This Other Country (4 page)

On a whim, Nikolas whistled for Radulf, and just as the dog turned, he snapped him with his phone camera. It was the dopey, ears askew and looking appealing expression that the dog specialized in. Nikolas shook his head despairingly again but sent it anyway. A few moments later she replied with a selfie. She appeared to be happy, coppery snakes of hair wild around her face and not stuffed into a hat now. He made a dumb face, took one of himself and winged it to her.

She immediately texted:
U R smoking!

He winced.

I’m telling Ben.

This was bad.
What do u want not to?

There was a long pause.
Bribery? U cant bribe kids! Its illegal!

Since when? So?

2 come for xmas

What about Babushka?

She not seen devon either

He thought about this. It was the only downside to bringing Emilia to school here—her grandmother had been left on her own once more. But she’d desperately wanted this chance for her granddaughter, so she had agreed. Emilia and Ulyana Ivanovna for Christmas. Why not?

OK but I want very good present

I will make u something in manual

Deep joy

Love you bye xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx :)

He smiled—Emilia had learnt early on that kisses, hugs, karma and any form of emoticon annoyed him excessively and never stinted, therefore, in their use.

I never think about u-goodbye

He snapped his phone shut, chuckling at the thought of Ulyana Ivanovna seeing the house. He could teach Emilia to ride—and play tennis. It was getting boring beating Ben all the time. Now he could defeat Emilia, too.

§ § §

Ben was still on the phone when Nikolas arrived back. He had his feet up on the table, and a succession of mugs around him with used teabags on spoons. Nikolas shivered with disgust and thought about calling for a servant before he remembered he didn’t have any now.

Ben hung up and took his feet down. “Jono’d been seeing the doc once a week for about six months. A couple of months ago the doc mentioned the possibility of him attending a residential course for a week.”

Nikolas sat down. “And?”

“He agreed to go. But I’ve just called Squeezy and asked him about it, and he claimed Jono’d been in Kenya, helping build a school.”

“Interesting. He wasn’t in Kenya.”

“Nope. Poor kid. He was on a residential, gay therapy course. But the really weird thing is, he was actually away from home for four weeks, not one.”

“So…where was he the other three weeks?”

“Exactly.”

Kate was good at what she did. By the end of the next day, she’d found fifty-seven of Dr Julian Wood’s patients had been recommended to attend the one-week residential course. Thirty-five men had apparently attended and returned home after one week, and some were still Dr Wood’s patients—to varying degrees; many had cut back the frequency of their sessions. But that left twenty-two men who’d attended the course but, as with Jonathan, had an additional unaccounted-for three weeks—no evidence of telephone calls made; no use of credit cards; no attendance at work. In itself, this was not particularly alarming, except of those twenty-two, twelve had returned home briefly and had subsequently disappeared once again, telling family and friends they were going travelling. Jobs had been resigned from, money withdrawn from bank accounts, and no contact had been made since. Of the remaining ten, six were dead—four by suicide and two by head-on car crashes, where they and the occupants of the other car involved were killed. Four men from the original twenty-two that had taken an extended stay at the therapy session were at home. She’d sent their addresses.

Interestingly, one of the four was ex-army.

Ben told Nikolas they were paying him a visit.

Privately, Nikolas was bored of the whole topic, but he knew if he didn’t go along with it, Ben would only continue to pursue it—most likely with Squeezy or Tim. This way, playing along, he at least got to influence the course of events and curtail some of Ben’s enthusiasms.

§ § §

Andrew Weir had served sixteen years in the gunners and had left the army on early retirement as a major. He’d bought a house in Amesbury, just outside the artillery camp near Salisbury that had been his regimental home. Ben was studying his profile in the car as Nikolas, for once, drove. Nikolas glanced over. “He was a major?”

“Yeah. Probably would have made half colonel if he’d stayed in.” He looked up. “You gonna have a problem with him being an officer?”

“Me? Why should I have a problem with that?”

Ben frowned. “Well, lots of soldiers don’t like officers, do they?”

There was a long silence, until Nikolas ventured with very uncharacteristic hesitation, “What do you think I did in the army, Benjamin?”

Ben put the papers down and turned slightly in his seat. “What do you mean? You were a Special Forces soldier recruited into Zaslon.” He rolled his eyes elaborately. “Now I’ve told you, you’ll have to shred me.”

