He turned swiftly and plucked Nikolas’s book from his hands. “Do something to entertain me.”
Nikolas frowned. “That’s my line.”
Ben grinned. “Ack, we’re interchangeable.”
Nikolas began to chuckle and hid it behind one hand. Ben had used his dismissive expression, too. Nik pulled something out of his suit pocket and handed it to Ben. Ben took the folded paper, but held onto Nikolas’s hand for a moment, admiring the ring on his surprisingly elegant finger. As ever, Nikolas’s nails were manicured and perfect. He’d stopped a developing habit of digging at one cuticle until it bled. If that had been the only outward manifestation of the mania which had gripped him over Steven then Ben couldn’t fault him. The ring was fashioned from life’s hardships—bullets and pain—exactly like the man who wore it.
Nikolas tugged his hand back with a grunt.
They didn’t talk about the ring either. But Nikolas had not taken it off once, not to swim or shower. Ben could feel it sometimes when they made love, suspecting Nikolas engineered the moments when the ring grazed his skin, or was felt in other places, the hard metal between the friction of their flesh.
If he did, they never spoke of it.
He unfolded the piece of paper, for one moment his mind spinning away on possibilities—a confession? A declaration? It was a printout of the activities available at the luxury hotel. Nikolas had drawn two columns, one headed me and one Ben. Against each activity, ticks had been put in relevant columns.
Ben’s excursions included an overnight husky and sleigh adventure to a remote seaboard camp, ice fishing, a trip to observe and feed bears, and a ski trek to a glacier. Nikolas’s included…
“You haven’t ticked anything.”
Nikolas plucked it from Ben’s grasp and stowed it back in his pocket. “How much ice can one person see in a lifetime?”
“But this is polar ice. It’s different.”
A small smile ghosted Nikolas’s features. “I’ve seen polar ice.”
Ben was tempted to rummage in Nikolas’s pocket for the list. Not only because he wanted to tick Nikolas onto all his excursions but because he wanted to feel Nikolas’s hard chest beneath his fingers, share his warmth and…he shifted in his seat and heard an incredulous snort from his companion as Nikolas said under his breath, “Don’t worry. I’ve just added something to my mental list—someone.”
Ben dug him hard in the thigh, surreptitiously. “Most people would kill to visit Svalbard. You’re going to take the opportunity to do these things.”
Nikolas glanced innocently across the cabin, apparently watching the approaching flight attendant, but said, as if he’d rehearsed the perfect timing, “I know Svalbard quite well. I was posted there once.”
The flight attendant arrived, drinks were ordered, served, the usual chat occurred as Ben was recognised, discussed, but then he could ask when she moved down the aisle, “What the fuck?”
Nikolas nodded innocently.
He got another jab but then Ben reared back. “Oh, you’re doing a Miles and Emilia on me.”
“A what?”
“All those stories you tell them. They’re complete bullshit, but they think—”
“Ack, I blend fact and fiction seamlessly, you know that. I was on Spitsbergen—as we always call it.”
“We?”
“Hmm, the Danish diplomatic mission.” Nikolas hesitated uncharacteristically, then gave a rueful laugh and ran his fingers through his hair. “It’s not one of my greatest moments. I had just died. I was not myself.”
“What are you…? Oh, shut up, you’re making all this up.”
“I assure you I’m not. I had just become…Nikolas…if you see what I mean. You’ve never asked me how I managed to persuade all his friends and colleagues—and others, come to that—that I was my brother. It wasn’t easy.”
“You told me it was. You said—”
“On the contrary. I said initially persuading the Russians I was Nikolas and leaving Russia was easy. I never said anything about my reception when I got back to Copenhagen.”
“Oh.” Ben realised this was true. It did seem incredible now that he thought about it that a complete stranger wearing the face of Nikolas Mikkelsen had arrived back in Denmark and taken up his job, his life, without being suspected. He couldn’t have done it…stuck in a Nikolas facemask, he would have been discovered in a few moments. Where would he have gone? Who would he have spoken to? What was he supposed to know?
“Bloody hell.”
