Page 37 of The Gods of Chaos and Chance

Heaven, orthe great abyss.

* * *

Chapter Twenty

The flight did indeed take an hour. They didn’t crash and have to survive in the white-capped seas they flew over. Their plane was not overtaken by hijackers. The pilot didn’t pass out at the controls. Birds minded their own business and didn’t fly too close to inspect them. They landed safely, which was something of a surprise to them all. Aleksey could see it in their expressions. He ignored the implication that somehow by him being there all of the other endings for their little trip had been more likely, and went to hire a car.

He returned.

They all seemed slightly stressed by his expression.

Ben stood a little closer. ‘What?’

Aleksey swallowed, hoping his voice wouldn’t falter. ‘There are only…’ No, he was literally unable to say the word. He didn’t need to, because just at that moment two women who’d been on the plane with them hummed by in the golf buggy they’d obviously just rented, much to their evident delight.

Ben, Squeezy and Tim then walked further out from the shade of the airport awning and viewed the scene. Golf carts. Everywhere. No cars.

Tim, naturally, was enchanted. ‘Oh, aren’t they adorable? So environmentally friendly!’

Squeezy and Ben chorused at the same time, ‘We walk,’ and Aleksey was never so grateful to have at least two normal men on this trip with him.

Ben took his bag for him, but this was fairly natural for them, so it didn’t make him stand out as the one who couldn’t walk for long with anything heavy to carry.

The hotel was a sixteenth century castle on a promontory at the end of the island, no more than a mile from the airport. It was coincidentally the best accommodation on St Mary’s, but Aleksey would have booked it anyway. He wasn’t hoping the residence on his island would be a castle, of course he wasn’t, but in case itwasit was nice to get in some practice staying in one.

A mile taken slowly by Ben, because there were lots of interesting things to see, took them half an hour. It was hot, much warmer than the afternoon they’d left in Devon. Sub-tropical was living up to its promise. They’d shed jackets and rolled up sleeves, and with their shades, height, and general presence, they turned a few heads. But not as many as a stroll down the esplanade in other places might have done. Aleksey could spot the wealthy fleeing the cities as easily as, he supposed, they could clock him. When you had real money, you bought up properties in places like this. He laughed inwardly. No, when you werefilthy rich, you bought your own island.

* * *

Their rooms were adjoining and they agreed to meet down for dinner in the restaurant which was beneath the castle, in what would have possibly been the dungeons at one time. Now, one stone wall had been knocked down and replaced with steel supports and glass, and this led out onto a courtyard and the ramparts. They chose a table in the window and sat down to admire the view for a while.

‘That is the weirdest coloured water I’ve seen since the Philippines.’

Tim nodded at Ben’s comment. ‘It’s the purity of the white sand. And the shallowness around the island. The light is reflected, refracted maybe, up through the water and creates that mesmerising turquoise.’

‘Pretty boats, boss. We gonna hire one of those to get to this island of yours?’

Aleksey nodded, also watching the colourful yachts in the harbour, far away in his mind on another island and in another little sailboat. ‘Next time. This is just a recce. The baby princeling is there for a few days, apparently.’

‘Covering 'is tracks, like? Digging up the bodies?’

Ben’s theorising about the reasons for the sale of the island had begun to spin a bit out of control now that Squeezy had taken up the mantle for him. He had no end of interesting speculations to throw into the mix, dead bodies buried all over the place being his latest favourite.

Ben suddenly turned to him and proposed eagerly, ‘You could buy a boat!’

‘I think I just said that. We will when we come—’

‘No, not hire one to get us there. Buy one, to keep there. A proper yacht.’ Ben’s suggestion stopped the inspection of menus, which they’d been doing while chatting.

Aleksey shrugged as if this thought hadn’t already occurred to him, and didn’t make him remember once more his ten-year-old self sailing the waters of Areo with his invasion of England plans stowed in the pocket of his shorts.

* * *

‘Do you think they’re having sex?’ Aleksey did a good impression of a slug encountering salt, and Ben sniggered at the curl away from him and subsequent gagging. ‘What? We are, and we’re only a few feet from them…’

‘Shut up! I was trying to…Well, whatever I was doing is now ruined because I have that image in my mind. Thank you.’

‘Bet they are.’

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