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He turned.
They were almost beneath Les Dents.
The outcrops towered above them; surf dashed furiously at their base; the swell sucked them in, spat them back. He sculled desperately to keep away from the wickedly sharp protrusions then felt a hand pulling on his arm. Nikolas was pointing to a channel between the low broken molar and the grinning incisors. It was calmer. He swam towards it, Nikolas behind, and finally they were in the undulating water of the opening. The jawbone’s precipitous maw seemed to swallow them. They could find no handholds either side and were swept through, but when they emerged to the south they saw a small ledge which they could cling to, buffeted by the swells still, but able to breathe properly at last.
The blood had washed off Nikolas. He blinked and spat.
Ben found saliva. Coughed. ‘You…’
Nikolas gave a small shrug, and wedged his strong fingers further into the crack, looking up as if assessing whether he could climb.
‘You…up…into the…’
‘Yes, well.’ Nikolas cupped Ben’s stinging ear gently with his free hand. ‘I like owning things. It makes me happy. Come, let’s see if we can find a place to climb out of the water.’
They released their holds and let the sea take them once more
It was a perilous thing to do, for the relentless swells dashed them against the jagged granite more than once, and by the time they made it around to the eastern end, in the lea of the wind, they were battered and bruised. But they found what they were looking for: a crevasse ten feet or so above them between two chimneys of stone which formed a natural shelf. Ben scrambled up, then helped Nikolas to climb after him.
They sat together, one behind the other and shivered.
‘What the fuck just happened?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘He…did I hear it right? He was Adolf Hitler’s son?’
‘Apparently so. I knew there was something I didn’t like about him when he started stealing all the yachts.’
‘He was going to burn our island.’
‘Those drums of diesel weren’t for decoration, no. Although they did explode very prettily.’
‘He knew who we were, Nik.’
‘You are avoiding the question that really needs to be asked, Ben.’
Ben wrapped his arms more tightly around the rangy frame and propped his chin on the bony shoulder.
Neither of them really needed to say it, but both were thinking it: what the fuck were they going to do now?
* * *
Chapter Fifty
‘No.’
‘Will you stop with that universal no thing!’
‘Unilateral. And it’s still no.’
‘Youhaveto.’
‘That’s as may be. Many people in my life have told me what I have and have not to do. As you may just have noticed Ben, it doesn’t go well for them.’
‘Oh, shut up. You don’t impress me.’
Aleksey thought back to the explosion aboard the Appaloosa, the killing of the head of the World Bank and all the crew, the saving of him and Ben and The Island of Light, and not least the deliverance of Radulf and PB, and thought this assessment was a little harsh.
