Potboiler (20 page)

80.

The restaurant was quiet, unoccupied except for one drunk colonel and Yelena. She did a double take as Pfefferkorn approached the buffet, his plate out for the last remaining pierogi. Aware of her staring at his moustache, he frowned decisively, took his sorry dinner, and dragged himself to the corner booth. He sat down in a daze and began breaking the pierogi into tiny pieces to make it last longer. In a world where nobody could be trusted, he had done the right thing. He had followed his orders. Believe no one. Deny everything. In a world where nobody could be trusted, certain events followed logically. He had rejected the overtures of a powerful man, who would now feel vulnerable for having made those overtures, and furious at having had them rejected. In a world where nobody could be trusted, payback would be forthcoming. Pfefferkorn knew he ought to be afraid. He ought to be in his room right now, throwing all his things in a bag and formulating plan B. In a world where nobody could be trusted, a van was being started up somewhere across town. In a world where nobody could be trusted, that van would pull out of an underground parking garage and head for the Metropole. Its occupants would be heavies in leather jackets. They would file out of the van and into the hotel lobby. They would enter the restaurant and grab Pfefferkorn in full view of everyone and drag him out to the van and toss him in back and hog-tie him and imprison him in a dank basement and strap him down and visit upon him unspeakable bodily desecrations. In a world where nobody could be trusted, the only reasonable choice was to run. In a world where nobody could be trusted, the clock was ticking, the sand was falling, the die had been irretrievably cast.

Who in the world wanted to live in a world where nobody could be trusted?

In place of fear he felt a profound sense of loss. A stranger had come to him, desperate for hope, and he had looked away, because those were his orders. A world where nobody could be trusted was a miserable world. He felt the loneliness of the spy, and he felt anger. He had done what needed doing and he hated himself for it. The squalidness of the room, previously obscured by Fyothor’s vitality, seethed forth. The walls crawled with vermin. The carpet festered with more. The table was sticky and gouged. It was not the same table it had been for the last week. Before it had been
their
table. Now it was
his
, and it disgusted him. He pushed the pierogi away. He hated his handlers. He hated everything about this mission. If he had any sense at all that he was getting closer to Carlotta, he might have consoled himself. But nothing was happening. It was like he was the lead role in some insipid student-written play. He felt his humanity leaching out into the stuffy night air. He swirled his teacup and stared dejectedly into the vortex. His mouth hurt from frowning all day. He had been doing his best to obey Paul’s instructions. He had been focused, he had not let emotions cloud his judgment, he had kept his eyes on the prize. Now he gave himself over to wallowing. He let melancholy and frustration wash over him. He missed Carlotta. He missed his daughter. He didn’t care what his country needed. He just wanted to go home.

Across the restaurant, the colonel’s head hit the table with a thunk, interrupting Pfefferkorn’s gloomy reverie. Loud snoring commenced. The kitchen doors swung wide and Yelena emerged holding a doggie bag, its neck rolled tightly and stapled shut.

“Hungry,” she said in English, holding the bag out.

Apparently Fyothor’s lecture on providing for the needy had taken root. Pfefferkorn was touched. Though he had no appetite, for politeness’s sake, he thanked her and moved to accept.

She moved the bag out of reach. “Hungry
,
” she said again.

The colonel snorted and shifted. Yelena glanced at him, then at Pfefferkorn, her eyes imploring.

Hungry.

A gear clicked.

Pfefferkorn remembered.

“I am satisfied, thank you,” he said. He spoke automatically, his voice rising. “But perhaps I will take this for later.”

“Later,” Yelena said. She left the doggie bag on his table and went about tidying up.

He tucked the bag under his arm and made his way carefully across the lobby. The desk clerk saw him and called out, “No messages, monsieur.”

But Pfefferkorn already knew this. He skipped the elevator, taking the stairs two at a time.

81.

