Age of Heroes (29 page)

“You are Mr Chase Chance? Of the TV show? The man who is doing the monster hunting?”

“Guilty as charged.”

“Hey! It is you! I knew it!”

The group begged for selfies, and Chase was only too happy to oblige. He had downed a few vodkas during the course of the meal, so his grin was wide and goofy as he posed with an arm around the youngsters’ shoulders, the twilight sky and the broad, burbling river forming a scenic backdrop to the shots. He even put on a good show of cowering in terror as one of the group loomed over him with fingers clawed and a snarling expression like a movie werewolf or vampire. It was all very good-natured and rowdy, and Chase was charged up when it was over.

“See?” he said to Theo. “Happens in Russia too. Anywhere in the world I go. That’s properly famous, that is.”

“It’s the same for me in Mexico,” Salvador said, “when I am out with my mask on. They queue up to shake my hand and take a picture. The women – sometimes they can’t restrain themselves. The places they grope me!”

Chase wagged his eyebrows at Theo. Theo just rolled his eyes.

“Hey, cuz, I’ve got an idea.” Chase patted his backpack. Inside was the Helm of Darkness. He couldn’t bear to be parted from the artefact, now that he had it back. “I’ll go the restroom and put the helmet on. Then I’ll come back, you wave your hands about above the table, and I’ll lift up cutlery and plates and stuff in the air to match your movements, and it’ll look like you’re a Jedi using the Force.”

“No.”

“Come on! It’ll be hilarious. Can you imagine their faces? They’ll freak.”

“Still no.”

“You can say things like ‘I find your lack of faith disturbing’ and ‘If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.’”

“Or no.”

Chase pouted. “Seems such a wasted opportunity.”

“It would draw attention to us that we don’t want. Your adoring fans are bad enough. If we start doing parlour tricks...”

“You can always pretend afterwards that you’re a stage conjuror.”

“Really, it’s not going to happen.”

“Spoilsport.”

“If I have to be.”

Chase moped, but not for long. A couple more rounds of vodka saw to that.

Sasha said to Theo, “I presume you have a theory who is carrying out the attacks on us.”

“I do.”

“You would not be Theseus if you didn’t. Care to tell me?”

“Two likely suspects. Harry Gottlieb is one.”

“It’s always sensible to assume Odysseus has a hidden agenda.”

“If it is him, he’s playing us even now by sending you to join us. But I don’t see what that gets him, other than the pleasure of pushing people around like chess pieces. What is the bigger picture? What’s his endgame?”

“Simply messing with us and having us try to second-guess his motives might be enough for him, for now.”

“I’d be more certain that Gottlieb was our man if Novy Tolkatui had turned out to be a trap after all. Since it didn’t and we got the Helm, it could mean I’ve misjudged him.”

“Or he was using you – us – to obtain the twelfth and final artefact, saving him the effort.”

“And then, at his leisure, he can inveigle us into handing it over to him. It’s plausible.”

“Who’s the other suspect?” Sasha asked.

“Evander Arlington. You might know him better as –”

“Oh, I know exactly who Evander Arlington is. I work for him.”

Theo was startled and not a little alarmed. “Run that by me again?”

“Not for Arlington himself. I should be more specific. For his wife. She is a Wonder Women client. Has been for several years. Arlington, of course, foots the bill. Keeps us on a handsome retainer. At twelve hours’ notice I can have a bodyguard at his wife’s side anywhere in the world, wherever and whenever she needs one. He is insanely protective of her, but then that’s hardly surprising.”

“Why?”

“You don’t know who Mrs Evander Arlington is?” Sasha said archly. “And you call yourself a detective!”

“Crimefighter, actually.”

“Well, you used to call yourself a detective.”

“In another age. Technically I’m not even a crimefighter any more. Just a writer.”

“Yes, I’ve seen your books on sale, chiefly at airport terminal bookshops. Can’t say I’ve been tempted to pick one up.”

“So who is Mrs Arlington? Probably some glamorous actress I’ve never heard of.”

“Glamorous yes. Actress? Debatable. In the broadest definition of the word, perhaps. Still not a clue?” Sasha was enjoying his ignorance.

