AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The sail proved uneventful. As Aleksey had not told the agent for the boat company his real destination, giving mind to his non-disclosure agreement, and had lied and said they were sailing to St Mary’s, he had a mooring in the marina already included in the deal. They motored in and tied up to a berth on the floating jetty.
They went straight to the hotel, but then discovered to their dismay that dogs were not allowed. Aleksey resorted to his usual solution and attempted bribery, but to no avail: no dogs meant no dogs—even extremely wealthy ones.
Ben finally pulled Aleksey to one side. ‘Get a room for Squeezy and Tim, and we can stay on the boat with the boys.’
This suggestion pleased Aleksey. He felt it was evidence once more that Ben Rider-Mikkelsen genuinely didn’t care about the money or the lifestyle he was afforded by being with him. It was just about that:being with him.
He handed the leads to Squeezy and told him not to bang his head on the swinging lamp.
Yeah. As if.
To prevent Squeezy’s outrage at this blatant swap, Aleksey proposed they should all meet for dinner later—and added that he had something to tell them.
Something important.
It worked. All three of the humans went silent. Radulf stopped raising his muzzle at the young man who had pointed to the sign with a dog on it—crossed out.
Aleksey’s jaw tightened. He wasn’t sure he liked having this much power to ruin people’s day. Then he gave a tiny twitch of his lips at their expressions of woe and fear and decided he did. Ack, he was a bad man, but he had Ben Rider-Mikkelsen to call him on it.
Later that evening, therefore, they all sat together at a table outside at a restaurant in the harbour, dogs asleep at their feet, and the four of them showered and shaved and extremely hungry. The lights from Tre Huw town glinted in the ink-dark water that sloshed gently against the harbour wall. The town was busy with people wandering along enjoying the ambience. The restaurant was packed inside, but out here on an awning-covered patio it was cool and therefore quieter.
They ordered, and the waiter turned on an outdoor gas heater for them before he left.
Aleksey welcomed its warmth and watched the little blue flames for a while, thinking.
Ben didn’t like it when he lied, but also, he’d noticed, Ben liked it even less when he tried to tell the truth—which was the reason he lied in the first place. Truth was highly overrated in his book. Ben had been quiet since the little announcement in the lobby. He’d been thoughtful while they’d showered together, and when Aleksey had queried this delightful peace and quiet he was enjoying (although he’d not put it in those terms), Ben had only muttered, ‘I had to poke it, I just fucking had to.’
‘So…’ He leaned forwards and rested his arms on the table. Ben was shredding sugar packets, tense and quiet still. Squeezy was forming the spilt grains into patterns, tiny crop circles of glistening crystal. ‘I was going through the photographs we found and have discovered who owned the island when the house was built and who gifted it to the prince.’ He laid down the picture of Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson sitting together at the pavilion.
Tim snatched it up, wide-eyed. ‘Gosh.’ He flipped it and read the inscription. ‘I sat there! This afternoon. Isn’t that incredible?’
Squeezy was peering at the image over his shoulder. ‘Bit skinny, like. She needs a bit of fucking fat on her. Sour puss, from the looks of it, too.’
Ben plucked the photo from Tim and squinted at it, turned it, read it, then handed it back. ‘Kinda makes sense, I guess. We knew it must be a previous one of them—someone in the family.’
Aleksey nodded. So far so good. ‘They had many visitors, as you would imagine, both before and after the abdication.’ He produced the picture of Lady Nancy Astor and Winston Churchill.
While Tim and Squeezy were examining this, Ben asked, ‘What abdication? That means resigned, yeah? Kings can’t resign, can they?’ but he once more took the new photo and looked dutifully at it. ‘Oh, that’s Churchill. I recognise him.’
Aleksey felt rather relieved.
When they’d enjoyed commenting on the odd clothes and other things, he detonated the peaceful atmosphere by putting down the photo of Hitler and Wallis Simpson sitting together on the steps, just where Tim had photographed him with Ben that afternoon.
Ben was the first to pick this one up. ‘Is that…? Can’t be, right?’
Tim pinched it out of his fingers and his eyebrows shot up. ‘It is! Wow. What does it say…oh, she doesn’t actually name him, but it’s Adolf Hitler, yes?’
Squeezy took it from him, studying it thoughtfully. He too read the inscription, but he then immediately shot his gaze to Aleksey and their eyes held. He’d got it. Of all of them, Aleksey had thought it would be the professor who would see those words and understand the truth first. Before Squeezy could speak, Aleksey handed him the second photo.
Tim was speculating with Ben about the visit, distracted, so Aleksey just watched Squeezy’s reaction to this new image: the Fürhrer standing with the German naval captain, the U-boat in the background, surfaced and waiting, ready to take him to freedom and a new life. Finally, Squeezy nudged his boyfriend and handed him the second photo and pointed to the date. ‘Hitler died inApril1945, little doctor of useless fucking knowledge. So what the boss is asking, what we should all be asking, is what’s he fucking doing on La Luz inMayof that year. I’d say by looking at these, that he’s alive and very fucking well indeed.’
Tim took the second photo from him; Ben half-knelt on his seat so he could lean over the table and look too.
Finally Ben sat down with a noticeable slump. ‘No. He died in a bunker. Shot himself in the head. They found his body. Even I know that. I mean, shit, this is Hitler, yeah! No way they’d make a mistake like that! Hitler shot his mistress, what’s her name, and then shot himself. Everyone knows this!’
‘Eva Braun was poisoned, Ben. Cyanide. But you’re right about the rest. Obviously. As you say, everybody knows it.’ Tim consideredhim, tapping the photos. ‘This is one hundred percent fake. There is no way you’re going to convince me that the bodies found in that bunker weren’t Hitler and Eva Braun. The entire world was looking for them: the Soviets, the Americans and us! They wereverifiedas his remains and then they burnt them. This is ludicrous. It’s a conspiracy theory and I’m not buying into it. Jesus, next you’ll be trying to tell us the world is flat and that we need to sail to the edge to prove it or something. Or that Apollo 11 never went to the moon—that Stanley Kubrick filmed it all on a set. What the hell. This makes me really angry.’ He turned his flustered countenance to his boyfriend’s less readable one. ‘What do you think?’
Aleksey snorted a little as Tim asked the moron this. He’d never heard the professor ever ask his boyfriend his opinion on anything. Usually he seemed to be pretending he didn’t exist, which was a neat trick Aleksey was trying to copy.
