theo, you get my voicemails?”

“Didn’t listen to them. Thought you could give it to me straight, whatever it is. Where are you?”

“San Juan.”

“That’s... Mexico?”

“Puerto Rico.”

“I knew that. Filming?”

“You betcha. Look, cuz, this connection’s shitty, so I’ll just get down to it. You heard about Anthony Peregrine?”

“Who’s that?”

“What do you mean, who’s that?”

“I’m guessing he’s...” Theo lowered his voice. Nobody was eavesdropping. Passers-by passed by, nobody cared. He was just another Manhattanite, on his phone. Still, discretion was your life. You were a member of a highly exclusive club and you took pains not to advertise the fact. “One of us.”

“Hell, yes, he’s one of us.”

“But I can’t put a name to... the name. I don’t keep tabs on us all.”

“Well, Anthony Peregrine is Aeneas’s latest alias. Or rather,
was
.”

“Was?”

Theo felt something in the pit of his stomach, not quite fear; unease, fear’s handmaiden.

“They’re saying he’s dead,” said Chase.

“
They’re
saying? Who’s saying?”

“Couple of news feeds. Reports from Argentina. I got a ping from Google Alerts earlier today.”

“You Google Alert us?”

“Hey, you may not keep tabs. I do. It’s fun to know what the relatives are up to.”

“The very distant relatives.”

“It’s not like we have family reunions. Anyhow, that’s not the point.”

“No. The point is he can’t be dead. Aeneas can’t be. That’s not possible. Unless he’s switching to a new identity.”

“Yeah, but that’s not how we do it, is it?” said Chase. “We don’t fake our deaths. Not any more. Because it’s too hard nowadays. You can’t just get hold of some stranger’s corpse, mess up its face and pass it off as your own. Forensic pathology has put paid to all that. So we just duck out discreetly and go be someone else. That’s the way.”

“Maybe Aeneas has decided to go old-school.”

“He’s a damn idiot if he has. And Aeneas is many things, but a damn idiot isn’t one of them.”

“How is he supposed to have died? Do you know?”

“Something to do with an avalanche, seems to be the gist of it. Killed in, by, under, an avalanche in the Martial Mountains, down in Tierra del Fuego.”

“So then it must be a mistake. Must be someone else called Anthony Peregrine. That or it’s misidentification of the body. Either way, they’ve got the wrong guy.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking. But I’d like to know for sure, one way or the other.”

“Me too,” said Theo. “You have a number for him?”

“Nope. You’re the only family member I keep in touch with – which is a tragedy for at least one of us.”

“If not both.”

“So I’m volunteering to go down there and do some nosing around. I’m not expecting you to tag along. The great Theo Stannard doesn’t leave Manhattan, does he? Superstar thriller writer, with his swish Gramercy Park apartment and his ten-grand-a-year health club and his cute twenty-something publicists with the tits and teeth.”

“Not fair.”

“But accurate. But as a matter of fact, I don’t mind going alone. I’m nearer, and there’s no point both of us having a wasted trip, if that’s what it turns out to be.”

“Okay. Works for me.”

“I can’t leave Puerto Rico for another two or three days. I’m at the tail end of... something. You know. Business to finish. We’ve wrapped, but there’s one last thing to take care of.”

“A world free of monsters.”

“Got it in one, cuz. But when I’m done with that, I’ll fly south, see what’s what.”

“Appreciated,” said Theo. “It’s almost certainly nothing, but keep me posted anyway.”

“Will do. And Theo? Remind me. Who’s got a constellation?”

Theo groaned. “For fuck’s sake...”

“Yeah, but out of the two of us? Is it me or you? Let me think...”

“That never gets old, Chase.”

“Sure doesn’t,” said Chase Chance brightly, and hung up.

“Y
OU LOOK GLOOMY.
Preoccupied.”

So said Cynthia as Theo sidled back into the restaurant and retook his seat.

“Do I? Shouldn’t. Not with that book deal in the offing.”

