When he was finished, he began on his project for escape—he wasn’t sure what this was yet, but thinking about it was good. He had some vague idea to use the blanket to form a rope he could snag one of the tools with, but this depended on being able to convince his captor to allow him to have his arms fixed to the front. And, of course, as soon as he persuaded someone to release him enough to make that exchange, he was as good as free. That meant staying awake long enough to speak with them the next time they came (Rule 1). Which was proving more difficult than he’d thought it would. Every time he lay down, he fell asleep. This, and the fact his head was hurting so much, made him think he probably had a concussion from whatever had hit him in the first place. He could feel the blood matted and sticky on the side of his head, and he couldn’t put this area to the ground without a sensation of worrying squishiness.
When he brought up the sandwich, he knew he was in trouble. Concussion in freezing conditions killed people quickly. But there wasn’t much he could do but endure. That he felt he deserved everything that was happening to him only added to his growing sense of helplessness. Rule 4—the strong survived by being righteous in their innocence—wasn’t looking good for him. It was so long since he’d been innocent of anything, his guilt tasted worse than the vomit in his throat.
§ § §
Gabby came to the restaurant as promised. She’d procured some maps, but they were geographical ones and only showed a few dwellings—and those in no detail. But they were topographically detailed of the lake. Ben took them from her and began to study them.
“Shall we have a drink?”
Ben nodded absently but didn’t look up, circling the few properties he could identify.
“Well, I’ll order some wine, shall I? Can I help? I know the area quite well, of course. Not so much the lake but certainly around the town.”
Ben looked up. “Do you have a boat?”
She turned away, waving toward the bar for the bartender to come over. “No, of course not.”
“Damn, I need to borrow one.”
“Oh. I could ask around at work, maybe? I’m sure someone will have one.” She ordered some wine—red when she couldn’t elicit any preference from Ben. She waited for him to pour then giggled and did it herself. “What can I do to help? Have you got somewhere to stay? I’ve got a spare room, and you’re―”
“No, I’m good. But thanks, Gabby, I really appreciate this. I need to go.”
“Go? But you haven’t had your wine! We haven’t ordered yet! You must eat, Ben!”
“Ordered? Food?” He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten. He thought it might have been the stuff he threw up in the cell, but that had been almost twenty-four hours ago. He sat again heavily. “I need to eat. Fucking hell!” He’d added this last in English because it never sounded as good in Danish, but he could see from her expression she understood it quite well. He ordered some food and asked Alan if he could hurry it. Alan jokingly asked him if there was a fire, and Ben replied surprised, “Haven’t you heard?”
“Heard what?”
“A friend of mine has gone missing. I’m sorry. I assumed you’d know. I seem to have done nothing but talk about it to people since it happened last night.”
“It’s a big island, Ben. Let me know if there’s anything you need.”
“Do you have a boat?”
Alan nodded. “All Danes have boats. Where do you want me to bring it?”
Ben could have kissed him. Instead, he squeezed Gabby’s fingers. There was a glimmer of hope at last. She squeezed back and retained his hand, staring at him over the wine. Then she stood up. “Come here, sweetie, let me give you a hug.”
Ben didn’t need this. It was the last thing he could cope with. He wasn’t used to the sympathy of women as he’d lost his mother so young. Held like this, he felt totally eviscerated, raw and utterly vulnerable. He didn’t need it, but he wanted it so much. He wanted nothing more than to bury his pain in this maternal woman’s arms and let her mother him until it all went away. She even stroked his hair, just like his mother used to. Alan brought them some food and explained he’d arranged for his boat to be towed up to Ben’s cabin in the morning. There was nothing anyone could do that night. Ben tried to eat his steak, but it stuck in his throat and sickened him. Gabby was making small talk, trying to cheer him up. She repeated her offer of a bed, and he suddenly agreed, “Actually, I’ve some friends arriving tomorrow. It would be great if they could stay with you.”
She sat back, picked up her handbag and began to rummage in it. “I only have one room…”
“Well, just Kate then.”
“Kate? You never told me about Kate.” She smiled and sipped her wine. “Is she your sister? Oh, Ben, I can’t wait to meet her.”
Ben was looking again at the maps, trying to work out where his cabin was. He mumbled, “Ex-girlfriend.”
“Oh, well. Why is she coming?”
Ben grinned unpleasantly. “She’s bringing my secret weapon.”
§ § §
Nikolas was awake when the door to the shed next opened. It let in a brilliant light from the snow outside. He was totally blinded. He got on his knees, head lowered, showing submission. Rule 5: Prove you’re no threat (and not worth killing—he made up that part of the rule, but who was going to call him on it?). He heard the door being closed and looked up cautiously. It didn’t bode well, in his professional opinion, that he wasn’t blindfolded. He blinked a couple of times then exclaimed in a croaky, amazed voice, “Anna?”
She went to the butcher’s table and put a basket on it. “You’ve made a terrible mess! Look at what you’ve done!”
