Age of Heroes (49 page)

“Please do,” said Roy, politeness only just containing a screaming sense of urgency.

“I can also lend you my helicopter to get you to the mainland,” Arlington said. “This is clearly a matter of some emergency. I can have my private jet waiting for you at Athens International, fuelled and ready to fly.”

“You’ll do that for me?”

The multibillionaire shrugged expansively. “I have moral obligations. There is a need to compensate.”

“How soon can I leave?” said Roy.

“How soon can
we
leave?” said Stannard.

Roy looked at him.

“We had a deal,” Stannard said.

“But you can barely walk.”

“You don’t look any better yourself.”

“I’ll manage.”

“So will I.”

“I’m coming too,” said Jeanne.

“How many can your helicopter take?” said Sasha.

“It seats six,” Arlington replied.

“Then count me in.”

“This could just be a wasted journey...” Roy began, but he knew, seeing their faces, that they didn’t care. They were accompanying him to Vienna regardless.

“I’ll make the necessary calls and rouse the pilot,” Arlington said, turning towards the house. “Wheels up in under an hour.”

FORTY-SEVEN

Vienna

J
OSIE HAD RECOVERED
, both from the lithium overdose and the failure of her plan. Her resilience surprised her. She hadn’t lapsed back into despair after learning that Benedikt had not managed to make the phone call after all. A Black Day had beckoned, but she had refused to let it consume her. She had shaken off its tentacles, forced herself to let go of her disappointment and look ahead. Try again. Come up with another plan.

Benedikt, however, was despondent. He was ashamed that he hadn’t been able to reach the landline. After Josie had passed out, the guards hadn’t left him alone for a moment. They’d insisted he stay by her side and keep a close eye on her, even while one of them was off fetching the materials for the makeshift stomach pump, which took well over an hour. A couple of times Benedikt had begged for a reprieve, a minute alone to collect his thoughts and compose himself. No dice. The guards were terrified of Josie dying on their watch.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Josie told him again and again, afterwards. “It was a shitty, half-arsed plan anyway. We both knew there was only a slim chance it was going to work.”

In the event, it did bring captors and captives together. The realisation that Josie posed a threat to herself made the guards, especially Ginger Walrus, much more attentive: they had come painfully close to losing her, and it was a calamity they had no desire to see repeated. The doors between the bedroom and the main room were now never shut. Josie was under constant surveillance, the guards monitoring everything she did. She and Benedikt were able to snatch the occasional whispered conversation in private, but for the most part they behaved formally towards each other, as though they were nothing more than what they were meant to be, carer and patient.

And the day-shift guards held Benedikt in higher esteem than previously. He had saved Josie, and in doing so saved their skins. They had begun to treat him with a certain respect, allowing him to come and go between the two rooms as he pleased, even inviting him to sit and watch football with them. He was a fan and fairly knowledgeable; a fragile bond developed. Josie often heard him participating in their arguments over team managers and star signings. He had gained their trust.

So when, this morning, he offered to make coffee for them, the guards happily let him. They asked for it strong. Benedikt was keen to oblige and heaped spoonfuls of coffee grounds into the cafetière.

Josie watched through the doorway as he added something else to the cafetière before pouring the boiling water in. None of the day-shift guards noticed.

It had been her idea. A far better idea than the last one, although it wouldn’t have been possible but for the last one, either. Her overdose had paved the way for this: giving the guards themselves an overdose.

Benedikt had palmed at least fifteen lithium tablets into the cafetière. The water would dissolve them in no time. The taste of the coffee would disguise what little flavour they had. The guards were about to get a dose of Josie’s own medicine.

T
HEY DRANK THE
coffee. Benedikt sat beside them, staring intently at the TV, not looking at them at all; he feared his face might give the game away. He focused on the football.

Josie waited. Benedikt waited.

How soon before the tablets started to take effect? Had Benedikt introduced enough of them into the coffee? Would being dissolved lessen their potency? Would the guards realise something was amiss when they all started feeling unwell at once?

So much could go wrong, but Josie and Benedikt were both agreed that it was worth the gamble.

Minutes ticked by, achingly long minutes, and then one of the guards put a hand to his belly. He said he felt odd, gassy. He had eaten Chinese last night, maybe that was it. He went to the cloakroom beside the main entrance, where there was an additional toilet.

When he didn’t return after five minutes, another of the guards went to check on him, collapsing after he had taken five steps.

The last remaining guard, Ginger Walrus, rose immediately to his feet, groping for his gun.

“What is...?” he began, then doubled over with an agonising stomach cramp.

Josie’s and Benedikt’s gazes met through the doorway.

This was their one – their only – chance.

Josie sprang from the bed and hurtled into the main room. Benedikt leapt from the chair. Ginger Walrus straightened, making a grab for Josie, but she shoved him hard and he stumbled over a low marble table and crashed to the floor.

Benedikt was already halfway to the exit. Josie was right behind him.

They had done it! They were going to escape!

The door lay ahead. Just as they reached it, it opened.

In came a man neither of them had seen before. He wasn’t one of the guards. He was large, ruddy-complexioned, bull-necked, and clad in casualwear, shirt and jeans, but with an unusual accessory: a kind of furry tunic, like an animal pelt, draped around his torso.

He stared at Josie and Benedikt, blocking their route with his bulk. He sized them up, and a sudden huge grin split his face. He seemed friendly. Like someone who might help.

“Please,” Josie said to him. “These men have been keeping us prisoner. We have to get out of here.”

She wondered if he was Austrian and didn’t speak English.

“Benedikt, tell him what I said in German. Maybe he didn’t understand.”

“Oh, I understand just fine,
choty goty
,” the man said in a South African accent. “And I’m sorry to say you’ve made a bit of a mistake. I know these men have been keeping you prisoner. I’m the one who’s been paying them to.”

