Love is a Stranger (37 page)

The menu was awesomely pretentious, so Ben tossed it across to Nikolas and told him to order for them both. The waiter tried to be supercilious in French, but when Nikolas replied nonchalantly, native in the language, they came to an understanding and got very good service—but at almost £200 each, just for lunch, Ben kind of expected good service. He reminded himself to tell Nikolas how much he loved him, realised there was no time like the present, and did so.

Nikolas took this in the spirit it was intended and kept a straight face.

Even Nikolas, he noted, managed to find something he wanted to eat at this restaurant. But he did have the grace to say, and sounding perfectly truthful, that he’d enjoyed Ben’s cooking just as much for the previous three weeks.

They were clearly getting slightly drunk and pleased with themselves. But Ben reckoned they both deserved it. He knew Nikolas was still in considerable pain—you don’t get shot three times and not suffer that pain for some months after. They had also weathered and survived some emotional pain that would have broken many other relationships. But then they hadn’t really had a relationship. They’d been acquaintances who fucked. But they weren’t now. And despite the fact that everything Ben was wearing was paid for by Nikolas, that even his hair and food were courtesy of Nikolas, Ben had never felt more that they were equals now. He put some of this down to Nikolas being a total fraud himself. In some ways, it was as if Nikolas were merely borrowing or even stealing the money anyway, funding both their lifestyles on lies. But it wasn’t just that. Ben had never seen so clearly before just how balanced their relationship had become. Nikolas provided the material things, and Ben pretty much everything else—which was unfair on Nikolas in many ways, but the essential truth in many more.

§§§

Although Nikolas didn’t know, Ben had added a Louis Vuitton dog lead and collar to their purchases. After all, they were only £248 and £170 respectively, a bargain. Radulf appeared to think so too. Memories of the bath fading, and with his new accessories, he hardly resembled the homeless creature they had taken on. But then Ben reckoned
he
didn’t much resemble the Benjamin Rider Nikolas had first come across either. Only Nikolas was unchanged at the centre of all this, and he was the one who, in truth, had changed the most. He was an entirely different man, after all.

They lounged about until three and then called a taxi. Nikolas reckoned it was safest to leave the hotel entirely and find somewhere else that night, so they packed up and took everything with them. First stop was Ben’s lock-up, where they left everything but the dog, and then they gave the driver directions to the meeting place.

Ben had no fears about Kate’s ability to elude surveillance—if indeed she was being watched in the first place, which was unlikely. She could tap into the resources of the department, after all. Even so, they sat in the taxi for some time watching her waiting for them, checking out any likely tail before they climbed out to meet with her. She saw them walking across the street, and they couldn’t read her mood. They read it slightly better when she came up to Ben and slapped him hard, then pulled him into a hug, and then slapped him again. She looked as if she wanted to slap Nikolas as well but refrained from going that far. She rounded on Ben again. “You bastard. Three weeks, Ben, I thought you’d both been killed.” He nodded apologetically.

Nikolas didn’t deign to take part in any of this until she was over her wrath, and then he asked, formal, learnt English once more, “What has been happening? Shall we…?” He waved vaguely at a small café across the road, and they went over together. The owner said the dog couldn’t come in, but for £50, he was not only allowed in but also given a bowl of water and a shortbread biscuit.

Kate filled them in on events since their spectacular disappearance: two unknown men found dead in their kitchen, one tortured before death, damage to the kitchen in a fire and the residents of the house missing. The police hadn’t closed the case but were no further forward with their investigations.

Nikolas nodded. “We have been in France. I need you to create this fiction. Tickets on the Eurotunnel, I think. We stayed in the Louis XIV. I have always wanted to stay there; I’ve heard it is quite tolerable. I think our appearance on some CCTV would be useful as well. We ate in various restaurants, but certainly at the Plaze Notre Dame
.
Ben had something disgusting with congealed blood, and I ate something light, salad maybe? But check their menu first. Also wine…hmm, Chateau d’Yquem? Yes, but check the wine list. Do select a good vintage—2001 if they have it, obviously.”

Kate was busy inputting all this into her tablet, nodding. She added, “A traffic ticket maybe, sir?”

Nikolas smiled. “Absolutely. Ben is a very erratic driver, as I have told him repeatedly.”

Ben was ignoring them both totally. He could still feel the sting of Kate’s slap on his face, and he was acutely aware that although Kate knew what he and Nikolas were to each other, this was the first time she’d actually seen them together since this great revelation. He was also very aware of the fact that Kate still believed she was working for Sir Nikolas Mikkelsen, the charming Danish diplomat. He was enjoying charming her now, Ben could tell. He wondered if Kate would be quite so amenable if she were made aware she was working with the enemy, so to speak. And, for that matter, that he, Ben, was actually sleeping with the enemy.

For the first time, seeing Nikolas with someone else, something that hadn’t happened since he had discovered Nikolas’s real identity, Ben was having something of a crisis of conscience. Sitting there in the café, drinking good transport café tea, he realised that for all of his working life, Nikolas—Aleksey—would have been his enemy, someone he was trained and paid to kill. And had, in fact, killed; he’d shot Spetsnaz in Afghanistan with no qualms at all. He could’ve and would’ve shot Aleksey had he come across him. Perhaps their paths
had
crossed. Perhaps the man currently sitting across from him had killed one of the many colleagues Ben had lost. Until he’d been ripped out of their little bubble of unreality and forced back to the real world—which Kate represented—he hadn’t really had to face any of this. He was therefore less than ready to hear Nikolas reply, when Kate pointed out that if they were to set up a meeting all they needed were contact details for the Russians who had attacked them, “Oh, I know how to contact Gregory. I have always known that.”

