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“Try it and see.”
“You haven’t eaten for at least twenty-four hours, have you?”
“What the hell? That’s your apology! And you say my thought processes are random shit!”
Aleksey grit his teeth. “I was testing the ground for your level of offence so I could pitch my apology just right—if it is not sufficient, I do not want you to turn on me and ravish me.”
Ben snorted. “Your English is still so funny sometimes. I have no intention of ravishing you at the moment. Trust me.”
Aleksey thought about this, testing words, translating them. Finally, he just muttered, “Perhaps you don’t need to eat because you are fuelled on righteous fury with me. Well, Iamsorry.”
“For what?”
“What do you mean, for what? For this.”
“For me being in this hole?”
“No, that is your fault. You cut the rope. I meant for—“
“I’m almost excited to hear this.”
“For leaving as I did. For attempting to do what I was doing without telling…consulting you.”
“Wouldn’t have done you a lick of good consulting me, Nikolas. I don’t have a fucking clue what any of this is about.”
After a pause, while Aleksey debated if he really wanted to get into it, he asked, “Why do you find it so difficult to remember my name, Ben? I am Aleksey. It has always been an issue for me—one I did not tell you about, because I know how you feel on the subject ofhim. But that doesn’t really help, as Iamhim, not Nikolas.”
Ben didn’t snap back quite as quickly as Aleksey had been expecting, and when Ben did reply, he heard genuine emotion in his voice. “Because I’m scared. Because I don’t want things to change between us, and he’ll change everything.”
“But I’ve alwaysbeenAleksey. I tried to tell you this once before, but you were resistant then. I sometimes think that he is the very best part of me, the one who—“
“No! Don’t say that. He was an evil man. I saw the things he’d done when Kate was researching you—him—I saw it! Aleksey Primakov was nothing but a—“
“Not him, Ben! Did you think I meant—no, AlekseyMikkelsen. I’m just Aleksey Mikkelsen.”
Ben made no reply to this, but Aleksey thought he could hear the gears turning a little and knew Ben was actually thinking about what he had said.
Eventually, sensing that Ben was in a more receptive mood, he added, “I am attempting to unravel the paths of my life, Ben. I thought if I could untangle them, see what they really were without all the noise and furious fight or flight which accompanied them in real life, I could re-twist the ones I wanted and discard the others.”
“Uh huh.”
“And I was going to start at a red door, Ben. You probably don’t remember, because it may not have been as important to you as it was to me, but when I had to leave Barton Combe, I sent you my London address, and I didn’t know how you would respond. I was going to try to work out how I got from him to me, because for the life of me, Ben, I simply cannot find the man I am now in the one I was then.”
He was so exhausted and in so much pain he could not have spoken or argued one more word. He was profoundly grateful, therefore, when Ben only propped his chin on his shoulder once more and hugged him tighter, and if he did not think it was merely pain-induced delirium, he would have sworn that Ben began to rock him gently.
* * *
Chapter 64
Nine Years Ago
He wassothin.
He had not realised how much weight he had lost until he put on an old pair of jeans he had not worn since Russia. Prized items in that country, where genuine American anything was hard won and fought over. Not that he’d been trying to decide what to wear for this occasion. He didn’t know what this was, so how to dress for it was entirely beyond him. Old jeans, an equally faded shirt over a T-shirt that he’d forgotten he owned. Anything but the bespoke suits and waistcoats and linen shirts that kept up the fronts between him and world.
But he had not fully appreciated how much the stress of the previous few weeks had loosened his always precarious grip on food.
He needed to eat more.
