The Apothecary Page 0,68

A stern male voice called, “Who’s in there?”

“Let’s go!” Pip said.

“What about our clothes?” They were scattered all over the floor, and they were traceable to St Beden’s.

“I’ll take ’em,” Pip said, and he bundled them under his arm. Then he turned the noisy water in the bathtub on again, and let it run.

We crept quietly downstairs, watching the doorknob rattle as the man outside tried to get in. Pip whispered to us to stay out of the way, and then stood close to the hinge side of the door. He unlocked it, and the man pushed, and the door swung open, hiding Pip with the bundle of clothes.

“Hello?” the man said, stepping into the house.

Upstairs, the bathtub water was rumbling. The man tiptoed up to catch the bathing boy-housebreaker, and as he did, the three of us slipped out onto the stoop. Pip stashed our clothes behind the first likely low wall, and we ran back towards Lower Thames Street. The cold pavement stung my bare feet, and I thought that if we were going to keep doing this invisibility thing, I had to find some invisible shoes.

“What time do you think it is?” I asked. The boat was leaving at three.

“Half past two,” Pip said.

I saw a new watch buckled on his wrist. “Where’d you get that?”

“From my auntie Jenkins,” he said. “Can’t be late.”

I was very cold, and all I could think about was getting onto the boat and burrowing into the enormous raccoon coat, but then I noticed a familiar car parked on our side of the street, just across from the Port of London’s gate.

“Look!” I said.

It was the green sedan with three men sitting in it: two in front and one in back.

“Go listen,” Pip said. “I’ll see that the boat don’t leave.”

He sauntered off across the street, and Benjamin and I moved invisibly closer to the green sedan. The passenger side window was open a few inches to let the smoke from Mr Danby’s cigarette out. The Scar was in the driver’s seat, so I assumed he had his vision back. And the man in the back was Leonid Shiskin, in a warm wool coat.

Mr Shiskin looked nervous, and twisted a fur hat in his lap. “The apothecary is very clever,” he was saying.

“I agree,” Danby said. “He’s a formidable opponent. I thought he’d blinded us for life.”

“He is also my friend.”

“That’s what makes you so valuable,” Danby said. “You can take him directly to the Soviet authorities, in his own chartered vessel, without unnecessary loss of life. You’re perfectly positioned. It’s a stroke of genius on Moscow’s part.”

“If I fail, please try to save my wife and daughter,” Mr Shiskin said.

“You won’t fail.”

“And please look after Sergei. He’s only a boy, and not a very bright one.”

“I will, of course.”

Mr Shiskin looked miserably at the hat in his lap. “You know that the ninth circle of hell is reserved for those who betray their friends.”

“Think of it another way, Leonid,” Danby said. “Russia is your country, and your family is your family. This isn’t a betrayal of the apothecary, but an act of loyalty. There comes a time when we must choose.”

“But Russia isn’t your country,” Mr Shiskin said.

“It’s the country of my heart.”

I tried to look to Benjamin in silent amazement at Danby’s claim and ran into the impossibility of eye contact again. You don’t know how much you rely on it until you’re invisible.

“But why is that?” Mr Shiskin asked. “What is Russia to you?”

Danby took a long, thoughtful drag on his cigarette. “What is Russia to me?” he said, exhaling. “A good question. There’s a literary answer, since we’re discussing Dante’s hell. I read Anna Karenina one summer in the country when I was fifteen, and it had such an effect on me, that book. I thought I had to marry a woman like Anna, with those round, soft arms, and dark eyes, and that passion.”

“But,” Mr Shiskin said, “no one sells out his country for Anna Karenina. And that Russia is gone, you know.”

“Yes, of course,” Danby said, tapping ash out the window. “There was also a very lovely ballerina named Natasha, when I was studying in Leningrad. Also with beautiful arms, though less round. That had some effect, too. But it was really the Russian soldiers I met as a prisoner of war, when I was shot down. They were kept on the other side of a great fence from us. We got packages of food and