Love is a Stranger

by John Wiltshire

  He listened intently to the man’s voice, the melodic Englishness—no mangled vowels or odd inflections here. He pictured himself running his fingers in the long, dark curls and snagging the man into an embrace of skin and hair and flesh and warmth, not a vicious interplay of rivals, cold edges and harsh reality. He’d never once touched Nikolas’s hair except in passing as you do while rolling and fucking and fighting for dominance. He pictured himself showering with Tim after sex, the laughter, the smell of soap and the sting of shampoo in eyes. He wanted to wash Tim’s hair, rubbing it up and messing it around.

  But then he remembered the feel of Nikolas’s fingers in his hair when he’d dried him after the shower, and it all came tumbling down around him—all his anger nothing more than one of those insubstantial bubbles Nikolas had rubbed out of his hair. Misery twisted in his gut once more. He took a long swallow of beer, sensed something change in the atmosphere, and stared at the man opposite. “What?”

  “Have you actually heard a word I’ve said, Jaime?” Tim smiled to soften the implied accusation.

  Ben hung his head sheepishly. “Yeah. Sorry. I’m a bit distracted tonight.”

  “Girlfriend troubles?”

  Ben took a drink. Sometimes fate handed you opportunities on a plate. “I wish. I sometimes think girls would be so much bloody easier than men.” He saw the surprise and quick pleasure flick over Tim’s face. “You married, Tim?”

  Tim shook his head. “I, err…I live with someone. John. He works at the university, too. He’s an antiquarian.”

  “Huh. That sounds painful or boring. I’m not sure which. You been together long?”

  “Years. He taught me.”

  “That legal?”

  “We didn’t care either way. So, have you just broken up with someone?”

  Ben felt like shit. He wanted to do really, really bad things to Sir Nikolas fucking Mikkelsen—things he actually knew how to do as well—but he wasn’t unprofessional and wasn’t about to talk about his boss here and now. He felt like even more of a shit when he shamelessly used Nate and the fire, making out his mood and present dislocation with life were due to that. And it shocked him to realise, as he talked about Nate, that this was actually easier and less painful to talk about and hurt him less than Nikolas’s rejection…than the fact that Nikolas had stood in a snow-covered field and told him to sleep with another man…that Nikolas had so little feeling for him that he was willing for Ben to…For the first time, the emotion he’d been unable and unwilling to examine became very clear to Ben…he was in love. It was as simple and as complicated as that—irrevocably, impossibly in love with a man who barely counted as human, whose whole existence was based on lies built upon lies shored up by falsehood and betrayal. The beer turned sour in his belly, and he realised with something like shock he hadn’t eaten all day. He never forgot to eat. He swallowed deeply. Tim’s eyes widened fractionally. “Toilet’s over there.”

  Ben nodded, resisted holding a hand over his mouth, but only just made it to a stall where he brought up the beer in a long, easy vomiting of liquid. As he stood at the mirror, looking at his now less than model-perfect reflection, he wished Nikolas were here to see what he had done to him. On that thought, he brought his foot up and kicked the sink off the wall. One kick, expertly aimed, and all his anger vented. He smoothed his hair, rinsed his mouth in the one remaining sink and straightened. He’d kicked his pathetic love for Nikolas away with that broken porcelain. It was over. He returned to the table and leant down to whisper in Tim’s ear, “You wanna get out of here?”

  The man’s eyes flicked over to the other side of the bar. “I should—”

  “Tim, I’m not talking about driving you home so I can meet John. I have an unused king-sized bed courtesy of DEFRA, and I’m in the mood to see if your abhorrence of animal experimentation applies to humans as well because, fuck, I want to experiment with you tonight.”

  Tim swallowed deeply, his blue eyes like a proverbial deer’s in the spotlight behind his round academic glasses. “I’m not…”

  Ben didn’t care what he wasn’t. He was sick of men who were not, not what he wanted them to be, not in love with him. He murmured, “My bike is leaving in one minute. If your car is behind, I’ll go slow enough for you to follow. If it’s not, the next time I see you will probably be over some bloody protest line. And that would be a shame.”

  He straightened and walked out of the pub. As he knew it would be, Tim’s Lada was behind him as he eased out onto the country lane. Fifteen minutes later, they were back in his room. Ben was immediately betrayed by a quick thought that he wished Nikolas had been sitting on the end of the bed once more to witness how much he didn’t love him now, but unfortunately he wasn’t. They made it just inside the door before Ben took off Tim’s glasses. Losing them seemed to lose most of Tim’s other defences, too. He shed his corduroy jacket and ripped at Ben’s leather one, dropping them both to the floor. Shirts followed. Tim ran his hands wonderingly over Ben’s ripped, honed, deeply tanned torso. His fingers actually bounced off the ribbed abdominal muscles. He laughed a little self-consciously. “Sorry…” He indicated sadly to his slightly rounded belly. Ben fell to his knees, placing kisses over the soft, warm flesh with unfeigned delight. He was sick—literally spilling his guts in a dirty toilet—from love for a hard, moulded torso; but this one would do him just fine. He undid the belt with haste, lowering the zip, but Tim backed off and pulled him to his feet. He came to Ben’s mouth, kissing him wildly, and it was just as good as Ben had hoped. He wasn’t as tall as Ben, which was good—very good. For once he was not thinking about Nikolas and how perfectly their mouths fit together, how when kissing their groins pressed…

  They kissed for a long time, eventually falling onto the bed. Ben’s body was beginning to feel the need for something more—a lot more. In fact, the violent, deeply satisfying sex he had with— Fuck it! Was he thinking about Nikolas again? Fuck!

