Potboiler (26 page)

99.

The chain had prevented him from seeing too far beyond the cell bars. He didn’t know what to expect when he stepped through the door. What he saw underwhelmed him. It was an ordinary concrete hallway, about eight feet long. At the far end was a plain wooden door.

“What about the guards?” he whispered.

“There are no guards,” she said.

She opened the wooden door. It wasn’t locked. On the other side was a square concrete antechamber. In front of him was a spiral staircase—nothing glamorous, just a narrow twist of steel ascending through a shaft bored in the ceiling. To his right were two more wooden doors. To his left was a third. It was a far cry from the dystopian holding pen he had envisioned.

“What about the alarm?” he whispered.

“There’s no alarm. And you don’t have to whisper.”

She opened the first of the doors on her right. It was a storage room, about ten feet on a side. Utilitarian wire shelving lined three walls. Pfefferkorn saw packs of one-ply toilet tissue, stacks of Hôtel Metropole linens, a carton of soap, more reams of writing paper, more boxes of pens. A crepey white jumpsuit hung from a hook. The wheelbarrow was propped in the corner. Zhulk’s wife got down on her knees, reached under one of the bottom shelves, and dragged out his wheelie bag. She stood it upright and invited him to take possession of it.

Pfefferkorn opened the bag. Incredibly, its contents were untouched. He looked at Zhulk’s wife. She shrugged.

“Dragomir doesn’t like to throw anything away,” she said.

She covered her eyes while he changed into the Zlabian goatherd’s outfit. It was comfortable, with the exception of the six-inch heels, which felt too unstable for a prison break. He kicked them off and put the straw slippers back on. He presented himself for inspection.

“Close enough,” she said.

He put the deodorant stun gun in one pocket and the toothbrush switchblade in the other. In his back pockets he put the dubnium polymer soap and the designer eau de cologne solvent. He tucked the roll of cash and the untraceable cell phone into his socks. He put his false passport in his underwear. “Don’t forget these,” she said, handing him his unsendable letters and his unfinished ending to
Vassily Nabochka
. He slid them in along with the soap. He was trying to decide what to do with the tin of breath mints when she put out her hand.

“These aren’t what you think they are,” he said.

She took the tin and dropped it in her apron pocket. “I know what they are,” she said.

He looked at her.

“Hurry,” she said. “We don’t have much time.”

The adjacent room was a galley kitchen. On the counter was a wicker basket filled with root vegetables, a crusty box grater, and a stack of unwashed trays. She made him drink two cups of tea. Then she sat him on a stool while she opened up the spare moustache kit and read through the instructions.

“Don’t forget the Q-tip,” he said.

“I can read,” she said.

She used up most of the tube of adhesive and all of the swatches. She polished a spatula on her apron and held it up so he could see his reflection.

He had a moustache to rival Blueblood’s.

They returned to the storage room. She handed him the white jumpsuit, which he now saw wasn’t a jumpsuit but a hazmat suit. He started to unzip it. She stopped him.

“Do you need to pee?”

He thought. “Probably not a bad idea.”

The room across the antechamber mirrored his almost exactly, with a mattress, a toilet, and a floor drain. Instead of books, the desk held a sorry assortment of cosmetics and a plastic comb tangled with hair the same color as Zhulk’s wife’s. The pillow was dented and shiny, the blanket rumpled.

She had been living next door to him the entire time.

He used the toilet and went back out to the antechamber. She held the hazmat suit open. He stepped into it. It was a roomy one-size-fits-all. He pulled his arms through the sleeves.

“Where’s your husband?” he asked.

She smiled sourly. “The penthouse at the Metropole.” She zipped him up and sealed him in with Velcro. “He’s busy with festival planning. He won’t be back until tomorrow morning.” She zipped the hood on. The interior of the suit smelled like her. “That’s your deadline,” she said, pressing the Velcro around his neck. “From this point on, you’re on your own.”

“I understand,” he said. His voice boomed inside the suit. “Thank you.”

She nodded. “Good luck.”

He started for the stairs. He paused and turned back.

“What’s going to happen to you?” he asked.

The same sour smile came across her face. She reached into the apron for the breath mints. She rattled the tin. If she swallowed one, she would be dead in three minutes.

“I’ll be minty fresh,” she said.

100.

