The Apprentices (18 page)

“You feel pretty awful when it’s over,” Benjamin said. “Dizzy, and like you might throw up, if you’re the one doing the watching. But that doesn’t last long. And if you take it again too soon, it makes you really sick, and doesn’t work.”

“Does Janie know where we are?”

“She knew we were in Vietnam. But she doesn’t know we’re in Manila.”

His father frowned. “How do you activate the connection?”

“You think about the person. You both have to have taken the powder. Then you concentrate, and it just happens. It’s hard to describe. I guess if everyone was blind, and you tried
to describe vision to them, it would sound crazy and made up. The idea that you know
exactly
what’s across the room without going over and touching it—it would seem like magic, for people who’d never done it before. This is just like seeing, only you can do it across oceans instead of across a room.” He could feel himself getting excited again.

His father sighed. “You’ve surpassed me in inventiveness, in what you can do. But you don’t consider the consequences. How do you know that this Magnusson isn’t now watching
us
?”

“He couldn’t,” Benjamin said, taken aback. “He doesn’t know how to do it.”

“But people learn, as you have demonstrated. Would you know if he were seeing through you?”

“Yes!” But honestly, Benjamin wasn’t sure. He probed in his mind for any sign of a big cigar-smoking man, but what would that feel like?

“He could be watching Janie,” his father said. “For all you know.”

“Why would he want to spy on a couple of kids?”

His father’s voice rose, a thing that almost never happened. “Because you
aren’t
just a couple of kids, as you were reminding me just a moment ago!”

“He doesn’t know that.”

“He might suspect.”

“There’s no reason he would.”

“I don’t want you to use it again.”

“But I’m just learning how it works! And she might be in trouble!”

“She’ll be in more trouble if she knows we’re in Manila. It’s much safer for her to know nothing. Do you understand me, Benjamin? I forbid you to use it again. For Janie’s sake.”

Benjamin frowned. The thing that really worried him wasn’t the cigar smoker. It was the boy in the dark theater. Janie could be kissing him right now. He didn’t want to see that, but he also couldn’t stand not knowing. His father was wise, and could advise him about so many things: dissolution, separation, calcination, the manipulation of matter, the closing of wounds. But he couldn’t advise him about this. If Benjamin tried to explain his stabbing jealousy, his father would look baffled and then stammer out something embarrassing about adolescence and hormones. A stray breeze came through the window, cooling the damp sweat on the back of Benjamin’s neck. A car horn blared in the heat outside the window, and men were shouting in Tagalog at someone who had stopped a cart in the middle of the street. Benjamin understood their curses and commands with no effort. That seemed unremarkable now.

“There’s a boy,” he blurted. “With Janie. She’s staying with him. I saw him kiss her.”

His father looked startled, and then his eyes grew serious. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That must be painful.”

“It’s awful!” Benjamin said, his eyes stinging.

His father sighed. “You have to leave her alone, Benjamin. Let her live her life, and be safe, if you care for her. It’s the kindest thing you can do.”

J
anie packed up her few belongings while Raffaello was at rehearsal for
A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
She said good-bye to Giovanna, who wasn’t too sad to see her go, although Janie thought she might feel a little wistful when it came time to close out the till. She threw her duffel bag over one shoulder and her knapsack over the other, and walked toward the bus station.

She was thinking about how she had made the right decision, to go home to her parents, when a dark-windowed black limousine pulled up at the curb beside her on Kingsley Street. The back door opened, and strong hands grabbed her arms. Janie struggled, but she couldn’t get free. She saw the white-blond flash of Magnusson’s hair. She was yanked inside the car, and a bag went over her head. Everything was dark. She was pinned against the leather upholstery and she felt the car lurch away from the curb. Her heart raced with fear.

No one except Giovanna and her parents knew she was going to the bus station, and they all thought she’d be on the bus until tomorrow. No one would notice she was gone. The
car was speeding along. Janie reached blindly to find the door handle, thinking she would throw herself out into the street, but a hand came over her mouth, holding something soft. A handkerchief? She had just enough time to notice a strange smell before everything faded away.

