Age of Heroes (25 page)

“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

B
ADENHORST 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 watching 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?

B
ADENHORST 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...”

“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.”