The Apothecary (26 page)
“
That’s
what makes you so valuable,” Danby said. “You can take him directly to the Soviet authorities, in his own chartered vessel, without unnecessary loss of life. You’re perfectly positioned. It’s a stroke of genius on Moscow’s part.”
“If I fail, please try to save my wife and daughter,” Mr Shiskin said.
“You won’t fail.”
“And please look after Sergei. He’s only a boy, and not a very bright one.”
“I will, of course.”
Mr Shiskin looked miserably at the hat in his lap. “You know that the ninth circle of hell is reserved for those who betray their friends.”
“Think of it another way, Leonid,” Danby said. “Russia is your country, and your family is your family. This isn’t a betrayal of the apothecary, but an act of loyalty. There comes a time when we must choose.”
“But Russia isn’t
your
country,” Mr Shiskin said.
“It’s the country of my heart.”
I tried to look to Benjamin in silent amazement at Danby’s claim and ran into the impossibility of eye contact again. You don’t know how much you rely on it until you’re invisible.
“But why
is
that?” Mr Shiskin asked. “What is Russia to you?”
Danby took a long, thoughtful drag on his cigarette. “What is Russia to me?” he said, exhaling. “A good question. There’s a literary answer, since we’re discussing Dante’s hell. I read
Anna Karenina
one summer in the country when I was fifteen, and it had such an effect on me, that book. I thought I had to marry a woman like Anna, with those round, soft arms, and dark eyes, and that passion.”
“But,” Mr Shiskin said, “no one sells out his country for
Anna Karenina
. And that Russia is gone, you know.”
“Yes, of course,” Danby said, tapping ash out the window. “There was also a very lovely ballerina named Natasha, when I was studying in Leningrad. Also with beautiful arms, though less round. That had some effect, too. But it was really the Russian soldiers I met as a prisoner of war, when I was shot down. They were kept on the other side of a great fence from us. We got packages of food and cigarettes from the Red Cross, but the Russians got nothing, and we used to throw them food, when we got it. But even starving and imprisoned, those Russian chaps were
certain
, in such a pure, strong way, that their country would be a great power after the war. Again, that passion. I admired them terribly. They were like the ardent young men in Tolstoy. I wanted to be like them, to believe like them, not always to be halfhearted, ambivalent, reticent,
English
. I didn’t want to be that.”
Mr Shiskin looked at him sadly. “You’ve been taken in,” he said. “Fooled by this Russian passion.”
“Perhaps,” Danby said. “But Moscow wants the apothecary, so that’s where he must go. If England discovers his secret, they’ll hand it over at once to the Americans, who will then have everything—both the power to destroy the world, which they have already, and the power to stop all other countries from protecting themselves. They will become even more monstrous than they already are. We mustn’t let that happen.”
“We,”
Shiskin repeated bitterly. “There is no
we
here.”
“Of course there is,” Mr Danby said. “We’re all on the same side. Now you must be going. Don’t disable the boat until you’re
positive
you’re in Russian waters. We don’t want to start an international incident. And think of your family.”
Shiskin sighed, pulled his fur hat down over his great head, and got out of the car. He stood waiting for a break in the traffic, then crossed the street towards the port, carrying a small, heavy brown suitcase that bounced against his good leg.
The Scar said something in German.
“He’ll manage all right,” Danby said, flicking the rest of his burning cigarette out the window. I made a small, inadvertent noise as I jumped away from the hot ember, which made Danby look up, but he saw nothing.
Benjamin and I crossed the street, following Shiskin at a distance through the port’s gate and along the docks towards the
Kong Olav
. It was a long walk in bare feet.
“What do you think’s in his suitcase?” I whispered. “A gun?”
“Maybe a radio transmitter,” Benjamin said. “To signal the Soviets about the boat’s position.”
I thought about Benjamin’s fascination with espionage, and his old disdain for his father’s work. “Do you still want to be a spy?” I asked. “Or do you want to be an apothecary now?”
Benjamin thought about it for a second. “I’m not sure,” he said. “Right now there doesn’t seem like much difference.”
We had almost reached the
Kong Olav
, picking our way over rusted nails and bits of glass, when we heard the clang of a police car’s bell. We jumped out of the path of the car, and watched it screech to a halt in front of the boat. Mr Shiskin froze.
“Oh, no,” Benjamin said.
The wispy-haired detective who’d arrested us at school jumped out of the police car, ignoring Shiskin, and approached the guard on the dock. “I’m Detective Montclair, Scotland Yard,” he said. “This is Officer O’Nan. We’ve had a truancy report from port officials. Three children were spotted near this vessel, two boys and a girl.”
“They were here,” Ludvik said. “But they left.”
“I’ll search the boat then.”
“I’m sorry, sir, we’re just casting off.”
“I’m afraid I must insist,” Montclair said.
Count Vili came to the rail and leaned over. “Is there a problem, officer?” he asked, his voice full of courtesy and money.
Mr Shiskin seemed paralysed by indecision about whether to board the boat, which might be searched at any moment, or to stay where he was and risk not getting aboard at all.
“We’re looking for three children,” Detective Montclair said to the count. “They escaped from Turnbull Juvenile Hall yesterday.”
“Oh?” Count Vili said mildly, in his interesting accent. “Then they couldn’t have been the children who were here.”
“Why not?”
“Because I had them out on the boat fishing all day yesterday.”
“In the
Thames
?” Detective Montclair asked, disgusted.
“Just for perch and pike,” the count said. “The fish are there if you know where to look.”
“Didn’t the children have school?”
“A holiday. They’ve gone back to their studies now.”
Montclair frowned. “May I ask where you’re
from
, sir?”
“Certainly,” said the count. “I am from Luxembourg.”
