The Age of Zeus

5. DROPOUT

The room fell ponderingly silent.

"A show of hands will suffice," said Landesman.

"Kill gods," said Ramsay. "The Olympians."

"And their assorted monstrous hangers-on, that misbegotten menagerie of theirs — Typhon, the Minotaur, the Gorgons, all the rest."

"You can do that? You can give us that power?"

"Let's focus on the question itself for the moment, shall we?"

"No, wait, you're seriously saying you could make it so that we, the twelve of us here round this table, could hurt the Olympians?"

"Not merely hurt. Destroy."

"Impossible," said Harryhausen. "Can't be done. Whole armies have tried. Tried and failed. I know this."

"The Olympians are hard bastards," said Barrington. "Hardest of the hard. The stuff they can do…"

"I realise it seems far-fetched," said Landesman. "Let's treat this as a hypothetical, then. A thought exercise. Given sufficient means to kill an Olympian, would you? Don't tell me none of you has ever considered it. In your dreams, in your blackest, bleakest moments, you've all fantasised about it — avenging the loved ones the Olympians took from you. They've caused you such grief, such pain. It would be only natural to want to strike back at them. Of course you've also told yourselves that this is idle, wasteful speculation. Better to forget, forgive if you are able, move on with your lives. You can't exact revenge on the Pantheon in the same way that you can't exact revenge on a tornado or an earthquake. But what if you could? What if you were presented with the chance to do just that? Would you reject it or grasp it?"

"Grasp." Soleil Eto'o put up her hand. "What else have I been doing since my parents' deaths? Trying to kill Olympians whenever possible. That's what we in the resistance do. We don't succeed. With our nail bombs and our rocket-propelled grenades we try, but we don't succeed, and mostly we wind up getting ourselves killed. But if you are telling me you know of a better way, Mr Landesman, a way that might actually bring success, count me in."

"I'm a yes too," said Sondergaard, raising his hand. "At Sj?lland we gave the Olympians a fight to remember. We lost. We knew going in that we would. But we showed them that Denmark wasn't going to just sit back and let the world be taken over. I'd like another chance to make that point."

"Sj?lland was an empty gesture, Herr Sondergaard," Harryhausen snorted. "Were the Olympians impressed? Did they congratulate your whole country afterwards for so kindly volunteering to be crushed by them? Perhaps they were glad for the target practice."

"So you would rather we had done nothing?"

"I can't speak for Denmark, but I would rather Germany had done nothing. Then my Dietrich would still be alive. But it is my nation's curse always to follow its leaders, however misguided they are."

"So it's a nein from you, Frau Harryhausen?" said Landesman.

"No, not a nein." She raised a hand. "Unless this gesture of yours proves to be an empty one as well…"

"Trust me, it won't."

"I'm in too," said Tsang. "I'm not sure why, but I am."

Other hands followed his into the air: Sparks's, Chisholm's, Hamel's.

"That's more than half," said Landesman. "Looking good so far. Anyone else?"

Mahmoud put hers up. "Can't do any harm to find out what you're offering. I'm not promising I'm in this all the way — but I'm definitely interested."

"Good enough. Rick, what about you?"

"Either you're a deluded nutjob or a nutjob hiding one hell of an ace up your sleeve. Lucky for you, I like nutjobs." Hand up. "Former gunnery sergeant Richard Ramsay, reporting for duty."

"Mr Barrington?"

"Ah, what the hell." Up went a meaty paw. "You have the Barracuda's services. What's the pay like and will there be beer?"

"Generous, and occasionally," said Landesman. "Your salaries will be enough to leave you living in reasonable comfort for the rest of your lives without having to work again. Alcohol, on the other hand, will be in limited supply. We'll make every effort to cater to all your domestic wants and needs. Mrs Fuller, Captain Fuller's wife, makes regular trips to supermarkets on our behalf, and is happy to take orders for specific items. Booze, however, will have to be consumed in moderation, I'm afraid, and inebriation will not be tolerated at all. Rules of the house, and non-negotiable."

"Right-o. Well, that could be a deal breaker. I might have to reconsider."

"Too late now. Miss Akehurst. Sam. It goes without saying that I'd be overjoyed to have you on board. What's the verdict? Yea or nay?"

Sam felt all eyes on her. The centre of attention was not a place she liked to be. Once, in younger days, it had been. Not any more.

"I don't know."

"Please."

"You're asking me to become involved in something, something to do with the Olympians, when I've been busy doing my best to forget the Olympians even exist. You have no idea how difficult it's been for me, how hard I've struggled just to get close to being normal again. And then you come along, someone I don't know and have no great reason to trust…"

"I'll beg if I have to," Landesman said. "I'll get down on my knees and kiss the hem of your robe. Prostrate myself before you."

"Come on, Sam," said Ramsay. "The man's prepared to humiliate himself, he wants you that bad. Don't make him do it. It's not dignified. Besides, his age, he might not be able to get up again. You know how it is with old guys and their prostrates."

"I am, I'll have you know, Rick, in remarkably good shape for a man of my years," Landesman declared. "In all aspects of my physical health. But still, you're right. I do want you 'that bad,' Sam."

A couple of the others made encouraging noises: go on, do it, say yes.

