Love is a Stranger

by John Wiltshire

  Ben was sleeping with a total stranger.

  Everything he knew had just been stripped away from him. He thought for an embarrassing moment he was going to cry. Everything—every word, every time they slept together, all they’d shared—was a lie. But then Nikolas—no, Aleksey—had warned him, “If you make me do this, Ben, then everything falls apart between us.”

  Ben picked up the keys for the Range Rover and drove aimlessly for a while until he realised that he was at Kate’s apartment. She was in and apparently thought he’d come to thank her for looking after the dog, until she saw his face. She let him in and sat him down. “I want to hire you.”

  “I already work for you—well, for Sir Nikolas, but—”

  “This is just me. It’s about…him.”

  “Okay…that’s awk—”

  “What do you know about him already?”

  She frowned. “Only what’s on his bio, the occasional things he’s said. Danish, obviously. Degree in Russian and politics from the University of Copenhagen. I know he lived in Russia for a while. Joined the diplomatic service and came here to the UK as a diplomat. I never did get how he made the transition from that to being head of the department. Sorry, that’s about it.”

  “Can you do an investigation for me? Everything. Any means.”

  She was silent for a moment. “He’s my boss, Ben. I’m not comfortable doing that.”

  “He’s more than that to me, but you probably worked that out by now.”

  “I don’t think you want to do this, Ben.”

  “Yes. I do. But I don’t actually want you to focus on Nik. He had a brother: Aleksey. Twin. Focus on him. They were born in Russia near St Petersburg. Everything you can find out.”

  She let out a small breath and nodded. “Okay, I’m more comfortable with that. It may take some time.”

  Ben nodded. He’d slept with an impostor for four years. Another few weeks wouldn’t make any difference at all. But it did. That night, for only the second time since they met, Ben turned away in bed. He said he was tired. Nikolas only laughed. “So, it begins. I will sleep next door.” They kept separate bedrooms after that and were icily polite around each other during the day. On Wednesday, Kate called.

  “I have the info.”

  Ben looked at the phone for a moment. “You said a long time.”

  “This is a long time—for me. How long did you think I would need? I’m insulted. Can you come over?”

  Ben was at her apartment within half an hour. She had the computer open and sat him down in front of it. “Okay, this is a weird one, Ben. Complicated. So, at first, I could find no record of an Aleksey Mikkelsen. I tried Alexei even Lyosha, which is the diminutive in Russian. Nothing. But then I searched for Aleksey under Sir Nikolas’s birth date in Russia and found him.” She clicked on a picture. “Meet Aleksey Primakov; he changed his name back to his father’s when he was seventeen. But I’m getting ahead of myself.” Ben was hardly able to process what she was saying because Nik was staring at him from the computer screen. The picture seemed to have been taken at a funeral. Everyone else was looking down, hands folded, Nikolas—no, Ben had to remember, Aleksey—was staring challengingly at the camera as if daring the man to actually take his photograph. He appeared younger and more filled out. He focused back on what Kate was saying. “So, two boys, born in Russia to Nina and Sergei Primakov. She’s Danish, daughter of a very wealthy industrialist, Godtfred Mikkelsen. Incredibly beautiful. You can see where Sir Nikolas gets his looks from. Sergei is Russian. I couldn’t find a picture of him from this time. Probably because he was head of Directorate S in the SVR.” Ben’s head snapped up.

  “You’re kidding.”

  She shook her head. “Nope. Top man in their illegal intelligence division. He had thirteen departments working directly under him responsible for planting illegal agents abroad, conducting terror operations, sabotage. He even oversaw the delightfully named biological recruitment of foreign agents—he ran the honey traps. This was a very powerful and very nasty man. And I guess Nina finally saw that because when the boys were born, she packed them up, reverted to her maiden name, Mikkelsen, and took them back to her parents’ summer estates in Denmark. The boys grew up there, but when she killed herself—”

  “She killed herself?”

  “’Fraid so. When they were ten. She drowned. Walked into the sea one day and never came out.”

  “No. I stopped that when I was ten. I lost the desire for it…”

  “Their father sent for them. The grandparents fought it, but he had rights, and he was a very powerful and determined man. They went. Now, this is where it got confusing but…shit; I hate this job sometimes…Okay…Over the next seven years we have Nikolas returning to his grandparents for holidays. He’s often reported at events with them. He spent one summer in the States, learnt English. He competed in the junior horse riding national championships another summer. But he always returns to Russia after the holidays—to a private boarding academy near St Petersburg where the boys were educated. Aleksey, however, stays in Russia during the holidays with his father. And they seemed to move around a huge amount. When I first found all this, I assumed he’d formed a close bond with the father—wanted to spend his holidays with him. But that’s kind of not…Remember, anything I found about Aleksey and Sergei is from our own agents who had infiltrated their organisations, so it’s accurate but possibly biased a little? Anyway, we have reports of the boy with the father at trials of dissidents, at executions, even at some of the torture camps the Soviets denied having but we knew existed from firsthand accounts of survivors. Very unusual holidays, yeah? Ben, are you okay? So, the boys are seventeen. Nikolas returns to Russia as usual after a summer holiday in Denmark, and two days later his father is dead—Aleksey killed him.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know how much Sir Nikolas knows about the events of that night or any of what followed…maybe you should ask him? His grandparents brought him back to Denmark the next day. Have you asked him about any of this?”