J
OSIE COULD HAVE
screamed. So near and yet so far.

Instead, a wild animal instinct overcame her. She hurled herself at the man, fists flying. Benedikt joined in.

The man just laughed as the blows rained down on him. He appeared not to feel a thing.

Then he grabbed Benedikt by the neck and slammed him face first into the nearest wall. The nurse slumped to the floor with a groan.

The man clamped one meaty hand around both of Josie’s wrists. She kicked him in the shins, but as before he seemed immune to pain. He thrust her roughly back into the room, at the same time pulling a pistol from a holster beneath his armpit.

“You, missy,” he said, “you’re a resourceful little minx. I don’t know how you disabled these men, but I’m impressed. I’d never have thought you had it in you. You’re supposed to be a basket case,
nè
?”

“I’ll basket case
you
,” Josie snarled. The line made no sense but sounded good to her. “Let me go, you fucker.”

“Ah-ah. No call for bad language. Pretty young thing like you should watch her mouth. Men don’t like women who swear.”

Josie rammed a knee into his crotch.

The man only laughed. What was up with this guy? Was he made of titanium or something?

“Now, then,” he said. “It seems your papa Roy has been a naughty fellow. I haven’t heard from him and the people with him since last night – radio silence, no calls returned – and my gut feeling is he’s betrayed me, even though he knew what the consequences would be if he did. It’s that or everything has gone tits up with the job he’s doing for me. Either way, I’m not taking any chances. I need you, Josie. You’re my insurance policy and you’re coming with me.”

“Am not.”

“I don’t recall offering you a choice. This is a Vektor SP1 nine-millimetre, and it says you’re doing as I tell you and you’re not going to kick up a fuss. I have a car waiting downstairs. We’re going to get lost in Europe, you and me. Your dad can come looking and he’ll never find us. We’ll have a lovely long vacation together, you and me. Maybe in that time we’ll get friendly. You’ll grow to like me. I already like you; I like girls with the dew still on them. You’ll come to appreciate the touch of an older man.”

“I will never let you touch me. I’d rather die.”

“You say that now, but in a week or two –”

A gunshot.

The sound spiked into Josie’s ears. For a moment she could hear nothing else a high-pitched ringing.

The man with the South African accent wheeled round, taking her with him.

At the entrance – Josie almost couldn’t believe her eyes – was her father. He stood in a half crouch, arms extended, a pistol in his hands.

With him was a second man, dark-haired, dark-eyed, lithe.

Taking careful aim at the Afrikaner, her father fired the gun again.

Something shattered – a vase on a side-table.

The man next to Roy Young said, “Save your bullets. That thing he’s wearing? The Aegis of Zeus.”

“
Ja
, the Aegis of Zeus,” the Afrikaner said. “Handy little trinket, don’t you think, Roy? Makes you invulnerable, and once you put it on, it can’t be unfastened except by the person who fastened it in the first place. So our employer told me. I suppose I could have let you Myrmidons use it on your missions, but it seemed unfair, one of you being immune to harm and the others not. So I kept it for myself, in case of need. And here’s need. Carry on shooting, by all means. The bullets will just bounce off. One of them might even hit your pretty daughter. Wouldn’t that be a pity?”

“Badenhorst...” said Josie’s father.

“Now listen up.” The Afrikaner – Badenhorst – pressed the tip of the gun against Josie’s temple, holding her neck with his free hand, fingers digging in paralysingly hard. “This is what’s going to happen. You and Mr Stannard there are going to move aside and let me and Josie leave. Otherwise... Well, I don’t have to spell out the ‘otherwise’, do I?”

“Don’t you dare hurt her.”

“Or what, Roy? You’ll kill me? Not as long as I’ve got this on.”

Two women now arrived in the room behind Josie’s father and the man called Stannard.

“He isn’t dead?” said one of them. She had the same colouring as Stannard and looked pure badass, an impression that her heavily bandaged shoulder did nothing to dispel. “We heard shots. How could you have missed?”

“The Aegis, Sasha,” said Stannard.

“Oh, shit. Of course. You thought he might have it.”

“Jeanne,” Badenhorst said to the other woman. “So you’re in on this too.
Ach
, I should have known you’d side with Roy. I could see the two of you developing a soft spot for each other. Anyway, it makes no difference. You all can just get the fuck out of my way. I’m coming through with Josie here, and any of you tries to stop me...” He ground the gun into Josie’s head. “Bang.”

“Go on, then,” Josie said. “Shoot. Pull the trigger.”

“That’s not the attitude, girl,” said Badenhorst.

“I don’t care. I want to die.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I fucking do. Of course I do. If you know anything about me you’ll know that I’ve tried to kill myself like half a dozen times. I keep screwing it up. You can do me a favour right now and put a bullet in my brain. End it all for me. Put me out of my misery.”

“Josie,” said her father, appalled. “Don’t. Don’t do this.”

“Dad, you know I don’t want to live. The treatment hasn’t worked. I hate myself. I hate everything about myself. The world’s better off without me.”

“She’s just talking,” said Badenhorst. “She’s as keen to live as anyone.”

“How do you know, you fucking wanker?” Josie yelled. Tears streamed from her eyes. “Don’t you tell me what I want. You don’t know how I feel. Go ahead, just do it. Just fucking shoot me.”

She grabbed the gun and pressed it to the centre of her forehead.

“I don’t care!” she said. “Finish it. I don’t want to live any more. Pull the fucking trigger.”

Badenhorst’s face registered confusion and alarm. A hostage who wanted to be sacrificed? It didn’t compute.

He pulled the gun away from her face. He seemed scared in case it went off by accident and he was left without his bargaining chip. His grip on her relaxed involuntarily.