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Squeezy put his elbows on the table and appeared about to reply, but whether utter nonsense or something more helpful, Aleksey didn’t get to find out. The other two came in, and all conversation from then on inevitably turned to the cottage.
It occurred to Aleksey, listening but not contributing much, that given its isolated location, this old farmhouse would actually make a superb meth lab.
* * *
Chapter Four
Aleksey didn’t want his island to be in the Caribbean, for many reasons, but mainly because he wasn’t too sure where it was, and it irritated him when Americans pronounced it. However, he didn’t fancy one in any Russian waters either, for different but equally valid reasons. Some Russian islands were so Godforsaken that they literally used to send people to die on them. You knew something was bad when a place was named Death Island, or, for light relief, Cannibal Island. Sometimes, lying on his mat at night in Siberia, so ravenous that he chewed small pieces of bark until they were soft enough to swallow, he’d wondered if you could hear the hunger in the voices of six thousand ghosts if they had starved to death.
The thought of voracious ghosts had terrified him at seventeen.
So, not Russia.
Denmark was an obvious option. Although he’d left that country when he was only ten, he still sometimes thought of himself as Danish. More so recently. He’d never been so glad to hold Danish nationality as he was now.Danishbillionaires weren’t having their assets stripped, after all. So, a nice island off the coast somewhere near Aero. He had no idea if such a place existed. At ten, he’d had no idea about anything very much, especially not things like geography. Or school in general come to that.
Maybe the Mediterranean?
Warmer.
Olives.
Oranges?
He was vague about these things, but he did at least know where it was. Superb classical education, of course, once he’d been forced to actually attend school. When he thought about the Mediterranean, he thought about barren, rocky, sun-drenched isles with the occasional Minotaur or Cyclops lurking. Presumably they’d all died off by now. But were any such places for sale? He couldn’t imagine any would be.
His mind drifted back to the moment and to the crossword he was ostensibly solving. Ben was making some sandwiches for lunch and casting him suspicious looks.
He gave him a sunny smile. ‘Painless treatment for animals. Eight letters.’
‘Oh, God. I have no idea.’
It amused Aleksey to ask for Ben’s help with his crossword, as he was always fairly confident that Ben would not have an answer. He chuckled privately—Ben had never worked out that, being Russian,hedidn’t even understand the questions. He assumed it was a language thing. If you began by translating in the first place, cryptic took on a whole new meaning. Oddly,opioidalfit nicely, even if it wasn’t a real word, so he carefully penned it in.
Ben brought the food to the table. Bread, Aleksey wasn’t too bothered about as it raised no voices in his head, so he poked everything around for a while, separating the sandwich out: oceans and tiny islands.
‘Squeezy and I are heading up to town this arvo for the Regiment’s benefit dinner for the homeless veterans. Did you remember?’
He hadn’t.
But this was good.
He perked up and ate a piece of cheese, pretending to solve another of his clues. ‘When will you be back?’ Nicely casual.
‘Depends. But probably late tomorrow morning. Squeezy wants to go meet some of them in the morning. Talk to them a bit.’
It seemed a bit unfair to Aleksey to inflict that moron on top of homelessness on anyone. ‘All right.’
‘Tim’s coming here for the night.’
‘What? No! I mean, why? Just the two of us? That would be incredibly awkward, Ben.’
‘Get over it. He’s very good at crosswords.’
* * *
Tim Watson didn’t appear to be any happier about the babysitting arrangement than he was. To be fair to the man, they’d had an unusual relationship over the years, something that was entirely tolerable normally because, buffered between Ben and the moron, they rarely had to interact with anything other than vague pleasantries. One thing, however, that always cheered Aleksey up when thinking about this quiet, attractive professor, was that in Tim’s company he, AlekseyPrimakov, had the moral high ground with someone for once in his life.Hebecame the ethical one. And even he had to admit there weren’t many people in the world who could make him appear principled. Obviously, any of their friends would vehemently dispute this, but Aleksey was confident that if questioned on his belief he could prove it easily. After all, who was more moral, the man who professed to be in the right but went along with great evil because itpaidhim, or the evil man who was just being himself? Exactly.
Ben and Squeezy made a great deal of noise leaving. Army reunions tended to be exuberant, and, apparently, getting into the spirit early was essential, even if it was only a benefit dinner. Aleksey sat on the bed, watching Ben stuff things into a bag, smoking quietly. It was the best cover for plotting.