“What? Mess? You fucking psychotic cunt of a fucking bitch! Let me go! You cunt. You fucking ugly, fat whore! I thought I was being held by the fucking Chechens! I thought fucking Special Forces had taken me down. I thought I was going to be hung up and fucking castrated! I thought I was going to be skinned by electric sanders! But I’ve been chained by a cunt in a skirt who thinks she’s in love with my fucking boyfriend! Fuck you! Fucking come back―!” He lunged, stretched to the extent of the chains, screaming at her as she left. He couldn’t even reach the basket.
Rule 1 clearly needed a little work.
§ § §
Ben was back at the lake when Alan and his son Jacob drove up with the boat. Overnight, there had been a freezing frost, and all the trees were white, sparkling in the bright sun. It was bitterly cold. They launched the boat into the lake by the dock.
Ben oriented his map and started the engine. It was shockingly loud in the silent calm of the beautiful place. He motored slowly down the southern edge of the lake, marking each house and dock he came to on his map then stopping and checking them out. Firstly, he let Radulf sniff around and then he checked each building. Most of them were empty for the winter, but one or two were occupied. Interestingly, they all reported hearing a boat about the time Nikolas had gone missing. It was too quiet and too cold for a boat on the lake to be missed at this time of the year. He asked each of those he spoke with to phone the police and tell them what they’d heard, and then continued on his slow navigation of the lake.
By lunchtime, he’d covered about one mile of one side of a lake that stretched for over fifteen miles of inlets, small islands and one little village. It was hopeless. He reckoned with the short daylight hours, it would take him weeks to cover the place in the way he was now. He was never so grateful to have his phone ring and see it was Kate. “Where are you?”
“In a place called Aero-esk-o-bing, or something like that.”
“Aeroeskoebing.”
“That’s what I just said.”
“I’ll come get you. Is he with you?”
She laughed. “Unfortunately. He reminds me of someone, and not in the good ways, yeah?” For the first time since Nikolas left him—was taken—Ben felt hopeful.
§ § §
He met Kate at Alan Lund’s. She was standing surrounded by suitcases and exud
ed glamour. The man standing next to her was hunched against the cold and swearing in a fluid and inventive stream about everything from the cold to the length of the trip to the dumb-assed buildings. But when he saw Ben, he grinned and came over and hugged him. “Fucking Diesel, man. How can you lose a great big fucker like that boss of yours? You dumbnut shithead.” He rubbed Ben’s hair with his knuckles then stood back. “What the fuck do you call that poncy girly shit? Cus that ain’t hair man—that’s just fucking gay.”
“Hello, Squeezy.”
“Yeah, don’t you fucking hello me, this—” and he returned to his theme about the cold and the ferry crossing, but Ben tuned him out as he had for the four years they’d served together.
Kate hugged him as well. “I like the hair, Ben, and don’t let anyone tell you it’s not manly.” He chuckled into the warm, beautiful-smelling crook of her neck.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, cut the girly shit and let’s go somewhere warm. It was T-shirts in fucking London when we left, and now it’s like Father fucking Christmas is fucking passing over.” They both stared at Squeezy, and he amended, “Jack Frost? Whatever. Fuck.”
Ben took them into the restaurant and to his usual table. Alan came over, asking how the search had gone, and Ben shook his head. “I’ve been in contact with some friends who have hunting sheds near the lake. They’ll meet with you this afternoon and help you search them. They know them all. Also, my son Jacob has asked his friends who have cabins on the lake to check them if they’re empty,” Alan told him. “I’m so sorry, but it’s all I could think of to do. The police are doing the same, of course, but it’s a very small force here.” Ben just nodded his thanks. He couldn’t speak and bit his lip, tipping his face up. Squeezy apparently saw an opportunity to make a new friend, so clapped Alan over the shoulder and led him off, proclaiming he hadn’t had a fucking bite to eat in fucking years.
Alone at last, Kate looked more seriously at Ben. “You need to eat, and you need to sleep, Ben. If he’s still alive—”
“If? What the fuck, Kate!”
“If he’s still alive, which you have to admit isn’t very likely—Stop, listen. Ben! Listen. He was almost taken in London, and if they’d got him there, he’d have been dead within hours—if he was lucky. You know this.”
“No, Kate. You’re wrong. This isn’t related to that. This has nothing to do with Gregory or the Chechens.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course it has. He’s been in Russia for months. They’ve followed—”
“No. This is different. I can’t explain it, but it is. They wouldn’t have taken him like this. They’d have taken me as well, for a start. I was there, too. I was naked. We had no weapons. Why not take me? I killed two of them, remember?”
“Yes, Benjamin, I do. I saw the autopsy reports. Thank you for that reminder. Okay, I see what you’re saying, but who’d take him here, and why? He’s not even here as Aleksey, is he?”
“You mean Nikolas.”
“Oh, yes, silly me, how could I have got that wrong? But my point is, no one knows he’s here on the island.”
“Well, the woman I lived with does, but I think we can rule her out.”