  “What’s wrong?”

  Ben rolled onto his back.

  “It’s Nathan, isn’t it? I’m so sorry, Jaime. It takes a long time to get over something like that. Don’t sweat it.”

  Ben felt like something spewed from the devil’s backside, but he nodded to the convenient lie. “It’s not just him. It’s the fucking job.” And how true was that when you were inappropriately in love with your married, unattainable boss? But he could be an equally cold bastard and use his more personal emotions to further his professional cause. “If I were you, I’d be doing something more than painting signs. You should take some lessons from history, mate. Direct action. If you’d met that tosser today, poncing around in his brand new Range Rover Sport—Jesus. My dad was still driving a twenty-year-old car when he died.”

  “My Lada’s new.” Ben turned his head, and they both spluttered with amusement on the thought of a Lada, however new, being compared to a £100,000 Range Rover. But on that joint laughter, something else got shared. Tim said hesitantly, “You should meet Seamus Mafferty. He thinks like you. He was…well, he doesn’t talk much about his past, him or his brother, but I get the impression he’d not stop short of a bit of direct action.”

  “What about you?”

  Tim was quiet for a moment then said, “I’ve done some things I’m not proud of. I think I used to be angrier, more militant. But recently I’ve been thinking about what it means to live an ethical life. Becoming like your enemy, however much you believe in your cause, must be unethical. I can’t live like that.”

  This was beyond Ben’s comprehension. He’d spent his whole adult life killing as ordered, either in the army or the department, and had never once felt any guilt about what he did. “This Seamus, was he there tonight?” He knew he hadn’t been, but it was necessary to feign ignorance.

  “He said he had something on. But he’s keen to meet you. I didn’t actually mean you should follow through on your thoughts, Jaime. I couldn’t support even knowing you were about to do anything that would break the law.”
<
br />   “Would it be unethical or illegal for me to tell you to take off your jeans?”

  “No, but if I comply, I will be a hypocrite, something I have always despised. I am hardly living up to the ethical principles I espouse being here with you now.”

  “You talk too much. Take off your jeans.”

  Tim smiled sadly and began to slide them down his hips. “Have you got…?”

  Ben raised his eyebrows expectantly. When Tim didn’t elucidate, he asked impatiently, “What? Have I got what?”

  “Err…condoms?”

  “Condoms?”

  Tim frowned. “Rubbers? John—”

  “I know what fucking condoms are.” In a flash, his mind was back to a billiard table, to a leather saddle in a stable, a horse blanket on a beach one summer, wildly expensive hotel rooms Nikolas always paid for…everywhere and everything they’d done—without condoms. They’d never needed to even ask if they were needed, never had a lack of trust or lack of immediate understanding between them. Is that why they never spoke? They genuinely had no need for words? Had he actually found the one person in the world he was meant to be with? But Nikolas didn’t share his feelings. Or did he…? I have my orders—I have had my fucking orders made very clear to me all morning.

  “I think it’s best if I go, Jaime. I’m sorry. I don’t think this is what either of us really wants.”

  “Hey, no…” He tried to recover some of the momentum and pulled Tim back to him, but the other man pushed him off and gathered his shirt and jacket from the floor. “I really like you, Jaime.”

  “Yeah, thanks for that, mate. That’s a big comfort.”

  “So, I’ll see you tomorrow? To meet with Seamus?”

  In the back of Ben’s mind, as he listened to Tim outlining a proposed meet, he knew this whole scene tonight only added to the veracity of his cover. He couldn’t imagine any other agent being as inept and unwilling to trap his target as he was tonight. No one could possibly suspect him of honey-trapping Tim Watson. It was embarrassing. You couldn’t fake the self-pitying shit he’d laid on this poor guy tonight. He didn’t comment on the proposals and nodded sourly. “Whatever.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Ben lay sprawled on the bed after Tim left like a beached starfish with little will or ability to move. After a long time, he heard his phone ring from the floor where he’d left his jacket. He ignored it. It rang again and stayed ringing until he couldn’t stand it anymore. He snatched it up and saw an unrecognised number. What a surprise. He stabbed the button and said sourly, “What do you want?”

  There was silence for a moment then, “What do you want, sir, might be a start.”

  “Yeah. Whatever. Sir.”