“Indeed.”
“What did you do? How did you pull it off?”
“Initially I claimed…how do you call it in the British army—battle shock? Combat stress?”
“PTSD?”
“Yes, because of Aleksey…the circumstances…”
“You faked…?”
“Confusion, sickness, loss of memory, inability to recognise faces…anything that suited me.”
“Good God.”
“Not so good. It got me posted to Spitsbergen for my health.”
“Oh, but that was…easy then?”
Nikolas laughed. “My fiancée didn’t think so.” He rode out the silence with an amused quirk of his eyebrow and even snatched back his book, as if he was about to return to it.
“Kristina.”
Nikolas frowned and thought about this for a while. “I think you are losing the plot a little, Benjamin. You need to concentrate more. I’m glad I am treating you to this holiday.”
“Okay, no, Kristina was your wife. And Peter Cameron is treating us both to this holiday.”
Nikolas ignored the latter part of Ben’s reply and said with some amusement, “Aleksey’s wife. I am Nikolas now, back in Denmark—do keep up.”
Ben’s eyes flew wide open. “You got back to Copenhagen and discovered Nikolas was engaged to be married.”
Nikolas chuckled. “I did. And lower your voice, please.”
“We’re speaking Danish, moron.”
“And I’m getting advice from the man who thought Denmark was full of windmills.”
“Are you doing the distracting thing?”
“Not at all! Did I not volunteer this information before you had to discover it in unfortunate circumstances—maybe bumping into her on an ice floe—and consequently stop speaking to me for days?”
“If you did, it’s only because it must reflect well on you and—”
Nikolas snorted. “Actually, it doesn’t. You should try it sometime.”
“Are you going to tell me this story or not?”
“See? I am entertaining you, exactly as you requested. Are you sitting com—?” Nikolas winced and laughed at another poke in his thigh. “So, I come back to Copenhagen. Fortunately, I had Nika’s wallet and his keys. From his clothes, you understand.” He hesitated for a moment but moved on. “They were waiting for me—his colleagues. I was too…distraught to speak with them, so they took me to my apartment. Nika’s. So far, so good. Then she turned up. Charlotte—Charlie.” He caught a look from Ben and added, “She was American. The daughter of a military officer in their embassy.”
“Did she…recognise you? Think you were…? I thought your brother was…?”
“A paedophile? Say it, Ben.”
“No, I was going to say…” He had been about to say that. He sank back a little in his seat. “She thought you were Nikolas?”
“She did. But I knew the deception would not extend to more than my face, which was identical to Nika’s. Our bodies—not so much.”
“He wasn’t scarred?”
“No, and he weighed more than I did, but he had very little muscle.” Nikolas paused as if deep in thought. “But he’d been away some months, six maybe? So it was possible these changes might have occurred. Not the scars though, as you say. Especially the burn ones. They took years to heal in the camps as they kept…” He waved vaguely, dismissing the pain of cigarette burns to a long-distant past. Then he smiled cheerfully. “So, I was in the interesting position o
f having to avoid sleeping with my very attractive fiancée. I acquiesced to the trip to Svalbard. Some ancient Danish king’s bones had been dug up from when it was our island and they needed to be handled…treated…returned…something ridiculous, anyway.”
“You really got into this diplomatic stuff, didn’t you?”
“It was a little more banal than the things I had been doing in Russia. But bones or no, an escape to Svalbard seemed ideal. I took as much of Nika’s paperwork as I could to study and went on the next available flight.”
“And Charlie?”
“Ah, yes, the delightful Charlie. It was unfortunate for her I suppose that she was American. It was particularly galling for me.”
“Because they won the cold war?”
“Don’t be stupid. We won the cold war, Ben.”
When Ben looked confused, he clarified amiably, “What do you think when someone says billionaire to you?”
“You?”
“Besides me. In general?”
“Oh, Russian.”
“Exactly. Wars are not won in the short term. It was always our strategy.”
“Uh-uh. Charlie?”
“World politics has never interested you much, has it my little…?” Nikolas winced at another hard jab. “So, Charlie followed me.”
