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Ben took the last biscuit and passed the plate back over his shoulder for Tim to refill. ‘He doesn’t seem too bothered, to be honest. It’s hard to separate that out from the injury. One is so connected to the other, I guess.’
‘Fifty. Fuck. That used to be, like, the oldest person in the entire world.’
‘When was that then?’ Tim asked this mildly, but Ben got the distinct impression that there was an undertone ofenough of your bullshit; put up or shut up.
Ben smiled privately and wondered what he’d done to deserve such friends. Not much really. He’d spent over a decade pouring his complex relationship woes over their heads, seeking their advice but ignoring it, asking for their help and abusing their complete loyalty. But they’d stuck with him through thick and thin, literally, when he thought about it.
Since the night he had come to them entirely broken, since a conversation over a loaded gun in the moon shadow of a cold caravan, they’d been by his side, united in one aim. They had been as shocked and distraught by Nikolas’s departure as Ben as been. For him, and for themselves. They’d sent him off with wise words to help sort the latest rift, not knowing that Nikolas had sorted it his own way.
It had not escaped any of them that if Ben had not caught up to Nikolas, if, for example, he’d taken up the offer of a bed with them for the rest of that night, better to tackle Nikolas fresh in the morning, then Nikolas might now be gone from all their lives entirely.
Neither of them had apparently ever given thought to the conflagration that was Nikolas Mikkelsen until those flames went out. Life without the Wassock, as Squeezy had mussed. It was unthinkable.
So, once the initial trauma was over—Nikolas unconscious in hospital, Ben bandaged and fed, Radulf checked over by the vet, a vast search initiated for PB—they had formulated Operation Wounded Warrior, and it had been ongoing very successfully, if Ben’s current happiness was anything to go by, ever since.
With tea restored and fresh biscuits, Squeezy checked his imaginary list of sub-headings. ‘So, stillNikolasthen.’
Ben stopped dunking and blew out his cheeks. ‘It’ssohard. I can’t stop doing it. He notices, but he doesn’t pick me up about it. Not all the time anyway.’
‘But he’s happy with the change? I did what you suggested, Ben, and mentioned it the other night. That it’s all come at once, so to speak…name…the age thing…the injury. It would be a lot for anyone to cope with. He snapped initially, just like you said he might, but then he actually apologised. I didn’t really believe you, but, well, it’s true. New man.’
‘See, I’ve bin telling you all along. 'S cus he reallyisNikolas, the twin, and he’s been passing himself off as Aleksey passing himself off as him, so now he’s Nikolas passing himself off as—’
‘Did we get any further with our plans to swap them, Ben? I’ll take Aleksey for a while and you can have this—’
A knuckle rub shut him up, and Squeezy made an elaborate air tick on his pad to, Ben assumed, indicate another subject covered. A note was written slowly in a similar mock-fashion. ‘Medal awarded to yours truly for the flying lessons suggestion.’
Ben grinned widely. ‘I’m only going to say this once in my life, so you’d better make another of those notes: you are a fucking genius. He seemed to love it.’ He pondered this for a moment remembering back. ‘In fact, on second thoughts, you’d better add something new to the list: Mystery Nikolas-Plotting.’
Tim frowned. ‘I don’t like the sound of that. That smacks a little too much of disappearing off to Russia? Unknown relatives suddenly appearing? I could go on.’
‘I don’t think it’s anything like that. I’m trying to put the pieces together but it’s not making much sense at the moment. He’s planning something, that’s obvious. It’s not…something bad. I think. It’s something to do with Miles and Phillipa, Scotland and churches, and somehow my mentioning the flying lessons seemed to fit with all that. That’s all I can make sense of at the moment. He said he’d tell me tonight, so obviously that’ll only be a pile of rubbish and distraction from what he’s really up to. But it might add a few more clues. I’ll let you know next briefing.’
