Ben glanced over. “Morning. You ever getting up?”
Nikolas grunted. “Despite appearances, I have been thinking and working things out while you were sleeping. So, you and Kate?”
Ben frowned then grinned, pleased with himself. “Yeah, London Motorcycles in Barnet. I bought my bike there. Went with her almost every Saturday for a month or so. She’d remember that.”
Nikolas just looked at him for a long time then commented dryly, “Yes. I’m sure she would.” He swung his long legs out of bed and went to the bathroom. “Get dressed, we are going out. If you’re good and behave yourself, I will feed you as well.”
They dressed in the only clean clothes they had left—old jeans and T-shirts—and strolled out into the warm Mayfair sunshine. Nikolas found a payphone and placed a call. “Kate? Yes, it is. Yes, I am fine. We are both fine. Can you meet? You may be followed, so use department protocols. Ben says do you remember the place you went on Saturdays? That you so enjoyed. Yes, I thought you would remember that.” He laughed at something she said and added, “He would not dare with me. Anyway, this afternoon at four. Remember the protocols.” He put the phone down. “She was relived to hear from us, I think. Come, we’ve a few hours to kill, and I know what I want to do. No, not that.”
He led the way straight to Alexander McQueen. Ben usually shopped on the high street if he shopped at all; Nikolas had bought all his better suits for him, anyway. So this was something of a new experience. Nikolas had an account, and very quickly they were out of their jeans and boots and into suits and beautiful leather shoes, and shirts that felt like butter against skin. Ben thought they were done, but Ralph Lauren and Louis Vuitton later, he was loaded up with bags and Nikolas was light many thousands of pounds. The next stop was what Ben would’ve called a barber, but which was termed Michaeljohn—like some crazy scientist had taken two perfectly respectable men and sewn them together to make one bizarre one: Michaeljohn. They both had their long, shaggy locks washed, cut, and styled. Nikolas didn’t appear to need an appointment here either. Ben could’ve died with embarrassment when he saw the place, but he reckoned if Aleksey fucking Primakov could sit unconcerned with a hairdresser styling his hair, he could. Even he had to admit that when they emerged in their new suits and styled to perfection, they turned heads. He enjoyed that part and could swear he saw Nikolas twitch a smile once or twice at the reaction they got as they walked together to find the food he’d been promised. The French restaurant Nikolas selected was not the place Ben would’ve chosen, but he felt good in his new clothes and his new look, so he relented. He felt damn good next to Nikolas who was positively edible.
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 reckonedhedidn’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 pathshadcrossed. 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—”