“To Svalbard?”
“Yes. That’s why I was not so keen to visit again. You try being shut up in a hut accompanied by an insane American female with a ticking biological clock for a month, having to invent reasons not to sleep with her, and see how fond your memories of a place are.”
“Did you…sleep with her?”
“I didn’t sleep at all! I sat up guarding my honour—and my scars. If I did not prefer the company of men anyway, that experience would have put me off the female of the species for good.”
“The company of men…?”
Nikolas smirked. “Other things of men, too. I admit it at last—you have guessed my secret.”
Ben twisted in his seat, getting closer. The conversation had suddenly become more interesting. “Tell me. Which other things?”
Nikolas glanced around. “Stop it.”
“Go to the bathroom.”
“Ben, no, this is not such a large plane as before.”
“It’s not big enough for your cock?”
“Stop it. It’s not funny.”
Ben stood up and stretched, giving Nikolas a full view of what was extremely evident only inches from his face. He climbed over him, swinging out into the aisle, adjusted his jacket neatly and made his way to the toilet.
He leant on the small counter, studying himself in the mirror.
He didn’t believe one word of Nikolas’s story. He’d learnt too well now to ever fall for Nikolas’s elaborate lies again. But there was probably a kernel of truth somewhere within it. Charlie likely was real, and he had possibly once visited Svalbard. The rest existed only in Nikolas’s twisted psyche.
A figure appeared in the mirror behind him.
Even in first class, the toilet was too small for both of them to comfortably stand. But then it had never been designed for two.
“Squeezy once wrote to an airline and suggested they have shagging-only toilets installed.”
“If your moronic friend trashes our house while we are away, I will skin him alive.”
“I think he’s turned a corner. Tim makes him pee sitting down.”
Nikolas reared back, stilling his hands which had been undressing Ben. “I do not know what to be horrified at more—that he does that or that he tells you about it…or that you think to tell me!”
Ben smiled at their reflections. “Less thinking then and more demonstrating the bits of a man’s body you like?”
Nikolas slipped one finger into a place he had demonstrated over the years with Ben that he liked very much, and Ben hissed, bending over slightly, accepting the intrusion. When it was nothing other than pleasure, he straightened and considered Nikolas’s reflection over his shoulder as they shared this intimacy. “Women have that part, too.”
Nikolas nodded after a moment of deep thought, his finger not stopping, however, not losing its rhythm. “You wouldn’t think so the way they guard them.”
Ben laughed. It was too true to refute. Nikolas’s other hand suddenly plunged deep into Ben’s trousers and discovered a more unique male part. Ben leant back against him, closing his eyes as the strong grip squeezed and released, squeezed and released in time to the stroking inside him. Sandwiched between Nikolas’s working digits, he was thoroughly satisfied.
He knew he would come soon, so he freed himself entirely. Then he opened his eyes to watch.
When it was Nikolas’s turn, they did it quickly, aware they’d been in the toilet a ridiculously long time. It was too cramped for Ben to kneel, so he simply returned the favour of Nikolas’s handjob, keeping Nikolas’s deep brown gaze throughout. At the end, just before he completed, Nikolas said thoughtfully, “Is it not fortunate this can be done without undressing fully?”
Ben saw nothing suspicious in this comment, except for its odd timing, until they were walking back down the aisle to their seats. Then he had the clear and perfect image of a certain pretend Danish diplomat, engaged pretend Danish diplomat, discovering how to avoid his fake fiancée uncovering the pretence.
He didn’t hesitate. He slapped Nikolas across the back of the head in full view of everyone in first class. It wasn’t hard. It didn’t hurt. It was a bitch-slap. He’d seen Tim give them to Squeezy often enough.
Nikolas was very quiet for the rest of the journey and didn’t catch anyone’s eye.
He still wore the ring though.
CHAPTER THREE
All Ben could say as he stepped off the plane in Longyearbyen was, “Wow.” It wasn’t his most coherent comment ever, but it perfectly described his reaction to the place.
He’d expected it to be totally dark.