He must have been a mile underground. As he rose, so did the ambient temperature. Breathability, he discovered, was not one of a hazmat suit’s selling points. Soon his peasant shirt was sticking to his chest and the viewing panel had fogged up. His thighs quivered with every step. His pockets felt like they were loaded with birdshot. The shaft was claustrophobic and dim. He imagined Zhulk’s wife doing the same climb carrying stacks of books, crates of root vegetables, re-ups of towels. He gritted his teeth and pressed onward.

The stairwell ended unceremoniously at a metal ladder bolted to the wall. Pfefferkorn climbed up and heaved against a trapdoor. It fell open with a clang. He poked his head up into a circular concrete chamber lit by bare yellow bulbs. At the center of the room stood a ten-foot tank that had burst open to resemble an enormous, rust-colored orchid. Oily puddles disclosed an uneven floor. Everything bore the universal three-petaled symbol for radiation. A series of pictorial placards ran along the wall. The first showed a smiling stick figure touching the tank. The next showed the stick figure down on one stick knee, proposing to a female stick figure. The third showed the stick-figure man standing by nervously as his stick-figure wife (her legs in stick-figure stirrups) bayed, a stick-figure midwife urging her on. The fourth placard completed the cautionary tale: the stick-figure couple’s faces contorted in stick-figure horror as they received a stick-figure baby with three eyes and both sets of genitals.

He found the exit. It was unlocked, as he knew it would be. He stepped onto a small concrete apron. The sun was going down. There were no dogs, no razor wire, no watchtowers, no arc lights, no cameras. Instead, extending in every direction for half a mile, was a vast lake of toxic goo. It was thick, sticky, and antifreeze green. It glowed faintly. Anyone wanting to come in or out of the building would have to cross it. He couldn’t smell it but he reckoned that the background smell from the forest multiplied by a billion was a decent approximation. He felt his prostate curling up and trying to hide. The hazmat suit didn’t much reassure him. It was one thing to know and another to do. He sighted the perimeter fence and stepped off the apron, sinking in up to his knees. He was glad he’d ditched the heels.

As he waded along, he glanced back at the ruined reactor. Cylindrical, flared at the top and bottom, the building looked like some overblown dessert sauced with lime coulis. A jagged crack ran up its side. It was identical to other nuclear reactors he had seen pictures of, only far smaller. The smallest in the world, he thought, remembering Zhulk’s obituary.

He reached the fence in thirty minutes. The goo had thinned enough that he could feel solid earth. He walked parallel to the fence for another twenty minutes and came to an abandoned checkpoint, the barrier arm replaced by a chain welded to the bent fencepost. He ducked underneath and was free.

Just off the dirt driveway was a three-sided wooden shower stall, like those at the beach for washing off sand. A sign read
. Decontamination station. He looked down at an ordinary garden hose connected to a pipe rising from the ground. He rinsed the goo off, unzipped the suit, and stepped out of it carefully, leaving it puddled in the stall. He hurried down the driveway to the main road. He walked for a while—he wanted to put some distance between him and the reactor—then stopped and scanned in all directions. He saw dewy moonlit fields. All was quiet, not even a bleat. He took out the cell phone. He was getting one bar, barely. He moved around until it fixed. He closed his eyes and pictured the card. He opened his eyes and dialed.

“Tha,”
Fyothor said.

“It’s me,” Pfefferkorn said.

There was a scratchy silence.

“Where are you?” Fyothor said.

“About five or six kilometers outside the city, I think.”

“Has anyone seen you?”

“No.”

“You are alone?”

“Yes.”

Pfefferkorn heard the phone’s mouthpiece muffled. Fyothor spoke to someone. The reply was inaudible. Fyothor came back on. He recited an address.

“It is near the waterfront district.”

“I’ll find it.”

“Come quickly,” Fyothor said and hung up.

Pfefferkorn took a good look at the stars. He might never see them again. In a world where nobody could be trusted, he had just committed a fatal error. He refused to live in that world. He put the phone back in his pocket and walked on.

101.

Fyothor lived on the eleventh floor of a hideous concrete-block tower. The elevator was out of service. The stairwell was slick with urine and sown with condom wrappers. Pfefferkorn’s legs were still sore from climbing out of the reactor and the long hike back to town. He relied heavily on the handrail.

Fyothor had told him to head straight to the end of the corridor. It was a sensible instruction, because most of the apartments were missing numbers. The prevailing hush amplified his knock. The door opened a crack. A hairy arm beckoned him in.

Pfefferkorn stepped into the entry hall. A sack-eyed Fyothor stood re-cinching his bathrobe. Through a doorless frame was the kitchen: a closet with a hotplate and a hand sink. A wooden drying rack nailed to the wall held four plastic plates. There was no refrigerator. It didn’t look like enough for a family to get by on. Down the hall was a darkened room.