  Ben shook his head. That would be kind of hard because Nikolas was dead, and Aleksey probably wouldn’t tell him. “Why did Aleksey kill his father? I thought you said they were close. How did he do it?”

  “He shot him. It was at a dinner party for party officials. He walked into the room, put the gun to his father’s temple, and pulled the trigger.”

  “My God.”

  “Yep. Pretty incontrovertible. So, Nikolas gets safely back to Denmark, and Aleksey is in custody. It’s a hard one for the authorities. Sergei was an important man so there had to be a trial. Also there were too many witnesses to just make Aleksey disappear. And then it all comes out at the trial…According to the defence team hired by the grandfather, Sergei had been abusing Aleksey since he was ten—and we’re not talking about not letting him watch TV here, Ben. They brought out doctors’ reports to catalogue massive internal injuries sustained at a very early age, repeated hospital visits for broken bones, weeks off school which can’t be accounted for. Seriously, if Sergei hadn’t been one of the most feared men in the Soviet Union, he’d have been arrested years before. Also, which is the thing that really got to me, they claimed that Sergei had actually only wanted Nikolas to come and live with him—the easygoing, placid son. Apparently, there was correspondence between him and the grandparents. He tried to send Aleksey back to them because he was too wild to handle. However, Aleksey—and, remember, he was only ten—made a deal with his father, he would stay and be Nikolas for him—i.e., good—if Nikolas was left alone and allowed to live in Denmark. It’s incredible, Ben; the prosecution tried to claim that Aleksey was totally okay with the sex—that he orchestrated it. He was ten! Once, he was in hospital for three weeks! The boy lived with his father being Nikolas, standing mutely by at executions…torture. It’s unbelievable. None of these facts were actually disputed by the prosecution but they twisted the various interpretations. Ben, are you all—?”

  Ben went outside fo
r a while. He wouldn’t cry in front of Kate. Especially in front of Kate. He held it together, barely, arms wrapped tightly around his chest, jaw clenched, eyes raised to stars he couldn’t see.

  Aleksey had become Nikolas to save his brother from a monster.

  “Aleksey adored me.”

  Who did Aleksey believe he was now? Could he actually tell anymore?

  He went back in. Kate kept her eyes on the screen, respecting his privacy and continued. “He was found guilty, of course. There was huge confusion over the forensic evidence, though. His defence team claimed there was no gunshot residue on his hands. But there were thirty witnesses who’d seen him do it, and he confessed. It was a foregone conclusion that he’d be found guilty—even though there were clearly mitigating circumstances. But seventeen-year-old Aleksey knew a lot of things the state couldn’t afford to have come out. They couldn’t put him in the ordinary prison population. I lose track of him at times, because this is when he changes his name from Aleksey Mikkelsen to Aleksey Primakov, perhaps to prevent any connection begin made to Nikolas which might ruin his prospects. Five years, Ben. He was in various political prison camps for five years. He was seventeen and looked like that. Can you imagine what his life was like?”

  “I have never truly kissed another man, and you are the only man I have wanted to give my body to…”

  Wanted…Aleksey had tried to tell him. He’d tried to be truthful in a situation where the truth was almost too painful to consider. But Ben hadn’t heard. He only ever heard what he wanted to. As Aleksey had said, he took emotionally and never gave back. Ben finally realised exactly what games Aleksey had been taught in the prison camps. And for what? To take the punishment for his brother’s crime…No gunshot residue? Thirty witnesses too shocked to remember a gun held in a boy’s right hand.

  “So, fall of communism, collapse of the Soviet Union, blah blah…It helped Aleksey get out of prison early. His father’s old colleagues lost power and his enemies rose. He’s released and immediately recruited to the SVR himself.”

  “Nik— Aleksey was SVR?”

  “Better than that. He appears to have been recruited for Zaslon. We can’t prove it exists, but we know it does. For ten years he’s an operative in one of the most secret branches of their military illegal-intelligence agency. He was the ideal candidate. Fluent in languages and a product of their own political system. I would think that after five years in Soviet prison camps he was ideal in other ways, too. Believe it or not, we actually have a photo from this time.” She clicked on the screen, and a photo of what appeared to be an embassy party on board a yacht came up. Nikolas—Aleksey, why is it so bloody hard to remember?—was at the back of the picture. This time, everyone else was looking at the camera, raising glasses. Aleksey was watching a seagull that was wheeling in the bright sky overhead.

  “I do not believe in fate. We make our own destinies through sacrifice and pain…”

  Aleksey had sacrificed everything to save the brother he adored. Ben felt tears come again and didn’t even try to hide them. He couldn’t tell if they were of anger or guilt or just plain sadness for Aleksey. His Nik. The real Nik.

