'No,' Landesman said, nodding, 'not solely. Revenge is a factor as well. We all know that. It's why I chose you. You have a personal stake in seeing the Olympians brought down. All of you do. So what?'
'What you haven't told us is that you have a personal stake too.'
'I do?'
He almost — almost — managed to get the words out smoothly, deadpan, with nothing other than a mildly startled note in them. Almost. But a split second of hesitation betrayed him. Sam caught it, and the look in her eyes told Landesman his bluff had been seen through and could not sensibly be sustained.
He heaved a great sigh, slumping a little in his chair.
'Somehow,' he said, eventually, 'I knew it would be you, Sam. You'd be the one to figure it out, if any of you were going to. In hindsight, perhaps I revealed too much. Gave away too many clues. But that's not to denigrate your achievement. Detective Sergeant Akehurst strikes again.'
'Zeus is your son, isn't he, Mr Landesman?' Sam said. 'He's Xander. The son who walked out on you. The son you haven't spoken to in years. All this, the Titan project, Titanomachy II, everything — all it really is is a spat between an estranged father and child. Am I right?'
'I can see how you might draw that conclusion,' Landesman said. 'However, you couldn't be more wrong.'
'Then what is the truth, Mr Landesman? Why don't you explain it to me so I can understand?'
'Very well. As you insist. I shall.'
50. XANDER
'W here to start? I loved that boy. He was so beautiful as a baby, quite the most exquisite thing I'd ever laid eyes on. Sometimes, when he was asleep, I'd sneak into his nursery and just gaze at him lying there in his crib. Hardly moving, hardly even breathing, it seemed. So relaxed, so deep in the arms of Morpheus that he could almost have been dead. Alexander, my son. I'd never thought of myself as father material, but the moment he arrived I vowed I would look after him to the very best of my abilities, make sure he had the very best life imag-inable, and every night when I looked in on him sleeping I'd renew that vow. You don't have children, Sam.'
'So?'
'It wasn't an accusation. I know you don't. I know everything about you. You were pregnant once, and you lost the baby, and for that you have my sincerest condolences.'
'Kind of you. Go on.'
'I think you will make an excellent mother, and I think one day, deo volente, you will be one. Let me tell you, the sense of duty that parenthood brings, it's indescribable. The burden of care which it places on you and which you willingly shoulder — you're quite transformed by it. It makes you try to become the kind of person you never thought you could be.'
'Yeah, yeah. Having kids is wonderful, life-changing, et cetera. Everyone knows that.'
'Let's not be snippy.'
'I just don't see the relevance of any of this.'
'I'm trying to show you that I am not a heartless and cruel man, although later on you may get the impression that I am. Please be assured that I never ever intended for Xander to despise me or for me to despise him in return. Of course I didn't. I gave that boy everything I could. Not just in material terms, though he lacked for nothing in that respect. I gave him as much of myself as I could, as much time and attention as I could spare.
'But it was hard, especially after Arianna died. With his mother gone, a crucial plank of stability was wrenched away from him, and instead of giving him the extra support he could have done with, I threw myself into my work in order to cope with my own loss, or run away from it. Work became my consolation and my displacement activity. I spent less and less time with Xander when I should have been spending more and more. I wasn't consciously neglecting him, I just found that I had to retreat into doing what I knew best, running Daedalus Industries, to save my own sanity.
'It didn't help that we were winning some huge contracts at the time, churning out mind-bogglingly vast amounts of product. Jolyon will bear me out on this. The company had gone into overdrive, and I couldn't simply leave underlings to deal with it all. That's never been my way. I'm a hands-on kind of employer, as you are well aware by now. I like to roll up my sleeves and get stuck in.'
'It took you a while, though, here. To step up and become Cronus, I mean.'
'I waited, in order to be sure. I had no desire to rush into anything.'
'You wanted us to lay the groundwork first. To field-test the suits and iron out any kinks.'
'Which you did, incomparably well. Shall I get back to my narrative?'
'Be my guest.'
'Thank you so much. Now, I'm not making excuses for myself. I'm simply relating what happened. I never ignored Xander. I never shut him out. Every minute of free time I had, I devoted to him. But there wasn't a lot of it to devote. When you have manufacturing plants on three continents, a workforce of several thousand depending on you, innumerable suppliers to court and clients to schmooze, it consumes you. It leaves you with very little else.
'Xander never lacked for company as he was growing up. Our huge house was never empty. An army of staff, mostly female, tended to him day and night. His every minute, when he wasn't at school, was occupied with play, sports coaching, swimming, horse riding, music lessons, extra tuition. You name the extracurricular activity, Xander did it. But he was lucky if he saw me, his dad, for more than a few hours a week. I tried my utmost to be there for bedtime, to read him the stories I loved and I thought he loved, the classical tales of gods, heroes and monsters.
'But I only made it perhaps every other evening, if that. Visiting politicians from abroad do so like to be taken out to dinner, you know, and it's only polite to make videoconference calls with subcontractors in Asia when it's their daytime and our night. Xander was never alone. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he was never left alone. The one person he really needed to be with, however, was hardly ever around.'
'I feel sorry for him.'
'You should. I do. Poor lad. My God, I loathed my own parents sometimes. Uptight, restrictive pair of cretins, they were. But I'd still rather have had them there than not. So many times I wished them dead, but equally I knew I would have been devastated to lose them. My mother smothered me, my father was a passive-aggressive bully. And then there was our rabbi, who seemed to be constantly around at our house, like a third parent. A pox on them all, but I wouldn't have done without them, even without Rabbi Rabinowitz, a kindly man in person but wrapped up in his Torah.
'And Xander had no one like that. No one he could rely on to the point where he was heartily sick of them. He had just me, absentee dad, whose chequebook was always open even if his appointments diary was not. And still he forgave me. Still he loved me. Small children do that. They have that capacity. They will love you boundlessly, unconditionally, whatever your faults and your shortcomings. And if you are good and attentive and you nurture their love, it will last. But if you aren't and you don't… don't…'
'Take your time.'
'Thank you. This is pure self-pity. That's the only emotion that can still choke me up. I can go on now. Awkward moment over. Is this like one of your criminal interrogations, Sam? Am I like a suspect you need to crack?'
'I already cracked you, Mr Landesman. This, now, is just paperwork. Tying up the loose ends.'
'Maybe I should ask for my lawyer.'
'Only the guilty ask for their lawyers.'
'Then I should definitely ask for my lawyer! Especially with 'bad cop' over there glowering at me. I hope we're not in for some of that police brutality one hears so much about.'
'Just keep going, Mr Landesman.'
'So, Xander continued to be my number one fan until he was about eight or nine, even if often he was adoring me down the phone or during a scant hour or two of together time that I could snatch on a Sunday afternoon.'
'You'd even work on Sunday?'