“After you,” Fyothor said.

Pfefferkorn groped his way forward. His nose picked up a briny, masculine smell. He could hardly see. The room’s shades were drawn against the moonlight. He stopped short. Fyothor bumped into him from behind. He reached past Pfefferkorn and switched on the light.

Pfefferkorn cringed at the bright blast. Then his eyes opened and he was disappointed to learn that he indeed lived in a world where nobody could be trusted. The person waiting for them was not Fyothor’s wife. If Fyothor even had a wife. And if Fyothor was even his real name. The person waiting for them was six-foot-five. He—for it was a he, very much so—was muscular and mean-looking, with a jet-black goatee and tattoos on his hands and neck. He wore a leather motorcycle jacket and black leather boots, and he was making a growly noise not unlike a garbage disposal. Pfefferkorn sank to his knees, gasping for breath. Nobody had hit him yet, but his mind seemed to know what was coming, and it was determined not to be awake when it came.

102.

“Ahn dbhiguyietzha.”

“Dyiuzhtbhithelnyuio?”

“P’myemyiu.”

“Friend. Friend. Are you all right? Can you hear me?”

Pfefferkorn opened his eyes. Fyothor and the man in the motorcycle jacket were standing over him, fretting. Contrary to expectation, he was not back in his cell, but the selfsame living room, laid out on a mushy sofa. He tried to sit up. They restrained him gently.

“Please, friend, rest. You had a bad fall. You went down like a sack of root vegetables. We thought you had a heart attack.”

Down the hall a kettle whistled. The man in the motorcycle jacket growled and left.

Pfefferkorn palpated himself. He was not tied up, and aside from a sore head, he did not seem to be injured.

“Akha,”
Fyothor said. He grunted as he sat down in a plastic chair. “I apologize. It was not my intention to disturb you. I assumed that you, as a foreigner, would be more accustomed to such things. But perhaps I am wrong.” He sighed and rubbed his face, then smiled tiredly. “Well, friend. My secret is now yours.”

Pfefferkorn, coming around, pointed to his ear and then to the wall.

Fyothor shook his head. “Not here. Besides, it is not them I worry about. It is my neighbors, friends, family. Jaromir’s mother is old. It would kill her to find out.”

Jaromir brought three steaming mugs of tea. He handed them out and sat on the floor near Fyothor. Fyothor laid his hand comfortably on Jaromir’s brawny shoulder. Jaromir’s hand went up to meet it. Their fingers laced and stayed that way as Pfefferkorn told them what he needed to do. He finished talking and fell silent and then he waited for a response. Fyothor’s eyes were focused on an imaginary point in the distance. Jaromir was likewise expressionless. Pfefferkorn feared that he had asked too much. He was betting the chance to save his life and Carlotta’s life against all of their lives, and he was getting poor odds. Action heroism was not a rational undertaking. He was far too preoccupied to wonder if that might make an interesting premise for a novel.

Suddenly Fyothor pushed himself out of the chair and went into the next room. A moment later he could be heard talking on the phone. Pfefferkorn offered Jaromir an apologetic smile.

“Sorry to disturb you like this,” Pfefferkorn said.

Jaromir growled and waved him off.

“Have you been together a long time?” Pfefferkorn asked.

Jaromir held up all ten fingers, then one more.

“Wow,” Pfefferkorn said. “That’s just great. Mazel tov.”

Jaromir smiled.

“And, eh. What is it you do?”

Jaromir growled as he searched for the word. He smiled and snapped his fingers. “Semen,” he said.

Fyothor came back with a slip of paper. “She is here.”

Pfefferkorn looked at the address.

“This is the Metropole,” he said.

Fyothor nodded.

Pfefferkorn looked at the room number. It was four higher than his old room number.

“Be at the harbor no later than three,” Fyothor said. “Jaromir sails at dawn.”

Pfefferkorn looked at Jaromir. “Ah,” he said. “Right.
Sea
man.”

“He told you this?” Fyothor chided Jaromir in Zlabian. “He is the captain.”

Jaromir shrugged modestly.

Pfefferkorn shook Jaromir’s hand and thanked them both. Fyothor embraced him and walked him to the door. Before he let him out, he said, “Tell me, friend. Is it true that in America men can walk down the street together, free of shame?”

Pfefferkorn looked him in the eye. “I’m not American,” he said. “But that’s what I’ve heard.”