It seemed like a moment later when the blindfold came off, and she was in a different place. The room was bright with artificial light. As Janie’s eyes adjusted, she realized she was in the office where she had seen Mr. Magnusson talking to his secretary. There was the sleek, uncluttered desk she had seen through Mr. Magnusson’s eyes. Now she was in a chair near one of the plate glass windows and she was very groggy. The desk looked enormous from this new perspective. It dominated the room.

She remembered that Magnusson’s office was in Boston, a two-hour drive from Grayson, but she didn’t know how much time had passed. It was still night outside the big windows. Was it the same night? On one wall of the office was a giant map of the Pacific. She thought of Mrs. McClellan’s roll-down maps in the history classroom.

Mr. Magnusson sat down on the edge of his vast desk, his enormous hands gripping the desk’s edge. “Miss Scott,” he said.

“Mr. Magnusson.” Her tongue felt thick and her throat dry.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t invite you here more politely. I didn’t think you would come.”

“You’re breaking the law,” she croaked.

“Yes, I am,” he said. “Sylvia?”

The blond woman he had called “my love” brought a glass
of water for Janie. The cool water was soothing, and Janie looked at the woman over the rim of the glass. Sylvia wore a white silk blouse and a string of pearls, and her hair was softly pinned up. The look on her face was conflicted, and Janie guessed that she hadn’t known that Magnusson’s plan involved kidnapping.

“The thing is, Janie, I need your help,” Mr. Magnusson said.

The water in Janie’s stomach made her feel queasy. “My help?”

“I need you to set up a desalination plant for me. I’ve given your experiment to my engineers, but they don’t seem to have the requisite…flexibility of mind, let’s say. They don’t think it can be done.”

“It
can
be done,” Janie insisted.

“You see?” Mr. Magnusson said, smiling. “This is why I need you. You have that can-do spirit.”

“Why didn’t you just ask me?”

“I didn’t think you were very fond of me.”

“I’m not.”

“That’s all right. I’m a man of business. I don’t need people to like me.”

“You’re a criminal,” Janie said. “A kidnapper.”

“Oh, I’ve done worse, in my time,” Mr. Magnusson said.

Janie wondered if she could stand up, but her legs didn’t seem to want to obey her. Groggy, she was so groggy. There was a tingling feeling in her fingertips. Was Benjamin trying to control them? Was he here? Or was it just the effect of the chloroform?

Magnusson turned to the big map and ran his finger across the blue ocean. “This is where we’re going,” he said. “I always think the island looks a bit like a seedpod, with its two rounded ends. It is in Malaya, in my wife’s homeland. It forms the uppermost point of a triangle between these two islands in the Celebes Sea, do you see?”

“My parents will come looking for me,” Janie said.

Mr. Magnusson smiled. “Do you know how many girls your age disappear every day? They run away, or they simply vanish…”

“People look for those girls!” Janie said.

“Of course they do,” Mr. Magnusson said. “But they don’t find them.”

“Magnus,” Sylvia said.

“How are you going to get me to that island?” Janie asked. “Someone is going to ask questions.”

“I have long been a believer in business aircraft,” Mr. Magnusson said. “To get the important people in one’s company around.”

“But it’s on the other side of the world.”

“We take the great circle route,” Mr. Magnusson said, unconcerned. “We refuel along the way.”

“Is Opal coming?”

“
Why
would I bring Opal?” he asked. “Poor Opal. You should have seen her as a baby, the most beautiful child. Everyone adored her. But now she’s become so stupid and bad-tempered. And besides, she’s at your foolish dance, with a block of concrete masquerading as a teenage boy, drinking spiked punch from a plastic cup. We leave tonight. You will come quietly, I trust. I don’t have to put you back to sleep?”

“No,” Janie said quickly. She didn’t have a plan, but she didn’t want the chloroform again, the sinking, the dry and aching throat. “I mean yes, I’ll go.”