  “Keep the photo if you want it so much, but you must promise me one thing. You must promise me that whatever happens in the future you will look at it and know that is the real me. If you promise me that then you can have it.”

  Ben finally understood what Aleksey had been trying to tell him. Aleksey, the wild boy so full of life, so bold and beautiful, could have been Nikolas, could have been the one with summers in America, going to university, living his life to the full. Instead, he’d killed all that he was and could have been to live a lie—the shadow man. But he had kept the photograph of his brother. Sacrifice and pain.

  “Clearly, we don’t have a lot of information on him over the next ten years, but there’s no doubt he was responsible for assassinations both here in the UK and in Russia. He’s responsible for torturing dissidents, setting honey traps…He was in Afghanistan, of course. I guess all the kind of stuff you’d expect. Very nasty piece of work, just like his father. There’s much more info on Sir Nikolas, of course. He got his degree, joined the Danish diplomatic service…served in various international posts and then the perfect posting—to Moscow. He was fluent in Russian, had Russian nationality—if he’d wanted to use it. We can’t prove that he met up with Aleksey at all in the six months he was there before Aleksey died, but I’m pretty sure he did—but I’ll get to that. So, six months after Sir Nikolas arrives in Moscow, Aleksey is dead—a fall from a hotel balcony. Apparently, they found a dead boy in the room—and he’d been sodomised, beaten. Did I mention I hate this job? He was a street boy—there are thousands of them on the streets in Moscow. Anyway, there would have been a massive scandal—you have no idea how backward the Russians are about homosex—sorry. Anyway…Sir Nikolas was able to help squash those details of his brother’s death coming out. It must have been awful for him. It’s hard to believe he’s never talked to you about any of this.”

  Yes, wasn’t it? Ben could see the scene: Aleksey arriving at the hotel to find his brother dead. After everything he’d sacrificed for Nikolas, everything he’d done and endured, his brother had thrown away his own life in a squalid, scandalous moment. When did Aleksey decide to become Nikolas? When had he taken on the life of the Danish diplomat? At what moment had he done the swap? He had the knowledge and the means to pull it off. “Aleksey” dies; “Nikolas” goes on to live the life he was supposed to have.

  “See, I’m pretty sure now that Sir Nikolas did meet regularly with Aleksey while they were in Moscow together, and that’s how, when Sir Nikolas came to the UK, he was able to sell himself, as it were, to the authorities and set up the department. He and Aleksey must have talked, and Sir Nikolas must have learnt a great deal about Zaslon, because that’s what he recreated here—with us—although possibly with less torture? Fewer honey traps?”

  He’d done a lot more than that, Ben thought. Aleksey had sold them out—his ex-colleagues in Zaslon. But he’d lived a very dangerous lie. Even his marriage…Philipa’s family thought they were using a man they believed to be Nikolas Mikkelsen as a cover, whereas in reality Aleksey Primakov had been using them. No wonder he’d been so bitter at the divorce, at being forced back out into the cold.

  And now—

  Ben had the unnerving sensation of plummeting in an elevator and his heart stopping for one moment then kicking back in—fast, panicked beating. He’d seen the picture in the paper on Saturday. He’d made the connection, and yet he had known nothing of this before. How many of Aleksey’s ex-colleagues in Zaslon were still alive, and how many would look at that photo of left-handed Sir Nikolas Mikkelsen and know that Aleksey Primakov hadn’t died in a fall from a hotel balcony?

  “Kate, I have to go. Thank you. I’m sorry. I’ll explain later, if I can.”

  He barely heard her reply. He drove like a madman. That’s what he was now—insane—ignoring red lights, focusing only on getting back to the house. The door was open—the red door that had been home and security for the last six months.

  Even before he went through it, he knew he had lost the only person in his life who would ever mean anything to him.

  But then hadn’t he lost him already?

  Hadn’t he lost him the moment he had denied him in bed and proved himself to be no better than all the other people in Aleksey’s life who had purported to love him only to betray him?

  The house was empty—torn up, evidence of great violence everywhere, but Aleksey was not there. Ben hadn’t even known Nik—Aleksey—had a gun safe, but it was open in the office, guns strewn around the floor. Aleksey was a soldier—had been. Elite Special Forces, more secretive even than Vympel. He heard a noise from the bedroom and picked up one of the guns, checking it over as he slid around the doorframe and along the hallway. He eased into the room and heard the sound again—under the bed. He knew what it was and crouched down, lifting the covers. Radulf stared
back at him for a moment then came out, utterly silent but speaking with his body, all twisting rubs and anxiety. Ben murmured to him for a while, calming them both down.

  Then he heard another noise from downstairs. He’d been expecting it. They were watching the house, which was a good sign—it meant possibly that Aleksey had got away. He told Radulf to wait where he was. Radulf immediately went back under the bed. It seemed like a good plan. Ben went silently back to the hall and cautiously peered over the handrail. He had one possible advantage in this situation—Zaslon may have found Aleksey, may even know he was living with someone else in the house, but it was very doubtful they knew who, or what, Ben was. They were about to find out.