He locked himself in the bathroom and put the doggie bag on the counter, wiggling his fingers in anticipation. He pried open the staple and unrolled the bag. Inside was a foam box. He took it out and opened the lid. Inside was a napkin tied like a hobo’s bundle. Delicately he undid the knot and pulled back the edges, ready for an electronic key or a microchip. That was what he expected, anyway, and he blinked in disbelief at a pale wad of doughy pastry. No, he thought. No, no. He’d practiced the exchange with the training staff until it was hardwired in his brain.
Hungry. I am satisfied, thank you, but perhaps I will take this for later. Later.
That was the code, word for word. This had to be it. Why else would Yelena refuse to hand over the bag until he reciprocated? Why had she picked tonight, of all nights, unless it was because Fyothor’s absence permitted her to act unobserved? But then where was his microchip? He prodded the dumpling. He’d been fed one like it at the safe house. To him it had tasted just as bland as any other example of Zlabian cuisine, but Paul said it was considered a delicacy.
Pya-
something
. Pyatshellalikhuiy.
“Little parcel.”

At once the answer hit him and he felt incredibly thick. He broke the dumpling open and began to pick through its contents. He was looking for a microchip. He was looking for an ear transmitter. He found neither. He found bits of diced root vegetable and gray flecks of herb suspended in a starchy goo. He flattened the exterior dough and held the pieces up, hoping beyond hope for instructions written on their insides. But he found nothing. It was a dumpling and nothing more. Disappointed, he moved to throw it away, pausing as his stomach let out a growl. He’d eaten nothing today and a week in West Zlabia had taught him never to turn down food. He stuffed a piece of the dumpling in his mouth and carried the rest to bed, switching on the television in time to catch the theme song to
The Poem, It Is Bad!

It was an interesting episode. The student poet had reinterpreted the one hundred tenth canto of
Vassily Nabochka,
popularly known as the “Love Song of the Prince,” in which the protagonist reflects on what he has forsaken in order to undertake his quest: the love of a beautiful maiden—a moment pregnant with irony, as the reader has been privy to scenes showing the maiden to be a nasty piece of work, poisoning the king and plotting to do the same to the prince upon his return. Pfefferkorn groped on the nightstand for the room copy so he could follow along for comparison. He opened to the back of the book and Fyothor’s business card fell out onto his chest. He picked it up and stared at it regretfully. The name, the number. Private tour guide. After a moment he took it to the bathroom and tore it into dozens of tiny pieces and flushed them down the toilet. He watched them spin and disappear. He got back into bed.

The student poet had taken liberties with rhyme and meter, but his boldest stroke was spicing the prince’s tone with cynicism. While this choice diminished the dramatic irony somewhat, it gave nuance to a character who often came across as a Goody Two-shoes. Pfefferkorn approved. A little edge went a long way. A character didn’t have to go around like Dick Stapp or Harry Shagreen, pulverizing fingers and snapping vertebrae at the slightest provocation, to be interesting. He put the last piece of
pyatshellalikhuiy
in his mouth and wiped his palms on the bedspread. How anything so dense and gluey could be a delicacy escaped him. He yawned. It was only twenty after nine but he felt sleepy. The panel of judges was going ballistic. They seemed to feel that the national poem made a bad platform for experimentation, and they laid on a critique so vicious that the camera zoomed in to show a spreading stain near the student’s crotch. Pfefferkorn disapproved. Never had he let a workshop get so out of hand. The closing theme played. Another yawn came on, a huge one that sucked all the air from the room. He got up to use the bathroom but his feet missed the floor somehow and he ended up flat on his face on the carpet. He waited for himself to stand up. New theme music played. Stand up, he told himself. His body wouldn’t listen. His arms said to leave them alone. So did his legs. It was as if he had four surly teenagers for limbs. He knew how to deal with that. He had raised a daughter. He pretended not to care. It was going fine until he noticed the room dimming. On-screen a teacher was being flogged. He saw her at the end of a narrow, shrinking tunnel. Her screams came tumbling toward him across an abyss. It was thankless work, teaching.

