“It’s me,” he yelled. His mouth was full of blood. “Art.”
She stopped screaming and looked at him. She was shaking.
He spat. “It’s me.”
She trembled and stared. Her fists were still tight little bloodless rocks. He said her name. Her face was pale and varnished with sweat. Her roots had grown out. She was thinner than he ever remembered seeing her. “It’s me,” he said. Her fists unclenched and fell and her hands hung limp at her sides. “It’s me,” he said. Her trembling peaked and began to subside. She said his name. He nodded. She said it again. He nodded again and put out a tentative hand. She said his name a third time and then he stepped all the way toward her without fear or hesitation, taking her in his arms and pressing her humming body close to his and kissing her like the California state bar exam, long and hard.
106.
He retrieved the knife. He wiped the plaster from the blade and closed it.
“How many others?” he asked.
“One. He went outside for a cigarette.”
“I saw him. He was just lighting up when I got here.” He spat blood and drew the back of his hand across his mouth. “We’ll have to find another way out.”
She glanced at Savory’s body. “What about him?”
Pfefferkorn knelt and took Savory’s pulse at both wrist and neck. He looked at Carlotta and shook his head.
“Don’t beat yourself up about it,” Carlotta said. “He was a hundred.”
Pfefferkorn expected to feel guilt, like he had standing in Dragomir Zhulk’s hut, staring at the prime minister’s waxwork “corpse.” He expected to feel disgust: unlike Zhulk, Savory really was dead, and he had died directly at Pfefferkorn’s hands, not via a middleman. He expected to feel fear. Any minute now the soldier would be coming back to the room, and they had at most a few hours before the manhunt for them began. He did not feel any of these emotions. Nor did he feel satisfaction, empowerment, or righteous fury. He felt nothing, nothing at all. He had become, irrevocably and without fanfare, a hard man hardened to hard truths.
“Closet,” he said.
They dragged the body into the closet and covered it with the spare blanket.
“It’ll do,” he said. His mouth was filling up with blood again. He spat, hard.
“Arthur.”
He looked at her.
“You came for me,” she said.
He set his jaw and took her by the hand. “Let’s move.”
107.
The service elevator let them out in the kitchen. They raced through a dark, steamy labyrinth of prep tables and swinging plastic strips. There were large walk-in coolers full of goat dairy and racks of unbaked pierogi on sheet trays. The whole place stank of garbage and bleach. The first exterior door they found was locked. He kicked it. It held firm.
“What now?” Carlotta asked.
Before he could answer, there was a noise. They turned to see a largish shadow moving toward them across the kitchen tiles. The shadow belonged to a largish person smiling menacingly and swinging a largish chef’s knife in lazy figure eights.
“Hungry,” Yelena said.
“Not in the least,” Pfefferkorn said.
He pulled Carlotta to safety behind him and flicked open his toothbrush.
108.
“Really, Arthur, that was very impressive.”
They were running.
“Brutal,” Carlotta said. “But impressive.”
Somewhere not too far away, a siren began to wail.
“You damn near took her head off,” she said.
“Keep your voice down,” he said.
They had no trouble at all finding the right ship. It dominated the harbor, a weathered twenty-five-thousand-ton handy-size freighter with in red letters along the starboard side. Jaromir was waiting for them by the gangplank. He blinked at their bloody clothes, then ushered them down into the cargo hold. There were hundreds of wooden crates, stacked eight high atop wooden pallets. They squeezed their way to the back of the hold, where Jaromir had cleared out a space and laid down a blanket. There was a bucket of water. He told them to keep quiet. He would let them know when they had reached the safety of international waters.
They waited. Pfefferkorn’s legs were cramping and it was hard for him to sit still. Carlotta massaged him and used the bucket to wash the blood from his face and hands. He couldn’t be sure whose blood it was, his or Yelena’s. Both, he assumed. He watched it come off impassively. Time ticked by. The sounds of a busy ship trickled down through the ventilation system: forklifts and winches, hydraulics and pistons. The engine began to churn and the whole ship juddered. Home free, he thought. Then he heard barking.
“They’re searching for us,” Carlotta whispered.
He nodded. He uncapped the stun gun and handed it to her. He opened the knife. The barking got louder and nearer and more insistent. There was a shrill metallic squeal as the cargo hold’s doors were hauled open. They could hear Jaromir arguing vociferously with a man in Zlabian. The dogs were going crazy, their barks echoing. Pfefferkorn could sense them straining in his direction. They could smell him. He thought fast and pulled the designer eau de cologne solvent out of his back pocket. It was amber and viscous, just like real designer eau de cologne. He had no idea if it was disguised to smell like anything, but he didn’t think twice. He pulled Carlotta out of the way, held the bottle out at arm’s length, and spritzed the side of a crate. A heady base note of sandalwood and musk, overlaid with ylang-ylang and bergamot, filled the air.