Nikolas quirked his lip but flicked him a look, his eyes off the road for a moment. “Ben, I was a
major general
when I left—the British equivalent would be a brigadier. What did you think? I was Sergei Primakov’s
son
…” The silence was even longer this time. Ben coughed lightly.

“A brigadier?”

Nikolas chuckled. “I thought you knew. My God, you thought I was a soldier?” He kept glancing at Ben, not sure whether to be amused or horrified. “Is this going to be a problem between us?”

“Shut up, or it will be.”

“Or it will be…sir?”

Ben opened his mouth to reply, a horrified expression forming on his face, but Nikolas chided brightly, “Oh, look, you’re missing Stonehenge. Really, Benjamin, you have no appreciation for your own culture.” He pointed out the monument to Radulf, only in Russian so he could add a few comments about Ben, which he knew the dog would appreciate.

§ § §

Andy Weir was very guarded at first, although Ben had called him that morning and explained he was making a documentary on gay men in the military and that he was interviewing as many ex-soldiers as would speak with him. Upon actually meeting ex-Special-Forces-expert Ben Rider, Andy Weir had no problem talking at all. He told them how it had been for him, a senior officer on the staff at the headquarters of the Adjutant General, being summoned into a conference room with two hundred other senior officers, the army’s leaders, and being told by a brigadier that contrary to the army’s previous stance that gay soldiers would adversely affect operational effectiveness, now they had to let them in. European law demanded it. “Brigadier McConaughey stood up there in front of us all and announced, ‘I don’t like it, but we’ve been forced into it.’ What sort of message was that to give? The army’s most senior officers were condoning the continuing homophobia—only now it is all covered up under the guise of welcoming our contribution. Bollocks. They were just forced into it by European law and didn’t want to be sued any more.”

He leant forward, which immediately caused Ben and Nikolas to shift back slightly in tandem. “I had friends who were seized from their beds in the middle of the night, dragged into interrogation rooms, had their personal things ripped apart in illegal searches—letters read, photographs poured over to see if they could find evidence of them being gay!”

Nikolas was finding it hard to be sympathetic with the huge chip this man seemed to be carrying on his shoulder. Gay soldiers in his command had been set on fire. It gave an entirely different definition to homophobia. He tuned out for a while, studying the tiny kitchen in the sad little house on the unimaginative estate. Not for the first time, he gave thanks men still wanted to go to war and that it was so incredibly profitable for those who supplied the wherewithal to maximise the misery.

He was impatient to leave and glad when Ben suddenly asked, “Okay if I use your bathroom before we go?”

Andrew Weir nodded and pointed to a door across from the kitchen. Ben got up, closing the kitchen door as he went. Andrew smiled hesitantly at Nikolas. “Are you—?”

“No.”

“Oh. So what is your role with the film?”

“I’m sorry?”

“I was going to ask if you were the director.”

“Oh.” Huh. “Yes. I am.”

“Are you ex-military?”

“Yes. Russian.”

“Oh. So, was it okay for…?” Nikolas wasn’t about to tell this very intense man that being gay was considered a mental disease when he’d been in the army, or enlighten him as to the punishments handed out to those discovered. Neither did he mention the flip side of this: the army he’d known obviously had just as many gay men as any other, only they were necessarily extremely secretive and very easy, consequently, for senior officers, like him, to exploit. He hadn’t told Ben much, if any, of this and wasn’t all that happy having to think about these things now. He was profoundly glad when Ben returned and declared they had to go—that they had another interview in London…

Andrew Weir seemed relived, too. He nodded and rose first, making his way toward the front door. “Sorry if I came over a bit strong there. I was angry for a long time, especially at that dickwad McConaughey, but I’ve been in therapy for a while. It’s really helped, you know?”

Nikolas found this admission slightly interesting and actually relevant, so he expected Ben to pounce on it and ask a flurry of questions. He was surprised when Ben didn’t seem able to depart quickly enough. He was almost hustled back to the car, which they’d had to park some houses down.

“What did you think?”

“About what? You drive.”

“About Andrew. What did you think?”

“I didn’t think about him at…”

“Nik…”

Nikolas sighed. “I think he’s a very angry and bitter man. He seems obsessed with events well in the past. Isn’t it
compulsory
for your army to be gay now? I was surprised though you didn’t ask him—”

“The house is completely stripped bare upstairs—no furniture at all.”

