‘What you wanted. I’m going to burn it all.’
‘Wait! Help me! I can’t lift this thing.’
Aleksey actually began to laugh. ‘Good. Ben couldn’t either, could he? He tried. He flung himself up, and he tried with everything he had. But you cut off hisfucking fingers!’ He emptied the can over the struggling man.
‘No! Please! Oh, God, stop it!’
‘His fingers! His beautiful, perfect body!’ He bent and picked up the serrated knife and dropped it down to Barthrop. ‘I thought I was better than this—I recently helped another man trapped like you, because I didn’t want someone to think we were anything alike. But cut your own fucking leg off if you want to be free.’
He reached into his pocket and withdrew his lighter, clicked it on, studied the little blue flame for a while, then dropped it onto the screaming, desperately hacking man.
* * *
Chapter Twenty-FIVE
Aleksey wasn’t a man of faith, so he didn’t let the museum director burn for too long before he began to shovel sand on him. He had no idea whether death by fire or death by suffocation was worse and really didn’t care. To shut the man up, he aimed the sand at his face until his screams stopped, and then he just repetitively filled the hole, each blade full another smash of the shark into the chamber, another gasp of pain from Ben, another look at his white face. And when he’d sucked those memories dry, he went back to the little bloodied objects stuck to the white fibreglass deck: Ben’s hacked-off fingers. He felt them again in his own palm as he’d picked them up,dig and throw, carried them into the galley and tended to them,dig and throw, and then Ben, in so much pain but still at his side making him a better man,dig and throw.
He finally tossed the tool away where it hit the tree, and sank to his knees, his head covered by his arms. Who was he kidding? New man? Nothing had changed.Nothing! He felt Radulf standing by his side and stretched out a hand to the dog’s immensely strong shoulders and heaved himself to his feet. He had answered his own question—the one that had come to him in a dream. It had beenhisvoice desperately asking him: do you get it yet? Do you get it now? He did. Nothing had changed.Hewould never change. It felt incredibly good. Papa? Who?Him—that’s who. He knew who he was—had always known. He wasn’t a perfect man at all; he was a weapon of war perpetually seeking a target. The only difference now was he knew right from wrong, which side to be on—what he did to keep his family safe might not be everyone’s idea of right, but if they thought that—and he smirked a little as he pondered this simple truth,his truth—they’d be wrong. Before he left the treasure of the Aztecs, this great secret knowledge that so many people had died for in so many terrible ways, he dragged the Jesus Stone back into its proper place.
It settled down onto its newly restored resting place, and he and Radulf waded together into the sparkling, healing waters of Clearwater Pond.
* * *
Chapter Twenty- SIX
‘There?’
‘Nope.’
‘Here?’
‘Nope.’
‘Hah, that’s because I’m not touching them.’
Ben opened his eyes, punched him lightly with his good hand, and studied the tips of his fingers where they poked out of a very large cast. ‘Again.’ He closed his eyes once more. This time, Aleksey did graze one nail over the tip of one of Ben’s cool digits. Ben smiled. He stroked over the next one and the smile broadened.
Ben twisted out of his cross-legged position on the bed and flung himself back, holding his hand high, waving it about. Aleksey lay on his stomach next to him, head propped up on one arm, studying his profile.
He had only really been working on gut instinct and terror when he’d handled Ben’s three severed fingers so carefully: sterilising them, wrapping them, packing them in ice. Maybe he’d been working on love. But whatever the cause of his care, when Ben had arrived at Truro hospital in the air ambulance and been hastened into the private wing, they’d found the fingers in their little plastic container almost as good as before they’d been sawn off. Apparently his had not been the worse finger amputation the surgeon had ever seen, as he’d once reattached half a hand and all the fingers and thumb of a young man after his moment of carelessness with a circular saw. Nevertheless, Ben’s bones, tendons, nerves and skin had all had to be reconstructed or repaired.
‘I’m Wolverine.’
‘Who?’
Ben rolled his eyes and waved his cast closer, presumably wanting him to admire, once more, the metal rods sticking out from the ends of his reattached fingers. It had only been a fortnight, and these wires had another week in place before they were to be removed. The surgeons didn’t know the extent of the motion or feeling Ben would have left once he was healed and the swelling gone. He was going in today to Derriford Hospital in Plymouth to have the current cast removed, suffer some manipulation and examination, and then have either another cast made or a bandage applied. It depended on how he was healing.
‘I bet you wish you hadn’t flushed the contents of my desk drawers away now.’
Ben grinned and twisted his hand around in the streaks of light coming in through the glass roof. ‘Nope. They gave me really, really good stuff.’
‘Ah. I did wonder.’
Ben rolled onto his side to face him. His colour was entirely restored. He appeared almost miraculous to Aleksey—that he was still here, that he was entirely perfect, and that they were together.
‘Harry said he’s thinking of taking out shares in air ambulances.’
‘I hope he’s not anticipating an imminent windfall to make that investment with.’
