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He was not old.
He was anything but fat.
He was most definitely not broken.
He was in fact undeniably beautiful. But most importantly, he was the man Ben Rider-Mikkelsen was laughing back at. He was the man thatundeniablyBen Rider-Mikkelsen loved.
Aleksey grinned. It could only be one man then.
* * *
Chapter Fifty-Six
Aleksey had other photos to consider when he got to the London house later that week.
He’d driven himself up, for once, as Ben had a first flying lesson and would be away for most of the day. He checked in with Peyton first. No news on the prince’s activities. Aleksey advised him to concentrate on the news coming out about the missing head of the World Bank, and possibly where he might have owned an island and who had visited him on it.
Speculation had been rife in the press all week as to the reason for Wulf Schultz’s absence from the World’s Future Forum, which had been held in Geneva during the final week of their stay on Light Island. It was always nice to have something new for a headline, he supposed, or for the endless speculation indulged in by pundits and contributors to the various cable news sites. The war hardly got a mention. The most widely held theory was that he’d been killed by the Russians. Possibly Novichok poisoning. Aleksey liked this theory a lot. It was half-right anyway.
After his debrief with Peyton, he went back to his side of the house and made himself some tea. He sat at the kitchen table, regarding an envelope which had apparently arrived a few weeks before. It had a handwritten address. He recognised it, obviously, as it was the one he’d posted to himself on St Mary’s while Ben had been in the little supermarket.
He also knew what it contained, therefore: all the incriminating photographs of the Royal Family’s role in the Führer’s escape in 1945. He had not wanted to destroy them, and had, even then, suspected what Ben’s solution would be. And Ben had not disappointed him—he had cleansed Light Island and burnt them all along with their Lord of the Nazi Flies.
Except these. Which Ben did not know about.
Aleksey could never really explain why he had always felt such a visceral dislike of the man Phillipa had set her sights on. The rest of the bunch were vaguely pleasant, if you kept the conversation to the confines of dead animals and the comfort of flat shoes, but nothim. It wasn’t jealousy, obviously, or if it was, not for his role in Phillipa’s life. He tried not to ponder it too much, as he suspected this hatred might reflect more poorly upon him than it did the prince, but he did always like to stay one step ahead of him. If he, Aleksey, was always plotting and planning, then so too was this future king. Aleksey was not the one who had just returned from Geneva, after all. Even he could not fathom a single reason why any member of any royal family would wish to meet with the man who professed owning nothing to be the greatest source of personal happiness. Or he could think of one reason, and he didn’t like that one at all.
He made a mental note to include a certain book about pigs onto Molly’s reading list.
But were these photos really that damaging to the current family? Had they not already renounced these two Windsor pretenders? But times were changing. Aleksey was fairly sure that if, or when, the coronation of the future monarch happened, a great deal of new attention would be placed on this family and things they had said or done in the past. It was inevitable.
And he now held the balance of power once more.
He grinned slyly to himself. As his favourite celebrity trial (which had now wound up with neither side winning anything except universal scorn for excess of everything except common sense and decency), only went to prove: it didn’t matter whether things were true, you only had to plant the seeds of doubt that they might be.
I move to strike that answer, Your Honour. Yeah, after everybody had already heard it…
Should he just burn them as Ben would want—as Ben assumed they had already done?
Aleksey flapped them lightly in his hand as he considered this option. He sipped his tea, thinking.
He was picturing four horses—but not the beautiful creatures he’d grown up with and loved still. These beasts were vast and ill formed, spikes through their hooves dementing them, crowns of bloodied thorns thrust low on their heads, as you’d possibly expect of creatures ushering in an apocalypse. The first of these beasts, Wulf, was dead. But you couldn’t kill the hydra by cutting off its head—the meeting in Geneva had gone ahead without him, after all. The second brute, war, was still stomping along, and didn’t look to be stopping anytime soon. How could you reconcile two peoples who wanted entirely different futures? He foresaw uneasy compromises breaking down into sporadic skirmishes—rather like the outcome of the human drama in the courtroom, when you thought about it.
No side claiming guilt or offering restitution.
Neither side really wining.
So, as far as Aleksey could see, it was the third horse that should now be considered. As Schultz had envisaged, before he’d been elevated: famine and plague. Pandemic and food shortages.
It had not escaped Aleksey’s notice that one of the topics on the agenda in Geneva had been likely responses to a possible global pandemic. Or had it been possible responses to a likely pandemic?
Aleksey could not recall.
But he believed now that it was coming.
They’d discussed plans forfood insecurity.
This was a concept he knew a little bit about. Possibly more than most.
