Chapter Twenty-two #2
They watched him walk away. Then before he disappeared from sight into one of the large sheds, they trailed after him. Nikolas was deeply shamed—two ex-Special Forces operatives and a computer expert didn’t have a better plan.
It was incredibly hot inside the shed, for they were filming at night, and all the lights were blazing, pumping out incredible amounts of heat. All four of them paused in the darkness behind the illuminated scene.
Five naked men were having sex.
There were a number of shouted instructions from a man off to one side, and for the first time it occurred to Nikolas that any grunts or murmurs of appreciation heard in such movies were added afterward.
It wasn’t that much of a passion killer to discover this, because there was absolutely no enthusiasm in the scene anyway.
They could have been watching animals mate on the Discovery Channel.
In fact it crossed Nikolas’s mind that he had seen something more—
They were spotted. The scene was halted abruptly, which was interesting to watch for a moment, and then a large man accosted them.
Tim handed him a card, introduced himself as a colleague of Doctor Fergus Atwell’s, and then out of the blue introduced Nikolas as his Russian backer.
Nikolas bowed slightly, shook the man’s hand and reeled off a string of Russian, gesturing knowingly at the lights, cameras, and huddle of naked men.
He knew a lot about one of these things, anyway.
Nikolas had a distinct advantage in this unexpected deception—something his friends now took for granted but which always made an impression on first acquaintance—he looked like what he was: a billionaire.
It was the cut of his suit, the hang of his cashmere overcoat, the quality leather of his shoes, his watch—even his bloody haircut screamed money.
Actually being Russian didn’t hurt either.
Uncertain, but clearly willing to take this odd group at face value, because accepting them was the easiest alternative, the big man claimed he didn’t know what they were talking about, that they were in the wrong place, that he was just the best boy grip, and he’d take them to the producer’s trailer.
They returned to the frosty night air.
It was something of a relief.
To Nikolas’s astonishment, there were tiny flakes of snow drifting down from dark, heavy clouds.
It was much colder here than in London and exceptionally chilly compared to the balmy climate of Devon.
He shivered, realised in the past he would have offered his coat to Kate and felt sad he wasn’t about to now.
Then he slipped it off and put it over her shoulders.
Full length, cashmere, made to measure for his frame, it dwarfed her.
She wrapped it tightly around herself and closed her eyes for a moment, then swallowed and continued to follow them across the pitted ground to the encampment of trailers.
Squeezy was probing the large man about the technicalities of being someone whose job it was to grip best boys and asking him, much to Tim’s obvious annoyance, whether there were any vacancies and what the requirements were for such a job.
Ben’s bike was parked outside the trailer they were led to. His helmet rested on the seat.
Nikolas shivered again, not from the cold this time, but from the realisation he was about to meet Ben again, with everything Ben now knew and thought between them, poisoning them. It took some not inconsiderable portion of his courage to enter the trailer after the grip.
It was empty.
* * *
Fergus Atwell couldn’t even account for the whereabouts of the men he’d radicalised and sent out into the world to make it a worse place than they’d inherited.
This was appalling to a soldier. Ben listened to frantic phone calls as they drove north, Fergus trying to find and locate lost men.
By the time they arrived back in Lancashire, he’d managed to find and summon only six. An army of six for what they had to do.
Ben wasn’t all that surprised when he saw where they were headed.
He pictured Nikolas standing out of the illumination of the streetlight, calming himself, and was glad Nikolas wasn’t here now—that he had no part in this.
He had to do this himself.
He owed it.
* * *
The grip went immediately to a rack of keys hanging on the wall of the trailer. “He’s taken the Golf.”
Kate took the details of the registration and colour of the hatchback vehicle and plugged them into her software. “This might take some time.”
Unsure what to do with his unexpected guests, the large man shrugged and left them to it.
Nikolas sat next to Kate.
“Keep working on this Fergus-Freddie man’s background while you run the search. Where will they have gone? It will be somewhere familiar and safe to him.”
She nodded, switched screens and began typing.
Squeezy found a bottle of whiskey and poured them each a generous measure. Kate refused hers and continued working.