“What’d he say? Chase Chance, Monster Hunter?”

“He was just – just touching base. That’s all.”

“Representation?”

“Didn’t find out. Didn’t come up.”

“Ah well. I’ll keep badgering you. You know I will.” She added, “You do seem worried, though.”

“I’m not.”

Not yet
, he added mentally.

He resumed eating his meal. The food was excellent; he ought to be enjoying himself, but he wasn’t.

Cynthia rattled on, in her way. Contract fine print. Royalty thresholds. Foreign markets. A hint of Hollywood interest. Potential this. Probable that. Avenues to pursue, calls to make, trees to shake. Theo heard, but didn’t listen.

Aeneas was dead?

Couldn’t be.

If he was, what did that mean for the rest of them?

THREE

El Yunque National Forest, Puerto Rico

C
HASE
C
HANCE STALKED
through the rainforest. He knew his prey was nearby. He knew, too, that his prey was aware he was there.

The beast had gone to ground. It seemed to have sensed that the man tracking it was no ordinary being. He was implacable; he was nemesis. Chase could almost smell its terror. But terror did not make it any less dangerous. Quite the opposite.

This was the creature he and his camera crew had been pursuing for two weeks, seemingly without success. They had camped out at the edge of the El Yunque National Forest and ventured in every night, shooting on high-def video with a low-light image-intensifying attachment. Along with innumerable mosquito bites, they had gathered a hundred hours of footage. There’d been no direct contact with their quarry, but enough creepy moments – rustles in the undergrowth, flashes of retinal reflection, eerie animal calls – to fill out forty-three minutes of running time and generate another nail-biting, ratings-grabbing episode. Chase Chance, Monster Hunter never actually found any of the monsters he hunted, but viewers didn’t seem to mind, aside from a few online grousers who thought that the show was all foreplay and no fuck. The thrill, for the folks at home, was the search, the atmosphere, the possibility...

Chase, in fact, had spent most of the two weeks deliberately steering himself and the crew
away
from where the creature was. He had figured out the location of its lair pretty early on: somewhere in the strip of forest between the western bank of the Icacos River and the El Toro Wilderness Area. Its trails and spoor all led in that direction.

Consequently, he had made sure to stay east of the Icacos, pretending, with all his pop-science authority, that he was busy narrowing down the creature’s whereabouts. At one point, out of sight of the crew, he had adapted a mongoose’s pawprint in the mud with his knuckles, then drawn it to their attention and speculated whether it might well belong to the animal they were looking for. Both Joey the cameraman and Ahmed the sound guy had fallen for the ploy, as had production assistant Mary-Anne, usually the sceptic in the group. All three became a little more agitated, a little more panicky. Upping the crew’s anxiety levels was part and parcel of the show’s appeal. If Chase could get them spooked and apprehensive, their excitement transferred to the viewers. Result: subscription channel gold. An audience of four million, domestic, on average. Double that, worldwide.

Chase Chance was US television’s premier cryptozoological adventurer. As the show’s credits voiceover put it, “He chases the animals that are rumoured to exist, that aren’t supposed to exist, that
should not
exist.” Over three seasons so far he had gone after yetis, lake monsters, giant earthworms, outsized felids, pterosaurs, owlmen, mothmen, apemen, prehistoric fish, flightless birds, every conceivable kind of cryptid. Wherever one reared its head, or allegedly did, there he and his crew went. Nepal, Mongolia, the Australian Outback, Congo, Cambodia, Cornwall – Chase and team crisscrossed the planet, racking up thousands of air miles in their ceaseless quest. Every time, they came home empty-handed, with nothing to prove conclusively that any such beasts were to be found. That, it seemed, was the abiding message of
Monster Hunter
: there are no monsters. Chase would say as much in his to-camera piece at the end of each episode. He would deliver a spiel about hoaxes, misunderstandings, wrongly interpreted evidence, over-credulousness, the human love of a good mystery. He would say he continued to
want
to believe, but he hadn’t yet found anything to make him believe.