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stalemate of contempt and fury. “Find rope,” she finally said to us. “We tie him.”

Shiskin tried to struggle away, and Jin Lo looked ready to pull his arm out of the socket. Benjamin and I found a long cord in the luggage cabin, and Jin Lo trussed Shiskin up with the speed of a calf-roping champion, leaving him immobilised and attached to his bunk. On her way out of the cabin, she picked up his wooden leg. Then she closed the door on him and marched us down the hall to the apothecary’s cabin.

The apothecary opened the door sleepily, wrapped in a dressing gown. His eyes looked naked without his spectacles, but then they grew wide. “Benjamin!” he said.

We sat on the spare bunk and told him about Shiskin.

Benjamin’s father listened and shook his head. “You should have told me before.”

“Then you wouldn’t have let Shiskin aboard,” Benjamin said. “And they would have killed his family.”

“We could have abandoned the mission.”

“It’s what you’ve been working for all these years,” Benjamin said. “I want to help you.”

We all sat in silence, listening to the rumble of the engines. The apothecary’s spirits seemed very low. “We have to tell Captain Norberg,” he said.

CHAPTER 30

The Anniken

We woke Captain Norberg, who was sleeping in his clothes and came instantly awake on seeing two stowaways on his boat. The apothecary apologised for our presence, and told him that Shiskin had been assigned by the Soviets to disable the Kong Olav.

The captain rubbed a hand over his yellow hair and considered the news. “I suppose you could take it as a compliment,” he told the apothecary. “They must be afraid of you. They could have arrested us in Russian waters without sending a saboteur.”

The apothecary shook his head. “They’ve overestimated my powers. I’m no match for the Soviet Navy.”

Captain Norberg studied Benjamin and me. “In all my years at sea, I’ve never had a stowaway bigger than a cat.”

“We’re sorry, sir,” Benjamin said.

The captain sighed. “I can’t lead my men into an ambush without telling them what to expect,” he said. “I’ll wake the ones who aren’t on watch and assemble them on the bridge, and you can tell them where we stand.” He put on his coat and hat and went forward to the crew quarters.

The apothecary stood in the middle of the corridor and stared morosely at the floor. “We should abandon the plan,” he said.

“No,” Jin Lo said. “We have come so far.”

He shook his head.

Benjamin and I left them there and went to wake Count Vili. We explained the situation while he pulled a burgundy silk dressing gown over striped pyjamas and knuckled sleep out of his eyes.

“Shiskin? I trusted that man!”

“They kidnapped his family,” I said.

The count yawned. “That’s why it’s best to be free of attachments. Much safer that way. How did you get aboard?”

“Invisibility,” Benjamin said.

“Ah,” the count said. “You’re hardier than I thought, running around naked in this weather. You’ll do well on that freezing rock of Nova Zembla—if we ever get to Nova Zembla.”

“Does anyone live there?” I asked.

“Samoyeds,” the count said. “They were reindeer breeders on the mainland, the best in the world, until the Soviets moved them to Nova Zembla and forced them to work on collective farms. The people rose up, so the Russians shot them down from aeroplanes. Charming, no?”

“How can the Soviets test a bomb where people live?”

The count shrugged. “You Americans have done it, too. And if the Soviets were willing to shoot unarmed citizens from aeroplanes, perhaps they don’t care if the rest are poisoned by radiation. Do you suppose it’s cold on the bridge? What an ungodly hour for a meeting.”

“You should talk to the crew,” I said. “You could be convincing and inspiring. The apothecary seems . . . discouraged.”

“Oh, he’ll be fine,” the count said, pulling his fur-lined trench coat over the dressing gown and taking up his black walking stick.

But I wasn’t sure. The crew crowded into the wheelhouse in varying degrees of sleepiness and disarray. A piratical sailor with silver hoop earrings in both ears had the wheel. There was also a skinny boy who looked about seventeen, the sun-bleached Ludvik, a man with a nose like a lump of dough, and the old cook, who looked ready to retire. They all looked as if they had better things to do than spend the rest of their lives in a Siberian prison.

The apothecary, standing in front of them, polished his spectacles anxiously with his sleeve.