"OK then," Sam said eventually, with a sigh, hardly believing the words were coming out of her mouth. She could always back out if she didn't like the look of what Landesman had in mind, if what he was proposing seemed too preposterous.

Landesman beamed with delight. "And that leaves Mr Pugh. Darren? Would you care to make it twelve out of twelve?"

Darren Pugh made to put his hand up, but then dropped it to the tabletop, with a smile that he might have thought was impish but looked to everyone else like a malicious leer.

"Nah," he said. "Not interested. Mainly because if ginger tits there" — he jerked a thumb at Sam — "is in, I don't want anything to do with it. And also because, you know what? This is bollocks. All of this. Heap of utter, steaming bollocks. You, Mr Landyman, Handyman, whatever your name is, you're talking shite. You can't beat the Olympians. No one can. I don't believe you've got any marvellous plan at all. You just like the idea of thinking you do, and you've roped in all these losers, got them halfway to believing your scheme, your fantasy, whatever this is, and nothing'll come of it, you mark my words. It'll all turn out to be some half-baked nonsense and the whole thing will fall apart.

"You know what you remind me of?" Pugh went on. "A posh version of those blokes you hear talking down the pub, the ones who say they know how they'd get rid of the Olympians, this is what we should do, and they've got some huge, complicated method, use poison gas or smuggle in a suitcase nuke or some such, and if only the government would listen to them then this whole thing would be sorted… But it's all just pie in the sky, just bullshitters bullshitting. And for all your money, your fancy invitations, your island and your World War Two bunker, you're no different from them."

"That's a no, then, I take it."

"Yeah, you could say it's a no. The only way you could kill the Olympians, I reckon, old man, is by boring them to death. Which, longwinded as you are, I wouldn't put past you. Other than that, though…" Pugh glanced around the table. "Good luck in your little happyland dream, all of you, and I'll keep an eye on the television for news reports about your bodies turning up charred and mangled in a field somewhere. That's assuming anything more comes from this meeting, which I seriously doubt'll happen."

He stood up, scraping back his chair.

"Now, I'd like to leave, if you wouldn't mind. I've been here long enough, and I don't enjoy being kept in places where I don't want to stay."

"I'll bet you don't," Sam muttered under her breath.

"What?" Pugh rounded on her. "What did you just say?" He took a step towards her, squaring his shoulders.

Ramsay stood up, ready to lunge.

"I asked you a question, she-pig," Pugh spat. "What did you just say?"

Sam locked gazes with him, at the same time motioning to Ramsay not to intervene. She could handle this. She'd fronted down far larger and far angrier men in the past.

"You don't like being detained against your will, Mr Pugh," she said. "That's understandable. So go. Go now. Don't make a fuss about it. No one wants any trouble."

Pugh took another step closer to her. His head was twitching. His eyes flicked to a table knife, just within his reach. Not particularly sharp, but a useable weapon all the same.

"But if you do want trouble," Sam went on, evenly, "I will give it to you. Come at me with that table knife, and I will break your wrist before you even get near me. Then I will break your elbow. Then I will break your nose. And while you're down on the floor screaming like a little girl, I will take out one of your ankles. And then I will get started on your crotch — and not in a good way. If you ever want to walk normally again, walk now, straight past me, out of that door, and don't come back. That's the one safe, sane course of action open to you right now. Try anything else, and you will regret it."

She kept her voice low, steady, to indicate that she meant every word she said. It was no bluff. She did.

Pugh weighed up his options. He could fathom only one way out of this that didn't involve losing face.

"Fuck it, you're not worth it," he growled. "Anyway, I don't hit women."

Sam wondered if Pugh's estranged wife, were she still alive, might have had something different to say about that.

"I'm off." Pugh headed for the door, skirting round the table on the opposite side from where Sam sat.

Landesman moved to intercept him. "Darren, I'm sorry it has to be this way. But, as a token of my appreciation, and by way of recompense for your time and inconvenience…"

He produced a chequebook, one of those furnished by the kind of bank that did not have high street branches, that had perhaps one premises in a Georgian townhouse in the City of London, another in Switzerland, and a third on a Caribbean island with malleable tax laws. He also produced a Mont Blanc pen. A quick scribble, a rip of perforations, and Pugh was holding a cheque for a sum whose size was sufficient to transform his normally tight-slitted mouth into a wide, gap-toothed grin.

"It was no inconvenience at all, Mr Landesman," he said, folding the cheque and tucking it into a back pocket. "For that kind of dosh, you want me to come and waste a day here again, just call, any time."

Lillicrap was waiting in the corridor outside to escort Pugh upstairs.

Landesman turned back to the remaining eleven. "No great loss," he said. His lack of disappointment seemed entirely unfeigned. "I knew he'd be fifty-fifty, and his antipathy towards Sam would have been an almost insurmountable obstacle. We're better off without him. Besides, one dropout, out of twelve, isn't bad. Now, if you'd all care to follow me, I have something to show you. The wait is over. This is where you learn that I am not, as Rick put it, a deluded nutjob, nor, in Darren Pugh's parlance, a bullshitter. I am the enabler of your vengeances and, quite possibly, the saviour of the world."