“Chase is the one who seems to know what everyone’s up to. He’s our resident Demigod Wiki. Chase?”

“Yeah?”

“Who is Evander Arlington married to?”

“No idea. Someone beautiful and high-maintenance, would be my guess. I didn’t even know he was married. I thought, like the rest of us, he’d given up on getting too close to mortals. We’ve all seen so many loved ones grow old and die; who wants to have long-term relationships with them anymore?”

“Amen to that,” said Salvador, and he and Chase clinked glasses together, spilling quite a bit of vodka in the process.

“Arlington has got around that issue,” said Sasha.

“His wife a sex doll then?” said Chase. “I can see how it might work. Non-perishable rubber. Never wears out. Lifetime guarantee.”

He and Salvador roared with laughter.

“No,” said Sasha, lip curling in distaste. “He married one of us.”

Theo thought fast. Based on Sasha’s hints and insinuations, one candidate came to the fore. “Helen.”

Sasha rewarded him with a nod that could scarcely have been more patronising. “Helen of Sparta, daughter of Zeus and Leda, sister of Castor, Pollux and Clytemnestra, and wife of Menelaus until her abduction by Paris, which gave her the name she’s better known by.”

“Helen of Troy,” said Salvador.

“And also,” Chase said to Theo, “your one-time girlfriend.”

Theo shook his head ruefully. “Don’t remind me. I’ve made some mistakes in my time, but...”

“Making off with a girl who’d barely started her monthlies,” said Sasha, “while you were in your sixth decade of life?” She sneered. “No, I can’t imagine
that
going wrong at all.”

T
HESEUS HAD FALLEN
for Helen the very first time he saw her, which was at the temple of Artemis in Laconia, just outside the city of Sparta. In a fit of high spirits, he and his friend Pirithous, King of the Lapiths, had drawn lots to decide which of two divinely sired beauties they would attempt to sleep with. Pirithous had got the short straw: Persephone, wife of Hades. Persephone was loveliness incarnate, with cherubic cheeks and fecund hips, but being married to the god of the Underworld made her by far the greater challenge of the two, and ultimately Pirithous failed dismally. Helen, famous throughout Greece for her astonishing good looks but also young, free and single, had seemed the safer bet, so Theseus was happy to travel to the land of the Spartans and court her.

He had not been prepared for just how remarkable her beauty was. A lightning bolt from Zeus himself could not have left him as staggered and dumbfounded. At the sight of her he felt utterly unmanned, and at the same time aroused to a degree he had never known before. The way her peplos clung to her figure, its folds caressing her curves, its open sides revealing glimpses of her perfect breasts ... The inviting shape her mouth seemed to fall into naturally when at rest ... The strong planes of her cheekbones and coquettish tilt of her chin... Unlike most women of noble birth, Helen eschewed cosmetics. She did not need them. Her lips were red enough on their own, her eyelids naturally smoky, her skin pale and soft.

She moved among the temple’s columns, bearing a votive offering of cheese, which she placed beside similar offerings at the feet of the
xoanon
, the wooden effigy of Artemis. Then she took her place among the priestesses and joined them in the
diamastigosis
, in which adolescent males tried to get at the offerings and were driven back by women armed with ceremonial whips. Even the glee and narrow-eyed ferocity with which Helen lashed at the youngsters did not dampen Theseus’s ardour; quite the opposite, in fact.

The young men seemed to feel the same. Helen’s whipping drove them into a frenzy. They competed with one another to receive blows from her rather than from any of the priestesses. They hurled rivals out of the way for the honour of feeling the bite of her whip, and showed off the bloody weals afterward as badges of pride.

Theseus was soon to discover that Helen’s tongue was a vicious as any scourge. Her behaviour at the temple ought to have given him a clue, but he was too smitten with her. He
had
to have her, and so he pursued her relentlessly, in secret, without the knowledge of her adoptive father King Tyndareus. He lavished gifts on her, boasted to her of the life of luxury she would lead at his palace back in Athens, danced to her whims, prostrated himself before her, and promised her anything and everything it was in his power to grant. In hindsight he made a complete fool of himself, but at the time, with lust and adoration raging through him like a lava flow, it all seemed sensible and appropriate and right, the only way to be.

