The Age of Zeus

2. ON BLEANEY ISLAND

Bleaney Island was a low-lying hump of land like the corpse of some vast, ancient leviathan, lying dead in the water. Between outcrops of bare black rock there were stretches of grass and gorse, and the remnants of dry-stone walls could be seen, still parcelling up the ground decades after the last inhabitants had left. A concrete jetty jutted out from a steep shingle beach, and a small man hunched inside a large puffy parka was waiting at the end of it to greet the boat and the new arrivals.

"Jolyon Lillicrap," he said, blinking through spectacles misted with sea spray. "Apologies for both names. Neither my fault, but each nonetheless in its own way a source of embarrassment. Captain Fuller radioed ahead to tell us you were en route. It's Rick and Samantha, right?"

"Sam," said Sam. "Nobody's ever called me Samantha apart from my parents."

The fishing smack reversed, came about and swung away in a cloud of diesel smoke, Captain Fuller bidding farewell with a double blare of his horn.

"Let's go," said Lillicrap, shivering. "It's not getting any warmer. This way. Step lively."

He trotted along the jetty onto a track that curved between two shallow folds of hill. Sam and Ramsay followed, walking fast to keep up. Lillicrap seemed a creature of nervous energy and brisk efficiency.

"Excuse me," said Sam. "Mr Lillicrap? Jolyon? Where are you taking us? Are you the one who invited us here?"

"Questions," said Lillicrap over his shoulder. "I'm not supposed to answer any questions."

"Well, I think that answers your second one," Ramsay muttered to Sam. "Monkey, not organ grinder."

The track terminated at a cave-like entrance set into the earth, braced all round by concrete and inset with heavy steel doors. As the three of them drew near, the doors rolled ponderously open, activated by a remote control from Lillicrap's pocket.

"What is this, fucking hobbit-land?" Ramsay said with a grimace. "We going to meet Gandalf?"

"Second World War bunker actually," said Lillicrap. "Bleaney Island was used as listening post, keeping an ear on German naval radio traffic and U-boat sonar pings in the North Sea. It was also going to be a last redoubt if things started to go wrong. Churchill and the rest of the war cabinet would have been spirited away here to, I don't know, make patriotic broadcasts while the Nazis hoisted the Swastika over the Houses of Parliament, something like that. The bunker was completely derelict until about seven years ago, when we started work. Don't worry, we've made it quite an agreeable place to live. Central heating, ventilation, the lot. Damp's still a problem in a few places but otherwise it's all perfectly civilised."

"Perfectly civilised," Ramsay echoed. "How come that phrase sends a chill down the back of my neck?"

"Because you're not British?" Sam offered.

"That'd do it."

The steel doors began to trundle shut behind them. Simultaneously overhead lights came on, revealing a pillared, low-ceilinged space like a storey of a parking garage. The walls were streaked with dried water stains. The floor was dotted with what looked like large wet blisters — build-ups of sediment, proto-stalagmites.

Lillicrap briskly crossed the empty area, making for the far side and a door whose locking mechanism was controlled by a handprint scanner. Sam had been beginning to wonder if perhaps she and Ramsay were the victims of some grand, elaborate hoax and there was no more to this dingy subterranean place than met the eye. The handprint scanner put paid to that. There was, self-evidently, a great deal more.

A broad corridor led them past a series of closed doors. Rock music thumped from behind one. Living quarters, she guessed. At the end lay a staircase, down which they went, Sam with a deepening sense of trepidation. What was she getting herself into? There was the feeling that she was descending into something inescapable, irrevocable. She could be about to disappear off the face of the earth. No one knew she had gone to this island. There were no witnesses to her travelling here except for Captain Fuller, and he was in the employ of whoever had organised this whole enterprise. If she vanished, who would notice? Nobody. That was the sad truth of her existence. She had no family, no close friends, not any more.

Tragic though this was, it was also perversely comforting. Whatever fate awaited her, it would affect her alone. Sam Akehurst would not be missed. Her absence would not leave a hole in anyone's life.

Rick Ramsay's presence was likewise comforting. If this situation was all some elaborate trap, a snare for the curious and unwary, she didn't think he would hesitate to fight his way out of it. And neither would she.

Lillicrap ushered them into a cramped, cluttered room that was mostly taken up by a large table. Seated around it were ten men and women, all in various stages of boredom and disaffection. Refreshments — sandwiches, pastries, dips — were heaped on the tabletop, largely untouched. Coffee and tea making facilities perched on a trolley in one corner.

"Make yourselves at home," Lillicrap said to Sam and Ramsay. "And the rest of you — it won't be much longer now, I promise."

"No worries," said a sunburned man, in a sardonic Australian drawl. "Tell your boss to take his time. I've got nothing else to do but sit around all day with my thumb up my freckle."

Lillicrap sniffed and withdrew, leaving Sam and Ramsay as the focus of ten scrutinising gazes. Sam tried a disarming smile, put on more than felt. Ramsay got a result simply by saying, "The coffee in that pot better not be the watered-down piss it looks like." Someone chuckled and the atmosphere lightened a little.

Sam sat down in the last remaining chair but one, between a sharp-nosed blonde woman and an Asian man. The latter, in almost entirely unaccented English, introduced himself as Fred Tsang. The blonde favoured Sam with nothing more than a reserved nod.

Ramsay placed a coffee in front of Sam, which she was grateful for even though she hadn't asked for it. He then took the final seat, sipped from his own cup, wrinkled his nose and confirmed aloud that it was indeed watered-down piss.

"So," he said, having drained the cup anyway, "which one of us gets murdered first?"

"You, you Yankee bastard," said the Australian cheerily.

"It's just, I'm getting a whole Agatha Christie vibe from this," Ramsay continued, pointedly disregarding the other man's comment. "Twelve folks gathered in a room together. Cut off from the mainland. Brought here by a complete stranger. Where's Miss Marple when you need her?"

"Not cut off," said a woman, another American, lighter-skinned than Ramsay, most likely mixed-race. She held up a mobile phone. "Not as long as we've got our cells."

"Reception?"

The woman checked. "Oh. Nuh-uh."

"Didn't think so, underground. Cut off, then. N'awlins?"

"Just outside. Chalmette. Chicago?"

"South Side born and raised."

"Kayla," said the woman. "Kayla Sparks."

"I'm Rick," said Ramsay. "And the lovely redhead with me is Sam. She's English, so she doesn't talk much."

"Prefers not to," said Sam.

"Same difference," said Ramsay. "But seeing as the two of us are the newcomers, and even though the rest of you have been here a whiles and probably already know a bit about one another, would you mind filling us in about yourselves? So we're up to speed? Then we can maybe figure out what the twelve of us have in common, other than being invited here, and try and make sense of this thing. How about that?"

"Did I miss the voting?" challenged the Australian. "Did you just put yourself in charge, septic?"

"No, Crocodile Dundee, I haven't put myself in charge of anything. But if you'd like me to…?"

"No way, mate. Spent thirteen years of my life taking orders. I'm done with it now."

"I doubt you ever did take orders, not really."

"Too right!"

"No, all I was doing was making a straightforward request, not a leadership bid," said Ramsay. "Like I said, to get Sam and me up to speed. Would that be OK?"

The Australian deliberated. "Can't see the harm."

"Good. Then let's start with you. Who are you and why have you come all the way from the Lucky Country to this godforsaken spot?"