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He opened his eyes and let his gaze rest on the dark wet hair beneath his fingers. In doing so, he noticed the seat cushions. Each one was covered in a fabric with Cyrillic writing, which appeared to be different inspirational quotes from great Russian writers. His reminded the world:Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart.Fucking typical.
Ben’s maintained:Nothing is more boring than a man with a career.He snorted quietly. Ben probably wouldn’t find it funny though.
‘Would you like a drink?’
Aleksey brought his thoughts back to his returning host, but shook his head.
‘So…’ The man was examining him as he sat once more behind his desk. Aleksey was giving him a pretty swift once-over too. He was older than he appeared on television, possibly in his late sixties. He had a non-descript yet vaguely handsome face, with an oddly determined jaw, which he clearly liked to clench to emphasise his point. Perhaps his wealth. Or power even, Aleksey supposed.
The most compelling aspect of the face was the eyes, which were hard to look away from. But in direct contrast to Ben’s, into which he had been falling satisfactorily for fifteen years, these snagged Aleksey’s unwanted compliance to Schulz’s demand to be attended to.
‘You are not as I was led to believe, Sir Nikolas. Hardly at death’s door. I would say the opposite. You are therefore more of a problem than I bargained for. Ah, here are your towels. Thank you, Dimitri.’ The crew member who had entered had a rifle on a sling over one shoulder. He put the towels neatly down just inside the door, well away from Aleksey and Ben, gave a brief salute, and then stepped outside, where he joined a colleague, similarly armed, guarding the doors.
‘Please, make yourself comfortable. Perhaps one for your friend as well.’
Aleksey rose and very deliberately not limping stepped to the towels and brought them back to his seat.
As I was led to expect? That begged some interesting questions.From fucking whombeing the most relevant, perhaps.
‘Well, to business. You are a man of business, are you not, Nikolas? May I call you Nikolas?’
‘No.’
‘Oh, don’t be like that. Come, you have something I want, and I assume I have something you want: your return to La Luz safe and sound.’
Aleksey forced himself to relax back into the seat and rubbed his hair with a towel, thinking. He was entirely at a loss.
Eventually, he admitted noncommittally, ‘All right. I’ll bite, Herr Schulz. What do you want that I apparently have?’
‘Ah, you know who I am, too. That is good. We are all friends together now and can do business like civilised men. I want the photographs.’
Aleksey didn’t askwhat photographs; it seemed rather pointless.
‘Why?’ A much better question.
Schulz steepled his hands. Aleksey almost laughed. He wondered ifWulfknew just how much he resembled his own caricature: Dr Evil. ‘I assume you think you know the significance of what you found, Mr Mikkelsen. Perhaps that those photographs would prove a long-held conspiracy theory? That they would raise questions about the role of the Catholic Church in Spain, even? Maybe that of the Americans in the aftermath of the war? No? You don’t have a view on this?’ He sighed, picked up a pen and began to tap it lightly on his desk. ‘Your colleagues seemed fascinated by them in the restaurant. I assume all these things were discussed.’ He smiled. ‘You should learn to stand out less, Nikolas. You and your companions, even your dogs, are very easy to identify and follow. Spindrift out of Penzance, no? A word to the wise: you should never have AIS, Nikolas—the satellites are monitoring us all. She was a lovely craft. Such a shame. But if any of those scenariosiswhat you were speculating on, then you would be wrong. My father had no particular worries about those photographs being released. He was quite safe. Other than the occasional picture surfacing, each easily passed off as fake, he lived very happily in Argentina for thirty years, and died in his sleep, as all great men should.’
Aleksey suddenly saw the resemblance. It hit him almost as hard as the baton had struck Ben. It was the eyes. Once they held you, it was hard to look away. They were mesmerising.
He swallowed. ‘Perhaps I will take you up on that offer of a drink. May I have some water?’
Schulz appeared gratified, now a genial host able to cater to important guests. He immediately called out to one of the guards. Within a few minutes, some bottles of Evian were placed where the towels had been. Aleksey got up once more to fetch them. ‘Again, I apologise. I should have been more hospitable. You are welcome to something a little stronger, if you would like?’
Aleksey sat next to Ben once more and dribbled some of the water from the bottle he’d opened into his mouth. Ben’s hand shifted from his head to brush his lips. One finger tapped lightly. Aleksey reckoned Ben was more aware than he was letting on.Good.
‘So, we return to my question. Where are the photographs?’
‘Then I’ll return to mine—why do you want them?’
‘Because you must see how that information would compromiseme. We live in a world of black and white, right and wrong, Nikolas. All I have done, everything I am working for, will be destroyed if it comes to be known that I am the son of Adolf Hitler. If it is known he survived, it will be the mission of every investigative journalist to dig up the details of his life, and then, when the connection is discovered, mine. The sins of the father will then be visited on the son. You of all men should understand this.’
‘You must have hardly known him.’
Schulz shrugged, regret clear in his expression. ‘Yes, I was the child of his old age. He met my mother; I was born, and any thoughts he then had of a resurrection of his vision were over. He walked, he painted, but he only dreamed of the Fatherland.’
‘So I do not understand the import of your blood. We make our own fate in life.’
‘You are a man after my own heart, Nikolas. I agree with you entirely. In another life we might have been great friends. But I do not think my backers would see it this way. They lost a great many friends and relatives in the war. A great many. Possibly as many as six million. So, you see…? But I was also told that you were a man who understood the realities of life. I would like to see these photographs for my own sake, and it would be courteous of you to give them to me.’
