"Stop!" Sam cried, and the loud, mock-desperate plea happened to fall into a lull in the general conversation, so that everyone turned to see where it had come from and what had given rise to it.
Ramsay downpipe-gurgled. Sam sniggered. Conversation resumed.
"I knew it," Ramsay said.
"Knew what?"
"Knew you couldn't stay mad at me for ever."
"And I knew," Sam retorted, "that you couldn't stay mad at yourself for ever."
"Heh. Touche. So where do we go from here?"
"Me personally, to bed. I'm absolutely knackered."
"That an invitation?"
"Only an idiot would mistake it for one."
Ramsay made a goofy face. "I can be an idiot."
"As we know only too well. Goodnight, Rick."
"Goodnight, Sam. Sleep well."
And she did. Better than she'd done in ages.
21. OPERATION:
THREE LIONS
A day passed, two days, three, and nothing from the Pantheon, not a word about the Hydra, no official statement, not a peep.
"They haven't noticed," said Landesman. "They don't care enough about the Hydra to be bothered to check up on it, so they've no clue it's dead and probably won't have for weeks. Just as I'd hoped. A lot of the time they treat their monsters as fire-and-forget missiles. Launch them, let them cause havoc, recall them maybe later, if at all, but maybe not. Hera has her favourites, that much we know. The Lamia, the Gorgons, Typhon. The slightly more sentient ones. Cerberus too. Any of those she'd miss if they were absent for too long. But the rest are, I think it's safe to say, regarded as expendable."
"And it's those ones we're going to continue going after?" said Sam. The two of them were in Landesman's office, an informal strategy meeting. "The expendable monsters."
"For the time being," Landesman said with a nod.
"But if they're unlikely to be missed…"
"…then what's the point? Why waste our time on them? The point, Sam, is that we can't afford to tip our hand just yet. Lower-profile targets first. Once we begin eliminating creatures from the menagerie that the Olympians actually have the time of day for, we run the risk of drawing their fire and our operations become exponentially more hazardous. I'd like to postpone that moment for as long as possible. Moreover the Titans need the practice, the battlefield experience, which the lesser monsters amply provide."
"Agreed. I just — "
"Keen to go after bigger game, eh? Already? Sam, Sam, patience. One victory does not a campaign make. Little by little we'll do this. It's the only way."
"Did you ever consider, when you were planning all this, an all-out assault?" she asked. "Mass-produce the battlesuits, assemble an army and go at the Olympians that way?"
"Besiege Olympus? Attack them in their mountain stronghold? The thought did occur, once, briefly, before I dismissed it out of hand. For a start, it's been tried, hasn't it? Remember the Raffles Syndicate and their paratroopers? What a botch job that was. But also, and more to the point, for me it isn't viable financially. Or logistically, for that matter. A few hundred troops, a regiment's worth — how would I recruit that many? Train, equip, supply, support, house that many warm bodies, all on my own? Not to mention the cost of constructing that many suits."
"Make it an international effort. Get governments covertly involved."
Landesman managed to smile and sneer at once. "Our beloved leaders, you mean? Pusillanimous nitwits like Catesby Baa tlett? Engage their help? What do you think are the chances of that happening? And how far do you think I'd get, trying to get a bunch of politicians on my side? Since when do politicians ever agree on anything? No, Sam, almost from the outset I understood that, if this was to have any hope of success, I had to think small. Trust me, for a man as ambitious as myself, accustomed to thinking big, big, big, that was a very hard adjustment to make. But also, there was the appeal of making this a project that accorded with classical precedence, which meant keeping the numbers low — to twelve, precisely. Once I'd hit on using the mythical Titans as my template, any other approach seemed clumsy and inelegant. How better to fight the Olympians than with a group inspired by figures from the selfsame mythology? How more apt? I just couldn't help myself.
"As a boy, you see, I loved books about the Ancient Greek gods and heroes. Still do. Hawthorne's Tanglewood Tales, Robert Graves, Mary Renault, Leon Garfield's The God Beneath The Sea — all terrific stuff. Homer as well, naturally, and Ovid, Aesop, Hesiod, Pindar, Apollonius Rhodius. And later the playwrights, Aeschylus, Euripides, that dirty-minded bugger Aristophanes. Even inane American superhero comics that used characters and motifs from the myths. Those old Technicolor movies too, with the gladiators and the rubbery-looking monsters. I devoured them all. There was such a grandeur about the stories, along with a sense that anything could happen and would.
"And the way the gods behaved — just like human beings but with the bonus of power and immortality. They had unfettered freedom to do as they pleased, which was thrilling to me as an only child growing up in a strict Jewish household and as a boy who knew from a very early age that he was a budding tycoon, destined to earn several fortunes, a Croesus or a Midas in the making. I instilled in my son the same love of classical lore. It was the one thing Xander and I both enjoyed doing together, poring over those old stories. The one thing that truly bound us. He'd badger me to read to him about the adventures of Theseus, Perseus, Hercules, Jason, whoever, any and all of them, and I did, when I could, when I had the time…"
His gaze strayed wistfully to the framed photo on the desk — the beautiful and soon-to-be-dead mother and the four-year-old Alexander already looking aggrieved, as if he knew what lay around the corner, knew that in a few short months he was going to be semi-orphaned, the parent he could count on the most was going to be torn away from him.
"And I didn't often have the time, or thought I didn't. And maybe Xander was only pretending to love those stories simply because he knew how much I loved them and it was a way of getting my undivided attention." Landesman's eyes darkened, and for a moment he looked much older than his fifty-odd years.
"The Olympians must seem like, well, like sacrilege to you then," Sam said.
"Oh yes. Oh yes. Absolutely. In fact I'd go further and say 'blasphemy.' Whoever — whatever — they are, they're corrupted versions of those wonderful, wayward beings that the poets sang about and the priests worshipped and sacrificed to and celebrated in their Mysteries. They're a travesty of the true Hellenic pantheon, that bizarre dysfunctional family with all their feuds and fancies and foibles."
"And you've come up with a way of turning the tables on them that also restores what you cherish so much about the myths."
"Yes, correct. So perceptive. In that respect alone, Titanomachy II is personal to me. In that respect and…"
"And…?" said Sam.
Landesman didn't finish the sentence, peremptorily starting a new one instead. "So we continue as we are, for now. We stay on the course as it is set. I have our next three monsters lined up. This is going to be an exhausting few days for you, Sam. The scheduling is tight. But since you insist on participating in every op, it's your own fault. You're going to be on your knees by the end, probably, but you'll only have yourself to blame."
"I'm my own worst enemy, Mr Landesman."
"Fortunately for us you're also the Olympians.'" Landesman handed her a sheet of paper. "Here's your itinerary. I'm calling this job Operation: Three Lions. You'll see why. Phoebe, Coeus, Oceanus, Mnemosyne and Hyperion will be travelling with you. Feel free to use whichever of them you want on each phase of the op, in whatever permutation you see fit. If all goes well, you should be back within the week — and all will, I have no doubt, go well."