The Apothecary Page 0,15
said. “We need that message.”
We ran to the rubbish bin his father had used.
“Watch where he goes,” Benjamin said, and he reached into the rubbish and came up with the folded newspaper and some shreds of paper. He pieced the scraps together on the ground as I looked over his shoulder. The note was in scrawled capitals:
I felt dizzy and wondered if someone was playing a game with us—or if Benjamin and his father were playing a game with me. “Is this real?” I demanded. “Are you making this up?”
The desperate look on Benjamin’s face told me he wasn’t. “Which way did he go?” he asked.
“Across that street. Who’s Jin Lo?”
“I don’t know.”
As we followed his father, I looked to my left, instead of to my right where the cars were coming, and heard the blare of a horn. Benjamin pulled me back and kept me from being run over by a taxi. The driver leaned out the window and swore at me. Benjamin’s father ducked into a red phone booth on the other side of the street.
“Did you know your father knew Shiskin?” I asked.
“How would I know that?”
We crossed the intersection at an angle and stood in line with people waiting for a bus, trying to blend in. I had never felt so conspicuous. The apothecary came out of the phone booth without seeing us.
“Give him fifty paces,” Benjamin said.
“Is he working for the Russians?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think he knows that viscount? Or earl?”
“Stop asking me questions!”
We trailed his father through the streets. The apothecary moved surprisingly quickly, and seemed to be headed for his shop. By the time we’d reached Regent’s Park Road, we’d lost sight of him. We stood in a recessed doorway, watching, but no one went in or out of the shop.
“Let’s go in,” I said. “Just ask him what’s going on.”
“I can’t,” Benjamin said. He was pale and had lost all his courage.
“You have to.”
“What if he’s a spy for the Soviets?”
“Then at least you’ll know.” I stepped out into the street, looking to my right this time.
Benjamin gave in and we moved uncertainly towards the shop. He looked over his shoulder to see if we’d been followed. The door was locked, and he opened it with his key.
The shop was silent, but smelled oddly of smoke. Benjamin locked the door behind us, and we moved through the silent aisles towards a light in a back room. I tried walking on tiptoe, but that made my legs shake. I had to put my heels down to stop the trembling.
In the back office, the apothecary was burning papers in a small metal wastepaper basket, feeding them into the fire.
“Benjamin!” he said. “You can’t be here! They’re coming!”
“Who’s coming?”
“I’m not certain. But you mustn’t be here!”
“Are you a spy for the Russians?”
His father peered at him through his spectacles. “Of course not!”
“But I saw you in the park! Shiskin passed you a message. He works for the Soviet embassy.”
The apothecary shook his head. “I don’t have time to explain, Benjamin. I have to hide the book.”
“What book?”
The apothecary answered by pulling a large leather-bound volume from a cupboard. Then we heard the locked door rattling in the front of the shop. “They’re here!” he said. “You both have to hide.” He set down the book to lift an iron grate in the floor, revealing stairs leading down to a cellar.
“I’m not going down there!” Benjamin said.
“You’ll go now,” his father said, with a sharpness I hadn’t imagined he was capable of. As if he had just had the desperate thought, he thrust the book into Benjamin’s hands.
“We can stay and help you fight them!” Benjamin said.
“Go!” his father said.
“We’ll go get the police,” I said.
“No police! I need you to protect the Pharmacopoeia and keep it safe. Please do this thing for me.”
“Protect it from what?” Benjamin asked.
“Anyone who comes looking for it.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be all right. Just take care of the book. It’s been in our family for seven hundred years.”
“Dad, wait!”
“I have a plan. I’ll be fine. Just go.” The apothecary lowered the grate after us. Someone was pounding at the front door.
The cellar smelled like damp earth, and we found ourselves at the bottom of the stairs in a concrete-floored room. Enough light came down through the iron grate that we could see a little of what was around us. There were shelves lined with dusty jars, and there was a heavy iron door in one of the walls. Benjamin