  “You are obviously not in an appropriate mood for a professional conversation. I will contact you late—”

  “I—I’m sorry, sir. I’ve made contact with Tim Watson. I don’t believe he’s the one making the threats. He’s implicated the younger Mafferty brother. Seamus.”

  “Are you sure Watson isn’t playing you?”

  “Yes. We got up close and personal. As you ordered me to do.” Ben heard other voices but no response from Nikolas. “Are you still there? Where are you, by the way?”

  “At the office.”

  “Jesus. It’s three a.m.!”

  “There’s been another incident. Someone took a shot at the minister’s wife today while she was out riding.”

  “Pity they missed.”

  “What was that? Wait, I’ll take you outside.” Ben heard a door, and the other voices died away. “She claimed she saw a chip fly out of the trunk of a tree by her head, but by the time our people got there the scene was cleared. She may have been mistaken. But if it did happen, it turns an ill-defined threat into something much more personal.”

  “Tim said Seamus couldn’t be at the pub tonight because he had something on. Why don’t you pull him in?”

  “He’s gone to ground. We’re looking for him now.”

  “I’m being taken to a meeting with him tomorrow.”

  “Good.”

  There was a long pause while both seemed at a loss what to say next. Nikolas sighed. “I have to go. There is another issue…but it doesn’t need to involve you.”

  “Do you ever actually sleep?”

  “I never sleep, Benjamin. It is advantageous in my job.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve never had the opportunity to know that, have I? I guess I have to be grateful for small mercies that you always pay for the rooms we fuck in, even if I never get to stay and actually sleep in them. Tim Watson’s a brilliant kisser, by the way.” Silence. “Did you hear me?”

  “Yes. I heard you. What do you want me to say?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. How about I don’t want you to—”

  “I don’t want you to kiss Tim Watson. I don’t want you to fuck Tim Watson. You know what, Benjamin? I don’t actually want you to kill Tim Watson. But where has it ever been written into our lives that we get to choose such things? This is our reality, Benjamin. Me being here at three a.m., listening to fat men in suits pontificating—is that the right word?—on things they know nothing about, and you there doing things I want to kill you for. I have to go, Benjamin.” The phone clicked off after the longest speech Ben had ever heard Nikolas make. Ben stared at the handset, his mind trying to process the stream of words. He settled carefully back on the soft mattress, not lassitude but something painfully like hope now pinning him once more to the bed.

  §§§

  He was a wreck the next day, waking up with his stomach screaming in hunger, a headache from the sour beer and the emotional roller coaster of the previous night. He was late reporting for day three of his course: Environmental Law and Badger Physiology. Fortunately the day was all classroom based. His head hit the desk once, much to the ribald amusement of the other trainees. He had to buy them all tea in the smoke break to apologise.

  That evening in the pub, he was introduced to Sean Mafferty, the older of the Irish brothers. Sean was far more cautious with Ben than the others and questioned him on his regiment and service. Ben fielded the questions innocently in his guise as Jaime Lancaster. When Sean suggested they leave and meet with his brother, Ben readily agreed. Tim seemed reluctant to accompany them at first but then got into the car with Sean. Ben followed on his bike. They wound around the Devon lanes for some time until finally beginning to climb at the edge of the moors. At last, they came to an old farm complex of dilapidated buildings with ugly, utilitarian cowsheds now fallen into disrepair, looking stark and forbidding in the cold December night. Ben slid cautiously off his bike and stowed his helmet. He came close to the car as Tim and Sean waited for him in the dark.

  “You live here?”

  Sean shook his head. “Nah, my brother uses it as a kind of headquarters for the organisation. Place we can meet.”

  Ben glanced at Tim, and Tim shrugged. “Sometimes we come across badgers that have been injured in illegal culls or during hunting, and we bring them here and release them.”

  Ben followed them into one of the sheds. There was no light at all inside, despite the broken sections of the roof. It was huge, and stank of old cow shit and rats. Ben turned to speak to Tim but something smacked into the back of his head. He went down, tried to rise; something hit him again, and then everything went black.

  §§§

  When Ben woke, he knew instantly things were bad. He was tied to a chair by his ankles and wrists. He was also gagged and blindfolded. He kept still, assessing the situation, testing his restraints. He could hear voices off to one side. They were speaking in Gaelic, some of which he understood. He appeared to be strapped down with good old Harry Black—electrical tape—the IRA’s restraint of choice. He’d been a guest of the IRA once before, and he hadn’t appreciated the experience. Finally, he let them know he was awake by lifting his head. He heard footsteps then a hood was lifted off his head. He made a noise in his throat, and the rag in his mouth was pulled out. He was facing Sean
Mafferty and another man so like him there was no doubt this was Seamus. To his relief, but also to his alarm, Tim was strapped in a chair next to him, head hanging down, glasses askew and one lens broken. “Fuckers. What do you want? What’s this all about?”

  “Your real name for a start, soldier,” Seamus said in his broad Belfast accent.

  Ben spat out a residual taste of the gag. “What the hell? You think you’re gonna stop the cull by taking me? For God’s sake, man, I’m just a grunt doing my job.”