Nikolas had disabused him of this fallacy and told him it would be greyish light.
But it wasn’t. It was blue. It was turquoise. It had a spellbinding remoteness to it that made him feel tiny, insignificant, and these weren’t bad emotions, they were good. He was anonymous, as if he were an alien landing upon a distant moon. Pick up a bag and go anywhere, for he was nothing and nobody. He calmed his expression into that of a bored, experienced traveller and dutifully followed Nikolas to the waiting taxi.
The taxi driver didn’t speak English, and Nikolas didn’t speak Norwegian. No one, according to him, in a muttered undertone to Ben, spoke Norwegian. They were at an impasse until Ben rummaged in Nikolas’s pocket and showed the man the hotel’s logo. An odd expression flicked over the driver’s face and he nodded, waving for them to get in.
The ride took approximately forty seconds across the snow-covered car park to a hanger. Ben craned down and tried to read the sign. “Are we flying somewhere?”
Nikolas shrugged, frowning, and trying to get his phone to connect to the internet. He showed it to Ben. No signal—phone or otherwise.
When they went into the hanger, which was something of a relief after being outside in only suits in minus sixteen with a distinct wind chill, they were confronted with a huge vehicle. Nikolas huffed. “Hagglund.”
The vast, articulated tracked vehicle looked a little like two public toilets at a music festival joined together and stuck on tank tracks. It was utilitarian to the nth degree, but Ben knew these behemoths had been especially made for the very conditions that existed in places such as Svalbard. Built for the Swedish military, many had now been decommissioned and could be bought for private use, not, of course, that he had been studying this interesting information in his latest car magazine whilst pondering his close proximity to Dartmoor…
Ben eyed the exceptional beast then murmured, “Exactly where is this hotel? We need a Hagglund to get there?”
Nikolas narrowed his eyes. “I assumed it would be in the town. Maybe that was just the nearest address they could use.”
; “Great. We’re going to a place with no known address.”
Nikolas quirked his lips. He obviously realised Ben’s complaints were totally bogus. He was in a place of snow and ice, about to travel in a Hagglund over life-threatening terrain in the eerie midday polar darkness to a luxury snow experience. Ben was covering for his earlier enthusiastic, tourist lapse. He was SAS. SAS didn’t say wow about anything.
They discovered they weren’t the only guests being ferried to this remote hotel. They vaguely recognised the four other people as fellow passengers on the plane. They too had travelled in first class. One couple, a man and woman, seemed to be in their sixties. They were studying the vehicle, watching a young man on its roof who appeared to be polishing it, and chatting quietly to each other. English. The other two were younger. The woman looked vaguely familiar to Ben. She had a raw-boned beauty that didn’t need to be enhanced with artifice—high cheekbones, flawless natural skin and wide-set eyes. Ben wondered why no one had ever told her this. She’d gone the subterfuge route, her nose plastered and splinted, her eyes circled black. He felt a nudge to his ribs. “Stop staring.”
Ben snatched his gaze away. “Do you recognise her?”
“Yes.”
Ben turned surreptitiously so his back was to the woman and raised his brows enquiringly.
Nikolas smirked. “She was on the plane with us.”
He almost got another bitch-slap, but Ben was trying to save them for important transgressions.
The man with the familiar woman was older than she was, possibly Nikolas’s age. It was hard to tell. Ben didn’t think Nikolas gave the impression of a man only three birthdays away from being fifty. Considering Nikolas’s life and recreational habits, he’d aged well. Almost as if reading Ben’s mind, Nikolas fished for a cigarette and lit it, bending over slightly, cupping his hand around his lighter. The position showed off his ring, and he smirked again as he blew smoke in Ben’s face.
He’d given up so many times, made so many promises, that Ben almost accepted now that Nikolas would never stop smoking. He’d cut down. It was something.
“Hey, can I bum a light, buddy?”
Nikolas glanced over quizzically to find the young woman’s partner holding out a cigarette hopefully. He was American, judging by his accent, and was dressed in a quality suit. Tall as Nikolas and lean too, they seemed well matched.
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