“Fuck. Okay, we go to work. I’m downloading geo-sat maps of the lake and surrounds for you, but Ben, just because he was taken by boat doesn’t mean he’s anywhere near the lake. He could’ve been put in a vehicle and be anywhere by now—Okay, we have to start somewhere. Where’re we staying? I assume we can’t use the cabin yet.”
“I’ve got a friend to put you up. She’s nice. Gabby. She’s being really helpful. She speaks okay English. Squeezy’s in with me at Ingrid’s.”
“Okay, I’ll go to Gabby’s and set up. You and Squeezy—does he have a real name? I can’t call him that—seriously, Ben.”
Ben frowned in puzzlement. She put a hand on his arm. “Priorities. Go. Go and look for him.”
Ben and Squeezy took the boat back out with Daddybark, Radulf’s new Op Fucking Cold nickname. No one in Special Forces could avoid a nickname so Squeezy had given their new sniffer dog one. (He’d been instrumental in naming the operation, too.)
They picked up where Ben left off that morning. They met with Alan’s friends who all sympathised with Ben, promised this kind of thing was unheard of for such a small place as Aeroe, and then topped them up with thermoses of hot coffee and rolls.
At each place they stopped, Daddybark was let out to run around sniffing, but he scented nothing relevant. Ben knew Squeezy wanted to point out that it was far more likely Nikolas had been abducted by car, and that Daddybark had probably been following a deer scent to the lake. Ben was grateful his friend kept the thought to himself though and let him dictate the search parameters. As he told Ben, everyone in the Regiment had learnt to respect his spooky hunches. Ben reckoned Squeezy’s eagerness to search the lake was more because he’d discovered the small boat had a space heater in the cabin, and between stops he had it on full blast.
It was dark by four—such a short day. Ben was frantic now. He could hear ice cracking on the lake. A second night of an ice storm was expected. He couldn’t shake his last picture of Nik naked in the snow. He knew how long people lasted in weather like this.
They docked the boat and returned to the car.
Ben wanted to kill something but he didn’t have the energy.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Nikolas thought he would die that night. He’d never been so cold. Even in the gulags, they’d had other bodies to huddle with to keep warm. Even in Zaslon in the mountains of Afghanistan or Iran or whatever shithole place he’d been sent he’d had survival equipment. Lying on the concrete floor of the shed, only the thin blankets over him, he felt himself hovering dangerously on the edge of a place he couldn’t come back from. He wasn’t alone, of course. Whenever he was this vulnerable, they all came to keep him company, to remind him of their pain and their suffering before they’d died at his hands, the men, the women, and the children—beaten, shot, tortured, starved, and in some cases, eaten. They were the worst, the eaten. They came holding the organs they’d given up to the ravenous appetites of the gulag. They offered them to him again, but he swore at them and raved, showing them his chains, telling them there had been no option. But they knew the truth—he existed only through their sacrifice. How could they leave? They were there by right; they were fuelling his body, keeping him alive.
She came back before first light. She set down a lantern on the table. He wasn’t really aware of her presence. He felt her lift his head and something hot was offered to him. He ate it as best he could. It was a kind of fish soup, very hot and full of chunks. He wolfed it down as fast as she would spoon it to him. Then she brought in some more blankets and a mat for sleeping on. He was profoundly grateful yet wanted to stuff them into her throat and watch her choke slowly at the same time. “Why are you doing this, Anna?”
“You’re a very bad man.”
He struggled to his knees. She sat primly across from him on one of the blankets she’d brought, just out of reach. “But this is ridiculous. What’re you going to do with me? Why are you doing this? Someone will find me. Why are you keeping me here like this?”
“You’re a bad man.”
“Yes, I know that! You stu—Anna, I am a bad man, you’re right, but Ben isn’t, is he?”
“I love Ben, and he loves me, and you hurt him. I have to keep him safe. I’ve taken you away to keep him safe.”
“Anna,” you crazy, psychotic bitch, “listen to me, please. This will hurt Ben. He’ll be—”
“He’s glad you’re gone. He can be with me now.”
“Okay, okay. Can you maybe fix my hands in front, Anna? I can’t—”
“No, I’m not stupid, you know. You’d try and—”
“Anna,” I’m remembering Rule 1; I’m remembering Rule 1, “Anna, please, I’m asking you to help me because you’re the only one who can. You’ve looked after me, haven’t you?—lovely food, your best china. Yes, see, I noticed. Th
ank you, and the blankets are very warm. But, you see, I’m a man, Anna. I can’t…piss…with my hands behind my back. And I wouldn’t ask you to help. I respect you too much for that. Please, Anna, think what Ben would want you to do?”
She stood. “You’re the devil. You’re whispering things in my ear, and it’s not true. You’re trying to trick me to come over there.”
“Anna, look at me—I’m totally helpless.” I wrote Rule fucking 5. “I’m in your power now. You have all the power here. Look, I’m bleeding, I’m shivering, I’m chained, and I can’t move. You only have to chain my hands in the front. Please, Anna. Anna, listen, I’ll help you with Ben. I know he loves you really. We even had a fight about you. I was very angry.”
Conscious Decisions of the Heart Page 13