Still, they stole an army jeep. They wanted to borrow boots, but being six foot four was a disadvantage in a country where people, by and large, were so much smaller. So, barefoot, still in only their makeshift shorts, they headed back to the disaster area to find the man they’d left behind. Special Forces don’t leave anyone behind.
They couldn’t find him. They wouldn’t have been able to find anyone or anything in the vast area of destruction they returned to. They had no idea where they’d been or which way to go, but they didn’t really have time to worry, for as soon as they climbed out of the jeep at the edge of the disaster area there was someone who needed help, then someone else, and then a body to be dug out, a child still alive buried in another car, an old woman sitting down in shock to be carried to a rescue vehicle, and another body, and another, and then it was only bodies, more and more to be pulled from the mud and carried to shelters and laid down, again and again until the light began to fade. They came across a bus. It was upside down on the roof of a building. It was utterly surreal but utterly normal for this place, where the insane had become the sane. The bus had been packed with people. It was now full of bodies just crumpled in a pile against the roof. They looked as if they’d been going to market, for they all had bags and purses and best shoes. It took them hours to pull them out and carry them down off the building. They worked on into the night until at one point Ben almost fell asleep on his feet. He just crashed, still standing, but no longer aware.
They had to stop. They climbed into one of the buses they’d found and emptied, and curled up together on the backseat, too exhausted to find it uncomfortable.
§ § §
When they woke a few hours later, it was to a world that had become rapidly more terrifying during the night. The smell hit them first. It was unbearable. They tore shirts to make face scarves and emerged into blistering sun and swarms of flies. Dogs had appeared overnight, terrified, disturbed and feral, attacking the bodies still trapped. When they pulled at a collapsed roof, snakes poured from it. In one street, a live electrical cable was still sparking and arcing in the mud. Around it were half-a-dozen people, electrocuted, but they couldn’t reach them. The buzzing of the flies was getting worse. They swarmed into their eyes and noses. If it hadn’t been for the people they found still alive, they would’ve given up. But every so often a body moved, eyes focused on them and arms lifted for help.
By now, there were emergency teams working alongside them and stretchers to load those still alive onto and take them to the hospital. They heard a rumour the medical supplies had run out, and a sense of desolation fell on them, even as they found survivors. Some were entirely unhurt, just sitting with a possession, perhaps a precious plate or jug also undamaged in the midst of all this ruin.
By nightfall of that second day, the conditions were so bad they were forced to return with an ambulance to the hospital. They’d entirely lost their jeep, as there were no landmarks to use to navigate through the ruin. At the hospital, they treated themselves as best they could for the renewed damage to their feet. Ben’s bruises were spectacular now, but he claimed he couldn’t feel them. Snakes had bitten them both; they just washed the bites and ignored them. The tented complex had grown as aid agencies moved in from other parts of the country. Some were international, and they heard a mixed smattering of voices. Unbelievably it seemed to Nikolas, he heard a Russian voice and discovered a young girl in her teens trying to ask if anyone had seen her parents. He translated for her, and that was the beginning of his new job. He spoke most of the European languages well enough to translate such a simple question—“Has anyone seen the people I love?”—and to translate the heartbreaking answer, “No.” He was assigned to an army unit. This came with the unbelievable privilege of being able to use the field showers that had been erected, as well as having a space to sleep allocated in one of the tents.
Standing under the cascading hot water together, stripped of the awful stinking shorts they’d been wearing for days, was one of the most luxurious things they’d ever done. They washed each other, hair and skin all gently soaped and rinsed, soaped and rinsed. They’d been found some sarongs, as none of the army fatigues would fit them, and these they tied with wry smiles of amusement. They looked like native gods. Finally they were clean, and they were alive. It was enough. The cot beds they’d been allocated didn’t seem as if they’d support their weight, but they dragged them together, climbed on and knew nothing more until they woke to the increasing chaos of the fourth day.