The other two frowned in unison, and they all pondered these odd connections for a while. Squeezy summed it all up nicely with a heartfelt, ‘Fuck.’ He pretended to consult his list. They all knew the subjects by heart, so there’d been no need to write anything down that first meeting—Ben so damaged inside and out, one dog traumatised and staring forlornly out for the other, and Tim terrified of everything, possibly including the bizarre enigma he appeared to have committed his life to. Whether he meant Michael Heathcote or Nikolas Mikkelsen in this, Ben didn’t press him. But they always worked through these subjects of concern as if they’d actually penned them, given themselves an agenda. Privately, Ben didn’t use any of Squeezy’s more amusing designations for what they were doing: he just called it The Nikolas Project, and that summed it up for him.
‘So, the war.’ Squeezy licked his pencil in anticipation of adding invented text to a non-existent list.
Tim and Ben slumped a little. This had been unfortunate. On top of everything, and it was a very long list of changes in their lives, Russia had apparently decided that if the Germans could do a bit oflebensraum, then they could do it back. Whether you called it annexation, realignment or invasion, it didn’t really matter because the effect was the same: a bit tricky being Russian anywhere, and possibly better to be a poor one if you did happen to have that unfortunate nationality.
Despite how any of them viewed the current conflict, they all agreed (except for Tim’s occasional demurring of any opinion for fear of being punched) that you never blamed soldiers for anything. They went where venal politicians told them to go and did what a grateful nation expected them to do. So not only did Nikolas have to suffer beingotheredby what he termed virtue-signalling morons, he had to watch as troops he clearly empathised with were blamed.
As Ben knew only too well, every single soldier wanted to re-enlist when their mates came under attack, and no matter how badly Russia had, in fact, treated Aleksey Primakov at times, the place and its people were in his blood. And they were singing a desperate song to him, and he, clearly, wanted to respond.
Ben glanced at Tim, knowing their views on thisincursionwere very different, and muttered, ‘He does it deliberately now: speaks in Russian when we’re out, just to scare people.’
Squeezy huffed. ‘They probably think it’s fucking Ukrainian. Most fucking people couldn’t point to either place on a map, let alone tell their dumb languages apart. We got that Spetsnaz bergen nicely stowed away for you, my little oppo. Don’t you worry. He’s not going anywhere with that leg.’ He leaned back and appeared to give Ben a quick assessment. If it was intended to be covert, he failed, because Ben caught the look.
‘What?’
‘Might as well talk about it then. Next on the list. The big fucking elephant squatting in all our rooms. How’s the old leg really coming along? Cus I’ve got some critical op info on that front.’
Ben sighed. ‘He didn’t do any real damage last week. Couple of days in bed and he was fine.’
Tim was frowning at his boyfriend, possibly annoyed that this latest gem hadn’t been shared with him first, filtered throughhiscommon sense and ability to speak as a normal human being. Before Squeezy could impart his dubious news, Tim pointed out, ‘He is limping, Ben. You can see it when he doesn’t think anyone is watching.’
‘Yeah, I know.’ Ben tried to repress a smile at the recollection of the opportunities this odd gait gave him to slide an arm around Nikolas’s waist when they were walking together. ‘But I’m honestly not worried. I don’t think he is, either. So, what’s he said to you?’
Squeezy glanced out of the floor-to-ceiling glass at the sunshine on the hillside behind them. ‘It might be part of your mystery then.’ He began to tap his fingers, thinking. Ben glanced at Tim. Tim shook his head slightly, whether to sayignore him, I always do,orthe wait might be worth it, Ben couldn’t tell. ‘Okay. I think I’ve got it. He’s planning to start a meth lab somewhere with Toosoon the little freakoid as his chief chemist and all-round fucking genius. His ex and her inbred mob are gonna be the backers cus of all those blue-blooded druggies they know, and—and here’s the fucking brilliant part of his plan, I do have to fucking admit—they’re gonna use fucking church services to distribute the product: you flying it around them all, cus she’s gonna beCaposof that lot soon, isn’t she?’