The detective didn’t seem to know what to do with that information. He had no opinions about Luxembourg. “I really must search the boat,” he said, striding towards the gangway.
Count Vili’s face lost some of its composure. The descriptions of the apothecary and Jin Lo would have been circulated to the police by now. If Detective Montclair came aboard, he would take them all in, and the voyage would be over.
But then Pip appeared beside me with a bright look in his eyes. I don’t know how he spotted me, when I’d left only the tip of my nose out of the invisibility solution, but I was no longer surprised by anything Pip did. “Get ready,” he whispered.
Before I could ask, “Ready for what?” Pip strolled down the dock with his hands in his pockets, passing the policemen as if he hadn’t noticed them. He stood at the bottom of the
Kong Olav
’s guarded gangway.
“Hey, mister!” he called up to the count at the rail. “I left my cap on the boat! Throw it down, will you?”
Vili glanced at the detective on the dock. Pip followed his glance and jumped in surprise, as if noticing Montclair for the first time.
“Crikey!” he said stagily. “Coppers!”
He ran back up the dock, zigzagging between the two policemen. Detective Montclair tried to grab his sleeve, but missed and chased after him. Officer O’Nan hesitated, looking at the boat, then took off after Pip, too.
Grateful to Pip for the distraction, we followed Mr Shiskin invisibly up the gangway to the boat, our light footsteps masked by the clang of his wooden leg. I looked back to see if Pip was coming. He had a good lead on Detective Montclair and was running towards the Port of London’s gate, just out of the detective’s reach. He had given all of us the chance to get away.
On board, Benjamin and I avoided the crew and went straight through the saloon to the cabin full of empty suitcases where we’d seen our trunk. We closed the door while no one was looking, climbed into the pile of luggage, and dug into the trunk. I pulled on silk long underwear, wool trousers, a jumper, and the peacoat over my freezing invisible nakedness. The
Kong Olav’s
engines rumbled to life.
“Soon we’ll be at sea,” I said, feeling better and warmer already.
“Soon?”
Benjamin said, his invisible head shrouded in the hood of Sarah’s brother’s ski coat, and his hands missing at the ends of the sleeves. “We’re in London, Janie. We’ve got forty miles to go before we get out of the Thames.”
“Forty
miles
?”
“Have you ever looked at a map of England?”
I had, of course, but not closely. I hadn’t realised there would be such a long stretch when the police could stop us or the apothecary could put us ashore with train fare home. We heard the calls of the crew casting off, and I pushed the blue curtain away from the cabin’s porthole, to look out at the busy port. The whole world, the boats and docks and cranes, seemed to be gliding past us as the boat began to move out into the Thames, with the sound of the churning engines reverberating through the hull. The effect made me a little queasy, and I let the curtain drop.
I pulled a blanket from the trunk and drew it over my legs. We just had to stay hidden for forty miles, that was all. And then we had to stop Shiskin from disabling the boat and turning us over to the Soviets. And then, presumably, we had to help the apothecary with his plan. And meanwhile my parents would be getting home from their location shoot to a tipsy Mrs Parrish, who would tell them that I’d spent the night with my friend Sarah (or Susan) No-last-name, at no given address, to do my Latin homework, and had never come back.
S
arah Pennington’s butler had included a bundle of things to eat in the trunk. We found tinned salmon and crackers from Fortnum & Mason, bottles of apple cider, and a pack of playing cards. I thought I would enjoy having a butler to think of everything I might need, but then realised that my parents mostly did that.
We sat among the empty luggage and played silent games of gin rummy as we waited for the
Kong Olav
to get out of the endless Thames. As parts of Benjamin returned, one at a time, I noticed the way his sandy eyebrows brushed up towards his forehead. It was part of what made him look so curious and intent, as if he was looking hard and slightly sceptically at the world. There were two freckles joined into one on the left side of his nose. His fingernails were round and still clean from the bath, in spite of our running around the dockyards. He caught me looking at him, over his cards.
“What?” he whispered.
“Nothing!”
“Do I have something on my face?” He brushed the back of his hand across his cheek.
“No.”
“Am I all here?”
“Yes,” I said. “You’re all—”
“Shh,” he said, and he looked to the door. People were talking outside, and Mr Shiskin was one of them.
We couldn’t hear the exact words, but from the voices and the thumping of the wooden leg, it was clear that Shiskin had taken the cabin next door. I wondered that the others couldn’t hear the anxiety in his voice. I could hear it through the door, without even knowing what he was saying.
The voices faded, and we went back to the cards. Eventually, the corridor grew quiet as people went to bed. Through the porthole we could see the open sea; we were out of the Thames and motoring north.
I had just been dealt a beautiful hand, with three eights and a run of four, and was waiting to go out. Benjamin frowned and moved his cards around in his hand, as if shifting them was going to change what they were. I felt a sudden giddy pleasure at doing something as ordinary with him as playing cards.
Benjamin must have felt something of the same happiness, because he said, “I’ve got a hand like a foot,” with his vowels flattened out like an American poker player, so it came out, “Ah’ve got a
hayand
like a
fuht
.”
I started to giggle at the fact that he was doing American impressions, and at how funny he sounded doing it.
“Shh!” he said.
“You started it!” I whispered.
Then he held up his hand for silence. There was a faint movement out in the silent corridor. We both listened, alert and tense, but the sound was gone. A minute passed, and I dared to breathe again.
But just as I did, the luggage cabin’s door flew open and we were staring at Jin Lo over the cartoonishly wide barrel of a gun. When she saw who we were, she dropped the gun and glared at us. “Why you here?”
I was too stunned to say anything.
Benjamin managed to say, “To help you.”
“Apothecary say no!”
“But he needs us!” Benjamin said. Even in the panic of the moment, I thought he was wise not to suggest that
she
needed us.