“Good,” Mr. Magnusson said. “Such a sensible girl. So different from Opal. You’re the daughter I should have had.”

W
hen Benjamin lost sight of the office where Janie was being held, his mouth watered with nausea and he shivered in spite of the heat. He stumbled to Vinoray’s tiny bathroom, the vertigo compounded with horror. He splashed water on his face, trying to think straight. Janie had been kidnapped by Magnusson while Benjamin was worrying about some skinny Italian kid.

He looked in the mirror, wet and disoriented. His father had told him not to use the powder anymore. But then Benjamin wouldn’t have known she’d been kidnapped.

His father had gone collecting with Vinoray, and Benjamin had a few hours before they would return. He left the apartment in a panic, walked down to the port, and started hailing tied-up boats: steamers and cruisers and sampans and pleasure yachts. When the skippers would talk to him, he asked them to take him to an island in the Celebes Sea.

Some of the skippers laughed, and some shook their heads. One old French captain said, “This is cyclone season.
You don’t know where you’ll end up. Cannibals will cook you in a pot and eat your brains.”

“That’s not true,” Benjamin said.

“Believe what you wish,” the man said. “I have seen this.”

An American couple on a sleek wooden yacht called the
Payday
seemed ready to listen to Benjamin out of sheer boredom. The woman was blond and tan in a black dress, with a gold charm bracelet dangling from her wrist. The man wore a pressed linen shirt, and had silver in his brushed-back hair. He poured Benjamin a ginger ale with ice.

“How old are you?” he asked.

“Eighteen,” Benjamin lied.

“Eighteen!” the woman said. “Oh, to be eighteen again, with the world before you, where to choose.”

“Here we go again,” her husband said, squeezing a lime into Benjamin’s glass. “Charlotte’s in mourning for her lost youth.”

He handed Benjamin the sweating glass of ice-cold ginger ale, and it tasted like ambrosia. Benjamin wasn’t sure he’d ever had anything better. He held the cold glass against his neck. The man smoothed out a chart on the table, and Benjamin showed him where he wanted to go.

“You know cyclone season is starting,” the skipper said. “Bad time to set out.”

“I don’t have a choice,” Benjamin said.

“And why’s that?”

“My friend is there.”

“You paying for the charter?”

Benjamin hesitated. “How much would it cost?”

“Oh don’t be petty, Harry,” Charlotte said. “He’s just a kid. It would be fun!”

“What’s your friend doing in Malaya?” the skipper asked.

“She didn’t tell me,” Benjamin said, which was true. He didn’t think it was a good idea to say that she’d been kidnapped.

Harry’s eyebrows went up. “Ah, it’s a
girl
friend.”

“Well,” Benjamin said.

“Listen, kid,” Harry said. “If a girl doesn’t tell you why she’s going someplace, maybe she doesn’t want you to follow.”

“She might be a woman of mystery,” Charlotte said.

“I’ve learned to avoid those,” Harry said, giving his wife a wry look.

“It’s
really
important that I get there,” Benjamin said.

“Sorry, kid,” Harry said, shaking his head. “I’m not taking my boat into a cyclone for some runaway girl.”

Charlotte, who smelled like gardenias and coconut oil, tousled Benjamin’s hair sympathetically, and they sent him over the side. He walked back up the dock, drenched with sweat and disappointment. He thought of Pip, who would’ve been able to talk his way onto that boat. Pip would be helping to take up the dock lines right now. He wondered if Pip had received his telegram and where he might be.

Despondent and hot, Benjamin dragged himself back to Vinoray’s closed-up shop and let himself in with a key. It was no cooler inside, but at least the sun wasn’t beating down on him. He closed the door behind him and looked round.

There was a fishy smell to the cluttered shop, and many of the jars held things from the sea: dried squid, dried sea slugs,
dried octopus. There were bottles with cobras preserved in liquor, and bottles with scorpions, and bottles that contained both cobras
and
scorpions. The scorpions were black, the cobras coiled and gray. It wasn’t anything like his father’s shop in London.