Bodies were appearing everywhere. They were being washed up on the shore, falling literally from the sky, as people who’d taken shelter in trees and then drowned anyway fell bloated to the ground. The fourth day in the blistering sun, these bodies weren’t easy to handle. They came apart unless carefully eased onto stretchers. Ben carried on with a small team of Red Cross workers, searching the devastated areas, while Nikolas became more and more involved with the authorities. Once he’d begun helping, just with some translation, he realised how much chaos there was, how lacking in any systems they were. He began to organise. Soon people were listening to the giant, blond-haired man who could switch from English to French to Spanish to Russian, Danish or German, and was willing to make decisions. They went from listening, to seeking his advice, and then nothing seemed to get done unless he drove it through. He was allocated an office, acquired a phone, and the following day was given a laptop with satellite communication. He immediately contacted Kate.
He and Ben managed to snatch an hour or so together in the evenings, to shower, to eat, and they moved their camp beds into Nikolas’s office and slept side by side. Ben was having a rougher time than Nikolas, for his job was impossibly emotionally draining. But Nikolas listened to his stories, ensured he was eating and taking his antibiotics to ward off infection from the dead, and held him until he fell into exhausted sleep every night.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Four days later, Kate arrived. She brought a crate of satellite laptops and mobile phones, and, most importantly, boots and clothes for Ben and Nikolas from home and a suitcase full of medical items Nikolas had asked for. Now he was able to set up the office properly, and the lost and bewildered came in their hundreds to register, to seek information, to contact loved ones at home to say they were still alive. The media had descended upon the disaster by now, and Nikolas pulled Ben off his search for bodies and put him in charge of escorting them through the destruction. Ben then became the spokesman for the tsunami, sought and feted for his startling presence on camera and his genuine knowledge of events. Kate established a database of missing and found, kept the computers running and took some of the load off Nikolas’s shoulders.
She’d clearly hardly recognised either of them when she’d arrived. The last time she’d seen them they’d been badly scarred, gaunt survivors of a bitter personal winter. She’d arrived to find them bursting with health and vitality amidst all the ruin, totally engaged by what they were doing. Tired, sure, but tired in a way that made them keen to sleep, so they could wake the next day and continue with the job.
And the job just went on and on.
The count of the dead was now thought to be over one hundred thousand across all the islands and the mainland coast. They had well over eight thousand in their small resort island, over three thousand from the lagoon and surrounding complexes alone. On top of this were the thousands of survivors, displaced, utterly bereft of anything—no clothes, no money, no passports and, in most cases, no loved ones. Flights had to be organised, temporary documents issued, accommodation found, food provided, medicine given, simple things like clothes in all sizes made available. Nikolas’s work, helped now by Kate, went on well over twelve hours a day, but gradually he turned it from an overwhelming wave of hopelessness into something like order. Once or twice, Ben even returned with a team of journalists to find Nikolas with his feet upon his desk drinking tea, as if he were in his Kremlin office surrounded by staff. To be fair, he was always on the phone as well.
Nikolas began to spend an increasing amount of his time on the phone. He used his extensive contacts shamelessly. He even swallowed his pride and phoned Philipa. Ben didn’t hear that conversation, but two days later, a royal visitor arrived. He flew in on a British army helicopter and toured the devastated site, visited the hospital and spoke with survivors. If he recognised the young man with the wide-set green eyes who showed him around and briefed him, he didn’t let on. The last time he’d seen Ben, Ben had been rescuing him from terrorists, so it was possible he didn’t. He knew Nikolas, of course, and they greeted each other like old friends. Ben was astounded once more at how little he still knew about Nikolas Mikkelsen. Seeing him chatting with the heir to the throne, unconcerned, in his element, he realised for the first time why Nikolas had often seemed bored and restless over the last year—why he seemed to constantly get into mischief.
The prince’s visit generated a vast amount of funding. Donations flooded into the various charities that had arrived on the scene in their brand new Range Rovers and with their state-of-the-art equipment. None of the money, however, seemed to be actually getting to the hospital to buy basic medicine or food or fuel, or any of the other things the locals needed to start rebuilding.