* * *
Now empty and deserted, it was obvious the bar hadn’t been used for many years.
Ben wondered why he hadn’t seen it before, but with the simple addition of a modern music system, a video, and some fake patrons, he’d been made to believe he’d come into a working bar in Burnley. “They were actors, too?”
Fergus nodded, his eyes darting anxiously around.
“Did they know? Were they in on it all? Here and at the…” It was hard to say. He swallowed. “The mill. Did they know what they were doing? That we didn’t know they were just acting?”
Atwell turned to look at Ben for the first time, catching his gaze voluntarily. “Your friend did know.”
“What?”
“Your big, blond friend who was pretending to be Nigel Stannis—he took their driving licences and their phones after the fight. They were all still working in the business. He must have known.”
Ben sat at the table he’d sat at with Nikolas and thought about this.
* * *
“A pub. In Burnley.”
Nikolas woke fully and focused on Kate. Squeezy and Tim were asleep on the sofa.
They woke, too, grunting and sitting up.
“His father owned a string of pubs in Lancashire. He went bankrupt. Some of the pubs have been sold for housing developments, but not the one in Burnley. No call for new apartments there. Give me another minute and I’ll have the address. ”
“Don’t bother. I know where it is. Let’s go.”
“Burnley?”
Nikolas gave her a look. She ducked her head and closed her laptop. “Burnley. I’ve always wanted to visit.”
* * *
One by one, the men who’d left their lives—their families, the people that loved them—responded, summoned by a call they’d been equally longing for and dreading.
Universally, they recognised ex-Special-Forces-expert Ben Rider.
It was too awesome to believe that they should intersect with someone so fabulous, so beautiful, so famous, so…
ethereal. Ben was ghosting along, hardly there in spirit or body.
His memories so recently returned, his decision to do what he was doing so radical and unlike him, he hardly knew who he was anymore.
Only one thing was keeping him grounded, but that was private and held down deep where it wouldn’t surface and distract him from what he now had to do.
He waited until they were all present.
Fergus Atwell seemed to be regaining his confidence. He swelled to his audience. He joined Ben at the front, the general bestowing approval on his most trustworthy lieutenant.
Ben studied the men. They were Nigel Stannis and Justin and Tim Watson and Samuel and James and Matthew.
They were him and Nikolas and Squeezy. They were all men and no man, anonymous souls who’d been desperately seeking acceptance but sold something very different.
What had Fergus done to guilt them into their radicalisation?
Had he debased them as he’d intended to humiliate Ben?
If Ben hadn’t been who and what he was—a killer—would he have cried and begged for mercy, would he have pissed himself at the thought of the sword cutting across his neck?
And all of this degradation taped and held as a stick, goading him into committing an atrocity?
Where was the tape of Jono? What had they made him do that led him to his death?
One of the men who appeared on the edge of breaking, his beard stubble thick, his clothes unkempt, his eyes restless and haunted, finally spoke up from the low rumble of speech in the room, asking, “What are we here for? What are we going to do?”
* * *
There were lights on in the pub. Nikolas told Tim and Kate to stay in the car.
Squeezy took the front. Nikolas went around the back, the way he’d exited after the fight.
He could hear angry conversation. He eased through the door into a short corridor.
He heard one man speaking more loudly, caught, “What are we going to do?” and then he heard a voice he recognised reply.
* * *
Before Ben could answer, Fergus stood up as if on a stage.
Ben sensed a messianic passion radiating from him.
He spread his arms wide—a gesture more suited to a far greater audience than these six weary men.
“We’re going to send a message to the whole world.
We’re going to go to London. We’re going to assassinate the president of Russia. ”
There was something of a commotion after this announcement.
Ben laughed.
He caught Fergus in a tight hug around the neck, asserted loudly to the room, “Actually, we’re not,” and elbowed the man in the temple, lowering him unconscious to the sticky carpet.
At the same time, two figures burst into the room. There would have been a desperate brawl, but Ben shouted, “Sit down!” and, as one, every single man in the group obeyed him. Nikolas came to a halt over the unconscious body.