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He tugged down his waistcoat, arranged his features, committed to Danish in his thoughts, to beingSir Nikolasfor the afternoon, and opened the door.
Ben Rider stared stonily at him.
He was reading that message quite easily.
“I was sorry to hear about the fire, Benjamin.”
It was a good start. He was quite impressed with himself.
And he didn’t even anticipate having to lie that much—for him, anyway.
“Have our forensics people had a chance to study the fire reports?”
He repressed a smirk, knowing that sayingNo, but they did write themprobably wasn’t what Ben wanted to hear.
Ben handed him a whisky, which he sipped, thinking through various answers. Ben wasn’t actually as stupid as Aleksey pretended he was. The other man occasionally had an uncanny awareness of whathewas thinking. After all, for some reason he could not fathom, Ben Rider was the only person in the world who appeared to understand that what you got with Sir Nikolas Mikkelsen wasn’t necessarily what was actually there. He decided in the end to stick relatively close to the truth.
“There is no evidence it was anything other than accidental.”
Almost completely true when you thought about it. He’d been there, and then not there, because he’d been blown through a fucking window! How much more accidental could anything be?
Ben was in one of his particularly endearing moods. Aleksey enjoyed Ben Rider the most when he was off-balance, angry and trying to score points against him. It was probably why he went out of his way to wind him up and annoy him so much. But he cut Ben some slack for the very provoking look he’d just been cast: Ben had probably discovered just how difficult it was to insure thatch. Ben Rider should have listened to Philipa’s sage advice.
“I agree the timing is suspicious. But Allouni is still in his embassy in Baghdad. We have had people on him twenty-four-seven. However, his brother Usama came through Heathrow on a diplomatic ticket three days before the fire. We cannot verify his movements after he reported into the embassy on the thirtieth of October.”Particularly not when he was meeting with me. “But, Benjamin, it was a two-hundred-year-old cottage. The balance of probability is that it was faulty wiring, just as the reports said.”
“With all due respect, sir, fuck thebalanceof probability. I shot Allouni’s son—that’s theactualprobability.”
Well, yes, and Aleksey thought that he might have paid for this suite with the money Usama Allouni had paid him to have Ben shoot Ibrahim’s son. It was all semantics when you took the correct perspective on these things.
“There is no way he could know that, Benjamin. The op was good.”
“Bollocks, sir. We were compromised from the start. It was him. He sent his fucking brother or some other minion, but it was him, and I’m going to make him pay.”
This, Aleksey reflected, might prove to be more of a problem than it seemed. He turned his back to Ben and returned to the small bar, topping them both up, thinking. Ben Rider on his own could do little to affect this situation one way or another. But Ben actually had powerful allies—well, one, in the quaintly named typing pool. Kate Armstrong could and probably would assist Ben tracking down the arsonist. They had parted on good terms apparently. Her loyalties, therefore, were uncertain. Aleksey could not predict whether she would side with Ben or him if Ben pushed this issue.
He sometimes wished people would give him a little sympathy for all the unpleasantness of his life. He had a deviant harassing him about Ben Rider. He had a titled cocksucker also tormenting him about Ben, and now he had Ben Rider badgering him about his thatch.Badgering? Was that the right word? Didn’t make a lick of sense in Danish. He tried it in Russian. Nope.Badgering. Did badgers needlessly importune people? Odd.
Staring into the golden liquid he was pouring, pondering the oddities of the English language, Aleksey then had one of his best ideas ever.
Badgers.
He couldn’t help it: he started to laugh.
After checking and discovering to his great relief that this was only internal amusement, he turned and said with his pompous Nikolas gravitas, “I am going to pretend I did not hear that.”
Checking that Ben was suitably subdued, hoping he could keep his face straight, he added, “I have another job for you. If you are up for it.”
Ben needed distracting from tracking Usama down.
He had to show Philipa and her insignificant other that he was indeed taking their badger problem incredibly seriously.
Ben could sort the badgers.
And, best of all?—he got to invite Ben Rider for the whole weekend to Barton Combe, which Aleksey translated into Russian and enjoyed very much indeed. He wouldhaveBen Rider all weekend at Barton Combe. Sometimes his plans were nothing less than masterful.
Ben Rider didn’t seem to find this nearly as amusing as he did.
But then Aleksey wasn’t too sure if this young man even had a sense of humour. Some of the quirky presents he’d given him over the years had not elicited much of a smile, that was for sure.