The effect was instantaneous, in more ways than one. The barks turned to whimpers. Pfefferkorn could hear the handler fighting to keep the dogs there, without success. They broke free and ran, and the handler’s voice faded as he chased after them. Right away the doors to the cargo hold slammed shut.
They were safe.
Except they weren’t.
“Arthur,” Carlotta said.
She pointed.
He looked.
The solvent was rapidly eating its way through the crate, the wood dissolving before their eyes. There was a creak and a spray of splinters. Pfefferkorn processed this information just fast enough to throw himself on top of Carlotta and tent his back. The bottom crate collapsed and the seven stacked atop it crashed inward on him, each one loaded with more than fifty-five kilograms of the world’s finest quality root vegetables.
109.
He awoke with his leg bound in a crude splint. His arms and torso were taped up. His head was bandaged tightly. His skin burned with fever. He looked around. He was in a tiny cabin, surrounded by metal canisters and mason jars. He was in the ship’s infirmary.
“My hero.”
An uninjured Carlotta smiled at him from the foot of his cot.
110.
She and Jaromir nursed him as best they could, feeding him soup and expired blister packets of Soviet-era antibiotics and keeping watch as he slipped in and out of delirious dreams. Eventually he awoke lucid enough to ask for a full serving of root vegetable hash and strong enough to get it down.
“Good?” she asked.
“Revolting,” he said. He twisted to set the plate aside and winced at his broken ribs.
“Poor baby,” she said.
“What about you?”
“What about me.”
“Are you okay?”
“You’re asking me that?”
“I mean, did they hurt you.”
She shrugged. “They roughed me up a bit in the beginning, but on the whole I was treated very well.”
“No funny business,” he said.
“Funn—oh.” She shuddered. “No, nothing like that.”
“Good,” he said. “I needed to know that first.”
“Before what.”
“Before thi
s.”
They made love. It was unsanitary, precarious, acrobatic, and transcendent.
Afterward she lay in his arms, lightly stroking his head.
“It was trés sweet of you to come rescue me,” she said. “Stupid, but sweet.”
“That’s my motto.”
“How in the world did you find me?”
He told her everything. It took a while.
“That’s rather complicated,” she said.
“I’m still having trouble figuring out who was telling the truth.”
“Possibly everybody, in parts.”
“They sent me in knowing I would fail,” he said. “I was a pawn.”
“Welcome to the club.”
“Didn’t they care about getting you back?”
She shrugged.
“You could have died.”
“I suppose.”
“You don’t seem too bothered by that possibility,” he said.
“We’re all going to die, at some point.”
“That’s an awfully forgiving line to take on folks who, as far as I can see, have shown no concern for you.”
“You don’t become a beekeeper if you’re not ready to get stung,” she said. “And let’s be fair. I’ve had a comfortable life, courtesy of them. Everything’s a compromise.”
“How long have you been a spy?” he asked.
“Never ask a lady that.”
“Was it Bill’s idea?”
She laughed. “I was the one who recruited him.”
“Did you love him?”
“Enough.”
“What about me.”
“I’ve always loved you, Arthur.”
They made love.
“Sorry we’re not galloping off across the misty moors,” he said.
“It’ll do.”
“I’m still looking into that beefcake for your birthday.”
She smiled. “I can’t wait.”
They made love.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“Tomorrow is Casablanca, last stop on this side of the Atlantic before we cross. Once you get to Havana the first thing you need to do is check yourself into a hospital.”
He nodded.
“Promise me you will.”
“Of course,” he said, “but I’ll be fine, as long as you’re with me.”
“That’s what I mean,” she said.
He didn’t understand.
Then he did.
“No,” he said.
“It’s too dangerous for me to stay with you, Arthur. And it’s too dangerous for you to stay with me.”
“Carlotta. Please.”
“I’ve worked with these people for thirty years. I know how they think. They hate loose ends.”
“I’m not a loose end.”
“To them you are. You know too much. Not to mention that if Zhulk was telling the truth, he’s bound to renege on the gas, now that you’re gone. That’s an enormous setback for our side. They’re going to be mad. Someone’s got to be blamed, and you’ll make an ideal scapegoat.”
There was a silence.
“‘Our side’?” he said.
“I’m sorry, Arthur.”
He felt the hardness coming on.
“Go someplace far away,” she said. “Start over.”