Moments before he blacked out, he remembered why
pyatshellalikhuiy
were so treasured. The recipe called for wheat flour, a rarity in West Zlabia. Practically the only way to get some was to smuggle it across the border from the east, a crime that carried the death penalty. As he heard the fading sound of a key in the door, he was thinking that it wasn’t worth the risk.

82.

He awoke in darkness. His hands and feet were bound. His mouth was full of cloth. His groin was clammy. He felt forward momentum in his bowels and rattling in his joints. He heard the modulating pitch of a shifting transmission. The heat was suffocating and the air suffused with mildew. He could state with confidence that he was tied up in the trunk of a car. Hysteria clutched at him. His throat started to close up. He bucked and thrashed around and ended up banging his head hard enough to subdue himself. He commanded himself to be rational. What would Dick Stapp do? He would lie still and conserve energy. What about Harry Shagreen? He would count turns. Pfefferkorn lay still, conserving his energy and counting turns. He determined that his right shoulder was up against the rear of the trunk. Hence pressure on top of his head meant a right turn. Pressure on the soles of his shoes meant left. He soon became attuned to changes in the elevation: the rightward jolt that indicated uphill, the gentler leftward yaw for down. They drove for what seemed like hours, making what seemed like a thousand turns. The car had rotten suspension. It hit a pothole and he was tossed against the roof of the trunk, landing painfully and losing count. The third time it happened he gave up counting and gave in to despair. All the turns in the world would tell him nothing if he didn’t know the starting point and what direction they had set out in. Nor did he have any idea how long he’d been passed out. He knew nothing, nothing at all, and to be confronted by his ignorance sparked a new fit of rage. He thrashed and bucked and rolled and kicked and screamed and gnawed at his gag, rivers of spit running down his neck.

The car slowed.

It stopped.

Doors opened.

Humid night air kissed him.

He put up no fight as they removed the blindfold. The orange glow of a highway sodium vapor lamp haloed four faces. A fifth face appeared, close enough to eclipse the light. The fifth face had two crinkly eye sockets, two thin bloodless lips, a bulbous pate like an overfilled balloon. It smiled, showing unnaturally even teeth. Pfefferkorn could tell they were dentures.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” he said, or tried to say. He was still gagged.

“Hush,” Lucian Savory said.

He shut the trunk.

FIVE

(Welcome to East Zlabia!)

83.

“You look good,” Savory said. “Have you lost weight?”

Pfefferkorn couldn’t answer. He was still gagged. The henchmen—he’d never before had occasion to use the word, and despite his abject state he could appreciate its aptness, for the four apes dragging him across the parking garage and into the elevator carried an unmistakable air of henchiness about them—smirked.

“The hell happened to your face, anyway? You look like Salvador Dalí with a cattle prod up his ass.”

The elevator doors closed and they began to rise.

Savory sniffed. He frowned. “Christ,” he said. “You pissed your pants, didn’t you.”

Pfefferkorn grunted.

“Give him yours,” Savory said.

One of the henchmen unhesitatingly removed his fatigue pants. The other three stripped Pfefferkorn from the waist down. Two of them lifted him like an infant while the third slid the dry fatigues on. The donor remained standing in his underwear.

“Don’t get too comfortable,” Savory said. It was unclear whom he was addressing.

The car went up, up, up.

“Here’s some advice, free of charge,” Savory said. “Try not to look so damned sullen. He hates that.”

Pfefferkorn was unaware of looking sullen. He wanted to grunt “Who’s ‘he’?” but the elevator dinged and the doors opened onto the grandest living room he had ever seen—it made the de Vallées’ house look like a Motel 6—and he knew the answer.

The henchmen carried him through an ornate wooden door and into a maze of corridors lined by armed guards.

“Don’t slouch,” Savory said. “Posture’s a big deal to him. Don’t fidget or stare. Speak only when spoken to. And if he offers you a drink, take it.”

The final door was made of steel. Savory swiped a keycard and pressed a code. A moment later there was a click, and Pfefferkorn was brought inside.