Kate was keen to work on the assignment she had been given and left after another pointed glare toward Ben. Nikolas pulled his mobile out of his pocket and began to tap it irritatingly with his thumbnail. “We’ll give her until tomorrow, and then we’ll contact Gregory.”

Ben nodded, staring out of the window at bikes in the showroom, deep in thought.

“What’s wrong?”

Ben turned to look at him and shrugged.

“It embarrasses you that Kate was probably speculating on what we do in bed.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” He hated it when Nikolas seemed to be able to read his mind.

“Don’t be ridiculous…sir.”

Ben’s head snapped up. “What?”

Nikolas had the grace to appear slightly embarrassed, but he said slowly and clearly, “I don’t want Gregory to be made aware of our…arrangemen—”

“Arrangement?
Arrangement
!”

“Don’t interrupt, and keep your voice down. Yes, our arrangement. We need to return to our… more formal association. You’re my employee and as such you should call me sir—as Kate does. I’m sure he’ll also speculate exactly what we—”

“Oh, I think the fact we share a bloody house might be a fucking clue!”

“I don’t appreciate being sworn—”

“You have got to be kidding. This is a joke, yeah?”

“As I was saying. He’ll undoubtedly speculate, but he’ll have no—”

“Not just a house! A fucking bed! Do you not think the double bed might be a—?”

“If you remember, we weren’t sharing a bed, Benjamin. I remember, even if you don’t.” This was said in a far less reasonable tone.

Ben leant forward, too, their foreheads almost touching. “I wasn’t sharing your fucking bed,
Nikolas
, because you didn’t actually exist. You’d been dead for ten fucking years, and some impostor had stolen your life. And now that bloody impostor thinks to tell me this?”

Nikolas pursed his lips and made his incredibly annoying gesture of dismissal. “Semantics. And stop swearing at me. You’re entirely missing the point, as usual. I don’t want Gregory to know about us. Is that not clear enough?”

“Oh, trust me, I get that loud and clear. And do you know what? Maybe there won’t be anything for him to suspect in future. No house sharing. No fucking double bed. How does that suit you…
sir
?”

Nikolas toyed with his phone some more then said sulkily, “Not all that much.”

Ben began to smile. He couldn’t help it. Nikolas glanced up. “Are you laughing at me?”

Ben gave him a pointed look but didn’t bother to explain what he found funny.

Nikolas sighed. “You have to trust me on this, Benjamin. These things aren’t accepted in the world I come from.”

“Being gay you mean.”

Nikolas flinched away from him. “You’re being incredibly obtuse, and I’m
not
gay.”

Ben leant even further forward and made his point more forcibly by poking Nikolas on his immaculate new shirt. “I don’t fucking know what obtuse means, but as I’ve had your cock up my arse for the last four years, I reckon it must mean accurate.”

Nikolas got up and walked out, which annoyed Ben intensely as he had no money on him and was stuck with the bill.

When he caught up, Nikolas was standing looking at the bikes in the showroom. They walked together toward the high street, Radulf’s claws clicking on the pavement the only sound between them.

Ben suddenly halted and glanced across at Nikolas. Nikolas stopped, too, his face a mask of stony resolve. “You’re scared—of Gregory. This is personal, isn’t it? You’re scared what he’s going to think about you. You want him to respect you. Oh, my God, you want him to
like
you!”

“Good grief. It’s like being psychoanalysed by the dog.”

“You want him to still see you as the fearsome, powerful Aleksey Primakov, despite the fact you killed
him
off ten years ago. You want to have your bloody cake and eat it.”

“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t eat cake. Do something useful and more suited to your intelligence and find a cab.”

“You’re ashamed. Of us. Of
me
.”

“Right at this minute I am, yes, because you’re making a scene. A cab?”

Ben flagged down the next passing taxi, and they climbed in, sitting in angry silence, except for Nikolas directing the driver to The Connaught. When they reached their room, Nikolas tipped the porter and they were alone again. Ben was trying to work out the best way to get to his lock-up and retrieve some of his cash so he could just—what?

He felt a hand on his arm and jerked away. Nikolas caught him again, more forcibly. “I’m sorry.” An apology from Nikolas was a very rare thing. Nikolas put a hand against Ben’s cheek, rubbing his thumb thoughtfully over his cheekbone. Suddenly, he exclaimed, “Fuck,” and pulled Ben into a tight hug. He turned his face into Ben’s neck. “When did you get so clever, Benjamin Rider?”

Ben knew that if he didn’t pull away, he would be truly lost. But as he was entirely happy to be entirely lost in Nikolas, he made no attempt to leave the strong arms at all. Sometimes, he wondered if he was so far gone on Nikolas that he’d let him kill him one day. He put his hand into the newly shorn hair and rubbed it up the wrong way, loving the feel of it under his palm. Nikolas held him off a little way, studying him.

“I think I’m going to do something very uncharacteristic and tell you something before you force it out of me with your annoying and incessant questioning.” It was hard for Ben to keep up the pretence of being angry with a hand tucked into his waistband to hold him prisoner and a thumb idly stroking his belly. “Aleksey
Primakov
never existed, Ben. I made him up and acted him out just as I made up all the other people I’ve been in my life. I’ve played so many roles now that I’m not entirely sure who I am any more. Do you understand? When we meet Gregory, he’ll expect to see the Aleksey Primakov he knew only too well. So, where do I find him? You tell me, because I actually have no idea. Aleksey Primakov was birthed and fed and nurtured on pain and betrayal—his and other’s. How do I find him if I don’t start with pain and betrayal again?”