“I don’t want to start over.”
She put her hand on his. “I’m sorry.”
They lay without speaking, listening to the ocean beat against the side of the ship.
“Whatever you do,” he said, “please don’t tell me I’m like a moth drawn to a flame.”
“All right, I won’t tell you that.”
The waves raged like war.
“Make love to me again,” she said.
He turned his head on the pillow. Her eyes were full of pain. He kissed them shut. Then he closed his own eyes and did his duty.
111.
They stood on deck, watching the rising sun gild the medina, listening to the muezzin’s fading wail as it yielded to the plashing of floukas in the harbor. Pfefferkorn was leaning on the railing to take the weight off his broken leg. Carlotta had her arm around his waist.
“I’ll miss you more than you know,” she said.
“I’ll know,” he said.
She started for the gangplank.
“Carlotta.”
She turned around.
“Read it at your leisure,” he said.
She tucked the letter into her coat, kissed his cheek, and walked away.
Pfefferkorn tracked her slender form as it moved along the waterfront. She was headed to the American embassy. There she would make contact with the local field agent. She would report that the West Zlabians had released her in the wake of Pfefferkorn’s execution at the hands of the East Zlabians. He would be gone before anyone thought to start hunting for him.
Jaromir helped him back down to the infirmary. He tucked Pfefferkorn into bed and handed him a tepid mug of thruynichka.
“To your health,” Jaromir said.
Pfefferkorn took a long pull. It burned.
SEVEN DEUS EX MACHINA
112.
The mercado was of a piece with the rest of the village, sleepy, low-slung, and salt-eaten. Life began before dawn with the arrival of fishermen offloading buckets of wriggling squid and fraying sacks of shrimp. At half past five the produce trucks pulled up, and by nine all but the sickliest foodstuffs were gone. Toward midafternoon the people rose from their siesta, yawning men jellied by drink, heavy-bosomed women shooing half-naked children with incongruously ancient Indian faces, boys doing battle over a scabby, wheezing fútbol until once again drawn homeward by the sweet smell of stewed pork.
Pfefferkorn, a wide-brimmed straw hat on his head, moved among the stalls, squeezing tomatoes. No longer did he feel petty for demanding a discount of a few pesos. Bargaining was not merely tolerated but appreciated, a dance that helped to freshen an otherwise tiresome courtship. He handed the six ripest to the vendor, who placed them on the scale and announced a total weight of eleven kilograms. Es ridículo, Pfefferkorn replied. Never in the history of agriculture had tomatoes weighed so much, he said. He would complain to the alcalde, he would inform the padre, he would get his axe (he owned no axe), he would pay a certain amount (he swung the bills, axe-like) and not a centavo more. The vendor replied that he would be reduced to poverty, that he was already giving Pfefferkorn a discount, and who did he think he was, gringo, talking to him like this? After several more thrusts and parries, they agreed upon the same price they had the day before and shook hands.
Christmas was on the horizon, the streets awash with the remains of the previous evening’s mercado. Pfefferkorn took his bags of food and walked to the post office, which was also the sewer department, pest control, and Western Union. The lone clerk swapped out the sign on the wall depending on who came through the door and for what purpose. As soon as he saw Pfefferkorn, he replaced ALCANTARILLADOS with CORREOS and began digging through a jumble of parcels, jostling the gimpy desk and setting its little plastic nativity scene aquiver, so that the animals and magi appeared to line-dance.
“It came yesterday. . . . Don’t you get headaches? . . . Sign here. . . . Thank you.”
Pfefferkorn tended to forget what he had ordered by the time it arrived, which made tearing into the brown paper more exciting—a surprise to himself, from himself. To prolong his pleasure, he strolled down the avenida. He sat in the zócalo, passing the time of day with the elderly men feeding the birds. A woman in a serape striped like a TV test pattern sold him fritters drenched in jaggery syrup, a seasonal specialty. He ate one and felt as though he had been kicked by a mule. He shifted the package under his other arm and headed to
ward the rectory.
113.
Some thirty-eight months prior, the had put ashore in Havana. While the rest of the crew stormed the city to carouse, Jaromir got Pfefferkorn into a taxi and rode with him to the nearest hospital. They checked him in under a false name. He was shown to the medical-tourism ward. He was given X-rays. His leg was rebroken and reset. Jaromir stayed at his side for four more days. Before he left, Pfefferkorn offered to pay him, but he waved it off, growling. He was fine, he said. He was taking back tobacco and sugar, several hundred pounds of which were undeclared and would be sold on the Tunisian black market. Pfefferkorn should keep his money.
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