She succumbed in the end, and agreed to go with him to Athens. They stole off from Laconia one night and he installed her in his palace as though she were the greatest prize a man could ever win.

What a bitch she turned out to be.

For perhaps three weeks their life together was bliss. They made love at least three times a day, sometimes twice as often as that, and Theseus had never known such ecstasy. The feel of her was like silk. The scent of her was like perfume. The taste of her was like ambrosia.

Then she became demanding. The sex tailed off; she shrank from his touch. She wanted more slaves, more jewellery, more clothing. Better food. Better wine.

Theseus complied, of course. Anything to keep his Helen happy. The bliss lingered, still just tangible, within sight, recapturable. There were moments when he could kid himself that nothing was wrong and that she was as passionate about him as he was about her. He believed that the squalls she brought to the household would pass, and balmy sunshine would return.

But then she started casually beating servants. She had a slave flogged within an inch of his life for the crime of dropping a dish of olives. A cook was branded with his own iron tongs for making her a cup of goat’s milk too hot to sip. A gardener was dismissed for pruning a shrub back too far for her liking.

Theseus could not let her get away with this. He prided himself on the unusual decency with which he treated his domestic staff, and Helen had offended his sense of fair play.

He was unable to bring himself to hit her. Most other men in his position, in that day and age, would have, but he did not even scold her. Instead he tried to reason with her. He implored her to stop abusing and upsetting the servants.

The result? A blistering hour-long diatribe from Helen, full of insults and swearing, followed by a sulk of epic proportions that lasted well over a week. No amount of blandishment could jolly her out of it; all the begging in the world could not pry her from her bedchamber.

The affair – because Theseus now saw that that was all this was, an affair, not the glorious eternal union he had thought it would be – limped on for another couple of months. There were brief reconciliations between longer and longer bouts of bitter, stony estrangement. He became increasingly disenchanted with Helen and resigned to the idea that she would have to go. Seldom did she have a kind word to say to him. Mostly she called his masculinity into question and complained that he was not the person he had made himself out to be back in Laconia.

Then her brothers Castor and Pollux came from Sparta to retrieve her, and they did not arrive a moment too soon. They thundered into Athens with a retinue of hoplites and cavalry, threatening war and retribution. It was widely believed in Laconia that Helen had been taken by Theseus against her will, much as had been the case with Melanippe and the Amazons. Theseus, however, was able to convince the twins otherwise, and that he was only too willing for them to take Helen back home. To sweeten the deal, he gave them fifty head of cattle, a hundred amphorae of wine, and sackloads of gold and ivory. He did not consider this too high a price to pay for getting rid of her.

“L
OOK AT THAT
damn face,” said Salvador, breaking in on Theo’s reverie of reminiscence. “So sour. There’s a man who knows how it feels to be screwed over by a woman.”

“It was not,” Theo admitted, “my finest hour. In my defence I will say that at least I didn’t start a ten-year war over her that cost thousands of lives. The only one who really suffered on my account was yours truly. And now Evander Arlington has her in his life?” He gave a hollow laugh. “I almost feel sorry for the old bastard.”

“She is difficult still,” said Sasha. “I can’t say Hélène Arlington – she pronounces her name the French way nowadays – is my favourite client. Some of my Wonder Women work for her once and refuse to do so ever again. The more robust ones can handle her, though, and are compensated accordingly. No one could accuse her husband of being ungenerous. But it all begs the question, why would Evander Arlington be killing other demigods? What leads you to that conclusion, Theo?”

Theo explained about the record of artefact locations Odysseus had left with King Minos. “That’s all I’ve got to go on so far. If I could just find Arlington to speak to him, then I might be able to eliminate him as a suspect, or otherwise. That’s generally what we’ve been hoping to do. This trip to Russia has just been a detour. And...” He looked at Sasha levelly. “Now that we’ve met you, it looks like we have an ‘in’ with him. Which is fortunate.” He almost said
fortuitous
.

“You’d like me to set up a meeting with Arlington, via his wife?”

“You’re in contact with her, aren’t you?”

“I have ways to get in touch with her.”

“Bingo. Then you’re the man for the job.”

“Woman for the job.”

“That’s what I said. Would you? Pretty please?”