“Huh. That
is
odd. I wonder what he does for—”

“Even odder? He’s got: ‘
I will leave darkness behind me’
scrawled on the wall of one of the bedrooms…”

Nikolas turned to him then stared thoughtfully back at the house. “I think that’s our cue to return and enquire about the therapy course, no?”

They were too late. The house was empty, but the gate from the tiny square of unkempt garden at the back was open and swinging slightly in the breeze.

Major Andrew Weir had left.

They were equidistance now from their two houses and debated which to return to. Ben checked his messages. “Fuck. Tim’s been trying to get hold of me. I had it turned off.” Ben returned his friend’s last call, walking a little way down the path and along the road out of Nikolas’s hearing. Nikolas debated whether he could get away with a cigarette. Ben and Tim usually spent an inordinate amount of time on the phone, in his opinion. Before he had a chance to decide, Ben came running back. “Squeezy’s gone.”

Nikolas cast his eyes to the heavens but no respite was forthcoming. He probably didn’t deserve it anyway. “So that idiot friend of yours decides to investigate on his own. What a surprise.” There was no doubt in his mind and likely not in Ben’s either as to why Squeezy had disappeared—or where he was headed. The idiot’s impulsive—reckless—way of tackling life was a constant source of annoyance to Nikolas.

“How come when he does something wrong he’s always my friend?”

Nikolas only grunted. “Well, there’s nothing we can do. We’ll go back to Devon.”

“Nik…”

“You drive.”

“Nik…”

“No. I’m not having this conversation.”

“You don’t know what I was going to say. We nee—”

“No, Ben, we don’t need to do anything.” He held up his hand, his face set. “No. Don’t speak to me of this again.”

It was a very quiet drive back to the glass house. Ben wasn’t allowed to speak about what they needed to do, but he wasn’t apparently prepared to talk about anything else either. Ben’s silence didn’t bother Nikolas one bit. He chatted amiably to Radulf. He often got more sense out of the dumb, blind dog than he did most humans anyway.

§ § §

As soon as they arrived home, Ben took himself off to a private spot and called Tim again. He informed his friend of Nikolas’s unhelpful response to their plan. Tim insisted they should do it anyway. Ben agreed, although it made him feel bad to go behind Nikolas’s back.

CHAPTER FOUR

Kate came down to the house two days later. She’d been reading the transcripts from sessions of gay men in crisis since she’d hacked Doctor Wood’s computer, so she wasn’t in the best of moods.

She sighed as she came into the kitchen. “Where is he?”

“Riding. He’ll be back soon. What’ve you got?”

“The ideal couple. Have you talked him around yet?”

Ben shook his head, making her some tea. “I haven’t mentioned it again. I thought it was best to wait till you had something. Is it going to work?”

“I’ll wait till he’s here, save me going through it twice. Thanks.” She took her tea to the table and sat sipping it thoughtfully as she looked around the vast, impressive kitchen. She smiled privately and glanced at Ben. He brought his tea to the table and pushed over a plate of biscuits. She nibbled the edge of one. The atmosphere was a little awkward. A few years ago they’d have been ripping each other’s clothes off, not drinking tea and thinking of something to say. She remembered Ben Rider’s body extremely well. It wasn’t something you forgot. She remembered waking up alongside him, awed at his beauty,
jealous
of his beauty, which seemed to take no effort to maintain.

Although Kate had once told Ben she’d always known he was gay, she’d lied. She’d not sensed anything from him to hint at this, except perhaps a cold remoteness when they made love, which she’d put down to his job—a sense he was going through the motions rather than connecting. Sometimes, in quiet moments, she compared herself to Nikolas Mikkelsen, trying to assess how and why Ben had decided he preferred that body to hers, that person to her. She couldn’t begin to imagine living with her boss. None of them working in ANGEL could. None of them knew how Ben put up with him. They all revered Nikolas, respected him, obeyed him, worked for him, but they all—even Squeezy who wanted to fuck him—admitted Nikolas unnerved them, exhausted them, and confused them. Ben seemed to float over the tumultuous ocean storms of Nikolas’s presence like a tranquil cloud, entirely unaffected. Which to a casual observer might appear as if the things Nikolas did and said didn’t affect Ben, but of course that wasn’t true.