One day, Ben woke to find the bed next to him empty. He had a note pinned to his boxer shorts. He couldn’t believe he’d been so deeply asleep Nikolas had been able to pin a note to him there or that Nikolas had been annoying enough to think of it. The note was very helpful:
I’ll be back
. He was amused and furious in equal measure. So was Kate. They hadn’t realised just how much everything in the relief camp had come to rely on Nikolas until Nikolas was absent for the day. People streamed in all day asking for decisions which neither Ben nor Kate felt qualified to give. They didn’t understand half the questions in the first place.
It was getting on toward evening and darkness, and Ben was taking a group of American journalists around the hospital when he saw Nikolas’s blond hair in the distance. At six foot four, both of them were easy to spot over a crowd, and they’d grown into the habit since the disaster of constantly looking around, just checking to see if they could see one another, reassured at the other’s presence. He finished his briefing and escorted the journalists back to the press tent and went in search of his errant lover. Nikolas was in his office. He was making some tea and added a bag to another mug for Ben. He was pretending to be engrossed in this mundane task, but Ben could tell by his expression Nikolas wanted to be asked where he’d been all day. Ben gave him a look, just so Nikolas knew he was pissed, but asked anyway. Nikolas pointed.
Ben couldn’t believe it. Sitting on his cot was the aluminium case he hadn’t seen for…was it years? It felt like years. He tried to work it out. Days. A little over a week had passed since he’d scaled the wall of the cave and tucked it into a hollow to keep it safe. He’d had no idea just what he’d been keeping it safe from.
Nikolas had returned to the cave and retrieved the case.
Ben opened it.
Fifty kilograms of pure gold, one-and-a-half million pounds worth, and possibly no one left alive knew of its existence—except them. He sat heavily on the cot, which wobbled alarmingly. “How did you get there?”
Nikolas looked up, pretending to be unconcerned, but Ben knew he was very pleased with himself. “I went inland then around by sea. It seemed easier.”
He really didn’t want to ask—didn’t want to hear it. “What was it like?”
Nikolas sat next to him, picking up a gold bar and sliding his hands around it. “There was nothing left…no huts, no hotel, no beach—no lagoon really. Just floating bodies. It was all mud and ruin. Like everywhere.”
“Just like here, Nik. The rest of the world is still out there, remember?”
Nikolas frowned as if he
had
forgotten this. “Yes. So…” He pursed his lips. “I have a confession.”
Ben never liked Nikolas’s confessions much. They usually involved some illegal substance or people who’d soon be trying to kill them. He nodded dubiously for him to continue. Nikolas took Ben’s hand, ostensibly studying the calloused fingers. “I’ve begun to believe in your ridiculous belief in fate. If we hadn’t found the gold, we’d be dead, for we’d have been in the hut when the water hit with nowhere to go. The gold saved our lives. If we hadn’t found the gold, it wouldn’t be here. The gold will save all
these
lives. I’m in awe of the power of your belief, Ben. All things seem to have a purpose.”
Ben put a hand up and stroked Nik’s head, running his fingers over the scar. “And your brother warned you to climb.”
“Yes. I believe he did.” He took a breath and stood up, walking to the door, which he locked. He turned back, pulled Ben to his feet, and seized his mouth, kissing him. Ben was instantly hard, instantly desperate for the touch, the intimacy, the release and escape for the first time since the day of the disaster. They’d not had time, inclination, energy, privacy, all the many reasons why only a brief touch of lips or fingers had had to suffice for what they’d been longing to do. They stripped out of their clothes quickly, a sense of fun and anticipation for the first time returning. This was when they stopped being individuals and became one, knowing each other so intimately, knowing things about the other no one else knew bound them and gave them strength. They kissed hard and passionately for a long time, hands on cocks, stroking, sometimes their own, sometimes the other’s. They eased down to the floor, and Nikolas rose over Ben, hand on his thigh, lifting it, gaining access—then entry. It had been almost a week. Ben arched and cried out in pain, but as always, Nikolas swiftly turned it to pleasure.